117: Dr. Cam Caswell | Why Control Fails and Connection Works with Teens

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

so today we're together with Cameron Caswell, who most people know as Dr Cam. First of all, welcome to the podcast. It will be a pleasure already is a pleasure. We chatted a little before, but welcome.

I really appreciate you guys having me. Thank you so much for inviting me on yeah it's very nice to meet you.

And I can be in doubt from time to time where to start because there is so many areas we could dive into. But I fell over one of your posts on Instagram and I was like, oh, let's talk with Dr Cam and you write and do a lot about teenagers and we are in the fun situation that we are full-time traveling with three teens. Right now. We have four children One is a grown-up and we are in Budapest for the month where we are attending a world school pop-up and there will be 120 traveling teens here and these are maybe not the normal teens. Sometimes there is no, no but they find normal.

That's true, there is no normal.

No, but what I mean is that sometimes people have this oh my teenager is difficult kind of thing and it is kind of a little different from when you're together with them all the time, like homeschooling or unschooling or world schooling parents. But the subject I wanted to talk about was teens.

Yeah, well, that is my subject. I'm all in on that and I think it's interesting. I would love to hear from you too, when you're traveling with your teenagers and homeschooling how does that impact your relationship with them, do you think?

I think they rock our relationships with them. Actually, I think, yeah, but we unschool and basically unschooling is all about the relation. Yeah, so we have been building on. It sounds like it's strategic, which I kind of it is not, and I don't like it to sound like that it's intentional yes, that's a better word.

Our entire lifestyle is intentional, and the way we are living our life with our children we do it with. There's a lot of thought process behind why we do the things the way we are living our life with our children we do it with. There's a lot of thought process behind why we do the things the way we do them, and the result is that we have awesome relations with our kids. Yeah, um, I would say there is. Oh, this sounds maybe a little too confident, but I mean the things they are going through, the things that belong to the teenage, and when it is complicated for them I wouldn't say it's about or affected by their relation to us I feel like we are the solid ground they're standing on and we're here to help and they trust us to help them, and that can be hard. I'm not saying I have an easy life or they have an easy life, but the relation has been the centerpiece of our puzzle for many, many years. So now we are harvesting the good results of an unschooling life.

Love that. Well, you guys have just summarized my entire platform of what we need to do as parents right there. It is all about relationship and connection 100% and being intentional about it. So I absolutely love that and that you're reaping the benefits of that. I have a teenager as well, and it is again I'm also very intentional about our relationship and about how I interact with her, and not in a like, oh how do I?

it's just thoughtful right, it's not this no, it's not like, how do I? It's very authentic.

It's crazy authentic. Like she sees the worst of me, she sees all sides of me. We see all sides of each other. It's very real. But it's mutually respective, respectful. It's mutually trusting, and I know I have to extend first the trust, the respect, and when I do that I get it back in spades. I get so much back and so it is a very supportive, caring, trusting relationship. But you're right, it's intentional, every day, every moment.

And we can grow. I mean, I can keep growing. That's why I stopped before, because I don't want it to sound like I'm Madame Perfect over here. I'm not, and relationships are always, in any situation, always in somewhat complicated and need attention and intention and time. And sometimes we have four children, plus we are nomadic, plus we are like everyone else. We know we need to make money and cook meals and do stuff, and sometimes there's just not enough of that resource, time and something's lacking. And so, yeah, it would be interesting maybe to dive into where do we even start? I mean, even if we have a good and strong relation with our teenagers, where would be the way, the space, where do you think the highest risk of harming the relation is? Maybe that's a better question.

That is, and I have a very strong answer for that one too what I see.

It's really control when we try to and I want to put out there too, because you were saying you're an imperfect parent and we all are and I think it's embracing that imperfection and not trying for us to be perfect but also not trying to make our teens perfect. And I see that a lot, because we measure our success as parents on our teen success, but we have a preconceived notion of what their success is supposed to look like to us, for us to feel like we're a good parent, to look like to us for us to feel like we're a good parent. And so I see a lot of parents who are in there pushing their kids towards the type of potential they want them to fill in. So the grades and the schooling and the different activities and just how they present themselves and the clean room and the right amount of time on social, all of these things we have in our brain what the perfect child should be, and none of us will say we want our kid to be perfect, but yet in a lot of the things that we try to control, it is trying to get them to fit into that mold of perfection, right, even how they talk to us, and the respect and the everything else that comes. But there's gonna be moments where we don't have that. There's dysregulation, like I was saying with my daughter, we have great and she's extraordinarily respectful.

Just last night we had a conversation and her tone I did not appreciate and it triggered me and I was like I'm going to stop right now, let's not talk. And I just stopped it. I didn't get mad at her, I just said I'm not, I'm not reacting well right now to how you're saying this. I just want to let you know I get what you're saying, but the way you're saying it is really impacting me. So let's, let's drop it and let's talk about it tomorrow. And we talked about today and we're like why were we both upset yesterday? The conversation wasn't even anything to get upset about, right, we had just put in an emotional place.

So, as the adult, I said you know what? I'm not going to respond well right now, so I'm going to let this go. So we're not perfect, but we're going to recognize that we want to take those moments to step back and not try to say hey, you don't talk to me that way. That's not okay, because she was emotionally dysregulated as well and it was more of a. I get what you're trying to say. I'm not feeling it the way I think you're intending. It's really striking a chord in me right now.

This isn't good right now, and she was apologetic, but it was still that moment. So I think Us saying we're gonna accept what our kids are giving us, we're going to take accountability for how it impacts us, because they're not. She wasn't trying to disrespect me. There was nothing about her that is disrespectful, but that tone felt it. So it's going okay, let's just stop. Let's just stop. That's her, this is me. How are we going to treat it, rather than me saying you have to behave this way to make me feel this way, and that becomes very controlling, or you need to do this, go ahead.

No, I was just thinking. Then it becomes about the behavior. It becomes superficial. I noticed that in the English language, and especially the Americans, they use this. You know, talk to me respectfully, show me respect, but then it becomes this puppet show you know 100. Because respect is not a question of how you phrase your words. My kids use the f word pretty often and that's not disrespectful. It's not because they don't respect me as a person. It just came out annoyed. They don't maybe say it directly to me. I'm just to clarify.

No, and I hear that. I mean there is a different.

It becomes this controlled idea about what we see on the surface. And I want to go back to the control problem because I find it really psychologically interesting why we set up these. You know, we have these, maybe not on the forefront of our mind, but we do have checklists. We want them to look good, we want them to be popular, we want them to clean their rooms, we want them to whatever. All these things take all the boxes and we think, okay, what can I do to make that happen?

It becomes this push, push, push and I think it's tied back into actually the feeling in the parent and it's very often on a subconscious level. You know, I had this miracle in my hands X years ago and I just want to do my best because this miracle is the best thing that ever happened in the history, of anything that ever happened, and I want to do my best. And then this doing my best becomes this systematic way of doing things that we were taught in our school years and in our upbringing that it's about the grades and it's about how nice is your handwriting, do the teachers like you? Do you wear the fashionable clothes? Do you cut your hair in the right way, all these things. So I think we need to unravel pretty far to find where that control comes from, and it becomes a very deep inner work. But I know that I can also rave a little bit about this explanation. That it's I want to do my best.

What would my best look like? Okay, it would look like this. So what can I do? And we become the pushing parents. Maybe you have a different, other perspective on it.

I think that the trick is. And then kind of what trips us up is when they're little. We do have a. We need to do a lot of control right. We are teaching them, we're making them safe, we're doing all of all of the things we need. I mean their babies, their feet. We're doing all of that.

And when our kids become tweens and teenagers, we have to change our approach, because now they're full humans, now they're their own individual humans and I think we forget to separate ourselves and so our boundaries get very blurred and we overstep our boundaries considerably when it comes to our teens, because we almost see them as and I don't think we do this intentionally, but we see them either as an extension of ourselves or something we own, something that we're entitled to control because they're ours and we have to separate and go. They're not we're responsible for caring for them, but we are not them. They are completely separate human beings with their own feelings, their own needs, their own dreams, everything, their own motivations, and we want to put our stuff into them, our motivations. We want to prioritize. What do you want? We want to do that, and you're right in this mind of having them become their best, but we're trying to get them again to be the best as we envision them, not the best of who they're meant to be, and we have to drop that. We have to drop those expectations and those pushes and we have to be able to stand by and go.

Who are you? You're going to make mistakes. You have to be able to stand by and go. Who are you? You're gonna make mistakes? You have to. That's the human experience, is making mistakes. The human experience is frustration and feeling all the emotions across the spectrum. That is the human experience. We wanna give them their own full human experience, which means we need to step out of it and not try to control it for them. We can support them, we can love them, we can encourage them, but it's not ours to pull the strings. That's unfair to them.

Cam during our conversation so far, I've been sitting and thinking about what kind of data was for our first team. So our situation was different. We lived a different life, which meant I was a classic going to work dad. Now we're full time traveling, which means I work from home and have so much more time together with the family. And when I look back at that dad I was and I'm like, oh man, you're a poor boy. I want to give him a hug, I want to give him some love and I want to say to him hey, you end up better. Because when I look back, I'm not necessarily proud of how I was a parent. We have a a former episode. I unfortunately can't remember the name, but she introduced the word. I'm a recurring yeller recovery recovery.

I'm a recovering yeller yes, and I just was like oh, it hit hard.

I'm like, oh yes, I remember trying to parent with volume, volume hey let's parent with volume the new book yeah, oh, a lot of people love yeah no but um.

And then I've been thinking about what is it for some of us dads, and the whole different life I'm living now, is the biggest difference is time.

I have so much more time together with my teens and unfortunately, in most family there is this the roles are skewed in a way where the dad is less together with the children than the moms and I think that's affected a lot of how, unfortunately, we also parent and I can see the biggest change I've done is the time and doing stuff together with my kids.

But when I look back and if I should be have not a negative oh, you were a bad dad, yes, but but trying to understand the differences, then what I see is a dad who didn't have such a deep connection to his children, and I'm not saying do my bidding, but I'm like if I wanted to encourage them to something or if I wanted to help them move in a certain direction, I couldn't because there wasn't that connection, there wasn't that trust. But I could with a negative control, with the parenting by volume, and I think it's interesting to look at that difference and it led me wanting to ask you how often is dads approaching, wanting to work, because I think we dads are hopefully getting there, we are getting better, but there is a difference and one of the big differences is time and connection. But there is a difference and one of the big differences is time and connection, and I just see a lot of parents, dads, try to control by volume or shouting, or deciding and demanding.

Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And I do work with some dads majority's moms but I have some dads, and the dads that I work with are some of my favorite clients because they're the dads that are like I want to break that cycle of not having those relationships with our kids. And one of the things I see is that and we'll be honest, like women tend to be more naturally nurturing and men try to be, are more naturally like let's problem solve and get to the point. And teens don't want that. Teens need nurturing, they don't need to the point.

And dads start to feel left out. They don't know how to show up for their kids. Right now it changes. They were the playful dad or they were the this dad and now they don't know how to relate. And so I see a lot of dads that, intentionally or not even intentionally, I don't even think they realize it but they start focusing on their role as provider. My role is provider and keeping everyone safe, and so that's what I'm going to do, and that's my love. But it's disconnected, and so they kind of move out of the picture. A to do, and that's my love, but it's not just. It's disconnected, and so they kind of move out of the picture a little bit.

And the other thing I see too is a lot of times parents parent in very different ways and so dads kind of feel ousted a bit because they're not parenting the way the mom wants to parent, and so there's a lot of conflict. So it's like, fine, it's easier just to step aside and I see dads that are going. I want to change that and I want a relationship with my teenager because I understand, just as you said, we can try to control Control's very surface. Control often breeds disrespect and mistrust, not the other way around, which decreases our influence. And parenting teenagers is all about influence. We can't make them do anything, but they can have trust and respect in us and want to hear what we have to say. And that's where we have the influence and that's our power. And so, learning how to step aside and go how do I want to connect with my kid, regardless of parenting style, it's connection and that's what I want to prioritize.

I think you said before that it changes when they become teenagers. And I remember one of the books I read at university a hundred years ago. Um, it was quite interesting as a Danish professor of developmental psychology and he said I'm just searching for words now as it was not in English he said when they are 12, you're done with the uphoud. There's a word that cannot really be translated, but you would say that is the part of parental work that has to do with you. Take off your shoes when you enter the home.

You shake hands with people over 65, whatever the social norms are whatever, but it's like your social compass, your um, where you can do, behave where you're. It would be all right, in the relation with the children, to tell them what to do. That's actually what it is it is. I mean, if my husband told me what to do, that would be really weird, right? Yeah, it would also be really weird if I told my 19-year-old son what to do.

But when they have a vehicle just a piece of information you're passing on, because they actually don't know at this point that you're supposed to take your shoes off when you enter x, y, z room. Um, so at. And he said stop when they're 12, which is a kind of radical because it's also the word for bringing up children in our language. But really what he meant was you do the work before they are 12 and after that, the only thing you have left is trust. If they don't trust you at this point, they're flying, it's too late. Everything you have to you do you do it before they are 12.

And I kind of wanted to go back to that because you said before it changes when they are teenagers, and I agree, but on the other hand, I would say the minute you you spit them out is when you start working on that trust thing. Oh, 100 percent, 100 percent. They need all that freedom and all that respect from day one of who they are, what they need, how they are different from other people and and and what our role is to keep them safe. Basically, yeah, um, not to control their behavior, but we can pass on the culture, which is that word I was looking for yeah, and and the social norms.

Obviously, like you can't, you don't want to go into somebody's house and jump on their furniture. You know the basic, you know you want to.

you want to talk to people, yeah.

Yeah, people talk to you. You want to look at them in an odd, like those things, absolutely, and I think when we try to continue to control them when they're older, we then send the message that you are not an okay human being, that we don't trust you to figure these things out, that we still and what happens as well, and what I'm seeing a lot of is we then we basically undermine their own confidence and self-trust in themselves as well, and they stop learning how to think critically and figuring things out. There's this learned helplessness of I don't know what to do or I'm going to blame you if I mess up because you're telling me what to do all the time, so it's got to be your fault and they don't learn how to do it on their own or to trust themselves. And so what you were saying and I love is even at a very young age, teaching them to trust themselves is. And so what you were saying and I love is even at a very young age, teaching them to trust themselves is so important.

And my like with my daughter, she made her own decisions of what she wore, of what, like so many different things, and she would go I love sharing. She would go into the school or go into we'd go shopping and her shoes would be on the wrong feet. She always put her shoes on the wrong feet, but she put them on herself and people would stop me and go your daughter's shoes are on the wrong feet, I'm like I know. Thank you, she put them on herself right. So she had this sense of independence and self-agency from a very early age and now, when she's older, she's extraordinarily competent, right and entrusting in herself, but also extremely trustful and respectful of me. And so we've got that. But you're right, we've nurtured that from day one. It's been you are you right.

Yeah, the other thing is really. So we're talking. It sounds I'm I'm exaggerating a little bit now, but it sounds almost strategic. We need them to trust us so we still have some sort of control or influence when they're teenagers, so that it doesn't blow up and become ugly. But actually it's also only fair, right?

I, this is a human being, brought into this world 24 hours old, two years old, five years old, something like that. And now they're telling you I want my shoes on, like this, or I don't like peas, or I can't sleep, or you know, maybe they cry something's off and you're like it can't be off. Everything's perfect because I've done all the things from the book, but it can be off. And so their experience you use the wording human experience. Their human experience starts as soon as they're human and they need to have a space to live in that and to be. There's so much batch thinking about children, so when they are three, they need to whatever. Oh, that's the worst. Could they please just have some space to live their life from the beginning of their life?

Yeah, please just have some space to live their life from the beginning of their life, yeah, and? And if we do this, then it becomes a question not of you. Don't talk like that. Here it's more um, let me explain to you. We are in a, let's say, place of worship from a different culture than our own. We're guests here to see the artwork, but we have to be also respectful, and in this culture, no one speaks.

In this room. You might hear all the other tourists talk, but we don't do that because that is disrespectful for the place that we're visiting. This is why I'm now asking you to be quiet for the next 10 minutes. That's a completely different parenting style than shut up. Shut up, yeah, and also maybe even give the child the choice If you don't like being in this room, if it makes you uncomfortable, we can leave, but if you want to be in here and see the artwork and that's the way we've been trying to do it all along and I am not perfect. That's not just a strategy. That is also giving space for someone else to be in their life on the journey that we have to share for a while, because we happen to be the parents and they're not old enough to fly yet, fortunately, I love that because I think one of the things we have this weird belief that kids are supposed to change to make our lives more convenient, and when our kids make our lives inconvenient, we get upset with them.

How dare you have a bad mood when I want to have a good mood, how dare you say something or not want to do something that I want to do and we get mad and we want to change that because they're ruining, and we've got to separate and go. Well, we're ruining them their time because they don't want to do this. So we've got to understand like they've got their own boundaries, we've got our own boundaries. They've got what their needs are, we've got our needs. They don't always align and, as the parent, as the adult, guess what we have to be the mature one and go.

How do we adapt to this? Not how do you adapt to me. How do I, as the mature adult, adapt to you and help you learn to figure this out? Because I know how to regulate my emotions. Hopefully, I know how and I will have other opportunities to do this but you, I'm teaching you and I'm modeling for you what that looks like to be compassionate to other people and to understand that other people have different needs than I do, and so we need to stop saying our kid needs to behave a certain way to make me okay. I hear parents say well, they made me mad, well, they made me and I lost it, and I go. Well, you made your child lose it way before that and now you're mad at them, so why can't they be mad at you for doing the exact same thing? You're mad at them for right. They're struggling directly, but so are you, so use that for empathy but, it's just a huge discourse that's out there, like this story.

You just keep hearing it, just like teenagers are horrible and it's horrible years. I disagree completely oh, me too, 100 there's this other story that is kind of a I don't know, is it a narrative that they are annoying, that it's irritating to be a parent.

That they trigger you.

That you know. Oh, there's this task. Oh, the kids they never. There's this way of talking about the element of life that it is to have children at home, where it's always about how, all the things they don't do and how annoying it is. And now you have to do. I just shared with you, before we started the recording, that I had to clean the entire kitchen the moment I walked in and that was really annoying, but it's just, and it is, of course, sometimes annoying, but at the same time, this whole song hey, wait a minute, we had that miracle in our hands eight years ago and it's still a miracle.

Well, because teenagers now are thinking for themselves and parents and I understand why no-transcript giving them ownership and so they fight back harder because they're trying to have agency over their lives and we're trying to take control over something that's not ours to control and they're saying no. And that's where this, so much of this tension, comes from.

Yeah, we're just making the gap bigger and bigger for some, some parents and luckily, cam. I wanted to talk with you about time and also a why you went into this uh you know.

So, uh, regarding time, that's why I shared our story about I went from a work dad working at home being this more or less sole provider. Cecilia was homeschooling, which meant that I had longer hours and long hours and were less home, to be a full-time, nomadic work at home dad with a lot of time together with my kids. When I look at normal life and being a parent to a teen who goes to school, I get almost shocked. I'm like how much time do they have to create that connection with your kid? When you have a full-time job, the kids go to school full-time and they have extracurricular activity, they go to sport, et cetera.

How, the people you work with, can you get them to cut out these slots of time in their life? Because I would be so stressed if I had led that life today with having to take the talks with our teens. It is we now. All of them have been teenagers or are teenagers, and the emotional development they go through when puberty hits. It is extreme. It is, of course, a difficult period. A lot of stuff happens and the amount of hours we have listened to things and the amount of hours we have talked with them how do people do this in a normal rhythm. I can't see it. So what do you suggest?

So here's one of the biggest things and this is one of the biggest mistakes I see parents make they have limited time with their kids and so they use that limited time to what? To lecture them, to tell them what they need to do differently, to ask them about their grades, to ask them why they're doing this. And the time gets more and more limited because the teen avoids them more and more and then they cram more and more into little time. So I'm working with a dad right now who had well, I've worked with several dads but that has situation like that and so I have. He has now when he has that time with his daughter. It is about anything but that stuff. It is about fully how are you? What's going? What are you interested in? She loves makeup. Even asking her about stuff like that, about what she loves. And I said I don't want you to spend that limited time telling your kid what to do, which is why you have limited time, as it is right, spend that limited time connecting with them. And suddenly that time starts to grow when you're around, because the kid now hangs out, comes to dinner, hangs out with you. When you have those moments, so when you take those even little glimmer of moments and make them about connection even little glimmer of moments and make them about connection. That does it's powerful, because kids will start seeking you out and that's what they're finding Like. My kid actually wants to hang out with me more now.

Wow, are the dishes all getting done? No, and I go. Well. Which do you rather? Have Clean dishes or a connection where your child's actually talking to you and you have some influence and you know they're okay? Which would you rather have? I've yet to have someone that says clean dishes right, I mean, clean dishes would be nice, but the thing is and I always tell people too when it matters to them we always say our kids are lazy or not motivated, but it's always when we're thinking about they're not motivated to do what we're telling them to do, because we're telling them to do things that have zero priority to them in their life, where there's a ton of other stuff that are extraordinarily important to them right now. Clean dishes just isn't one of them. That's okay. We can they help. My daughter helps a lot, but it's not a you go do this, it's a we got to do this. Hey, I'm doing the dishwasher. Can you come help me and do this side of it. That's it, easy connection, and she's learning About that.

I don't know, it's a little thing, but I think in many families it's a little thing but I think in many families it's a big thing. The chores, yeah. One of the really good conversations I had with one of ours about this was when I took the time to make it completely clear that when I ask a question, no is a completely okay answer yes. So if I say, can you please help me with the dishes, and she says no, I don't have the bandwidth for that right now. I'm not available for dishes at the moment. That's fine, which means it is fine. It has to fine. I have to be fine with that no-transcript, as if they're supposed to obey.

They owe us.

They are supposed to obey. Think about that for a minute. Obey, that sounds like something from medieval times in my years. I mean, who would? I think one of the best hacks is to think about. You know, would you talk to your spouse like this, would you expect these things from your spouse?

If she did what I said.

Yes, no, I mean, it would be great if everyone just I think you know, everyone wants everyone else to do what we say but, they want us to do what they say.

And there's this conflict right.

So and I think you're right there's there is still this belief that obedience and respect are the same thing, and they're absolutely not. And one of the things that I see that's very concerning is, when we focus so much on obedience, we are not teaching a kid to trust their own sense of self, not to trust their gut, not to be able to say no, not to speak up or trust themselves or have confidence, and not to think for themselves and have critical thinking. All of those is what I want my daughter to go out in the world with. I want my daughter to be able to say no. Please, be able to say no. I see kids that aren't, and the situations they get themselves into is terrifying, because they don't feel like they have the right to say no. They don't want to upset anyone. Rather than saying I need to make sure that I'm okay doesn't mean I have to be mean. I've learned how to say no in a nice way.

I also think we all need to work with that. Actually, can you take a? No? It's. I also think we all need to work with that. Actually, can you take a no? It's actually not a big deal. No, if I ask him, would you please make me a cup of coffee? He's out there, he's making coffee for himself and he says no, not, it's not that my husband doesn't love me or would never prioritize helping. He's probably busy or just burned his hand or you know. No is just one of the options to answer a question, and I think we all need to do some inner work here, maybe because we were brought up in the same kind of way, where no was a big danger.

No was a no-no. No was a no-no.

I really love words and would love to go back and dig into where does the word respect come from, what is the Latin original root, etc. Because if I should read it in the dictionary, like people see the word, then it is respect. That's something people give me. I don't need to give it to them. It is often a very one-sided thing. I demand respect, I want respect, but respect is something you give others. If you want your children to respect you, then start out by respecting them. Then the respect will start coming.

Pam why did you choose this field, or how did it choose you? What was it that attracted you to working with teens and parents and help parents to get better at being with the teens?

It's been this like very windy, weird road, not a direct path at all. But I mean, personally, as a teen, I struggled and I look back. Personally, as a teen, I struggled and I look back and I have a great relationship with my mom now. But we fought all the time and I think, looking back, I go she was in the, her heart was in the right place, my needs were, my heart was in the right place and we misunderstood each other completely and so a lot of that conflict didn't need to be if there was that deeper understanding. But I don't blame her for that, we just don't have it. And so I was going into, I was getting my PhD in psychology and I taught an adolescent psychology class and I absolutely loved the material.

But what I loved even more is I had a lot of parents actually in the class because I taught an evening class and they started coming up to me and saying my relationship with my own teenager has changed so much based on what I'm learning here because I get them now, why don't we have this information? And that really got me thinking and I just started. I mean, at the time I was in marketing and I just started sharing information. I wasn't a mom yet. I had nieces and nephews.

But I just started sharing information with my colleagues and they started lining up at my door to get information about parenting and I'm like I love this, I think I'm kind of good at it and I get it Like this is so necessary. I've raised my own daughter and I've raised it based on what my beliefs are and she's turned into this amazing human being and I think a lot of it is. I just didn't break her, which I think is part of my parenting philosophy. It's just don't mess them up, Right? That was big, big piece of my goal. Just don't mess her, break her. And so I think, and then I just started doing that full time because this is what I love, and now I just it's everything, it's like my heart. I don't know. You just kind of you get called to something, I guess, and I just it was, it's what I was called to.

What are the most general challenges people have when they seek you out?

Most of it is the connection and they start with a. They'll often start with I want a big, better connection, or understand my teen, and then it often narrows down to my teen's grades are tanking. I don't know how to get them to motivate them. I can't get them to do chores. I don't know how to get them to motivate them. I can't get them to do chores. I don't know how to get them to listen to me. They won't listen to me and it's all about how do I get my teen to do what I want them to do most of the time and so they don't always like what I have to say and most of them want to send me their teen and say my teen is broken. Basically I don't say that, but it's like fix my teen and I will say I need to work with you because the relationship with your teen starts with you and the things your teen is struggling with.

A lot of it has to do with your relationship and how they're seeing themselves through your eyes, because they learn who they are and their self-identity through what we reflect back to them and if we're reflecting back all the stuff that's broken and all the stuff we are annoyed by and all the stuff we're frustrated by that becomes part of their identity and we don't reflect back all the amazingness of them. And I've even had parents say I can't think of one positive thing to say about my teen. I go well that my dear is the problem. That is the problem. It's so hard, but I understand.

We get so focused and our brain does this and it's not, it's not our fault. Our brain does this. It looks for the problems to fix and the more we look for problems to fix, the more problems we find. And the more we focus on the problems, the bigger the problems get. We get more of what we focus on and so we have gotten into a mindset that our kids are going to be difficult, that our kids are going to be a challenge, that they're not going to like us are going to be a challenge, that they're not going to like us, and we go into adolescence already with this mindset. That is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I see it over and over again. And my goal is to change the mindset, not change how we parent. Change the mindset of why we parent the way we do, because no matter what parenting style or parenting technique you use. If your mindset is to get my kid to do what I want them to do, the parenting strategy is going to fail.

Yeah.

Agreed.

I have so high hope for the future Because when I look at how I was parented and the generations around me and I look at, I don't think the world is perfect at all. But when I look at the rivers coming of new knowledge, of more and more people going in a direction of a more connected parenting, attachment, parenting all these different styles when I look at how my relationship is with my children, I'm like, oh, what will their relationship be with their children? I'm almost jealous of my grandchildren, my unborn grandchildren. That must be awesome, because I hope my children will become a better dad than I was when I started out.

It is a learning journey. Of course it is. It takes time to learn to be a parent, but the knowledge is growing, it is out there and you have been and are among the ones spreading this knowledge. So I wanted to end our conversation today with asking you to share with our listeners how to find you and also, yeah, maybe one final advice or something yeah, so you can find me at on on instagram, I'm at dr cam caswell, um, and then my website is askdrcamcom a-s-k-d-r-A-Mcom, and those two things.

You will find everything about me. The one thing that I would say about parenting is we are learning beside our teenagers, and so we are not either a good or bad parent, but we can choose to always be a better parent, and that requires us to constantly learn not to be guilty about what mistakes we've made in the past, because we all make them. But how do I do better today for my teenager and how do I take responsibility for my part of the relationship today? And when we start doing that, we don't have to feel guilty or blame anyone on the situation. We just go. Okay, this is where I want to learn, and we do that in every other aspect of our lives. If we're going to go do a job, we're going to study hard to do that job. Well, parenting is the one thing that we just leave to winging it, and that terrifies me, because I can't think of a more important job to get right. So we just want to keep learning.

Yeah, I agree. Keep questioning as well. Keep questioning what we do. Why do we do the things we do? Why do we ask them to do the dishes, is it, you know, or whatever it is?

Yeah.

Okay. Cam we need to leave it here.

Yes, let's do it. It has been a big pleasure. Thanks a lot for your time, and we will put links and show notes and everything out there for people.

I have really enjoyed this. Thank you again for inviting me on.