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Welcome to the Rebel Ninja Parent Series, the show for parents raising confident, resilient kids. Coach Andrew shares real talk and actionable tools to help your child build unstoppable confidence, a resilient mindset, and the social skills to thrive in any situation.
Coach Andrew (00:14)
Hello and welcome to another amazing episode. Thank you for being awesome. And it is a beautiful day here in San Diego. It's about 80 degrees. Pretty warm, but also pretty fantastic. Last episode we went over shyness. Four different types of shyness per se. And today is basically the opposite. What about the kids who aren't shy?
Maybe they don't seem to have low confidence, but they're still struggling with something. Specifically, today we're talking about people pleasing. Now, this episode's for you. If your child seems like really nice, so nice, agreeable, easygoing. They never cause drama. Some parents even describe this as a strength. Maybe you've noticed your kid give away their things, go along with a friend.
And give them what they want, say yes to almost everything. Or maybe your child has changed something about themselves. Maybe a new favorite color, an interest, a preference, so they can match a friend. And maybe you noticed it but brushed it off as a kid just being a kid. Maybe you've seen your kid laugh along with other kids when something hurtful was said to them.
And maybe you didn't quite catch the hurt that went underneath or caught it, but you just didn't know what to do with it. Sometimes kids give up something they clearly wanted, like going on the swings, keeping a toy, keeping a friend happy, and they just explain it as I just don't want to hurt their feelings. Maybe you've noticed some of these things about yourself.
Saying yes when you mean to say no and you're wondering maybe did my child learn this from me? So if you're a parent, this probably sounds like your kid is being sweet. But there may be more to the story.
So let's take a look at what is below the iceberg. And I meet maybe a dozen parents every week and or more. And what I always try to do is help parents move through the four levels of consciousness.
Level one is unconscious incompetence. You don't know what you don't know. Level two is conscious incompetence. Now you've learned what's below the iceberg. You you are more aware of like what to do. You'll have an easier time. Now there is conscious competence. You're seeing the progress. You're like, yes, finally, this is where this is really working. And then there is unconscious competence.
When you are just so good at something, or in other words, we just really want your child to get so good at being themselves authentically that they don't ever feel like they have to do any of these people pleasing ⁓ safety behaviors. Okay, more on that in just a minute. So let's take a look at what's below the iceberg. Sometimes what looks like kindness is actually fear wearing a nice costume, aka scarcity mindset.
What looks like flexibility is actually self-erasure. So when a story repeats over and over again, this becomes their new identity. What looks like, they're just easygoing is actually a child running a constant background calculation. If I say what I really want, will I lose this person? And that's coming from fear. And the laughing along when they're hurt moment, it's not resilience. It's a mask going up in real time.
People pleasing is a form of social anxiety. It just doesn't look like the anxiety that most parents expect, like the melting down, the visible fear. It just looks like a really agreeable kid. And that's exactly why it gets missed for years. In the last episode, we talked about social anxiety, but that was more so for introverts and how they stay quiet or they'll isolate themselves. Extroverts do the opposite. And so sometimes with extroverts,
kids that are a little bit more of like the life of the party, outgoing, the kind of kids who like they go to a single birthday party and they go, Hey, you know, I don't mind going to another party, you know, 'cause introverts go to one party like, I'm good, I'm tapped out. No thank you. I'm can we go home now? Right? So for the kids who are more outgoing, it doesn't really look like they lack confidence because they really don't. It's more so a self esteem problem than it is a confidence problem. The confidence problem is just very, very minimal in this kind of case.
So now let's I think a good question to ask now is so but why? Like where does this even come from? Does it come from me? Does it come from the house? The answer is no. Okay, so basically if a child feels that they only have one friend and they lose that friend, it feels awful. It feels terrible. Catastrophic.
And it basically just confirms like I think that maybe something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm not so likable. Maybe I'm not so lovable. Maybe I'm not so fun. And again, that has nothing to do with how loved they are at home. It's how their perception of being liked is outside of home. Now this is basically it's called a scarcity mindset. And this is the root of it all. Right.
Here's how I like to explain this to to kids, especially if they're a little bit younger, like four or five or six. I would say something a little bit like more relatable, like toys. If you had only one toy, your which one's your favorite toy? that plushie? Okay. Now, if I said you have to give that away, would you want to give it away? The usual answer is a a a nod from side to side.
That's a big no. I'm like, okay, that sounds fair. But what if you had a hundred of the exact same plushie or the exact same Lego? Would you give one away? ⁓ okay. Some kids say, Yeah. Some kids still say no. You know, it's like but I'm like, but but would it be easier to give it away? And the answer is usually yes. I'm like, and yeah, and that's the same thing with friends. If you had a hundred friends and we
One of them left you, how would you feel? The usual answer is kind of like a soft, it would like a soft bit of a yeah, it's kinda I wouldn't like it. And I'm like, Yeah, it's not nice to lose a good thing. What if you only had one friend and you lost that one friend? How would you feel? Bad, yeah, exactly. Right? So now I'll give you a a couple of another I have three metaphors I like to use. You can take
All of them. Now the toy one works really well if they are much younger, but if I say like maybe mature little kid, which in my head that's what I call them, but they're just basically more like seven, maybe even six, but seven, eight, nine, you know, the way that they communicate is like you can almost talk to them like a adult, basically. They're like goofy little adul adults.
In that case, I would say maybe something like, hey, you know, if you had a dollar and that one dollar could get yourself a new toy, and then someone just took it from you, how would you feel? Mm-hmm, not so great. But if you had a hundred and someone took one dollar from you, and you can still buy ninety nine toys, how would you feel? Yeah, not as bad. It's the same with having friends, you know? So basically that's
What I would say.
Another metaphor I will give you is a circus metaphor that I like to give. And it's like if you look at a circus performer hundreds of feet in the air, walking on a tightrope, no no, bicycling, no no, not even that. Unicycling. That's one wheel. If they fall off that string, they could fall and get really hurt. Maybe even die. Depending on how old the kid is, I probably don't use the word die.
but anyways, so but the point is how do they get so brave, so courageous to take a risk? It's because they have a safety net. They know that if they fall, they're gonna be okay.
You just need to know that if you fall, you're gonna be okay. So basically what I'm trying to say here is well, first I'm like sit this is called a scarcity mindset. You feel scared. Scarcity means you're scared that something bad will happen if you do the right thing. And however, when I explain it to ⁓ parents, what I just say is that their decisions are coming from fear, and they just feel like
If they make one wrong move, they and they're right though. Their friend might not actually want to be the friend anymore. For a day, for a week, forever, maybe. That is the truth. Kids know it. So they have what what do they do? They avoid. They avoid the rejection. And that's the definition of social anxiety. So they just need a safety net. Now
Why it's happening, I wanna go over six different terms with you just so you kinda have a little bit more of something to like label it. Label what's going on. Sometimes it's really hard to figure out what a solution is when it feels like you're reaching through the mist, like, ⁓ what's going on? I know something's not right, but I don't know how to describe it.
Now the thing is sometimes you do the right thing and something good happens from it and something like and then you reach out into the mist again, you try another thing, you're like, ⁓ why didn't that work? But when you really can put a label to the things that you're trying, or a label to what the problem is, it makes it so much easier to make it repeatable to keep getting good experiences and good outcomes. So here are the six things I want to share. The first one is scarcity psychology, right? So this is I'm gonna butcher these names.
Cindel Muliathan and Elder Shafir. So their research basically shows that scarcity of any resource, money, time, social belonging. So by the way, these were done on adults. A lot of these things, no almost everything I share with you was never done for children. It was done for adults. And the problem is it was like you need someone to break it down to make sense for children. That's
What I do. So basically what they found is scarcity of any resource, money, time, social belonging. It imposes what's called a bandwidth tax. It basically it means it's ⁓ it takes away all the brain power that you could use on logic and reasoning, and you use it towards avoiding pain. So it imposes a bandwidth tax on the mind, narrowing focus.
onto the pressing need and leaving that less cognitive capacity for everything else,
The way that we make decisions as human beings, by the way, decide, the root word side means to kill off like pesticide kills pest. The way that we make decisions is not to chase pleasure, it's to avoid pain. So although it might sound good to be treated the right way, the thing is if we maybe tolerate how we're treated, at least we'll avoid being rejected, because if I'm rejected then it means that I'm not likable.
if I'm not likable, then I'm not enough. And so then it's not a confidence problem, which is more skill based, which is like how do I set up these boundaries? But self esteem is more like what do I think about myself? So really what happens in the in these cases, you have a a self esteem that went down.
So, anyways, with scarcity psychology, this is why we're seeing that it is challenging to make the right decision, standing up for yourself, for example. Second term I want to cover with you is loss aversion, which is the research is done by Daniel Cannerman and Amos Saversky. I am
See, this is just how welcome to my brain. This is how it sounds like inside my head. So basically what they ⁓ have found with Kahnman, he's won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for this specific work. The commonly cited figure is that losses feel right around two times as intense as equivalent gains. What does that mean?
Basically, it means the amount of pain you feel from being rejected versus the amount of pleasure you'll get from making the right move, standing up for yourself, saying no. The pain feels almost two times worse. So the math is that I gotta avoid the pain. That makes more sense.
Basically.
And that is called loss aversion. Later down the road, they also found out it's not just 2x. It's more like anywhere between 1.3 times to 2 times the amount of pain, equivalent to the gains of doing the right thing.
Basically, this means that feeling a sense of belonging, which for kids, there's two places, home and outside of home. More than likely, inside the home, if you see that they have no problem saying no to you, that means you've already provided a very safe environment. They know that the love inside the house is very unconditional. That means that they can make the wrong move as many times as they want.
Push your boundaries, give you attitude. At the end of the day, they're still loved. They know outside of home, it's not the same thing. Nobody loves me like my parents do. You're and you're not gonna find that from other people. It's conditional, the love that you'll find. So feeling a belonging outside of home is not a nice to have. It's a core built-in drive, equivalent to needing food, equivalent.
to needing safety. So
The need to belong is very, very important to a child.
Number four is the social media theory. Also by Mark Leary. Basically this means that it proposes that self-esteem functions as an internal gauge tracking social acceptance versus rejection. So think of like
An actual meter and being empty just means that I don't know if anybody likes me. I'm totally the weirdest kid. I have no friends. A full meter is like everybody likes me. Like the popular kid feels very liked. And then the kid that feels like a loner, their social meter is super low. And when you have what's called a fixed mindset, which is a perspective problem, then this is really bad because then
You assume that if people don't like you, that you're not there's something wrong with you. That's the only logical reason. So then your self-worth goes down. And then if you're like super popular and you're really liked, then your self-worth goes up until all of a sudden somebody doesn't like you, and then things change socially, or you change schools, and then your self-worth goes down. So basically it's having
a strong self esteem or strong self image based on do people like me or do not like me.
this can be a self-esteem killer. Now, let's move on to number five. Social pain overlaps with physical pain. This is research done by Naomi Eisenberger, Matthew Lieberman, and Kipling Williams. Basically they did a brain scan, you know, MRI, and they found out that the that social exclusion activates the anterior cingulate cortex.
Now it sounds like I'm Andrew Huberman for a moment. But basically it's a brain region that is also active during physical pain. And there's an overlap in neural regions. Basically, it the same area that you feel physical pain is the same area that lights up when you face rejection. It doesn't mean that the physical pain and emotional pain is like the same thing. It just shares the same brain circuitry.
As the physical pain, which is why we see a lot of avoidance when it's like, maybe I should just say no, maybe I should just voice myself, maybe I shouldn't laugh and tell them don't joke around about me like that. But then they'll avoid that because it feels like they're gonna experience pain. They're gonna experience another bad experience. Now, number six is safety behaviors, which comes from CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
This is more so from Paul Salkoviskis. Hope you're having fun with me butchering names. The importance of behavior in the maintenance of anxiety and pack and panic. Anyways, so all this really means is that these are like little shields that kids come up with, or not just kids, humans, that we come up with small little things to help us feel safe.
That might mean avoiding eye contact. Ooh, you might have seen that before. Or they'll laugh even though it's not funny. And there's also being quiet, isolating. So basically, w in my experience, introvert kids like to isolate. Because if you if I'm over here on my own little island, you can't hurt me. I don't like being here. It's the only way I know how to feel safe though. And then for extroverted kids,
They'll walk up to people and all that. They seem fine. But the thing is they're performing. And they're performing so that way they don't get rejected. But then they're not happy because it's like, well, if I do act like myself, it's not going to go so well. Then the assumption becomes for both kids, both types of kids, it's the assumption is, well, if I am going to be myself, people won't like it. So neither has a higher self-esteem. It just
It's easier to see introverted kids to have a confidence problem and that extroverted kids don't have a confidence problem. And it's ⁓ I would say, I mean, maybe you're both right, because the actual problem is self-esteem. What do the kids think about themselves? Do kids actually need people to like them to feel good about themselves? The answer is no. Well, the answer should be no, and they should learn how to not let outcomes define their
identity or their self worth, but every kid I've met is born with a fixed mindset and they have to exercise their growth mindset. Just like going to the gym and getting a six pack. No baby comes out of the ba the the womb with a six pack. But they can definitely earn it through exercise as they you know my point is I'm not trying to say a baby should get six packs. I'm just saying
Kids can learn how to stop letting these passive thoughts of ⁓ if I do the right thing, ⁓ they're not gonna want to be my friend. They have to get good at challenging the inner critic thoughts, and inner critic thoughts come from the amygdala. The amygdala is a small little part of your brain that's supposed to be there to protect you from a negative experience from doing something that could hurt you. So for example, the
the social pain overlapping with physical pain, just like I talked about. It's ⁓ if I'm gonna get rejected, that's gonna feel very painful, so I'm gonna avoid that. The thing is, kids just let those thoughts passively happen and they just take every one of those thoughts as a fact, as as a truth, and they don't ⁓ in my explanation, you need to argue with that inner critic. You need to challenge that inner critic. And that skill of metacognition
Is something that should be taught in schools. That's my opinion. Alright. Now I want to cover with you what's really happening from the kids' shoes. Okay, we've got to kind of put ourselves in their shoes. What does it feel like for them? Kids sometimes tell me, I want to say what I actually want, but if I do, they don't like it and I might lose them.
And I don't have anyone else. So the thing is
Kids aren't choosing between being honest and being nice. They're choosing between honesty and survival. And in a child's nervous system, losing your only friend registers as something closer to survival than social preference. They're out here surviving when they should just be thriving. So
Like I mentioned before, there are two versions of this fear. You got the outgoing kid, they manage their fear by through people pleasing, being extra nice, saying yes to everything, laughing at things that aren't funny, giving away their things or their time, their energy, because the thought is if I'm really nice to you, how could you ever leave me? In one of my other episodes, one of the girls was saying, I just thought that if I if she liked herself and I acted like her, then she would like me. Right.
Now, that is what the outgoing kids do. The shy kids, the introverted kids, they manage the exact same fear through isolation, staying quiet, avoiding the risk altogether, never putting themselves in a position to be rejected.
Both of them are wearing a mask. Two different looking masks, but in the end, it's the same. Fear. Scarcity mindset. So when a child laughs along at something hurtful, here's what's actually happening inside. It's a values conflict. I don't know. If I stand up for myself, you know, maybe I'll sound kind of mean. Maybe I'll maybe I'll sound rude.
'Cause I don't like what they're doing, but I don't want to do the same back to them. So this inner conflict causes a kid to freeze. That's usually a surface layer of fear, but the deeper fear
I'm afraid that I might lose a friend. Kids have told me that they would rather have a bad friend than have no friends at all. This is the need to belong, right? And feeling this pain, loss aversion. So hopefully all of these things are all starting to come together. So your child isn't weak for staying quiet. They're doing math and right now the math tells them silence is safer than honesty.
So then okay, what do we do? Here's what doesn't work. Telling kids to just speak up or just say no. You could tell adults to do that. They st it's still not easy for us. So basically, the things that don't work is like the scripts and assertiveness training, like they don't really work because that's like trying to cut the leaves off of a weed.
You need to pull it out from the root. And if the root of the problem is scarcity, then what the the real antidote to that is abundance. But that's not through like ⁓ reassurance. Like everyone loves you. You have plenty of friends. Not that it's bad to say those things. I just want you to know that as a parent, this is like the default thing they should be hearing. It just there's something on top of that that they need and it's evidence.
Because at some point when this becomes their story, like, I have to do these things to keep my friends or I have to do these things to make sure I don't get rejected, this becomes well, if it's a long term story, then it becomes their identity. Well, this is just who I am. This is what I do. So what they need is a change of evidence. They need to collect positive experiences from doing the right thing. So then that comes from skills, skill building.
Not that affirmations are bad. It's just that I I have my students do affirmations over a long period of time. They have an effect. But if you want a quick fix, which there really is no quick fix, but the quickest fix is not affirmations, it's evidence. That's what actually works. I have a hard time teaching kids to be a positive thinker. Like, hey, you just gotta, you know, stop being stop having those scared thoughts, the negative thoughts. You gotta think positive. That's
I've have you had any luck with that? I haven't. The only thing that actually works in my experience is working with a kid's nervous system, going through baby steps, trying some new skills with the highest probability that they will get a positive experience, even if it's a bad event. I don't really care for bad events. It's life. Life will give you good events, bad events. We want kids to grow up becoming adults.
capable adults. So they have to be able to handle when things don't go right. So good events and bad events are fine, but when bad events turn into bad experiences, that's what where it actually gets bad. That's where you get kids who will increasingly avoid and avoid and avoid and avoid. Okay, so basically what does this mean? So before boundary setting skills are usable, we we got to try to put them in some kind of a container where we increase the probability that if they do try
To do the right thing, they have a high chance of a good experience. So put them into camps, put them into Rebel Ninja, put them into sports, karate, jujitsu, gymnastics, group activities, clubs, chess club, you know, it doesn't have to be sports, it could be anything. So put them into these situations where if they're gonna meet new people that
Maybe it's not the same group of mean kids from their school. Maybe that they need to give some other activities a try and then try some of their new assertive skills.
What we want to do is stop coaching kids to make friends. So what happens is when kids are trying to make friends, they have what's called a spotlight effect. They feel like everyone's going to notice if they embarrass themselves or make the wrong move. And the spotlight starts to make them redo. And the spotlight makes them feel redo. And the spotlight makes them think, will they like me? Am I interesting enough?
gonna want to be my friend. This increases their anxiety. So instead, teach them their goal is to leave people better than how you found them. The way I like to explain this is that your goal has a best friend. And so, whatever redo what I like to teach kids is that whenever you have a goal, its best friend is called doubt. These are your what if thoughts. So if your goal is to make a friend, your
Doubt is what if I don't make a friend? If your goal is to keep your friend, your doubt is what if I don't keep my friend? So if you really want someone to like you, you're gonna be like, but what if they don't like me? What if I sound weird? What if I sound awkward? What if they don't want to be my friend anymore? But if we change the goal to leaving people better than how we found them, then your only scared thought, your doubt is gonna be then what if I don't leave them better than I found them?
What's better about this is that it doesn't attack their identity. This attacks their skill. Which is fine. I tell kids, did you come out of your mama's belly knowing how to ride a bike? Or did you learn? Yes, you learned. Did you come out of mama's belly knowing how to brush your own teeth? Or did you have to learn? Yeah, you had to learn. Did you come out of mama's belly knowing how to do math? Or did you have to learn? That's right, you had to learn.
That's what skills mean. Now, there can never be something too fixed about you because if you think there's something you need to fix about yourself, that means you think there is something wrong with you. But there's nothing wrong with you. You're human, you're just you. But there is something wrong. And it's your skills. Skills is something you can actually get better at. And the best skill is to leave people better than how you found them. So if they don't like you.
You're okay. It was never your goal for them to like you in the first place. But you need to get good at being kind, curious. Stop talking about yourself. Get stop trying to be interesting. Get other people to feel like they're interesting. So let's go into the next topic, which is the gift of reciprocity. So this comes from Robert Cialdani's book called Influence, published in 1984. It's a great book. Great book. I highly recommend it.
And because I take a lot of the stuff from there and I teach it to the kids and a you know, I just have to repackage it. Basically what what is the gift of reciprocity? When you give things to people without expecting anything back, they want to return that kindness because they can tell it was given without any expectations. So when a kid shifts from trying to be liked to trying to make someone feel seen, heard and understood, two things happen.
Their own social anxiety drops. Why? Because the spotlight effect, imagine a real spotlight right on them. Like you if you're on stage and there's a spotlight on you and you are talking in front of a thousand people, you're gonna be nervous that maybe you'll make the wrong move or forget what you're supposed to say. This is how kids feel, right, when they want to be liked. but what if you don't like me? What if I make the wrong move? Maybe I should just laugh along. Maybe I should just tolerate. Maybe I need to perform. So basically
What I'm saying is we've got to get the spotlight. I don't know how to get rid of the spotlight. That's what I tell the kids. And they go, What? What's the point of you telling me the spotlight effect? And I'm like, Well, but what I do know is how to move the spotlight off of you and onto them. okay. Yes. So you've got to stop worrying about how you sound and how you look and whether they're gonna like you or not. You've got to make them feel interesting.
So that's how their social anxiety drops the spotlights off of them and they become more likable because they're listening, they're being genuinely curious, they're building trust.
So I tell kids, how do you make friends? It's through trust. What does that even mean? You know that they're gonna treat you the right way. They're not gonna try to hurt you, judge you. Basically, trust is being treated the right way. Now, the main thing here is when and I I tell this to more like the older kids, but basically when you try to become likable, you become less likable. And when you
Want someone to become your friend. This is taking taking energy. You're trying to get something from somebody. But what you need is giving energy. Giving them, and you'll walk away feeling happy, knowing that you turned someone from sad to happy, or from happy to amazing. That's all. And every kid I meet, when they switch their mindset or switch their perspective to ⁓ that is what I'll try to do, they stop being so worried.
They stop having this anxiety. So, I mean, there's Ruth there's room for going, ⁓ you know, your feelings and you're feeling nervous and you're feeling anxious. There's a time for this, but in the end, kids need to c j they need skills, they need to collect evidence that they are actually gonna be safe voicing themselves and being themselves authentically. Studies show that kids who can be authentically themselves in highly conditional settings, which basically means everywhere ex outside of home.
They're very happy, but if they cannot be themselves authentically, they are not happy. And so whether they people please or or they isolate, neither type of child is is happy. So the gift of reciprocity, I would say, is like their north star. This is what they need to focus on. And then their framework, the step by step, the how is like compliment challenge.
where you leave someone a compliment, you walk away, or you change the topic. You like don't try to make it about you. Just like give them something nice and walk away. I I tell them it's kind of like if I came over and like I slipped a little note underneath your your your door. You wake up in the morning and then you see this note. You open it up and it says, It was nice to meet you. You're so amazing. ⁓ I had a lot of fun hanging out with you today. Have a great week. Then you'd be like, huh.
I want to write Coach Andrew something now. So it's this is how people feel when you give them this free gift. Now the people who are greedy will take advantage of this, but that's a fast way of knowing who not to waste your time with. You don't need you don't need that.
Now here's some more simple language that you can just take from this podcast episode. So instead of telling your kids to make friends, tell them how can you make someone else's day a little bit better today?
Amazing. Yeah, that's a great idea. Another one.
And when it comes to boundaries specifically,
Something easy you can say is that you know sometimes when you're telling your boundaries over to your friends, your heart could be in the right place, but sometimes people don't see your heart. They hear what you're saying and they take it the wrong way. They think you're attacking them, they think that you're you hate them. Right? Have you ever noticed that sometimes two people who love each other can still argue.
Not because someone's trying to be right or someone's doesn't want to be wrong, it's because someone doesn't feel understood.
So the thing is, even if you really care about someone or if you really love someone, it's not enough. How you say it really, really matters. It's called communication. You have to get really good at telling someone the truth, but they also understand you're not trying to attack them and you're not trying to hurt them, and that you do want to be friends with them and you do care about them. So you put a softener in front of the truth. You can say something simple like, Hey, you know, you probably don't
mean to do this, but when you call me dumb, I just don't like it. And they go, ⁓ I I was just kidding, I didn't know.
Basically, we are teaching kids how to use effective communication so they don't end up affecting somebody's ego, offending them.
And another thing you can teach your child is that sometimes in order for this to go well, you gotta try not to embarrass them in front of the whole group of friends. So if you can find a way to say it to them quietly, like a whisper, or when all the other kids are distracted and you just quietly walk up to this one kid, your friend, you can say this and then everything will be just fine because you're not embarrassing them and they won't feel hurt by your
words and then end up leaving you, right? So this is a real thing, not just with kids, but you might know some adults you could probably try this on.
another angle I like to tackle this from is a compassion reframe. And I love telling the kids, you know, hurt people hurt people. I actually what do you think? Do you think that the friends that are not treating the right way, is it because they're bad kids or kids making bad choices?
Yeah. There are kids making bad choices, right? And the reason why I like to frame it this way is because, ⁓ that's why this is happening. They're not bad kids. There's nothing wrong with me. That's really what I'm trying to teach the kids. Is there's nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with the kids' choices. But I don't wanna tell kids like, yeah, you're perfect, but the other kids, they're bad. That's that's awful. Cause now you're teaching superiority complex and it's reinforcing something in ad later.
Psychology, which is vertical relationships, that you can be more or less of a human. No. We want kids to know that when you compare yourself side by side with other people, that's it. We're just side by side. No one can be more or less of a human. ⁓ anyways, so I just want kids to have compassion.
Hurt people, hurt people, which is why they are hurting you. That does not mean it's okay. However, that's also why you should know that should not hurt your self-image. It's not about you. It's about them. Okay. Maybe the only thing about you is that maybe you can improve how you say your boundaries. Cause some kids have like a type A personality. They just say whatever comes out you know comes to their mind and then it kind of ⁓ backfires, right? And some kids overthink it.
However, what's really important is teaching kids the perspective.
So basically my point is they're kids whose own self image got hurt somewhere by another kid or someone in their family and they are taking it out on you.
Okay, we do. So in the end, we just don't want your child to excuse the behavior, but also know that it has very little to do with them and pretty much everything to do with the other kid. And that they have to protect their self image, what they think about themselves.
So there are five main key takeaways from today's episode. And the first one is scarcity versus abundance mindset instead of relying on encouragement and praise, because all of that will always feel like it's not true. It feels fake and it feels phony and it just it's contradictory to the evidence they've collected, which means they've got to collect new evidence, different evidence. So
If they only have a couple of friends, then they feel like those friends are that's all they can have. That's all they can get. It's irreplaceable. I'm not gonna try anything new and take do anything risky. Right? I don't wanna lose them.
Then it's like boundaries just will be non-existent because there's too much fear. To get rid of the fear, they need to have more meaningful relationships that treat them the right way. So then they've gotta learn how to actually go and socialize without people pleasing, without performing. They just gotta be themselves, bring their good vibes, just talking to brand new people like they're your already been your best friend forever. And that's called the best friend challenge.
Talk to them as if they are already your best friend, but don't talk about yourself. Get them to talk about themselves. Be curious about them. So many kids are so s ⁓ j
The their own favorite topic is themselves. And then when they have nothing in common, like, ⁓ they're but they're not into K-pop demon hunters. they're not into Minecraft. Or they're not into baby dolls. And you know, it's like then they're like, I feel awkward, I don't know what to talk about. It's like you gotta get good at becoming friends with people who are the opposite from you. That is important.
Don't try to be interesting, be interested. Number two, safety behaviors. So the people pleasing and the outgoing kids, the isolation and the shy kids, these are all just little shields that they have because they're afraid of
Taking action and being authentic. They're trying to protect themselves from a bad time. But the reason why that's bad is because then they'll keep relying on it, not collecting any evidence that's just being themselves is going to be safe. Number three, gift of reciprocity. So stop teaching kids to make friends, teach them to leave people better than how we found them. That's a beautiful reframe. Kids love
Focusing on leaving people better than how we how they found them. Kids love helping other people. Your child loves to help others. I'm sure you've already seen that before. And we just really want kids to realize that real connection doesn't come from having the same things in common. Real connection comes from genuine curiosity. It comes from thinking about the other person, putting the spotlight on them instead of focusing on yourself. Now
It's important to think about yourself in terms of safety, but in terms of making new friends and connections, the secret is stop thinking about you. Make them feel like they're interesting. Like they're the only person on this planet. Look at them in the eyes, nod your head up and down, and repeat back to them what they said. Show them you're listening. Don't just listen. Listen's not enough. Show you're listening. That's actually what matters. That's part of your communication.
Number four, hurt people hurt people. Basically teaching a kid compassion and knowing that, you're treating me this way, not because there's anything wrong with me, but there's something wrong with something happening in your life.
Number five, build evidence, not affirmations. Abundance isn't created through pep talks it's created through real repeated positive social interactions that give the child new evidence to work from.
And that'll be it for today.