Dr. Aliza Pressman on the Five Principles for Raising Good Humans EP 405
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Coming up next on Passion Strike. I think the thing that we don't know is transition to parenthood actually changes your brain and you are motivated at that time to make changes that you wouldn't normally have the motivation to make. So a lot of ways to make changes in your life as an adult happen when you are incentivized with kids, like to be your best self in order to serve

raising kids. And that is just a very specific time in life where we are really just growing. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the

power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become

PassionStruck. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to episode 405 of PassionStruck, consistently ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast in the world. And thank you to all of you who come back to the show every week to listen and learn how to live better, be better and impact the world. I have a special invitation for you. I'm excited to introduce our new PassionStruck quiz. It's a unique opportunity for you to discover where you stand on the PassionStruck continuum. Are you an orchestrator who balances various aspects of life with passion and purpose or a vanquisher conquering challenges and turning obstacles into opportunities?

Take the quiz on passionstruck.com and find out which one resonates more with your journey to living a passionstruck life. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs or Spotify to get started.

In case you missed my interview from earlier in the week, it featured Dr. Mark Hyman, and we did a deep dive on the future of medicine. And if you liked that previous episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the PassionStruck community, where we can help more people to

create an intentional life. And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Throughout the month of January, I'm trying to focus the episodes on everyday heroes who are doing amazing things. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome a special guest, Dr. Elisa Pressman, a developmental psychologist and the beloved voice behind the hit podcast Raising Good Humans. In today's episode, Dr. Pressman invites us to let go of the pursuit of perfection and parenting. She brings a refreshing perspective that challenges the high pressure norms of modern parenting. With her expert guidance, she encourages us to become transformative,

positive influences in our child's lives while also crafting our own unique definitions of success. Dr. Pressman's approach is grounded in her five principles of parenting, which offer a practical and flexible framework for raising good humans. These principles, relationship reflection,

Regulation, rules, and repair aren't about presenting a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, they emphasize the diversity of successful parenting strategies and acknowledge that there's no singular right way to raise a child. Whether you're navigating the challenges of parenting toddlers or teens, Dr. Pressman's insights are invaluable.

Her principles help parents and caregivers alike to understand that it's never too late to adopt and improve your parenting approach. Importantly, she emphasizes the journey of personal growth that accompanies the parenting process. By striving to become more intentional people, we naturally evolve into better parents and in turn, better human beings. With nearly two decades of experience working with families and healthcare providers, Dr. Pressman's expertise is both deep and wide-ranging. She serves as an assistant clinical professor in the Division of Behavioral Health Department

of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and is a co-founded director of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center. So whether you're feeling overwhelmed by the demands of parenting or simply seeking new strategies to enhance your family's journey, today's conversation with Dr. Eliza Pressman is sure to enlighten and inspire and empower you. Let's dive in and thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

I am absolutely so thrilled and honored to have Dr. Aliza Pressman on PassionStruck. Welcome, Aliza. Thank you for having me. I love to get these interviews started by getting the audience to get to know you. And you have a really popular podcast called Raising Good Humans, and I love that name. Can you share some more about it?

Sure. I started it. I've been working in this field of developmental psychology, which is essentially a niche field in psychology that looks at change over time, how we come to be who we are, cognitive, social, emotional development of humans.

And all the stuff that really informs so many things that people don't even realize. And I've worked in this field and I've worked with lots of families and I've worked with lots of healthcare providers and I teach and all these things. But there's so much amazing content and there are so many incredible experts involved.

that I felt like I had access to. And I just wanted to bring them to easier, more palatable conversations than maybe academic journals. And so that was how I ended up starting a podcast. I understand that as you were growing up and going through school, that you were really interested in studying the human condition. And you started doing that through examining history and

English literature and drama. Can you tell me why those three lenses were so critical for you? I just felt like I had my whole life to figure out like my professional, um,

career, but in college, I wanted to understand, first of all, I just wanted to have the opportunity to work with great professors and students that I would never be able to pick up on my own or understand on my own. I just was, I think, if I may, very wise as a youngster to recognize that these kinds of things could be really interesting and to have the privilege of

of being able to not like choose a vocation and really focus on growing my understanding of people. Now, of course that ended up being my vocation. It just, it did inform it. But I think studying all of those things from literature to art, to theater helps you understand the human condition in a way that is

much more easily accessible to people. And then I turned it into, okay, now how can I operationalize this in the science of the human condition? Okay. And I used to live in Southern Spain. And so one thing that I loved being there was all the Baroque art. And I understand that you were originally interested in getting a PhD in art history and Southern Baroque art, if I have it correct.

How do you even know that? Have I said that? Was that in my book? Where did that come from? And that is 100% true. I do a ton of research for these because I don't want to repeat the same episode. So I'd like to

That's fascinating. I totally was obsessed with Southern Baroque art. You're absolutely right. And specifically, I was really interested in Caravaggio. I was really interested in this woman, Artemisia Gentileschi, and I was really interested in how they portrayed like biblical stories. This is so minutiae, but I thought it was so cool how they portrayed biblical stories sometimes and

through the lens of man versus woman. I remember this artist, Artemisia Genileschi, did a very famous painting to the very few people who are interested in Southern Prokhor about Susanna and the elders. And it's like a story that had historically been interpreted by artists that were male artists as like this beautiful woman in a garden

and elders looking at her, but from an admiring her and very pretty. And then this woman, Artemisia Genileski did the same painting, but she made this beautiful woman in the garden much closer up with these onlookers peering at her in a much more disturbing way. And she looked very vulnerable. And I was like teaching a different interpretation through the eyes of a woman.

And for me, all of the work that I did in college, whether it was theater, art or literature, learning other people's perspectives to me is what made me go into this field of psychology. And that painting and that painter and comparing the differences of the styles in that era was

blew my mind. Not to mention the fact that lots of just techniques came along in that time about with light and dark, which I thought was fascinating, but I haven't thought about it in 20, 30 years, but that was why. And it makes sense when I look back on my life that I was interested in that, but I don't think at the time I understood why I was so interested.

I lived in Spain about an hour south of Seville, but I remember going to the Alhambra with my parents and just how innate everything was. And art has always been a fascination for me. And even when I was at the Naval Academy, I would love the weekends that I could get away and I'd go to the National Mall and just go through all the art museums I could find and just absorb it all.

Well, tying into what you were just saying about theater and drama, I understand that you somehow got introduced to an NYU program called Drama Therapy, which just the sound of it sounds like I would want to take that course. How did that help influence your desire to study developmental psychology?

Well, what happened was I really just, I found out there was like an actual field where you could use theater to, and drama to help children come outside of themselves and particularly children who had been through trauma. And I thought that would be such a cool way of being of service. And so I went to look into the program and the head of the program said, it's the middle of the year.

You can't start this program now, but you could take some fundamental psych courses so that you're ready and you have done some of the credits before you started the program. And in taking these fundamentals, I fell into this incredible class called developmental psychology. And I just fell in love with it. Yeah.

That's great. And through the rest of our interview, we're going to be discussing your amazing book, which I'm holding up right here, The Five Principles of Parenting, Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans, which comes out on January 23rd. So pre-order her book while you can and get the goodies that come along with it. So one of the things I wanted to ask to maybe get this started is how do you define a good human?

So there is a chapter in my book about this because I don't define it. I would say three things. One, when I say good human, I think we all get a feeling like we just know what that is, but I don't know that we all define it the same way. So I don't presume to tell the reader, the parent, the person, what their idea of a good human should be. I just am there to guide figuring out what for you, your North star is.

And being able to have intention in raising your kids that way and being, raising yourself to be that person. What I don't do is say that person has the following qualities because I don't think it's appropriate for me to decide my, because it's so like values oriented and,

So I want to deliver the science and then let each person come up with their values. So for me, I almost prefer asking everybody to close their eyes and imagine what is a good human. And I just know that we all understand what that means, but we all, again, interpret it in different ways. Okay. And I want to get into the science here in a second, but I,

Did well to tell the audience, you have some pretty amazing endorsements. I read the first three and they were from Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Garner, and Adam Grant. Pretty darn amazing. And I love the interview that you did with Drew Barrymore as well. And it seems like you've had really a profound impact on her and the way she is also trying to raise good humans.

So yeah, I've been very lucky. The endorsements that I got were generous and it felt really, it's scary sending your book to people to read. And a lot of people in my field also did endorsements where I just knew they've obviously read a lot. And I wanted to, that was like, those were the first people who actually saw the book because you have to send it pretty early on to get those endorsements.

So it was nerve wracking, but I think it felt like if I can get that support and it's authentic and that book is of service, then awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. And I felt the same way you did as I was sending mine out. I remember sending first two people I sent it to were Seth Godin and Matt Higgins. And Matt ended up coming back and wanting to write a forward for it. And I was just hoping Seth

would say, as he comically often does, this book is good enough to pay $27 for one idea. But he actually gave me a really nice endorsement. But it's the one that was the scariest to me is the book

in a lot of ways is about self-actualization. And so I asked Scott Barry Kaufman kind of Mr. Self-actualization, if he would consider endorsing it. So that one is one of the most meaningful ones to me. On this podcast, you've brought up intentionality and we talk a lot about behavior science, psychology, and what I call intentional behavior or life design.

And I think it's important to go through some of the science behind parenting, because it's interesting that you write that the science shows that it's our own learning curves that are the key to this whole process of raising good humans. Could you explain what you found about that?

I think we forget that the day our kids are born is the day we are born as parents. Maybe you start to feel like a parent right before when you decide to have a kid. And so you're not supposed to know everything right away. And there's this pressure that it's all instinct and just go with your gut. Or there's a thousand things that you're supposed to do.

And to me, like when you are developing a skill, you want to be intentional about what you're practicing, who you're learning from, what it feels like for you, what the plan is. And as you do this and you're thrown in, you have to do it. There's no, let me practice for a little while, but without a kid. Although in a dream world, you'd start thinking about these things before you even have kids.

I think you then, and then sometimes you have multiple kids. Your growth is exponentially faster with overtime just because you get more comfortable, you get experience.

And so I really wanted to capture supporting that feeling of, I know some things, like I have to have some sense of internal efficacy. And also I wanted to empower people to say, you don't have to know it all. Here's some pretty easy content that you couldn't possibly have known.

unless you were in this field, but it's so nice to know. And I think every parent and person has the right to know a lot of the science of how we come to be who we are, because it does matter. And then I think we are so motivated.

at that time in the transition to parenthood, it's the third largest growth in our brain. And that's true for fathers. It's true for mothers. And it's true for caregivers in general, like whoever the caregivers are. We know like obviously the first few years, it's the largest brain growth than adolescents. But I think the thing that we don't know is transition to parenthood actually changes your brain. And I think the idea is

You are motivated at that time to make changes that you wouldn't normally have the motivation to make. So a lot of ways to make changes in your life as an adult happen when you are incentivized with kids, like to be your best self in order to serve raising kids and

We tend to like have these more people quit smoking when they find out that they're having a child. More people are able to quit whatever it is that's been maybe maladaptive or unhealthy for them. And that is just a very specific time in life where we are really just growing.

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And I know when my kids were first born, especially my son, who's six years older than his sister, I was out there looking for books. And it was as if everyone I picked up was on one extreme or the other. Yes. And what your book reminded me about is I have a concept in my upcoming book called Becoming the Anxiety Optimizer.

And what it's all about is you look at anxiety and if it's a tightrope, you can have two different extremes, one with way too much anxiety, which is going to cause ramifications, the same thing with too little anxiety. And I think it's a great analogy for parenting. Yeah. Can you use that maybe as an analogy to define what a balanced approach to parenting is?

Well, I felt very strongly that this book had to be a balanced approach because we're in such an era of like polarization and throughout time parent, if you just look at parenting books and parenting approaches, it's always these extreme views that get attention when of course it's never the answer. And so to me, the balanced approaches, there are two aspects and then maybe you can help me figure out how it translates to this tightrope metaphor, but yeah,

I think the first thing in balance is actually balancing yourself, your openness and capacity to figuring out how to take in information in a way that's not using it as so important it makes you rigid and then not so irrelevant that it's chaotic. And so I think the balance is coming between those two extreme spaces.

And I think the content of the science has been very clear that it is in this realm of parenting and those five principles, you, the balance is you don't need to be doing this more than more often than not. You just want to on balance. This is what you lean on. This is your approach, but there's going to be plenty of times that it's not.

And the last thing that I guess was important to me was naming multiple approaches for certain things where the science isn't clear. The science is like, for example, with sleep, your kids need to sleep and you need to sleep. That is the science. How that happens. There are some studies about the approaches to get your child to sleep that

And so of course I give all the suggestions. Like if you are this type of person, try it this way. If you're this type of person who feels more comfortable in with a softer touch, try it this way. But I was very clear, like you can choose your own adventure as long as you meet the science where it is, which is that sleep matters.

And that's the easiest way to have a balanced approach in my view is find the kernel of science that really matters and then figure out the parts of it that you can interpret in ways that when, in how you're living your life and how you're responding to your kids and recognize that any of the extreme stuff is just for marketing. I love how you ended that. My analogy of how I would use it, uh,

as a parent is I think you have parents who are on one extreme where they are so hands-on in the way that they're parenting, that they're actually overbearing and over influencing the development of their child. And then you have others who

almost ignore their kids. And so the child, it could be the parent who has to work all the time. And so there's no one at home and the child becomes too self-sufficient. The way I like to look at it is you need to be eyes on, but hands off, meaning you need to instill the child with the skills that they need to have, but you need to be hands off enough to allow the child to explore and to make their own mistakes. Because I found with my kids,

I wanted them to make mistakes earlier in life by trying things out because it becomes more painful the older you get, as I found in my own life. Yeah, absolutely. It's also as when you're younger and you're making mistakes in the support system of having your family there.

It's quite different. And it's pretty nice to know that you can make mistakes over and over and that gives you space to grow. And when you have, if it's at a time when you're younger, you usually, they aren't so dire and you get the sort of muscle memory of the fact that making mistakes is part of growth and not the end of the world.

I think there's another issue with balance or not issue, another way to look at balance, which is very much how the research looks at parenting styles, that there's three typical parenting styles apart from neglect, which we don't even talk about in the book, because if you are a neglectful parent, you're not buying a parenting book. This is a self-selecting audience of people who are motivated to be the best parents that they can be for their child. So the three parenting styles are typically authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive.

And the permissive parenting stuff, and these have been around for decades. Like this is not me. This is just what the developmental science has looked at across cultures and communities. And obviously I'm making it very oversimplified, but essentially it looks at two dimensions, sensitivity of care and demandingness is just another wonky way of saying like expectations, control, limits, things like that. And so permissive parents,

are very high. They like score super high on sensitivity of care. They're so attuned to their kids. They're almost best friends with them. But the reason that they're like in the best friend mode is because they don't typically feel comfortable with their child having difficult feelings or their part. Like this is true with relationships in general.

but they are not as good at holding boundaries and limits when they see a child having a negative reaction or having a hard feeling. And so the scale tips so that the sensitivity is very high and

And the demandingness is very low. And the reverse of that is authoritarian parenting, where the sensitivity is very low and the demandingness is quite high. And for those parents, it's much more because I said so, it's much more outcomes and goals oriented, but not really connected. And there's this Goldilocks parenting, which is authoritative parenting. And that's the one that the science says leads to the best outcomes that we're typically looking for.

both intellectually and emotionally. And that's where there's both sensitivity of care and attunement and connection. You really have that close relationship. And also you're sturdy in your rules. You understand that it's safe to have rules and expectations and limits and

That you're not best friends, that you are in fact running the ship. And so that balance is a different part of this conversation, which is the balanced approach in parenting instead of being like the extreme of one or the other. And that usually always leads to better feels for everybody. But it's hard if you don't explore and reflect on what your experience being parented was.

Like if you had a parent who anytime you didn't like a rule, they were like, okay, then nevermind. It's going to be really hard for you to feel comfortable having those rules with your kids. Cause it just won't feel like it wasn't baked into your body over your early experiences.

And so it's something to look at because if you want to intentionally be a balanced kind of Goldilocks parent, you have to pay attention to what your experiences were when you were younger. Oh, I think that's a great explanation. And I want to ask you a question later on about how, if you were influenced one way

by a parent do you learn to parent a different way which can be tough but i think before we even get there we've mentioned the five principles of parenting a couple times now

And sometimes when people lay out principles in the book, I don't like to go through all of them because that's the whole book. But in yours, you put them out in the first two sentences of the book. And the book then is about explaining how to utilize these, which I want to use for the rest of this interview. So can you lay out the five principles of parenting and how they can transform the way we approach parenting? Yeah.

I really did want to put them right out there. And I didn't want the book to be like, chapter one is this principle, chapter two is the next principle. I really wanted it to be baked into...

all of the different kinds of challenges that get thrown our way, because that's how life works. You don't have things in this exact linear experience. Something happens in your household. I want everybody to have, by the time they get through the book, like I want everyone to be able to translate how those five principles might come into play. And I don't think you can do that by just learning the principles themselves.

But I'm going to tell the principals now because I do think that they just to even understand what the developmental, the science of human development tells us are the five most important principles in raising kids that are in our control. I didn't.

use one of the core principles of a peaceful environment with no socioeconomic differences and no strife, no pandemics, no politics, like none of that is in our control. So it's nothing to do with this book. So I chose five principles that are rooted in science that we have control over and

just ourselves, since we can't control anyone else, and that are shown in science over time in multiple contexts and cultures. So those are relationship, reflection, regulation, rules, and repair. And if you can really understand those concepts and understand

get into the habit of using them to inform how you respond to your kids and how you make decisions, you really are doing absolutely the best you can to contribute to building resilient kids.

And I was thinking as I was reading this, Aliza, I'm not sure if you know who Elizabeth Lati is. She did her master's studies under Angela Duckworth. Oh, yeah. Well, I know Angela. And then she ended up going back to Finland to get her PhD. But she studies Sisu, which is the Finnish science of resilience. It's basically the art of resilience that they teach all the kids and

That's their parenting style. So I thought it would be an awesome match to figure out how do you use Sisu to raise good humans, basically. But I wanted to go back to these five principles just for a second, because I'm assuming that as children are growing from toddlers, school-aged children, then to teenagers, you're going to have to apply them differently. Is that a good way to think about it? Absolutely. It's like the principles remain the same. The application is different.

And that's why the way I structure the book, I tried to say, here's what it would look like at each age for whatever challenge or topic I was talking about. Because I think once you get in the habit of doing that, it actually becomes quite easy. One of the chapters I enjoyed and you already went into it, so I'm not going to have you redo it, was raising good parents. But I want to go back to the question I was going to ask you. Because I came from a situation where I had a Marine Corps father who was

very much hands-on, high expectations, disciplinarian type of parent. And I realized that when my son was growing up for the first few years, I was modeling so much of his parental style, which is what I grew up myself with.

but realized that for me, it had a lot of detrimental impacts and I didn't want to do the same thing to my son. So I ended up working my way out of it and changing the archetype that I was using, but it was really a struggle. What do you recommend for parents who are in that same situation where, because we reflect what

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raised us, obviously. Right. Well, I think that's like that principle of reflection, which I believe doesn't get as much. It feels like you can skip it. You know what I mean? Like reflecting doesn't feel like it's such a big deal. Like how could it really change my relationship with my kids and how they pan out? But

When you do that work, and I think you gave an example of reflection right there is like really digging into asking yourself. And of course, if you feel like your experience was really challenging, it's an opportunity to seek out professional support to do this process. If you feel like you need that kind of just guidance, I think there's nothing wrong with

realizing, wait a second, there's a lot to unpack about my history. Like when I think about what it was like when I got upset when I was a kid, how did my parents react? Or when I think about what my parents said to each other when they were mad at each other, or when I think about if I broke a rule, what happened? Or when I think about if I had a feeling, would I share it? Was it safe? Like

All of those kinds of questions and being reflective about what those experiences were like are important.

Just asking those of yourself, just saying like, huh, I have a little quiz in the book of just asking yourself if you are or were parented in a particular way, like permissive, authoritative or authoritarian. And I think just asking yourself the questions gets your brain thinking, oh, okay, this is informing a lot of my responses in the world.

And of those responses, which ones do I feel good about? And which ones do I feel like I don't like that? I don't like the fact that I bubble over with anger when my child leaves dishes everywhere. Is it because I'm actually like angry at the dishes and the fact that they're leaving dishes everywhere? Or am I remembering that

That was really important in my household. And I'm feeling very disrespected because that's not happening in this household. And I wonder if I'm just going to raise a slob. It's just really helpful to think about. These are silly examples, but it's really helpful to think about those things. And of course, you want to ask yourself, well, how was I disciplined?

Was corporal punishment used? Was I spanked? Was I afraid? Was it fear-based? And would I have lied over getting into trouble? Because that's very scary, especially if you have teenagers. You don't want your kids to think that it's worse to tell you than it is to end up at the police station or the hospital. So...

I think that reflection is what we can do to question and then to move forward and asking yourself what your experience was and what you're looking for can be really helpful. It's super helpful if you have a partner who's also up for that conversation. And sometimes you just start with a question.

I think if you even just think about those parenting styles that I mentioned, and you ask yourself, was I raised primarily in a more permissive households, a more authoritative households or more authoritarian households, that question alone can bring up lots of interesting stuff. And the act of just, again, reflecting makes you more intentional as a person.

You just don't go on the autopilot that we go on. I don't want to think about that. I'm just going to go. And I know another thing that I felt when I first became a father was that there was this expectation that I had to be a perfect parent. And you write that striving for perfection and parenting actually counteracts the goal of being a good parent. Why is that so?

I think that if I tried, I even wanted to name the chapter perfect parenting is the enemy of perfect parenting, but we changed it to the perfect parenting is the enemy of good parenting for clarity. But I really meant if you are aiming for perfect, if you really want to get this right, which of course you do, we all do. Come on. These are our children.

But if you really want to serve them and you're super high achieving, then know that in being a B parent, like just not quite perfect, but good is better for your children because witnessing a perfect parent is so burdensome.

It's not true. And your kids grow up and they ask themselves, why can't I do this when my parent could? And the truth is that wasn't because your parent could, it was because you don't know what was going on under the hood. And so I really encourage parents to openly make mistakes for the purposes of modeling how we navigate mistakes and how we bounce back from mistakes and

And you can't be a perfect parent if you're making, like, theoretically, if you're perfect, you wouldn't make the mistakes. And then your kids would miss out on that. It's really important. It's if you really want to convince yourself, you have to imagine if anybody listening had a perfect parent, how that was for you. If you actually thought your parents were perfect.

What did that do for you when you went out into the world and made any mistakes or had trouble doing something or got tired or thought this is overwhelming? You would question if you're less than, and that is not the voice we want in our kids' heads. Absolutely not. I remember when I was a senior executive,

I one time went on this job interview for a prospective job and they asked me what my leadership style was. And I think they were expecting me to say I was a servant leader, I was this type of leader, et cetera. And I said, I practice situational leadership. And I remember the interviewer didn't like it. But what I was trying to tell them is that you can't always use a one size all approach.

leadership style, because you have to personalize it to not only the situation, but the person that you're leading. Because while some people might like very clear direction and high pressure environments, you have other employees who that would completely turn them off. And I think the same thing goes with the way we need to parent. And I liked how you had a chapter on

the need to personalize your parent, because at least with my two kids, they couldn't be more black and white in the differences between what motivates them, what excites them, how each of them takes direction, et cetera. So how do you embrace as a parent that the understanding that every child is unique and that you've got to, as I was saying, adopt different parenting styles to fit the individual?

Yeah. I think that's just, we have to accept you have two choices. You can make an intentional decision that like you're going to pay attention to the unique child that you have and parent accordingly, or you can parent exactly the same for both and just watch what happens, but you have to adapt your parenting or you're not paying. You're not intentional. You're not realizing that, Oh, wait a second.

This one kid has such good executive function skills. I didn't have the experience of having to make lists with them about and plans for how they were going to get their work done or give them scaffolding with making sure they didn't forget things and how they could get into good habits that could wire in so that they have an easier time with their executive function skills. But then you have this next kid who...

If you treated them the same way and were like, good luck and Godspeed, I assume you know what to do, they are lost. And so you really want to find that through the experience of adapting your parenting for their temperament.

And I know a common thing, at least with my kids, is for one, using timeouts really worked well. For the other one, it didn't work as well at all. In fact, it didn't work at all. In fact, it just made her more defiant. Disregulated and defiant. Exactly. And so then you learn, right? Okay. Yeah.

This is not the approach I'm going to take because it's backfiring. I think that's a good lead into we all make mistakes and I've made my fair share as a parent. How do you approach or recommend people approach their own mistakes? Because it's hard to want to self-reflect in that way. And, but I think it's just as we make mistakes in life, we make mistakes as a parent and you have to use those as learning opportunities for growth. Is that how you see it as well?

Totally. Not only learning opportunities for growth, but modeling opportunities for self-compassion. I think both of those things. I just think we have to name the mistakes, just not pretend that they didn't happen or justify them, but just say that was not good judgment on my part, or I wish I hadn't done that, or I've been thinking about it and here's where I, what I've reflected and

Let's find a path forward, all of those things. And I think if you don't do that as a parent, because you think it undermines your authority, you don't realize that it actually expands your authority. It expands the respect. It expands the mutual connection and it expands the capacity for everybody.

So do you think it's wise to let your kids know that they made a mistake or that you made a mistake in a situation? Or do you think that they see it in how you correct the mistake when you encounter similar situations? I think you have to be pretty explicit with young people.

I think you have to be explicit because they're going to make up the stories that they make up. And so it's really helpful. And again, not all the time, but more often than not, it's really helpful when you are explicit. Whoa, here's this mistake that I made and I want to tell you about it. And it doesn't even have to be about your parenting. It could be about something that happened at work.

But it's here's the mistake I'm looking at as a challenge. Here's how I've come out to here's my process for dealing with it. Now, obviously, if you're really dysregulated and it's stressing you out and you can't figure out a path forward, it's not the time to scare your kids into thinking that you don't know how to manage your own experiences. But.

So you might want to do your own bit of work first before talking about it with your kids. But I absolutely think we can get more comfortable acknowledging mistakes in front of our kids as long as we are both self-compassionate and we are accountable and we are ready for growth and change.

An area that I think I need to go into with you is navigating co-parenting challenges, because unfortunately so many people are getting divorced these days or were never married to begin with when they had the kids. And I know for me, this presented itself when my kids were 10 and 16, and it was extremely challenging because we had different parenting styles. But what would your recommendation be for

Again, a situation where one of them is acting as if they're the friend to the child. Yeah, especially as they're entering adolescence, which the kids are loving because it's giving them freedom. But the other parent is more of the Goldilocks and they're trying to set some balance. Yet the kids are gravitating more and more to the one who is acting as their friend. I think this comes up a lot.

And the two things to remember with co-parenting, one is you can only control yourself. And so if you just double down on your commitment to those five principles and that what really feels like your own intentional parenting, it's a long game and the benefits will be enormous.

Because relationship is such a huge part of it. And relationships always do better with boundaries and limits. It's just in the short term, it's always easier to be around people that don't have boundaries and limits. But you can't change how the co-parent is. And so you're not going to be able to change that if you hold true to those boundaries and limits, those that rules as the fourth principle, that you're not going to be the favored one.

But if you are super intent on connecting and having a close relationship, your boundaries and rules are not going to be a problem. Even if you're not the choice house to go to when there's a party or something in the long game of it, your relationship is what matters. And relationships always feel more safe and stable in the context of the structure.

Okay. Thank you for sharing that. One of the chapters I wanted to make sure we touched on was the science of awe and play. And I want to touch on both of them. I wrote an article several years ago on the importance of adult play. And for years, it was the most popular article I ever wrote. So it shows me how top of mind this is to many people.

But one of my favorite episodes that I've ever done on my podcast was interviewing Dacher Keltner, who I think you might know because you studied at Berkeley. Yeah.

And we were talking about his latest book on awe. And what was so interesting to me about his studies is we think of awe and how it comes up in seeing great works of art, like we talked about earlier, or maybe a natural wonder, the birth of a child. But what I loved about his exploration was that we see it

the most by observing others performing acts of kindness or ourselves performing acts of kindness. And I wanted to ask to get through that. How does awe in play help us maybe through that lens? And how does that contribute to a child's development?

Well, I think the short answer is that play is this natural way that kids connect, engage, interact. It's how they learn. It's everything. Play equals learning. And if we as the adults are struggling to connect through play because we're just bad at play as we get older, we just forget how to play. I think we all crave it.

then we're able to take a step back and really observe. I highly recommend observing kids in play, not just interacting with them, but really just enjoying the experience of watching them play as their brains are unfolding. It's so awe-inspiring. And also, especially the first time you have a kid, when you're just watching them develop, you're just like, oh my God, some of it's so extraordinary. And

I still find it extraordinary all these years later, and I know the predictable course of development. So I think that one thing is just giving yourself, finding those moments of awe in everyday growth and development and

And then of course you are being, you are giving in that moment, you are giving your attention and your attention is the most valuable commodity these days. So I think it's quite generous and wonderful. And of course, see,

seeing and experiencing just like the interactions between humans as they're developing and as they're learning to be kind to one another and as they're learning to consider each other's perspectives, like even in pretend play, it's so mind blowing when you see like

A child is creating a different world and sticking with it. Like they're answering a question in the character of someone else. And that means they're imagining what someone else would be thinking in that same context. So it is extraordinary. And it really grows the muscles, like the brain muscles, but it's also an opportunity, I think, to get closer and an opportunity for a little bit more of the delight that

we miss out on in parenting. Yeah, absolutely. And my first cousin has an 18 month old and I got to recently spend some time with them when I was visiting DC. And it's just amazing to look back at that age and just see how quickly they're picking up on things, but how they take what you

are talking about and then turn it into characters or situations that they then use as imaginary play zones. So it's fascinating. It's so fascinating, but you have to have that mindset of awe and delight in order to really appreciate it and really notice. If we're rushing through and we've got an agenda in play, we miss out on those opportunities.

So, Lisa, I wanted to end on this question, and that's advice for new parents. What's one piece of advice you would give to new parents just starting on their parenting journey? I would say talk to each other about your intentions and make a family value statement. I think that can be really helpful to give yourself a North Star in your parenting. Okay. And for those who want to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to go?

You can go to my website, drliza.com, or you can go to Instagram. I'm at Raising Good Humans Podcast. And I have a sub stack, drlizapressman.substack.com. And I have the five principles of parenting out wherever you get books, ideally local bookshops. Thank you so much for being on the show. It was such an honor to have you.

Thank you so much for having me. Really, that was such a joy and a totally different context for talking about all of this.

I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Eliza Pressman, and I wanted to thank Eliza for joining us on today's program. It was such an honor to have her. Links to all things Eliza will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube, both at our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please check it out and subscribe.

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I recently heard this and it's resonating with me. So in the last few months, someone said it's easier to go 100% than it is like 95% because it makes choice very clear. An all-in team has clarity on what the goal is for the collective team and has a reason to contribute 100% of themselves. And the leader...

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