Episode 141: Exploring Patience: Nurturing Resilience in Children and Ourselves with Dr. Stephen Rowley

Children  0:00  
We think you should know that Imperfect Heroes Podcast is a production of Little Hearts Academy USA.

DJ Stutz  0:10  
you're listening to Episode 141 of Imperfect Heroes: Insights Into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in an imperfect world. And I'm your host, DJ Stutz.

Welcome back all my heroes and heroines to another episode of Imperfect Heroes. And I am so excited for what we are talking about today. And so yeah, last week, we introduced our new theme of patience. And then this week, we're going to talk a little further. But before we get started on this fabulous conversation, I just want to remind everyone that we've set it up in an kind of a new way. So that whether you go to the website of www.LittleHeartsAcademyUSA.com, which is the coaching website, or if you go to the podcast website, which is while you're probably there, but I'll tell you anyway, it's www.imperfectheroespodcast.com. When you go to those pages, you'll see a little pop-up now, that will say, register for our newsletter here. And so I would love to encourage you to go ahead, register and get in on that. We only send that out twice a month. So you're not inundated with a bunch of stuff. But it's going to help you understand what's coming up with the podcast, what you can do to connect with your kids and the theme. for that month, we're going to have some activities and hacks that you can do to enjoy your time as a parent, because we know, especially here at imperfect heroes, that joyful parenting is just the best way to get through it all, isn't it. So we're gonna go forward with that, sign up. And then also, please hit the rating and review, follow us, or subscribe, depending on which platform you're listening on. But that way you're gonna keep up to date. And when we put up a new episode, you're gonna get that notification. And please remember five stars is the appropriate number of stars to give us if you are rating. So thank you very much. Let's move on with our topic for today. 

So my guest is Dr. Stephen Rowley. And he actually has some amazing work that he's done on adoption. And he can tell you a little bit about that. And through that, although we are going to connect to patients and teaching our children about patience, why it's important to teach our kids that and how to manage through and get that through their heads. Right? Well, and our heads did, because let's be honest, even isn't it true? Parents are just as impatient as kids, sometimes, probably more so.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  3:10  
You have a longer life to learn how to be impatient as well as patient.

DJ Stutz  3:13  
It's true. It's so true. So Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've got going on who you are, and then we'll talk a little further.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  3:22  
Well, very briefly, I am currently a psychotherapist, I live and work on Bainbridge Island, Washington, which is across the water from Seattle 35 minute ferry boat ride had a 40 year career in education as a teacher, principal, superintendent and three different universities in the northwest. So I've been around, I can't keep a job. lately. Actually, just about two years ago, I've had began work and wrote a book called the lost coin A Memoir of adoption and destiny, and published by Chiron, on publication, it's on Amazon. And I've been doing since then, this actually feeds into the topic quite well. I spent the better part of my life in search of my birth parents found my birth mother Mother was just kind of a cornerstone of the heart of the book when I was age 40. And she was age 60. But in very difficult circumstances. And then two years ago, word Cantonese from 23andme, with no effort on my part, except belonging to 23andme. Suddenly I have sisters, my eyesight. But they discovered me they had no clue about me. And I had no clue about who they were. So it was a pretty big surprise. So yeah, so I've lived and breathed patients of various kinds, not only with my parents, but if you ever been a superintendent, you'd have a thing called a school board. If that doesn't test your patience, nothing will so yeah, my wife and I also adopted our son. So I've been adopting and that pyramid adoption, talking about patients. If you've worked for 50 years of your life to find your own original birth certificate, you still can't get him. I don't know if that's a test of patience or of your neurosis. Come up with the impossible.

DJ Stutz  4:51  
So as we're talking though, let's talk for a second about what is patience. How would you even define that to someone right? Well,

Dr. Stephen Rowley  5:00  
this was a little lengthy, but I did look it up before it came on. But it it kind of fulsome definition I think has to help us flesh out what we mean by it. So, patience is a virtue and a psychological attribute characterize the ability to tolerate delay, struggle or suffering, without getting angry, upset, involves the capacity to remain calm, maintain self control, accept or endure difficult situations provocation or annoyance with perseverance and composure. This, of course, is the ideal definition, right? Sure, patience is often associated with a level of endurance that allows individuals to face challenges, obstacles or waiting periods without resorting to hasty actions or decisions. And this is where I think it can be applied in so many settings. atrophy is an amoral definition. Because you can talk about people who are, I don't know mafia hitman, if you're going to do your job or a sniper, you have to have patience, even though you're going to end up killing somebody and doing what you do. It's considered a valuable skill in many cultural, philosophical and religious contexts, and can lead to better decision making improved relationships and overall well being. It's also it's a key component in achieving long term goals. It enables individuals to persist in their efforts over time despite setbacks and delays. So by definition, this is a very fulsome thing. It's an idealized definition. But I have to think, among other things, is that it is like many things in life, it's an ability that's acquired. Yes, I don't think be born patient, I think we have to learn patience.

DJ Stutz  6:25  
Yeah. You know, with my five kids, I got five very different personalities. And I do have one that's more patient from the very beginning than the others. But yet, it's still something that even when you have a child that has that calmer, easier going, maybe personality, that you still have to help them understand patients and what it is and what the benefits of it are, you know, and maybe we can talk about those benefits for just a little minute about being patient. How waiting and thinking about things before we make that hasty decision. Yeah, I am going to wait and not buy all this other stuff I want right now. But save, save, save and get something bigger that I want even more.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  7:09  
I think delayed gratification itself is an acquired taste. For people who collect wine, that might be a challenge. Sometimes they put things in them, lock them up for sale, we'll see in five or seven years. I mean, I bet combat I never could do that as a young person now a little bit. It's easy to do. But you know, it's very contextual. I mean, if you're stuck in a traffic jam, and you're trying to get to a hospital, patients may not be a virtue. Patients mean you honk the horn, you pull into the hinterland and you stream pell mell and do what you got to do just save your life or somebody else's. So that's not a lacking of patience as you shift into gear about a higher purpose than just simply a somewhat of a consciously understood or modulated sort of inner calm, inner sense of tranquility, which can certainly pay off. But even then, when we think of people who are accomplished in meditation, my practice a lot, you see pictures of, of Zen Buddhists are sitting in black robes facing the wall, they're not moving. It looks like they're completely impassive, their minds are empty, which is completely untrue. I mean, they're wrestling with the same things, maybe mentally, maybe a little lower level. But a lot of us thinking, Oh my God, what did I pay my rent before I left for this retreat, or my back is killing me or whatever. So you become aware of the what the mind does. mind creates thoughts. And for some people, those can be crazy making, particularly if you're tending toward panic or anxiety or ADHD, those can get you very excited. But even when you're not, you begin to notice Yeah, my mind is distractible by its very nature. So this distractibility is inherent to us. I think that's also we bring, even work I do bring into consciousness. This is what way my mind works. That's the way your mind works. It's everybody's mind works that way. So how do we then bring to conscious and be able to grapple with that and on a on for, for the honors class, you then get to take yourself on a spiritual level and say, well, who's doing the logic? That's another question altogether. But you begin to create an awareness of it's like a meta thinking. I'm aware that I'm not patient. I'm aware that I'm nervous. I'm aware that I have goals that things I thought my to do list I would do it didn't get done today. Maybe they were really important. Maybe they're just like, trivial. So sometimes you have to categorize what's worth worrying about and what's not.

DJ Stutz  9:22  
Exactly. And I think, and you can help me with this, but I think that as parents grapple with their own patients or the lack thereof, right, I think it's important for us to be able to put that over on our kids and understand that I've had all these years to work on patients and I'm still struggling with that. And yet, I'll get upset at a two year old who has had 24 months compared to my many years to work with it and we expect them to show these higher levels of patients that maybe not maybe that definitely are not developed. mentally appropriate for where they are in life. And

Dr. Stephen Rowley  10:02  
I remember flying off the handle with our son in his teenage years someplace getting into some of the usual troubles of teenagers get into Yeah. And it was so exasperated said, Why can't you have a problem that isn't like the one I had, when I was your age, it's driving me insane. I was in trouble with the same sort of stuff, I should be understanding, you have a different set of problems, not the ones I ask. But you catch it and you catch yourself, you know, the two year old that misbehaves, it's like, you think I'm not a very good parent, I don't have any control over a two year old. And that's where patients really has to kick in. I think what we observe in grocery stores a lot of times with ill mannered children screaming kids grabbing stuff. And the parents are set off there, it can be swatting a kid or yelling the kid or whatever, you see some parents that don't have that trauma law whose kids are well adjusted, emotionally regulated. But others, it's like, it's easy to trigger parents, if they themselves were raised that way. If their mothers treated that mother with impatience and flying off the handle about this or that or being judgmental or punishing without understanding what was really going on with it, then it just perpetuates the classic definition of generational trauma. Right,

DJ Stutz  11:10  
exactly. And I think to that, sometimes understanding that I know what I don't want to do, especially maybe if you've had that traumatic or pushy parent or whatever, that didn't model it appropriately. But I don't know what to do instead. Because this is what I know, right? And so trying to get yourself, well, I'm just going to be more patient. That's a nice sentiment, but you kind of need to have a plan on what we're going to do.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  11:39  
Sometimes we have to do the counterintuitive or something again, with advanced skill within and sometimes we have to surrender to our own impatience to say, I know this is the way I am. So when I do, I'm better off taking a little walk outside or getting away from it for a couple minutes, get my act together to be able to come back to it and regain my composure. Because if I know if I have a hair trigger temper, I can't let that just be an act of punishment by the boy my little the time, but you have to have awareness number one before you can be in to find a new lever for control. And from a therapeutic point of view. Of course, I'm always interested, what what's the trigger anyway? What kind of complex is being triggered? It's likely, since we all have a parental complex mother or father about it likely, it's a lot of that early patterning starts when we're quite young, as you mentioned before, and it's deeply ingrained, really deeply ingrained.

DJ Stutz  12:30  
Absolutely is. And so it's just an interesting thing that I feel like, sometimes parents can take the same advice that I give them to us on their kids in that you know, and being a teacher, or you're an educator, so you are there. But I'm like, let's get data. Right. And so when I'm coaching parents, I'm often that first week is pick whatever we're going to start working on first. And whatever that is, let's take this week and check off like, am I yelling at my kids? Or what am I doing that I want to work on first? And then how often is this happening? When is it happening? What time of day, who was it involving sometimes, to certain people will trigger your lack of patience more than others? So if I'm working on myself, I wanted maybe take some time to say, alright, let me look at when this is happening to me. And then once I have that data, what can I do then to set myself up for more success?

Dr. Stephen Rowley  13:31  
Right. And I think you have to, again, this is my psychotherapist talking, self talking. But sometimes to do that kind of checklist or self examination, you really have to work on starting that is with a point of grounding, literal, you know, like a guided self guided meditation, two minutes to take the energy down all the way and get your feet on the ground and the gravity take over number one. Number two is maybe a little bit of a, somebody's giving you the permission to be imperfect, allow yourself to be vulnerable. Like, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know how I do this. Well, the I don't know, questions and responses actually sometimes gonna be a very good thing because it's a puzzle we can stay with. Why am I this way? Why am I that way, and rather, so it's that kind of self reflection of what I'm doing. Rather than some kind of plan I'm either executing or not executing for a particular outcome. Now, it's silly to say, you know, looking for an outcome in your child or even yourself. But it was only judged against those things. We never quite get into the deeper part in here that we examine our own psycho emotional disposition and accept it for what it is, I mean, at least at a certain time, that's not to say that you acknowledge that you slap your kid, even once, let alone a bunch of times. So I'm not saying accepting that but but also recognizing the vulnerability that we all have. And sometimes that vulnerability is is not a weakness. It can be a strength, but it's a tough challenge to be vulnerable with your own child. You know, at this moment I don't know what to tell you, because I'm frustrated, you're frustrated. I don't know what to do. And right now I'm going to have to look at B and B. Let it be okay? If the Okay, it's extending example, sometimes you can just set it aside and say, right now, I'm just not on top of this issue. And maybe I'm not supposed to be right, then maybe I'm not supposed to know. And maybe I'm not supposed to know what makes you tick. Maybe I'm not supposed to know this very well. But I've got you, you, the child all figured out. That's tough order anyway, because kids until they have any cognitive ability to kind of express it in later life teens and beyond. They can't articulate it. They just have that own cycle predisposition for who they are. And there's no, there's no cognitive reasoning. I think it's just some of it's a matter of also matter growing up.

DJ Stutz  15:42  
Exactly. And there's that too. And I think, too, as we were talking about how important those early years are, right, and all kinds of I'm in every area of life, honestly, that those first that first year especially. And then I would say the first five years. And then the next milestone for me is eight years, when different synapses start firing in the brain, and they're able to start understanding things on a different level. So we can do things, there are things that we can do to help our kids. And especially if we notice, oh, we have a child that is maybe more patient than others, or I've got a child that is extremely impatient. My thing is, then how can I help them through experiences through my modeling through whatever, but how can I help them not squashing their personality? But using that and saying, I think this will serve us as we work together. So talk to me about maybe understanding, watching our kids and helping them understand and helping us understand how those moods and those feelings come into play with this?

Dr. Stephen Rowley  16:52  
Well, I think it getting back to I've mentioned before, if if a kid somehow knows or has been told by a parent or teacher, you know, here are the rules, here's the expectations, you do these things, you're gonna stay in the box, no problem. But if you stray off that problems, and so being under the gun, for some kids feel like they're always being evaluated on whether they're living up to the expectations, or they've checked the box. Mean, some kids will rebel just to say, this is not who I mean that consciously. I'm more than this, and I'm frustrated with you by trying to put me in a box of your expectations was not who I am. So one of those ways, I think, is that the, which I talked about, about as the importance of play, unstructured time, there's no outcome intended, there is no expectation generally within you know, it's not endless time, but a pretty big amount of of time to themselves. Also having a having activities that are not planned, not helicoptered. I probably when you grow up, I did two kids stay at all hours. I mean, if your parents generally thought you're within a couple miles, you're okay. In like, you know,

DJ Stutz  17:57  
tracking to see where we are calling or

Dr. Stephen Rowley  18:01  
what went to 1957, the National kindergarten reading criteria was not all the stuff about math and science. One of them was to a parent, can you drop your child off four blocks from where you live? And can they walk home alone? Yeah, today, that'd be considered. There have been parents have been arrested for that kind of stuff. It's a form of abuse. Now not saying cross a busy street, but you know what I mean, it's like, fuck can you walk off. And that was, I think, kind of helping encourage and model a kind of self reliance that we're looking for self reliant kids, we don't give kids much of a chance when you're a little league and piano and art lessons and music, you know, on and on and on, and school is no different. They got all their stuff, you got homework, suddenly, your cram jam, it's no wonder kids don't crack, because so much of it doesn't really, with some exceptions, of course, really, unless they had something they love, like, say sports or music, that it's more or less just like being a military drill. You just got to do this and that and that. And there's it stifles that, that inner creative drive, I think, if you will, but I think that's why when you can be less concerned, what we're outcomes are are more inconsequential. So for example, if you go to pottery class, or you're dealing with clay, that's nice if you can make a cup or a bowl or a statue, whatever. But you can also just play with it and stuff. Play with it. They can remake it. I did a thing with my own clients. Sometimes. It's called scribble drawing. It's like you know, one way to cut through so if they're talking about their anxiety go well let's I don't know what anxiety is really. So you draw a picture with pastels of your anxiety, I'll draw a picture of mine and we'll show it hold and hold it up to each other. totally fascinating. Their definition by again a scribble is not a picture. It's it don't draw the car, don't you know? I mean? On the other hand, if you're talking if your anxiety looks red, well then red but if you do it really colored in hard if that's what it means to you. So very self revealing and also show all the differences we have in these these psychological states. We say oh, that's a depression. That's anxiety. They're an oppositional defiance. You know, that's why they don't pay Essentially the teacher at school or at home, and so forth, and sort of begin to get out of that to understand what energetic impulses are going through a person before you can get there. And also make it okay. Because you have yours. I've got mine. And I'm going to show you what mine looks. And I'm going to see what yours look, if you'll show it to me. It's a different conversation.

DJ Stutz  20:18  
That's a totally different conversation. Yeah. And kids, I think kids are so much more capable than we give them credit for, especially today, we're over protecting them, or we're clearing the ways that they don't have any problems to solve, we're gonna jump in and solve those problems. And so they are not developing that patience in even in themselves, or the patience of having to work through some kind of problem solving with a friend or with a sibling or whatever, because we're just jumping right in. And there's a level of patience that goes with being able to disagree with someone or be upset with someone and still manage to have a conversation and not end the relationship but to say, oh, okay, we're different here. When

Dr. Stephen Rowley  21:02  
you realize how much using one of the tools people can use as the aces, Aces stands for, it's a

DJ Stutz  21:09  
good event. Yeah.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  21:12  
I mean, you could do even a mental rubric without having to take a 10 point test. But if you've been around as many kids as I have been in classrooms, at school level, even at a school district level, you just were naive to think that there's so many kids that are not in those indexes way up there. It's almost like a program to fail. If you get to high school, your first semester, if you flunk two classes, you're not going to graduate, you're done. I've gone through this with principal, let's say with some of those kids, show me the names of them. Let's go through the ones that are already on the set up to fail this and it's like, yeah, they're not doing well, in math. They don't understand algebra can't read very well. Okay, so the idea was, what would they need more math than they need more reading to pick up a deficit. But when you hear the stories, we're talking about gang homes, we're talking about divorces, poverty, poverty, poverty, the stuff we're talking about actually sounds like first world problems compared to a lot of what a lot of other kids and they're where I live in round of the south end of Seattle. I mean, there's many districts in King County have maybe as many as different home languages spoken at home. That's a lot. And a lot of them are coming straight from SeaTac. Airport. I remember being in a class in a school one time, they were from Ethiopia, I think it was like I think the first or second day and a student lunch room and watch these kids. And so on one hand there was food. So that's a good thing. But then these little kids kind of just threadbare and kind of just so heart wrenching. And then the last lady gives them a corndog. It's like a corn dog. What do I do with it? So I'll just say there's there's something from certain perspectives of such deficits. The kids come into life experience schools, families, just in general, I mean, where it's just hard scrabble just to stay alive just to stay have food on the table. Food deserts, lot of people live in food deserts, where there's no, there's no grocery store within three or four miles, and there's no transportation, you don't have to take a bus to go to the grocery store every time.

DJ Stutz  23:07  
Yeah, and that's such a big issue. I think, too, in teaching kindergarten, and I mostly taught in inner city, very low income, high, high crime, lots of gangs, I wasn't much thrilled when I got a dad to come to parent teacher conference, but a little surprise when they'd have the face tattoos. Okay. But I think that having patience as an adult to say, and even if they're our own kid, and maybe we are having problems with income, and with stability, and with all of that, and maybe we are having those problems, but there are some evil parents that do not want what's best for their kids. But I think for the most part, we really want to take care of and help our kids but to find the ways for them to come to school. And I would see kids come to school, I would have, I'm thinking of a specific little boy now, who came to school with his mom's flip flops on. And we were in Denver in the winter, because it couldn't find any of the shoes for him to put on. And how are they going to learn anything, let alone patients when they're dealing with those kinds of issues. And now, even if you have this beautiful home and you've got a steady income, good good careers going on, and mom and dad love each other and all of that you're still going to have times when this child is dealing with something internal. And and so sometimes we tend to, well, my kids, okay, where they're in there, and yet, maybe it's just a nightmare. Maybe it's somebody coming to visit that isn't usually there that can set them off. Maybe there's a loss, even a pet or a good friend that moved away or those kinds of things that can really affect a child and Where their level of patience is going to be, they're going to be short tempered with different things. So yeah, we have the lower income kids that have so much going on. But we don't want to discount what's going on with middle and and higher income kids too.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  25:14  
Right? Right. I mean, just a little bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. For some kids, as you were mentioning, food and clothing and survival, number one without that stuff, forget it. On the other hand, as we mentioned earlier, these various kinds of actual real act trauma, developmental trauma, their lack of bonding, and the early years of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and home all that big ball of wax of trauma, or, in that matter, highly professional parents who are so busy with their own careers that they barely touch base with kids. Anyway, with all these kids, it's a state of disassociation. That's the imprint that's that that's the calling card of traumas, dissociation. So in a school setting or teaching other parents, I think the number one rule of how the the extreme impact of dissociation is, in fact, just the opposite is connection. Whatever that means. Yes, if you go to that kid in third grade, who's you know, he's just barely getting my B's. Now he's got some shoes and get some food and stuff, and wants to be recognized. And all that takes us a pat on the back, like a moment to chat. You know, it happens several times a week just to say we're connecting, I know you, how are you doing? That's where that connection begins. And that's what we're gonna begin to take what you're talking about when people are out of control, where the dissociation is running rampant. And in moments for even well adjusted, kids and families are those moments where things get a little out of control, or you're not regulated, but what they've learned almost de facto, if you're got most of them, loving their family, and things are secure, and so forth. It's a way you build build resilience is because you can laugh, learn, and you can be a little out of control, or a little depressed, and get yourself back into that zone of tolerance we call that's what creates resilient people. It's not a happy go lucky pain, free life. This is why there's so much angst, rightfully so about being in sports, for example, everybody gets an award for whatever you showed up, you get an award, you get a trophy for just being you don't ever really learn the benefit of failure, or the being on the butt end of bad sportsmanship to teach you something else that if you haven't felt like what's the other by the end of bad sportsmanship. It's hard to turn around and be a good sport. So that's why I think this is kind of the hard knocks of life, whether we shoot them or always come our way. We learned we were lucky through guidance and support or some kind of other people who are just simply, you talked about parents skills, just being a hole that if your 13 year old daughter just broke up with her boyfriend and eighth grade, and she's heartbroken. We're going Oh, my God, you know, well, we probably did it too, you know. So on the other hand, being able to hold that you don't have to intercede, you just hold that place for until it's time not to hold anymore. You don't have to come up with a solution. In fact, the more you try to do to Well, have you thought about this, have you thought about that, you might get a little of that. But mostly you're not going to it's just a predicate of that, of course, is listening. At age 13. There's not a lot of self revelation, this is gonna come from a 13 year old. Yeah, it's part of what you have to accept. Yeah,

DJ Stutz  28:10  
I love the way that you said, just holding that. And just saying, I know this is hard, or I know that you're frustrated, or whatever it is, but and not lecturing them on that, when they're in that state of mind, they're not going to learn anything anyway.

Dr. Stephen Rowley  28:25  
This would good therapists do, as far as government, say your stuff into the office with some of your nightmares, some of your closely held secrets, some of the stuff that doesn't make you look very good. Or you're just a jumble of a broken heart or anger, rage, whatever sad, that you can kind of in time sometimes happens immediately. But other times, it slowly will come out. And this is a place where you can have it come out and not judge. By listening now, later, you start to carry around some of the things on how you begin to work your way through this stuff. But those moments you just kind of, with all of its warts and imperfections, with all of its things where there's there's maybe justifiable reason for self blame. We how we began to let some of that go. It's not so much what you did, or how you begin to move forward. And it can be true of a five year old or 50 year old. I mean, we sometimes face those except it's more conscious. We'd like to think anyway for adults on the other on the older side of the scale, but sometimes that's not true, either. Yeah, sometimes people come with a remarkable lack of self awareness and don't want to go there. Give me a solution, tell me what to do. I don't want to go probing into my life. It's fine

DJ Stutz  29:32  
to do this. Right. And I think the understanding who you're dealing with and where they are, is going to affect how you approach a situation with that as well, right? Whether they're two or whether they're 22, you're going to really take a look and see and then two, we've talked about that feeling of safety being safe, and that so it's not even just safe that I have a roof over my head and clothes on my back and food in my belly. But it even goes I am safe in my mom's arms, I am safe. Even when I'm having a rough time, I am safe with my parents with their opinion of me and with the love that they show me or whatever, that's when then we're able to move on to some of these other values, including patients, and we're able to talk to them outside of the moment, in the moment is when we just need to show our best patients actually. Okay. And then outside of the moment when things are calm, we can do some role play or, you know, there are a bunch of things you can do with kids that let them talk about well, I just heard on the news that there were these two little boys and they were fighting over, you know, whatever. What do you think they should have done? Or just having some of those fun conversations? But it's outside of the moment? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I know, gosh, this time goes by so quickly. Oh, it does. Oh, my goodness. So Stephen, if any of our listeners want to get a hold of you, or learn more, and especially about your books, and some of the work that you've done there, how would they get in touch with you?

Dr. Stephen Rowley  31:07  
Well, all the contact information is on my website. Again, it's one word with pH minus Stephen Ste pH en row le y 108 dot com, it's got not only all this stuff about my practice my contact information, it also has a whole page or a little bar at the top about the memoir that we'll find more about the book, all the podcasts, have done articles, I've written all that kind of stuff. But I'm also very miserable having people my email addresses their contact and the questions or your input or whatever. So I enjoy that.

DJ Stutz  31:37  
You were the same on that. That's so cool. Yeah. And of course, we're going to put all of that information, everyone in the show notes. And so if you didn't have a pen at the rate at the ready, and weren't able to write all of that down, don't worry, we're gonna put all of that down in the show notes. So you can get that. So now Steven, before you go, I asked all of my guests the same question. We all know that there are no perfect parents, hence, the title of our podcasts, imperfect heroes, but there are parents who seem to be more successful than others. How would you describe a successful parent? Okay,

Dr. Stephen Rowley  32:09  
I've got a couple of criteria, we've covered some of this. And all of these will seem common sense because it sounds good. It's in the execution number. But number one, unconditional love. We say we haven't traditionally love our love until it's like, well, if you want to score that extra goal, or if your essay T would have been 100 points, or if he hadn't you know this, that and the other thing, then suddenly becomes conditional. And I interviewed students who have applied to Stanford, I've been seniors, I just finished with the route, I can tell with some kid, they are striving ever, ever more to be do what mom and dad would like to think they're going to where they want to go to college and what they want to major in, even though they're not interested, I call that conditional love. Number two, I think is also the next two and three are both listening without judgment, trying to really listen deeply. And also having the patience not to respond, even the stuff you don't like to hear. Yeah. Third, you also mentioned security, that can be emotional security. Not everybody can as financial security. But there's lots of kids who grow up without a lot of financial means in their homes. But they're really well adjusted, they learn to accommodate to the world. But if mom and dad seemed squared away, even sometimes in divorce settings, although it could be its own trauma, is the number one motivation for custody. Arranging parent plan is number one to kid. Sometimes we ignore the fact security can be really disruptive. We don't have mutual ways in which we're going to be able and have the same party line, so to speak with our own kids about how important they are. And we base everything around them. Okay, the next one is maybe the toughest of all, I think for parents, and that is Joseph Campbell talking about follow your bliss. I see so many kids, where it's the parents expectation their parents agenda for them. And many parents fail to take the time to recognize what is that little light ball that's in them their own bliss, what they're really most interested in. Anyway, the last one, which you've already mentioned, I think it's vulnerability. We can model for our kids. And we teach kids parents I was just having over by neighborhood coffee places a little girl who I had this, these polka dotted pants and cute little sweater and matching shoes. I said, I love your polka dotted pants. And she said, Oh, thank you so much. I said she's Oh, I got this other outfit that goes with this. She pulled my sleeve and said, You're a really nice man. And I said, But you know, you're a really nice girl. But I said, You know what, I'll bet you anything. You didn't just grow up learning how to be nice. Somebody taught you how to be bad and dad saying you don't teach it. You modeling. This goes back in both moms in that family tree and getting themselves right. Yeah, it's as though they're the ones who are going to stop with the stopper in the trauma. That generational traumas the bad mothering stops mean, even when you don't know how doesn't matter. If the intense there, then that's the kind of person you are at something to be acquired to be able to know in your own skin. That's what I refer to as like a deep emotional, I may not know who I am on some level, but I know who I am and what my values are. Write

DJ Stutz  35:01  
That was a fabulous answer. Thank you so much. That was great. Ah, so everyone, I would just love to encourage you again to rate and review and give your kids that chance mile the patient's teach them about it. And if you have any questions I know Dr. Rowley would love to talk to you. I know I would love to talk to you and help you. We'll come up with some plans on how to make all of this happen for you, and for your family. Next week, we're going to have our parent expert on patience. And so we'll be talking about that. And so until then, let's find joy in parenting. Bye, guys.

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