Episode 192

How often in your home do you and your kids get into power struggles? You know, a real ⁓ battle of wills where they're coming at you and they're being defiant or saying, I don't want to do that. And then we tend to then react to that by kind of matching that intensity with our intensity. ⁓ Well, I know that can happen to me a lot, especially when my kids were little and I was still trying to kind of change the way I was parenting to where I didn't want to raise kids who were just really good.
at fighting me or even losing to me, either way. That's why we wanted to bring on Vivek Patel. Now Vivek is a man who is ⁓ a martial arts expert. He's also a dancer. He's also a parent coach. ⁓ And Vivek has so many cool thoughts wrapped around ideas ⁓ like respect, ⁓ controlling our kids, and also about strength. What does it look like to really be strong as a dad or a mom in our culture today?
And so I wanted to talk to Vivek about helping us kind of reshape that. And so throughout this interview, you're going to hear him start kind of giving you a new way of thinking about these subjects, especially I love his thoughts about respect ⁓ and strength and control. These three in particular really stood out to me. And so I know you're going to walk away with a whole new epiphany about how to take these moments that seem to be moments of power and control with your kids. And you're going to start seeing them in a different way.
So take a moment to sit back. you haven't already, ⁓ pause, definitely rate, review the podcast, share it, because this is gonna be so helpful to so many of your friends that have kids and are raising kids, are in the midst of these kind of power struggles. But we really appreciate you taking a moment to do that. And then sit back and enjoy this interview with Vivek Patel.

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:0.900)
Okay, welcome to the Art of Raising Humans. I'm Kyle. Hi there, I'm Sarah. And you know, Sarah, a lot of questions we get from parents when we're coaching them is what do you do when your kid just isn't doing what you ask, you know? You ask him to do something simple. like you're doing everything and then there's still that. Yeah, it seems like everything becomes a battle with the kid, right? So we thought we should bring on somebody who's like an expert in martial arts, right? On how to figure out how to use...

Vivek (0:3.214)
⁓ you

Vivek (0:20.110)
⁓ Ha ha ha ha ⁓ ha.

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:27.564)
martial arts to get your kid to do what you want, right? Is that the goal? Okay, so today we want to welcome our audience to Vivek Patel and Vivek is gonna share with us some unique ways to turn these moments of resistance, these moments that seem to be battles into something different. So welcome to the podcast, Vivek.

Vivek (0:45.666)
Thank you so much, my friends. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for the invite. And I want to start off by saying that I was reading some of the articles on your blog and I was really moved by how alike we think. Because, yeah, yeah, I was expecting a bunch of only because it's so common. It's bench of authoritative, hierarchical stuff. And I didn't find that. I found collaboration and I found listening and I found connection and I found human relationship. And I was like, wow, these are my people. I'm so...

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:55.225)
good.

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:0.238)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

Vivek (1:10.818)
I'm so, I was telling my wife, they're not gonna find me very radical. ⁓ Which is a pleasure. I'm so used to being thought of as radical. So was a pleasure to read through your content. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:10.905)
Yay!
⁓ Yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:21.144)
Well, good. Well, good. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you kind of, were talking before we jumped on there to record, ⁓ how does martial arts, how has it taught you to kind of be this kind of a parent to this kind of adult? As you're helping parents move away from battles to working together, how does martial arts play a role?

Vivek (1:37.653)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting when my daughter was, my daughter's 28, by the way, ⁓ married, has a house, has a job. ⁓ She's got a whole life. Yeah, it's amazing. ⁓ And when she was born, I still remember the moment she was born. ⁓ I ⁓ was right there, thankfully, I was right there. And when she popped out, ⁓ the doctors like missed her and she kind of bounced on the table. ⁓ Yeah, she kind of flew out, whew. And then ⁓ I I shooed everybody away and I went right to her and I was the first person that she saw.

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:56.164)
⁓ my god!

Vivek (2:4.874)
And I looked right into her eyes and for 30 seconds I just held her and said, I love you, love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I
because I really wanted that to be her first ⁓ experience of me, you know, literally the first. And then I heard her psychically in my head. I heard her say, thanks dad. And let me just let you know now, if you treat me like most people treat their children, I'm gonna hate you when I'm a teenager. ⁓ And I said noted, thank you very much. And you know, in martial arts, when someone threatens you, ⁓ you don't threaten them back, right? ⁓ So for example, what I teach in martial arts is if somebody threatens you,

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:16.514)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:28.100)
⁓ Yes! ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:33.235)
Yeah.

Vivek (2:43.037)
start by looking at their humanity, start by looking for ⁓ what empathy you can offer these people. Because everybody, these people wanna fight, but they're fighting because they're wounded, they're fighting because they're in pain, they're fighting because ⁓ they don't know what else to do, they're fighting because they feel oppressed and they feel trapped. Like all the, ⁓ I have intervened, because of my martial arts skill, whenever I've seen some kind of danger happening out in the wild, I intervene, I jump in, because I don't want people to get hurt. And 10 times out of 10, I'm able to ⁓ deescalate the situation.

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:47.491)
Mm-hmm.

Vivek (3:13.310)
And part of the reason I can do that is I have confidence in my skills so I can relax in front of a dangerous person, right? And so I think with parenting, it's very similar. Like I know that because I focus on things that create a really deep relationship with my kid, I focus on being able to communicate well, I focus on being able to connect really well, I focus on being able to empathize and listen deeply and be able to share my heart openly and vulnerably because I do all these kinds of things. ⁓
And I'm not doing the more aggressive punching ⁓ kind of martial arts, like punching the people when they threaten me, which would be limits and boundaries and consequences and rules and punishments and all that stuff. ⁓ So because I take the more flowing method, I'm able to ⁓ work with my kid and flow with them, not just my kid, but like I've worked with hundreds of children throughout the years, ⁓ volunteering in schools, teaching dance, teaching martial arts.

Kyle And Sara Wester (3:53.602)
Yeah, yeah, ⁓ yeah.

Vivek (4:9.061)
I'm volunteering at youth conferences with hundreds and hundreds of kids, you know? And so I put these more human, more connected, ⁓ less violent principles into action with so many kids. And every single time, their heart opens, their desire to collaborate and cooperate opens. I find it amazing, you know? I find it absolutely ⁓ an amazing thing to witness because, like there was this one time when I was at a youth conference ⁓ and...
this and my daughter would volunteer with me every year as well. So the two of us were always there and I was teaching. I used to teach anti-bullying workshops or leadership through movement workshops because I'm also a dancer as well as a martial artist. So would combine dance and martial art games. Yeah, I would dance martial arts, combine martial arts and dance games together and we would have so much fun. And one time my daughter came in just before she must have been she's 28 now. She must have been 16 or something at the time. She came running in. She said, Dad, there's this one kid that's disrupting all of the other classes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (4:46.404)
Cool. Yeah.

Vivek (5:4.753)
He's getting in their way. He's speaking up. He's being rude. He's shoving the other kids. He's making life difficult for everybody. Everybody keeps sending him out of the room. And then she, she said, dad, came to warn you. And she said, dad, he needs your empathy. So I was like, this kid knows what's up. ⁓ Right? So she didn't say, watch out. He's a troublemaker. She didn't say that. And so I said, point him out to me when, when he comes in. So she hung back and she pointed him out, but I'd actually didn't need her to point, to point him out because

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:19.235)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yes. Yeah.

Vivek (5:30.374)
It's a movement workshop. I had the whole thing, the whole center of the room clear, right? So he brought three chairs right into the center of the room and lay down across all three chairs. ⁓ Right now this kid is maybe 12, right? This is the youth conference, younger people's conference. But you can see he was used to being the bad kid. He was used to being the troublemaker. His identity, exactly, exactly. And how he gets his needs met, how he gets his connection and energy needs met. ⁓ So I went over to him.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:38.755)
God.

Vivek (5:58.935)
And I said, hey, I'm so glad you're in this class with me. And I wanted to tell you that I love the fact that you pulled those three chairs out and you're laying down in the middle of the room. I love that. And he looked at me and goes, really? Why? I said, because it shows me that you're taking care of yourself. You're tired. You don't want to be participating and you're honoring that. Most people would push themselves to do it even though they don't want to do it. I love your courage. I love your self-awareness and I hope you will do. I said, I hope even if you lay down in the middle of the floor while everybody's working, if that's what you was really right for you.

Kyle And Sara Wester (6:13.028)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (6:28.079)
I hope you'll do it because I'm really glad you're here. This is what I said to the man, right? Now, ⁓ I kind of set a little bit of a boundary in the middle of that, even though most people would say, he's permissive, but I let him know what the things were that were most obstructive. And I said, and if that's really your truth, ⁓ I support you in doing it. So the kid kind of grunted at me and I left him, ⁓ but I knew it was gonna play on his mind, right?

Kyle And Sara Wester (6:31.512)
Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (6:41.059)
Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (6:44.985)
Yeah, yeah.

Vivek (6:51.162)
And we started the games. I had to do this game where you like, you touch fingers and one person leads and the other person leads and neither lead and you try and figure it out. And it's really fun. And then we discussed what, how it applies to relationships afterwards ⁓ and leadership. Not even three minutes into the thing, the kid comes up to me and like tugs on my shirt and goes, can I be your partner, sir? ⁓ And he was dancing with me maybe three, four or five minutes to acclimatize. And suddenly he was in there with the other kids and he was.

Kyle And Sara Wester (7:10.008)
Hmm, ⁓ yeah. ⁓

Vivek (7:17.772)
laughing like a little kid, having fun and playing and my most supportive participant after that, you know? And it really hit me like if other ⁓ adults in that, I mean, this is a youth conference, so these people were all supportive of empowering young people, but they still come at it from the authoritative, hierarchical mindset. ⁓ And the parenting style I teach is called non-coercive collaborative parenting. ⁓ Non-coercive meaning we don't...

Kyle And Sara Wester (7:24.056)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (7:34.414)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Vivek (7:46.480)
coerce our kids emotionally, relationally, mentally, or access to resources or physically in any of the ways that we have power over kids. We don't use that power to coerce and control our kids. And the second part of the name is collaborative, means we want to work with them as human beings to learn how can we live together in the most mutually satisfying way ⁓ so that we're all caring for each other's needs, we're all caring for each other's preferences, we're all caring for each other's sensitivities, sensory sensitivities, trauma in our nervous systems, all the different things that make us human.

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:4.724)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (8:16.410)
How can we care for all of that for all of us and make a family community where we all feel cared for, right? And this is what I strive for in my work with my kid, of course, even she's 28, we're still always working on that as a family. And the families that I work with ⁓ and all the kids that I interact with, you know, and I'm very fortunate to be able to work with so many families ⁓ to help them have these kind of close relationships with their kids, you know, because...

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:29.048)
Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:39.182)
Mm-hmm.

Vivek (8:44.599)
Yeah, because we can so easily push our kids away.

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:46.776)
Yeah. think, ⁓ what goes through my head is I'm listening and I'm thinking about what I've heard other parents say is I, ⁓ and, you see this, I don't know if pendulum is the right word, but it's like, okay, I've been in charge and trying to control and manage and do all that. And then they swing over here and you were talking about this mutual everyone's needs because then they swing over here and there's, they're trying to be so gentle. I know, but gentle parenting is getting this, you know, everyone's down on gentle parenting, ⁓ but.
where ⁓ then it's, what do you need? And ⁓ how do you feel? And everyone gets worried then that they lose all their boundaries and the child is running the show. ⁓ So I would like you to speak to that and what you were. You were kind of going there with some things and I'd like to hear more about that.

Vivek (9:26.200)
Right. Yeah, sure, ⁓ sure. ⁓ It's a really good thing to think about because when we're transitioning from ⁓ being more coercive to being less coercive or being less collaborative to being more collaborative, when we're making that transition, of course the transition time is going to be chaotic. It's not a light switch that suddenly turns on, now the kids are just going to be, you know, because

Kyle And Sara Wester (9:45.795)
Yep.

Vivek (9:53.978)
You've just spent however many months or years controlling them against their will. And even telling a kid you can't have a cookie before breakfast is technically controlling them against their will. ⁓ And I always tell people that's actually a violent act. And they say, how can it be violent? It's just a cookie. I'm like, okay, but what if your kid says to you, thanks for the suggestion, but I'm gonna have a cookie anyways. And they walk towards a thing, they put a, how are you gonna stop them? There's only one way you have to use your power. It's the only way.

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:7.970)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:13.560)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek (10:19.961)
Right now, maybe use relational power. say you like turn or you turn away. You say, okay, fine. You're going to take a cookie. That means you don't care about me. So that's relational power, right? ⁓ You could use emotional power and scare them and say, Hey, I said that's you know, that's relational power. And you can use, course, access to resources. I'm not buying you any more cookies because they can't just jump in the car and buy a cookie for themselves. There's so many different kinds of power we have on top of the physical power.

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:27.524)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:40.258)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek (10:45.070)
So if I have been living with someone that's been treating me that way for a few years, let's say your kid is nine and you're deciding to change. So for nine years, you're aware of that that's how you've been treated. It's gonna take a little while to trust that there's a new way that my parents says, you're respecting me now? You're not gonna control me anymore? I don't understand this. ⁓ So I talk about three phases that happens during the transition. ⁓ They're called the test, treat and tornado phase. ⁓ First, the kid is gonna test to see if your new attitude is real.

Kyle And Sara Wester (11:10.094)
Okay.

Vivek (11:15.330)
Are you really gonna be kind? Like, I'll give you an example between adults, because adults go through this too. So like something like 15, 17 years ago, and I always laugh when I say this because it seems ridiculous, but it's really, the impact of it was huge. ⁓ I suddenly realized that in my relationship with my wife, I wasn't always right.

Kyle And Sara Wester (11:33.836)
Hmm. ⁓ I realized that too. That happened with me as well. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (11:37.964)
Wonderful. And I really believed that. I really believed that I was always right and she was wrong when we disagreed and that she should listen to me. then my job was to get her to listen to me and to agree with me. Right. And thank you. I really appreciate the, I really do. And so, and so, the impact of this epiphany, it was like, wait a minute, her perspective is just as valid as my perspective. Like it hit me really hard. It was, I mean, I do a lot of inner work. So it's, I'm glad that that was part of the work that came.

Kyle And Sara Wester (11:46.562)
Yes, I feel you. ⁓

Vivek (12:5.731)
⁓ But ⁓ after that, when I would go to have conversations with her, had complained like in a moment because it was an epiphany. Like there's two kinds of learning that we do. We learn gradually as we put in work, work, work, work, evolve. But we also have epiphanies where we level up, right? ⁓ And you can't really choose an epiphany. You can choose the other kind of learning, but the epiphanies happen when we open ourselves to it, when we lay the foundation, all that kind of stuff. So I had a real level up and I was not interested in convincing her anymore.

Kyle And Sara Wester (12:24.612)
Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, that's true. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek (12:32.579)
So then when she would make a point, I would say, oh, I understand that more. Tell me more about that. Now, why do you feel that way? Oh, I see. And what effect do you think that's going to have? And it would even bring up my argument until I really understood. Now it took her, I would say, five years before she started to really trust that I meant it. You know, it was evolving, but before I could really feel like, like, was she just relaxed into me and relaxed into my safety? I really think it took about five years.

Kyle And Sara Wester (12:42.520)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (12:50.638)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:1.113)
Yeah.

Vivek (13:1.538)
And I had to be very perseverant for that. And I had spent probably 15 years at that point doing the other. So five years is grace. Thank you for only taking five years to forgive me. So with parents and kids, it's the same thing. Part of the reason we don't think about this is because most people say, oh yeah, that makes sense. Your wife would take time to trust you. But we don't think about that with kids because this is one of the essences of childism. We don't see them as full human beings.

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:8.610)
Yes. That's right. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:20.376)
Yeah. I know. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:26.276)
Yes, no, I agree. I agree. Yep.

Vivek (13:28.788)
And childism is like racism, childism is like ableism, it's all those kind of things. ⁓ And so, when we do see children as whole human beings, they were like, okay, it makes sense that I've been treating them this way and it's gonna take them some time. So the first thing they do is they wanna test it, right? So ⁓ they're gonna find all sorts of ways to, what we used to call push boundaries. Now I say assert their autonomy, assert their personhood, right? Wonderful. ⁓ And ⁓ so they're trying to find, they're trying to,

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:51.372)
Yes, that's what we say too, yeah. ⁓

Vivek (13:57.686)
figure that out, figure who you are out. The second is it's test, treat and tornado. So the treat ⁓ is where suddenly they're, they don't have a bigger, stronger person with all the power telling them they can't have a cookie. So they're going to have five cookies before dinner for sure. ⁓ And maybe every day for a week and maybe ice cream for breakfast, right? Because we're not, we're not ⁓ forcing them anymore. And then the last one is, and I'll tell you, I did workshops in prisons for a decade every week with my mom actually, who passed away about four months ago.

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:9.048)
Yeah. ⁓
I hope.
Mm-hmm.

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:23.246)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek (14:28.193)
⁓ And the two of us were partners in, I wouldn't say partners in crime, maybe that's not a good saying for that particular environment. But kind of, right? ⁓ But people who get out of prison ⁓ often have a similar thing where they want to revel in the treat of their freedom. And then the last one is, ⁓ and often those people, ⁓ because they haven't learned the skills of self-regulation and ⁓ emotional regulation and all that kind of stuff, they do, ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:33.604)
Especially not in prison. Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:44.900)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (14:58.526)
go to an extreme and it can cause an issue, right? And so it's the same with kids. ⁓ If we've been treating them authoritatively, we haven't been helping them learn those skills because we're making the decision for them rather than help them learn the skills to make the decision. So that's why the treat can be very disconcerting for parents and they wanna go back to control as opposed to, but instead of going back to control, what we do is we start to work on the skills and the attitudes and the knowledge and the support and the environment.

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:20.374)
Yes. Yeah, yeah, because I it really sparks a lot of fear in them when they go that direction. They get really scared. Like, no, this isn't working. I got to go control them again. Yeah.

Vivek (15:26.775)
Right. Right. Right, right, right. And it's a reasonable fear because all of society is built on coercion. We don't have a lot of examples of real human-based collaboration that are successful. And if we are, like the media doesn't jump up and down about it, right? So, and then the last one is tornado. Tornado is when all of those feelings that have been repressed because they haven't had a free space to come out. Cause I just read a post on Facebook today actually that said,

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:32.504)
Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:41.316)
Sure, yeah, yeah.

Vivek (15:54.953)
Something like, when I spoke back to my parents, I got a smack in the mouth and now I'm respectful. ⁓ And I'm like, no, my friend, you are not respectful. The only thing you learned was fear, you know? ⁓ And respect is something that is largely misunderstood. Yeah. And so that's the test, and tornado. So the tornado, all these feelings come out. Your kids might be angry more. They might be defiant more. They might be... ⁓ All of these things, if you understand test, treat and tornado, you can say, thank goodness my kids are doing this.

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:5.944)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:22.372)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, you can see it and now you know what to expect and you're like, Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. What I liked about the comment from Facebook, I always tell parents when I'm coaching them the VEC how, yeah, there was a time where my dad, if I talked back to him, he'd slap me in face. And then after a while I learned if he did that, then he'd feel really bad about it and buy me something at the store. So sometimes I, if I wanted him to buy me something, I would push him.

Vivek (16:27.496)
Right.

Vivek (16:46.024)
Stop.

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:50.050)
by being very sarcastic or rude until he did slap me. And then later on he'd say, hey, you wanna go to store with me? And I'd be like, sure. And then he'd be like, you want that ⁓ toy you wanted? You want that candy bar? So I think that's interesting. ⁓ We've had that happen where some of our stuff on Facebook or Instagram has blown up and then people will make those kinds of comments as if somehow that solved something. And so I'd like you to talk about that, how a lot of parents who are more ⁓ still using those traditional old school type methods

Vivek (16:53.562)
Right, right.

Vivek (17:2.924)
Yeah.

Vivek (17:11.642)
Right.
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:19.396)
⁓ Maybe they're moving away from spanking. Maybe they're even moving away from timeouts, but they still think respect comes from demanding a kid say, yes, sir. No, sir. And then obedience. Yeah. Yeah. And you're not, if you're not, if you, if you quote unquote, talk back, even though that's what a conversation is, ⁓ if you talk back, then they're like, that's not respectful. Right. So kind of, I loved how you kind of worded it. How do you define respect and ⁓ how do they, how do we teach our kids to be respected?

Vivek (17:23.185)
Right.

Vivek (17:29.722)
Right. Yeah, yeah.

Vivek (17:40.655)
Right.

Vivek (17:48.347)
Yeah, on the back of my business card it says, respect comes from caring about other people, not from being afraid of what will happen if you don't. And that's exactly what you just described, right? Excuse me, yeah, that's exactly what you just described that what most people consider respect is actually fear. It's not a human relationship. It's not based on caring about the other person. know, like one of my sayings is, it's a slightly different, it's not respect, but one of my sayings is love is the core of chores.

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:55.180)
Yes, yes, ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (18:4.440)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vivek (18:16.420)
And when parents talk about chores, they say, I feel my kid doesn't respect the home, my kid doesn't respect me, my kid doesn't respect. And I'm like, well, ⁓ then what you want to do is you want to create ⁓ a relationship and a culture of respect in your home, right? Like ⁓ how do you respect another human being? How do you care for them? How do you honor their humanity? How do you see ⁓ the bright light that they are? know, like in all of my close relationships, all my people know I see them as a bright light.
All of them, it doesn't mean I ignore the issues that they have, because I want to also support them in that. But they all know I see them. Like my friend Tanya, she says, when I'm with the vague, I know I can do no wrong. ⁓ And she loves that. And we also have honest conversations. If something goes wrong, if one of us like says something that hurts the other, we're able to talk it through. But because we have a foundation of that deep level of trust, we can work through things. It's the same with our kids, you know, like with the love is the core of chores, you could say love is the core of respect or ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (18:47.522)
Sure.

Kyle And Sara Wester (18:52.724)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (19:13.120)
respect is the core of love or something, I don't know. But like the idea behind it is it's the human relationship at the core. That's why I say my parenting mantra is relationship first. I always put relationship first in any situation before any practical concern. ⁓ How am I enhancing the relationship or how am I ⁓ causing an obstruction to the relationship, right? And if you put things through the, I call it the relationship filter. If you put things through the relationship filter, ⁓ there are some things that are very hard to do. It's very hard to.

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:22.082)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (19:41.975)
If you put it through a relationship filter, it's very hard to take the phone out of your child's hands ⁓ without their consent. ⁓ Just try taking the phone out of my hand without my consent. Just try. Right? I'm an adult.

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:52.069)
⁓ Yeah, yeah. going back to what you said about kids being ⁓ humans and like treating them like that, that's the example I use a lot when I'm talking about respect is if I did these same things to my wife, they would not be seen as respectful. They'd be seen as disrespectful to her. But somehow because the kid is smaller, I can do these things to the kid and call them like good for them or say it's for their own benefit. And then I'm like, I'm modeling how to disrespect.

Vivek (19:58.281)
Right. Right.

Vivek (20:7.595)
Right. Right. Yeah.

Vivek (20:15.978)
Right. Right.
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (20:20.992)
and then they in return are gonna feel disrespected. ⁓ So it becomes this weird kind of cycle. If you just thought, I try to think, if I did this with Sarah, would this help the relationship or hurt it? And I think every time it would cause her to pull away from me. ⁓

Vivek (20:24.330)
Right.

Vivek (20:32.661)
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, 100%, 100%. And a lot of people say, but it's brain development. Their brains aren't developed yet, right? And I'm like, well, then they deserve even more care and respect, not less, right?

Kyle And Sara Wester (20:42.242)
Yes, yeah, yeah. ⁓ I know, I know, yes. Because they're even more likely to misinterpret my actions as opposed to Sarah. Sarah could be like, he's just in a bad mood. I get it. I don't want him to do that. I'll tell him later. But to the kid, they really think it's, I must be a really horrible person for them to do that and treat me that way.

Vivek (20:49.768)
Right. Right.
Right.

Vivek (20:58.526)
Right, ⁓ right, right, right. And the relationship, thank you for mentioning that because the relationship filter has three different relationships in it. ⁓ It's their relationship ⁓ with me as the parent, but it's their relationship with themselves that I'm affecting as well, right? And this is one of the primary focuses of my parenting and hopefully the new progressive ideas of parenting ⁓ are that we wanna build our children's relationship with themselves up in a deeply empowered way, you know?

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:11.362)
Yeah, ⁓ yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:23.982)
Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek (21:26.023)
And most traditional and even authoritative parenting ⁓ approaches aren't centered around building up an empowered relationship with self for the child. And I just want to mention to folks listening to this that I'm using the word authoritative instead of authoritarian on purpose. ⁓ Because I know that ⁓ people are these days saying authoritarian is the old style and authoritative is the new style. But authoritative honestly is one step away from authoritarian. We have many, many more steps to take.

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:36.621)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:43.278)
Okay. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:47.746)
Yep. Yes. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:53.700)
⁓ Mm. ⁓ Mm, okay.

Vivek (21:56.181)
because authoritative parenting still allows for so much hierarchy and limits and boundaries and control and all that stuff that is really, ⁓ I mean, I love authoritative parenting because we're yelling at our kids less, we're punishing them less and we're connecting more and they feel more safe. But it's still, like I said, it's still just one step. I want to take as many steps towards peace, as many steps towards respect, as many steps towards true human collaboration as possible.

Kyle And Sara Wester (21:59.833)
Yeah. ⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:8.472)
Yeah, yes, yes, yeah.

Vivek (22:22.994)
Because the old mindset is, I mean, look at the world, it's falling apart. The world is in flames everywhere right now. Everywhere. You know, I live in Canada ⁓ and Canada is like ⁓ one of the least in flames. Places that were still in flames. We're still having, I saw this whole news story about this whole white supremacist group forming underground in Canada and all this stuff. ⁓ And so I feel like ⁓ if we can create like a truly nonviolent, non-hierarchical, peaceful culture in our home.

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:27.724)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:35.012)
Yes. ⁓

Vivek (22:52.883)
⁓ that we're planting the seeds that will spread out into the world and create more peace and harmony in the world. Because without it, the old mindset is just gonna kill us all, you know? It's gonna kill us all. And we need healing. We need deep, deep healing. Not just as ⁓ individuals, but also as families and also as communities and also as a species. There's a deep healing that we need. And starting with our kids, I think, ⁓ is one of the best ways that we can plant the seeds of that healing, you know, for future generations. I really believe that in my heart.

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:58.212)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (23:19.250)
And I think that redefining respect ⁓ is such an important thing. A lot of redefining is necessary. I'm doing a, you had mentioned ⁓ working with dads at some point, right, Kyle? And I've been asked, thankful, very grateful to ask to do a series of four quarterly workshops next year for ⁓ a group of dads ⁓ from an organization in the UK. ⁓ And I'm very excited about it. And one of the ⁓ four workshops is called Redefining Strength.

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:29.124)
⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:48.580)
⁓ Mmm, ooh, that's good. Yeah.

Vivek (23:49.395)
Mmm.
Because there's so many misconceptions ⁓ wired into us from gender norms around what strength is and isn't, you know? The number of times I get called a woman as an insult online.

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:56.825)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (24:3.510)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Vivek (24:5.427)
Right? And I'm just like, thank you. Oh, you just gave me a wonderful compliment. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And so.

Kyle And Sara Wester (24:10.520)
Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. So ⁓ when you were, because that just ⁓ was bringing up, there's a couple, my mind is going with a few different questions, but so ⁓ can we get a little preview? Since we're not going to be there. like it. How are you defining strength? I like that, ⁓

Vivek (24:35.211)
Sure, absolutely, absolutely. And it connects also to how people talk about we have to prepare kids for the real world, right? It's similar to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they talk about you have to give kids consequences to teach them there's gonna be consequences. I'm like, yeah, you're giving them consequences, but the way you're teaching them about consequences, I'm just diverting for a sec. If the way you teach them about consequences is just by giving them consequences, you're just kind of hoping they figure out. But instead,

Kyle And Sara Wester (24:41.252)
⁓ Yes. ⁓ Okay, no, we like that too. Yes.

Vivek (25:1.884)
Don't be the one that gives the consequences. Be the one that learns how to deal with consequences and teach those skills. When my kid went into kindergarten, kindergarten, I told her, listen kiddo, here's the thing. You're going into a system where adults think they know better than you and they wanna control you. And they have these things called rules and they have these things called expectations and they have these things called consequences. And they do it because they don't understand how we're supposed to treat each other. They weren't taught what we were taught. They don't understand the nature of love. You know what? I would tell her all of this stuff.

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:5.966)
Yes. Yes. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:16.036)
Yeah. ⁓ Yes. Yes. ⁓
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (25:29.625)
And so when she would go into that thing, she had her eyes wide open, a teacher would tell her, ⁓ she'd be like, meh, that doesn't touch me. I know where you're, I know you're broken. ⁓ Right? And so, and so, ⁓ and so, but, and I said, you know, you want to pay attention to which rules make sense, which rules don't, which ones will help the class functions, you know, like effectively, cause you all want to get along and which ones may feel unfair to you and you want to speak up about. And I will always have your back no matter what. And so this is teaching discernment, teaching skills.

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:33.988)
Yeah. ⁓
Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:50.404)
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Yes. ⁓

Vivek (25:59.910)
We would also talk about how it would feel if a teacher would yell at you, what happens in your body, what happens in your mind, and how does it feel, and what can you do about that, right? So like these are ⁓ skills. What other skills do people need? We need to learn conflict resolution. We need to learn emotional regulation. We need to learn how to communicate effectively our needs and how to listen effectively. We need to learn how to problem solve together. We need know so many beautiful skills we can teach our kids. Evaluating systems. ⁓ What part of the system makes sense to me? What part of the system do I want to follow? What part do I want to resist?

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:4.600)
Yes. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:16.964)
Thanks. Yeah.

Vivek (26:30.065)
⁓ And so this is preparing kids for the real world, right?

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:32.812)
Well, ⁓ just you know, all that we do as well. So all that when our kids go, yes, everything you said, we're like, we've had the same conversations with our kids. And when those things happen in a classroom, it's so good to have those follow up conversations about how they dealt with it. You know, did they feel like they that they were able to listen to both sides and hear the point of view and all those kind of things. That's really good.

Vivek (26:35.685)
That's wonderful. Yeah.

Vivek (26:48.901)
Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. we can, yeah, and this is what guiding is. Giving kids consequences isn't guiding. And ⁓ so redefining strength has a similar idea to it. ⁓ For example, ⁓ emotional strength. We'll talk about one of the things I'm gonna redefine is emotional strength. Most people think most, let me change that. Most ⁓ men and male presenting people have been socialized to think ⁓ that feeling a broad range of emotions deeply is weakness.

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:55.384)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:17.815)
Yes. Yep.

Vivek (27:18.648)
Right? And emotional control means not feeling anything except maybe anger and maybe joy when your team scores. ⁓ And that's it, right? And you can... ⁓ Right, right, right. And maybe you can smile at your kids when they're playing and that's it, right? ⁓ But ⁓ like deep tears or profound empathy or like overcome with compassion, you know, or like all the different kinds of really soft, beautiful emotions. ⁓ one of my sayings is, ⁓ I searched for my tears for years.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:21.976)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:25.292)
Yeah, that's right. ⁓ So many men have anger and joy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:34.052)
That's right.

Vivek (27:48.335)
⁓ because I was blocked from all that, from my own ⁓ conditioning, right? But when it started to open up, I became so much more of a full human being. ⁓ And then my understanding of emotional control shifted too, because I was like, wait a minute, emotional control doesn't mean not feeling. It means being able to feel all the full range of my emotions without it damaging me to become out of it stronger.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:51.305)
Yeah, yeah, yeah ⁓

Vivek (28:10.822)
and to have the capacity to understand other people's emotions and how to work with them. All of a sudden I have all this strength. I have all this capacity. All of a sudden you can't trigger me as easily because I have ⁓ all this unconscious stuff has become conscious. ⁓ And I'm like, like online when people do call me those kinds of names, like it literally just brings me joy, right? Actually it brings me a combination of joy and sadness. It brings me joy because I celebrate my own evolving liberation. And it brings me sadness for the trap, ⁓ the little trap that those people are in. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:31.094)
Yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:35.534)
Yes. ⁓

Vivek (28:40.589)
⁓ of whatever that trap is, of whatever wounding that they have that they're responding to. ⁓ And so I share the idea that having more knowledge and more understanding and more capacity for your emotional nature, even though we've been told this weakness is actually a great strength, and then we ⁓ model that and we can help our kids develop that strength so that nobody can control them and they don't have to repress any part of who they are and it doesn't make them weak. ⁓ And ⁓ it's just so empowering.

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:56.964)
Mm.

Vivek (29:10.399)
for men to hear that message that they can feel without being weak because all society. I remember one time when ⁓ mom and my sister both were really sick over the last few years. My sister also passed away last year. It's been a hard time for our family, honestly. ⁓ And I've spent most of my life in and out of hospitals for ⁓ having so many sick family members. And I remember this one time, both my mom and my sister were in the hospital at the same time and I was bouncing back and forth between the two of them taking care of my

Kyle And Sara Wester (29:22.009)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (29:37.432)
Yeah. Wow. Man.

Vivek (29:39.806)
My sister had a smoke, let's smoke. My sister had a stroke. My mom had a heart attack. ⁓
And it was like right in the middle of this whole thing. And I walked into the hospital and all of a sudden I sat down on this bench and I realized I hadn't let myself cry for weeks because I had been supporting everyone else, you know. And all of a sudden, all of these tears, like the tornado, like the test-treatment tornado, right? All of these tears started coming out. And I was laying on this bench and I was just weeping and weeping. And people were just walking by me. I still remember that part of my brain was watching these people walk by me, kind of looking sideways. Why is this strange man crying?

Kyle And Sara Wester (29:56.152)
Hmm, ⁓ yeah.

Vivek (30:14.144)
I remember thinking, my goodness, I could not have done this 10 years ago. I could not have done this 10 years ago. And I felt such a, ⁓ I felt this almost ecstasy in ⁓ my pain of, ⁓ you know, in crying because I felt so grateful to be in touch with that level of depth inside of myself. ⁓ And honestly, when I talk that way, even in the prison when I talk that way, like these are tough guys. ⁓ Like these are people who have killed people and really hurt people and all this stuff, right? And these guys are weeping.

Kyle And Sara Wester (30:17.592)
Yeah. ⁓
⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (30:31.289)
Yeah.

Vivek (30:43.967)
Especially my mom. My mom could touch their heartstrings and make them weep like little, children and reawaken their relationship with their inner children, which was ⁓ like my mom's, I really call it her. She was the star of it. I was her assistant really. ⁓ she, ⁓ her workshop was called Freedom Thinkers. ⁓ And it was the most requested. She had a waiting list of 50 guys long. And it was the most prescribed. This little old woman wheel her in in her wheelchair.

Kyle And Sara Wester (30:56.127)
Hahaha

Vivek (31:12.488)
sits in the room for two hours a day for six weeks. And these men would come out completely transformed and they couldn't talk about anything else. ⁓ And so the whole, they called her the queen of OCI. That was the name of the prison, OCI. ⁓ But the principle was the same. The principle was you're not bad. You were wounded and you can heal and you can bring your true, beautiful, powerful self to the world and bring peace to the world and bring joy to the world and make the world a better place. You have that power. It was like the first time they had been told that.

Kyle And Sara Wester (31:18.744)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (31:38.136)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (31:42.858)
Because everyone else told them they're broken and they needed to be fixed and they were a problem, right? And you better make better decisions, but life doesn't really work that way, right? You can't force yourself to make better decisions. Especially the bad ones usually come from ⁓ our dysregulation anyways, right? So then the skills we need are how to re-regulate and how to know ourselves. And self-knowledge is one of the most powerful things ⁓ we can give our kids.

Kyle And Sara Wester (31:54.104)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (32:5.078)
Yeah, well, and all of that sounds like strength. ⁓ That would take a lot of strength, a lot of courage for a prisoner to actually start trying to believe that and then do something. ⁓ And I'd love to, and just kind of like bringing this all together, I'd love to take, when you hear a guy who knows martial arts like you do, right? And I know a lot of, ⁓ even when I always meet like a black belt or something, do, that dude's gotta be strong. dude's gotta, like, you never, cause like really a lot of what,

Vivek (32:9.811)
Exactly.

Vivek (32:30.089)
You

Kyle And Sara Wester (32:33.984)
looks like for men in particular, when there's situations of conflict and they get really mad, ⁓ I know for myself, it's because I'm scared. I'm actually scared I'm gonna get the crap out of me. I'm actually scared. So like, feel like you gotta get big and loud and angry. So that person backs off and doesn't, right? And so I loved how when we first started our conversation before we were recording, you were talking about how ⁓ it's the same thing we're kind of modeling to our kids.

Vivek (32:42.215)
Hmm
Right, right, right.

Kyle And Sara Wester (32:59.544)
that when we're coming and if people are watching on YouTube and if you're not, you need to go on YouTube and watch us when the fists are coming together, right? That's an opportunity where you're saying lots of people, the fist comes at you, you meet the fist with a fist. You know, and that's kind of what happens a lot in our parenting, authoritarian or authoritative. It can still be us coming at the kid and resisting the kid's behavior, right? And so if you could kind of share that there was a great quote you had about a bridge or river, that whole thing, but kind of how martial arts has taught you
this idea of respect and strength and all that in these moments with these kids. And I'd love you to wrap it up with that.

Vivek (33:35.674)
Yeah, absolutely. The saying is, and I have a lot of one-liners, by the way. I've written hundreds of them. I love them because it helps parents remember concepts, you know. And this one-liner is, guide your kids like the banks of a river guiding the flow, not like a dam stopping the flow. Yeah. And one of the beautiful things from that is, and I see this in my kid, is our children actually crave our guidance. You know, I always say, don't make learning a drag.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:39.650)
Yeah. Yes, yes. Yes, of course. ⁓ yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:50.244)
Exactly. Yes. ⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:58.701)
Yes, yep. Yeah.

Vivek (34:1.510)
If you make learning a drag, your kids are gonna find they're learning elsewhere, right? But if you make learning a joy, if you make learning connection, what's that, sorry? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you make learning a joy. ⁓ Right, right. And my martial arts students, honestly, they love me. Actually, I ⁓ don't teach martial arts anymore, but I taught for 20 years. I stopped because I wanted to focus on the parenting education stuff because I was doing both for a while. ⁓ But my students loved me, adored me. They would say, Vivek, all we think about is getting to the next class, you know?

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:4.344)
Yeah, yeah. That's good. That's good. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, they're not gonna want to learn from you if it sucks to learn from you. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:27.278)
Yeah. Yes, yep, yep.

Vivek (34:29.881)
And it was because of, it wasn't because the martial arts were that spectacular. I mean, I was good, but like there's lots of good martial artists out there, but it's because of who I am and how I treated them, you know? And ⁓ I remember there's this one, so martial arts, so what you did was this, right? So when, ⁓ one of the things that we're taught is when you have force, if you meet it with force, you're both going to get bruised. Really, that's what's going to happen. Yeah. And instead what happens is when this force comes in, when a force comes in, we want to guide the force.

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:43.320)
Yeah, yeah, together. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:57.261)
Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (34:57.711)
And so lot of my students would say I fell and I don't even know why. Right? It's like, it's an invisible thing. ⁓ And it's the same with kids. Like with kids, if we can get to, ⁓ instead of trying to fight with their behavior presentation, if we can connect with them, I call it having iceberg consciousness. ⁓ If we can go underneath the surface and find out what are the needs, what are the feelings, what's going on. Like you mentioned fear ⁓ in the self-defense situation, the kids are experiencing that too. Their nervous systems are dysregulated.

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:1.208)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:17.048)
Yeah, yes. Yep. ⁓

Vivek (35:26.682)
They have some kind of fear response, or a catastrophization response, you know? And it's often built on real experiences because they do know they're going to get in trouble or something like that, right? So ⁓ instead, what we do is we take... ⁓ So first we take a moment and we regulate ourselves. Always, always, always. Start from the center outwards, right? Even if it's... One of the things I do is I teach a micro meditation, which is a one breath meditation. And it's just, you just go... ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:30.029)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:35.212)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:50.914)
Yeah, yeah.

Vivek (35:56.793)
and then you go on about your day. It literally just happens in one breath. And you practice it a number of times so your body gets used to that feeling. And then what happens is after we build up layers of skill during that, then when you come to a tense situation, you'll be able to take that breath and regulate your nervous system because you've been practicing it. But anyway, you need to do it, whether it's tapping or whether it's dancing or... This is where pattern interruption comes in, because you would ask me about pattern interruption.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:2.978)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:11.774)
Mmm... yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:20.248)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Vivek (36:21.071)
So when my nervous system is on fire, I'm gonna find some way to interrupt that pattern. Cause if I just follow the pattern of the dysregulation, we're gonna fight, ⁓ right? And there's gonna be a power struggle. So I interrupt that pattern. ⁓ pattern interruption is so good with an on fire nervous system. And I'll do different things. First of all, I will change my voice. I will either get humorously loud. I don't mean scary loud, but humorously loud. ⁓ I'll be like, my gosh, I'm on a mountain and I have to yell really loud for the people on the other mountain to hear me. And just.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:26.690)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:45.166)
Yes, yes, Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. ⁓

Vivek (36:48.471)
My whole nervous system is like being activated, right? Sometimes I'll get up and do a wild dance, you know? And sometimes I will get really still all of a sudden and like fall to the floor. Sometimes I'll go out like pattern interruption is about shifting things, right? So I'll change the speed, I'll change the location, ⁓ I'll change the volume, I'll change, I'll use props, I'll use furniture, I'll do anything I can to shake out of the moment. Because again, I don't want to follow my standard pattern, I want to follow my chosen pattern.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:53.762)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:1.838)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:17.046)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vivek (37:17.666)
I call it moving from imposed to chose. ⁓ And we're, cause we have so much of us as imposed. can, even, I mean, I've been doing this work of dismantling my programming for 30 years and I still know most of my mind is imposed and most of my thoughts are imposed, right? I'm always working towards chose. ⁓ And I think that's part of being a conscious person is moving from imposed to chose. So many people just accept they're imposed as their identity. And I'm like, I'm like, thank goodness I didn't end up like that. I ⁓ don't want to be stuck like that.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:20.396)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:30.904)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:40.760)
Yep.
I know. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (37:46.540)
And so ⁓ I'll tell a story. ⁓ So I ⁓ mentioned I'm also a dancer. I was at a dance retreat. ⁓ there was one teacher that was teaching this dance thing where we all, you know those decks of cards where they have different things and you have a book and it explains each card. So this was goddesses. They had all different goddesses. ⁓ And you pick the goddess out of the card randomly, out of the deck randomly, and then you read your little description in the book. And so I picked Diana, the goddess Diana, who's Wonder Woman.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:3.236)
Sure. OK. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:14.968)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vivek (38:15.423)
And my daughter loved Wonder Woman, so I was very excited to get that card. And so we did a whole dance and then at the end of ⁓ the ⁓ session, there was about 10 of us left over and we were reading from the book and all of sudden this four-year-old ⁓ was sitting on their mom's lap, went and grabbed the book from one of them and held it like this and wouldn't give the book up. And there were still like eight of us that wanted to read the book ⁓ after the dancing was over. ⁓ And so ⁓ the parents, first of all, tried to take the book from the kid, wouldn't do it, grabbed on like full life, like lives for dear life.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:32.258)
Yeah.

Vivek (38:45.216)
⁓ And then other family friends came, other parents came, this kid would not give up the book. Now everybody there knows what I do. I was there for dancing, but they all know I do parent stuff and work with kids. they all were like, why is Vivek just standing there? Okay, Vivek, none of us had success, you try. ⁓ Right, right, right, right. And they all don't like what I teach also because it's too much pressure, right? But still. ⁓ So then I went over to the kid and I said, hey, listen kiddo, all these people are trying to get this book away from you. I'm not gonna try and get the book away from you because you want the book. I want you to have it.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:53.827)
Yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:59.070)
That's right. Show us what to do here.

Vivek (39:15.090)
I want you to have it as long as you want it, as long as it's really right for you to have that book, even if it means till tomorrow. And then you keep it because nobody should take something out of your hands like that. No, you deserve respect. said, and also I'm so excited to read this book because I got Princess Diana and my daughter loves Wonder Woman and I wanna read it so I can share it with her. And I'm so excited about that, right? And the kid just handed me the book just like that. In that instance.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:21.390)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:36.268)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:41.070)
Yes, ⁓ yes, isn't that awesome? ⁓ Yeah. ⁓

Vivek (39:43.515)
Yeah, and I'm telling you, I have hundreds and hundreds of stories like that, hundreds over the years, that when we, ⁓ first of all, when we support kids' autonomy and we share our need, I shared my need vulnerably with this kid, right? He was so happy to collaborate with me. A friend of mine afterwards was walking with me and said, Favik, I still don't agree with your stuff. I said, okay, maybe, but look who practically in the real world got the job done. Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:47.490)
Yes. Yep. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:56.163)
Yes! Yeah. Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (40:8.228)
⁓ That's so good. That's so good. And I love that. What I love about that story too, is it's just an example of even a four year old, how ⁓ we want to make it all about power and control. But then this four year old is seemingly like, usurping everybody's will in that moment. like, ⁓ yes, and like, and like, it's not about saying, ⁓ my will will overwhelm yours. Instead, it was what you did there was you turned chaos into connection.

Vivek (40:25.904)
Running the show, running the show.

Vivek (40:32.743)
Right.

Kyle And Sara Wester (40:36.578)
And then the connection led to cooperation. And that's all the kid wanted the whole time. The kid was just saying, I don't think any of you will understand how bad I want this. So I have to fight for it. And you're like, no, I want it too, but I'm not going to fight for it. And then the kid's like, wow, and you still think you're going to get it? That's awesome. Yeah. And like that, that's all the kid wanted was a different path than having to demand her own way or his own way.