Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

All right, well thanks a lot for being here everybody. We’re doing the KarateBuilt podcast. Today, this one’s going to be on parenting and we’re titling this the Ultimate Guide to Effective Caring and Discipline. With me, I have Senior Master Laura Sanborn. Thanks for being here ma’am.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Hello sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

She’s one of the experts at discipline in our martial arts school but also at home with the two kids that she’s brought up to be amazing individuals. One with a master’s degree, another one that’s a sergeant now, right?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

In the Air Force and having great career there. So her kids are really amazing and well developed individuals. So I’m really glad to have her here, I’ve always admired how well she’s worked with her kids. Mine’s another story. No, mine’s great. My son is great and he’s awesome, he’s an instructor at our school with a fourth degree black belt. So both as parents and as instructors and also people that have worked with kids in a lot of other ways. We love this topic and love being able to work with kids and help parents as well develop really effective ways to help discipline their kids. But also be caring and mostly effective at the discipline that they use with their kids. So that it can build better relationships with their kids, help their kids develop into more effective human beings in the long run. If you don’t do the things in our podcast well what can happen is some pretty negative consequences and we’ll talk about them in a second here. So let’s get to it. So a couple things about us. This is me, Dr. Greg Moody and Laura Sanborn.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

My qualifications I guess, are on here. We need to put yours on here ma’am.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Let’s get to a few things. So a couple things about working with kids and one book I’d like to recommend to everybody that we recommend to most of our parents is 1-2-3 Magic by Dr. Thomas Phelan. P-H-E-L-A-N. I’ll erase that in a second so anybody watching the podcast please take a look at that book. We highly recommend this book for any parent. When I write my own book on discipline we’ll still be recommending this book because it really provides a lot of the fundamentals to anybody that is working with kids. We’ll I’ve talked to some people in occupational therapy and other areas who say well, I don’t really like this book and after about 10 minutes of talking with them they’ve told me the reasons why. Most of the reasons why people don’t recommend this book that have been familiar with it are because they generally see people that just don’t implement the things properly. The reason is, it’s mostly because it’s so simple. The people look for complicated solutions when there’re simple solutions that are out there. This is the simplest and most effective fundamental rule book for dealing with kids.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So I highly recommend this book, Thomas Phelan 1-2-3 Magic. There’s a version for teenagers, there’s also a version if anybody’s watching here that’s an educator. There’s a version for educators that I highly recommend as well. So I think everybody should be looking at this book. Anybody that works with kids, 1-2-3 Magic from Thomas Phelan. So let’s talk about a couple things that we need to think about with dealing with kids. So two big rules. Rule number one is called the little adult assumption. I freely admit I stole that from Dr. Phelan. The little adult assumption is something that parents make this error all the time. The little adult assumption is assuming that kids are the little adults and if I have a conversation with the child about let’s say why they hit their sister. If they hit their sister that I’m going to explain to them why that’s a bad thing and why hitting their sister is going to make them feel bad and their sister’s going to feel bad. In the long run they’re going to feel bad themselves and there’s going to be all these negative consequences.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So that will help them understand why it was a bad thing and therefore they’re not going to hit their sister again. That’s assuming this is a little adult and if they understood this they could process that in their mind and they’d have new cognitive rules to have new guidance in the world. This is never ever going to work. Another thing that parents do a lot of times is they ask questions and they already know the answer. For example, they say something broke in the house and they have one child. They’re the only one there and something broke. They don’t have any pets and there’s one child and they say who broke that? They assume that these are little adults and they’re going to tell the truth. Now, not that all adults tell the truth but these are not little adults they’re children. So what we’re doing then is we’re asking a question that really can only have one answer from the child and that’s to lie. The child’s going to lie because it’s the only possible answer to the question that would get them out of trouble and not keep them in trouble.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So we’re not only making an assumption that they’re an adult, that they would have the wherewithal to take the penalty that would come with breaking whatever they broke at home. But also that they would understand the long term consequences of lying. So kids don’t understand that. By the way, that last example is also teaching them to lie.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

To lie.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

You’re teaching them to lie when you ask stupid questions like who broke the thing? When you already know who broke the thing and you’re asking them to answer a question that really only has one answer. So little adult assumption and Phelan does a great job of explaining this in a lot of other ways. But is assuming your kids are an adult so therefore if you sat down and talked to them about whatever the behavior is you want to stop, that they’re going to understand it in a full rich way. No, we just need to stop the behavior. Now, how we do that? That’s really important and we’re going to talk about that in a second. The second thing is use less talking and less emotion. I have another rule that goes along with this but… So let’s say your child broke something and you knew that they broke something, they knew they broke something because you don’t need to have a conversation about it because they’re the only one in the house. You don’t have pets and nobody else is there.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So they broke something and you go well okay there’s some consequence about it, maybe they’re in timeout. We’ll talk about what consequences you should have later. Maybe something happens, maybe they need to just fix it or clean it up. Less talking less emotion is the most effective way to do it. So, oh it broke clean it up. That would be the most effective way to deal with your kid. But instead what happens is a parent might be very upset and you might go, what happened? I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you were so careless to break the lamp and start putting a lot of emotion in this. Or as we’re going to talk about some other examples later, you’re going to see some but they put a lot of emotion. Parents put a lot of emotion in places where it may not be effective. So we’re going to have to see how less talking and less emotion is more effective. The more talking you provide to your kid, especially the younger kids the more confused they’re going to be.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Now, a rule that we use in training instructors and teachers is the emotion you show is the emotion they need not the emotion you feel. Sorry, that went off the box there. So the emotion that you show should be the emotion they need, not the emotion you feel that’s our rule internally. In other words, your kid’s going to do something sometimes that might be really hilarious. For example, they may trip and fall and land on the ground and they may not get hurt. Let’s say nobody’s hurt and it’s really hilarious. But you really don’t want them doing that over and over again. You may not want them falling all the time and being goofy like that. If you laugh and even though it’s hilarious, if you laugh what’s going to happen? It’s going to get reinforced and they’re going to continue doing it. So the emotion you show needs to then be, get up. Just a neutral emotion, maybe a little bit that wasn’t a good idea even though that was really hilarious. Master Sanborn, do you have any examples on that? I put you-

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

The falling down one happens most often in karate where a new kid gets in class, throws himself on the floor, all the other kids laugh. So he does it again and then the next kid does it and then the next kid does it because they found somebody laughed and if everybody’s laughing it must be fun. As well as the reinforcement of everybody now likes me because I fell and it was funny. So the falling one is actually the most common one with the really younger kids. Because once one throws himself on the floor and falls everybody wants to do it. So if we allow that to happen over and over again and then the instructor starts to laugh because it really does look funny when they try to kick and fall on the floor it just goes out. So we’re just like hey, we don’t fall down in karate. Stand up and keep going.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, and sometimes you’ll see parents laughing too.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

You have to correct that.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Then a child sees their own parent laugh and you don’t realize as a parent that when you laugh at something like that you’re reinforcing poor behavior. Now it doesn’t mean that it’s not actually hilarious, it can look pretty hilarious. We understand that, that doesn’t mean it’s what we’re trying to reinforce, an area we’re trying to help your child grow. We’re trying to help your child grow, so we need to make sure we’re focused on the emotion that your child needs. Now none of this is to say that you shouldn’t have emotions. We want everybody to have emotions, to be authentic about their emotions. There’s a difference when we’re a parent and we’re trying to… That our job is to help our child grow and develop into somebody that we want them to have really strong and authentic emotions themselves. Well they can get confused by the emotions that we express. So that’s a great example Master Sanborn where we might see a parent laugh.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

A kid even hears out of the… Even if it’s just a small noise, they can tell what their parents laugh sounds like. Kid hears their parent laugh and even if we tell the kid no get up, then the kid will continue doing it because they’ve heard this and gotten reinforced by their parent. So it’s very important we understand that it’s not that we don’t want you to be authentic about your emotions. You should also understand this other rule that sometimes it’s not the right time to show the emotion that may not be helpful for somebody, especially a child. Another point on that is what Master Sanborn just said. If somebody does something like that… A kid is falling down. Even though it’s funny and even though we’re not really mad about it but somebody could on the other side get mad about that. One of our instructors could get mad about the kid falling down. We’re also not going to yell at them. We’re going to say get up.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

The most we might say is to the rest of the kids who are laughing and say we don’t laugh at things that are not correct. We say good things about people doing stuff correctly or we don’t think things are funny when they’re done wrong. Something like that is what we’d say. I don’t think something’s funny if it’s wrong. That might be something that we’d say if somebody’s falling down or doing something incorrectly. I don’t think that’s funny because it wasn’t done right. I’m not using a lot of talk, I’m not using a lot of emotion. I’m just moving forward with letting them know that we would expect them to do it correctly. Nobody’s in trouble, nobody’s mad, even though the child who’s fallen down may know oh I wasn’t supposed to do that. So two big rules, little adult assumption that’s a big error parents make. I think that if I talk to the kid, if you talk to them and make sure they understand that hitting their sister was a bad idea. Hitting their brother was a bad idea.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

They already knew that hitting their brother was a bad idea, they weren’t supposed to do that. Now, it might have been a good idea in their mind because they may have wanted to hit their brother or sister and you telling them they weren’t supposed to do that probably isn’t news to them. I doubt many brothers or sisters that hit their sisters or brothers knew that they were supposed to do it or thought that was acceptable behavior. Okay? I don’t think that’s any news to them. They knew they weren’t supposed to break the lamp. They knew they weren’t supposed to steal the cookie, they knew all those things. Kids know all those things. This doesn’t mean kids aren’t smart, they know they’re not supposed to do things. But little adult assumption means don’t have conversations with kids about stuff they already know. Don’t have conversations with them that’s trying to motivate them with lots of cognitive discussion to try to get them to change behavior. We have to use other tools to get them to change behavior which we’re going to talk about. The second is less talk and less emotion.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Now let’s talk about how to do the less talk and less emotion. A really good psychologist that I recommend somebody named Gabor. He’s from Hungary, he lives in Canada now. Gabor Maté and I’ll leave that up for a second so people can look him up. Does a lot of work with trauma and human development and he even does some work with the addiction. So you’ll see a lot of different stuff on him. Lately he’s written some books on how this relates to parenting and different work. But one of the things that we can talk about related to him is two big pieces for parents to think about. One is attachment and the other is authenticity. Make sure I spell all those right. So attachment and authenticity. So attachment means that when I’m a… This is my good stick drawings. So is how a child and a parent connect and we know you guys have probably all heard about attachment needs and when kids are young they need to be able to connect with their parent.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

How this works is if the parent is there for them and caring and loving and it doesn’t mean you have to be sitting with them all day long or you have to be overly permissive with your kid in any way. In fact, we’re going to show you some ways to make sure you use effective discipline. That’s what this podcast is about. But developing strong attachment with your kid means in some… A short version would be that your kid knows that when they need you that you’re there for them. That when they need you that they can rely on you, that you’re reliable, so this is about reliability. So you’re reliable. Authenticity is the kid feeling like they’re independent from the parent. That they’re who they are, that they develop their own sense of self independently and we know about three years old and up they start realizing they’re separate from the parent. You can look at developmental psychology to understand some of this, that they start developing a sense of self separate from the parent.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So these two needs are really important as humans, you need to have attachment because when you’re an infant humans are the most needy animals of all. I mean, some mammals their parents give birth to them and they go run off into the forest and start getting their own food. Infants have to be attached to parents literally for most of their early life and then they need parents to even survive otherwise they’ll die. Authenticity is necessary because at some point they need to break that attachment and turn into something that they can independently survive. Otherwise, you have your 40 year old living at home in the basement which nobody wants that. Right? So this is independence. So we need those two things, reliability but then we need to help them develop independence. So how do we get those two things? They seem like counterproductive and in fact what happens is use a couple examples. If you have really good attachment and a child wants to start developing authenticity they can learn both of these things poorly. For example, let’s just talk about attachment.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

If the parent is unreliable, maybe they’ve got their own issues, maybe they’re gone a lot, maybe they’re… Nobody has listened to our podcast probably, but maybe a parent has drug problems. Well, then the kid’s not going to have a very reliable parent, right? So they’re going to feel very insecure and anxious and there’s a couple kinds of attachment issues. One is anxious, another type of attachment issue that can come up is avoidant. A child can decide well, if a parent is gone I’m just going to build my own shell around myself so that I don’t need to have any parent around. We’ve got a podcast just on attachment theory that you guys can listen to that goes into this in more detail. So these are different types of attachment issues. But let’s say I really need attachment because I need that for survival and I’m almost always going to pick as a kid attachment over authenticity, over being independent. What’s a good example of this? Well, let’s say I’m a kid and I want to get a cookie and I didn’t get permission for the cookie.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

I just decided there’s cookies there I want to get a cookie and go get the cookie and my parents says rightfully so, hey you can’t get a cookie what the hell? And gets mad. Well, the kid can take this because they’re a kid they don’t have a lot of skills for understanding why they shouldn’t get a cookie and rightfully so the parents should tell them not to get a cookie that’s good. The parents shouldn’t be letting them get cookies whenever they want. But the kid’s interpretation can be well, I wanted a cookie that’s what I wanted but now I’m getting… Depending on how loud the parent was remember, less talk, less emotion. But they used a lot of talk and a lot of emotion. Now the kid’s understanding is going to be that I’m not loved, I’m not cared about and the way that they were treated was making them feel like they were at risk of not being connected to the parent. They were at risk of detaching from the parent and if that happens in a lot of different areas and that happens a lot in a lot of different ways.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Even well meaning parents and even parents in what we call really normal households, you’re going to have a risk of loss of authenticity and this happens a lot. We see this in there when you measure at risk kids or also later in life people in prison populations, very high issues with authenticity. So if you have to risk authenticity being yourself over attachment making sure you’re safe and your parents are going to take care of you, which one are you going to pick? You’re always going to pick attachment. You’re always going to pick your parents over taking care of yourself. Later in life we end up having lots of problems because of this. Now, why do I care or tell you about this in terms of parenting and effective and caring discipline? It’s important because the messages and how we’re describing how to manage behaviors with your kid are going to sound a lot like some parenting advice that is going to look very similar to what we’re describing. It looks a lot more like… Let me give you an example.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Some people will tell you if your kid’s upset put them in a corner and let them stay there until they go back to normal. Some famous people that are psychologists but not really parenting experts are really well known in telling people things like that. The reason that’s poor advice is that’s not taking the time to understand what’s going on with your kid and it might instead look something like kids upset. Well yeah, I hear that you’re upset and you’re just taking a little bit of a moment to understand. They still may need to go into their room, they still may need a time out. That’s still what we’re going to suggest if they’re causing a problem in the household. However, understanding what is going on so that we can identify what the issue is, is still part of the conversation. It’s not treating them like an adult. It might just be going, yeah I understand that you’re upset. It sounds like, that was really tough, I know you really wanted a cookie. That doesn’t mean we’re giving him a cookie. It’s like, I know you really wanted a cookie I get it.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

I know it sucks when you don’t get a cookie, depending on whether you say sucks in your household or not. But I know it’s a pain when you don’t get a cookie. When I was your age I really wanted a cookie too. So that’s a complete different thing and if the kid escalates then, yeah if you keep escalating then unfortunately you got to go in your room. You’re going to be gone and then you follow up and we’re going to teach you the 1-2-3 system in a second of how you would turn it into a consequence. So that’s the difference in that conversation, it’s a lot different than I can’t believe you’re behaving this way. If you do this you’re going to be sitting over there until you go back to normal. That sounds a lot different, right? Master Sanborn, any comments before we move on from this?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Yes, sir. We see a lot of the results of this where kids cling to parents, just won’t even let go. They stay behind the parent, they’re afraid the parent’s going to move away from them just too far. They can’t get out on the floor and take a class even without turning around and looking where their parent is and looking for their parent’s approval. They hit that clinginess that makes it hard for a kid to move on to anything else and they’re never sure… If the parent walks around the corner the kid freaks and can’t continue with anything else because they’re so afraid that, that meant oh, they don’t love me, they’re not here. They aren’t looking at me the whole time. So even that little bit of distance of I can’t see them for a minute makes it really hard for the kid to continue on with anything.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah. Sometimes that could be reinforcing to the parent. My child really loves me, my child really wants to be with me. Isn’t that great that they want to hold me close and be with me? What we’ve got to realize parents is that’s counterproductive to your kids building their own authenticity and their own future development. They’re getting behind in their own independence and authenticity at this young age. So where are they going to be when they’re 10, 11, 12? Where are they going to be when they’re an adult? They’re getting behind the race. They need to get a head start on this right now so this is really important. Okay. So that’s a little bit of a side on the two big rules. Remember little adult assumption and less talk, less emotion. Less talk, less emotion will help you with this authenticity piece a lot. Less talk, less emotion just stay real calm. Use the emotions that they need, not the emotions that you feel. The emotions you feel you can talk to your spouse about it later, talk to your buddy about it later.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

But the emotions that they need are what should give them at that moment based on what’s going on. Okay. We could have a parent say to us well, yeah. But if I’m authentically me, I’m really mad at my kid. That’s true, I get it and you’re also authentically you I would argue in that you want to be a really good parent as well. Being a good parent means that you’re going to give them the emotions that they need right then. So that’s being a disciplining and good parent as well.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Another comment on that sir, with the authenticity as a parent. Because you take a second to breathe and go to the emotion that’s needed in the situation. You’re not denying that you’re mad, you’re not saying I’m not mad about that. You’re just not making it a big blow up scene that goes on and on and on. You’re just calming it down. Your emotion is I’m mad and that’s what you say which teaches your child to be able to say back, I’m mad too. So everybody’s being authentic about what they feel. It’s just not a big blow up scene that goes on and on and everybody gets nothing out of it.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

That’s a fantastic point Master Sanborn. I think that’s a really insightful thing to say because what kids will learn then if you don’t do that is when something happens, the next person escalates what they said and the emotional level. So then the game is to escalate something else in emotion [inaudible 00:28:35]. Pretty soon some people on this podcast can hear themselves in a conversation with somebody where you don’t even know what was said but you can tell the emotional level went up. It’s the emotional level just went up like crazy and nobody really knows what happened afterwards, nobody even knows what the conversation was about. It was just this emotional level and I’m talking about adults now and that’s what they’re learning at a young age. Now, also imagine the kid processing that emotion. As an adult you’re much more able to handle escalating emotion than a child. When the emotion escalates what the child’s going to hear, I’m not loved, I’m not worthy, I’m not safe. That’s the message that they hear and then we end up having a lot of consequence of that later in life.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Kids are very resilient but we also should be sensitive to the messages that we give them. Okay. Last thing we’re going to do and then for part two we’re going to go on to a little bit more of this. So the remaining part of this is the first stage of effective discipline and this is the ultimage guide. So we’ll have to fix that on stage on our… It should say the ultimate guide. We made a typo error down there. So this is the ultimate guide and the ultimage guide maybe that has some other meaning.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

That’s because you used 1-2-3 Magic. So now you’re [inaudible 00:30:11] with that.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, that is exactly right. But step one or the next step… But this is really step one to stopping behaviors or managing behaviors is define the behaviors. If I was an educator in a first grade classroom… There’s a great book by a gentleman named Harry Wong, H-A-R-R-Y and it’s called The First Days of School. Even just the title of this book is a good idea for anybody in any kind of organization or your own household. Defining what behaviors a kid gets in their first day of first grade or first day of third grade. Whichever day it is, is going to define the rest of the experience and the same in your house. What behaviors do you guys have in your house that are well defined? If you have two parents in the house then they should have exactly the same expectations for the kids. We see a lot of times where one parent has an expectation, the other parent has an expectation and then there’s a little bit of chaos. So making sure the behaviors are defined.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Now this doesn’t mean you have to have a written document, that’d be okay if you did. A job chart is one behavior defined for a kid, some sort of reminder or some sort of way for a child to know exactly what the behaviors are but define all the behaviors. In our martial arts school we have behaviors for kids or the students. We have behaviors for the parents, we expect the parents to do certain things. You have to bow on the way in, you have to sit quietly if you’re in class or take class. We have behaviors for the instructors. They have a dress code, they have all kinds of things they have to do. We have behaviors for… Who am I missing? Who am I missing there? That’s probably it. So behavior for all of these different people that are in the environment. In your house there should be behaviors for these groups, right? Your kids and for you guys as parents. What are the behaviors that are defined? If they’re not well defined and people don’t know then you can’t do the next part. So we’re running out of time right now.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So we’re going to do this in part two and then have very specific rules. You’re going to be really excited about this and we’re going to teach you exactly what to do when any kind of behavior happens that is not okay. That’s not one of your defined behaviors and we’re going to help you fix it and give you some magic about this that’s going to work really well. Master Sanborn anything you want to say to wrap up?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

No sir, I’m ready for the next part.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

All right, I’m looking forward to part two and we’ll see you next time.

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

Thank you sir.

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Dr. Moody is also a licensed psychotherapist and maintains a practice at Integrated Mental Health Associates (IntegratedMHA.com) where he specializes in couples therapy and mens issues.