Jan. 7, 2026

How to Parent Without Yelling (And Why Tantrums Stop)

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Parenting without yelling becomes possible when tantrums are understood as signals, not failures. In this episode, Greg and Rachel Denning explain how prioritizing connection, emotional co-regulation, clarity, and intentional challenge helps prevent tantrums before they erupt. By addressing the root causes of behavior and teaching kids how to process emotions safely, families can replace chaos and correction with calm leadership, trust, and long-term emotional resilience.

Are you tired of yelling—and still dealing with tantrums, defiance, and emotional meltdowns?

What if the reason tantrums keep happening isn’t because your child is “misbehaving,” but because something deeper isn’t being addressed?

In this episode, Greg & Rachel Denning break down the exact framework they’ve used to practice parenting without yelling—and to prevent tantrums before they start. As parents of seven, they share the six core principles that transformed their family culture from reactive and exhausting to calm, connected, and emotionally resilient.

You’ll learn why tantrums are a symptom, not the problem, and how prioritizing connection over correction eliminates the need for constant discipline. This conversation challenges the myth that punishment creates better behavior and shows how teaching, clarity, emotional co-regulation, and healthy challenge create lasting change.

They also explain why many kids simply lack the neurological ability to self-regulate, and how co-regulation—not isolation or punishment—is the missing piece for most families struggling with meltdowns.

If you’re ready to stop firefighting behavior and start building a family culture that actually works, this episode will change how you see parenting.

Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/V1Vrh3u6FpI

Key Takeaways:

✅ Connection reduces the need for correction — discipline works best when the relationship is protected first.

✅ Tantrums are symptoms, not the problem — go upstream to unmet needs instead of reacting to behavior.

✅ Parent with clarity, not threats or bribes — vague rules create rebellion; clear teaching creates ownership.

✅ Emotional co-regulation is essential — children can’t self-regulate until they’re taught how through you.

✅ Family systems reduce chaos — routines and expectations remove friction and power struggles.

✅ Resilience is built through connection and challenge — kids grow strongest when they choose hard things with your support.

Memorable Quotes

🗣 “Connection reduces the need for correction.”

🗣 “Tantrums are a symptom of a problem—not the problem itself.”

🗣 “If you’re not getting the results you want, you need to question your parenting methods.”

🗣 “The most effective way to discipline a child is to teach them—not punish them.”

🗣 “We never correct our children at the expense of connection.”

🗣 “Children don’t need isolation when they’re overwhelmed—they need co-regulation.”

🗣 “Parenting is your most important role. Everything else is secondary.”

Chapters:

00:00 Raising Well-Adjusted Kids on the Move

00:42 Understanding Tantrums and Yelling

01:01 Prioritizing Connection Over Correction

04:13 The Importance of Connection Over Correction

05:20 Understanding the Desire for Connection

06:01 The Impact of Parental Engagement

06:10 Recognizing Attachment Issues

06:28 Daily Intentional Connection

06:47 Behavior as a Symptom, Not the Problem

07:21 Going to the Root Cause of Behavior

09:25 The Investment in Parenting Knowledge

10:39 Clarifying Expectations in Parenting

11:34 Engaging in Clear Communication

13:33 Encouraging Dialogue for Clarity

18:05 Natural Consequences and Child Empowerment

19:58 Establishing Family Systems for Smooth Parenting

22:14 Emotional Co-Regulation in Parenting

27:51 Building Resilience Through Connection and Challenge

RESOURCES:

Let us help you in your extraordinary family life journey.

How We Raised 7 Well-Adjusted Kids - Without Yelling, Tantrums, Punishments or Power Struggles (+ get THE CHECKLIST: Things We Do Every Day to Raise Well-Adjusted Kids)
Rachel’s ⁠⁠Must-Read Booklist for Well-Read Moms⁠⁠
Greg's ⁠⁠Recommended Reading List for Parents & Youth⁠⁠
Join the 12-Week Habits Challenge for parents of kids 13+
Don’t miss out on the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method class!
Get Greg’s NEW Formidable Family Man BOOK!
Get Rachel's ⁠⁠Family Systems & Charts⁠⁠
Get Rachel’s Extraordinary Family Life Planner

0:00

You have to stop and question your methods.

We do not correct our child at the expense of connecting with them.

Parenting is your most important.

Role Sometimes good parenting means allowing your children to do things that other people would judge is bad.

Connection reduces the need for correction.

0:18

If they aren't that way, it's because they don't feel connected to you, the parent, the most important person in their life.

You are a parent.

It's number one most important priority enrolled ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast where your host, Greg and Rachel Denning, as always, here to give you tools and strategies to help you create your own unique extraordinary family life.

0:43

We're going to go through six different things that have helped us be able to parent without tantrums, without yelling.

And we literally have been able to prevent tantrums from occurring as we'll get into because we realized that tantrums were a symptom of problems, not the problem itself.

1:01

So let's dive in.

OK, so number one and one of the things we have done to be able to raise children without tantrums or yelling is that we always, and I say always intentionally prioritize connection over correction.

What does that mean?

1:16

What does that look like?

The.

Absolute best way to correct our children and to quote discipline our children is to teach them.

I I don't know how to emphasize that enough.

We think erroneously.

1:32

We think that punishment is the trick.

If I punish my child, then the behavior will stop.

That's not true.

And we're going to talk more about that.

OK, then I won't dive into it, but punishing is not the way.

Teaching is the way.

The most effective way to teach is to connect.

1:48

Yeah.

Abraham Lincoln said that if you would win a man to your 'cause you must first convince him that you're his sincere friend.

And that's never more true than in parenting.

We do not correct our child at the expense of connecting with them.

So meaning we don't correct them in a way that's going to break our attachment with them, our bond with them.

2:10

So.

In other words, we're not harming the relationship.

Exactly.

We're not harming the relationship in order to teach the principles that they need to know, to help them be happy, to be successful, to interact appropriately with people.

Like whatever The thing is, we do it in a way that, and this is the other key, we do it in a way that actually builds your connection with them as opposed to tearing it down.

2:34

Yeah.

So you're after you correct and mentor them and help them get the lesson.

Like really truly get it.

Your relationship is actually better with yes instead of worse.

You have to stop and question your methods.

Because if you're not getting the results, then your methods aren't working.

Exactly.

So stop.

2:50

And and I, I understand what you're saying.

The the correction does need to happen, but the goal is like, let's step back and say what is the most effective way for correction to take place?

And it's through mentoring generally with questions where the child comes to his, his or her own conclusion.

3:11

Says says to you, yeah, what I did was wrong exactly.

And I don't want to do that anymore.

And I'm sorry.

When when it when they come to the conclusion on their own and they say it out loud, that is impactful versus you saying what you did was wrong.

3:29

You should be ashamed of yourself and you need to tell me you're sorry.

Yeah.

So the correction occurs, but it happens in a way that's more transformative to the child because they are coming to their own conclusions.

This is so important because when your kids behave poorly, they, they often, they almost always know it and they don't like what they've done and they don't like themselves.

3:50

So if we come in and drop the hammer, we're adding to that.

But when a person is already despising themselves and somebody comes in starts telling them they they get.

Defensive.

They get defensive exactly.

So they start defending themselves instead of letting it calm down and saying hey let's talk about what happened.

4:08

Then they themselves admit and say, yeah, what I did was wrong and I I don't like it.

Parents are complaining to us about how much time their kids spend fighting.

And then they say things like, well, I don't have time for that kind of intervention.

Well, that's why you spend so much time listening to them fight.

4:24

That's why there's so much contention in your house, because if you don't spend the time investing in these types of approaches, then you're going to get the opposite results.

And so yes, which will.

4:41

It'll be scattered throughout years and years and years.

Yeah, exactly.

So you're going to spend time either way.

It's like, which result do you want?

Now the other benefit though is that when you spend this time investing, well, now we eliminate most of the problems.

So we, we're not doing this every single day because we've invested we.

5:00

Don't do it at all now.

Right.

It's very rare or it's small, you know, because we do still have an 8 and an 11 year old, right, that have their little things.

But it's so small because we've made the investment early on that yes, took more time, but now we have the benefits of that.

5:17

That's what investing is.

So you have to be willing to invest in your kids. close and connected child is a happy child that's obedient.

It is easy to get along with.

If they aren't that way, it's because they don't feel connected to you, the parent, the most important person in their life.

5:34

Now I think, I think there's 2 problems here.

There's a lot of parents, they're so busy in their own lives doing their own thing.

The only time they show up for parenting is when, oh, there's something I have to deal with here.

I have to put out a fire.

So put on my parent hat because I had to be a fire.

Otherwise, I was just doing my own thing, living my own little life and oh, you've interrupted my life again.

5:53

I have to come over and correct you.

Yeah, that's not that's not how this works.

You are a parent.

It's your number one most important priority and role.

It's the most important work you do.

I think too few parents really understand how much their children want to have an amazing relationship with them.

6:10

Your children have an attachment disorder because if when they were younger, their needs were not met, they weren't connected with as much as they wanted, because young children really want to connect.

They learn how to protect themselves essentially by disconnecting and distancing themselves from you.

6:31

So yeah, they start to not be interested in you at all because you weren't interested in them.

That's how it begins.

It's a survival.

Mechanism.

You're right, they're protecting themselves.

I don't want to lean into my parents because last time I tried they pulled away and I felt rejected.

6:47

OK #2 again, not in any specific order, but this is a key ingredient.

It's to see, quote UN quote, bad behavior as a symptom, not the problem.

Too many parents view the bad behavior as the problem they're trying to solve.

7:06

And so they want a technique, they want a hack, they want a trick they can use to fix the problem, which is not really the problem, it's the behavior.

So they want a time out, they want a punishment, they want a thing they say they want to take things away, they want to whatever to fix the problem.

7:28

But it's not the problem.

This the behavior is a symptom of a bigger underlying problem, or even a smaller underlying problem, but it's the symptom.

So every time we saw bad behavior, we never tried to fix it because we realized, oh, this is a symptom.

7:45

And so we would ask ourselves, we would say, why is my child acting like this?

What's causing?

This what's causing this behavior?

It's the cause and effect framework.

Exactly, Behavior is the effect.

What's the cause right?

You go upstream to look at what is causing this behavior, and that can be things as simple as they didn't get enough sleep, they're tired, they're hungry, they feel disconnected from you.

8:13

Well.

Their human needs aren't being met.

Yeah.

I mean, in some way or form, essentially they're one of their basic human needs is not being met, whether that's food, shelter, you know, connection, whatever.

Well, certainty, uncertainty, action, significance, all of that.

8:29

So their human needs are not being met.

That's the short answer to why why they're misbehavior.

OK, so this is this is really good because when, when we stop here and, and just this just one principle here, we say we don't, don't focus on the effect, focus on the cost.

8:49

I think it was, Thoreau said for for every thousand people hacking away at the branches of a problem, there's one person going to the root.

So if if as parents, we stop, we got to go to the root and then you guys hear us in 60 seconds say, well, the root could be, you know, any of this vast array of human needs or human drives it.

9:14

All of a sudden you're like, well, I need to understand all of the psychology and all the sociology and, and all of this stuff about what it means to be a human being so that I can know what's the cause of my kids tantrum.

And the answer is Yep.

Ultimately.

9:29

Yeah, so that, buckle up, you decided to have kids.

You have kids.

Like that's the nature.

If you want to do this, well, you have to lean in, which is literally why you and I, Rachel, do.

We do coaching.

We have courses.

We.

Put all of this in there because there's so much to it.

9:47

Yeah, it's why we're creating the Extraordinary Parent Mentoring Method course, because yeah, we want to outline all of these things in there.

Are you willing to invest in your kids so you get better results, or you just going to keep living a life with frustrating, annoying, irritating results so that you don't really like being a parent because you're not very good at it and your kids don't like being around you and the family culture is unhappy and unpleasant?

10:15

Like, that's the alternative in my mind.

So it's worth the investment.

It's worth doing the work, it's worth doing the research.

It's worth learning all of these things because you get way better results and your life is way better and happier.

If we can get down to the cause, the root cause of these things, then it's so easy to address and change.

10:35

And we also, though, we don't want you to feel like, Oh my gosh, now this is hopeless because I have to get a master's or doctorate in child psychology in order to help my child.

That's not what we want you to feel.

Because the beautiful thing about this is that even when you start to learn even a little bit, even listening to this podcast, you're going to have that much more knowledge that's going to make things that much better.

11:02

Exactly like it's incremental it it builds up on itself.

Hey there, this is Greg Denning.

We want to reach as many people as possible and help as many families as possible with these conversations.

And we want to keep this podcast ad free forever.

11:18

You can help us do that by subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen your favorite platform and on YouTube and leave a quick review and, and share your favorite episodes with friends and family.

It makes a big difference.

Thank you for being a part of this very important movement.

11:34

Just just like it's true for you and for me as adults, it's it's often more than just the thing.

It's not just what's on the surface.

There's there's stuff underneath it.

There's layers.

And so if if you're frustrated or said about something and you start unpacking it, like, OK, there's some underlying frustration here.

11:55

Like I'm still upset about this thing that happened a few years ago, or I'm still questioning my own worth.

I'm still wondering if I'm likable and lovable.

And so when somebody does something mean to me or says something mean, it's it's not necessarily just that act that makes me hurt so bad.

12:11

It's like I'm still wondering back when I was a child if I'm even lovable.

And so if it's stacked for us as an adult, then then you start thinking, well, I wonder if it's stacked for the kids too.

And if we go to the cause and we help address the 'cause then the problem, so many of the problems just go away on their own.

12:30

Exactly, Yeah.

So powerful.

OK, let's move to number three, parent.

And in this case, I like to remind parent is a noun, but it's also a verb.

So in this case, parent the verb with clarity, not with threats, punishments or bribes.

12:47

So what that specifically means is that too many parents are too vague.

They're not clear enough.

And part of the problem is because they themselves are not clear enough, they don't know.

So a child does something and they say don't do that or stop being mean or stop whatever.

13:06

That's vague.

It's unclear, it's nonspecific, and it's not helpful.

So because the child is unclear about what you're saying, because you're unclear about what you're saying, they keep doing the thing.

And so you threaten them or you punish them or you try to bribe them into doing the right thing when they probably don't even know what the right thing is because you have been unclear about it.

13:30

We.

Hear this all the time.

Yes.

Oh no, no, no, no.

I have told them 10,000 times not to be rude to their siblings.

And so then I talked to the kid.

I'm like, hey, you know, you're like, I wasn't being rude, right?

Wait a minute.

Like, did your parents tell you not?

Oh yeah, my parents told me.

Not rude, but what I was doing is not rude.

13:46

Exactly and like.

Okay, what did you do?

And they're like, I did this, this and this.

That's not rude.

Like, okay, so what's happened is it's like this, this difference in definition or difference in paradigm.

So you say don't be rude and includes all these things, but you never explain that.

14:03

And the child's like, I wasn't being rude, I was just doing this.

And so it's a total miss.

And you guys are, there's punishment, there's frustration.

The kids going to be livid.

Like you're punishing me for being rude when I wasn't being rude.

They're going to be so angry and so resentful and rebellious.

14:22

It's like now you're just making crap up.

Yeah, not fair.

I hate, I hate what you're doing right.

This is ridiculous because I didn't do it and it all stems from a lack of clarity.

Exactly.

So the more clear, the more specific we can be in our own minds, but then also to articulate that to our children, the fewer problems we're going to have.

14:43

Because if I can go to my child and say, when you do that and you say it in this tone, at least to me and to your sibling, it sounds mean, it sounds rude.

So, you know, here's a way we could probably do it better.

15:00

Let's practice, let's do some role-playing and let's speak in different voices.

I'm not talking like this.

I'm going to talk like that and see how they sound so that we are aware, more aware of what different tones sound like.

So then now there's more clarity about what you're exactly saying.

15:17

And then if it comes up again, you're like, oh, that was kind of like that, you know, grumpy voice that we practiced the other day that that sounded like that to me.

Let's try a different voice.

Let's use one of our other voices that we practiced.

It's very specific and you've practiced it so they know exactly what you're talking about.

15:34

There's a frame of reference.

And so when you tell them later, because you're going to need to, they, they know what you're talking about and you're more clear.

And now you don't have to threaten them.

You don't have to punish them.

You're just simply reminding them of something they have been taught in a way that they understand.

15:51

The best correction is teaching.

Right.

Act it out, role play, give as many examples as you can, like see the whole like rotisserie chicken from every angle.

Keep going at it from different parables, stories, examples until it finally clicks because you might be over here.

16:12

It's like, well, it's like this and like that and the kids like, I don't get it.

And then you relate it to something that he's connected.

To like a movie or a book.

Or something that he's fascinated with or basketball like, OK, hold on.

Let me let me walk through this.

You're on.

You're on the court.

The referee does this, the coach which says that, does that make sense?

16:29

He's like, oh, OK, I get it.

So it's called assimilation.

If you're making connection the the learner gets it.

It assimilates into their brain.

It literally connects into the neural connections that are already.

There, get that one.

Or hey, it's like in this book you love or that movie.

16:46

Yeah.

Oh OK, I got it.

Well, and I think it's very important for parents to understand in this process that you want should welcome and not get upset when your children talk back or argue with you during this process because what they are doing is assimilating the information like they're asking.

17:05

Seeking clarity.

Yeah, they're seeking.

Clarity.

They're asking questions.

To you it might seem like they're being disrespectful and and they should.

You should again be clear about how it looks like Respect, like how to have this conversation in a respectful way, but they are essentially trying to grasp the information and saying, well, what about this or no, it's not like that because this or no, I disagree.

17:29

That's OK, That's a good thing.

That's literally how they are assimilating it as a part of their way of being by having that conversation with you.

So welcome those kind of conversations instead of shutting them down and telling them they're so disrespectful or like, now you're going to get extra punishments or you know, that's not a, a healthy way to approach it.

17:50

If you want to have well adjusted kids, you want them to own the information for themselves.

And they're only going to do that if they're able to dialogue with you in debate and conversation to really grasp it.

I just want to point out before we move to #4 another great benefit of having or having the space for these types of conversations that kids love is I can't even tell you how many times my kids have convinced me that their idea was better because I would say something like this.

18:23

And then they'd be like, well, no, what about this and this and this?

I'm like, yeah, you're right.

Let's not do that then.

And kids love that because they feel respected.

They feel heard.

They feel like they have a voice.

They feel like I'm going to listen to them and make course adjustments when they have good ideas.

18:43

That's what you want from your children.

You don't want to be the one who's in charge that makes all the decisions, who does all the thinking in the house, and nobody else can.

A dictatorship.

That's exactly that's called control and it does not create healthy families.

So we allow this space for discussion because we want the ideas of our children.

19:03

We want them to contribute, we want them to give feedback and provide alternative options like that's what we want because then we become this team, especially as they get older that can work together to that can do more than the whole, like the the sum is greater than the whole.

19:21

Yes, and the kids become self-directed.

So whether I'm there or not, they make good choices.

They think clearly, make good decisions, follow through, take good actions like I don't have to be there babysitting and policing.

Because they realize that the goal is not to be obedient to mom and dad.

The goal is to think and make good choice choices.

19:38

That's the goal.

And when they real, they recognize that that's allowed.

Like they can do that.

And what they end up doing is the decision that they came to because it's the good decision, the right decision, not just because it's what mom and dad wants.

Then they start to integrate that into their life and it's beautiful to magic.

19:57

That's what you want.

OK #4 I don't want to spend a lot of time on this one because.

I have a whole course on it and I we have some other episodes about it, but it's still, I have to mention it because it's still key and critical to this whole topic of avoiding tantrums, parenting without yelling.

20:18

Part of the key is having and it's use family systems to reduce chaos.

When you have systems in place that includes routines, that includes expectations, When you have that in place, it reduces a lot of friction because you're not seemingly out of the blue saying I need you to do this.

20:38

And your child's like, what?

Blindsided?

Like, what do you mean I need to do this?

I don't even know how to do that.

You've never asked me to do that before.

It feels it's so much more work.

There's so much more inertia there because you don't have the smooth operating systems that help reduce the friction.

20:56

Now, when a lot of people, some people think that a system means a very strict, rigid schedule, I'm not talking about that.

You don't.

In fact, I don't think they're healthy.

It's not healthy to have these very strict rigid schedules, right?

Family life is much more dynamic and flowing than that.

21:14

It's not chaotic it.

Shouldn't be to the other extreme.

I love the yin and Yang because it should not be all the way to the other extreme of no chaos or no systems, no order, no expectations.

Like that also is a form of chaos that is detrimental to your family life.

So you've got to find that yin and Yang balance so that a lot of the friction is reduced.

21:36

Think it's easier to get things done.

It's easier to ask someone to do something.

And it happens without everything being a battle or a power struggle or an argument, Right?

And it also kind of ties into what we talked about just having clarity.

Like if you're clear about, hey, I expect the dishwasher to be loaded and unloaded.

21:56

I expect the garbage to be taken out.

I expect this room to, you know, stay in this level of order.

Then you're not constantly trying to fight to get that stuff to happen because people just realize, oh, this is how we do things.

22:12

This is how things are done in our home.

OK #5 this is obviously, like all of them, very important.

But it's something that too many parents do not fully understand because there is a faulty belief in our society that children have certain abilities that they just do not have.

22:32

And when we understand that they don't have those abilities, then it makes our lives as parents so much easier.

And so this one is lead with emotional Co regulation.

And what does that mean?

Essentially what it means is that children, and in this definition I'm going to include perhaps up to the age of 25, do not have the ability to self regulate.

22:54

Now that's going to vary in levels according to their age and maturity that children are born without a prefrontal cortex.

The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that regulates emotion and the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the age of 25 S.

23:10

Your child very likely literally lacks the ability to self regulate their emotions.

And unfortunately because we've been indoctrinated inappropriately in society, we've been taught to believe the children can self soothe, even even babies, and that is just not true.

23:30

In fact it is a lie and that is what creates so many attachment disorders which then create behavior problems throughout the life of a child.

A child cannot self regulate, they have to have Co regulation.

23:46

When they were in the womb they were regulated by your emotions.

If you were stressed, they were stressed.

If you were calm, they were calm.

They still need that from the age of birth 0 until they learn how to do it.

And that's going to depend on the child and their own uniqueness.

24:05

So we have to, and I realize when I say this, we have to help them Co regulate.

Many of us do not know how to even regulate ourselves, which is part of the problem.

And, and I want to add a couple of different words here.

It's like we don't even know how to process.

24:22

How do we process our thoughts, our emotions?

How do we process an experience that was challenging, a difficult, some kind of stressful thing?

How do we process our big traumas, big tea traumas and our little tea traumas?

Most people don't know how.

They don't have the skill set, so it has to be intentionally developed and cultivated.

24:43

Children and adults need to be taught how to do this.

So one of the major roles of parenting is learning how to do it yourself and then teaching your children how to process.

So when you're very upset, how do you get over it?

When you're hurt, how do you get over it?

25:01

When you feel depressed or discouraged or hopeless, what do you do to move past that?

Yeah, figure that out and teach that to your children, because if you don't teach them, who will?

That is why many parents are struggling with this because they weren't they weren't taught how to do it themselves.

25:21

So it's kind of this catch 22 in a way of like, well, we can't parent our children as well as we need to because we haven't learned how to regulate ourselves.

And yet, ironically, so many parents say things to their kids like control yourself or get over it or deal with it.

25:40

And the kids are like.

How?

I have no idea.

And we're not teaching them how.

And so they just don't, they don't know.

And then we wonder why they have all these misbehaviors and they're acting out and they're they're throwing tantrums and like they're emotionally dysregulated.

25:59

It's because they haven't learned how to they have not been Co regulated with their parents.

So in very simple, basic ways, of course, it starts with babies by responding to their cries.

So many mothers ignore their babies or they'll say, well, I'm not feeding the baby yet because it's not time to feed the baby.

26:19

Like that doesn't help the child, that the baby has no idea about your schedule and neither do they care about it.

So when a baby cries, meet its needs, whether that's hungry or tired or just want to be held, meet the baby's needs.

That's how it starts.

26:35

But then it also is like when you're when we're talking about tantrums and helping children, tantrums often occur because a child has literally reached their limits.

It's like a mom being burnt out, touched out and like losing it.

That's the same thing.

26:51

That's what a tantrum is.

But we want to punish them where a mother wants empathy and sympathy and and someone to you know, like validate her feelings, but we don't do that with a child and that's wrong.

We need to validate their feelings of like, Oh my gosh, you're so overwhelmed, you're so stressed, you're so tired, you're so touched out, you're so over stimulated.

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Let me help you regulate.

Let me Co regulate with you.

So I'm going to hold you.

Like the best thing you can do with a tantrum is hold the child and love them and make them feel like it's OK.

Let me help you calm down.

Let's take some deep breaths together, let's get some food, let's go lay down.

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Like anything you would do to help yourself feel better, help them do that rather than isolating them, threatening them, and punishing them for having their emotions.

Like how would you feel if somebody did that to you when you were just had reached your limits?

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Don't do that to your children, OK?

Number six, last one, we have to build resilience through connection and challenge.

So I hope in all of this you're not taking away this idea that we are these gentle parents that are all touchy feely and like don't do anything hard or expose our kids to any hard things.

28:12

That is not true.

And if you know anything about us, you know that that's not true, that we're often challenging our children and they've done very challenging things, including two of our teenagers summoning Count Mount Mount Kilimanjaro.

You know, they've done very challenging hard thing.

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Because that's, that's the framework we operate in.

Like we want to be tough and we want our kids to choose to be very tough.

So we are in no way, shape or form advocating or condoning this easy, comfortable life where there's no.

28:44

Challenge for you?

No.

Struggle.

So challenge matters, but it's connection and challenge meaning because.

The connection has to happen first.

That I am going with them.

So I lead my children through challenge.

28:59

I always have since they were born.

I would carry them, sometimes two or three of them, into insanely difficult areas and they're watching me.

They had reached their own limits.

Yeah, so they go to their limits and then I carry them, right.

And they're watching me even even little.

29:15

There's making these cognitive connections.

They're just watching me sweat and struggle and strain and I'm smiling and like, this is the best.

Oh my goodness, this hurts.

And they watch that their whole lives.

And then I'm I'm leading the way through difficulty and like, hey, let's go in.

Let's push ourselves.

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Let's push our limits.

Let's go.

They're watching me do it well and we're connected.

We have a great bond and I say, hey, I'm going to go do something really hard.

You want to come?

And they're like, yes, please, where do I sign up?

I'm in.

Well, and the key framework to understand this with, and this actually comes from clinical psychology, is that children, well, everybody, but in this scenario, our children have to choose to opt into the challenging things.

30:01

If people are forced to do things they're afraid of or don't want to do, like literally the research is out there, it's detrimental to them.

But if they do the same thing, the very same activity, but they chose to do it, it can, it produces a completely different positive result.

30:22

So we have to allow them to opt into the challenge.

And one of the best ways to do that is 1.

By having a great connection with them.

So you've been building a connection with them from the time they're a baby or rebuilding that connection if you didn't when they were young.

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So they trust you.

So they trust you because that that's a key part of connection is trust.

And then you're leading out by taking on the challenges.

And that's the magic formula.

When they're younger, they're like, yeah, I'm not so sure, Dad.

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And you and I do it anyways.

And they watch me and they're like, wow, OK, he did it.

He just jumped off that huge Cliff or he just did the bungee jumping.

He just jumped out of that airplane.

He just did that insane hike or mountain bike, or he's did a triathlon or a endurance race.

31:09

Wow.

Or he went and climbed that mountain.

He came back and told me the stories like that's whoa.

And you're planting all these seeds.

When they're ready, they're like, hey dad, I want to give it a go this time.

And one of the things that happens, I think is that either parents are afraid of things or children are afraid of things.

31:25

And so they end up avoiding them as part of your life, right?

It's just, oh, well, we don't do that thing because I'm afraid of it or the kids are afraid of it.

And that's not a healthy way to develop because we have to be regularly, regularly confronting and facing fears and moving through them.

31:46

So if there are things that you're afraid of, especially if you're because we're leading out, if you're afraid of something, let your kids know, but then let them see you facing those fears even in small ways, so.

Thanks for bringing this up.

So it's huge.

I see it every day.

So many parents just stay away from all their fears.

32:05

They hide from their own fears and their insecurities.

And boy, they're going to protect their kids from those scary things.

And so the kids even grow up with greater fears and insecurities, and they're even more shelter in the.

Next generation from.

Things that aren't even that scary, but it was your own fear that you wouldn't lean into.

32:23

So, so the idea here is that as we continue to push limits and push boundaries and grow in skill, things that were dangerous or are dangerous to other people are no longer dangerous because you have improved or increased your skill and ability.

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That's the idea behind building resilience, behind building competence, behind taking on challenge because you're going to, you're going to be more well-rounded, you're going to be more well adjusted because you have more skills and capability.

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And this is true physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

Like, in all ways, we grow more holistically when we instead of shying away from the things we're afraid of, we actually lean into them and help them become more capable and competent.