Maggie Dent - ‘Good Enough’ Parenting is Good Enough

You just have to be a good parent 30-40% of the time. According to the research, and parenting expert Maggie Dent. 💌Join 5,000+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy In our Academy of Imperfection, Maggie schools parents Hugh and Josh, and trusted non-parental figure Ryan, about the ‘no matter what’ rule, the importance of micro connections and the beauty of a well-timed fart. An advocate for imperfect parenting (which is REALLY great for brand alignment), Maggie insists on the significance of unconditional love when raising boys. Maggie you are wonderful. This was wonderful. You’re the best. Watch the full episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/iUHYScQ3WgQ 0:00 – Why boys are better than girls 6:22 – The science of boys 14:02 – Shedding the shame 22:28 – Growing healthy boys 31:09 – Connecting with your rooster 42:56 – The S words: screens and social media 47:00 – The good enough factors 57:45 – Correcting the narrative 1:06:05 – Importance of Lightness + Letting go of mistakes 1:11:41 – Raising an autistic boy 1:16:05 – How do you resist the easy method 🫖Other episodes of The Imperfects mentioned on this episode Hugh’s ADHD…brief - https://bit.ly/4aofEjd 📖 Things to read You can find all of Maggie’s books here - https://bit.ly/46g4GK7 Help Me Help My Teen by Maggie Dent (page 106 to converse with teens) - https://bit.ly/4aYi2NO Maggie’s Fragile Boy Friendship Blog Post - https://bit.ly/4qUqzGw 📺 Things to watch Bluey ‘Octopus’ episode - https://bit.ly/4riF2Ng Marc-Andre Leclerc - The Alpinist - https://bit.ly/4tEsaCR 💻 Things to check out Allan Schore’s Brain Development for Boys research - https://bit.ly/3OfRyi9 🎧 Things to listen to The Good Enough Dad with Maggie Dent - https://bit.ly/4aGq2la Parental As Anything - https://bit.ly/4qHAleM 🩷To host your own Vulnerabilitea House, (with the new cards!) purchase here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuWz 🩵To purchase our journal (or your novel) My Imperfect Life, click here - http://bit.ly/4lyuuW 🩵To join our subscriber community, A Little More Imperfects, follow this link - http://bit.ly/4mqunxu 🩷 AND you can subscribe to A Little More Imperfects through Apple Podcasts too, here - http://apple.co/theimperfects The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional, or call lifeline on 13 11 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Maggie Dent should be queen of Australia.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  You know, we all muck up. I'm an advocate for imperfect parenting. You only have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time. We've had these boys in our homes who've brought endless amount of mates into my house. They eat the whole fridge out some days accidentally and go, "Sorry, sorry Maggie."

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Excellent impersonation.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Of any man.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  The term I keep saying is no matter what, no matter what it is, there's nothing you can do that will stop me loving you. So anytime anything bad happens, no matter what, every time they walk out the door to a party, say no matter what. You know, there's a thing I talk about micro connections because we'd love quality time. Of course we would. One-on-one time would be beautiful, wouldn't it? But who's got it? So it's a ruffle on the head as you walk past and it's the tickle on the back and it's the bump. And then of course, if they were really being difficult in the kitchen, then I'd drop a well-timed fart.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Wow, it's been a long time coming for us to.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  So overdue.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  So overdue to have this incredible woman.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  I'd say it's like when you discover a library book in your house that you actually borrowed 12 years ago. That's what it feels like.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's similar to that. It's similar to that. But it's like, it's so amazing to have Maggie Dent here, someone who can finally tell us why boys are better than girls. So overdue. That's overdue, that discussion.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Let me introduce properly Maggie for those, I mean, everyone knows Maggie, but here's what I've written anyway. So Maggie Dent should be queen of Australia.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Yes, that's it. Welcome to.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Growing up on a farm in rural WA, she spent a great deal of her time with her dad and younger brother. Maggie was loud, sporty, opinionated and smart. Initially attending university with a goal of journalism or law, Maggie transferred into teaching, realising that being there for vulnerable teenagers was where her passion lay. Maggie spent almost two decades as a secondary teacher, raising four boys of her own before moving, I can't believe that by the way, but before moving to counselling and working, that's the thing that stands out amongst everything for me, before moving to counselling and working in palliative care and suicide prevention. Maggie realised that working with parents had the biggest impact on children's lives and began writing what she knew and soon became a voice of expertise in the parenting space.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Maggie's the author of ten genuinely, like actually best, because everyone was like, oh, it's the best selling book, but this is actually the best selling book. Maggie is a host of podcasts, The Good Enough Dad and Parental As Anything. Maggie is a true national treasure. Her wisdom, compassion and fierce advocacy for our kids has helped an entire country feel more connected and more hopeful as they navigate the toughest gig there possibly is, parenting. We are so happy you're here.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I was just before we came on, just asking you how come it took so long that you got someone who's a boy champion and amongst the room of guys who still quite boylike.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Very much so. I hope I'm always boylike.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so do I. So let me just do one other thing too around the, me having the four boys, because I, I kind of got boys, you know, all the reasons that you said, I hung out with them a lot as, as a kid. But it was when I had my third son, I had people coming up to me just like crying, saying, you poor thing, I can't believe you've had another boy, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And when I had the fourth one, it was worse. And one lady even went and lit candles in the local Catholic church. And my eight-year-old son at the time turned to me and said, mommy, why do they speak like that about us as boys? And that's when I lit the fire that says, how come this has appeared to be a dud gender? And that was really where the boy champion came alive. It's like, that's not okay.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  I didn't, I did not know that, probably because I am a boy and I think we're the best. But like, I didn't know that that was a common.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, mums still come up to me today and say, if they've only got boys, people apologise to them and wish them all the best. And now sometimes people run into me and realise I've got four adult sons and I say, you don't look that bad.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  So I'm sure they don't say that about girls. So I'm going, you know, this is that cultural stuff and the conditioning stuff still, and that sometimes the things that make boys tricky, we automatically assume they deliberately make poor choices and that they, you know, we just say there's boys being boys.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  When you decode some of that, of what's under it and the reasons why,

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Then we can come along, when they feel understood, then we can coach them into making those better choices, you know? So that's, that's a big passion in my work.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  That's very exciting to, I mean, as someone who does, I'm not a parent, but it's still, I'm so fascinated to understand the, the answers to that why? The why, why do, why does anyone do anything? But particularly, why do boys do what they do?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And let's do the disclaimer, that's, you know, we know that gender's not in either box and that we have gender fluid in the middle. But what the stats really show is around 70% are fairly atypical. And so in, that's girls and boys, but also then when you factor in the temperament issue. So of that 70%, um, probably only half of those are what the man box would say is the right boy.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  You know, it's the go getter, the winner, the loud, the champion. Whereas we negated the lambs, the sensitive boys, they were sort of less than.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  And we need to recognise they're equally valid.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  You guys are a bit lamb-like, so even though it's a bit of a rooster, he's got some lamb.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  You reckon Hugh's a rooster?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Well, now the sport he's played, often that's a big drive when they're wanting to be so competitive.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got most encouraged, I got an encouragement award in under 14, so.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Hey, you could be too.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Probably a rooster.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  We want them in the, we want them in the middle.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Hmm, oh.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Right, so you're capable of assertiveness and courage, but you're also capable of being caring and thoughtful. And that's the bit that the traditional man box likes to shut down.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love the thought of a rooster's body with a lamb's head on it. That's what, that's what I'm picturing right now.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  I think you'd go the other way around. I reckon you'd go lamb's body, rooster's head for visual appeal. I'm just the balance alone.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  So good.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  I feel like, um, there'll be a lot of people who'll just quickly, will know what lamb rooster is. Maybe if you could just give a really quick explanation, the difference.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you'll know you're rooster because you can't get them asleep. They hate missing out on anything, they argue before they're verbal, I think they poo more. Um, they will try and think, they're so brave and fearless, they'll terrify the hell out of you as a parent. And they will, like I said, you know, before you know it, you just cannot rest. The lamb is gentle, thoughtful, often slow to warm, takes a while to step into their power. But so they make you look like a great parent. You know, you're looking at the playground and the lambs are quite obvious.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  I just want to give context to this. I mean, Maggie is like a leading voice on on boys and boys' education. But just to to give further context to why we want to sort of talk about this, just some statistics. So as far as mental health is concerned, three out of four suicides in Australia are men. Suicide is the leading cause of death for boys aged 15 to 24 in Australia. Men are far less likely to seek professional help, with only 30% of mental health services being male. In the education spaces, Maggie would know all too well, boys make up 80% of school suspensions in Australia. Boys are far more likely to struggle with literacy, as Maggie just alluded to, falling behind girls by year three and often never ever catching up. Boys are 40% less likely to

• 7:42Speaker 00

  graduate from year 12 than girls. On the on the topic of violence and risky behaviour, boys and young men are dramatically overrepresented in all forms of risk-taking behaviour: road fatalities, substance use, physical fights. 90% of violent offending in Australia is perpetuated by males. And critically, most male violence is the result of untreated trauma, emotional illiteracy and disconnection. And the last statistics, which is kind of what I when I think about Maggie's work, I think a lot of it comes down to this, but the social connection. So, one in three Australian men report having no close friends. Men's friendships networks shrink dramatically after their 20s, and loneliness increases

• 8:23Speaker 00

  men's risk of early death by up to 26%. So Maggie, you've spent decades helping Australians understand that boys aren't broken, they're hurting.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  And I think just with that context, I think you are just such a wonderful person to talk on this topic.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  One of the things that comes from traditional patriarchy is that boys and men are tough. That wasn't my dad. My dad was an incredibly beautiful human with an incredible good sense of humour, but a really kind, good humanitarian, which is a great model for me.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, you can see all that in you in 10 minutes of meeting, you can see that.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  He just, he just didn't care what colour his skin was, whether he educated or not, you're a male or female, whatever, just, yeah. So what happens is, we are conditioned by those messages from when we're quite little. So when I sometimes saw in early childhood settings, a little girl fall over, so often the response from an educator, and it can happen out not even in that setting, is we sweep over and speak gently to her and help her up. And then if a boy falls over, we often say, kid, come on, mate. Now, both of those are actually incorrect because they're both feeding incorrect messages. Because most girls don't actually need help either. And then I, when I brought that up, there's research that shows we speak more harshly to boys.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  So when you, when I wound that back and thought, well, obviously, if they're unable to feel um, safe, when they do hurt themselves, they're going to push that down. I've got to look tough. And then, you know, that male fragility stuff that, you know, it took me, when I landed on that, I sort of thought, oh my god, if we'd known this before. So in the first five years, the more securely attached and loved a little boy feels, the better he goes right through life. It's not just, isn't it his mental health, it's his physical, it's everything. The other part to the fragility, of course, is that it took us a while to discover, thanks to Dr. Alan Shaw's work,

• 10:22Speaker 01

  that um, when the fetus is being formed in that first 12 weeks, between eight and 12 weeks, when it gets flooded with testosterone, the actual brain development slows down. So at birth, they're cognitively behind little girls. Not only that, it impacts the way the left and right brain are working, which is why girls are so much better linguistically. And we keep thinking they're the same. One size fits all. There's another study done by a researcher at the Kids Institute in Perth, which I found fascinating. He was um, researching core blood of the cord and then linking it to all sorts of things to see if there was. And what he was looking at was the um, level of testosterone in core blood of little boys and what that

• 11:07Speaker 01

  came up against. And he found an interesting correlation, remember, not causation, correlation between high testosterone levels at birth to difficulty learning to read.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And again, it's the left brain that needs the reading. So again, so what did we do? We stole the age of five off our boys. They actually need more time to be cognitively ready for the same things that we push down with formalized learning. And then the more we push down form, the more we took away their need to move, their need to play, their need to work out how to have friends. Cause the fragile boy friendship, that was a blog I wrote once. And it went insane, went right around the world because nobody really considered it. That um when I was doing some of the stories on on the TV programs, all of them. So I said, so how many, how many good friends you got? And they say, two. I said, when you last seen him? Oh, ten years ago.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Because you actually have to spend time, because little boys don't do what girls do. Saying, I really would like to play with you, cause I'm really, so we go and play dolls. So we go, when can I see you again? And all that stuff, boys just go out and give you a punch.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  It sort of feel, it sort of feels like, and maybe this is obvious to say this, but it's like, boys from the very beginning are expected to be more self sufficient than girls.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  And and it's, and that kind of carries through for the rest of the boy man's life.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  To the extent where it's like, if they're not able, like, and maybe that is, maybe that's sort of why girls traditionally sort of lean on each other a little bit more and catch up.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Estrogen.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And we've got to remember that still there is in our epigenetics, those biological drives that boys are meant to be. One day grow up and defend, protect and provide for everyone else. You know, it is really important. That's why sometimes when they play those stupid superhero games or they wanna make guns out of their toast, they're not gonna turn into a murderer. But what they're doing is I wanna kill baddies to save goodies.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  And we need to allow that to be in its, in its, you know, what's okay. But we also need to let some of the girls join in there.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  I'm not making this up. Our daughter made a love heart out of her toast this morning.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, see?

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Actually, she said, if you squeeze the bottom of toast, it's a love heart. Can you put some Vegemite on it? So she said Vegemite love heart.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I love it. It probably wouldn't make a gun. But go and make, so that also, um, you know, when you understand that.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  You know, estrogen is bonding, it's caring, it's coming together. And that that also affects the way we communicate. So those fragile boy friendships, if we take away play, neighbourhood play has disappeared. We don't breed as much, not as much cousin play. And schools, you know, when they get to school, recess is shortened, lunch is shortened. And so all the things that help boys build social and emotional competence have diminished.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  So what do we do then? What do we do for our boys who, say they're five years old and they're probably not quite ready for school, but they're going to have to go because that's the way society is set up? What can we do for them at home to to support that, understanding that and supporting that as much as possible?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'd like them to be as feral and free as possible, if you can possibly arrange. You know, what children have always needed is, has not changed, but the world has changed, is to try and find where they can play with multi-aged children of all genders in an environment with potential risk, within the blood-curdling safety of one adult. Because what happens, boys and girls, automatically will step up to be the protector. So boys don't get that opportunity anymore to actually step up and be, they're just wired to do it. If you don't ever have a chance, you don't know how to do it.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I'm thinking, the first thing that comes to mind, and this is topical for me because I used to be, I would go to the park, mum would tap me in the park as a little boy and I was so scared of, I got, I had a, I've shared the story before, but mum had an old handbag. And I loved walking around with mum's handbag and I used to hold my arm up so it wouldn't, just walk around my arm, yeah, so it wouldn't fall off my shoulder. And we went to a friend's house once and these other boys took it off me and beat living daylight out of me with it. And ever since then, I was just so scared of boys that I didn't know.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  I see boys at the park with my kids, I go, well, boys are coming, we need to just be careful here. And so I think my kids haven't played in the park anywhere near as much as I should because I'm scared of little boys.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  So let's touch on that a bit because the hitting, hurting and stuff of little boys, that that's usually a bid for connection.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  So when we reframe it to big for connection, they also need to be coached into what are the signs when that other person's not enjoying that.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And lectures don't work, but often doing it with play works, especially if adults role play it. Um, and it's, it's just such a big thing. Um, you know, there was so much wrestling in my house.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And they are learning about boundaries.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  But I keep saying, if they're boys are wrestling, they actually like each other.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  It's called aggression, nurturance in boy world. And that's why sometimes that run up, a little boy might run up to farewell his best mate and accidentally punch him in the head instead of the arm.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Now, he didn't mean to do that. So there's often this thing that boys really mean to hurt. When no, they accidentally do dumb things.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  In the spontaneous moment of wanting to connect.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  And they sometimes can kick mum after school. And this is one of the things when I say that I've had so many women go, yes, he's done that. So you can pick your little boy up and you're heading out towards the car and you stop to talk to someone and your son starts kicking you in the leg and you think, what, what's he doing that for? And what's possibly going on is he has a poo that's due and boys don't poo at school. So he's trying to tell you to hurry up so he can drop it off.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  And of course, we never grow out of that. We never grow out of that. That's still how we communicate. We need to do a poo. Even at forty four, isn't that what we're doing?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  I know. There's another side to that that we don't understand. It took me a while to work it and I've now got grandsons who run in and tell me, come and have a look at my poo nanny. It's a dinosaur, not a lion. So poos to boys are kind of like achievements.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  A gift.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  They're a gift and they're something to celebrate if it's good, right? And most women don't get that kind of thing, right? Which is why also when we put pressure on them, we do know statistically that boys are the last to be able to be toilet trained around pooing.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Cause they're so much more sensitive and it's this vulnerable, fragile side of boys.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  And that's the kind of gift that, God, I don't want to get emotional here. Um, the number of times mums have said to me, I couldn't stand my little boy. He was just an episode, couldn't, he was, and then I realised he wasn't this tough little thing and I started to really lean into nurturing that tender part of him. Um, and he within two or three days is coming up, putting his, linking his fingers with mine, saying, I love you, mummy. Because they know when they're safer, you know, and they do muck up, right? The impulsive poor decision making. We keep thinking they deliberately plan it, but when you come in, I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt your brother. Oh dear, look at that. How are we gonna clean that up? So when you come in without the shame,

• 18:32Speaker 01

  you create such a safer space. And then when they've all calmed down, and there is some really big science, it's so handy to understand about this, that when the amygdala fires up for little girls and women, the next centre in the brain that fires up is the word centre.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Have you ever had one of those vans?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Okay, so what happens for boys and men? The amygdala fires up, there's a threat and there's something upset me, and then it goes into the body.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  The shove, the push, that we see on TV with men breaking things. And then a long time later, it comes from the body back up into the word centre. And so often, it still happens in school environments where a boy may have done something and sometimes it's, you know, running in accidentally into someone and knocking them in the playground. You get sent to the, you know, to get growled at. And they have no idea what they've done wrong because they didn't plan to knock that kid over. And then they get interrogated and they can't speak. Because it's too soon for them to, you know, and I love the principles. There's some great primary principles that take boys for a walk around the oval. So what happens when we're walking is it actually helps to open up the word centre. So they can communicate.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  But often they need to process it a bit first, and that's what guys do. They often, that's why sometimes they're not so good after a trauma, going to talk to a counsellor. They can often trigger them to be worse because they haven't worked it out themselves. There's a really big story that came from a dad. He reached out to tell me that he'd heard, sorry, I'm gonna mention another podcast.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  That's okay. We're okay with that.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Okay, ABC Conversations and it was some.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Never heard of it.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  And apparently this guy came running into the house, he said, oh, because I've had lots of problems with the 14 year old son, like he's been suspended and they've taken everything off him and it hasn't changed his behaviour and he's still, you know, school's ringing again and he's come in the back door and said, just listen to this lady on the radio, I'm gonna try something new with our son. And the mum said, yeah, the school's rung again. Anyway, so he's called out to his son, he said, mate, let's go for a walk. And his son come out looking a bit dubious. Anyway, they walked all the way up to the Maccas, which was about a kilometre away and he's just had a big smoothie and a bucket of chips. And, um, he just walked on home and halfway home, his son starts to cry. And then he's sobbing in his dad's arms and said, it's the year 11 boys, they keep belting me up and they've told me if I dob on them, they're gonna cut my face with a razor.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So he's held his son while he owned into this and, you know, by the time he's walked home, this boy's a different boy. And the dad walks in, he says, who would have thought? Just a walk and a bucket of chips and we sorted it out.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  But he did that beautiful thing. That helps to open in a safe space, like nothing else.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  That's, it's really been something that I think I've always done whenever I've like been overwhelmed or stressed is that like, and Jam, my partner and I often talk about this, whereas like when she's really overwhelmed or has anxiety, she really needs to talk about it, you know, instantly and needs to talk it through. And but whenever I'm overwhelmed or anxious about something, I need to just be by myself.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  That's exactly. And guess what happens though? Sometimes when she's going through her talking, is a part of you thinking, is there something I need to fix?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely, all the time.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Right? Because that's that wiring in us again. And there's nothing more irritating when your male partner says, why don't you try this? You just wanna punch them out.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, until they fix it.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  And that's a good moment. It's just so tempting, so tempting.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  I know. I reckon when I'm doing the dads only, I keep saying stuff, they're doing a big vent, mate. You just, you nod. Yep, nod, listen, don't distract. You can't even remember what she's saying, but let it go right till the end till she takes a breath. And then you say, do you want a cup of love or a glass of wine?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  That's it. That's, I've held space.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I've held the space in the way that you need it.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And then we can discuss the souls.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I wonder when that comes in though.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Sometimes what's happened, it just didn't need solving. It just needed expressing the frustration from that place. But let's celebrate the, you know, greatest social shift that's happening in Australia at the moment. And that's our dads turning up with beautiful big hearts and really team parenting. And, you know, everywhere I go, sometimes in a playground on a weekend, there's no mums. Dad's baby's tied on, toddler's nailing it. We have to celebrate that. That's a massive cultural shift. And I think the other part to that is, um, they keep saying, you know, so often they say, I just wish there was a game book, but there isn't one for women either.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  But you know, because let's talk about that sense of self-worth that boys and men are different to most girls and women. And that is that boys and men give themselves self-worth and what they do, they judge as good and worthwhile. So I think of boys who want to hit targets, climb the highest tree, build the biggest dupe load tower. They set themselves up for something and when they do it, they go, yes, I've done good. Now we can't give them that. And so, um, I love it when I get a story that's influenced a mum particularly. And so this boy came into his mum, he was eight and said, um, I'm going to dig to China.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Fortunately, you know, every mother thinks what an idiot. Miles will tell him now, no, she'd heard me and she said, well, let me know how it goes. Now, no joke, this boy dug for a week, like he had blisters. You know, and she used to take drinks, he was determined because he's set up a target and a project. And then, um, finally realised it wasn't going to work. So he came in and said, oh mum, can't dig to China. She said, never mind. And it's such a shift when I see the woman in the room go, oh, because.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And there's this part, you know, that, that kind of.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  You know, protect a defender brave part, which has the testosterone. They do wanna do stuff every now and then that scares the, you know, what out of most women. And I keep urging them just to keep breathing and hold back because, you know, when we keep holding that back, then we make it harder for them to stretch and grow later. And then the natural consequence is the way they learn that it doesn't always work out. I'm not bad. I'm not useless. I'm not dumb. It just wasn't the right time or energy. And so I had my two lads at one point on the farm. We went back to wandering and it gets a minus five, it's freezing. There's a stream through the farm and the six and four year old, we're out there. And I said, I can't jump in. You know, the first thing is I hear my mum voice.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Don't be so stupid. You'll get a card, which of course you can't get, but it's an old story. And then I realised, hang on a minute, I used to jump in there.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And so I just pause. And then of course, most boys wanna get naked. The whole anti clothes bit. Oh man, I've had naked boys, no undies, Monday, Sunday, Tuesday. Anyway. No woman understands that either. Anyway, off go the clothes. Off go the clothes. In they jump and I think one will be enough, right? But let's do it again. And I'm thinking, it is freezing. But that little warrior that wants to stretch and grow, they do it again. And then I thought, no, definitely. By the third time, you have to laugh. They're completely blue around the lips, but their whole little package has been sucked inside.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Because it was too cold for the testes.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And so I keep going, you know, they've just had this wonderful adventure, which doesn't make any sense to women. But it does to boys. They're having fun, but they're stretching and growing. And that's exactly how we grow healthy men.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Josh has got two boys. He's got a rooster and a lamb. I'm so interested to know what's going through your head because I feel like every single topic you make is tough. You've got a thousand questions. So I just wanna give you a chance to.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know where to start. I, I think, yes, I've got five and three. One thing I find hard is that I, I think this goes to my inner critic in my own sort of story, that I find it very hard. I'm trying really hard to be one of those men who's really getting as involved in the, the, the most present parent I can possibly be. But I.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  That's just evidence to that. I have a video of Josh. Um, playing um on on our trampoline severely hungover, but still there playing with my kids and his kids playing Ringo Ringo Rosies uh and them crawling over him. And I just remember thinking, well, that is a dad who is

• 27:05Speaker 02

  is struggling.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was really struggling.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  My kids are trying to pull your pants down as well.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on. Yeah, they don't like to just get themselves naked. They seem to want to go to the adults too. Um, I think because of growing up in a family where there wasn't any male roosters um or rooster behaviour, I found it really difficult and I've sort of I find myself making so many mistakes as a dad. But one thing I notice is that uh my rooster, he's very physical, loves to bite, loves to pull, loves to pinch, loves to do all these things. And I think about a mistake I made yesterday when we were rolling around, having a good time and then suddenly bit me really hard on the leg.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  And I reacted with a with anger and then why did you do that? And I suddenly expected this three year old to be able to explain a cognitive decision that led up to him biting. And he looked at me, um, it makes me very sad to say because he looked at me with this wobbly bottom lip and had no idea. And was completely, and it's happened a few times where I've reacted and he's completely caught in the headlights. And I feel so bad because of the mistake I've made. But also to see that for this rooster, I think has so much emotional depth and complexity going on underneath the surface

• 28:27Speaker 03

  that is that I miss all the time. And I'm trying so hard to focus on it and and um and um and respond to it or or at least be there for it.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  But I don't know, sometimes I don't know how, without the sacrifice of, say he's bitten the older, the lamb, and I'm stuck in this situation of, well, I can't, I wanna protect the lamb, but I also wanna acknowledge the rooster, and I don't know how to play this situation without letting one of them down.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  All right, so this is so common. You know, I have a membership group, and I think that question gets asked now every month.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Now, the important for you is to react with, oh, no, that's too hard.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So that's where he learns gradually that it's too hard.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Okay, rather than, why did you do it? He has no idea, no cognitive, but he can know, that's too hard. And that's the same why stacks on and roughhousing and all that sort of stuff is actually really good.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Because they need to know there's a point where it's no, right? That, that's the kind of boundary stuff. And we often find that boys who've had those sort of moments tend to navigate, you know, the nightclub scene a lot better than others, because they read the unspoken cues on the face a bit better.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  It's called a play code. So that's what I, that's the first thing you say. Anytime it actually really hurts, we're, oh, no, that hurts, that's too hard, because he's still three, and he doesn't even know what hard is.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  Interestingly, on that topic, when I do do that, when I have a better moment, where I say, in a calm way, he will, he'll put his mouth on my arm, and like bite down, and he'll go like, is this okay?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  And then he'll test the limit of when.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  And then he's like, and I'm like, no, that's too much. And he's like, yep. And then he's pretty good.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no joke. And I think the other thing that we, you know, we all muck up, you know, I'm, I'm an advocate for imperfect parenting. I need to remind all parents that you only have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  But when you do do big bugger ups, and you know it in your heart, you can feel it, right?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Then, once you've become calm, you come back and repair that rupture. Even with a three-odd, I'll come back and say, I didn't need to, shouting's not okay, and I'm gonna work on that, right?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Because that doesn't happen in previous generations. And so that imprint of behaviourism is still deeply embedded into anyone over 40.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  You know, that the, the only way to stop that behaviour is to punish the child. But it doesn't teach and what it does is threatens the relationship. And remember, that's the core to it. And I guarantee, just listening to you, you know, how many problems with connection with your kids?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Anyone who's half drunk on a trampoline, anyway.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  And so the other part to it, especially for roosters, is where is your connection time with your rooster? Because they're harder to connect. They genuinely are, they're often more physically active. So I have, you know, there's a thing I talk about, micro connections, because we'd love quality time. Of course, we would, one on one time would be beautiful, wouldn't it? But who's got it? Now, let's be honest, especially if you've got more than one child. So it's the ruffle on the head as you walk past and it's the tickle on the back and it's the bump where the, I used to walk past my boys, even when they were teenagers, and deliberately tread on their feet. Oh, sorry, sorry.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  So that counts.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Or if you're sitting on the couch, I'd sit on them, you know, I'm sorry. And they go, oh, my god. But a physical connection can often work more than words. And then, of course, if they were really being difficult in the kitchen, then I'd drop a well timed fart.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Because that can get a, that can get a grin on a.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  I mean, I want to, I want to ask, what does that look like?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  And I feel like that's, yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Pretty sure we're not doing it right now.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Dangerous territory, yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And so other things in that space are, make sure you've got photos of both your siblings in really happy moments and cuddles with you. I, I, I really encourage if you've got boys in the toilet. Because remember, they've got to become calm before they poo. So the more they see images of joy and connection, it triggers endorphins in the brain of, of being loved. Especially roosters, because they're the ones who break more things and damage more things. And we're forever going through the process, you know, what are you trying to do? And what are you going to do to make it right? And all those sorts of things. So making sure that is, but also sometimes writing, obviously a three year old won't be able to read yet now. But sometimes notes for boys are really powerful.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  You know, we think the verbal thing, and this is another thing that take, women really take a bit of time and they don't like it when I first say it, but you use way too many words sometimes for boys. And so can only take a few and they glaze over and go, I can't remember what she said. So even as a high school teacher, I had to learn that I was, if I was delivering an assessment. And I started with, now you've got to choose whether you want to write a poem, a short story or a play. And then what you're going to do is choose a character and you're going to have this kind of contest with mother nature. So some, and I'm looking around the room and I've lost every boy. And what the boys told me is what they're doing is they're going, what's the easiest thing to do?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  So until I solve that problem, I'm not ready for this.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And it's the same around home. We think that I've told you three times, they haven't heard it. Sometimes, you know, a little boy can be just over there. And you can yell at him, you know, or say loudly, can you go wash your hands? It's time for dinner and he doesn't move.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  And you say it again and it's, again, dads don't tend to do this. It's mainly mums. And then they're saying, he's deliberately not listening to me. And they yell at him and he's suddenly going, why is my mother suddenly yelling at me? And this is that single focus that they're so absorbed in what they're doing. They actually don't hear sometimes.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And that's a really important one. So, you know, encourage mums to go up and rub their back and go, time to wash your hands. So we go up and just.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  That was making, making our contact.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, just quickly. Sometimes there are more signs of what you want them to do.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Hat on head.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  They're spatially quite good.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Lunchbox in bag.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Cause spatially, boys are, they're much stronger and they're also very strong at non-verbal stuff. So they see every time that particularly a mum, but even a dad, rolls their eyes going.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  That's like a knife in little boys' hearts. It's insane in teenage boys. They know when they've disappointed their parents and it's a really big burden.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  I've, I've always sort of, I've, I think I've always known that within myself that I, I will, uh, comprehend something clear, clearly. If it's shown to me.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  And I've always sort of labelled that as like, I'm a visual learner. I've sort of always said, I've always just sort of, that's just the thing that I've invented and just feels true. I was like, oh, if you need to explain something to me, I need to see it or be shown it and then I'll remember it. But that's so interesting.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Another layer of the boy bed. Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, wow.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  So one of the other most powerful ones, and this is something I've probably been saying now for 18 years. And, um, it's the bedtime ritual.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Oh boy.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  So no matter how many times.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Hang on, say that, Pat, hang on.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  No matter how many times you've had to growl and, you know, pull them back in and, you know, remember, you know, use soft hands, all that stuff. And please, we in the toilet, not up the wall. And, you know, all those things that you've had to say.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  You writing this down here?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  It's that, and not every night. You can't go in and do a warm bedtime ritual when you're pissed off. You just can't. You've just got to make sure. So it's not every night. And that when you can, you, you lay next to that little precious boy and you tell him how much you love him. And because they're good with numbers and spatially, you, you say, look, I, you know, I love you more than every star in the night sky.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Every grain of sand on every beach in the whole world and every hair on every bear. And they'll go, man, that's a lot.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  My, my, my parents used to say and still say, I love you to the sky and back possumeta.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Possumeta.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Possumeta.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And then, oh my God, over the years, oh my God, I've just had so many gorgeous messages come back. Cause when they add something else, it personalizes it.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  And all the bums on all the, you know, fishes in the world and all the poo in the zoo. And, you know, cause quite often they go to that.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And I think when that happens two or three times a week, we deeply embed that sense of loving connection into the ones who are going to be harder to love some days.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And it's so profound. And it's something that can play out later. You can, you know, write a message to a teenage boy who's, I have the door in your face and hasn't done the dishwasher and left the milk out. You know, um, remember the stars. Remember the sand.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  They'll know exactly.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And that's that, you know, when we think we need to be harder on boys, it's coming from a space of behaviorism that does not actually work, except on possibly rats. And I share the story about one of my, I've got a feisty rooster who landed on Halloween, who's a whoopsie.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Worked that one out. Whoopsie means it wasn't planned.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And to land on Halloween.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Anyway, he was fifteen or something.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Pretty intense trick or treat.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Every, I can imagine he's twenty first, every party at uni, everything, Halloween's huge. Anyway, and he was absolutely giving me a serve in the kitchen because I wouldn't let him go to a party because, you know, it was, I didn't let mine go out to parties, you know, with my knowledge until I was sixteen, year eleven. He goes, everyone else is going in the worst mum on earth. And yeah, yeah. Anyway, he walked off, slammed the door and.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I officially, I'm actually probably the best mum on earth according to all my books.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  No, this is before I wrote the book. Anyway, and I knew, like, and I know, you know, in your head, you're saying he shouldn't speak to me like that disrespectfully. And I need to, you know, I need to come down hard on him to stop that. But that's the old thinking again, not recognizing that that is just equally as tender heart as a girl who feels these things. So does he need more harshness? Does he more darkness? Does he need more criticism? Anyway, so about twenty minutes later, I go down and knock at the door and I've said that anyone who's got a teenage boy, you wait a good twenty seconds.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  You do not open that door for twenty seconds.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  And then you open it gently and you shove in their favorite drink like Milo or something and some biscuits and you shove in the dog and then you shut the door.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And you go back and even though in your mind, you'd love him to come out and say, gee mum, I'm sorry I used those disrespectful words to you earlier and I really apologize because it's not gonna happen. He's not really got that cognitive capacity. Most teenage girls wouldn't either. But I need him to know we're still okay. And so often, you know, when he comes out, you might get a bump. But I want him to know that. That's the vulnerability of teenage boys and that, you know, that's, you mentioned that suicide rates, spontaneous suicides that come out of nowhere. It's the last thing. And if you're safe base, and this is what came up in that research from Boys to Men, is who was the most important thing in your life over that bridge to adulthood? And over sixty percent said their mum.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  So if she's your safe base and she turns on you. It's a really dark place to go and that's why we have to know it's a really vulnerable time and that we need to be bigger and not listen to the rubbish that we had from, you know, rats that said punish them when they're badly behaved. The term I keep saying is no matter what, no matter what it is, there's nothing you can do that will stop me loving you. So anytime anything bad happens, your first thought needs to be call mum, call dad.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  No matter what. Every time they walk out the door to a party, say no matter what, because that's exactly what they need to know. There's an anchor that's safe for them. Lots of teens don't have it. They might think, the parents may think that they've got it, but if they're, you know, the, the boys know they're disappointing their parents because their grades or, you know, yes, they've left the milk out in the fridge yet again, um, or they haven't done the dishwasher or all these things that we think are important.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  You don't know what's going on while they've been at school or what they've got copped online. And they're so much more fragile psychologically than any other previous generation.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  My, um, my rooster child, um, I, I have a picture of him on my, um, key ring. He made it at, um, childcare and, um, I was looking at it. I can't remember how this came about. It was just me and him at home and he was asking me about it. I wrote, I love you on it. Uh, and I showed it to him and he said, what does this say? And it said, and I said, it says, I love you. And he gave me this look on his face like it really hit, like he hadn't quite realised or something. And I tell him all the time that I love him and I cuddle him and I thought he would really get it. And then, and I thought it hit a bit different

• 41:37Speaker 03

  and it makes me emotional, think, talking about it. And then later that night, my wife says, you know, um, After you did that, he came into my office and he held this up and he said, Daddy loves me. Oh.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah. And let me tell you that it's about the written word. You know, the spoken word is flies around.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  The number of times, cause I've mentioned that in that micro moments, write a note to say you love your son. And the stories I've had back, particularly from dads who have written the note that changed the whole relationship for the rest of their lives.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And so boys keep those notes.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  Hmm. It was, yeah. So just to, I, I guess, I, I think I thought I was doing it and it, and it obviously wasn't landing like I thought it was. So it was a really, yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  How good you landed.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Oh, felt good. It's really good. It's felt, I've thought about it so much since. And I do, I honestly think our relationship is a little bit better.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  I know.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Because of it. And he's only three, but it really, we're, we're just that little bit better.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Sometimes those micro notes that go into lunchboxes can do that too. Especially if you've had a rough morning or a rough night. Before you just write a note saying, love you, mate.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's such a good tip. Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Hi, it's Ryan from The Imperfects and I'm reaching out to you now because we need your help. Gosh darn it.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  What, why do we need?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Sorry. No, we're, I'm just making a plea to the listeners and viewers to ask them to subscribe to the show in whichever way they see fit. Because it really helps. The more subscribers, the better we can make this show. Am I right?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I don't think we need to, I think we could just ask them politely.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if I use the emotional music.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  I think the music's a bit much.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Who's playing that music?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter who's playing the music. The important thing is we're pulling at the heartstrings and asking them to do us a solid.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Could we not just ask, like just ask them straight? Like, oh, it'd really help us if you guys subscribed because we would be able to make more of the show and make the show better.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Oh, and not use emotional manipulation.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I reckon.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Well, you can give it a go, but I doubt it'll work.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Can I ask you about your, I guess I'm just asking to speak generally about the area that you feel most passionate about, but screens and social media for boys, the damage, your advice, what you've seen?

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Oh, no question, but it's been big and we know that, you know, some of our boys are definitely being influenced by the manosphere online and the negative algorithms that say big tech is to blame, not parents, not schools, not boys. But it's not as many as we thought and I think that was the thing, we started to have a shift in sexual harassment in schools where, boys have always said things like, you know, rank girls from super hot to freezing cold. Apparently that's the thing you did on a piece of paper once and threw in the bin, but now you do it online and share it, except...

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Well, that's literally how Facebook started.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yes, it is literally how it started, except that now with the boys watching so much more pornography, the language has gone to unrapeable.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Oh god.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Right?

• 44:42Speaker 00

  What?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's exactly what the ranking stuff happens. So again, if that, that wasn't there, that wouldn't be happening.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  That's a shocking thing to hear.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Teachers, there are rape threats in classrooms, there are, it's the language in some, it's not all schools and it's not all boys, some schools don't even know what you're talking about and other ones have been working on it to come through, which is why, you know, boys still need good guidance and mentors on that bridge to adulthood, rails on the bridge. So the pornography is the first thing, the second thing was not as many boys on social media than you think. Where are they? They're gaming.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Ah, right.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so gaming has a really positive space, especially if they're gaming with their mates, you know? We also know the sexual predators are out there as well, so the sexual extortion has increased 1300% over the last three years.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  And we have to just think if a 14 year old boy thinks a 14 year old girl is really keen and sounds really gorgeous and she'd like to see a photo of his best friend... He's gonna obviously share it. And so it's, you know, we understand the maturity of them. But if that wasn't there, that wouldn't be happening.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And some of those boys, as you know, are dying by suicide because of the shame.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  The other thing that's happened as well is that in the boys, it's not just manosphere stuff. Um, the body stuff in terms of being buff and looking a certain way. So body image um stuff is actually impacting boys at the highest level it's ever impacted again. So when you pile it all together, it makes it even harder. That unless they've got, you know, um, good enough parents, so we say, at least one. And I know most boys tell me they're hungry for a warm relationship with their dad. But of course, most dads tell me I'm hard on him because I don't want him to be a dickhead like I was, which is. You can see that. But of course, the more hard you were, because that's what happened when you were that age.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  The more you push your son away when he needs you. So it's, so that's why I talk a lot about the lighthouse figures. Which was me as an English teacher, but it's those. Sometimes it's a teacher in a subject that might be physics, or it might be music, or it might be, it might be the coach. Right? When they kind of show they care, oh, it's like a lifeline.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And I think that's exactly what you do with your work in schools. You are actually setting up teachers and people to be, to know that you can make a difference in kids' lives. And it's, you know, it's how you be, not just what you do.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  So we've got to find, where do we find the safe spaces, you know, for our boys? But I'm, I'm hoping, I'm hoping, um, when we talk to boys, older boys who've gone through this, they often say. Yeah, I was a bit more interested when I was thirteen and fourteen. But you know, the prefrontal does a big growth around sixteen. But once I got to sixteen, I started like working it out myself. That wasn't who I wanted to be. That wasn't the man I wanted to be, quietly in their own world.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  What do you think of the, um? The factors and are there consistent factors that are present in, is it just what you said, or are there, are there consistent factors that are there in boys who are able to get to that point of working that out for themselves? So they're, because they're all in the sort of washing machine of

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, of thirteen, fourteen year olds.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  So a minimum of one good enough parent.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  With some good enough friends.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Engaged in some good enough activities in a good enough school.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Those boys will usually come out okay at the other end.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Regardless of what's thrown at them.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  I really like that phrase, good enough.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Good enough, yeah. So where we find, you know, so a family might not be the good enough, but those a good enough school and a good enough, you know, whatever it is, if they're into music or they're into something else, something what I call is the spark. And it's, it's so interesting, you know, obviously I had four sons. Um, they were into sport, but when they, when they took up surfing. Oh man, is that what I wanted to do on a Saturday morning after teaching full timers? Get up at six o'clock and go and look for surf for hours on end. Oh man. So I'd have two brothers and three of their mates driving around farting in the car, you know, being ridiculous. Um, and then when I watched them come out of the surf,

• 49:05Speaker 01

  I saw something like profound that I didn't see in my classrooms. And that was five boys fully alive.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  And that meant they could go back and suck up school with whatever it dealt with. Cause there was this big part of them that was alive. And so I talk about that a lot to parents, find the spark for your teen, you know, yeah, of course, schools matters, but they can always pick that up later, but it's without a spark, they're more likely to dive into dark places. And that spark sometimes, you know, it can be something you never want them to do like that. God, I couldn't wait for the oldest to get a licence. Um, and that's a mum, a fourteen year, a mum of a fourteen year old, um, whose dad had died by suicide. So the boy had been, you know, really going through a tough time. And she said, so Maggie is in, you know, year nine, going to year ten and he, he loves racing motorbikes. He did it with his dad. And so, um, should I get him off his motorbike?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  So he focuses on his studies. And I said, so tell me what his average morning and night is like as a, you know, during the week. And she said, well, he gets home from school, goes for a quick ride. Yep. And then he comes home, does his homework, so he can go to bed early and goes for another ride first thing in the morning. And I'm looking at her going, I don't know any fourteen year old boy that does his homework. Like.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  He's connecting to his dad.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  So there's a, you know, what's his face like when he comes in, he's alive, he can't wait to get his chores done so he can go to school. Seriously, do not remove that ever.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  And I meet so many teens today who think that their social media is their spark.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Hmm.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  But it's not necessarily, you see, and that's why we have a new generation of lonely teens.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Have you seen, have you seen that, there's a documentary about a guy, I think his name is Marc Andre or something. He was a um free climber, like, you know, climber, have you seen this? Whatever it is, it's in the show notes, a link to it. Um, but uh his, he really struggled at school, was not a happy kid. And then he discovered somehow, I forget how, he discovered this like climbing, rock climbing. And his mother, this incredible woman, just sort of like, exactly how you described, taking the boys surfing. She did not enjoy necessarily driving into the woods to find like these rock climbing walls. But that's all he wanted to do. He was reading, he was engaged with this thing.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  And he became, not that this matters, but he became like one of the best in the world at, at rock climbing, at free climbing. Super dangerous, no doubt. His mum was terrified. Um, and it's unfortunately has a bit of a, it's a tragic ending of that story. But what is so hopeful about it is to see this mum, like, just recognise what this boy really loves and what like brings him alive and makes him so happy and connects him with those other people who are doing it. And her just like wholeheartedly supporting it.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  It's really magical.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Is, so there's a window of um incredible importance that we need to understand in adolescence. And it's the same for girls and boys, but because girls go into puberty earlier, it's earlier. But the boy window is the same window, they get so super disengaged at school, like, what's in it for me? This sucks. So you know, the brain does this pruning, which is why sometimes I've got messages from mum saying, has an alien stolen my son? Like, he was really great two weeks ago and he's awful now, like. And I keep explaining that when you understand the why that your son suddenly gets more grumpy is because any change triggers stress in the body. So their body is already physically changing, then hormonally changing, then cognitively changing and emotionally changing. And I don't know what the hell's going on, right?

• 52:45Speaker 01

  And so one of the first steps is the pruning. And as I explained before, um, you know, girls have much better memories and organisation skills. Oh man, so a bit more of that gets pruned off on boys than it does girls. And they can even, you know, when it happens, forget their mass chest or leave their backpack on the bus and feel really stupid. And so we need to prepare them before it happens so that they can go, oh, this is the brain pruning, it's not just me. Cause I could have 500 boys in a, in a seminar and say, haven't even noticed your memory. And if you ask, nod your heads and the boys are all nodding and, and they're, and they're looking at their mates, does it happen to you? They don't talk about it.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  But when we shine a light on it, then we can set up strategies with them.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  What does that look like at home for parents though? If they're like going.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Floor drobes, cannot put the towel, cannot put the towel on the hook in the bathroom that it used to be able to do.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  I mean, that means I've never recovered from the, because I'm a floor drobed towel floor.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Um, oh, it's the, the same thing as like putting empty containers, like empty yoga containers back in the fridge and the milk on the bench. Uh, or saying, I had this beautiful year eight boy run all over the school and find me, I was teaching year 12s and he's found me and I said, what are you doing, mate? And he says, so can you tell me where I'm supposed to be now? I said, where's your timetable? What's that? Mate, this is week four.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Go down to the front office and they'll give you your timetable. It just got pruned off after he started.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  What's the front office?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's the front office? Where's that? Anyway, so that the next stage is interesting because that's where Mother Nature says, gee, we'd better hurry up and make these kids smarter because they're going to be adults. And if they don't, they start breeding soon or the species dies out, you know? So it makes lots and lots and lots more dentrites, which is so exciting because you can learn faster. Anything you throw your energy into in the window under 16, anything that they do, they get better amazingly. And yet it's the same window that they're feeling really dumb, stupid and useless and more forgetful. So that's why I keep challenging our best teachers should be in middle school. This is where you can tap into something.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Totally agree.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Tap into, you know, that hope, that place, you know, and I, there were boys in my class that struggled with whatever, you know, and I'm, I used to say things like, why do I have to learn to write an essay? I miss I'm going to play football for Australia.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, great. Good one. Now you're going to learn to write an essay.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Because I can't see the point, right? And it's so amazing. If you fire up a kid in that window with, it doesn't matter what it is that's in that school smorgasbord, whether it's cooking or it's clay fun or mountain bike riding, you can stoke something that helps them get over that kind of place.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  It's a protective factor through that.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  That's exactly what it is. And we need to, we need to invest as parents lots of time to nurture that window because that's the window we most likely lose our boys.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  So just to clarify as you're going, the, the window we're talking about, what is the ages here?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so now that puberty is moving earlier, it used to be for girls, it was, you know, like 11 to 13 and for boys, it was 13 to 15. So it varies around that, but we know for our boys, some of them are around 12 when that kicks in now. But the big one is that most of those big shifts have finished and by 16, that's when there's a big growth in the prefrontal cortex where they can be much more reasonable. Because if you've lost your son because he was... Incoherent, couldn't speak and all those things, talking in a plucky bag.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  He comes back sometimes in that.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  With the dendrites.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  So what, what the, the brain, the brain pruning you're talking about and the dendrites?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  What, can you, I mean, I obviously know, but for anyone else who doesn't know.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Cause you're so.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  I know most things.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  So intelligent. Um, so what happens is, um, so brain cells and neurons, and then when, um, you're going to join up to another one, which is when learning occurs, there's an axon and at the end of the axon, a feathery bit's called dendrites. And so when there's a massive growth of dendrites means more of them are grabbing on to more and more neurons. So when the pruning happens, it prunes all the, whatever you're not using gets pruned off. And that's why girls who use their memory and are quite organised, don't have theirs pruned off to the same degree as boys. And that's frustrating as hell for mums.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Right. And is that part of sort of because your body's putting so much effort into growing puberty, going through puberty, it almost like an efficiency thing it needs to shed.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's changing a child brain into an adult brain. And that's part of the journey, which it would have been good to know about it when I was teaching them.

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Huge knowledge.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I never, you know, you never, ever had, um, and there's a whole list in one of my books that says, you know, the number of times that a girl forgot when the assessment was, just was very rare.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  I had a boy, a teenage boy, just forget his bag once, just turned up, walked in.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  They were loose boots, shoes.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Forgot my bag today.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Have you done?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Or this is what I love, their accommodations. I saw a boy once carrying this massive bag full of books and I said, mate, that's huge. What have you got in there? He's put everything out. And I said, but you don't have chemistry every day of the week or biology. He said, no, no, I don't, but I can't remember what day it is. I just lug them around.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  I guess he's solving the problem. He's solved the problem.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  Oh dude.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  It's a little bit like how I packed it going out. Like how I packed it going out tours, I bring seven days worth of clothes because I can't. I'm like, I don't know what's happening tomorrow. So I'll bring everything.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. Just bring everything I might need in any conditions. Cricket whites.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  No undies. Don't worry about undies.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  I think I just took it for granted. I think I have just taken it for granted that at the school that I went to, and I guess probably mum and dad chose this school for a reason, but at the school I went to, it was, I'm so lucky that we could do media and drama.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Because if I went to a school without media and drama, I reckon I would have come out of school probably being fine socially. But I think I would have felt like a real failure.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  In terms of my, my intelligence, because I just didn't really click with the, with most of the other school subjects.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. I, I would love to ask you about, um, the narrative around teens, which you've sort of been talking about a little bit. But I, we were having lunch a couple of days ago with, um, some of the resilience project people because we're in the same office.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Just so, so now I deliberately didn't tell them Maggie was coming today because she wouldn't have got in here.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Everyone's such a big fan, it would have been just, we wouldn't have got her in here. So, yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Forget the selfies on the way out.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Um, and I was chatting with one of the incredible people there called Belinda. And, and what struck me was that this is the first time I think I've ever heard this, but she said, I'm sick of everyone saying how bad teens are. I love my teens. She's got teen kids. And she's like, they're the best. Yeah. They're a bit challenging at times. I get it's hard for some people and it's more extreme, but I love them. And I'm, she's like, I'm gonna do whatever I can to break this bullshit about teens being crap.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  How damaging is that teens are crap narrative?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Oh, they're so used to it. And that's exactly what that survey said, help me help my teen. It was just over and over again. We're so sick of being, you know, marginalized and made to feel we're all useless. And the boy narrative makes me even more annoyed. Because, you know, we keep seeing a small number of boys who are, you know, behaving badly and assume it's all boys. You know, there's a few, um, people in my circle who are also mums of boys, teen boys. And we, we're on to anything to correct the narrative because we've, we've had these boys in our homes who have been, who have brought. Endless amount of mates into my house. I've had so many boys come through my house. Look, they eat the whole fridge out some days accidentally and go, sorry, sorry, Maggie.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  Excellent impersonation.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Of any man.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  I, I just, yeah, I'm, I'm right with Belinda on this one because when a, when a teen can't communicate and can't, and looks grumpy and moody, it's, it's a lot to do with all the things happening to them. So we can't expect them to suddenly cheer up. And it's one of the things I think we oversell in, um, mental health, isn't it? That we're all supposed to be chirpy, chipper or calm all the time. That's rubbish. We all have moments and I think that's how do we approach them? And that's probably the reason I wrote, Help Me Help My Teen is, um, it, I give scripts on how you open the conversations. Cause if you don't know how to, you need to learn how to. So when they come in and you know, they failed the test, you don't go give them a lecture on why

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  they needed to study more. You go, oh mate, that sucks. Sucks eh? Oh, it's lousy when you fail something you want to pass, you know? Shall I get you a sandwich? Get the ice cream out? Right? It's this coming alongside. I think in the past it was you were above and you had all the power on the wisdom, the knowledge, which was also rubbish because previous teenagers were probably doing things around the edge. No one knew because they weren't there. And I think that's what I say again, when hard things happen, uh, our job's not to rescue or fix our teens. It's to make sure that we first don't just launch into anger, which is a natural reaction of every parent, is to cool our jets, to get a bit more information before we start the conversation.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Because so often, even if you find a vape in a bag and you go in and rip the hell out of your teen, whatever, might not be theirs. They might be having it in their bag because the dad found it in the other one and belted the hell out of the son. So he's, he's protecting him. He's got to get all the information. And then you go, okay, so here's the challenge. Let's find some good information. And then what, what is your plan? What's your plan A? What's your plan B? And how do I help you? Cause if you don't start dealing with the hard things. They're never gonna learn how to do it.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Hmm. You can so see the, how this evolves in a person and how like, you know, there are people who kind of like are constantly, I don't know, like they're living day to day on lots of little micro lies. And it's nothing that harmful, but I guess it's like if you've grown up in a place where you didn't feel like you could make mistakes. Or you felt like, you know, if you get really in trouble, you had to be really good, a good boy. And if you weren't a good boy, then you would get in trouble. I can kind of see how that kind of like develops into like, well, I need to be good for everyone.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's another line that boys tell me is one of the most painful to hear. And you'd think it wouldn't be.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  But it's when your parent says, I'm so disappointed in you. That one is like a really big knife, right? Because this is boy's self-worth. You've just validated that I'm worthless and useless and that I'm not enough and I've let you down. So when they muck up, there's a process that we do, right? We don't assume it was deliberate. We go, God, what were you trying to do when you broke the window? Right? But you still damage someone's property. So how are you going to make it right?

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  So how does that accountability, if we start younger and we don't tell them by about eight or nine, they have to start becoming accountable. And then we talk about, so what are you going to do next time? Cause they don't have any other way of making a different choice until we help them work out. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna make sure we're a bit further away from the window. And then we forgive and forget. You don't keep bringing it up. And if you keep that over and over again, you get a boy who's not only responsible for when he mucks up. He does tend to start thinking a little bit better about it. Then just how do I get away? How can I get out? How do I blame someone else? And how can I tell a lie in a fib and, you know, whatever.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's how we build that layer of character that, you know, you work on as well. Um, in, we want to build a boy who's got character inside him, gradually growing as his brain myelinates, which doesn't finish, of course. Well, it used to be about twenty seven, but apparently the more they've been online, it's slower. So it means about thirty now that they think the full malination of the average boy is.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  This is, this is full brain development.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, full brain development, yeah. Girls are around twenty two to twenty three. Yeah, because all those instant things are delaying the thought, the thinking capacity, because there's no deep thought anymore, because they just go straight on their phone or straight on to something else. So deep thought, which is, you know, part of the way, you know, your programs work, why I'm such a believer in rites of passage, where you go away and think about things deeply, about who you are and what sort of man you want to be. They're so fundamentally important because they, they've got it in them. But if someone doesn't bring it up to think about, it just stays dormant.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  I mean, this is a, um, when you think about the brain fully developing then, one of the reasons this is a very obvious problem is that by the time you're thirty, you're much more likely to be a parent. So you're much more likely to be parenting without a fully formed brain. And I mean, there are so many arguments against social media, everyone's aware of it. It's just become disgustingly addictive. But that is a, that's a really concerning one. Though in relationships, probably married, but well, a lot of people are married by then and we're doing it without all our brain.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  There is some good news though, because I found this out, that when a father becomes a father the first time, regardless of his age, uh, mother nature says, holy heck, we better grow a lot more brain cells for this baby to survive. So no matter when you have your first child, there's a massive growth spurt of.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Unbelievable.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Oh no, it's such good news.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  That's what it felt like, to be honest.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  Genuinely what it felt like.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  The head got bigger.

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  It's like Jason Bourne.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  No, that, wow, that's a real, that's, yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  And don't sleep for eight years and then they all get.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Destroyed and you're back to where you were.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  So do you keep getting smarter each kid you have?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Apparently it's the first that's the urgent one. Yeah, urgent.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  It sounds like, I mean, it's very clear that when you were parenting your boys when they were children, it was clearly a lot of like humour and play in the house that would probably come from you. And that, like, that's, that would be incredible. But like, a lot of people, a lot of parents I know, like, they don't, they're not playful or funny people. What if you don't have that in you?

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Well, I can tell you now that any parent who lightens up a bit will notice a definite shift in a home. So what's happened with kind of, you know, too much information is that parents want to be perfect. They don't want to get anything wrong. And, you know, when I first started appearing on radio in Perth, you know, I'd get a mum ring out and saying, so Maggie, how do I stop my two and a half year old having meltdowns? And I said, oh no, that's actually a sign they're developing beautifully. That's exactly what they're supposed to be doing right now.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Gosh, my kids are developing well.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Yes. No, seriously, they're supposed to do that because they're not able to get everything they want. And that's because their autonomy is growing and they haven't got the words and they've got an underdeveloped brain. And so well done. What? So they'll be so serious about everything. And so I think, I hope that's something I've brought to that, that if you lighten up at any point, just when everything's getting a bit hot, go on a monster chase around the house or be a dinosaur or, and you will shift. Because what we know, you can shift from cortisol, which is the stress hormone, over into the endorphins of laughter and lightness really quickly by what we do. And what's really beautiful now is if you can keep that lightness, your boys are more likely to feel safe coming to

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  you when they've really mucked up. Because you don't go into the, oh my God, it's catastrophic and this is serious and how could you think? And then that shuts everything down.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's not my episode to give advice, but I also think on the playfulness thing, I think watch the episode of Louis Octopus.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah. I think that is unbelievable. So like finding your way to play with kids.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Louis added so much lightness to families. And imagine, you know, he's just, no wonder he's been a big hit in America. That's all I'd say.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  I think I'm trying my absolute hardest to turn up to parenting with the biggest heart I can and try and meet their little hearts and big growing hearts.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  And I think I'm doing okay, but one of the problems with that is that I feel the guilt and shame of mistakes, I feel more because I've opened, I'm opening up to it.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  And I think I find myself, I mean, I don't think there's a day I can think of where when I'm lying in bed at the end of the day, no matter how many good things that have happened, I don't fixate on the mistake I made or feel guilty about myself as a parent and, and the job I'm doing.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, parental guilt is a massive thing today, isn't it really? Because in the past, we didn't actually have a lot of things to compare it to.

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  And we probably didn't have the information.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  No, that's so that overload, but also the sense that we are actually having less children. So we want to make sure they all work out well. And parents being super hard on themselves is, is just really a kind of normal thing nowadays. So the mental load on women has become extremely excessive because they will ruminate on everything they didn't do all day and last week and last year and five years' time. And so we've actually noticing a really increase in burnout in women particularly. So that the parent guilt bit, the very fact that you acknowledge that we mucked up, but I think you have to come back and land on what this research says. And that means you just have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  So the days that we aren't, that is actually normal humans raising little people who can be really annoying, messy, unpredictable, frightening, don't sleep. All of that is completely normal and there's no perfect in parenting, never has been and never will be. So we can always go and just pretend we've got guilt on our hands and go and give them a good wash with lots of shower gel and wash it down the drain hole because there's always tomorrow. And that's the thing, I think that we can drop the guilt when we know tomorrow, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can go better.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  It's a great point and to think that if I look at my day, did I do it well at least 30% of the time? Yeah, probably did. Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  It's such an excellent thing.

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  Definitely did.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Anyone on Tramalina is half hungover. Yeah, that definitely nailed it.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  I also parent not hungover too, so.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  It is my, it's my, cause I filmed it, I filmed it. I filmed him on the trampoline, jumping in a circle with five kids singing. Um, and I, I still, it's my, my kids' favourite video to watch, cause they can see the pain in his eyes.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  So those muck up moments, and that's what I, I share a lot of them because people think, oh, she must be amazing. I show this picture of these gorgeous handsome boys, you know, as men, and they go, wow, she did a great job. No, I didn't. Slam their fingers in car doors and says, what did you do that for? I forgot, got the wrong assembly, you know, I failed the worst thing you can do as a woman nowadays, and I forgot book week. I left one at the pool. Well, technically, I thought dad had him, dad thought I had him. And, and so no one does it perfect, right? And when we own up to those things, we all realise, hang on a minute. Yeah, that's why we kind of need the village to bring me kid home after you've forgotten them.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  Um, I, throughout this entire conversation, I have no doubt the majority of people out there are going, for example, with the roosters, veal lambs going, yep, that's my, my son's this, my son's that. And yep, I see my son in that teenage. I do feel like there might be a group of people going, I don't know. And where my son fits, and that's, I certainly put myself in that category, having an autistic child. Um, and I would expand that to, to say not just autistic, but neurodivergent kids. Um, but for me, that's, that's our situation. I'm thinking about our child going, I'm not, I actually don't know. And then because of that, I don't know if a lot of this stuff then applies to them, because I, it's been a, this is something I knew nothing about three and a half years ago. Now I know, I wouldn't say everything about it, but I know

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  a lot more about it. And I'm always, when I'm listening to parenting, um, experts or, or I'm always thinking, how does this apply to my child? So I'm just wondering, neurodiversity, more specifically for me, autism, but these things you've talked about today.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Ah, there, there's no question that temperament can play in that space. But in terms of neurodivergence, um, there is only one autistic child that came in your family that is like yours. So your job is to work out what works for your child. Hmm. Regardless of what everybody tells us. I think that's the, that's the thing, the same with boys as well, is that sometimes I find parents think, oh, I'll give them love how I like to get love, but that's not how they like to get love. So the languages of love can be really helpful at working out how to connect with any child. So my oldest isn't a hugger and I couldn't wait to get a baby I could hug the hell out of. And that was really hard for me. Even today, I'm lucky if I can, we take the piss out of each other about it. Can I get a sideways one?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Just give me half your shoulder.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  So I think that the additional challenge in, um, you know, kids who are wired differently and they're all wired in very special ways, is that our challenge is to see, um, how does the world turn up for them and how much can we influence the environment, still knowing that neurodivergent kids who feel safe and securely attached are going to do better anyway, no matter how hard that is. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it's interesting because I had, I worked with quite a lot of boys with ADHD. And, um, it's interesting because I listened to your episode on that, um, Hugh, and it was interesting because, um, you know how you weren't picked up and part of the reason, if I can explain this in a little way, is that we now know from polyvagal theory that

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  there's ways we cope when we regulate or not regulate. So the green zone means we really beautifully regulate, we can play and we can learn and we can do everything. And then the red zone's the one when we're fired up and that's the fight one, we know. But the blue zone is the, is the freeze one, the flight one. And the way you described yourself in classrooms is just you were in the free, and it looked like you're a really well behaved little lad. Hmm. You know, you're in an equally high state of stress as the ones in the red zone. And then, so at one point I had a parent, had a number of them message me saying, oh, they think I need to send my kid off in attentive ADHD, he's daydreaming, not trying and. And I got all fired up because we still sort of thought there's, you know, they're just cruising and they're fine. And so I did a quick video and that's one of, every

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  now and then when I do a rant, it goes crazy all over the world. That one did. And I was explaining that that is equally as highly distressful for that particular, and they were all boys, as it is for those who are acting out. And we need to work out how do we, you know, that environment becomes safer, but also that relationship needs to come safer. So I had this beautiful boy coming to me. He was definitely wired up ADHD. And yeah, very impulsive. Anyway, the deputy principal had called him up and shamed him in front of a group of his mates. And that's one of the things we keep saying, if you're gonna have to have a chat to a boy about something about their behaviour, do it one on one, you know, respectfully and quietly without anyone hearing it, because that doubles

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  their shame. And he got so fired up about it, he wrote graffiti on the deputy principal's car with his name.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  He was 14.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  They'll never find me.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Can you see again? And then I had to say, convince him he was still a decent human, you know, try to get through that.

• 1:16:56Speaker 03

  I, I think, one thing I find interesting as a parent is sometimes doing the inverted commas, wrong thing, gets the immediate result in the moment of what you want. So if it's to stop a behaviour or something like that. And so then I find myself getting pure, and I know it's wrong, but I find myself repeating that behaviour because it worked. Does that make sense?

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Give me a specific example, sorry.

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, so.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  Hey, let's go back to the biting thing. So being bitten, I yell really loudly. The child stops, looks upset, but their biting has at least stopped. Now, I know that was the wrong response, but now I've sort of conditioned myself into thinking that, oh, that worked. Like, there's a bit of my brain that goes, that worked. So in desperate times, I'll, I'll pull that one out, even though I don't want to. I find it really hard to avoid falling into the mistakes that are, that work. But there's such a, I guess there's such a cost long term of continuing to make the mistakes. I don't know what my question is.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  How do I, um, how do I?

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Am I alone in that?

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess, how do you?

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  How do you resist that?

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  How do you resist the, the easy old method that we were taught as kids?

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  So the imprints from our childhood, yeah, they're massive. And, um, you know, I, I think, you know, we all know that you guys are having moments of therapy, but sometimes those voices just appear out of anywhere. And it's usually when we are stressed and we are already in a semi dysregulated state. So the more calmer and grounded we are as humans, the less likely we go to those places. The first thing is to make sure you forgive yourself later. Cause this is exactly what's always happened. You know, I share, um, a story about when, um, cause I was hit a lot as a little girl. Cause I was the noisy, loud one who wouldn't do as she was told and all those sorts of things. Only two in our family were hit a lot and that was me and my older brother. He became an amazing emergency doctor. Anyway, um, and it was only mum.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Cause that was her family. That's exactly what happened. She came from a family of 12. And, um, and so at one point, um, my oldest was just pushing all my buttons at one point. And I swung back to hit him and I caught myself mid flight and went. Wow.

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  No, that's not who I'm gonna be. And that started a whole journey of therapy for me, exploring um, the reaction. So I think it's really important that there's a difference between responding and reacting. And my only tip to you is, um, as you feel yourself getting, you can see what's escalating. It's kind of going up the mountain. Um, is, is to really, that's when you take your steps. That's when I'm gonna take a few breaths, I'm gonna step outside for a moment and then I'll come back in. Because you will more lightly respond than react.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  And uh, it is just as simple as taking a few deep breaths. There were times, you know, the boys all know that when everything got really fired up, sometimes I'd go for a walk. Um, because it's, it's just what I do when I'm wired up. I don't talk about it, I go for a walk sometimes. And so if I'm only going for 10 minutes, they're all going, oh, wasn't too bad. If I'm gone for 20, they sweep the floor. If I'm gone for half an hour, they'll pack the dishwasher. And they reckon if I go longer than that, they'll paint the house.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  But I take responsibility for my hot feelings.

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  And I deal with them. And I've said to parents, you know, if you feel yourself getting poked in the bear bite, you know, you know, you're starting to escalate. Put your hand up and go, excuse me, hold on. I'm starting to get really, really stressed. I'm gonna take myself in my bedroom and I'm gonna calm myself down so I can come out in a moment. You go in, lock the door and you've kept some high quality fruit and nut chocolate in there. It's really good. Have, you have to scump some of that, take a few breaths, regroup. And then you'll come out to be the parent you really wanna be.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Now, what is your kid seeing? They're seeing you recognize that I'm getting dysregulated. And so you're actually modeling to them, it's normal for us to lose our schmick. But that I'm taking responsibility. Um, and that, and you know, that's the scariest part of, you know, parenting to realize that 92% of what your children will do is because of what you do, not what you say. Damn it. So it's the same thing. It's what are you modeling to your kids?

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  I had a terrible moment yesterday that I, I just would give anything to go back in time and change. Um, we had, I had told the kids I was gonna take the three of them to a cafe, which for me as a kid was just, we didn't do much, it would have been so exciting and I just thought they'd be so happy to do it. And all of a sudden they had decided. It was a terrible thing to do and I wouldn't stop fighting and then I couldn't. And there's some neurodiversity stuff making it extra challenging. And then I just said, the worst, I said the worst thing, I said, I, something had happened, I quite loudly yelled, what is wrong, I said, what is wrong with you guys?

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  It was, I felt like such an awful thing to say because I really was looking at our, neurodiverse child when I said it.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  And then I just, and then that child just looked so sad for the next couple of hours, like so sad and said quite a few times, because justice is a very big thing for this child, said, I actually wasn't doing anything. I was sitting on the couch and I was ready to go. Why did you look at me and say what's wrong with me? And just kept asking me over and over. And I said, I didn't, I didn't actually mean to. And they said, but you looked at me, you're looking at me. I didn't do anything wrong. It was the other two. And I just, I, I just, I don't know, it just, that thing of like, I just wish so much. I had put my hand up and said, I'm, I'll be back in a second.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Back in a second.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  And just come back in two minutes because it's like, like the thing I think of is the, um, like the guns they used to use back in the olden days where you had to like, stoke the, put the gunpowder in and spend ages loading it. And then by the time people like, no, I'm not that angry anymore.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  So my, my top tip to anyone who has boys is I didn't go to a coffee shop for a very long time.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's why you laugh, it's my first mistake.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  And the second thing is that if I needed the boys to be able to really be trustworthy to, to, to behave really well for 20 minutes, first thing I did was run the heck out of them, the gunk out of the motor, whether it was a park or make them ride bikes for 20 minutes, shoot hoops. They had to eat a sandwich in the bus on the way to the event. And I would get these immaculately well behaved boys for 20 minutes. But as soon as one of them starts wriggling, I'm out of there. Cause I know that's, they're not going to handle it beyond then. And they gradually get better at it. But you, you know, like sometimes we take them to environments they will not be okay in.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  And sometimes, um, that's where there's China. So don't take them into big department stores. Cause I like picking stuff up and it could drop and then you look really bad. Yeah. Thank God for click and collect is all I can say.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  I just feel like, I mean, there's so much, so many things to say right now as we sort of wrap up the episode, but.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Like, one of them is, keep talking.

• 1:23:55Speaker 00

  Well, as you just say, I feel, I'm feeling the urge to make this a 178 part series.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  And we still wouldn't cover everything. It's just, you're just incredible. Like, I would really, like, saying you're a national treasure is almost, like, if, like, it's an understatement. I just feel like, I don't know, for, for me personally, you've made me want to get home and be my boys. That's what I feel like doing right now, having spent time with you. And I'm sure everyone listening right now feels a similar, regardless of where they find themselves at the level of distress and stress for parenting. I feel like you, you, I don't know, you made me feel like I just want to be my boys at the moment. And that's a beautiful, that's impossible at the moment. So, well done.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  What's really, you know, because I was just this little girl that came from the farm. And then I was in Canada last year and I was at the Vancouver Aquarium, because I like otters. And.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Are the otters the ones that, ones that hold hands?

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And laid babies on them. Oh, man, they're so cute. Anyway, this lady's reached out with a Canadian accent and said, Maggie, Dan, I love you. You changed my life. I used to hate these little pups. Now I love them. She's got three little boys. And I held her hand and looked at her and we both burst into tears. And I thought, that happened. And then I've just come back from a trip to Romania where I spoke with, at a big parenting conference and I, with Dr. Dan Siegel, who's, I've been admiring for years. And I had all these Romanian women doing exactly the same thing because that's been translated into Romanian. And to realise that, you know, I could have done that from a little kid on the farm who was an annoying little rat who loved hanging out with a dad. It's, it's pretty mind blowing.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a bit unfair, though. Your brain developed when you were 22, 23.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  That's an advantage.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've got a bit of a head start, so.

• 1:25:42Speaker 03

  If you enjoyed this episode and want a little more, you might enjoy our subscriber-only apps, available on Patreon and Apple Podcasts. If you want a little more but don't want to pay any more, then you can join our newsletter at theimperfects.com.au. And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who help make this show. A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri Wurundjeri people, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.