Harvard Psychologist Shares 6 Words That Will Change Your Family | The Mel Robbins Podcast

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

I'm just sitting here trying to find the words to explain the conversation that I just had that you're about to listen to.

I'm blown away. You're about to meet somebody who just changed my life.

And there is no doubt in my mind that everything that you're about to learn will forever change you as a person.

It will change how you think about relationships, how you think about yourself.

It'll change how you parent, how you show up at work.

I mean, this is one of those conversations that sticks with you for a lifetime.

Dr. Stuart Ablon, who has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years practicing at Mass General Hospital here in Boston, just came in here and taught me some of the most important things that I have ever learned in my life.

I cannot wait for you to hear this.

I cannot wait for you to share this with the people that you love.

And it is my absolute honor to share it with you.

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Hey, it's your friend Mel.

I am so fired up that you pressed play and that you chose to listen or watch this episode today.

This is going to be extraordinary.

And it's always an honor to be able to spend time with you and to be together.

But today in particular, I'm so excited that we get to spend time with the extraordinary Dr.

Stuart Ablon. I'm going to tell you about him in just a second, but I want to also take a moment and welcome you if you're a brand new listener.

And I suspect there's going to be a lot of brand new listeners around the world that come in through this particular episode because I know you're going to share this.

That's how incredible what you're about to learn is going to be.

And so welcome. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.

You have picked a winner to jump in to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

And you know what it tells me?

It tells me that you're the type of person who values your time and that you're also interested in learning about ways that you can improve your life and your relationships.

And today you're going to leave a changed person.

I know I am. I have been following the work of the extraordinary Dr.

Stuart Ablon for years.

And I am so thrilled that we finally have him here today so that you and I can learn from him.

We can grow, we can become better people, and we can use his research -backed approach to help us deal with the challenging people in our life.

Now, Dr. Stuart Ablon is an award -winning psychologist.

He has over 30 years of experience, and he is an expert on challenging behavior.

He's also the founder and director of Think Kids, which is a program in the department of psychiatry at Mass General Hospital.

He's a professor at Harvard Medical School.

And he started all of his work and research with children, but has found that everything that he's learned about dealing with somebody who's exhibiting challenging behavior, you know, they're frustrating you or you're deeply worried about them, that everything that you're about to learn applies to any

relationship. It applies to adults.

It applies to co -workers.

It applies to your marriage.

You're going to love this.

And I love the title of his new bestselling book, Changeable, The Surprising Science Behind Helping Anyone Change.

And that's what the conversation is all about today, how you can use science to help anyone in your life, no matter how challenging or scary the situation might be.

Yes, you can help them change.

Dr. Ablon, it is such an honor to meet you.

Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

It is an absolute pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Where I want to start is, could you just tell the person listening what they could experience in their life that would be different if they really take to heart everything that you're about to share with us and teach us today?

Well, I think in essence, people could find that conflict in their life could decrease substantially.

People could find that they're able to repair relationships with people they care about, love, work with, raise.

And people could build skills, skills in areas like flexibility and frustration tolerance and problem solving and empathy.

So those are some of the things.

I'm in. This may seem like a hard question, but in the 30 years of clinical psychology experience and being the founder of the Think Kids program at Mass General Hospital, what are some of the biggest takeaways that you have from your career truly working with parents and kids specifically?

I would say a couple of them.

One is that still today, despite all the things that we've learned, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, challenging behavior or concerning behavior is still tragically misunderstood and mistreated.

And if we can just shift our thinking to better understand what causes it, there's so much opportunity to be helpful in a variety of different ways.

So I think that's one of the things.

And when you say challenging behavior, what do you put in that bucket?

You know, it depends on the age of the person you're talking about and the setting.

But we're talking about everything from tantrums to with younger children to the kind of concerning behavior with teens that keeps adults up at night to the challenges that people have with their spouses' behavior, their in -laws' behavior, their colleagues' behavior.

And what would you tell the person who's listening right now who's either overwhelmed or burnt out or just tired of dealing with a person or a particular issue in their life?

And they're just like, is this ever going to end?

Is this ever going to get better?

Well, the good news is we've seen it get better in the toughest of places.

And this is a battle tested approach that started with the most challenging behavior, again, in the toughest of settings.

And we're talking about with kids with severe trauma histories in residential treatment facilities.

We're talking about correctional facilities and things like that.

Before we ever started using it in homes and other places.

So it's proven. But that's not to really diminish the fact that wherever you're experiencing concerning behavior from folks, it's incredibly frustrating.

It's really hard to deal with and it pisses us off.

So it's really hard to sort of keep our calm and be able to respond in ways that are effective.

But I think we've got some ways to sort of reframe understanding the challenging behavior that can position people in a totally different place.

Well, that's cool. So it sounds like what we're going to learn from you today is an entirely different way to look at and approach a situation where someone's pissing you off.

You got it. And your question before of sort of what have I learned over 30 years?

The other thing I've learned is that, and this is probably one of the most, I think, important findings in social science research about helping people.

And we're talking about any kind of person, kid, adult.

If you're trying to help somebody with anything related to their behavior, what we've learned over the years is there's only really one reliable predictor of helping somebody to change their behavior.

And the good news is it's also the most powerful one.

What is it? It's the degree of helping relationship between helper and helpy, the degree of helping relationship.

And when I say helping relationship, what I mean by that is a collaboration born of empathy, of understanding, of nonjudgmental acceptance.

So it's sort of working together on hard things, but coming from that nonjudgmental perspective.

And that's what we find, whether it's in therapy or in schools or all kinds of places, that's the biggest predictor of helping somebody to change their behavior.

Well, what I immediately think about, and I'm sure we're going to unpack this in great detail, is I think about situations in my life, whether it's dealing with our son Oakley when he was in the fourth grade and we were just figuring out that he had dyslexia and ADHD, and he was super lonely and felt

like an outsider. And we were trying to help, but everything was a fight.

Or when another situation, my husband was going through a really bad bout of depression and I wanted to help, but I just couldn't find a way in.

And I can think about challenging people in my extended family where I'm like, I'd like to help you be a better person because you pissed me off and annoy me.

But where it almost feels like a deadlock in terms of the dynamic.

And it's as if they don't want help and you don't know what to do.

And so are you saying it's possible for us to change our approach and that changes what happens?

Absolutely. And also, you know what, I've got a philosophy that all of our work flows from.

It's a pretty simple one.

When we apply it to kids, it goes like this.

Kids do well if they can.

Oh, not kids do well if they want to, but kids do well if they can.

And what that means is if a kid could do well, they would do well.

And the reality is, in all the years I've done this, I've never met a kid who prefers doing poorly to doing well.

And now substitute that word kid with adult, with spouse, with partner, with coworker, with mother -in -law, you name it.

People do well if they can.

It's true. Everybody wants to do well and wants to have healthy, happy relationships with others.

There's just things getting in the way sometimes.

And when you're saying like, all these people that might piss you off, how do I get them to change their behavior?

I hate to say it, but they may be saying the same about you because they're surely saying the same about me at times as well.

And so it's really about how do we come to some mutual understanding and how do we collaborate with one another.

And what we found is we've sort of developed a bit of a formula for how to do that.

And we'll see that not only does it sort of have proven results, but it maps on to how our brains work, how our brains process information.

And to boil it down a little bit, when somebody's pissing you off with their behavior, you want to sort of tell them what to do.

And the reality is, they're never going to listen to you unless you start by listening to them.

And we'll talk about exactly what a formula of that looks like.

I love this. And what I really want to make sure that I highlight as you're listening is that sentence, kids do well if they can and adults do well if they can.

And I am so, I guess, hopeful.

And I feel better knowing that we're starting from a position based on 30 years of research where you've seen over and over and over again, everybody wants to do better.

You got it. And if you provide the right conditions, they can get better.

Yes. And here's why though.

Okay, tell me why. Well, because if you believe kids do well if they can, or people do well if they can, what you're doing is you're embracing a mindset shift, because that's not the most common way of thinking about people and their behavior, especially when they're behaving in ways that piss you off,

or are very concerning.

Right. The more common way of thinking about it is kids do well if they want to.

And if you believe kids do well, if they want to and a kid's not doing well, you're going to assume the reason they're not doing well is because they don't want to.

Yes. So then what are you going to do about it?

You're going to try to pressure them, make them want to correct.

And we start this very early on with kids with rewards and consequences and things like that.

But in essence, as long as we sort of have more power over somebody, we never quit trying to do that motivating people to behave better, which is all fine and well, if what is standing in somebody's way is a lack of motivation.

But that's not what's normally standing in someone's way, is it?

I think that's where it's going.

Correct. And if you're trying to motivate somebody when motivation isn't the issue, not only is it not going to be effective, but it might make matters much worse.

And we can talk about what I mean by that.

So when you shift your focus and you say, kids do well if they can, people do well if they can, what you're saying is if that person could do well, they would do well.

And if they're not, something else is getting in their way.

And I personally don't buy that it's just a lack of motivation.

And now here's where the research comes in.

Because we have about 50 years of research in the neurosciences that has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt, that people who struggle to manage their behavior, they actually don't lack the will to behave well.

What they lack are the skills to behave well, skills in areas like problem solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance.

And I can give you fancier names for those things, clinical names.

Please don't. If you're watching this podcast on YouTube, you're seeing my mouth slowly open wider and wider as my jaw is hitting the ground.

Because this is the simplest explanation and the most empowering and encouraging explanation I have ever heard for how to change the way you look at other people in your life.

Whether like me, you're a boss, and you're trying to motivate your team, or you're a parent, like we both are.

And you're trying to motivate your kids or you're dating somebody and you're like, boy, I wish you'd take better care of yourself.

And you're so quickly to the judgment and the frustration, and I'm focusing on frustration and people's behavior that pisses you off because it feels accessible and lighter.

Because it can quickly go to the serious stuff where somebody's really struggling.

And you feel super hopeless.

That becomes very scary to think about, but it's going to be the exact same model.

Because we're starting in the exact same place with either kids or adults, which is kids do well if they can.

And if you start there, instead of judging a lack of willpower or discipline or motivation, you go, okay, well, what are the conditions for doing well?

And it sets you up to sort of collaborate, to help, to be a helper.

Because when you sort of define this as a lack of motivation, then what it sets you up to do is to try to sort of use power or control to try to motivate somebody.

What, have you been in the car rides with me and my kids or at the kitchen?

Dr. Avalon, come on now.

And I want to point out something, because you said something really important a moment ago.

There's a difference between just being aggravated by somebody's behavior and being aggravated, but also really concerned and hopeless and worried.

Yes. And as a parent, there is no worse feeling.

Now, I see you brought something.

Yes. What is that letter that you have there?

This is a girl I worked with in the Boston public schools, who was having a really hard time both at home and at school managing her behavior.

And she both was a sort of what I call an exploder and an imploder.

What does that mean?

So exploder means like she would scream.

She turned over her desk.

She would throw things.

She'd hit other people.

An imploder means she would quietly put her head down and cry.

She would sneak out of the room and ask to go to the bathroom and not come back.

She would shut down.

And to me, by the way, all these are, these are different flavors of saying, I'm having a hard time handling something with the skills I have.

Yeah. Why would a kid choose to do any of those things if they could handle the situation better?

Kids do well if they can.

Why does this get you so emotional?

Because just kids being misunderstood and mistreated.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

We know better. You know, we know better.

We have to do better.

And I don't blame us because like, this is how it works in history.

We learn. Conventional wisdom gets overturned and we learn better.

And it takes a while until we change our practices.

And we're in that period now, which is why I'm thankful for you helping spread the word here.

Because we can shift our thinking and do better here.

We don't have to lose kids.

And I just looked at this girl's letter and that I seen this a million times.

And it still makes me emotional every time because this girl was struggling so much.

And they used a sort of classic sticker chart to try to motivate her to behave better.

You know, like get stuff if you behave well.

Yeah. And it wasn't working great.

And I asked her, you know, when I was meeting with her, I asked her what's happening with it.

She's not great at letting people know what's bothering her and things, but she would write for me.

Yes. She could do it in written form.

And she could draw things.

And so I asked her, you know, how the thing was going, the sticker chart.

And she wrote this for me.

And it says, my brain is idiotic.

I make stupid mistakes.

I mess everything up.

I always make a mess and get hurt and ruin everything.

And that's a kid we're trying to motivate to behave better.

You got to be kidding me.

I mean, how we miss the mark.

This kid, more motivated than anybody in the face of the earth to behave well.

Why? Because she don't want to feel this way.

So she already has all the internal motivation in the world.

The last thing we want to do is send her the message.

We don't think you're trying hard enough.

So what is available to the person who's listening to you right now?

And if you could speak directly to them, whether they are a parent who has a child like just spiraling from an eating disorder or spiraling with behavior issues at schools and they're getting kicked out and they're lost, or you have somebody in your life that's spiraling with addiction.

What do you want to say to that person directly about what's available to them in this conversation?

Well, so what I want to say to them is that it starts most importantly from this place of mindset.

Okay. And that we've got to take ourself out of this position of wanting to make somebody change, impose our will upon them in some way, whether we do that harshly or nicely.

And what we need to do is remember this person's doing the best they can to handle what the world is throwing at them with the skills they're able to bring to bear in that moment.

And so what we want to do is we want to try to help figure out what are they struggling with so much?

Which skills are they having a hard time accessing?

And how can we help them with those things?

How can we help problem solve?

How can we help them build skills?

And I have good news here too is the skill building process, it's not something where you're going to send your kid or somebody out to have somebody else build their skills.

You can help them do that.

And it's not by some sneaky process, it's just by collaborating with them on practicing problem solving, but using the real life problems that they're confronting.

The way you just explained that makes me see it completely differently.

And I just want to be clear that it's not like I don't reach moments where that faith gets shaken because I get so upset, bothered, pissed off, et cetera.

And both in my own life personally, but also my clinical life.

And I just try to hold tight to that philosophy.

And when you were saying that, a memory came up years ago in my practice of working with an adolescent who was really, really struggling and his behavior was really obnoxious too.

Like what? Well, he just would be really disrespectful to his parents, to most adults authority figures.

And it seemed like he just didn't care.

So it was so easy. It was so frustrating because you couldn't engage him much and it seemed like he didn't care.

And I remember the day where his mom who was never lost hope and she brought in, he was a 15 year old at the time and he was a pretty rough kid.

She brought in a picture of him asleep as a two year old, on the back seat of the car.

And he was just the cutest little thing.

And it's giving me goosebumps right now just talking about it.

And I saw this and I said to that kid's in there somewhere.

Like this hardened, tough kid who's really hard to access.

There's this little adorable guy and things have gone wrong in the interim.

But I got to believe that that kid who everybody looked at said this one lovely, cute kid, he's in there.

He wants to do well.

And how do we access that?

And actually sometimes I give parents that advice with little kids.

I said, if you're losing faith, just watch them sleep for a little bit, because they're really cute then and they can't be obnoxious when they're sleeping or difficult.

And it'll restore a little bit your faith and remind yourself kids do well if they can and then come back at it the next day.

Although we're going to get into specifics about exactly what to do.

I want to be clear, this is not just about mindset.

It's about shifting your mindset and then shifting what you do to match that new mindset.

You were talking about skills.

Can you just list off some of the skills that people that we may be dealing with in our families or at work or in life are missing?

Absolutely. That create challenging behavior?

Absolutely. So I gave you some big categories that they fall in, problem -solving, flexibility, frustration tolerance.

But I also told you there's 50 years of research that shows exactly where those skills are.

And in essence, what we found is they're in five different areas.

And if we want to use fancy languages for a moment, they're what we call neurocognitive skills, which is a fancy way of saying thinking skills in essence.

They're largely what happens in the prefrontal cortex of your brain.

So there's five areas.

One, language and communication skills.

Now, really easy to think about with a kid because like most two -year -olds are very poorly behaved, right?

We call it the terrible twos.

Not because they're evil little beings, but because they lack a lot of skills, including they're not great at knowing what's bothering them, using words to tell somebody what's bothering them, engaging in a back and forth to solve a problem.

Those are language and communication skills.

Now, most four -year -olds are better than that than two -year -olds at that.

Most eight -year -olds better than five -year -olds.

Most 20 -year -olds better than 10 -year -olds at that.

But notice my language, most.

So you may be working with a 15 -year -old who's got six -year -old language skills.

And let's be clear.

This does not just apply to kids because you may be in marriage with a 45 -year -old who really struggles to identify what's bothering them, communicate it to others, engage in the back and forth to problem solve.

So that's one category, language and communication skills.

And you know what else I just kind of got as I'm listening to you?

I need to manage my face because I think I look like I'm in a state of shock the entire time I'm listening to you.

So like, where were you 30 years ago?

You're here now and we're all going to learn from you now.

Is that as you were explaining the two -year -old, then if you don't have the language and communication skills, it would be completely age appropriate and normal for you to exhibit challenging behavior because you don't have the language and communication skills to express what you need.

Well, that's what I would say.

What do two -year -olds do when they're upset?

They don't calmly express what's going on, right?

They bite, they scream, they flop, they run, they hit, you know, they do all those things.

And that's what they've sort of gotten their bag of tricks in their toolbox.

So if they don't develop other skills, that's what they're going to resort to.

You know, there's a good analogy, a precedent that I like to remind myself of because I think we've made a ton of progress there and I know this is going to, this will resonate for you.

When you and I were in school, we didn't know much about learning disabilities.

So if you had dyslexia when you were our age growing up and you were struggling to read, people didn't say, I wonder what she's having a hard time with.

They thought that you were either lazy or dumb.

And if they thought you were lazy, what would they do?

They would try to motivate you to work harder to read, which, you know, the sad reality, the ironic reality is who's working harder than anybody else in the classroom to learn how to read the kid to whom it's not coming naturally.

And honestly, I think we lost a lot of kids by sort of teaching them that we thought they weren't working hard enough when actually they were working overtime.

And what they were struggling with was skill, not will.

Wow. The opportunity for all of us to look at any challenging behavior or any frustrating or scary dynamic with another human being as a skill issue is incredible.

You've covered one of the five skills and that was communication and language.

So what are the others?

Right. Okay. So the other has to do with attention and working memory skills.

That's number two. Okay.

And it's a big category, but, you know, attention skills are like, can you focus on something not that's enthralling to you, but something that isn't that interesting, or you don't exactly feel like focusing on right now, but can you sort of marshal enough attention to focus on it?

Yup. And can you shift your attention from one thing to the next when needed?

And as a kid, by the way, you're told all the time, but even as an adult, we're told, stop paying attention to that.

Start paying attention to that.

Right. And then also what's confounding, whether you have a child who's a gamer, or you have a young adult in your life, or a significant other who's a gamer, you look at the fact that they can focus there.

Yes. And then you're like, why the hell can't you pick up your shoes or pay attention or keep a job?

Well, and this is a, you know, this is a big misconception, for instance, about attentional issues as a whole.

Okay. You know, people think that if somebody's diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, ADHD, it means they can't focus at all.

It's just not true.

What does it mean, doc?

Well, it means that they have a hard time focusing on things that are not intrinsically all that interesting to them.

In fact, most people diagnosed with ADHD will tell you they have the ability to hyper focus, which is an incredible skill and strength on something they're super interested in.

But it's when somebody says, well, could you pay attention to this now that is really hard to focus your attention on, which by the way, for kids in school, there's a fair amount of school.

They're like, I gotta force myself to pay attention to this.

Right. So, you know, and that's a skill.

It's a skill. Absolutely.

Gotcha. And what's the third one?

Well, so hold on. Oh, we're having a job.

Oh my God. Okay. Well, I snuck in attention and working memory because it's related to attention.

See, I have both problems obviously.

And I'm exhibiting it in the middle of this interview.

Well, you know, most of us humans can only remember three to five things at one time and there are five of these.

Well, Dr. Avalon, my memory not working right now.

Okay. So keep going.

Working memory just means keeping a bunch of stuff, ironically, in your head at one time and balancing it together.

Okay. But the reason that's relevant is all problem solving requires working memory.

You don't realize, but when you're solving a problem, you have all these files open in your head and you're toggling back and forth between them all at one time.

What's the problem?

Have I seen this before?

What did I do about it?

How did it work out?

Have I seen anybody else handle a problem like this?

How might I do it now?

And you're juggling all those things.

And if you're sort of hard drive crashes trying to juggle all those things, it gets in the way.

Yep. Okay. So that's attention to working memory skills.

Okay. Let's go to number three.

Yes. Use jargon for one second.

I'll translate it. Okay.

Number three is emotion and self -regulation skills.

Regulate is a word that's thrown around a lot these days.

What does that mean?

Well, here's the thing.

Just translate it into plain old English.

It means to manage or to control.

Okay. So when people are talking about emotion regulation, they're talking about your ability to manage or control your emotions.

Okay. Okay. And self -control.

What are they talking about there?

They're talking about things like perhaps the most important human skill we have, which is impulse control.

Okay. All day, all of us basically keep our impulses in check.

And we say to ourselves, like, don't say that.

That's a bad idea. Don't do that.

We sort of check ourselves.

I always tell people if you want to know how important impulse control is, spend a day.

We should not do this today on the podcast, but spend a day where you imagine what it would be like if you did or said the first thing that came to your mind all throughout the course of the day.

I'll see you in jail.

I was going to say you'll have a blast.

Yes. It would be ugly.

Okay. Because most of the time we're checking our impulses.

Now again, who's not very good at checking impulses?

Two -year -olds, four -year -olds.

But guess what? Teenagers.

Some teenagers, but also adults.

True. Okay. And if I could just point out really quickly, again, a sad irony here.

People who are very impulsive do stuff without thinking about the consequences of their actions.

It's a definition of impulse control.

Think about the likely consequences of what you do before you do it.

So if you have poor impulse control, you do stuff without thinking first.

Then you get hit with consequences, typically.

The reason this is sadly ironic is guess what consequences require to be effective in the first place?

Impulse control. You got it.

Because you've got to be able to stop in the moment and say, okay, if I do this, what will happen?

Oh, gosh, if I do that, there's probably going to be this consequence or this bad outcome.

I probably shouldn't do that.

Let me reel it back in.

So in other words, consequences only work if somebody has good impulse control.

Because, and I just want to make sure we unpack this because I think this is really important because a lot of us get in this loop, especially with kids or even with people in our lives that are adults where you literally like, let's give an example, because I'm thinking about a kid who is not studying

at school and you start hammering them.

You got to get more motivated, get your grades up or else you're going to get on academic probation, and then you're going to kick out.

Well, if you have poor impulse control, you're going to go party all weekend or you're going to blow off class because you don't have the ability to think about the fact that this is going to happen.

And then when it happens, it's not really that motivating because you still don't have the impulse control to think about the consequences if you don't get your act together to get back into school.

You got it. So consequences, in essence, don't work for the people to whom they are most applied.

And that's why it's so frustrating to the rest of us because you can see the consequences and you're like, why is this idiot not seeing what's about to happen?

Do they not care about their family or their life or their future or my feelings or all that?

So I can see how not seeing impulse control as a skill that could be developed creates this real, almost toxic situation between you and another person where you just lose your power, they lose theirs.

You're now in this weird standoff and it's viral.

And we should be clear, Mel, none of these skills that I'm talking about are correlated with intelligence.

So this is not like if you're struggling with any of these skills, just like dyslexia, if you can't decode words, that doesn't make you not smart.

In fact, some of the most brilliant, innovative, interesting people had a hard time decoding words.

Their brains worked a little differently.

Same is true with these skills.

You can have poor language and communication skills, but be brilliant.

You can have poor attention and working memory, emotion and self -regulation skills.

And we still got two categories to go through.

You can struggle with those skills and be brilliant.

Well, and what you know that I think would be helpful for the person listening to hear and understand is that the majority of people that end up in jail actually are missing these skills or have a learning disability or have impulse control issues.

So it is not ever that you're dealing with a, quote, bad human being.

You're dealing with somebody who would do well if they can, and they didn't have the conditions or the skill building that would have helped them.

I remember when I first presented these ideas at one of the prisons we were working with, one of the senior guards there that everybody sort of respected the most.

He said after, he said, this is really interesting.

He said, you know, I think this might apply to like, say 10%, maybe 5 % of the young people we have here, but the rest of them, they're actually criminals.

And what they lack is the motivation to not behave this way.

And a couple of years into our work together, it was amazing when he was like, you know, Doc, got to tell you, I still think there might be a couple of like sociopaths here, but like 95 or more percent of these people here are struggling with the exact skills you're talking about.

Yeah. And that, and it makes it heartbreaking.

And that's why I'm thrilled that you're here because I think seeing these five skills that are things that anybody can learn, but when you're missing it creates challenging behavior.

This is the heart of what we're talking about because it allows you to approach any dynamic with any human being in a very different way.

You got it. Dr. Avalon, I have so many more questions.

There's so much I want to dig into with you.

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Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins.

And today you and I are getting to spend time together with the amazing Dr.

Stuart Ablon. He's teaching us how to help people change in our lives and how to deal with challenging behavior by first understanding the source of it.

So Dr. Ablon, what is skill number four?

Cognitive flexibility, cognitive fancy work for thinking.

So we're talking about flexible thinking.

And what is flexible thinking?

You know, there's a lot of people out there who struggle with flexible thinking.

What I mean by that is that they tend to be more sort of rigid or concrete or literal, or we call it black and white in their thinking.

It's sort of like all or none.

Yeah. And sort of the the grays of the world are harder.

You know, as kids, you can spot these kids because they're the kids who, if everything goes according to the rules, the routine, the structure, the template they had in their head, life is good.

Yes. But any change, any unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, entering a situation, they don't know what it's going to look like.

They don't have the template for and sort of winging it.

What's interesting is, I don't know if as you're listening to Dr.

Ablon, you're like, that's me, that's me, that's me, that's me.

I'm checking all five, and I'm missing all of them.

But what's interesting to me is that I can say that I definitely default to that all or none, like things are absolutely fabulous, or they're horrendous, or it's going to be amazing, or this is the worst.

And my husband and kids often feel like they're on this emotional rollercoaster with me because they're not quite sure, are we going to get the Mel who's at level 100?

Are we going to get her at zero?

And I work at this.

So I hear what you're saying as a skill, like I have to practice these tools of catching my own thinking.

Yes. And wanting to have a mindset that is more flexible.

And over time, I've absolutely become way more flexible.

So this is the thing, kids brains are very malleable.

Yes. So you know, changeable, you can help them learn skills more easily.

But sometimes people think that like, once you're an adult, you know, you can't develop these skills, that's nonsense, you're going to change the adult brain.

But as you're saying, it takes repetition and practice, but you can become a more flexible thinker, just like you can become better at regulating, controlling, managing your emotions.

You can become better at using your language and communication skills.

And this is a power of thinking skill, not will, because if it's about skill, not will, skills can be built.

And I have to say, I have never seen anyone at any age with any level of skill where they couldn't improve that skill incrementally.

So I'm talking about the most severe cases.

There's always opportunity to improve our skills always.

Absolutely. This is so empowering.

What is the fifth? The fifth is a big category, social thinking skills.

And what does that mean?

So it means all the types of skills that go into managing social interactions, like basic ones, like how do you start a conversation with somebody?

How do you join a group of people who are doing something smoothly without sort of budding in or upsetting things to more subtle, complicated skills, like knowing how you come across, how your behavior impacts other people.

I call it your feedback loop, which we are all so reliant on in the world.

Basically, we do stuff and say stuff and look around and say like, how's it coming across?

And we adjust our behavior if all's going well, but some folks don't have a feedback loop or keep it open for a very short amount of time or misjudge the feedback.

So those are more complicated skills and probably empathy and perspective taking is one of the most complicated of all social thinking skills, which is in essence, can you try to understand where somebody else is coming from?

And all these skills can be interrelated to.

So these five we talked about, they're not mutually exclusive.

I have a hard time with this and nothing else.

Because you can imagine, if you're a very concrete literal thinker, it might be hard for you to step into somebody else's shoes and empathize.

Or if you tend to think in a very black and white way, your emotions may spiral pretty quickly if you start to catastrophize, as you said a moment ago.

Right. And I can also think of things like, especially in the social behavior, like if you're somebody that just doesn't have the skill of the the cues, you're the awkward kid or the awkward person at work that just stands a little too close to everybody.

Yes. Or like close talker or you follow somebody too closely into the bathroom and you just don't know.

Yes. That then becomes its own thing that makes you start to wonder, why don't I have friends?

And why do I feel like I don't belong here?

Yep. And so how does missing those skills create this dynamic that is challenging for us with other people?

Well, the way it happens is because you struggle with these skills, you have a hard time meeting people's expectations.

You end up doing things that people don't like that they don't want you to do and not doing things people want you to do.

People get frustrated with you.

Yep. And then people default to assuming this is a lack of will.

Yep. And they try to motivate you through incentives, rewards, consequences to try to behave better.

And that doesn't work because you're already trying hard.

You're trying harder than anybody else to behave well.

I mean, this is one of the secrets.

People think sometimes people struggle with their behavior aren't trying hard to behave well.

No, you know, who's not trying hard to behave well?

Well -behaved people because it comes naturally.

The people who are really working hard are the folks who for whom it doesn't come naturally.

And then I got to say what gets really dangerous is not only our rewards and consequences, incentives, things like that, not effective, but they can cause real harm.

And if I can talk about two ways they cause harm.

Please, because I think where we're going now is, especially if you think about it from a parenting context, that when you get frustrated, you then discipline and you punish and you scream or yell or timeouts or whatever it may be.

Yep. And what is the impact if we're dealing with a skill situation?

By the way, that word discipline is an interesting one because people somehow have equated discipline with punishment.

Yes. Where actually the origins of the word don't involve punishment at all.

The origins of the word discipline revolve around teaching, really means to teach and punishment is a very poor way to teach.

Now, if you think skill not will, now you're in the business of teaching because you know what you're teaching, which is skills.

But to go back to the harm, two ways, okay, that I think classic discipline, rewards, consequences, things like that cause harm.

One is that when you try to motivate somebody with some external motivator, some like tangible thing that you'll get this, um, if you do this, or you won't get this, if you don't, there've been thousands of studies that have shown not just with kids, but with adults too, that when you use external motivators

to try to get kids to do stuff or people to do stuff, it actually decreases their internal drive to do what you want them to do.

They do become more motivated, but what do they become more motivated to get the thing, get the stuff.

They actually become less motivated to achieve the goal you want them to achieve, which is ironic.

So not only is it not work, it makes matters worse.

And this smell is not a small correlation.

This is a strong, what we call in research, negative correlation.

The more use external reinforcers, the less internal drive developed.

And it actually can cause even more problems because what ends up happening is people end up behaving in unethical ways also because they're just trying to get the stuff.

I want to talk about the second way that I think rewards and punishments can really be harmful because not only do they decrease internal motivation, intrinsic motivation, but for kids and adults, they can do real damage to self -esteem.

Because here's the thing, if we're constantly using rewards and consequences, we're sending the not so subtle message that we think at least part of the problem here is you're not trying hard enough.

Or why would we smart adults be trying to motivate you?

And my grandfather, who I was incredibly close to, and he lived till he was 106.

Wow. Yeah, my grandmother just celebrated her 107th birthday.

We call that a Smucker's grandparent.

You know how they used to put him on TV?

Yes, with the Smucker's jam.

So my grandfather was really, really close to, grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi at the beginning of the 20th century.

And what he saw in his life is amazing, but he had all these great grandfatherly sayings, these pearls of wisdom he would impart.

And one thing he would say to me all the time is he would say, you know what, Stuart, if you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it.

If you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it.

And what I realized with the kids we're talking about today is that if you treat a kid like they're lazy, unmotivated, don't care, aren't trying hard enough, we shouldn't be surprised when over time, guess what, they start to look like and talk like and act like kids are lazy, unmotivated, don't care,

aren't trying hard enough.

Because if you give a dog a name, eventually they'll answer to it.

And I want to be clear, us parents, you know, we would never set out to make our kids feel that way.

Of course, teachers never, of course, try to make people feel that way.

But with every reward and consequence, again comes the not so subtle message, hey, if you tried harder, this would go better.

It's unavoidable. I'd love to have you talk a little bit about that sentiment that some parents have or some people have that's like, well, nobody talked to me about that.

And I turned out okay.

Like how you address that sort of generational pattern and cynicism that has been passed down through families and in our society.

Yeah. Well, I mean, typically when people say to me, you know, nobody ever did this for me and I turned out okay, they're saying that with an edge because there's parts of them that maybe didn't turn out okay.

And if you can get to that part with them, which is what do they wish was different about their life and their skills and how they operate, it opens up a lot of doors there.

My feeling about that is each generation, there's actually been research on this, each generation feels like the generation that comes after it, has it easier, isn't learning the right skills is a more spoiled generation than the previous one.

This is how if you go back hundreds of years, this happens and look, the world changes and you know, we need to adapt with it.

I mean, look, when people say we wouldn't do this that way, when I grew up, we used to think that corporal punishment, that actually injuring kids, hurting, traumatizing kids, that that was a good form of discipline, right?

We learn things, okay.

We learn that actually that causes harm.

It doesn't help and we need to change with the times.

And you mentioned that, you know, trauma, since we can image the brain, one of the clearest things we found is expose somebody to trauma or to chronic toxic stress in childhood.

Guess what it does?

It delays, it changes the brain.

It delays skills in those five areas we talked about before.

It's one of the primary reasons for very challenging and concerning behavior.

Kids who have trauma histories, that trauma has gotten in their way of their skills.

So if you want to be sort of really trauma sensitive, you really need to read, realize behavior is about skill not will.

I'm really glad that you said that because when you go back to the five things that are skills that are missing if somebody is exhibiting challenging behavior, and now you're connecting the dots to any form of trauma, is interfering with your ability to have those five skills.

Whether you're talking about racism or poverty or having a parent going through a struggle or financial hardship or a parent that's absent or mental illness or abuse, like all of these things impact your ability to develop these skills, which then impact the behavior that then becomes seen by the outside

world as challenging.

And then to make it worse, the outside world typically reacts in punitive ways, which what does that do?

It adds stress. So it further gets in the way of skill development.

It only escalates the behavior.

And then when we have escalating behavior, we tend to up the ante on the discipline.

So it becomes this cycle of sort of chronic stress and punitive discipline that just keeps making matters worse and worse and worse.

And the good news is, we don't have to respond to that behavior punitively.

We can respond in a different way, a way that I call relational discipline, discipline that doesn't leverage power and control, but leverages relationship.

Because remember, the biggest predictor of helping somebody change, helping somebody build skills, is the degree of helping relationships.

So we can respond with relational discipline.

So Dr. Abelon, I'm totally bought in.

Give me the step by step.

Let's go. What do we do?

Here's a simple way to think about things.

And I always say to people, don't confuse simple with easy.

But simple is this.

Pick any problem that you have with anybody, literally anybody in your life.

In other words, anything they're doing, you don't want them to do or not doing, you want them to do anything.

And at the end of the day, you really only have three options for how to handle those.

And just to be clear, we didn't create these in collaborative problem solving.

We just put labels on them.

We call them your three plans, which is another word saying, your options for how to handle a problem.

You need a plan. What's your plan?

There's only three.

We call them plan A, plan B, and plan C.

So give me an example.

So you've got somebody in your life that has a problem.

And it could be anything from somebody who has a mental health issue and is not taking their meds or using their tools.

It could be somebody who is not looking for a job.

It could be a kid who is oppositional.

It could be as simple as a kid not getting out of bed on time to get to school, or it could be much, much, much more complicated than that.

Okay. So you've got three options.

Okay. Plan A is when you decide to impose your will to try to make the person do what you want them to do.

Okay. So plan is A is I'm getting them out of bed.

I'm going to impose my will.

Now there are different ways you can try to impose your will.

Okay. Because if the kid is small enough, you could physically try to impose your will by getting them out of bed.

But the other way we try to impose our will is no surprise, rewards, and consequences.

Right. Either way, you're sort of leveraging power and control to try to make somebody do what you want them to do.

Okay. That's one option.

Okay. Plan A. Okay.

Second option, call it plan B.

That's our code for collaborative problem solving.

Okay. That's when you're going to collaborate to try to solve the problem, work together to try to solve the problem.

And this is an important phrase, in a mutually satisfactory way.

So you're going to work together to solve in a way that works well for the both of you.

Okay. And we're going to need to go into detail about that option.

Okay. Third option, plan C.

Plan C is when you decide to drop it, drop your expectation, or in essence, solve the problem the way they want it solved.

When they want it solved.

Not forever. Right.

But just for now. Yeah.

Okay. And what's really important about that is it's a strategic choice.

Yes. Okay. It is not giving in.

Giving in, actually, most of the time is when you try to use plan A and make somebody do what you want them to do, and they don't do it, and then you throw up your hands and find, forget it.

Right. That's failed plan A leading to bailing.

Yes. Okay. Plan C is being strategic.

Plan C is saying, you know what, we got like 10 problems to solve here.

Can't solve them all at once.

I'm going to just drop this one for now.

Yes. So those are your three options.

Impose your will, plan A, collaborate to solve the problem, plan B, drop it.

Got it. Plan C. Okay.

And the first thing I tell parents, or anybody, this could be a manager in a workplace, is, all right, list out the problems you have with as much specificity as possible.

Be as specific as possible, which problems you're talking about.

Like a kid won't get out of the bed, won't get out of bed, et cetera.

Okay. And just decide how do you want to handle it?

A, B, or C. And that should be informed by what you're trying to accomplish.

That's basically step one.

It is step one. You have to choose the approach and choose it powerfully.

And it depends what you're trying to accomplish, because plan A, imposing your will, it may get your expectation met, but it might get very ugly on you.

It might harm the relationship, and there's no skills that are being developed by imposing your will upon another human.

Okay. Got it. Okay.

So I just want to make sure that, as you're listening, you get step one, is you're going to list out everything that's frustrating you, and then you're going to choose between these three plans?

Yes. But when you make one clarifying comment here, list out the things that are frustrating you, that's going to look like a list of behaviors that are frustrating you.

And then just sort of put that aside, get it out of your system.

I want you to really make a list of the specific situations in which those frustrating behaviors are happening.

So your list should not look like disrespect, screaming, crying, running out of the room.

It should look like, when's that happening?

Over what? What are the triggers, the precipitants, the situations?

Okay. Because that's really what you want to prioritize with these three plans.

Got it. Okay. Okay.

So plan A? Yep. We talked about that.

Plan C. When would you choose plan C?

Plan C is going to keep things calm.

So if you just want to avoid a meltdown or avoid a challenging situation for now, it'll do that.

The problem is, the problem lives on, right?

Your expectations haven't been met.

Skills aren't built by just avoiding something temporarily.

You know what I love about this conversation is that all of this work that I'm doing about saying let them and then saying let me, when you say let them, you're choosing plan C.

But then when you say the second part, which is let me, you come back to your work, which is let me actually follow what works when I'm ready to do it.

Correct. And I was thinking about that as well because you talk about in the book how let them is not giving in.

No. It's not sort of ceding.

It's actually a very mindful decision.

It's strategic. And for parents, by the way, when we talk about plan C, I always ask people a trick question.

I'm like, with plan C, who's in charge?

And they usually say the kid.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

You are still, every bit is in charge as a parent because you're deciding not to pursue this for now.

Because you're recognizing the way you've been doing it isn't working.

It's just backfiring.

And this is out of your control at the moment.

And so you're choosing not to stress yourself out about it.

You got it. And you're choosing not to, if you're not going to pursue an expectation that's been leading to challenging behavior, you're going to reduce challenging behavior.

So let's say you, and again, I think what's fascinating to continue to remind you as you're listening is that this applies for any situation, whether you can't get your kid out of bed or whether you have somebody spiraling with an eating disorder who is refusing treatment.

It really involves any form of challenging or concerning behavior.

I always go back to anything somebody's doing you don't want them to do or not doing you want them to do.

Dr. Abelon, I wish I knew this 30 years ago.

And I need to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors.

I'm going to give you a chance to just kind of let all of that sink in.

And of course, please share this with people that you care about.

And don't go anywhere because I'm going to be waiting for you with Dr.

Abelon and so much more to unpack with you.

After a short break, stay with me.

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Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins today.

You and I are getting to learn from the extraordinary Dr.

Stuart Ablon from Mass General Hospital.

He's the founder of ThinkKids and Dr.

Ablon. Let's just jump right back in.

We talked about in depth about plan A and plan C.

We didn't talk in depth about the most important plan which is plan B.

What does that look like?

So that's when you're collaborating to solve a problem together with a kid.

So let's say you're in a really challenging situation with somebody.

Whether I was you know I was in a situation with my husband who was struggling with depression.

Did not want to seek treatment.

I have a number of friends that are dealing with situations with adult kids who are struggling with mental health or struggling with an eating disorder also mental health.

And it's a wildly frustrating.

Absolutely. And so what you say to yourself let's say the problem the specific problem was that somebody you love is really struggling and not seeking help.

Okay and again that's a much more challenging one than perhaps the kids not getting out of bed to school.

How do you say to yourself the first thing I got to do is decide okay am I gonna try to impose my will and make them get treatment.

Well first of all it's not going to work okay but it's going to have all those other downsides.

Am I just going to drop it so that we're not having all this conflict but of course the problem's not solved or am I going to try to collaborate to solve the problem because that option has you pursuing the thing you're worried about trying to actually solve the problem so it won't keep rolling on.

But there are other benefits.

This is the only one of the three options where you're actually building that helping relationship I mentioned earlier that is the number one predictor of whether anybody's going to change their behavior anyways.

And here's perhaps my favorite thing about this the ingredients to it which we're about to talk about if you just follow those ingredients that's where the skills training happens.

That's where people practice and develop their skills because this is going to seem really simple but if somebody struggles with problem solving skills what's the best way to help them develop those skills?

To help them figure out how to solve a problem.

Practice problem solving with them and not some hypothetical problem like in a workbook or something but take a real problem and problem solve using a structure that's proven an evidence -based structure for solving problems and that's what I think we should go to next which is okay what are those ingredients

look like? So how do we do that?

Okay three ingredients to this process.

Okay. Okay the first ingredient the hardest the most important we call it the empathy ingredient okay and the reason it's so hard is I think most of us misunderstand what the word empathy means.

What does it mean? It means understanding and we think that empathy means sort of expressing you know that we care by saying something like you know I can tell you're really struggling.

People think that's empathy it's actually not really empathy.

Empathy is really trying to understand somebody else's perspective point of view concern what's hard for them.

So the first ingredient the empathy ingredient is not coming in with your perspective your point of view your solutions which is the mistake we make all the time.

Instead it's starting with let me understand where you're coming from.

So there's a situation I want to talk to you about let me understand where you're coming from and empathy is the most powerful human regulator we have.

You want to calm someone make them accessible.

It's all about empathy.

It is the most powerful way and I hope I'm sure Mal you've experienced this I've experienced this.

If somebody really empathizes with you really tries to understand where you're coming from it is incredibly calming and it's calming upon your whole system.

I mean this is why your words can literally change the person across the table next to you thousands of miles away.

They can change their blood pressure their skin conductance their heart rate.

Empathy regulates and when people are regulated they're much more able to express what's going on for them.

I don't know who said this but when I heard this I was like oh I think I understand what empathy especially as a parent but also truly in any relationship means.

They said it's not your child's job to help you understand them.

Yes. It's your job to figure out who they are.

You got it. Now I think though that is really hard to put into practice and so I actually spent this is going to sound ridiculous.

No it doesn't. I spent like five years.

Yeah. Intensively studying the first ingredient of our problem solving process.

Well I think we do it performatively.

Yes. Where we want to try to understand but we don't know how to step into someone else's shoes.

You got it. And really attempt to understand what it's like being them.

You got it and so I spent these years with all these recordings of people doing this from different places and people we work with and I basically poured over them my own work and basically said when this first ingredient empathy goes well what are people doing and when it goes off the rails what are people

doing and I'm pleased to say like the result it's not rocket science.

When we do a good job of empathizing with another human we're doing four things and four things only.

Okay. And anytime we do anything other than those four it tends to go off the rails.

So here are the four I promise they're not rocket science okay.

Two of them are information gathering tools asking questions clarifying questions like any good detective would do yeah trying to understand what's going on okay because that's your job you're a detective trying to understand the other person's point of view.

Ask questions number one okay.

If they're having a hard time filling you in take some guesses educated guesses do it tentatively because you're not the expert on them and their experience but educated guesses.

Questions and guesses those are the information gathering tools.

The other tools are what I call the regulating tools.

They are what calm someone down if they're getting upset shutting down and those two tools are reflective listening and reassurance.

Reflective listening simply looks like when I ask you questions or take a guess anything you communicate back to me I let you know that I heard you okay and I try to tell people especially with adolescence but with anybody you know avoid the sort of rote just like saying exactly back to you exactly

what you said because that's cheesy it upsets people and it doesn't show that you really heard them instead in your own words reflective listening is saying something like okay so let me see if I got this straight what I hear you saying is and then in my own words yeah other people call this active

listening etc crucial okay fourth one okay because we got questions and guesses yeah we've got reflective listening last one reassurance and reassurance what I mean by that is reassure the person that this is not some tricky form of plan a where you're about to try to impose your will because too often

what we do is we say let me try to listen to you and now let me tell you what needs to happen okay and by the way kids are on to this like unbelievably and we do it so much that I have to say one of the biggest impediments to getting this off the ground is kids are skeptical like when we start this they're

like oh yeah what new form of plan a did you learn now you had your session with dr Avalon and now you're gonna come check the boxes and then drag me back to therapy I get kids say like what did you do to my mom she doesn't even sound like herself anymore but um so reassurance to be more specific the way

to do it is to say something like I just want to understand or one of my favorites is I know there must be an important reason that fill in the blank with the behavior not so wild about because I always remind myself I may not love somebody's behavior I'm sure there's good concerns behind it and that's

what you're trying to uncover with empathizing so you're asking questions if need be you take a guess if you hear anything from them you reflect it back to make sure you got it and if you need to reassure them so it looks like you know hey I wanted to talk to you about how you've been feeling I know

I've been on you to get some help but obviously there's good reasons why you have it and maybe I haven't done a great job listening can you fill me in like what's going on why are why do you think that's the case you i'm sure you got a good reason that is so disarming like I even as I'm trying to put

myself in the shoes of somebody yeah because what you've probably experienced is the tension and the pressure and the judgment and the standoff and the only way that you can feel some semblance over of control over your life is to resist what somebody's trying to make you do you got it you got it and I

promise you you can't go wrong if you stick to those four things you I'm not saying it's magic but it won't go badly and it's almost impossible for somebody to get really worked up or shut down when all you're doing is trying to understand patiently and if they're looking frustrated at all you're reassuring

them and you know sometimes you have to press pause and come back to it later sure but you won't go wrong with those four things how just to recap to make sure I'm tracking yep the first thing is for you to really sit down and take a look at what is the specific dynamic and when does it happen you got

it that is bothering you yep and then you have to make a conscious decision about whether you're going to go with plan a which is imposing what you want which we know doesn't work plan b which is the kind of collaborative approach based on the research and the neuroscience and all of the the work that you

do which is about you activating this helping relationship yeah or there's plan c which is just use the let them theory and make a decision and say let them and I'm going to say let me come back to this when I'm ready to follow Dr.

Ablon's approach and now we're at the part where you have sat down and you have really led with empathy yeah and we have asked the open ended questions I forgot the second part because I'm missing skill number two where you have the the ability to have a working memory so I'm going to be in there as

I'm listening going well I'm throwing three so what's the next step so I'm going to do so my hands here okay because basically what you've done in that first ingredient the empathy ingredient yep is you've gotten their concern or perspective on the table got it only once you feel like you've got that on the table

and they're reasonably calm and why are they calm because empathy is regulating then you move to the second ingredient which is where you are going to share your perspective your point of view your concern now let me ask a question about this though because you've just reassured them you're not doing

anything so should you do it in that conversation or how do you set this up so it doesn't feel like a bait and switch well no no but notice what I said you're not sharing your solution to the problem if you were that would be what I call tricky plan A you're sharing what you're worried about why you're

having this conversation in the first place not your solution and this is the heart of collaborative problem solving you know what I've just I just had a huge breakthrough this is one of the skills that I need because I think whenever I get worried or frustrated I default immediately to problem solving

yes and that creates a tremendous number of problems in my life because I'm either running people over or I'm frustrated because I see a solution that I think works but now somebody feels like they're being minimized or micromanaged yeah yep I mean look the reality is people want advice far less often

than we think and even when people seem open to advice they're typically not going to follow the advice if they haven't been co -authors of the solution where their concern and perspective is accurately represented yeah so after you understand what's going on with them you just share your perspective

your point of view what you're worried what you're worried about your solution so if you had a solution in mind you said I think they need to do this right like if you said they have to go see a psychiatrist and get medicine right I would say slow down Mel so you're saying they have to get medicine

why do you think they need medicine well they're horribly depressed they can't get out of bed okay so your concern is how depressed they are and that they're not able to get out of bed fill me in more about what you're worried about I just I feel like I'm losing them I feel like I'm you know so they're

slipping away from okay good I've got your concerns on the table so instead of saying okay I heard you you need to go get medicine you're saying okay I heard where you're coming from and I like to teach people say the word and not but because but is I heard you but here's the real deal yeah and is I

heard you and I'm worried that it's hard for you to get out of bed and I feel like I'm losing you I just see how much you're struggling now we have two sets of concerns on the table then and only then do we move to the last ingredient the one everybody's really eager to get to which is where you're

inviting the person to problem solve together to brainstorm solutions but you have to tee it up like this the reason I keep using my hands like this if you only have one set of concerns on the table and it's Mel's which plan are you using here well and also mine and also when you got the one hand up

it looks like you're about to get smacked so no I'm serious like I the visual is really good because if you think about it like the whole three -step approach is about getting their worries and their experience on the table and your worries but zero solution right now and then you're just like let's

talk about what we're both concerned about you got it and then you're working together and I tell parents all the time if you want a little tricky reminder here a little trick to help you remember things if you only have one set of concerns on the table and it's the adults you're headed for plan a if you

only have one sentence the child's what playing headed for plan c how you know you're both that's why so it's adult both child I got it that's why there's three plans you're a genius and here's the other thing I think I can remember that okay good well it's only three here's the other thing that's that's

really important here is there's an this order is intentional notice we don't start with the adult concern then try to clarify what's going on for the child and then invite them because they will shut down and there's a reason for that because our brains work in a certain way okay information doesn't

hit the smart part of our brain first which is why you can't just start problem solving you've got to regulate a child before they're gonna be able to relate to you before you can reason with them and that's a that rubric is a rubric coined by a good friend and colleague of mine dr Bruce Perry who does

a lot of work with very traumatized kids regulate relate reason and the reason I'm doing this is how you move up the brain regulation low down on the brain move up the brain so somebody can relate to you and then finally get to the cortex and reason with them and the three ingredients I'm sharing with you

those operationalize that it turns into action first ingredient empathy let me regulate you second ingredient let me ask you to relate to me by sharing my perspective which makes you a helper not a solver third ingredient let's problem solve and if at any point in that process they get upset with you

or shut down just go right back to the bottom of the brain the first ingredient let me re -regulate you let me remind you here's what I heard from you okay got it um regulate relate reason first ingredient second ingredient third ingredient okay incredible absolutely incredible and it's not easy let

me be clear because you've got to keep yourself regulated which is a skill it is although you know what the interesting thing is dysregulation is contagious right like you're the person you're working with getting dysregulated or trying to help dysregulates us I mean there's nothing like being disrespected

or things like that that dysregulates us but if you can just start with that first ingredient empathy you regulate the person in front of you're gonna see what we call co -regulation happen you're gonna start to regulate as well we humans we can dysregulate each other we can also regulate each other

and I think that's a critical thing here is it's one thing to understand somebody it's a completely different way to go through life and want to actually understand yes what somebody's going through and where they're coming from yes to be curious I mean you don't want to make assumptions be curious

and you know and there's so many places this matters I mean as parents right now these days I got to say one of the biggest concerns we have is social media use and screen time for our kids there's so many battles that happen over that this is tailor made for it and it's a great example of let's walk

through that one because I think that's a huge concern yeah I was talking to somebody who is actually very worried about their father so he's our age and his father is now retired and he's just scrolling on reels all day all day goes to bed with it yep and his mom is upset about it I mean there's a real

addiction there yeah and he's very concerned he doesn't know how to address it and so I think it's probably the same conversation whether you're talking to a 10 year old or you're talking to a eight year old it is and it's just really hard because the algorithms of these things are meant to addict I

mean let's be clear that the they are built to addict so there's a very powerful force going on here but it's still the same three -step process and what I find doing a lot of work with kids and adolescents around this is that kids share our concerns a lot of the time so we don't actually need to come

in barging in with our concerns and solutions if we listen first what we'll hear from kids is they're worried about a lot of the same things and if that's the case it opens up the door to collaboration where you're now working together against these addictive algorithms right as opposed to sort of you

know working against one another but it all starts with listening you know people um we actually created a series for how to talk to your kids about social media well we're going to link to it in the in the notes of this episode because I'm sure people are really interested in that I mean it's the biggest

parenting challenge of our generation I think um but the funny thing about it is we call it how to talk to your kids about social media it's not how to talk to your kids about social media it's actually how to listen to your kids about social media and it's exactly what we talked about pick a specific

instance you know maybe it's you pick your child up at school and they're glued to their phone when you're wanting to talk to them right pick a specific instance okay decide which plan you're going to use if you're going to try this collaborative problem solving you're going to start by getting their

concern their perspective their point of view on the table right you'll express your concern you'll collaborate I'm so excited to try this I am curious what you're seeing in your work when it comes to young adults because it seems at least maybe it's just what my friends and I are talking about but it

seems like it's everywhere a tremendous amount of challenges with with parenting kids yes in their late teens and into their 20s yes you know it's really interesting I've noticed I've typically worked with children adolescents occasional young adult I work with more young adults now than I ever have and there's

a reason for that because in essence young adults aren't looking like what young adults used to look like and what I mean by that is thanks to the pandemic there's a gap between where we expect people to be at certain ages and skill level kids skills did not develop at the same rate despite heroic efforts

from teachers from parents which is why like fifth graders now when I work with schools look a lot more like third graders 12th graders look a lot more like 10th graders and yes 22 year olds look a lot more like 19 20 year olds things like that so things that were already challenging are more challenging

um adulting is harder than it used to be because a lot of the kids don't have the same skills how do you think about this in terms of the challenging dynamics that you're seeing yeah well so basically you know I have a lot of families that are very frustrated because they're like my kid is not launching

here yes and I'm supporting them and this is unsustainable yes now where do parents typically go with that um we're going to feel right now where they go with that is so here's the plan yep here's what we are willing to do to support you if you've hidden my house um by x date you must have at least

a part -time job and contributing this amount by x state you will have secured an apartment and have a full -time job to and you know at best what you get is okay yeah that sounds good yep i'm good which you know what i call that i call that dissociative compliance which means the kid is basically checked

out saying exactly what they think you want to hear so that they can get this over with yeah because their concerns aren't around the table got it so it's the same three -step process unless you want to do plan a or plan c it needs to look like because that was plan a what i just said which is you're

doing this yes it needs to look like so let's talk about how things are going what you think uh about how things are going your perspective your point of view what you're looking for your goals i'll share some of my concerns and let's see if we can figure out a plan together at least in the short term

that's going to work for the both of us and what is your advice about the financial piece because i think it's a very tricky dynamic yes because the fact is you know when i look at the city of boston where we're sitting right now i saw a statistic that housing prices have gone up 78 percent in three

years here no it's absurd it's absurd and you know i think about when i was a young lawyer working at legal aid my parents helped me paid rent i could i couldn't afford the rent and groceries yes but then you get into this dynamic yeah where you might be helping your kid right but then you see them

going out and you see them buying things and then you start to have opinions about how they're using their money and i see it with so many of our friends we've experienced this in our family yeah where you want to help if you can yes and that in of itself is a wonderful place to be in but you also don't

want to be taken advantage of no and you also start to feel like i'm contributing to the quote lack of motivation but if we go all the way back to the beginning where you said kids do well if they can yeah it's not a lack of motivation what is it in the first place it's a lack of skills to deal with the new

world it's struggling with the skills needed to handle the new world which is a very challenging world so how do you handle the financial piece though i always say okay share with me not your solutions to the financial piece but what are you worried about your concerns because they are going to matter

they're going to be different from family to family one family is going to say my concern is you're going to never get your act together and i'm going to be paying for your ass the rest of your life so we might rephrase that slightly slightly this is not a safe place doc no it is and it's why usually

when i prepare these conversations with parents i let them tell me it that way first okay and then i say all right so let's rephrase that a little how do we say how do you say it well but here's what i mean because i'm worried i'm worried about you finding your way i'm worried about you being now i'm

about to get upset i'm worried about you being happy okay i'm worried about you like feeling successful okay but see now we're actually getting to your real concern yeah okay now someone else their real concern might be we are going to run out of money very soon and so i am worried about being able

to put food on the table for us all yes somebody else is you know the concerns are different the key is really them being co -authors of the solutions your concerns are every bit is important they're on the table whether they're the financial concern and or the concern about i'm worried you're not going

to be happy and feel good about yourself and i want to help these 20 year olds who are living with their parents who are really struggling it that doesn't feel good to them they want to feel like i can provide for myself right i'm successful i have a career etc but we need to help understand where they're

coming from while simultaneously then sharing okay here's here's our reality of what we're worried about and we gotta work together here i love this thank you for also painting the landscape against which we're actually living right now and understanding that it is very different than when we were in our

20s or our teens or 30s huge like a completely different world that impacts you and the five skills that you've been talking about and one of the things that i love about your work is that it feels as though following everything that you've taught us today gives you the ability to change the way things

have always been in your family and you know i look at a lot of the incredible research that's been done around trauma and the kind of takeaways that people can only give you what they have to give people just repeat the things that are done to them and i wanted to share something with you because i

found it to be so extraordinarily powerful and it was an appearance that des bryant who is a former nfl player who played for eight seasons for the cowboys he was on this podcast that i personally love called the pivot and he had talked about how he had a really difficult upbringing his mom was a teen

mom his dad wasn't around and that he's really focused on trying to give his kids the support that he didn't get as a kid and so he has this quote in his phone and he pulled it out on the podcast and read it and just it was so emotional and i want to share it with you and just get your thoughts to say

uh break break generational curses quit yelling at your kids before they go to bed and expect them to sleep well quit yelling at your kids in the morning right after they wake up before school expecting to have a good day you set the tone for your children you set the tone for your you set the tone

for your voice they will always remember in their heads you become their inner voice don't be there in the critic speak life speak love speak bravery kindness and hope speak wisdom and truth most of all listen to your children i never had none of that i get that to mind and that's my number one priority

that's how i follow that that's heartbreaking wow he's describing right there what we talked about earlier if you give a dog a name still eventually they'll answer to it right like don't be that voice that becomes your child's inner voice and uh i love how he's setting this sort of this intention for himself

right he is saying this is who i want to be and how i want to be when i hear that one of the things that if i were if i were sitting with him one of the one things i would say to him is to get there fully i think he's actually going to probably need to forgive his parents and the way to do that in my

world is to remember parents do well if they can and that the parent who wasn't there for you was probably doing the best they could to handle a very tricky situation with the skills they had and my guess is a parent exposed to a lot of chronic stress and trauma and that's i want to be clear that's

not excusing behavior you know there's a big difference between excusing and explaining and so you can still be really upset and really mad and hurt and traumatized and at the same time realize that people do well if they can and your mom was doing the best she could and your dad was doing the best

he could and that's a way to forgive while still recognizing the impact and then saying to yourself i'm going to do the best i can with the skills i have to handle what my kids need for me and if i feel like i'm not doing enough i'm going to work on building my skills so you know that that's that's

what this thing makes me think of when i when i hear him and he's his vulnerability there is amazing dr stewart ablon what are your parting words i guess my parting words are remember people do well if they can it's about skill not will it's all about empathy listening and truly understanding and if you

do that it'll open up all kinds of doors to collaboration to repairing relationship to building skills and i guess the last thing i would add is as we've been talking about in these last few minutes try to extend the people do well if they can to yourself you know you share yourself some empathy to

know that you know we're all doing the best we can at any given moment with what's coming our way and our skills we can always do better because skills can be built but we're doing the best we can oh i just love you i just love you i am so happy you're here thank you for sharing your work thank you

for doing your work i'm excited because i feel like i'm going to be a better parent and a better spouse and a better colleague and a better human being because of you i can't wait to have you back and i know that this is going to be shared all around the world and i really hope my wish for you as you've

been listening is that you listen to this with the people that you care about that's my hope and uh one more thing in case no one else tells you i wanted to be sure to tell you that i love you i believe in you and i believe in your ability to create a better life and you and i just got the roadmap to

doing that with other people and with ourselves and i cannot wait to see what happens when you use it already i'll be waiting for you in the next episode i'll see you there love love love all right doctor all right here we go yeah all right dr stewart albion i already said it wrong jesus here goes the dyslexia no people

have a hard time with my last name which i'm always like it's not that hard but people you wouldn't believe what i get what do you get avalon albond abelom all kinds of things but how do you say it ablon ablon you're gonna i think i was gonna say ablon i must have been thinking about the nightclub here

this is what i mean is this is this too long because my husband was like this damn cat and i'm like chris he can't tell you that he's sad yes because he's only doing it in front of oakley's door which is shut yeah well so what you gotta tell your husband is first cats do well if they can okay so what is step

two so um well hold on oh we're okay perhaps i uh coming on after doing some research and listening to some things i was like this this is a hard high bar you've got some incredible people and man do you really get the most out of folks you're so good oh my god the whole time i'm trying to be president

like we should write we should we should do this oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper this is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what i need to read to you this podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes i'm just your friend i am not a licensed

therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician professional coach psychotherapist or other qualified professional got it good i'll see you in the next episode stitcher hey thanks for sticking around for this bonus segment about the importance of breaking out

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[The Science of Changing Anyone: A Relational Approach to Challenging Behavior]-[Harvard Psychologist Shares 6 Words That Will Change Your Family]

📋 Summary

The Science of Changing Anyone: A Relational Approach to Challenging Behavior

The Fundamental Mindset Shift: Skill vs. Will

Relational Discipline: Moving Beyond Power and Control

The Three Ingredients of Collaborative Problem Solving

Breaking Generational Cycles

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript