Speaker 1:
Hi there, and welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles Podcast. I'm Susan Stiffelman, I'm your host. I'm glad that you're here. Today I'm gonna be speaking with Dr. Aliza Pressman and we're gonna talk about the five principles of Parenting. She's just written a wonderful book called The Five Principles of Parenting, your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans, and I'm really excited to chat with her about it. First, just a couple of things. I wanna make sure that you are connected with us in all ways possible for your parenting support, and we are at susanstiffelman.com. You can get the free newsletter, lots of tips and strategies, all the input and information about special classes and memberships and opportunities to learn and grow together as a parent. So that's available to you.

This podcast, as you'll know, if you have visited the podcast page or wherever you listen, you'll see a list of episodes with guests including Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Mona Delahooke, Janet Lansbury, Maggie Dent, Dr. Tina Bryson, Byron Katie, so many wonderful people. It's just been a joy and pleasure for me over the course of these many years to collaborate with really wise, smart, intelligent, caring, compassionate people who are doing good work in the world. And they often show up here. So check out all the other episodes as well.

I wanted to just introduce my guest today by saying that we have connected through Dr. Tina Bryson. Dr. Aliza Pressman is a wonderful psychologist and has so many great insights and tips and ideas to share. Mostly our conversation explored this idea of how we raise a good human being. And the good, the word good can be a little bit sketchy because, you know, sometimes we read different meaning into what it means to be good, but I think it's really just about the kind of person that you would wanna hang around with, the kind of person that you would trust and feel you could rely on.

Speaker 1:
How do we raise those kind of children who become the future leaders of our world and, and potential rescuers of our, our gentle and beautiful fragile planet. So it's big work that we do as parents. And in this conversation with, with Elisa Pressman, you're gonna hear us discussing that in some specificity as we look at how we help kids grow into those caring, kind, compassionate adults. Have a listen and then we'll come back for the wrap up. Hi Elisa. Boy oh boy. Are we gonna have fun? I'm so happy you're here with me. I'm

Speaker 2:
So happy to be here with you. So

Speaker 1:
I'll start by giving your bio. Oh, Dr. Elisa Pressman is a developmental psychol psychologist with nearly two decades of experience working with families and healthcare providers who care for them. Alisa's an assistant clinical professor in the division of Behavioral Health Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she's the co-founding director of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center. Ali is also host of the HI podcast, raising Good Humans and holds a teaching certificate in mindfulness and meditation from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley Elisa's, the mother of two teenagers. Welcome.

Speaker 2:
Thank you.

Speaker 1:
We've had so much fun chatting, you know, beforehand. It's like, oh, a new friend and I know really, really happy about it. So you've got this amazing book title for the book that's coming out in January. I wanna talk about it. It's called The Five Principles of Parenting, your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans and . Yay. I mean, that is all we're doing all day. Every

Speaker 2:
No, we're doing.

Speaker 1:
Yeah.

Speaker 2:
So

Speaker 1:
I, yeah,

Speaker 2:
I made it a sim I made it a simple title. ,

Speaker 1:
Well, it sums it up, you know, we were just talking before we hit record about the state of the world and the, the things going on in the world. And all I ever hear, you know, in my head is every person who's perpetrating some awful thing was a child. And if we can raise a generation of kids who aren't hurting, who are, who feel secure, safe, loved by good enough parents, then you know, the whole trajectory of where we're headed in as a planet really changes. So you kind of came up with five guiding principles that you distilled a lot of your experience down to in terms of what you feel are the kind of elemental parts of raising a good human. What are those?

Speaker 2:
Okay, so the five principles that I felt like were in our control, teachable and really, really matter are relationship, reflection, regulation, rules and repair.

Speaker 2:
And I did ours 'cause it's easier to remember and yep. To me a pathway to the Big R, which is resilience. But I definitely did not invent these, there's core constructs in this field and I just, I really focused on those because we know from the science that they are so highly linked with resilience for both parent and child. But they're also really doable and they only have to be more often than not. And the good enough that you mentioned earlier, like I think we all feel so clear and passionate about the fact that this is just about good enough and not a bit more, and I'd even go as far as saying I tried to, even, I, I'm not sure this comes across, I tried to make a chapter called Perfect Parenting is the Enemy of Perfect Parenting, but it was too hard for the publishers to grasp.

Speaker 2:
Not 'cause they don't under, but because they didn't understand what I meant. So I didn't cl I didn't make it clear enough. So we changed it to good, you know, perfect parenting is the enemy of good parenting. Yeah. But what I meant was, in the effort to be perfect, you're going to undermine what would be more perfect, which is a flawed parent who prepares and shows their children that like you are not expected to be perfect. That would be such a burden. So that's why I really like when I wrote this book, I, I keep drilling home in it. And I hope that, you know, for everybody, for, for anybody looking for support and guidance that we all highlight this is about more often than not and good enough. And that the perfect and the minutia is so bad for us and it's not even good for our kids. So it's not like, like my only way into convincing parents of this, I think is to say that it's actually worse for your kids. 'cause We so want to do right by our children. So I want people to mess up and be, you know, imperfect on the reg for their kids .

Speaker 1:
And, and I love that because, you know, in my work I also talk about the good enough idea and the value, which I think we're we're both saying exactly the same thing. The value of tripping over ourselves, stumbling, losing our way, and then repairing and modeling for our children. This is what it is to be human. We all come with it. We've downloaded our own inadequacies, insecurities, temperament, challenges, weird quirky characteristics and as well as the beautiful ones. And we're bound to kind of fall over from time to time, maybe some more than others. And being able to come to our child and say, you know, that version of me that showed up this morning when we're trying to get out the door? Ugh, I can't imagine that that was not your favorite version of mom. And I just wanna apologize, you know, and, and there's no, but I only did that because you were

Speaker 2:
Right.

Speaker 1:
Being helpful. You just own it. And now you've modeled one of the most important relationship skills, which is, you know, essential to, to true vulnerability and intimacy. It's like, here's me the true version of me and I'm willing to be this connected with you. And I know you say that relationship is one of those five elements. Is that sort of what you had in mind in terms of the creating authentic Exactly. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2:
That's exactly right. And I think it's a circle. 'cause I think you start with the connection and the relationship and the attunement and finding ways to really see your child. And you're totally right. This is not like just for kids and parents, this is people. But it's like the Trojan horse way in is through our children because we care more about that than anything. But but the reflection part, like you said about we all come with our own stuff, we have to come to terms with that stuff and we have to kind of notice what is impacting our today in this moment that is actually about yesterday or 35 years ago. And then also it helps us reflect like, what do we really want in our relationship with our children? And in order to know that you have to unpack your relationship that you had with your parent or caregiver Yeah.

Speaker 2:
And your early experiences and what you don't want to repeat. And then I think it's also reflection is also about helping our kids in real time go through that process. What was that really about? What do you think happened there? Paying attention so that they don't have to redo it later. That it, so it's part of the, the language that we speak in the household now. Yeah. and then reflection is the, also the path to self-regulation. Because when you take that moment, I can't remember the exact quote, but you'll know this, the, the Rolo may that sometimes gets attributed to other people. But it's about this finding the space between chaos and rigidity and the between that is where freedom, where we find freedom. Nice. And that breath is the easiest way to find it. It's just like a, a quick conversation with your nervous system so that you can have the freedom to be the parent that you actually intentionally want to be instead of whatever your nervous system is guiding you to 'cause it thinks that there's emergency.

Speaker 2:
Right. So I really like, I really feel like when you are atuned and you have that relationship and then you reflect and then you can self-regulate and co-regulate with your baby. Yeah. Child, whatever human you're around that co-regulation so they can borrow your nervous system. Yes. with a little bit more mature and a little bit more built. And then you can get to the rules. Like, I don't think we can get to these rules that we have the boundaries and the limit setting without the relationship and the reflection and the regulation. And then rules are meaningful and they're still very important. Like I think in the conversation right now, I was talking to Tina Payne Breen about this a lot. I think we have this misunderstanding about sensitivity of care that somehow you're also responsible to make sure that your children don't feel the pushback or the frustration or the sadness from your boundaries and the rules that you see.

Speaker 2:
Right. But that's obviously not what it's meant to be because we all need that for our own safety and for emotional and physical safety to have rules and boundaries. And so once we can really understand that it, it's easier to look at a sweet little weld up eyeballs, sweet little weld up eyeballs that are just so upset and not change the limit that you had and feel the freedom that their emotions are not yours and that you can support them in their emotions without fixing them. Like I definitely grew up thinking that challenging feelings were an emergency that had to be dealt with immediately and fixed immediately. And I do not think that is ideal. , I

Speaker 2:
I know my parents were loving, they were like such loving parents, but they, I so much as felt like even a whisper of discomfort. They were like, how do we get this away , how do we fix this immediately? Because they couldn't tolerate it. And I, so I grew up from a long line of that. 'cause My grandparents were like that. They definitely didn't, they didn't think it was loving to be able to sit next to a child that was sad. Yeah. Or that was angry. And so I wanted to make sure that I got that part in there. The, the, that it's okay that we don't have to fix those things, but that we can hold boundaries and we can have appropriate limits and still be in beautiful relationships. Especially to be in beautiful relationships.

Speaker 1:
Well, you know, I'm just giggling inside because whenever I meet somebody who literally feels like, oh, am I saying that or are you saying that like , it's literally like it could, it's interchangeable. There's a, a sense with you and with others, but, and it's such a joy to have this conversation because it's, it, we can keep saying it. I think parents need to hear this from so many different people Yeah. In so many different ways to validate something that they probably do intuitively know, which is it is not our job to make sure that our children are never unhappy. In fact, the flip side of it is, it is our job to make sure that our children experience frustration and disappointment while they're in the presence of our loving care so that we can help them learn how to cope. And so I love that you're talking about this idea. Parents have a lot of confusion, especially conscious parents. Yeah. Rules. What do you mean rules? That's something from the fifties and let's just pinky swear right now Alisa to like change the association with the word rule rule AKA also known as a way to help a child feel safe and secure.

Speaker 2:
It's all about safety. That's the thing that's so frustrating is that I agree. And even when I included rules, I could tell that that was like, like somehow that was a rogue and controversial thing to say. And I was like, I promise that it's not . Great.

Speaker 2:
I promise that it's not, it just, if you were just, if your core principle was just rules that would of course be a problem.

Speaker 1:
Awesome.

Speaker 2:
But if your core principle was just attunement, it would not be ideal because it's not about safety and security at that point. So I think it's un it's been an unfair trend to parents to expect that we're supposed to let go of the rules part of this gig. It's like exhausting too because then parents are like, but I tried that, but then they were upset about it, so then I couldn't do it. And I'm like, wait, what happened? How did we get so extreme? And I think back to the chaos and rigidity is that like something happened in the translation of the trends where it's very boring to say, but like the middle is gone. The the place between the space where it's not that exciting sounding, but it is both re you know, the sensitivity and the boundaries and limits. Yeah. And it's not just the attunement and deliciousness and it's not just the, and that's so old. It's all, you know, like parenting styles and authoritative parenting. And you could say it in so many different ways, but for some reason it's gotten lost in translation too. Gentle or conscious. Yep. And, and it's mis it's either misinterpreted but also it's just like not clear. So I think we can be really clear and picky where that is like, that is safety and security for both parent and child. 'cause The chaoticness, is that a word? Chaos. The chaos of the chaoticness. We

Speaker 1:
Can use it.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. Let's pick a new word. The, the chaos of this idea that you can't have that set of rules is not fair to anybody. It's like a very unpleasant feeling for parent and child. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
I'm, I know we have to wrap up, but I'm so happy that we're wrapping up on that note because it's such an essential idea that I want people to sort of sit with this question that, you know, as you the listener are considering some of the things we're talking about, what comes up for you when you hear the word rules?

Speaker 2:
Yeah. Just,

Speaker 1:
Just start to notice. Do you have a reaction? Does it feel old fashioned

Speaker 1:
Reflect on it. Yeah. Like what? Because until we kind of clean up the, the internal dialogue, if we're in opposition to a, a applying a rule or you have a family meeting and say, you guys we're gonna set some rules if you can't use that word, which is fine, use limits and guidelines or totally.

Speaker 2:
I just needed an R word.

Speaker 1:
You just needed an R word. But the thing is, we do have to sometimes look inside ourself to see am I in conflict about applying this? I wholeheartedly now believe that the kindest and most compassionate parents are setting very clear boundaries and limits for their children and fearlessly standing in the loving presence of their kid, you know, in a loving way. Yes, sweetheart, I see it. This is not what you were hoping to hear. You desperately wanted to see the movie and that that is, you know, true love

Speaker 2:
And Yeah. And I'm not afraid of your feelings

Speaker 1:
And I'm not afraid of

Speaker 2:
Your feelings. I love you so much. I'm not afraid of your feelings. Yeah. Make repairs, which is, you know, the cycle. The final

Speaker 1: Step. The final step. So we've got relationship refle, sorry, relationship reflection, regulation, rules and repair. And the book again where you tell people the title 'cause Yes.

Speaker 2:
The five principles of parenting, your essential Guide to Raising good Humans.

Speaker 1:
We want more good humans. There's so many good humans and there's so many good humans kind of buried inside confused humans. Yeah. Or lonely humans or anxious humans. So I encourage people to get the book. I can't wait to get my copy. One is on the way. I understand.

Speaker 2:

Speaker 1:
We just

Speaker 2:
Gotta to each other so fast. I

Speaker 1:
Know, I'm so, so happy that we, we can do this together. And I just look forward to more fun and more overlap and more collaboration.

Speaker 2:
Me too, me too. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:
I hope you enjoyed our conversation. I know I did. And I love that we could explore this idea of rules and reframing our view of rules as actually beneficial to children. Not something that we have to hide from or shy away from. You know, there's always been these pendulum swings in parenting. There's the swing of the very authoritarian parent who's, who's sort of moniker is It's My Way or the Highway and I'm the parent. And don't ask why, and I'll give you something to cry about if you're crying. So that rigid sort of almost military approach, children should be seen and not heard. And then, you know, as things evolve, and I think what happened in some cases in the sixties in particular, we swing to the permissive, which is you sit down and you talk about every little thing and explain your decisions and negotiate everything with your kids and give in.

Speaker 1:
And as, as Elisa was saying, when she was a child and she even drifted in the neighborhood of being upset, her parents would want to make things right for her or better and avoid her experiencing any pain. So that permissive style isn't too much better than the authoritarian because it denies children of the chance to discover that they can cope with adversity, with frustration, with loss and disappointment. Rules are a way to create a sense of safety, consistency, predictability. You could call them boundaries, you could call them compassionate limits guidelines. But I hope that you got something out of that and encourage you to think about this idea, whether you call it rules. I think at one point Elisa said, well, she needed a word that started with an R to stay consistent with her five R's. But if you don't like the word rules that you just really feel into the gift that it is for your children.

Speaker 1:
When you say, this is where the line is, sweetheart and I so understand that you wish it was a little further out or that there was no line, and that you could have chocolate ice cream for dinner, or that you could watch that scary movie or stay up till 11, that we're willing to be present with that disappointment, understand it, but also say, and I'm sticking with my decision. So lots to think about as always. And I just wanna acknowledge you and appreciate you for showing up, for being part of our community, for learning and growing together. Again, please visit susanstiffelman.com and get in our network and stay connected. We have so many wonderful classes coming up and programs. We have our membership. I'm doing a class with Dr. Vanessa LaPointe on Dandelion and Orchid Children, which is gonna be so much fun. That's in December and in January with Dr. Gabor Mate.

So many things we're gonna talk about and cover, if you're not familiar with him, he's just a legend and a profoundly wise and interesting person and I'm really excited to do our our class together in January. So all that is available to you at susanstiffelman.com. And now let's just wrap up by putting your hand on your heart, appreciating and acknowledging yourself for showing up, for listening, for being committed to growing as a parent, breaking old patterns, choosing with intention, how you wanna be with your children and in retroactively in a way healing some of the perhaps difficult aspects of your own childhood. That's why we are here, that's why I'm here. It's my joy, my privilege, and my passion to do this work. So remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well, take care and I'll see you next time.