Episode 187

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:15.362)
Boy, do we have a treat for you today. ⁓ Sarah and I have been trying to get this ⁓ guest on this podcast for so ⁓ long. ⁓ He has basically been ⁓ one of the biggest ⁓ agents of change when it comes to how we see not only parenting, but even child development ⁓ in this country and around the world. ⁓ He is just recently was teaching over at Oxford.
⁓ He's he's currently at UCLA as a professor, but he's written so many books. I want take two take two here we go Boy do we have a treat for you today? This is a guess we have been trying to get this audience are trying to get to come talk to this audience for ⁓ Quite some time never thought it was gonna be possible, but we were able to get on dr. Dan Siegel. ⁓ He is
basically not only one of the founders or one of the innovators or one of the the leading voices in parenting ⁓ Throughout this country in the world, but also just of child development and better understanding adolescents and kids and ⁓ how to parent them differently and how to help them be the most healthy humans they can become You know Dan Siegel. He's the founder and director of education of the Mindsight Institute
He's the founder and co-director of Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He's a graduate of Harvard Medical School, completed his postgraduate training at UCLA, specializing in pediatrics and adults, adolescence and child psychiatry. He was trained in all the attachment research and narrative analysis through National Institute of Mental Health. ⁓ Research training fellowship focused on how relationships shape our autobiographical ways of making sense of our lives.
and influence our development across the lifespan. He's written 15 books. Five of those have been New York Times bestselling books ⁓ like No Drama Discipline, The Whole Brain Child, Parenting from the Inside Out. I mean, ⁓ so many great books, the power of showing up. ⁓ And today you are in for a treat. I mean, I'm telling you, get ready to learn so much about every stage of your kid's life and how to help them.

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:31.298)
He's going to give you practical tools about how to help your adolescents, ⁓ your teenagers and make those years fantastic. He's also going to talk about the classic debate of nature versus nurture. What's doing ⁓ all these things are going to be discussed in this, this, this podcast today. And it's, it's going to be fantastic. So we had such a great time ⁓ doing this interview today. I hope you enjoy it equally as much. And man, if you, if please share this with anybody, you know, because it is a treat to get to hear him talk about this stuff.
⁓ like, ⁓ the, podcast, give us a five star review if you want to, that'd be fantastic. Leave us a comments about how you enjoy his, his interview today. that would just mean the world to us. So I hope you're able to sit back and enjoy this interview today.

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:0.848)
Hello and welcome to the Art of Raising Humans. I'm Kyle. Hi there, welcome. I'm Sarah. And this is a big day for us, right? Yes, yes, we're excited. So excited. Lately, Sarah, we have had the honor of having some really awesome people on this podcast. But today was a day I don't think we thought was going to happen. Did you? No, just hoping. Hoping, wishing. Hoping, But one of the people who's been so influential in our lives,
on how we see our kids, how we see our kids behavior, how we understand ourselves has really been at the forefront of all that for us is Dr. Dan Siegel. ⁓ And without further ado, I want to introduce, this is Dr. Dan Siegel. Thank you for coming on our podcast.

Dan (0:42.956)
Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Kyle. It's great to be here.

Kyle And Sara Wester (0:46.212)
You know, Dr. Siegel, what I wanted to open up with, okay, Dan, what I want to open up with Dan ⁓ is ⁓ lots of times when parents come to us for help all throughout the world and they're seeking out, they're wanting to somehow help their kids with their behavior, their big blow ups, their anxiety, whatever it might be, right? One of the first things I'm trying to do in that first meeting is help them change their view of this outside in model.

Dan (0:48.150)
And you can call me Dan, please. Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:14.380)
and more do this inside out approach, right? And so I was really curious when I knew you were gonna come to, want, how does Dan do that? Like how do you pitch it when you're talking to families and they're like, we want him to stop doing this, stop doing that. ⁓ And you're like, they're really outside in people. ⁓ How do you talk to them and help them see it different?

Dan (1:33.550)
Yeah, great question. Um, first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. And it's an honor to be here with you. Um, I think the journey and this is what I say to parents, you know, the journey to parenting is such a wonderful and challenging opportunity because it's probably the hardest job in the world. And in some ways it's the most important job, you know, because we're raising our children, we're raising the next generation.

Kyle And Sara Wester (1:53.060)
Yes.

Dan (2:1.288)
And whether you think about it personally or think about it for the large public thing about being human ⁓ here and raising humans, you know, it's, it's a big deal. So what I say is that, ⁓ you know, as you, think in your philosophy approach it that way, you know, the best resource for parenting is the parent themselves. ⁓ And so then you say, well, where are you getting your ideas? Where are you getting your behavioral responses to your kids?

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:20.900)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan (2:29.942)
And it's from the inside, whatever you've held, not only from what you experienced as a child yourself, but then how you made sense of what you experienced. So I begin with that. And some people go, what do mean by making sense? And I go, well, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about, you know, and I ⁓ wrote a book by the name parenting from the inside out, you know, which is ⁓ with ⁓ Mary Hartzell. ⁓ And what we wanted to do, Mary and I was to make sure

Kyle And Sara Wester (2:51.246)
Yes, great book. Great book. Yep.

Dan (2:59.640)
parents realized that the inner resource that is themselves was more than just how they were going to manage behavior. So that's how I start. said, sometimes even if we were raised where our parents just dealt with our externally visible behaviors, you know, our actions, what we said, our interactions with people, giving us rules, you know, a behavioral approach, there's a ⁓ validity to that.

Kyle And Sara Wester (3:9.744)
Hmm.

Dan (3:29.154)
research shows, but it misses the opportunity to see inside, the see inside, to look at your feelings, your thoughts, your memories. All that we can say is the mind, and the mind is what drives our own behavior. So how would you as a parent, I say to them, like to get to know your own inner world so that if you started parenting from the inside out,

Kyle And Sara Wester (3:36.176)
Yeah. ⁓

Dan (3:55.182)
You might find there are things you love that you want to keep on doing and that's great. Two thumbs up. You might find there are some things that you're not so certain about, maybe one thumb up. And you might find there are things you don't really like, you one thumb down or the things you really, really can't stand that burst out of you that you can't believe you did. And maybe your parents did that too. Two thumbs down. So I said, you know, you actually can't change the past. So some parents say,
Why would I look at the past if I can't change it? And I go, because while you can't change the past, you can change how you ⁓ make sense ⁓ now of how the past back then affected you, meaning what did you experience and what did you learn about how to deal with that experience? So that's how we're going to liberate you. And that's what I say. And liberate means that we are in a prison sometimes we don't even know. ⁓ And what parents...

Kyle And Sara Wester (4:27.727)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (4:34.539)
Mmm... yeah.

Dan (4:54.039)
have and you've probably experienced it yourself, ⁓ is the ability to empower themselves to create a new way of parenting that they didn't even know was even possible, even though it was in their dreams it had to be.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:6.298)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. ⁓

Dan (5:7.895)
So that's kind of how I invite people on the journey, the Inside Out journey. you know, I'll tell you, Tina and I, ⁓ you know, wrote four parenting books, Tina Payne Bryson. We never would have written any of those books ⁓ if the book Parenting from the Inside Out that Mary and I, Mary Hartz and I wrote wasn't already out there because, and Tina shares this view, you've got to start from the inside. So that book already existed. And then we said, well, what else would be helpful to parents?

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:11.021)
Yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:19.256)
Yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:27.652)
Mmm.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:32.143)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan (5:36.811)
That's our four books kind of trying to respond to that question.

Kyle And Sara Wester (5:38.638)
Yeah, yeah, ⁓ we kind of do that. We tell parents that we've got a real parent first approach, you know, and what we love about our journey, Dan, ⁓ is that we really feel like our kids, once we embrace this idea that you're talking about, we saw our kids' issues, conflicts, you know, all the idiosyncrasies that make them our kids ⁓ as opportunities for us to grow as people and as humans. And that's what they've done. They've shaped us and made us into better people because we embrace that kind of inside out model. ⁓

Dan (6:7.905)
Yeah, beautiful. That's beautiful.

Kyle And Sara Wester (6:9.444)
Yeah, it's been so rewarding because we've been on this journey long enough now with our kids being, you know, not.
two-year-olds, you know, we've seen it play out and I've loved it. And one piece that I really love that's a real big part of our parenting journey and that I've appreciated from what you bring is about connection and the important role of connection and brain development and all those kinds of things. And I wanted to ask you, if we're thinking about, I'm trying to figure out how to word my question, but if we're thinking about how important connection is.
And at the same time, you hear concerns about snowflake parenting and my child, how do I build resiliency in my child? How do we do this? And ⁓ what does that look like in the day to day ⁓ of my parenting journey? How do I do that in the day to day ⁓ with them to build that resiliency, to build that connection and hold all those things together? ⁓
I hear some parents feeling like it's an either or, you know, but how do those things look? Well, and Dan to jump on that too, I think Sarah and I were talking about before this interview about how in our childhood, lots of times when these ⁓ big emotions came, there was a lot of stuffing it, you know, there was a lot of like, ⁓ get over that, move through that. And somehow our brains were wired to believe that made us tougher. That made us more resilient. And then you come along and other people like you saying, no, it's through connections, through understanding those feelings. then sometimes
⁓ like Sarah's saying, looks like we're raising these kids who are just constantly overwhelmed by their feelings and can't make any, you know, so I would love to hear, I'm sure you hear that a lot from people, that this kind of leads to weaker kids or snowflake kids, you know?

Dan (7:48.555)
Yeah. ⁓
Right, right. Well, ⁓ you know, these are great, great concerns and questions. What I start with is that word connection has a wonderful way where you can invite parents to realize that ⁓ the relational connection they establish from how you communicate, how you connect, how you're really present for your child in how you're interacting with them.

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:2.021)
Mm-hmm.

Dan (8:21.477)
that relational connection ⁓ shapes the connections inside the brain that are going to develop in your child's brain. So what I say is, if you want to be influencing the brain development of your child in a positive way, and they go, yeah, I do, I do. ⁓ I say, well, relational connections build neural connections in the brain for things like resilience ⁓ or

Kyle And Sara Wester (8:39.760)
Yeah.

Dan (8:51.187)
inner understanding ⁓ or understanding other people or making sense of your life and the story of your life being flexible and empowering for you ⁓ or it's restricted and you feel bad about who you are. So I said, it's up to you. Your relational connection is exactly what will shape the brain connections that are underneath those ⁓ signs of wellbeing and resilience.
So once you say that, then they go, well, then what kind of connections do I need to be offering? ⁓ And the answer, you know, is kind of simple. ⁓ And I made up a word called mindsight a long time ago for, you know, the ability to see the sea inside, to be able to sense ⁓ your emotions, ⁓ your memories, your thoughts, your intentions, your motivations, all of that is part of what's called the mind. So the... ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (9:34.266)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (9:38.671)
Yeah.

Dan (9:49.158)
skill set to see that we as parents are the first teachers of our children. So it's the basis of what some people call social intelligence. It's the basis for emotional intelligence. ⁓ And in terms of the question, ⁓ kids are now overwhelmed by their feelings. It isn't just that you're ⁓ telling them, ⁓ be obsessed with what you're feeling. It's to use those feelings as a sign for what matters in your life.

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:13.648)
Yeah.

Dan (10:18.401)
and what's gonna drive your behavior. So for example, children who have parents who talk to them about their emotions, don't just have more awareness of their emotions. First of all, they do have more awareness of their emotions. They have more awareness of the emotions of others. ⁓ And what they do is they learn with that awareness to regulate their emotions more effectively and to be able to communicate with other people about their emotional world in a more mutually rewarding way.

Kyle And Sara Wester (10:41.134)
Yeah.

Dan (10:48.811)
So kids have more mutually connecting relationships and their relationship with their inner self ⁓ is ⁓ enhanced because they can feel a feeling. ⁓ think about the analogy of surfing. Instead of just being a kid who is walking on the shore and watching the waves and is scared of them because they don't know what to do with them, your child will learn how to surf. They don't have to be afraid of emotions that come in as big waves. They can ride those waves.
You know, and so yeah, you may see a kid who's able to say, right now with what's going on at school, I feel really sad because so many of the kids are, you know, ⁓ hurting each other as bullies on their phones. And it makes me feel really isolated. And that really feels bad. Your child may be able to articulate that. So you may say, my God, they're so preoccupied with their emotions. But actually by being able to have the clarity of ⁓ naming the emotion.
They can frame it in a story that makes sense. They can also tame it in the sense of it's over out of control, they can come to regulate it ⁓ and then work with it. So instead of just going along with the social pressure to be bullying other kids, they have the feeling this doesn't feel right. They act on that feeling, I'm not gonna do that bullying and they can be a beacon of strength in their peer community.

Kyle And Sara Wester (12:8.047)
Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (12:14.352)
Yeah, I love that. That's such a great picture. That's such a great picture. And I think it's what we have really desired for our kids to Dan the way you're wording that ⁓ is really this ability to understand the feeling like in the past, we were told to just push it down almost like ignore it.
And then you can then go do that thing and not be overwhelmed, but really just made us less connected to the feeling less under, you know, let we understood ourselves less, almost like we tried to just like not listen to ourselves and just go do it anyway. And I think that is the, the nuance in our culture that keeps getting missed, you know, like all too often you hear like gentle parenting or snowplow, know, snowflake parenting, those kinds of things. It really does seem like they're still getting caught up in this dichotomous argument.

Dan (12:41.364)
Exactly.

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:0.242)
of either the feeling is controlling you or you're just, you know, stuffing the feeling, you know? And we're really wanting them to be able to understand the feeling. So then they can, you know, like you talk about in Whole Brain Child, in that book, they can really then integrate the feeling and then do something about it.

Dan (13:5.472)
Exactly.

Dan (13:15.827)
Exactly, because you know, ⁓ what is it feeling? A feeling has to do with three big things. It has to do with your response of your body. So just letting your kids be in touch with what is their heart feeling, what's their gut feeling, are tightening of their muscles, their jaw, you know, all these feelings, you know, a lump in your throat. Having your child be aware of those bodily sensations and knowing what they mean. Incredibly important for inner strength.
So your body isn't just a vehicle to carry your brain around. It's actually a source of deep wisdom and intuition. So that's number one. Emotions are about body. The second thing is emotions are almost always ⁓ about something that's meaningful, something significant happening. So if you're ignoring your emotions, you're not ignoring your body, you're ignoring what's meaningful in your life, right? And the third thing is emotions are often either directly or indirectly

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:47.950)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (13:59.345)
⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:7.674)
Wow. Yeah.

Dan (14:13.151)
related to our interpersonal relationships or relationships with nature or with God or this higher sense of connection, something larger than just our skin and case body. So it's about relationships, it's about meaning, it's about the body. You couldn't get three more fundamental aspects of what's significant in our lives. So yeah, absolutely. ⁓ I'll give you a quick little story. When we were raising our kids, ⁓ we were at a party and one of my colleagues,

Kyle And Sara Wester (14:31.257)
Yeah.

Dan (14:43.021)
who's also a physician, he says to me, he wasn't in my field, he says, you talk to your kids too much about their feelings. You're gonna make them neurotic. I said, hear you. And in his family, I noticed he never talked to his kids about his feelings. Well, when ⁓ our kids who were good friends ultimately came forward in life, they had a very different way initially of knowing how to handle themselves. I'll just say our son,
who's a musician now, Alex Siegel, can hear what he did with his ability to be aware of his feelings. ⁓ Check out his music, but you'll see, you know, for both him and his sister, you know, we really were encouraging them to develop an inner compass, which meant, you know, no matter what's happening with your peers or what's happening in your decisions at school or whatever, you have an inner compass that gives you a feeling in your gut, in your heart.

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:16.577)
cool, yes.

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:27.919)
Yeah.

Dan (15:40.064)
way beneath and before and in some ways more fundamental to what your higher cognitive upper brain is thinking, right? So they could use this inner compass to say, you know, I know my friends are doing this and that, but my heart and my gut are telling ⁓ me, it's just a feeling like a clamping up. This isn't right. So both of them, both our kids had this ability. ⁓ And for our friend's son, he ended up, ⁓ you know,

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:47.536)
Yeah.

Dan (16:9.933)
dropping out for a while, because he was so not prepared with an inner compass, he had to develop in his own way. And now he's got it, but it wasn't because of what his parents did. It almost in spite of them. And I understand what my friend was saying to me, you you're going to make your kids neurotic. He was in a field that had zero to do with emotions and all was about, you know, surfacey stuff. And, you know, we find that in science too. There are some people in science who act like, and I certainly found this in medical school,

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:13.294)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:28.815)
Yep.

Dan (16:38.701)
Like the mind is not real. I was once in a debate, believe it or not, in psychiatry, in psychiatry of, you know, should psychiatrists learn about emotions? And the proposal was no, because there's no evidence that emotions are real. And this is what my debate partner said, the room was full of the people watching us. We were the young, you know, upcoming generation.

Kyle And Sara Wester (16:41.551)
Yeah.
Yes.

Dan (17:5.357)
And I got up and I thought, oh my God, what do you say when the leading thing is there's no scientific evidence that emotions are real? So I just got up there and I said, I feel really sad.

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:17.007)
Ha ha ha!

Dan (17:18.701)
⁓ And I sat down and I sat down and then I said, okay, I got to say something more. So I got back up to the microphone and I said, you know something, I don't know any of research evidence that shows that my debate opponent is actually exists. So I don't know what else I can do. Show me the evidence that says you are real. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:20.890)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:37.721)
I did. ⁓

Dan (17:39.320)
So we have this thing called emotions. So the cool thing about emotions is when you get comfortable with them, they allow you to live a more whole brain life, if you will. You can use your thinking and logic on your left side. You can ⁓ use the more autobiographical body felt things on your right side. And Tina and I try to talk about this in whole brain child, you know, and both are important. You don't want to favor one or the other, but if you're ignoring emotions,

Kyle And Sara Wester (17:50.488)
Yes, yes.

Dan (18:8.331)
you're ignoring on purpose in a sense, and then it goes on automatic pilot, one of the most important feeling qualities of being alive. ⁓ And even if you just say, if a person could say, look, dad, mom, I'm feeling really sad about something, I don't know what it is. You as their parents could say, tell me more about that.

Kyle And Sara Wester (18:16.664)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (18:35.567)
Yeah.

Dan (18:35.789)
They go, I don't know at school, this is going on, that's going on. I don't know why I feel so sad, whatever. They're able to use that emotion as an opportunity in terms of relationship to share with you something very vulnerable inside. I'm feeling something that's pretty intense, doesn't feel good. And I want to share it with you. And I don't understand. I'm not in control of in the sense of, I don't understand it. I'm clamping it down. I'm just being with it. And when we're being with an emotion like that,

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:0.366)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (19:5.587)
It develops closeness and you as parents can say, tell me more about it. I wanna know more. You don't have to have answers. You don't have to solve problems. You can just be present. You know, as Tina and I like to say in Power of Showing Up, you just show up and you don't have to solve the sadness. You can be showing up for that sadness.

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:21.060)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:26.544)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. All right. I want to bring it to another uncomfortable emotion. As you were talking, I was thinking about how I think it's a little bit of a struggle sometimes for parents. And I felt this too, when it's like, let's move to anger. And you think, okay, I want to let my kid be mad because that's a common one to shut down. Right? You want to shut the kid. One way of thinking is we got to shut down the anger.

Dan (19:31.371)
Yes. Yeah.

Dan (19:48.897)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (19:52.293)
But if you're thinking, you know, if these feelings are important, anger's important. But then you get this big dysregulated child, and I think sometimes ⁓ parents are then thinking, now ⁓ what? I've got a very mad child here, and I'm trying to let them feel mad. And then it's like, what now do I do? You know what? Because it feels, even though sadness is uncomfortable, I think there's a piece that goes, ⁓ I can be here with you in the sadness.

Dan (20:13.516)
Right.

Kyle And Sara Wester (20:20.292)
but anchor feels different and is experienced different as parents and out in society and things. So I'm just curious what, ⁓ know, about your thoughts. ⁓

Dan (20:30.573)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's so great. You're asking about that, Sarah. Thank you. You know, I just wrote a book with four colleagues on, um, for, for therapists. So it's not a, I mean, you can read it, but it's not like a easy to read book. Um, but we talked about three core emotions that are emerging from deep, deep in the brain in an area called the brain stem. So Tina and I talk about the downstairs and upstairs brain. This would be the deepest part of the downstairs brains. It'd be like the basement.

Kyle And Sara Wester (20:52.292)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle And Sara Wester (20:59.182)
Yeah.

Dan (20:59.941)
And so there are a bunch of networks there, but three of the networks relate to some of the emotions that people might say are uncomfortable. So one is anger, like you're talking about. Another is separation, distress and sadness. And the third one is fear. Right. ⁓ And you know, when these emotions arise from the brain stem, so deep, deep in the brain, they're all about survival.
So for example, fear comes up when you need predictability and you need safety. And if those aren't there, you feel frightened. And if it's severe, you feel terrified. ⁓ The separation, distress, and sadness is we need relational connections to people. We don't get that. You get sad. ⁓ Or if it's more subtle, like a separation distress, an ootsie feeling. ⁓ Anger ⁓ is about ⁓ agency. means it's about an
embodied empowerment, the need to have your fundamental needs met. And when those needs are not being met, it's understandable that anger arises. Initially, it's like frustration, irritation, anger. And obviously, if it gets intense, it turns into fury and rage. So people are afraid of rage because rage and fury, those can be very destructive, intense expressions that are out of control of anger. But anger,

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:12.388)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:17.072)
Mm-hmm.

Dan (22:25.783)
by itself is a very constructive emotion we need to tell our parents. So if someone says, I'm angry, it means there is a wrong that needs to be righted. So on a personal level, it could be, you know, I'm needing to have a breathing and someone's choking me. I'm angry about that. You know, someone's ⁓ stepping on my foot. I'm angry that they keep on repeatedly stepping on my foot. That hurts, you know.

Kyle And Sara Wester (22:46.148)
Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.

Dan (22:55.141)
Anger is a protective emotion. It's really, really healthy, super positive. But in ⁓ interpreting it as, ⁓ my God, it's the gateway to fury and violence, then people understandably get nervous about it. So you want to clarify that, you know, ⁓ anger begins as a very protective emotion. Even when you look at how it goes up higher in the brain, it's a very, ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:8.548)
Yeah, yep.

Dan (23:21.421)
Outwardly, I'm angry like that where sadness goes inward, fear goes inward. And that can be, you know, distressing for a lot of people. Now, if you as a parent, like in my case, in my now I'm allowed to talk about it, but I wasn't before this year and my mom gave me permission. But in my family, I had a father who was a rageaholic. so anger was a hard emotion for me to deal with inside of myself and in my kids. You know, it really got me agitated.

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:48.984)
Mm. Yeah.

Dan (23:51.478)
Because when my father would get angry, in quotes, it was fury out of control. And he would never remember what he did in these rage attacks. And afterwards he would deny. When you said, why did you throw the pot of stew onto the ceiling? He goes, I didn't do that. ⁓ Your brother did that. ⁓ My brother didn't do that. You did it. No, I didn't. You're crazy. You know, it'd be insane. It'd be like a lunatic asylum. But so, so.

Kyle And Sara Wester (23:57.273)
Wow. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (24:9.560)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.

Dan (24:20.489)
you could feel the beginning of frustration, anger, and it would turn to rage in about two seconds. So for me, you know, I have a historical, you know, reason to get agitated with anger. But in general, I think people ⁓ have ⁓ made it a universal thing like anger is bad. So anger is a really healthy emotion. says, ⁓ I am going to stand up for what's right and try to right a wrong, you know?
And so we don't want to snuff it out. We don't want to get rid of it. We want to allow a child as parents teach a child how to feel that anger. I feel there's an injustice. That kid is being bullied at school. I'm angry about it. Okay, well, how are we going to take the energy to right or wrong? Well, maybe you should go to the teacher and tell the teacher. Maybe you can try just telling the other kids doing the bullying. That's not right. What you're doing, you know, a bullying is a good example because you see a lot of kids cave in and the

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:1.786)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (25:19.213)
proper response to seeing bullying is to be angry about it. I'm angry that kid or myself is being hurt and I'm going to right the wrong. So, you know, so that's where the anger piece, ⁓ that's what I would suggest to people see what did it mean ⁓ for them in their own lives, you know, and unfortunately I'm not alone. There's so many people when I tell the story these days, you know, my rage, a holic father, I'm looking at a picture of him here right now.

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:23.396)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:31.695)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (25:49.209)
Yeah.

Dan (25:49.388)
you ⁓ know, was hard or even ⁓ in my own experience as a teacher, I wanted to talk about it and my mom.
made me promise I wouldn't because many of her friends were therapists and they were my students. ⁓ And she didn't want them coming back to her saying, why did you let your husband go wild with your children? So she just passed at 95 and a half. My dad died a long time ago, but she recently said, you know, all my friends who are therapists are gone now. And now I'm about to go. So you have added, you go, you say whatever you want.

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:5.474)
Hmm, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hmm. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:16.752)
That's ⁓ right, ⁓ wow, wow. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:26.382)
Yes. Yes. ⁓

Dan (26:30.281)
And it's been freeing to be able to share that because I think a lot of us have certain things in our histories that are, know, things that when we share it with other people, people can be liberated to realize they're not alone.

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:42.554)
Yeah, yeah, no, and I appreciate you sharing it. ⁓ I wanted to ask you, since we're in the throes of this, right, I told you we've got a ⁓ kid turning 16 soon, and we've got a 13-year-old. ⁓ I love your work in the book Brainstorm, where you really start talking about the teenage brain. And I, so many of our listeners, so many of my clients that I'm helping, ⁓ it is a lot with ⁓ anxious teenagers, ⁓ angry teenagers, right? And I'd really love...

Dan (26:52.225)
Yeah.

Dan (26:57.287)
thank you.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:10.468)
for you to talk to them about what is so different about the teenage brain and how they, you know, it does mirror a lot of those toddler years to some extent to where they're slipping back down their brain and the emotions are definitely much more intense. ⁓ But I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to help parents understand those teenage years instead of it being a scary time to where it can be a really beautiful time.

Dan (27:35.440)
absolutely. Yeah. Well, you know, when I wrote Brainstorm, ⁓ I had two adolescents in my own. ⁓ My two kids were adolescents then. ⁓ And so I ⁓ initially wanted to write it with my daughter because I thought it'd be cool to have an adolescent voice. then she was she was so good. We actually were going to write it together. And she was so good. She said, Dad, it it doesn't make any sense for an adolescent to write a book about being an adolescent.

Kyle And Sara Wester (27:52.356)
That would be.

Dan (28:3.403)
with her dad, it just makes no sense. So I am gonna bust out of my contract and not do it. It was perfect, she's an amazing human being. ⁓ we just love both our kids so much. Anyway, ⁓ they're both now in their ⁓ 30s. But the initial idea was to speak directly to adolescents. So now I had a project that I was gonna write with my adolescent daughter and now she's off the project.

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:5.282)
Yeah. ⁓
⁓ Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:25.700)
Yes. ⁓

Dan (28:32.843)
So I said, ⁓ so then I said, OK, well, maybe I'll write the book for both parents and ⁓ adolescents on the left side, like will be for adolescents. The right side will be for parents. And I tried that for a little bit. It was nauseating. It just it just didn't work. So then I said, well, you know, I am an adolescent therapist. You know, I treat teenagers all the time and older people in their mid to early to mid 20s. So I said, you know, why don't I, ⁓ you know, channel

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:41.838)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (28:51.064)
Yes.

Dan (29:1.877)
my ability to communicate directly, but also I work with parents. So I made the book written toward an adolescent, meaning 12 to late 20s, ⁓ and ⁓ see how it goes. then I realized there was kind of an acronym that could address the adolescent brain changes ⁓ and be kind of memorable, which is the word essence. So ⁓ in terms of your question about emotionality,

Kyle And Sara Wester (29:27.855)
Yes. ⁓

Dan (29:31.342)
So the basic thing to say about the adolescent brain is if you think about birth, let's say to 12, just to give a rough sense of numbers, and it depends on the culture you're in and food people are eating and stuff like that, timing, but let's just do, you know, in a lot of Western cultures, let's say zero to 12, the brain is basically accumulating more and more connections. Because when you learn, you make more connections.

Kyle And Sara Wester (29:57.914)
Mm-hmm.

Dan (30:0.972)
And that's cool. But then what happens right before adolescence begins, and this isn't the same as puberty, which is sexual maturation. So those are two different things ⁓ is the brain begins a process of remodeling itself. So if you think about the first 12 years as construction, now you've constructed something that's the 12 year old brain, but now you're going to remodel it.

Kyle And Sara Wester (30:29.052)
wow, yeah.

Dan (30:29.685)
Right. So that's the first thing to say about what we now understand about brain development. Now, the remodeling consists of two processes. The first part, which really starts, some people say preadolescence, but certainly when adolescence begins into the middle of adolescence and continues in various ways, but it's really ⁓ in this first half, if you want to say it that way, ⁓ there's really this beginning, middle and end, but ⁓ is a pruning process.
So you're start to remove the connections that the younger child has established. Now you say, what's the point of doing that? Well, ⁓ the way information processing happens with all the connections that were established in the first 12 years of life, it's not so efficient. So when you start removing those connections you don't need, you basically are channeling the energy flow and making it more efficient, believe it or not. So that's the reason is you're differentiating aspects of the brain. So ⁓ it's influenced by experience.

Kyle And Sara Wester (31:20.400)
⁓ Yeah.

Dan (31:27.981)
So what I say to kids in middle school and high school, I said, you're the one in charge of your brain development because if you just want to stay on a screen and ⁓ use your thumb to do the little clicking on your mouse, ⁓ you'll develop that part of your brain. But if you want to develop other parts of your brain, be with your friends, do ⁓ sports, do art, learn foreign languages, challenge your brain in all sorts of ways because it's a use it or lose it principle on what gets pruned away. So ⁓ stress.
will increase pruning. So this becomes very important for understanding why certain psychiatric disorders first emerge during adolescence, because you get dysregulated, that creates more stress, that creates more pruning, and it's the pruning process, which is probably why we see a lot of shifts in emotional regulation challenges during that time. It's not about raging hormones. There's no such thing as a hormone that rages. It's about brain remodeling, and the pruning is the biggest issue.

Kyle And Sara Wester (31:58.704)
you

Dan (32:26.571)
Then in the second part of adolescence, you're now gonna boost how you're gonna increase the connection among the remaining neurons by laying down something called myelin. ⁓ Myelin is like a ⁓ sheath that lets ⁓ neurons communicate with each other much more efficiently and effectively and quick. So ⁓ by middle adolescence, ⁓ that myelin formation is allowing them to do all sorts of things in incredible ways. You see this in gymnastics.

Kyle And Sara Wester (32:56.088)
Mmm.

Dan (32:56.141)
So if a kid is gonna learn a sport to be, let's say, in the Olympics, they're gonna learn that sport before adolescence starts. Because then the mile in it that's gonna lay down that allows them to do things thousands of times more efficiently effective than you can, because you didn't lay down the mile in for that skill, that's when it gets laid down. So that's why we wanna really honor this as an incredible opportunity for brain development. But the ES of essence means emotional spark.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:3.663)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:16.143)
Yeah.

Dan (33:24.489)
And the way the brain modeling is happening is that emotions are just more intense. They have more abruptly, they last with a more, you know, intensity. ⁓ so teaching kids to surf those emotions during this time, which I tried to do in the gray pages of the brainstorm book, you know, is so important to do because they're going to be more intense and studies show that, you know, and I used to always make a joke that ⁓ the research shows if I come home and
I'm there and then my daughter or son come home in the middle of their teenage years and I go, hi. They may go, what do mean by that? You know, in this big reaction that I just said hi, you know, ⁓ and because there is a leaning a bit towards ⁓ interpreting a neutral statement like hi as negative. And I didn't make a big deal of it. I didn't say, your amygdala is interpreting my neutral comment. ⁓ But I know that'd be perfect.

Kyle And Sara Wester (33:59.619)
That's right, yes, yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:17.552)
That's right. Yeah, they would love that. They would love it if you said that. They'd be like, thanks, dad.

Dan (34:21.569)
Perfect parenting there. So, ⁓ but that's the emotional spark. You got to realize it's just ⁓ about the remodeling of the brain and the way the changes and the connections are happening. So that's the emotional spark. Essay is social engagement. ⁓ know, ⁓ adolescents have a drive now not to so much turn to their parents for support, but to their peers. And that's a natural thing in other species too. There's Barbara ⁓ Natterson Horowitz wrote a beautiful book.

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:43.854)
Yep. Yep.

Dan (34:51.053)
called the Wildhood with her colleague. ⁓ And ⁓ it shows it's another species as well. So it's a natural thing to try to get with your peers more. And that's the social engagement. And we want to honor that while we're also staying present in their lives. Maintaining the lines of connection while they're exploring ⁓ a world beyond home is so important. So that's social engagement. ESSE, the N is novelty seeking. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (34:57.296)
Mmm.

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:6.084)
Yes. Yep. Yep. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:18.830)
Yeah ⁓

Dan (35:19.563)
What happens in the brain, ⁓ two things. One is ⁓ the molecule that helps you feel reward is called dopamine and dopamine levels change in significant ways. The agreed upon factor is that the release levels of dopamine for an adolescent are much higher than for an adult or for a younger child. A more controversial is
is the baseline level of dopamine lower also? Put those together. If the baseline level is lower in general in adolescence, but let's say in your adolescence, it means they're gonna feel a little depressed. They're gonna feel a little out of it. And they wanna get that dopamine boost to feel reward. And then they're gonna get a bigger hit once they do something. The biggest thing to release dopamine is novelty. So they get tired with doing the same thing over and over again.

Kyle And Sara Wester (35:51.440)
you

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:4.143)
Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:14.308)
Yep. I get bored quickly. All ⁓ right. Yes. ⁓ I know. Right. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Risky stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (36:16.423)
And really bored. They're bored. I don't want to be bored. Give me something new. Well, doing dangerous things ⁓ really gets your dopamine going. ⁓ Risky stuff. So especially when they're around other peers. And that's why, at least in California, we have a rule that when you learn to drive at 16, you cannot drive with a peer in your car until you're 17, until you've been driving for a year. You know, so ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:31.075)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:39.716)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan (36:45.557)
That's a research finding. ⁓ the other thing, because I said there are two things, one is the dopamine business. The other thing is there's something called, and I know it's going to sound strange, but it's called hyper ⁓ rational ⁓ reasoning. And people say, no, you got that wrong. It's less rational. ⁓ but here's the rationality. This is a sad story, but ⁓ this is a true story. But, you know, one of my favorite professors was killed. I start the book with this story.

Kyle And Sara Wester (36:58.777)
Mmm.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:2.884)
That's right. It's hyper irrational reasoning. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓

Dan (37:15.329)
by an adolescent who was driving about 100 miles an hour on a surface street. ⁓ And he had crashed a car two months earlier and his parents just got him another car. You know, one these racing, you know, sports cars. So ⁓ here's the hyper rational thinking. You say to an adolescent, here's a car. What do you want to do with it? I think I'm gonna drive it 100 miles an hour on a surface street. ⁓ what are the chances of you getting hurt? ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:24.964)
Wow. ⁓

Dan (37:45.058)
chances of me getting hurt are maybe 40%. Now let's say the chances of getting hurt are really 10%, but they say, no, 40%. And then you go, so what are you going to do? They go, I'm going to drive a hundred miles an hour. They go, why? Because here's the hyper rational part. 40 % is less than 50%. And so if there's, if the likelihood is I won't have a problem, then I'm going to do it.

Kyle And Sara Wester (37:52.452)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:11.865)
Yeah, yeah.

Dan (38:12.279)
Cause I'm going to emphasize the exciting thing of driving a hundred miles an hour. Now you may go, hold on. You still have a big chance of 40 % of getting hurt, but they still say, here's the hyper rational sentence. The most likely outcome is nothing bad will happen. It's true. ⁓ 60 % means most likely, right? Cause it's over 50%. So that's the reasoning. It's ⁓ nuts, but it's, it's what gets adolescents truly. It's not a myth. There are a of myths about.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:21.368)
Yep. Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:29.838)
Yep.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:33.262)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Dan (38:42.283)
raging hormones and all these other things, you know, being a terrible period of life. No, those are myths, but this is not a myth. Adolescents are more likely, even though their body is stronger and healthier than any other time of life, more likely to get physically injured or die based on what an adolescent chose to do. That's just true. So what I try to teach is that reasoning is happening up here, the hyper rational reasoning. So you want to teach this inner compass.

Kyle And Sara Wester (38:43.492)
Yes. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:0.804)
Wow, yeah. ⁓ Yeah.

Dan (39:10.253)
So their heart and their gut will tell them, you know, I can think it would be exciting to do it. My thinking brain actually wants to do that. I think my friends will think it's cool, but my heart is telling me it just doesn't feel right. Because the heart and the gut are a whole different way of reasoning in what to do. And the final one is S and C, creative engagement. You know, this is this,

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:12.878)
Yes. ⁓ Yes. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:21.690)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Yeah. ⁓

Dan (39:40.366)
opportunity that we have where adolescents can think outside the box. They, in all cultures, will do things a little differently. Part of it may be the novelty, but here what they're doing is they're really saying, I see how things are, but I can imagine how they could be. And as adults, we kind of settle into accepting the status quo, and this is just the way it is, but the adolescent creative exploration,

Kyle And Sara Wester (39:59.183)
Yeah. ⁓

Dan (40:8.117)
that they really can get involved in, the CE, is so important because it allows them to make a new world that we all need. So that's it, emotional spark, social engagement, novelty seeking, creative exploration. It's the way the adolescent brain we're modeling really sets up adolescents for a fabulous future life. And in fact, we all should try to hold onto that essence into our adulthood.

Kyle And Sara Wester (40:17.456)
Yeah. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (40:25.230)
Yes. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (40:30.766)
Yeah. ⁓
⁓ Yeah, I love that. if I'm sitting here as a parent, which I am, of a couple teenagers and I'm thinking, okay, there's so much, right? There's so much I want to take and absorb and do. But if I think, all right, this is where I should, if I'm new to this, or if I'm trying to wrap my head around it, what are some things that I should focus on? what are some, you know, where would I start? Or what should I kind of use as my baseline if I want to make sure ⁓ I'm doing this with my teenagers?
What would those? ⁓

Dan (41:4.651)
Yeah, well, keeping the lines of communication open are so important. Brainstorm, I have a whole section at the end about exactly how to do that. And in the gray pages of Brainstorm, you'll see exercises you yourself can do, and certainly your adolescent can do them. And they help you develop an inner compass. They help you develop a way of dealing with your emotions and learning to surf those waves. And they help you have relationships.

Kyle And Sara Wester (41:8.388)
Huge, ⁓

Dan (41:31.073)
that you yourself can have with your adolescent and that your adolescent can have with you and with their friends. So, yeah, I mean, there are absolutely things to do. The wonderful thing about it ⁓ is you have an opportunity as a parent of an adolescent to take a deep breath. First of all, think about what your adolescence was like, because sometimes parents haven't thought about that. And all they want to do is make sure their adolescent doesn't do what they did. Well, that's a problem.

Kyle And Sara Wester (41:51.426)
Yep, yep. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (41:58.287)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah. Well, it's almost like they're re and they're almost like they're re parenting themselves as an adolescent. They don't even really know their own adolescence. ⁓ Yeah.

Dan (42:1.600)
⁓ Because this is...

Dan (42:8.893)
Exactly. Well, exactly. So it's a beautiful time of life. And I know so many parents say, my God, I hope we just get through this okay. And I get that. I get that. But it doesn't have to be a mystery. And you can stay connected to your adolescent. That's so important to do while they're learning how to be out in the

Kyle And Sara Wester (42:28.750)
Yeah, I love it. Can you wrap up wrap wrap us up with this? And I know this is a big question. But if you're ⁓ the thing I wanted to end with is something that also blew my mind and reading your work was this idea of we grew up all the time is, is it nature or is it nurture, which is the more powerful thing, right? And then you come out like like you do, Dan, and you, you say this crazy thing, ⁓ if I'm quoting you right, you say, it's actually ⁓ nurture informs how nature presents itself or how it develops. ⁓ Maybe I'm saying that

Dan (42:44.162)
Yeah.

Dan (42:56.587)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kyle And Sara Wester (42:58.382)
And so I've said that to a lot of my clients, but I'd love to hear what do you mean by that? Because I think it's such a powerful concept. gets us out of that dichotomous where I hear a lot of parents, he's got ADHD. So that's, that's not anything we did, or he's got anxiety. It sounds like he's had that since he was born, like he was in the womb, anxious and like, there's nothing I did. And I want to say, no, there, ⁓ if you didn't do anything to, then there's nothing we can do to help him. Right. We got to like get somebody outside. ⁓ So a lot of times I feel like it's this misunderstanding that the parent
not to blame, but that we did have an impact on helping develop this thing, right? So if you could just share your thoughts on that nature versus nurture debate.

Dan (43:34.316)
Yeah. Well, but you know, ⁓ Kyle, you're really pointing out an important issue, which is as parents, we want to do the best we can. And ⁓ we understand they're very sensitive to feeling like we messed up. ⁓ And ⁓ if our child is having something challenging going on, like they can't focus attention or their emotions are out of control or, you know, they're feeling like wanting to hurt themselves or they're alienated, lonely, mean, all things that kids can feel these days, you know,

Kyle And Sara Wester (43:47.535)
Yeah.

Dan (44:4.061)
It's important to take a deep breath and ⁓ own that you wish you could have done it better and you hope what you did didn't hurt your child. So that's just a place to start. But even if what you did did hurt them, ⁓ then it's better to be aware of that and then own that, make a reconnection repair. But often it's a more complicated story, you know, ⁓ than that. ⁓ So the nature nurture story, you know, the word nature

Kyle And Sara Wester (44:13.476)
Yeah. Yep.

Dan (44:34.017)
is the idea that we have a body, the body has a genetic background and has temperament that some of which is genetic, some is just the innate way the brain responds. So that's ⁓ the nature part. The nurture is our interactions and the behaviors that we offer, the experiences that we can help cultivate. ⁓ So, you know, when we say nature needs nurture, it's that our bodies ⁓ need connection.
Right? And this connection is what our body is expecting to have. And when that kind of connection doesn't happen, things can go not so well. Now that's, you know, that nature needs nurture. Now what nurture does, it helps work with the nature. So for example, in this work on temperament, the idea is that we have lots of different aspects of temperament, but you as a parent,
may not have been responsible for your child's temperament, like being prone to anxiety, for example, but how you parent ⁓ that particular child with that particular temperament is going to shape how they learn to know themselves, to feel their feelings, help regulate their anxiety, for example. So there's a beautiful ⁓ study by the father of child psychology, Jerome Kagan. know, what that show was, let's say you have a kid who's really prone to being.
nervous about new situations and they hold back like this, you know? ⁓ Some people call them reactive child or ⁓ a behaviorally inhibited child or a shy child. Those are roughly the same thing. ⁓ What Kagan's research beautifully showed was that how you parent that child will determine when that child is in their early ⁓ 20s, whether they now have overcome behaviorally.
their nervousness about new situations. But when you put them in a brain scanner, even the ones who have overcome it, they still have that bigger reaction like the other highly reactive kids have also. So what that shows is that parenting helps you in a sense, develop the higher parts of the brain, the upstairs brain, Tina and I would call it, ⁓ that are regulating the lower parts, even if the lower parts like the brain stem and other regions still have their

Kyle And Sara Wester (46:37.305)
Yeah.

Dan (46:54.429)
natural part of nature propensity, ⁓ nurture has helped them learn to regulate their nature. Right? And that's what research has shown. So it isn't that one temperament or the other is better. It's you as a parent have a wonderful opportunity to get to know your child's temperament and then parent them according to their temperament.

Kyle And Sara Wester (47:2.320)
⁓ Yes. ⁓

Kyle And Sara Wester (47:9.744)
⁓ Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (47:19.694)
Yeah, yeah, ⁓ that's so powerful. Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you giving that distinction because I really think that also sums up everything we're trying to do on this podcast is try to equip these parents to be able to have the skills, the wisdom on how to nurture.
the nature that's so beautifully already there, you know? And then to bring out the best of that nature, you know, the most beautiful aspects of So I love that. And I thank you, know, Dan, it has been so amazing to get to spend this time with you. And I know our listeners are gonna be like, it's writing so many notes, just being like, man, where else do I get more of this info? This is great. So can you tell them, if they wanna know more about your work, where can they find you?

Dan (47:40.063)
Exactly. ⁓
Exactly.

Dan (48:4.737)
Yeah, the best starting place would be drdansigel.com. D-R-D-A-N-S-I-E-G-E-L.com. ⁓ And you'll find a bunch of links there to different videos and stuff like that. There's also, if you want to take courses, we have a school called the MindSight Institute, M-I-N-D-S-I-G-H-D Institute. And that's mostly for professionals, but there are some parenting resources there too.

Kyle And Sara Wester (48:32.824)
Yeah, I love it. And they definitely need to go on YouTube and find you doing the handbrain. They need to figure out they need they need to get the handbrain because the handbrain is it's a tool Dan I teach every parent and every kid I help. Yeah, I've known it since they were a little bitty. I'll share one story that I think will really touch you. I remember when our kids we taught it when they were very young. I got in the car.

Dan (48:37.967)
yeah.

Dan (48:45.201)
that's great.

Kyle And Sara Wester (48:54.126)
My son was maybe six, maybe seven at time. And I got in the car, he sits in the back seat and the car was kind of messy. And I typically keep my car really clean. And I looked back and saw this mess and I said, what is going on here? Why are you guys leaving this trash in the car? And he looks at me, holds up his hand. And for those who are watching us on YouTube, he puts his hand like this, dad, are you here right now? Are you here? Like, ⁓ I know you, maybe you don't think we love you or maybe you're taking it personal, but it had nothing to do with you. We just forgot to take it out of the car. And he said,

Dan (49:13.842)
Hahaha!

Dan (49:22.647)
⁓ wow.

Kyle And Sara Wester (49:23.470)
Yeah, he said we will and I looked at I said, son, that is so true. Because that's kind of what I'm saying to you is like, you did this to me, like somehow you personally attacked me. And it's really you just forgot. And he's like, Yeah, so we'll get it when we get out. And I thought we're doing something right here. Because my son in that moment didn't take my anger personally. He knew about me. And yeah, yeah. ⁓ Yes. Yes. Well, and the kids with lots of dad, you're flipping your lid, they would say all that stuff, just like you say,

Dan (49:30.572)
Yeah.

Dan (49:34.177)
Yeah. ⁓

Dan (49:42.005)
There you go. That's beautiful. Exactly. He could see you were doing a jack in the box. ⁓
Yeah, that's so good.

Kyle And Sara Wester (49:53.514)
Yeah, so it was so fun to see them not only understand it, but then use it appropriately. ⁓ so it's right. I love teaching kids. love having kids who maybe are having a hard time understanding their emotions and say, Hey, here's, here's how to watch your mom and dad see where they're at in the brain. And then they're really good at noticing that they're like, I feel like my parents are in that middle part a lot, you know, and so it really helps them better understand themselves. So check that video out.

Dan (49:58.561)
Yeah.

Dan (50:8.235)
Yeah. Yeah.
that's fantastic. Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (50:18.192)
⁓ And I just want to once again say thank you for taking the time. Thank you. And appreciate all the wisdom. thank you.

Dan (50:21.677)
⁓ My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Kyle. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with you. Thanks so much.

Kyle And Sara Wester (50:29.905)
Thank you. Thank you. ⁓