The "Emptying Out" Protocol: Why Logic Fails During a Tantrum

If you are trying to use logic to negotiate with a screaming toddler or a defiant teenager, you are talking to a brick wall. Modern parents default to "problem-solving" mode, but when a child's nervous system is redlining and they are emotionally "filled up," rational thought completely shuts down. 

Dr. David S. Marcus, a clinical psychologist with 40 years of experience treating families under severe stress. He completely dismantles the way we handle family chaos and delivers a rigid, tactical framework for de-escalating your household.  The "Emptying Out" Process.

Before you can correct a behavior or offer advice, you must help the child "empty out". Dr. Marcus outlines the three distinct levels of emotional intensity parents must navigate:  The Here and Now: The immediate, logical trigger for the upset.  The History: The built-up frustration from past, similar events.  The "Tapped Into" Level: The deepest core wound, often tied to feeling unheard, unvalued, or inadequate.

If you skip these levels and try to force an immediate solution, you are actively bypassing the development of their emotional resilience. 

The Confidence Trap (Stop Correcting)
High-achieving parents accidentally crush their kids' self-esteem through constant "constructive criticism". When a child shows you a drawing, they are looking for your validation (the "gleam in your eye"), not advice on how to color strictly inside the lines. Dr. Marcus establishes a rigid boundary: Let the teachers teach. At home, your primary job is to act as a "Soothing Presence"—an anchor who remains calm when your child is falling apart. 

The Attention Baseline
A child's need to be attended to is biological, operating exactly like the human need for air. If you ignore negative behavior in hopes that it will extinguish itself, the emotional need does not disappear. It rapidly intensifies until the child forces you to engage through extreme, disruptive actions.  Stop relying on the flawed, inherited responses of the past.

Learn more about Dr. Marcus's upcoming book, Parent Rx: A Prescription for Raising Emotionally Healthy Children, at https://parentrx.org.

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Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And I was just talking to mom for a few minutes. And they were out in my waiting room right outside the door. And all of a sudden, we hear a scream. We both jump out of our chair and we go into the waiting room. And the nine-year-old's holding his arm like this, crying, and the seven-year-old's looking like, Oh boy, I'm in trouble now, you know. And of course, I'm observing this because I'm a psychologist, you know, I'm not going to interfere with her right there. And mom turns to them and say, What happened? And the nine-year-old says, He bit me. And he picks up his shirt, and there are teeth marks. I mean, he really got bit, you know. Now I feel really bad for the mom. She's here, she's in the psychologist's office, and her children are biting one another. She was mortified, you know. And she turns to the seven-year-old and said, I told you to use your words. And he'd looked at her in all innocence, right, and said, I don't know how. And I say, that's where we have to go. You know, we expect a five-year-old to throw a tantrum because they don't have the words, right? But if they never develop the words, I mean let's face it, a tantrum when you're 17, that could be jail time. I mean, you know, somewhere along the line, they have to learn to do this. You know? And, you know, this if you never attend your children and help them to develop this, and how we can talk about, um, they don't develop it. And there, for all their behavior, you know, it all you can do is then is adjust to their behavior, react to their behavior, because they don't have an emotional language. So you keep giving them consequences for bad behavior. And I can tell you, that doesn't work. You know, we can talk about the difference between punishment and discipline if you wish.

Meet Dr. David Marcus

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Welcome to the parent top. Today we are joined by Dr. David S. Marcus. With 40 years of experience in the clinical psychology, Dr. Marcus has treated countless families under severe stress and serves as a highly respected clinical and legal resource in child advocacy. He is here to help us unlock a new toolbox for parent-child communication. Dr. Marcus, thank you so much for being

Parenting the Way We Were Parented

SPEAKER_00 2:23

here. Let's start with the biggest trap parents fall into. You point out that most of us naturally default to the parenting techniques our own parents used, but you explicitly state that these do not apply to the issues families face today. So why is the iTunes, I turned out fine mentality actually dangerous for a child trying to foster a healthy self-image today?

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Well, that's that's a loaded question, of course, but that's fine. You know, that's why we're here, you know. Uh we do parent the way we were parented, oftentimes, good or ill, obviously, you know. But one of the things to understand is a process called internalization. What that this is sort of subliminal learning, it's it's learning below your level of awareness. And one of the things that we take in from our parents on this subliminal level is how we react to stress. Okay, so you can have learn anything from people like me or from your parents, but under severe stress, especially unanticipated stress, Ryan, and children are great at giving you some stress, we regress. We regress back to these internalized responses and how we react to stress. So if you have parents who yell in response to stress, that may be what you regress to, you see. Or actually, this is one of the reasons why children who are abused when they grow up, they'll swear what upside down and sideways. They'd never do to their children what happened to them. But they've internalized I aggress when I'm distressed. So when they regress, they'll hit. And they'll regret it later when they're not regressed. But now it gets passed on. And what I teach parents, well, tweak, I don't like to say teach, I tweak their parenting skills because that's what I'm doing, is how to become

Becoming a Soothing Presence

SPEAKER_02 4:28

what I have termed a soothing presence. It's a soothing presence in its simplest form, is someone who's okay when we're not okay. When you think about the people that you turn to or I turn to when we're upset or have something intense going on within us, they're invariably friends or family who are okay when we're not. And the term I use is we we can sure we can say get it off our chest, although emptying out, which is something we'll get to later, is different than simply catharsis or getting it off your chest. Okay, we have to, there's a different process here that we're talking about, all right? But I'm I'm jumping the gun a little bit here. But, you know, a soothing presence is some, you know, so we can get it from in here in front of a soothing presence and sort of sort of borrow their okayness for a while. And what we're gaining is what I call a safe emotional distance from it. So we can now look at it in their soothing presence so it, you know, we can calm down some because they're not getting upset, we're not gonna get upset. And now we can look at it more objectively and think about what to do about it. All right. Now, why do I use the term soothing presence rather than soothing person? And this gets to your initial question, which is it's this day and age, why is it so difficult? Because to be a soothing person, you have to have an environment that is soothing. You have to create an environment in the home where everybody feels safe, and we can speak about these things freely without worrying about an unpredictable reaction from mom or dad. But you know it's really tough to do that when you've got two incomes, you've got financial pressure, you've got job, you know, difficulties. If you don't react the same way to stress between you and your partner, that can be a problem as far as parenting style. You see? And so I call these things impingements, they impinge upon the soothing presence. And so oftentimes I'll talk to parents about lifestyle, you know, because hey, you know, you're running around like a chicken, you know, you you know, you have the computer and you've got the cell phone. You know, in the old days, you know, usually your father would come home from the office and leave the work, you know, at the office, right? Then he'd sit in his big comfortable chair and smoke a pipe and everything was great, you know. Well, we can't do that anymore. You know, we don't we don't have that freedom anymore. It's always impingements. You know, we have a deadline tomorrow, you know. It's a matter of exactly office, we have to do it now, you know. Oh, you know, multitasking, you know, emails, you know, constant emails or messages that we have to respond to. We have no personal space like we used to have. You know, other problems are obvious. The children are, you know, the electronic babysitter is is a problem, you know. And the reason we have, you know, kids can't just go play on the street anymore. You have to have planned activities. Things are just very different than they were. You know, I'm an old man, you know. I mean, when I was growing up, you could go out on the street. We just ride our bikes, and it was safe because it was always a parent at home. We could always duck into somebody's house, but that's not the case anymore. It's just not the case anymore. So, you know, young teenage girls are so inundated with cyberbullying and all the all the picking on that that happens and house, and they're so fragile at that age that it it mortifies them. This is a true problem, you know, because you know, social media, you can say anything and get away with it. You know, in the old days, if somebody insulted you, you got into a fight. You know, you know, you found out, hey, you can't just do that and think you can get away with it. Well, now, you know, and it's some of the things they say are terrible. Anyway, those are some of the problems that we face. And I I I noticed in your description, because again, I I I've got your description right in front of me here. Okay, Brian. You talk about family chaos. Yes. Well, that's that's true. I don't know if you're familiar with the Bowen family systems theory, okay? Doesn't matter. He came up with this theory about how families interact. And the best analogy I can give you is the ping pong balls in a lottery machine. They're always bouncing off one another. And that's what happens in a family. There's even a there's even a numerical way of doing this. Let's say you have five people in your family, two adults and three children. Well, it's called a factorial, which basically means this five times four times three times two times one. I don't know what it is up to, but that's what's going on at all times. What affects dad, it's gonna affect mom, which is gonna affect the kids to come back to dad and go to brother, and then you know, and this is go, this dynamic is going on all the time. That's chaos. And when you add external chaos, like, you know, I'm gonna have a job tomorrow, the uncertainty of this, that, or the other, it's pretty tough to be a soothing presence. And yet that's what you're trying to achieve because there's so much that you can achieve as far as helping your children to grow up and be resilient if you're okay yourself. I tell parents the biggest gift you can give yourself is to be okay yourself. Biggest gift you can give your kids, excuse me, is to be okay yourself. Now that doesn't mean you do 10 days in Acapulco and give them 50 bucks for pizza, you know what I mean? But it does mean you've got to be able to come home and be present, be attend to your children, you know, be how do you develop an emotional language? You have to attend to your children. Children aren't born with an emotional language. You can have the brightest child in the world, they may not have an emotional language, okay? How do you develop it? By attending to them. And you know, we can talk about how to do that, but how many times have you heard a parent turn to their child and say, use your words, don't hit your brother, use your words, right? You've heard that, I'm sure. Uh-huh. You're you're a parent yourself.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

I am, yeah. I have two toddlers, and that's really the reason I'm doing this, is because I'm trying to become a better parent, but also help other people going through the chaos of what I've, you know, been going through and am going through currently.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

So sure. We, you know, I I actually see children down for the age of three because I try to help children to develop this, you know, parents to help their children to develop resilience. Okay, and we can talk about what that actually means. That word's tossed around a lot these days. Resilience, resilience, resilience. What is it? It sounds great, but what does it mean? So, to get back on point here, you know, we have to think about the steps that we take in helping our children to learn how to use their words. I had two brothers, I was seeing seven and nine. I always tell this story, I hope you don't mind. And I had just seen them. And I was just talking to mom for a few minutes, and they were out in my waiting room right outside the door. And all of a sudden, we hear a scream. We both jump out of our chair and we go in into the waiting room, and the nine-year-old's holding his arm like this, crying, and the seven-year-old's looking like, Oh boy, I'm in trouble now, you know. And of course, I'm observing this because I'm a psychologist, you know, I'm not going to interfere with her right there. And mom turns to them and says, What happened? And the nine-year-old says, He bit me. And he picks up his shirt, and there are teeth marks. I mean, he really got bit, you know. Now I feel really bad for the mom. I mean, she's here, she's in the psychologist's office, and her children are biting one another. She was mortified, you know. And she turns to the seven-year-old and said, I told you to use your words. And he looked at her in all innocence, right, and said, I don't know how. And I say, that's where we have to go. You know, we expect a five-year-old to throw a tantrum because they don't have the words, right? But if they never develop the words, I mean, let's face it, a tantrum when you're 17, that could be jail time. I mean, you know, somewhere along the line, they have to learn to do this. You know? And, you know, this if you never attend your children and help them to develop this, and how we can talk about, um, they don't develop it. And there for all their behavior, you know, it all you can do is then is adjust to their behavior, react to their behavior, because they don't have an emotional language. So you keep giving them consequences for bad behavior. And I can tell you that doesn't work. You know, we can talk about the difference between punishment and discipline if you wish.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

And I wanted to talk also being filled up. You you talk about those concepts and why it's wrong for us to kind of just jump in and try to fix problems or tantrums or whatever you have it. You want to touch on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Absolutely. I mean, this is the soothing presence and the filled up phenomenon and the emptying out process are really the basis of the book I've written, which is called Parent Prescription, Parent RX. And uh, which is in the process of being sold right now to take the truth, you know. So I'm hoping that it'll be out soon. Let's talk about being filled up. Now, these are my own terms, so you know, I'm not basing it on some research thing. It's 40 years of experience, all right. That's what it is. I don't want anybody to think that I'm not scientific. I see psychology, psychotherapy as both a science and an art, to tell

Being Filled Up & The Emptying Out Process

SPEAKER_02 15:14

you the truth. What do I mean by being filled up? And this is how I explain it to Paris. We have an emotional space within us, and typically we point to our chest when we think about our emotions, but obviously they're associations in our mind. And as long as as much as we'd like to think how logical we are, most of the associations in our mind are emotional. Okay, so they don't follow logic. That's what they meant. I mean, if emotions followed logic, I'd be unemployed there, right? I mean, there would be no need for somebody like me. But okay, what do you mean by filled up? This space gets filled up with intense emotion. It's easy to see intense anger, apprehension, frustration. In fact, in little children, it can be intense glee at getting the little new toy. It's the intensity of the emotion that fills us up. And we know when we're filled up. This is not this is not the secret. We have phrases that describe it. Like I've had it up to here. The straw that broke the camel's back, right? We know it. We feel it. And how do we feel when we're filled up? Well, it feels intense, it feels uncomfortable. Sometimes it can even be frightening because we don't understand why we're so filled up. You know, not all emotions can be explained with words. In fact, that's one of the things I help individuals with is find words for some of these things. The reason they don't have words is because they never developed emotional language. Or it happened, you know, the experiences that are causing these feelings were pre-verbal. You see what I mean? So, anyway, that's a tangent, puppy. You know, that's therapy, but okay. What happens? Well, we don't like it. We don't like being filled up. So, what do we do? We focus inwardly on how we're feeling and try to do something about it. We may get it off our chip with a soothing presence if we have one. We may journal. We may watch TV and you know, divert ourselves, go for a run to get rid of the energy. You know, there's a hundred ways we can do this. Maybe everybody has their own way. But the point I'm trying to make, excuse me, is that we're focused inwardly. So by definition, we are not focused outwardly on what people are saying to us. You when somebody's really filled up, you can give the most logical explanation for why they shouldn't feel that way. And you know what you should do about it, and they don't hear it. And people are sitting there scratching their heads going, why don't they get this? They're filled up, they're focused inwardly. You think the best example I can give you ever hear the phrase a blinding rage?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Blind? Okay. That's accurate. When somebody's that filled up with anger, they don't hear a word you say. Maybe they hear that 5% or your tone of voice that somehow supports their rage, and they get even angrier. All right. And the person who's trying to talk to me says, I can't talk to you. It's like talking to a wall. That's another phrase that we hear a lot. And it's true. At that point, you are talking to a wall. So the obvious implication is they have to be emptied out before they can even hear what you have to say. Okay. So people need to understand it's actually the emptying out process we're going to get to because there's actually three levels of emotional intensity that fill us up. This is where it's different than catharsis or just getting it off your chest. Okay. I'm going to explain that to you now, all right? The emptying out process. Excuse me. I got it in changing. But anyway, that one helped.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, yeah. No, no worries. You're good.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

You're good.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Anyway. I'll show you where the logic breaks down here. This is what I'm getting at.

The Three Levels of Emotional Intensity

SPEAKER_02 19:32

There's three levels of emotional intensity, and only one of them is obvious. The obvious one is the here and now. Now, I use this simple example when I explain this. You need to take out the garbage. Now, we have lots of logical words that we can use to explain why you should take out the garbage. It's your chore. Garbage is coming tomorrow. It's getting kind of rife. You know, we need to easy. The next deeper level is the history level. These are my terms. History level. This is the sixth time I've asked you to take out the garbage and you haven't done it. See? Now obviously how a person asks after the sixth time is going to be a lot more intense than the first time. But if you were a stranger and didn't know this history, you might turn to that person and go, why are you getting so upset? So you didn't take out the garbage. You know, it's not a big deal. Things break down. The deepest level is called the tapped-in-to level. The fact that you didn't take out the garbage at first, you know, answer six times means you don't listen to me. I hate when people don't listen to me. You know, my parents wouldn't listen to me, and they always sided with my brother, and I hated that. This one can go anywhere. In the person's history, you know, emotional perceptions. All three levels have to be emptied out. The first one's easy. That's logical. You know, when somebody's emptying out on the second level, the history level, when they say things like, you never do this or you always do that. Now they're referring to previous events. See? The deepest level is when you do that, it makes me feel X, Y, and Z. And this is what it reminds me of. Now, what happens, and this is what gets in the way, and I'll be stereotypical. Men are problem solvers.

unknown 21:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

They don't do this. They hear the problem and they want to cut to the chase. They say, okay, hey, I've been through it myself. This is what I went through. This is what I did, this is what you should do. Now think about that as an adult. If you turned to somebody and you had something that you really needed to talk over, talk through. And they cut in on you and said, Oh, wait a minute. I went through it too, but if they were a good friend, you might say, just hear me out. If it wasn't a good friend, you say, Thank you, and go find a good friend. You see what I'm saying? Well, the difference here is children are not about the gainsay you. They'll just sit there and nod their head. Why? Because children are geared to please their parents. This is before the tweens, you know. They're geared to please their parents. And so they're not going to, do you really expect your six-year-old to turn to you as dad, Ryan, and say, hey, dad, will you just shut up and listen to me?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I hope not. Exactly, you know.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

But they're not going to do that because you're dad.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So they'll, uh-huh, uh-huh. And you explain it away, and they're quiet now, and you figure, okay, we got that nailed, right? Three days later, something similar happens and they're just as upset. I thought we talked about this. No, you didn't do it. You didn't empty them out, they didn't hear you. They have didn't help them to develop the emotional words to share with you. And you also didn't help them work it out by giving them some safe emotional distance from it. If you want a definition of resilience, Brian, I'm just giving it to you. When a child with a soothing presence can deal with the emotions and come to a place where they can now think about what to do about a situation. Right? Because now they're emptied out. Parents can make suggestions at that point, but not before. You know, that's the point. That's the process. Well, that's what we call resilience. When a child can work through their own experience, emotional experiences, and come out well at the other end, they're resilient. And you know, when they grow up, what that becomes, that process is called stress tolerance. See what I'm getting at here? Yes. This is definitely part of a child's maturation. You know, really is child, children need to be attended to. Notice I'm not using the word attention. Because that connotes negative attention. Here's the irony of this situation.

Attending to Your Children

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Children have a need to be attended to. Develop emotional language, to develop self-esteem, to develop resilience, you know, all these things. Right? Well, it's a need. It's not something they want. It's a need. And I have to explain to parents, and I'll explain it to your listening audience as well, that there's a difference between something that you need and something that you want. For instance, you may want a new car. But gee, I don't have the money right now. I've got two toddlers and I need a van. But gee, you know, vans are expensive. I don't know what your situation is, but you you get the point.

unknown 25:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

So I'll make the car last a little longer. Something that you need is like basic needs: air, food, and water. Now, what happens to the need for air if you don't have air for three minutes? Does it go away? Does it? Yeah, no. What happens to it? What happens to that need?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

I mean, it gets higher, right? Because you obviously need it to live. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

It gets more and more intense until all you can think about is getting that next breath of air. Or in two days, that next drink of water. You see what I'm getting at? And the reason I use this analogy is because emotional needs work the same way. If a child doesn't get attended to by just approaching their parents, you know, parents attending to them, that need intensifies. And they'll give more visible behavior, maybe some more obnoxious behavior, because they need you to attend to them. And there's the irony because we want to extinguish that obnoxious behavior. So I'm going to ignore it. Give them a consequence ignore it because I don't want to reinforce that behavior. Guess what happens to the knee? Keeps intensifying. And the child eventually will get your to attend to them. It may be negatively, but is still getting attended to.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, absolutely. And I do. And I'm nodding and smiling because you're you're describing the daily life of me because dealing with toddler tantrums, and I have a also a four-year-old who is on the spectrum. So just the behaviors that you're describing is exactly what I'm up against. And I'm sure other parents out there can relate. And I don't handle it the best way always. And I've learned quite a bit on based on this conversation about how to go about that and how to think at a deeper level about what kids really are saying and what they really need. And I'll be honest, I have a lot to reflect on just from this conversation because, like, I've been going about it a lot of things the wrong way. And I think that this is definitely a wake-up call for me and hopefully others out there.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

This is the reason I even wrote the book is because the parents that I was seeing said, Dr. Marcus, please write this stuff down. It's really helpful and it makes sense. That's the thing I hear the most. This makes sense. It's not just be a great dad. What does that mean? What does it mean to try to develop emotional language or resilience? You know, these are all just terms. How do you do it? And that's what the book goes through. In fact, in the book, I give examples a lot. Parent says, child says, parent says, child says, and I annotated. This is what you're accomplishing. This is what you you see what I mean? Because people can, so many parents turn to me and say, Dr. Marcus, I wish I had you in my ear on Thursday night because my son was having a rich up. I can't do that. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I I could try to call you. I mean, maybe, maybe I could get that, because I feel like I could need you in my ear too at this point.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Well, you know, I do give the parents that I see and and the teenagers my social number. And they'd say, oh, don't do that. Most people don't. They, you know, teenagers come. I tell parents, I am not the uh the the person who's gonna change things. Okay. I'm gonna, you are. I'm once a week, once every two weeks, you know, for an hour, that's not gonna make the difference. But I can, you know, tweak your parenting skills, and you can try these things out and see if they help and you know reduce the intensity and frequency of the misbehavior, you know, then all this type of thing, and you'll tell me. So I tell parents the idea of coming to see me is to get rid of me. You know, once you have the skills and you have access to your child's emotions and their emotional perceptions, you don't need me to tell you what their emotional perceptions are and why they're doing what they're doing. You know, and access is influence. You're done. Come back to me when your seven-year-old is is spiking their hair and wants to, you know, get tattoos, you know. Then, you know, come on back to me. That's that's that's something new again, okay? And we laugh, but actually that happens sometimes. This is the emptying out, how you do the emptying out process though. Verbiage, how you frame things is very, very important as far as the emptying out process. You know, first thing is you've got to mirror. Now, I'm not, you know, you're mirroring is nothing new, but I'm talking about strict mirroring. You don't add anything, you don't put a spin on it, you don't put your own opinion in, you don't say, gee, this I went through this too. And none of that. You keep eye contacting. This is what I hear you're saying is that close. With young children, you might have to take a guess because they don't have the language yet. But again, you know, we're getting into specifics. I don't think we're gonna have time to do in a podcast like this, okay? But there's very specific ways of doing it with children who need an emotional language, with no uh latency age children who are more concerned with stuff than with relationships. Uh tweens going into teens to hold a can of worms. How do you do this? How you you soothe an instant by holding them and cruing to them. With older children, you try to make up, you know, words, actually a common emotional language where it's the words that they say have the same meaning to you and to them. All right. And that's a skill, too. And then with a teenager, you know, we say you can't tell me what to do, it's another another approach altogether. All right. So now how to soothe that is different, you know. And again, we're not gonna get through all this stuff here, right? I mean, we're talking, you know, three hours, four hours worth of going through each level of child development. Where can my viewers go to find your resources? www.parentrx. One word, parentrx, like parent prescription.org. Parentrx.org. And I have a whole list of the podcasts. You know, I've done different podcasts and talked about different parts of this, you know, during the podcast. Uh, how to deal with narcissistic parents, you know, high conflict, you know, even children on the spectrum, although that's not my area of specialization, you know, the ADHD, I mean, 40 years of experience. I've sort of seen it all. And then there's also the legal part where I've done a lot of custody work and in reintegration therapy, and you know, which is actually the hardest work I've done. You know, in a family that is totally polarized, how do you get them to be a family again?

SPEAKER_00 32:17

You know, these a lot of these are when the situation's not ideal, you know, you got a divorce, you got parents that are each other, or you know, just a bad upbringing in general. Like, how does that even play into what we're talking about?

SPEAKER_02 32:32

This is why every case is everybody's emotional experiences are different. Everybody's internalized responses are different. Everybody have, you know, people come to me when they've talked to counselors, they've talked to you know friends, and you know, about their kids or about their relationship with each other, and and nothing has seemed to work. They don't come to me first, you know. And so I used to ask them why are you coming to see me? But now I've changed that question to why are you coming to see me at this particular time? Because there's always timing involved, you know. And this is I've got to be sensitized to the timing because I could easily triple wire that makes them want to run away. All the parents who come to me at that point, they tried everything they're up to up to hear, they don't know what to do. The last thing they want to hear and what they're afraid to hear is Dr. Marcus is gonna turn to them and go, Look, oh, you're really messed up. Of course, I'm not gonna say that. My phrase is we're gonna tweak your parenting skills, and you'll tell me if it's helpful. So I'm in I'm empowering them, I'm recruiting them. We're gonna work on this together because it's true. And you've got the skills and you see the behavior diminishing. Bye. You know, there you go. You know, you've done it. If you need a brush up, you'll contact me, you know, whatever it may be. Or you're again, you enter into the tweens of the teens, and all of a sudden your child is like, you know, who is this child? You know. Again, we'll talk about it. This is what this is what you're dealing with now. So, and people do come back. Sometimes I wonder if they're coming back because it didn't work the first time, or they're coming back because they like what I did. But, you know, I you know, I I sit there and go, okay, okay, let's think about it. You know, well, I'll I'll tell you, I've had to give teacher conferences, and the teachers, teachers are messing

Building Confidence & Self-Esteem

SPEAKER_02 34:38

up too. I've given teacher conferences, you know, and they shake their heads because of this. Teachers as parents try to teach their own children. Right? And they'll say things like if the child makes a drawing, oh that's great, but maybe we could try to keep it within the lines the next time. Maybe, you know, they try to teach. Well, this is part of self-esteem. The child shows you the drawing because they want you to go, gee, that's great, and stick it on the refrigerator. And they internalize, you know, the finger painting, the first trophy, the first report card, you know, whatever it might be, gee, that's great. And you, you know, put it on the shelf. What they're looking for is the gleam in your eye. They internalize that through internalization, and that becomes you know, your sense of confidence. That's the beginning of confidence. But if you create, you know, you correct everything, the message they get, even though it's not intended, is it's not good enough.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

That brings you back to my childhood. I'm sorry, but I just had to interject. That brings it back to my childhood because I still feel like that a lot of times in my life, I'm not good enough. And the exact situation you're describing, I I creamed because sometimes I I do that with my daughter, and I'm like, this is awesome, but you know, there's always that like but and maybe I don't want to right. I don't want to, I don't want to do that because I've, you know, I'm a grown man, you know, almost 40 at this point, and I still have those confidence issues. And I think a lot of it was because I don't I didn't feel good enough, and there's a lot of insecurities, you know, about myself. And I think that you know, a lot of those were developed, like you said, at the early stage. And I don't want to do that for my kids. Like I don't that's this is why I'm doing this. I don't want to leave them with the baggage I have.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Well, this is why I help parents understand the their internalized responses. You see what I mean? Like you're just realizing this. Even though you would know you're aware of it, you still end up doing it because it's an automatic response, because it's that gets in there below your level of awareness.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Right. It just comes out. It's almost like we're uh we go at it like an a we're trying to help, we're trying to be constructive and give credit, you know, feedback, right? Like, oh, this is great, but but but yeah, like you said, we're it's actually the opposite, right? We're we're tearing them down in a sense.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Well, you don't mean to. Your intention is good, but I tell teachers, let your kids' teachers teach them. You're you're a mom, you're dad. And that's when that's when you know I tell them, hey, I explain your messages, you're not good enough. They all go like this. Oh, you're right. I shouldn't be doing that. Even though they're teachers and their intention is good. You see, it just I see the kids, I get the emotional perceptions, and I say, guess what? This is this is what how they feel about themselves.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Oh wow. Lots to reflect on, lots to reflect on here. I think parents, teachers, and everyone dealing with kids on a daily basis here.