Vishen Lakhiani recounts parenting advice from psychologist Shelley Lefkoe: before disciplining, parents should consider what beliefs a child will form from the interaction. He illustrates with an example of a child (Billy) dropping utensils and explains how punishment without exploration can lead a child to infer they are unimportant or unworthy. Lakhiani describes his own practice of asking his son Hayden nightly what he loved about himself and highlighting one positive trait daily to build self-love, arguing that fostering self-love prevents the cycle of 'hurt people' creating more hurt people.
Chapters
I was talking to a famous American parenting psychologist, Shelley Lefkoe. And I asked her, shelley, you know, what's the biggest piece of advice you can give any parent in the room? And she said, vishen, this is what you got to know. Firstly, no matter what action you take with your child, ask yourself, what beliefs is he going to walk away with from this? So let's say you have a kid, right? And the kid's at the dining table and he drops his spoon. He's angry about something. He tosses his spoon down, and you say, billy picked that up. And he goes, no. And he drops his fork. And now you're frustrated. You're like, billy picked it up. He goes, no. So what would a good parent do? They would take Billy, put Billy in a corner. Well, a bad parent would smack Billy, but a good parent would go, put Billy in a corner and say, billy, I want you to sit down there and think about what you did, okay? And we love you, but sit down there and think about what you did. Now, is that good or bad? What do you guys think? Well, here's the thing. You gotta ask yourself, what beliefs is my kid going to take away from that? Now, here's what could be going on in Billy's head. Remember, Billy is like moldable glass. So he could be thinking, well, I dropped my spoon because I was angry because I asked my mom a question and she seemed to be talking to dad and didn't listen to me. So I wanted to gain her attention because I really respect my mom now. Mom puts me in a corner and scolds me and doesn't ask me why I dropped my scoon. So therefore, I think my mom doesn't really respect me. Now that starts accelerating. My mom doesn't respect me. My mom doesn't respect me. It means I'm not worthy. It means I'm not important. It means I'm not enough. How many of you here grew up feeling you were not enough in some way? That's what we do to our kids. So the most profound exercise I've started doing is with any parenting intervention, I ask my child, hayden, what do you think? What does this mean to you? What are you thinking about? Why did you drop that spoon? Tell me. I know it's not normally you, is it because I did this. And every night before I put Hayden to sleep, I asked Hayden, Hayden, what did you truly love about yourself today? And he'll say, my hair. I like my hair. It's soft. Or he'll say, I like the fact that today in school, I ran really, really, really fast and came second in the race. And sometimes he'll go, I just want to sleep, dad. And then I'll tell him, hayden, what I really like about you is that you sleep so well. It can be anything but every single night, I try to point out to my child one thing I love about him. Because you cannot give a kid enough love. You cannot give a kid enough self love and make them appreciate themselves enough because the entire world is bashing them and putting them down. One of my friends, her name is Veena, said this. She said, hurt people, hurt people. The teachers who hurt you hurt you because they got hurt. And so the greatest thing we can do is to create self love in our children. I don't believe in narcissism. I believe everyone should be madly in love with themselves, with our kids, because the only way we can disrupt this societal pattern of putting each other down is to make sure we do not create more hurt people. Premium beat.
