Let’s Talk Love Podcast Episode 129 - Why Boys Are Struggling with Dr. Brendan K. Hartman | Transcript
14.04.26
This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.
Welcome to Let's Talk Love, a space for real conversations, fresh perspectives and expert wisdom. We dive into the joys, the challenges and the beauty of relationships, learning and growing in community. Join us as we expand our relational literacy, becoming better at love together.
Robin Ducharme l Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Love. I'm so happy to be here today with my new friend and fellow Canadian man, Brendan Hartman, Brendan, thank you, Dr. Brendan Hartman, thank you for being with us Brendan.
Dr. Brendan Hartman l Oh, thanks for having me, Robin. Looking forward to this.
Robin Ducharme l So Brendan, Tell us, tell me, I know that you work with boys, teenagers, men. You're really helping. I would like you to describe what you do, please for a living, and what your mission is. And yeah, your work in this world.
Dr. Brendan Hartman l Yeah, absolutely, it's kind of one of my struggles is that I get excited about doing a ton of different things. So it is kind of hard to sum it all together, but I would say that I'm at the intersection of where social emotional wellness meets gender. And so started about like, okay, we need to teach social emotional skills, emotional intelligence, regulation that's all really important, but our gender also plays a role in how our wellness is shaped, and our relationships to different emotions and our relationship to the buy in around social emotional skills is influenced by our upbringing, based on our gender, and so a lot of the work that I do is going to schools, working with my favorite is working with parents, with teachers and with students to kind of create windows so that people can see and understand boys and men more clearly, but also to create mirrors for boys and men, for them to understand themselves more clearly. And it started primarily focused on boys and men, but often we were living in the most Gen Z and Gen alpha is the most divided politically by gender. It's the most romantically divided. So a lot of the work that I do is actually with all genders and bridging gender divides and trying to create empathy and understanding the male socialization experience, the female socialization experience, as well as for gender expansive individuals, and try to build empathy and connections bridges across these growing gender divides.
Robin Ducharme l So wow, you just said so much right there. Brendan, and it makes me when I was thinking about today and thinking about meeting you, you know what one thing I thought of was, I understand that there's, there's definitely differences in how we're raised and the culture, and when it comes to then you said, it's like, this divide is growing, like the gender divide, but I'm like, how do we get back to a place of like, what we all share in common, which is our humanness, right. And so if we're so focused on, you know, the patriarchy and feminism and boy girl, I understand there's, there's there's differences, right we have to honor, honor our differences and come to a place where we can have that bridge of understanding and curiosity. That was just the big thought I had this morning.
Dr. Brendan Hartman l Yeah, yeah. And I think we can sometimes there's this tension of like, we're all way more human across all genders than some people think, and yet we also need to acknowledge that there's differences. So if we talk like I often use this framework of, I don't like throwing around the word crisis too lightly, but I call them boy crises. There's a girl crises. And these are developmentally growing up these are specific time periods where children are at a risk of disconnecting from authentic parts of themselves. And the pattern for these disconnections looks differently depending on your gender. So for boys around the ages of five and 14, those are really pivotal years where their disconnections can become greater. For girls, they tend to have one more developmental crisis that's around grade five grade six. That's when the relational aggression spikes. It's when they get objectified and sexualized by society at a much higher degree. So accounting for yeah, we're all human, and we're all more like than some of the narratives out there thinking about like men aren't emotional or they don't have emotional needs. No. Men are deeply emotional and least sensitive. Boys are boys human emotions are human experiences. But then there's also the reality of acknowledging that there's differences too.
Robin l Yes. So you are, you're a sociologist. Is that right Brendan? that's your
Dr. Brendan l Yep.
Robin l And you started out working in high like, as a teacher,
Dr. Brendan l Yeah
Robin l Right.
Dr. Brendan l Started out as a teacher in my second year teaching one of my favorite students. And I know you're not supposed to have favorite students, but he loved Lord of the Rings,
Robin l I had favourite teachers so it makes sense the teachers would have favorite students. You know
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, you have ones that yeah, that stands out in different ways. But he died from suicide in my second year teaching. And obviously that was deeply impactful, and that helped, that made me kind of focus more on, like, social, emotional mental health issues I came up across the research that 81% of students diagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders were male, and then I, like, quickly ran down, looked at the records in my school, and it's like, the exact same percentage at the high school I was teaching at. And I was like, okay, how much of this is biology and how much of this is socialization? And there's arguments for, like, a little bit of both, but overwhelmingly, the amount of research and evidence that the pressure society puts on boys and men, as well as boys and men put on themselves, exacerbates and creates a lot of problematic psychological outcomes for boys and men and for those around them.
Robin l Yes, so let's talk about those pivotal ages that you mentioned Brendan for boys and for girls, and what actually you're seeing as like, that time that it's like, these, these shifts, or, you know, there's kind of like, kind of like, it sounds to me like there might be, like, a turning point where it's like, there's this, tell us, tell us about that.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, so the first boy crisis around the age of five, that, and I refer to these disconnects as both emotional and spiritual in nature. So the emotional disconnects of like increased risk of disconnecting from certain emotions that you're taught to suppress or that it's less okay. And so around age five, boys know that two emotions in particular are less acceptable to express because they're boys, and that's fear and sadness. And then if you look at research of parenting growing up, is that parents of all genders tend to use less emotional language with their sons in comparison to their daughters, particularly around sad and scary events. So there's less language given to boys around experiencing fear and sadness. And there's also all these other different studies where you swap toddlers in opposite gendered clothing, and you like, look, how do adults interact when they think it's a boy versus when they think it's a girl. And there's tons of different types of research around that. But from the emotional perspective, one of the biases that parents have to and adults have to grapple with is that when a boy is upset and crying, adults tend to assume so they it's not actually a boy. They think it's a boy. They tend to assume that the emotion is anger, that that boy is quote, unquote, angry. And if it's a girl, they tend to assume that that girl is sad or anxious. And so we have these projections around different emotions around children growing up, which creates, I would argue, a distorted relationship, that boys often grow up with a distorted relationship around understanding, fear, sadness and anger, and you think like, okay, why does it really matter so much if we're not using emotional language well, our ability to regulate our emotions later on in life is it's connected to our ability to accurately name the emotion. So if we can't accurately label and name and describe and understand what emotion is going on, it way harder for us to then use the appropriate management, regulation tool technique later on in life. And so like all the research, and sorry I'm going on here, is that if you actually were to make an argument about who is more emotional that most of the evidence would actually suggest that boys, on average, are more emotional than girls are. They have more verbal expressions of fussiness of joy and of distress as infants, that changes around age two to three, girls become more verbally expressive than boys, but boys still display more emotions on their face, and that ends around that difference ups around age five, again, the start of kindergarten, greater socialization pressures, but boys become less facially emotional around age five, but they've looked at whether that's an act of suppression or repression. Emotional suppression would be more of a conscious shutting down what's going on, whereas repression would be less conscious, and most of the evidence leads us to believe that it's actually a suppression, that it's an active kind of like, oh, I'm not going to show this emotion on my face. And so that changes around age five, and we know the socialization pressures for boys at that age is severe. Boys are more likely to get policed and bullied for being outside of the normal male whereas girls, on average are allowed to be more tomboyish for longer in life.
Robin l So when you like, I have my son is going to be five in May.
Dr. Brendan l Amazing.
Robin l He's very high on the spectrum. He's autistic. He's got chromosomal disorder. He's nonverbal, but he communicates very clearly through his eyes, through his facial expressions, through his emotions, he's able to tell, tell me, and tell people, his caregivers, like, what's going on and so like, and let's just say, like, somebody does have a verbal son in ages, around this age, we're talking about Brendon, what is, what is the way to actually help build this emotional because really, we're helping our children build emotional like a toolkit, right an intelligence around this, right. So like, when my son, Evan is sad, or if he's scared, is it like it's actually just, I know. And he's really sad, because he would just start crying, and it's just so clear. It's like, oh my gosh, you are really sad, you know. And just being there for him and being able to be like, I've got you, you know that that's that doesn't feel good. You know, like being able to really empathize with how he's feeling right.
Dr. Brendan l Absolutely, like not being alone in the emotional experience is one of the greatest gifts that you can give them. And the non sexy answer to your question is like we need to understand our own emotional landscape and our own emotional worlds. And so if the goal is to be an emotional safe haven for our sons, for any of our children, which it should be, that's actually how you build emotional resilience. Is having a level of safety there, we also need to become our own emotional safe haven. And so Dr Mark Brackett has a great acronym for like, the five key elements of emotional intelligence. And so anytime you're working on these skills, you're building emotional intelligence, and that's a trait that can be taught. It's associated with so many positive things. So the acronym is ruler, so it's recognizing your emotions in yourself and others. It's understanding the cause and consequence of emotions, and I would say the big one, especially when I work with adult men, it's not like I'm angry I punch a wall. It's not that cause and consequence. It's understanding that anger is often a secondary emotion, especially in how men are socialized, and understanding what emotion did I feel before it led to anger and a numb a huge emotion here is shame, that when we experience shame, shame is a sense of like I am, that something's wrong with me. It's one that makes us want to hide, like what our bodies want to do in shame is like you generally want to hide and not like show up
Robin l You want to shut down, yup
Dr. Brendan l Yes. So one of the quickest ways to avoid that negative feeling of shame is to use anger, because anger tends to be an externalized emotion where you can put the blame out elsewhere. And so understanding that anger is often an antidote to a feeling that you haven't given yourself permission to feel or you don't know what to do with it. And so anger is like the easy solution, easy, quote, unquote. But then the thing is, I work with, like, some youth who are like, are the epitome of angry in the sense of, like, they're in gangs or just left gangs, and they're often very terrified of their violence, and so they only understand their anger in this really enraged and they don't understand, like, all the purposes of anger. And so they're actually quite afraid of their anger, and then they have a lot of shame after they are enter into like a rage state. And so this perpetuates a cycle of not knowing. So that's understanding cause and consequence. The L of ruler is labeling, the more accurate you are to actually label what specific emotions underneath, then you can get a more common regulation strategy or a more useful one, because not every emotion needs the same response. Your emotion of disappointment
Robin l Right
Dr. Brendan l Versus your emotion of frustrated actually, would require something different. And then the E is expressing your emotion, talking about it, and then the R is being able to regulate your emotion
Robin l Right. Ruler, I like that.
Dr. Brendan l I do too
Robin l So yeah, and I also really appreciate what you said, Brendan, you said you've said this many times. What I've been, you know, following you and listening is just really how important it is for us as parents, know we've got it's like taking care of our own selves and really learning, building our emotional intelligence and our awareness, like playing out the ruler within us so that we can model that for our children. You know, you can't teach something you don't have right.
Dr. Brendan l Absolutely, yeah, you can't. And the two practical things, because that was kind of more the theory behind it,
Robin l Yes please
Dr. Brendan l Two practical things. One like, the best gift we can give is our own regulated nervous system. So just physical proximity for children to learn emotional regulation. Think less talking, especially the younger age the child is. It's more of I just need to work on calming myself down. And that can be exhaling for longer than you inhale, just a quick breath, cold drink of water. That can be something that you just give them the gift of your nervous system being calm, even if theirs isn't. That's co regulation, one of the best things you can do. And then the second thing is, be an emotional broadcaster. What that means is think of like sports casters, but instead of broadcasting the sports play by play, sometimes it's really appropriate for the adult to describe what's going on for them, and that's one of the best ways to teach kids around metacognition, of how you think around emotions. Is just an adult describing, like, okay, so this is the motion that's coming up for me in this moment. I'm a bit more activated here, but you're owning it yourself. You're not causing your child to then be in charge of your emotions, or you're not saying, like, look how upset mommy or daddy is you need to do that. That's not emotional broadcasting. That's causing your child to take care of your emotional needs when you're the adult and she should be the one showing up for them, but it's describing like, oh yeah, today daddy at work, like, had this anxiety that came up, and I felt like, you know, I wanted to nummo on my cell phone. And I thought, You know what? Maybe let me do. Stay with it. Maybe I'm gonna just journal and process and just name out loud. This is what daddy's feeling. That type of emotional sports casting would be another great strategy.
Robin l Yeah, I really I've never heard that before. Emotional be an emotional broadcaster. I
Dr. Brendan l Actually introduced me to the term, and I would love to credit whoever came up with it, but I have no clue who that is, but I love it so much.
Robin l It's smart. I think what I've been telling stories about my I've got a 16 year old, and she's learning how to drive, and I'm telling you, man, what an experience that is on a daily basis, when she's driving the car and I'm in the passenger seat, but like, sometimes I'll be like, like, you know, sometimes there's like, dangerous situations, and I'm like, holy moly. Like, well, you know, I'm, like, scared and like, and I'm getting emotive, and I can be like, holy, like, you know, how can you, how can you be stoic when you've got, like, somebody who's learning beside you, and you're, you know, you're in a moving vehicle. But
Dr. Brendan l Yeah
Robin l One something, I've really become more. It's been a couple years of practice, but I'm so much closer to my I'm in my inside myself a lot more, you know, and knowing myself better and better, and it's like, okay, I can let these emotions come through. Because, as we know, like our emotions there. What is it 60 seconds? You're the doctor here. Is it 60 to 90 seconds? Emotion can sorry,
Dr. Brendan l 90 seconds.
Robin l Yeah, 90 seconds. So think it's a minute and a half, it's not a long time, but in that time, I mean, you can let it go through and, yes, emotionally broadcast to be like, okay, right now I'm really freaked out. Like, holy cow. That scared the bejesus out of me. And, like, some she's pulled over before, and we're taking deep breaths together, because that was a close one. Okay, now, back on the road, you know what. We've lived through it. We're good. And then I'm like, clear it. Clear it. Like, you know, open the windows. We're gonna take some breaths and next, and then it's done. You know what I mean?
Dr. Brendan l So, yeah, like, just that is so powerful. Just having a break of 90 seconds just feel and process the emotional experience would just create such a better world where we're not bleeding out all of these suppressed emotions in these weird, sideways ways, but like, we live such busy lives that then those emotions never get processed in the way that they should.
Robin l Yeah, so what talk let's, let's go through the other two, like with girls and boys. So boys, you said the other pivotal time is, like between elementary and high school. And is that right? Is it from like, middle school to high school for boys?
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, grade eight, nine,
Robin l Yeah
Dr. Brendan l Being the most prominent for girls around grade five and six. And so those gender crises really coincide with puberty. Girls go through puberty on average earlier than boys do. But it's also just transitional time periods are just really hard for any human throughout development transition periods, they're always at way more risk of bullying when the social status changes, and then there's way more posturing. And so that's why you have like girls, relational aggression is what it's called. It used to be called or it's often known as drama, but I hate that term, because drama, I think, trivializes how psychologically damaging relational aggression can actually be, of all
Robin l Relational aggression, instead of drama. And I also think drama is just too overused. I mean, nobody understands that. Like, what really is drama. Right, where you're saying, wow, that's a different way to say it Brendan.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, the academic terminology is relational aggression for that reason.
Robin l Yeah, ok
Dr. Brendan l Because drama, drama, it's like, oh, like, just in the way that we have this gender bias of like, two girls are fighting, it's a cat fight. Like, it kind of trivializes, like we have all this language that trivializes the seriousness of issues that girls and women face.
Robin l Yup
Dr. Brendan l So that's why I don't like that term for there. And then I, as I mentioned earlier, like the sex, sexualization, the objectification of girls going through puberty, that is so their disconnect is often in relationship to their body.
Robin l Yes
Dr. Brendan l Of course, body image is rising as issues amongst boys and men as well. But a huge, major stamp of what the disconnect looked like for girls in our societies around their bodies, and then for boys, the time period transitioning to high school. That's when the the grade 12 boys in my PhD research, they all said that was the hardest time period. They all said that that was when they felt like the most fake, inauthentic versions of themselves, trying to be tough and cool to fit in. The pressures around masculinity were the highest. They really felt alone and thought that they were the only ones going through that experience.
Robin l And you know something I've heard you say over and over again, which is, you know, aloneness, sorry, loneliness. These boys that you, you know, studied and researched, and now you're, you know, you're in schools and you're interacting they're like, they could be the popular, popular kids. They could be the ones that are on the sports teams. They're surrounded by friends, but they're deeply lonely and so and so, what did you, what did you, what do you attribute that to Brendon? And how do we, how do we change that? How do we help these boys and girls with that? Because there is a loneliness epidemic. So where does it what's the source, and how do we move like, help and support our kids?
Dr. Brendan l The source always gets like, the academic in me was wants to think of like a lit review of all the different things that cause this. But like, what causes it is we get disconnected from ourselves, and we can't prevent all of the disconnections. Like, that's part about being human, is that there's gonna be posture, and we are trying, like, there's a developmentally appropriate thing that the adolescent years are filled with identity formation of when you're trying to find out and discover who you are. So you're testing different strategies and seeing what fits what doesn't, and so you can't prevent all of those things. And like what you said earlier is that being emotionally present, being attuned to what they need, or just not making them feel like they're alone in the experience, that is one way to mitigate that aloneness. And it would be amazing if those kids throughout those developmental crises, could have like one to three people in their lives where they could talk about what's going on, where they didn't feel judgment and they didn't feel like they were being a burden. And so those were the two main reasons why teenage boys in my PhD research shut off from talking about their what was going on in their lives was feared being a burden. It's selfish. Like my parents are going through a divorce. They got enough stuff to worry about. Or I, I've talked to boys all the time of like, yeah, I'm not gonna tell my mom about like, the bullying I face. And boys are very reluctant to actually even call it bullying, because most bullying happens from your in group, not from your out group. So it's less nerds versus jocks. It's more like you're a jock on the team, but you're on the outskirts of the accepted ones in your team. So the ones that are bullying you are the ones that you're actually trying to be connected to. And so it's harder to even identify as bullying, but they don't want to share that to their parents, because then their parents are going to freak out and again. So it goes back to can we give our children compassion, non judgment? And often you're just gonna need to give a lot of assurance during that time period of like, I'm a huge fan of what I call exposing the system, basically just naming up front the dynamics in the room. Of like, hey, you know what you might know this, if your child is a grade six or seven, that like, as you go to high school next year, you might feel like you're really alone going through things and your experiences, and you might even feel like you don't want to be judged by me, or like you might feel like if you share what you're going through with me, you might feel like I'm going to be burdened by that, but it's like, no, that's actually my role as a parent. Like, I want to know what you're going through. I want to know these struggles, and it's up to me to control my emotional reaction to that, but I am here for you, cheering, naming different dynamics. One of the saddest things in my PhD research, and I compared the most emotionally expressive grade 12 boys to the least emotionally expressive grade 12 boys, and all of them wanted more emotional connection with their male friends, but almost all of them thought that none of the other male friends wanted the same thing. And so it's just reassuring, just naming that, posturing like, hey, I bet you you think that other guys don't want to do this, but I know from a research perspective, that's not the case. And I honestly like, I saw a lot of myself because I was quite emotionally expressive in high school. But the boys who were the most emotionally expressive, there was a little bit of cockiness in them, of like, oh yeah, I'm kind of special and unique. And by grade 12, though, like, half of them were starting to realize my other male friends are emotional too. It's like they had almost written off a bunch of their male friends. They're like my male friends that I can have fun with, but like female friends are who I talk to emotionally about other things going on in my life and that division, they were starting to realize everyone actually, these boys I had written off, are actually more emotionally desiring deeper connection and longing
Robin l This conversation makes me think of Dr Shefalis work, right. I mean, Dr Shefali is going to be our, one of our speakers at In Bloom this year
Dr. Brendan l Amazing.
Robin l And she just keeps going back to the parents, the parents and how we are modeling, right and and how we ourselves like, like you said, if we could become that safe haven for our children and showing them and communicating to them like, even through our foibles and all of our mistakes, like, because that's what we are we're human beings, and we're gonna make them all the time. But it's like, as we are building our emotional bandwidth and our tolerance and our intelligence, it's like we can share that with our children
Dr. Brendan l Absolutely and depending on what age our kids are, we might realize we have to repair our relationship before we can even become an emotional safe haven
Robin l Oh yes. Oh my gosh what a great point you make, of course. So how do you tell tell me about that. Let's go there. Let's just talk about repair.
Dr. Brendan l Well, I do a, I'm a I'm a reluctant, big fan of role plays, because I want everything that I do to be like research base of like, how do you actually create change? I realized very quickly after my PhD, I could talk about these subjects, but every parent question was just like, okay, so what do we actually do?
Robin l How do we do it? How do we do it? Give us the tools.
Dr. Brendan l Well, two quick things, because it would get into too long of a lecture, but two things that we can do is changing. If you can change people's emotional feelings around the subject that is often done best through stories like a level of personal vulnerability that gets people's emotions more on board with change. And another side note of that is if you get people to reflect on specific behaviors, is way better than getting them to reflect on general behaviors. So if you want someone to reduce violence, you don't get them to think like, what do you think about violence in general? You get them to actually granularly, like, case study, be like, how do you feel about slapping your partner across the face? And you're both and we're in BC together. It's like the amount of intimate partner violence amongst teenagers and relationships is crazy high, like, across all genders, like the amount of just physical
Robin l Is it really?
Dr. Brendan l It's very high. I apologize for not knowing the actual statistic, but is very high across the board, of all genders, just and some of it you can attribute to like pornography in like, sexual context, some of it, though, is just like, is it appropriate to, like, slap or punch, just kind of like, minor pushes. Yeah. Like that that those rates, um, are self reported to be very high, which I know I want to come back to something that you said earlier, but I actually lost track of thoughts. So I'm going to leave it back to you, Robin.
Robin l That's okay, something that you you shared this story on a podcast you were on Brendan about a teenage boy who was because you were teaching about the window of tolerance. And I know like, can you, can you please tell us about the window of tolerance, and when just the story that I like that you were relaying on this conversation you had was around this teenage boy realizing, like, I am going like, I don't I don't have like, I'm not in the middle. I'm not in that.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah I don't live in my window.
Robin l I'm not regulated in that window. I am either in hyper or I'm in hypo, right. Either I'm under like, I'm just like, numbing out my emotions, I'm ignoring them, or I'm in a state of, like, high like, I am in like, fight or flight. There's no capacity here to think rationally or do rational thing, like, so I'm not in that. So can you describe that to us? Because I thought that was a great story that you shared about this boy, because you can see it, right. He's like, either smoking pot or he's like, video gaming, like, numbing out whatever he's doing. So he's like, totally not there. Or he's like, raging and like, so it's like, yeah, one side of the spectrum
Dr. Brendan l Absolutely. So the window tolerance, essentially, when you're within your window picture that as a middle band, like, there's gonna be ups and downs in it, but you can still kind of catch and regulate and exist and learn, and your brain is working kind of firing on all levels still, but then you go above your window, hyper arousal, that's fight or flight. Most often agitated things are unsafe, very hard to learn. If your kid is in a meltdown, your response to that kid and hyper arousal is different than if you catch it before going into hyper arousal. And then hypo arousal is like, shut down, freeze. And I love using this kind of window, like it's this is part of the emotional broadcasting, or emotional sports casting that parents can do is just identify I'm getting out of my window or I'm on the edges of my window. And so this boy, I often get boys and men to like feel it in their bodies. What does hyper arousal feel like to you? A lot of them feel it in their fists. A lot of them feel it in their legs. And then, what does hypo arousal feel like to you? And then get a name like, what are the things that you do when you're hyper aroused? Sometimes that's punching a locker, throwing a controller and a video game. What are some things you do when they're hypo aroused. And these boys came up with a list of like, porn, social media, doom scrolling, smoking pot. And then that boy was like, after we did this list, just sadly looking at it, he's like, whoa. I'm like, never in my window. I'm just existing on the lines of the hypo aroused line and the top of the window of hyper aroused and I just go back and forth and that insight. And I share this story a lot, and I often see a lot of parents and myself realizing how much are we actually living more on the edges of our window of tolerance, as opposed to within it. And that's one of my biggest concerns with social media and cell phones, is that it becomes a quasi emotional regulation tool, quasi in the sense that it does kind of down regulate us. I was it down shifts our level of activation, but it doesn't actually then process the emotions underneath, and it just becomes kind of a band aid that perpetuates emotional suppression.
Robin l Wow. I. Well, if people are using it to regulate, it's like you said, it's like, taking you, you're not in the window, you're not you're not even being present. You're you're
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, and so like, let's have a more nuanced look too. Because, like, for and I've worked with a lot of in this. I had my master's in special education, lots of ASD, working with students with autism or autistic students, and sometimes the down regulation of using technology is super helpful, like, that's a that's a tool from a hyper aroused state, but then there's processing, or there's things to be do after that. So it's not like you can't use it as a tool. The problem is especially because these apps are designed to be so addictive that you never end up processing the emotion and it just becomes a suppressor.
Robin l Yeah, so you're going into schools. Oh, please, go ahead
Dr. Brendan l I find this is part of my ADHD is I realized why, I realized the thing that I never finished. And I want to let your audience know that I was talking about role plays,
Robin l Yes
Dr. Brendan l And that is one of the biggest things that you can actually do to equip any human being to actually changing the behavior, because if you want boys to show up more accountable in your life, you need to actually practice it when the stakes are way lower. And so I do a role play like a full apology role play that I do with all ages and all genders, but it's like, there's kind of like five steps of this model that I use of what a full apology looks like, and then kind of working through that.
Robin l Can we practice it Brendan, can we do it? Let's do it. I want to see what this five step apology looks like, because let's we can all like the importance of an apology and the importance of repair, and we need skills around this.
Dr. Brendan l Yes, we do. Okay, so you put me out. I'm not gonna remember all five.
Robin l It's okay. We don't need to. We don't need numbers around this. Just
Dr. Brendan l Okay
Robin l Like, just like, do it. Let's play it out.
Dr. Brendan l Okay, yeah, so do we want to have a situation? Do I owe you an apology for something, and what's the situation? Or wait, let's put ourselves in the parents shoes. I okay. I use the tone of voice with my daughter today that upset her before school, and it was zero her fault. She asked for a bagel and half a bagel, and I put both in and I never told her that I was gonna eat the other half, and I saw her eating both. Eating both of the bagel pieces. And so I was like, Oh, why are you doing and it was not ill intent on my part, but the tone of voice she was sensitive to so an apology is being very clear about what you did and taking responsibility for your actions, and then it's also addressing the impact that you had on that other person, trying to name what that impact was, and also giving a space of what am I going to do better in the future, or also acknowledging that they don't have to accept apology right now, and there might be things in the future that you might want me to do to make this feel better. So in this case, I didn't do the full full apology, but a full apology in this sense, in this case, would be, hey, my daughter, I realized that you actually had no clue that I was planning on eating the other half of the bagel, and my tone of voice startled you, and I recognize that that impacted you, because you kind of shut down and you felt like you were in trouble, and so that was daddy's lack of communication. That was totally my responsibility for that happening, and I am going to be more aware of my tone of voice in the future, and also like, I want to reassure you that you weren't in trouble, you're not in trouble, that daddy's tone of voice is the issue here. And if you want to talk like, do you have anything that you want to say right now, or is there anything in the future? You let me know if I can make it better, or if there's anything that you need to say on your end. But how does that sound? And and checking in with them of how that's landing.
Robin l You knw what I was just sitting here listening to that and feeling into it, and I'm like all of that. It just it shows so much care and consideration and love, right. Like, that's, it's just like that, right there was like, love in action, because you're like, I see that what I did there, I'm so sorry. You know, you are acting like the safe place that you want to be for your daughter, and you're mimicking, you're showing like, you're not just mimicking you're you're showing her like I really do care. I did not mean to hurt you in that way. Like it was, you know what I mean? Because it did startle her. It like it was, like something that affected her. And it's like being able to apologize even for half a bagel, that whole bagel, it doesn't matter what it's about, like you could see that your behavior affected her in a way that didn't, that wasn't good. Didn't feel good for her, so just being able to apologize, but in that way though, it's like you're playing it all out. It's not just like, sorry. What does that do? It actually doesn't do anything. If you just were to say sorry about that, that doesn't actually acknowledge the impact that you had on her.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, and even though, sorry, would still be better than like, oh, you're so sensitive. Or like, you think that was a hard tone of voice. You should have heard how my dad's tone of voice, like, you need to grow resilience. It's like one of the big parenting skills is being attuned. And attunement is realizing that the child in front of you is not you. It's not someone else's projected version of them. It's just like, who is this person in front of me? Can I meet their needs? Again, having twins is really helpful for this, because it shows you, in real time that like, and a positive example is that, like, one of my twins as a toddler would want to be thrown up in the air as high as possible the other twin exact same enjoyment, but I could never release her from my hands. And so it's like, I'm looking for, what does that child need in that specific situation? And it's like, oh, am I okay that one of my daughters is more sensitive to my tone than I would be to my tone. It's like, that's just who the daughter is, and I want to honor that in her but it also requires me to reconcile my past and be like, well, I think that you should be able to deal with a harsh tone of voice. Yeah. I want you to be resilient to other people in your life, but I also want you to be someone like your father, someone if you end up marrying someone someday, I actually think tone of voice is a really important issue, because there's a lot that can be communicated and a lot of relational conflict that happens in tone of voice. So I actually do think it's actually really important to address at a young age.
Robin l There's no doubt about it. You use there's so in the beginning of this conversation, I was telling you about Dr Jody Carrington, fellow Canadian. She lives in Olds, and I love her, and she wrote a book called Feeling Seen, and that's what you were just talking about with your twins. It's like you're seeing them for who they are and their differences, and honoring them as people, as like and that's one of the one of the greatest gifts we can give each other, right.
Dr. Brendan l It is and like, that's the human need to feel seen and heard. And this gets harder during adolescence, because they at the developmental stage of looking for identity. It's harder for them to see themselves and understand themselves, because they're going through so much, and so basically, you have to see them in the chaos developmentally, of all of these unknowns, and it requires us to sit with a lot more discomfort of like, yeah, there's there is more uncertainty and lack of clarity, and you're just being a consistent support.
Robin l Wow, awesome. One more thing I wanted to ask you about before we close is resilience, because I've heard you talk about resilience. Like, how do you we do want to help our children build resilience for sure. And what does that look like, like? What is your definition of resilience? And how do you how do we help, help with that? Or just, how do you understand or explain? How do you explain resilience?
Dr. Brendan l I should have a definition. I would say my definition is your ability to handle deviations that interrupt you from your window of tolerance, essentially, and being able to persevere through that and to be able to get back on track and not be so off put from what comes your way and how I explain it is that there's two pendulum swings of how you could approach trying to raise resilient children, and both of them are problematic. One I call the tough love approach, which is the under supported, which is like, figure out yourself. And I hear this, if you want to trigger me, you tell me, like, oh, you're gonna lose your son for a couple of years as a teenager, but like, then he'll come back to you. It's like, sure, there might be a level of disconnect that happens and that it's going to be a bit more a touch and go. Maybe you're not the emotional safe haven. Maybe it's an older uncle, maybe it's an older sibling, but you're still going to be showing up, even if it changes. But you don't build resiliency by your aloneness, by being under supported. And I think a lot of men struggle with this concept, because they grew up and they survived and adapted to a lack of support, and then I think that's how they became resilient, because now they can persevere through a lot of things, but this is called the fallacy of misattribution, where they didn't become resilient because they were alone. They became resilient in spite of being alone, and so that is a really important thing to realize and recognize, that sure, you might develop resiliency by yourself, but that isn't actually being alone is not a helpful thing for building resiliency, then the opposite end of the spectrum, and as a former teacher, these parents, sometimes we call snow plow parents, where they remove all obstacles in front of their child, and they step in in ways that their child should be learning, should is a bad word, but they are developmentally capable of learning the skills to handle it themselves or with more autonomy and so that doesn't build resilience, because resilience isn't built from the absence of obstacles. It's built by meeting the challenges. And so resiliency, think of it as a library where you want children to be supported, to go through hard things and to basically have like a library of memories of all the hard things that they've done before, so that as they develop and become less hands on with your parenting, they can go like, oh, I've done hard things in the past. I can do it again. I can do other hard things, and that continues to grow and develop that way.
Robin l Oh, my goodness, I love how you put that. It's like a library of memories and experiences. Like, that's how we grow and learn as people. We have to go through the stuff and be like, actually, I've been there, done that, and I did really well and or maybe not, but I learned from that, and then I could carry on in do things differently next time. Or I know I can do this, because you've built the tools for it.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the like, and this is such a nuanced thing is that one of the most harmful messages around masculinity that boys and men can grow up, there's three, but one of them is need to be self reliant. Need to do things yourself. And that is like has such a positive aspect to it, but it becomes problematic when it's rigid and you cannot accept help from others, or you have to do everything yourself, and then you get overwhelmed, burnout, emotional suppression blows up in all these other ways. It's really hard to it's really hard for humans to hold cognitive dissonance that things can be both things at the same time, that I'm not going to regret or like I'm grateful for the hard experiences I faced alone because it helped me develop as a person, but also they didn't actually need to experience things as hard as I did, and I can change the pattern for my own children. That's like, the best thing you can do with cognitive dissonance is just to understand that there's probably conflicting and polarized parts within you, and just to put it all on the table. Yeah, I mean, I could get so lost in the weeds here.
Robin l No, I think what you said is just poignant. I really do. I think there's so many things in life that that hold polar opposites, and it's both are true at the same time. That's, that's the life experience, right.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, if I always say, if there's a magical, magical wand that could wave around the world, around people's relationships with emotions, it would be able to tolerate our own emotional distress more and the emotional distress of others more. And I think that's really difficult,
Robin l Especially with our children, right.
Dr. Brendan l Yeah, yeah, like, and going back to the opposite of resilience, I would argue, and Dr Becky Kennedy says this really well, is that the quickest way to raise entitled children is every time they face a challenge, it's met by an immediate success. So don't give them immediate success or like this is also like preventing eating disorders, is that if you soothe any emotional distress with food right away, you're also creating more wiring that like food is the comfort. It's the dopamine for emotional dysregulation. That's why cell phones, if you can turn off notifications as much as possible, because that becomes a soothing thing. And I showed my university class a couple years ago when the first like, video taped evidence of a toddler crying in a crib at night was just like swiping on an invisible iPad, but like, that was their soothing technique, because that got wired as how they manage emotional distress.
Robin l Something that I do, and have done for a while now is like, I have my phone on silent and do not disturb at all times. It doesn't mean I'm not on it. It doesn't mean I don't go on it and work and, like, answer messages and texts and stuff, but no notifications. Like, I don't want to know you're not. I don't want that phone to be ruling my life. It's like, I'll decide. So that's just a practice that actually changed a lot in my life, you know, in the last like, maybe three, four years. So it's good.
Dr. Brendan l Absolutely. We talked about Dr Hilary McBride earlier. That's one of her tips that I also took as well, take away notifications on my phone.
Robin l It makes all the difference. So Brendan, before we go, we have, like, one minute, and I just want to, like, what is it that you say to kids, because I think there's been a lot of tools for me as a parent and as an adult, you know that I can take from this conversation, but like, What are you saying and then we can, you know, hopefully take this in as the adults listening, but to the kids that you're doing workshops with at the end? Like, how do you like, you know, as your like takeaway, like, you know, for when they're struggling through all the things that we've just talked about. Like, it's hard to be a kid. It's hard to be a teenager. Like, I know I've got two teenage like, Well, my my daughter's 19, so she's in university, but my daughter right now in grade 11, she's going through stuff. And I know because I was, like, I was that age once too. You know
Dr. Brendan l There's so many different types of workshops that I do that have different type of ways. But I guess it goes back to the overall thing is, I want students to feel less alone in their experiences, that even if they don't have someone in their life, like, I want to be really realistic that,
Robin l Yeah
Dr. Brendan l That getting more emotionally vulnerable is actually quite dangerous, because if you don't have someone in your life that can support that, that can be worse. And so you might be in survival mode. And so one of the things is like you deserve to be seen and heard. You're less alone than you think in this experience, and even if you I always encourage 10% discomfort rule, like try to lean in in a conversation with someone in your life, 10% more uncomfortable and vulnerable than what would feel safe. Don't go 100 that's greater chance of a vulnerability hangover or an AB reaction, and so just where are the areas where you can sit with your discomfort a bit more. And then I also do encourage, like, the self reflective thing of, oh, there's so much more time, but like, there's four core emotional wounds, or four core emotional fears that humans tend to have, fear of being alone, unloved, disrespected and inadequate, and just getting that sense of, can we sit with our own discomfort of what's coming up for us in a situation, and can we see ourselves and we we deserve to be if no one else in our lives can see us, we deserve to at least give ourselves the the benefit of meeting ourselves in the mirror.
Robin l Yeah, oh, wow, that's beautiful. I just got so much out of today, and I thank you so much, Brendan, and I love your last name. It's like Hartman. You. You're a man with a big heart. I know it so thank you so much.
Dr. Brendan l Thanks, Robin. It was so nice talking with you.
Robin l You too, and I hope to see you in Vancouver next month.
Dr. Brendan l Yes, yeah, I'll check the dates. All right.
RLR Team l Thank you so much for listening. This podcast is hosted by Robin Ducharme. Please subscribe and rate our show. We value your feedback as it helps us bring you the resources you need to improve your relationships. Visit us at realloveready.com to attend our annual In Bloom summit and to access more ways to build your relational literacy, we honor and express gratitude to the Co Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play. Blessings to you in love and in life.