People Pleasers, Sibling Fights and Attention vs Direction

0:02 Welcome everyone. We are here to talk about people pleasers, sibling relationships and so much more. I have amazing questions from you. We are here in our April reset. That means no question is going unanswered by me and I am going to answer all of the many questions that have come in one by one and we are going to get started. So the first question that came in here is from Lvida and she writes what an inspiration. Thank you, Avital. One question from me. How would you prepare a 2-year-old for a new sibling? My son will be two and a half when a new baby arrives. We tried to tell him already.

0:38 I'm not sure if he understood though. Maybe he's still too young. All the best, VA. Vita, thank you so much for this beautiful question and congratulations on your baby on the way. I have been in your position four times because every time we had another baby, my elder child was about two, two and a bit. And so I have a lot of experience with this and I would say that there is not that much preparation that's necessary. A 2-year-old is still very young and they're very much in the moment and it's very hard for them to project into the future. All sorts of stories that are going to happen seem really abstract. So there's not that much preparation that they need. I would actually say it's more preparation that you need. This is the type of thing of setting up your routines in a very predictable way. trying to maintain as much predictability and as much routine with the toddler so that it's not a massive big change in their life that uproots everything and creates chaos everywhere, right? Keeping some things predictable like bedtime, like dinner time and bath time, like the same book at night even after the baby's born, that kind of thing. So that they maintain a sense of stability like the baby hasn't uprooted everything. Um, if you have babies in your life, if there are, you know, neighbors, friends, family members, cousins who you can introduce to the baby to your toddler and show them this is a baby. I also have a baby in my tummy and the baby's going to come out, etc. You can do that.

1:55 You can tell them stories about babies. You can read them those very sweet books about the baby that's coming. Um, but most of the work with a toddler is going to be done after the baby's born, right? It's going to be showing them how to touch the baby gently and wash hands beforehand, how you never touch the baby's eyes or the baby's face. say you're very gentle with the baby. Um, and helping them to uh be part of the transition like do you want to fetch me the bottle? Do you want to pass me the diaper? Do you want to help me bathe the baby? Uh, those types of things that are all going to happen as you know as you as you welcome the baby in. There are many things that you can do like helping set up the crib together. You just want to involve the toddler so that they feel that they too are welcoming the baby in and not that they are being replaced by the baby. Um, and uh, that kind of thing I think is going to come naturally to you and you're going to do it really, really well. And I actually think I have a video about this on YouTube from way back in the day. So have a look. But I do want to say one really important thing and this is true for you if you are welcoming a new baby and it's true for you if you have siblings, if you have more than one child. There is a pervasive belief in our western culture um that siblings are somehow um you know they've taken something away from their elder sibling that they've dethroned their elder sibling that having a baby is somehow something bad that you've done to your older child. Okay? There's this insidious belief that when you have a child and you give them a sibling you're somehow taking away from their attention. you're somehow, you know, splitting yourself and it's unfair to them because now there's a cuter little baby there and they're going to feel hard done by. And I think this is a really bad mindset to welcome a baby into the world with because your your elder child actually needs to know that this is the biggest asset that has ever been given to them that ever will be given to them. Okay? This is something good that happened to them. Siblings are a blessing, not a curse. And so you want to really have a very positive attitude towards the sibling coming in. You want to have a very unapologetic frame of mind. Um where you're not going to, you know, feel like, "Oh no, poor baby. Now there's a baby here and they're cuter than you and all of that, but rather create togetherness. Rather show them that babies are a good thing and a beautiful thing, even for the older sibling. And yes, they're sometimes annoying and they sometimes take away attention from you and that kind of thing can be hard, but that overall overwhelmingly siblings are a good thing. Siblings are a gift. Um, KPZ says, "My biggest issue is that my older son needs so much supervision and help with school work because he's extremely hyperactive and takes up most of my time that my younger kids don't get as much."

4:40 Okay. And here's you know what you are talking about another belief that we have as parents. Um, and it's, you know, it's fair enough and it's an understandable belief, but I I do invite you to question it. And that belief is that we have to give all of our children exactly the same thing, exact equality. Okay? The same amount of time, the same amount of attention. Everything needs to be fair square as if you're dividing a cake. And so, you need to give them the same size pieces. But even when you are dividing a cake, different people are going to consume different amounts of cake, right? It's not the same for a two-year-old and for a 20-year-old, for example, right? Or for two different two-year-olds. They're going to need different amounts of cake to feel full and to to be satisfied. And I want you to shift from thinking all my children need to get the same in order for it to be fair to thinking all my children need to get their needs met. Because the truth is that different kids have different needs. Some kids, say you have a child with special needs, that child is absolutely for sure going to take up much more of your resources than your other children, right? In most in 99% of cases, you're going to spend a lot more money on them because they're going to need therapies and clinicians and visits and travel and uh equipment and gadgets and uh supplements and all sorts of things that your other kids might not need. Now, is that unfair? If I say, "Wait, I spend $100 a month on this kid.

6:08 Do I now need to rush out and spend $100 a month on every other child just to make it fair?" If I say I spend two hours a day doing, you know, occupational therapy with this kid, do I need to now match that and spend two hours a day with every other child just to make it fair? No. That doesn't make any sense. And that's not how human development works. We don't need to measure things to make them equal. If your elder son needs time on his homework, needs time with you, needs that attention, and your younger children can play independently nearby, then great, that's wonderful. And I want to remind you that actually when it comes to fulfilling a child's needs, it's much more about the quality than about the quantity. So KPZ says, "Especially my daughter, she will cry and say, I never why do you ne why do you never spend time with her? I don't know how to manage my time working full-time. I have four kids. My eldest is nine, seven, four, and two." Okay, so it's a great question. A lot is in there. Let's dive into this piece by piece. Okay, the first thing to say is it is a lot. You're doing a lot. Raising four young children and working full-time means that you don't have uh, you know, all that many hours spare in the day to divvy up attention between your children. That's just the fact of the matter. If you're working, you know, a 9 to6 or an 8 to5 or whatever you're working, an 8 to six, a full-time job, okay, then you only have precious few hours in the day at home. In that time, you need to do your housework, you need to do any leftover work that's lingering. You need to do your self-care. You need to sleep. You need to eat. Uh, and you need to spend the time that you have with your children, raising your children, right? Doing the homework, bath time, feeding them. I don't know what, right? I don't know exactly what goes in. I don't know if you have help. I don't know if your husband helps. I don't know if you have a nanny that helps. I don't know if you're doing it all yourself. It all depends, right, on how you're divvying up this time. But of course, it's hard for you to manage your time. Of course, it's hard to give everybody everything they need when much of your time is not even available, right? That's what working full-time means. It means that we're not around all of that time and we can't give what we don't have. So, the first is to understand that there are tradeoffs to every decision in life, right? None of us can be perfect at all things all the time. We can't develop a full-time working career and be stay-at-home moms at the same time.

8:24 There are trade-offs. There are balances. There are there's give and take, right? And we have to accept the prices to our choices, right? Maybe the price of staying home uh more than, you know, working part-time or staying home is that I don't earn enough money or that I don't develop my career or that, you know, I feel bored or all sorts of, you know, there's a price to every choice is what I'm trying to make. I'm not trying to say that there's one choice is is more correct than the other because I think it really depends on you and your unique situation financially, socially, uh psychologically, all of that stuff. But what I am saying is every single choice has a trade-off. And one of the tradeoffs of these this type of lifestyle is, and I've been there, is that we have less time to divvy up with our kids. So that's the first thing is just to accept that there's a price to pay and then we have to just pray pay it graciously. The second thing is to understand that children don't need massive amounts of time um time focused attention with us. Okay? They don't need us to spend hours and hours a day looking in their eyes and telling them how much we love them and snuggling with them and reading them etc etc. If you can do that in a higher quality way with your daughter then you will fulfill her need for for parental attention. Okay. I don't believe that kids need us to give them hyperfocused attention for long stretches of time during the day. In fact, I think that would probably be unhealthy for them. What would be better for her is that she gets to really connect with you at certain times. And maybe that that be becomes a reliable thing like you have a special bedtime routine together or you're with her when you feed her you really sit down and you put your phone away and you listen to how her day was or on the weekends you spend the whole day together and you kind of make up for lost time or something like that where you can give her a predictable reliable like it's true right now I'm doing homework with your brother but I will be with you you know in 20 minutes when we're doing bedtime I want to hear all about your day and everything that you have to tell me right making enough time for that quality connection, right? So, it's not constant and distracted and on my phone and busy and with other kids, etc., but just at some point in the day like I work from home and I spend time with my kids. But the the truth is that I'm often busy and distracted and I'm, you know, jumping between kids needing different things and housework and and other distractions and my work. And so if I want my child to feel like, okay, I've given her real attention. I've really been with them, then I'm going to, you know, set aside even just four or five minutes at bedtime to sit by their bed and to listen to them. Or we're going to sit around the table as a family for dinner and we're all going to be able to share about how our day went.

11:02 That type of thing. Does that make sense? Uh KP, let me know if that answers your question there. Um and I would love to go in further if it doesn't. Okay. Now the other thing I want to say is that when your daughter says she cries and she says why do I never spend time with her? Really important mindset shift for you here. Okay, for all of us. I used to homeschool and one of my friends uh not only homeschooled but she unschooled and she did not work. So I was always working but she didn't work. In other words, she spent 24/7 all the time that she had in the world with her kids completely focused on them. That's all she was doing. And I spent a lot of time with this family and I heard on many occasions her child crying and saying, "You never spend time with me."

11:51 Okay, child would say, "Why do you never spend time with me? Why are you never with me? You're always not with me." Now, I watched I was there. I was there for hours. We homeschool together. I was there all the time. I we hung out together. She spent more time with those kids than I think any mother ever could. Like, it was all her time. It was all her time. Um, and so sometimes, I'm not saying it's always true. It could be that you don't spend enough time with your daughter. That's also possible. But sometimes it's not an indication that we're not actually spending enough time with them. It's almost like a symptom or a a a catchphrase or a way of expressing something else. And sometimes it is a need that our child has like, I want a bit more attention or I want more touch or I want more bonding or I want more love. Right? That's possible.

12:40 But sometimes it's a mindset issue with the child themselves. Okay? And sometimes we have created this mindset issue. And here's what I mean. In our modern day parenting, I hope you've seen my recent master class all about this. But in modern day parenting, we have this myth that the answer to absolutely everything is more and more connection. The answer to our child whining, the answer to our child saying I can't, the answer to our child bickering with siblings, the answer to our child whatever is connection. Connection.

13:06 Connection. You've got to connect before you direct. You've got to connect before anything. You have to answer every unmet need before you can address any behavior. And the truth is that sometimes it's not that there's no connection. It's not that you haven't spent enough time with her. It's not that she has an unmet need. It's not that she's hungry or tired or needs attention or feels jealous or any of those things. It's that she's stuck in a bad mindset. She's stuck telling herself a skewed false story. She's stuck telling herself, "My mom doesn't spend enough time with me. My mom doesn't like me. We all know people like this as adults. You know, adults who are always stuck, you know, complaining about the government, complaining about the weather, complaining about um their job, complaining about their in-laws, complaining about their children, complaining about their house, compl complaining about their health. They always have something to complain about and it almost becomes a habit because it is it's a habit of mind. It's a thought pattern. It's actually a cognitive fallacy, right? where we maximize something negative and minimize something positive. And children are just as human as the rest of us and just as likely to get stuck in poor, repetitive mindsets that actually hold them back. And by the way, this is exactly what I teach inside of the studio. I teach you how to coach your child with helpful mindsets to set them up in life for success. So, a child like your daughter might might I don't know.

14:30 I'm not I'm not in your house. I don't have a secret spy camera. Okay, but just ask yourself, is it true that I don't give her enough time and attention? Okay, if so, fine. I will give her more. You know, I will set a time for special time at bedtime. Fine. Okay, we'll we'll connect for a few minutes. We'll do the eye contact and the touch and I adore you and I love you and all of that is great. But if it's not true, if you're like my friend who actually spent all day every day with her kids, doting on them, listening to them, teaching them, helping them, serving them snacks, right? She was at their beck and call and her kids were still saying, "You're never with me. You never spend time with me." Then you have to analyze it and realize that this is a mindset issue.

15:09 It's not a you problem. It's a her problem in her mind. And then you need to help her with her mind. And you have to say, "Honey, I hear that you often have a complaint that I don't give you enough attention." And I'd like to just break that down with you. Okay? And this is the type of coaching I teach you how to do inside the studio. So definitely join. We're opening doors tomorrow. Okay? But inside the studio, I teach you how to address poor cognitive mindsets with our kids that are going to hold them back, keep them small, keep them bickering, keep them pessimistic, keep them like, I can't, I don't know how, you know, keep them unhappy in their lives. Because what makes a child happy is not that their mother spends more and more attention and time with them, but that they learn to think about their life in a positive way through gratitude, right? Through something more productive than just complaining. Okay, I have kids like this. is I have five children and some of my children tend towards complaints or whining. They tend to see the glass half empty. They tend to kind of make up problems. Suddenly get injured all the time even though they didn't really get injured. Oh, my arm, my belly, my head, this hurts me, that hurts me. These are all mechanisms for getting more attention, for getting what they want, for getting out of chores or of homework or that kind of thing. And those are poor mechanisms that won't serve them well in their life, right? They need to learn to take responsibility to take take accountability to face their fears to get stronger not weaker as individuals.

16:35 So if your daughter and KP says she does make up a lot of stories. Okay. So that's she's a perfect candidate for coaching. Okay. And you said your children are 9, seven, four, and two. So I assume we're talking about the seven-year-old or the four-year-old, right? It's a perfect time from around the age of three I say four is a perfect time to start coaching their mindsets to see things uh you know in a more productive helpful way and in a more empowering way to her because it's not good for your daughter to go through childhood with the story my mom doesn't give me enough attention when that might not be true. Maybe her mom gives her plenty of attention and actually what's happening is that she's getting stuck with a narrative with a false narrative that keeps making her feel like I'm lesser than it's not fair. Why do other people get an I don't why don't I have as much attention? Why am I not loved?

17:27 Why am I not likable? Those types of thoughts are not going to be good for her, right? They're not going to propel her forward in her life. So instead, we want to teach her to reframe the situation. So, you would say to her something like, "Huh, I hear you saying that I don't give you enough attention." Yeah. And I just want to address with you like, uh, can you can you support that claim? Can you tell me why you think that's true? What's the evidence? How much attention do you think a mom should give their kid? How many hours a day or how do you know when your mom has given you enough attention?

18:00 How do we measure this type of thing? Right? Are there times when I give you too much attention? Are there times when I give you too little attent? You want to actually start to break it down and talk to her about this story, okay? So that you can address it and reframe it. And eventually you're going to walk her down this path where eventually you're going to say, you know, sweetie, I think what you might mean is I don't know what to do. I'm a bit bored. I need an idea or I need a project or she may she may need to be doing more chores around the house and be a bit more helpful. So she starts thinking about others and less about herself, right? What can I what can I give? How can I help? This, by the way, for everyone watching this, this needs to be a guiding question of your child's childhood. A guiding question that they ask themselves every single day should be, "How can I help?" Okay?

18:53 You want to train your child to look around the room and think, "What can I do to help? What can I do to help my mom, to help my siblings, to help my neighbors, to help my community, to help myself? How can I make things better? Right? Because our children are often very busy thinking, what do I want? How can I get what I want? Oh, I want sugar. I want screen time. I want a play date.

19:18 I want a gift. I want you to order me something on Amazon. I want you to make me a snack. They're very busy asking themselves, what do I want? And how they can get it. And one of our projects throughout their childhood is to start to shift that focus from that narcissistic, which is healthy when you're a small child, from that narcissistic focus outward to start asking themselves, what do I have to give? How can I help? So KP, the idea here is to a address the story. You have a story that I don't give you enough attention. Let's reframe that. Maybe that's not true. Do you have evidence for it? She needs to learn to question her thoughts. Just because you think it doesn't make it true. I can think I'm not getting enough attention when in fact I'm getting plenty. I just told myself that story and that's not helpful. It's not fair on my mom. It's not fair on me. It's not helping me out.

20:06 Two, she needs to reframe that with something else. Oh, I do get enough attention. Here's what's actually happening. I'm not sure what to do with my time right now. I haven't figured out how to entertain myself. I need to develop my independence. I need to develop a project or a h a a hobby or an interest that I invest my time in. And three, she needs to start shifting her mindset from thinking about me me. It's not fair that you're with your my brother, right? And I want you to actually say to her explicitly, your job as a sister is to support your brother.

20:38 His job as a brother is to support you. You should be looking for more, not less, ways to help him get the time he needs from me to help him with his homework. Okay? So, you should be saying to yourself, "How can I help mom give my brother the time to do the homework? Oh, I know. I can entertain my little siblings. Oh, I know I can set the table for dinner so that she doesn't have to do that afterwards. Oh, I know I could cut a vegetable plate right now so that she doesn't have to make the snacks.

21:03 Right? That is how we want to shift her mindset from thinking about how, oh, woe is me. It's not fair. Mom's helping my brother with homework. No, that's not only fair. That's good. You want him to succeed. You want you to succeed. You want your whole family to succeed. And how can you be a helper, right? that we want to completely reframe her way of thinking about it. And I don't want you to apologize to your children for not spending enough time with them. I don't want you to keep reinforcing the idea in their mind that they are somehow lacking, that they have somehow been hard done by. Every single person growing up in today's day and age seems to have some kind of childhood trauma.

21:41 Even when there's no trauma, right? We're making normal things like mom is busy into some terrible story that is somehow, you know, a childhood is somehow neglect or somehow going to hold you back or somehow unfair on you, somehow impoverishing your ego and your sense of self. And that's terrible for you, right? That's terrible for your kids. That's no way for her to go through life. She's fine. You give her plenty of attention. If you don't adjust that, that's fine, too. But more you need to help her coach her mindset. If that's the type of coaching that you want help with, make sure to join the studio, guys. It's opening tomorrow. It only opens once a year. So, this price is never coming back. I want to make sure that you get in there while it's open and I can help you to coach your children's mindsets into empowered individuals. All right. Okay. Let's keep going. We have so many more questions, but if you do have a question for me, make sure that you drop it in the comments and I will try to address it during this session. I won't get through them all today because I have so many and they're really good. But I will certainly uh get get back on and address them because in April I'm leaving no question unanswered. This is how you can test drive my coaching style and see if the studio is right for you. Vip Zipin says, "I am joining.

22:53 Amazing. I will see you on the inside. Can't wait to let you in." Okay. Uh this is from Anna. Hi Avital. I have a sibling question. Okay. Hey, let me know in the comments right now if you have more than one child, if you have sibling questions, too, because that is a big part of what we focus on in the studio. I have five children. It's a big part of my life. Like you, I tend to let the usual bickering go, and the kids figure it out themselves. What I'm struggling with is a bit different. My 10-year-old daughter will put my 8-year-old daughter down in creative ways when she's having a bad day. For example, she'll quiz him on fifth grade math and then call him dumb and go on and on about it when he finally answers wrong. or she will tell him, "Chew with your mouth closed over and over." Even though he is. My 8-year-old sometimes ignores her, but other times he just can't take it and melts down. As an adult, I can handle her bad moods and attitudes, but it's so triggering to see her belittle her brother in an attempt to make herself feel better. Any advice for my 8-year-old or for me on how to handle this? Okay, amazing question. I'm sure many of you have had similar situations.

23:50 And here's what I want to say. Regular sibling bickering like, "Oh, you touched me, you took it. It's my turn. Fine. But there is something that we do need to put a stop to and coach on and be very strict about. Okay? And here is that thing. Demoralization. Demoralization. If an older child or a younger child, it's usually the older child, but say an older child is demoralizing, okay, discouraging their younger sibling and uh you know, poking holes in their sense of self, in their confidence, in their ability to um you know, think of themselves as intelligent, competent individuals, all of that stuff. Like she's quizzing him on math that he certainly can't do, right? then that is absolutely an appropriate time for a parent to step in and coach. But it's actually it's a little bit further than coaching because we're not just trying to reframe and mold their mindset. We have to set a boundary. We have to say in no unclear terms what that is. Here's what that is.

24:58 This is a little harsh, but it's akin to it's close to it's a cousin of bullying. Okay? It's a cousin of bullying. Now, your 10-year-old has had a hard day. your 10-year-old is tired. Your 10-year-old is has had people tease her in school or whatever. We get that. We can empathize with that. She's allowed to share that. She's allowed to say that. What she's not allowed to do, okay, is put her brother down to make herself feel bigger. Okay? And that is something that is common. You don't need to feel bad, Anna, about this. This is something my children have done. This is something that my students come to me all the time with these types of questions. It's extremely common because it's really just part of our culture and it's part of kids culture. Kids do this to each other, right? They have sometimes got this kind of a little bit of a cruel edge to them. And just recently, I had a student inside the studio tell me that her daughter was forcing her son only to play girl uh roles, right? He always had to dress up in a dress and pretend to be a girl. And she was always calling him by girl names, even not in the game, right? Even not as as play. and he hated it and he didn't want that. He wanted to be called by his own name and he wanted to be a boy and he is a boy. But this was her way of forcing him to play with her and she made him feel bad for being a boy.

26:14 Now just think for a moment, okay? If she had done that, if it was reversed, okay, if a boy was forcing a girl to always be like a boy, right? Or he or she can't play or think if it was about something else, okay? Like skin color or religion or right? And here it was gender, whatever. We would come down on that like a ton of bricks. we would make it absolutely clear that you don't you know bully people in that way that you don't um uh kind of discriminate against people in that way and I want you to always ask yourself right what is this what is this behavior uh driven by okay if it's driven by those regular siblings jealousies and you know that bickering and that just oh someone's in my space you're annoying me that type of thing okay we have a lot of space for that we have a lot of time for that we have a lot of patience for that but if It's driven by I'm feeling insecure or small or out of control or teased in my own life and so I'm now passing that on to my younger sibling and I'm going to demoralize them. That's something that we actually want to really stop. We want to make sure that our children don't ever get used to don't ever normalize cruelty or real unkindness in that level. Okay. So, how do we do that?

27:31 Okay. I think with an 8-year-old this, you know, with your with your sorry, with a 10-year-old, with a 10-year-old, it's perfectly possible to pull her aside for one, two, several conversations and really help her. You're going to talk gently. You're going to talk lovingly. You love her. You want the best for her. You understand her. You empathize. Yeah, we've all been cruel to someone at one point or another. We've all been on receiving ends and giving ends of sharp comments maybe to my husband or to my cousin or whatever it happens to be. So, you're going to be warm and you're going to be loving, but you're going to be really firm with her. And you're going to say, "Darling, hey sweetie, I want to talk to you a little bit about your relationship with your brother. Um, let's talk about any example. You bring the last example of what happened." Oh, okay. this morning when you were were telling him to chew with his mouth closed again and again even though he was chewing with his mouth closed. Okay, look, you're the oldest, so you don't know what it's like to have an older sibling, but maybe there's an older kid on the block or an older cousin that you have or someone that you look up to. And I want you to imagine that they were treating you that way. They were making you feel dumb. They were making you feel stupid. They were making you feel incapable. They were constantly showing you that you can't do things that they can do. that you are being controlled by them, right? Kind of messing around with you, messing with your mind. I really want you to think for a moment how that would make you feel. Now, I, for example, I'm am a younger sibling. Okay?

29:00 So, I've had conversations like this with my eldest where I've said, "Look, younger siblings really look up to their older siblings. They want to please them. They want to impress them. They want to be part of their lives somehow. And if you constantly uh tell them that they're stupid just because they're younger than you or that they uh if you rub in their faces that you have privileges that they don't have or if you make them feel demoralized or incapable or incompetent or or dumb then you should know that has an immense power on them. As a younger sibling, I can tell you that has an immense power on them. It really shapes how they see themselves and they walk around in the world thinking I'm dumb. I'm stupid. I can't. um I'm unlovable. I'm annoying.

29:42 Right? And that hurts their development and it it makes them really it hurts them. That's really all you need to know is that that hurts and it's unacceptable behavior. Okay. One thing I you can say I need space for my sibling. You can say I need uh you know I need I need you to protect my playtime or I need you to protect my relationships. You can say uh you know what I just want a break. That's fine.

30:09 You don't have to always be with your sibling or have to always connect with them. What you can't do, what you cannot do is put them down and demoralize them. Okay, that I won't stand for. All right, so let's talk about ways you can do it differently and you're going to really coach her and you're going to step in. So that's for the 10-year-old. At the same time, you have the 8-year-old. Okay, the eight-year-old, uh, you said he sometimes ignores her, which is good.

30:35 If he can ignore her, that's good. Good for him. Well done. I would praise that and I would say to him, you know what? Well done. You didn't take the bait. You didn't let her get on your back, you know, like water off a duck's back. You just let it slide off you. You didn't make it a big deal. Go you. Kudos. Okay. But other times, he can't take it and he just melts down. Okay. And I understand that completely. I spent most of my childhood being insulted and hurt. Okay.

31:00 But the reason that I'm saying this is because um you do need to coach him as well on her shortcomings, on her mistakes, right? And you can you can you can certainly step in when you see it happen. Vip Vip Zippin says, "I'm going to step in." You do step in. You do step in and you say, "Uh, hey, that's demotivating language. That's demoralization. That's bullying. You don't you do not talk to him like that. That's unacceptable behavior. You take a break and you can come back when you're ready to be a civilized elder sister.

31:31 And you can tell her, you know what the job of an elder sister is? You know what a job is? You are there to support your siblings. You are there to help them, to teach them, to guide them. Okay? You are there to be there for them. And I would try and present positive sibling relationships as examples to her. Okay? Like I am lucky enough to be able to say to my children, look at me and my brothers or look at me and my sister.

31:56 Okay? We try to help each other. We try to support each other. We try to give each other love. We try to understand each other. We're we're gentle with each other. That's what you want for you and your siblings. And look, I take care of my niece and nephews. They take care of me. Blah blah blah. Right? You want to give them an example of how this is a good thing to strive for in the future, right? That this is a meaningful relationship, a lifelong relationship, an important relationship that's going to last them a very, very, very long time. And for that reason, they need to work on it. They need to cherish it.

32:26 they need to um really respect it and it's it's not a good idea to destroy that relationship, right? It's not a good idea to spend 20 years bullying your sibling because this is your best friend. This is the person you're growing old with. This is the person who's going to uh you know help you raise your children, right? Etc. Okay. So, to the 8-year-old, you want to help them to build a thicker skin. Okay? You want to stop the 10-year-old from bullying the 8-year-old, but you want to help the 8-year-old to see that the 10-year-old is doing things out of jealousy, out of insecurity, that it's immature behavior that he can just walk away. He doesn't need to engage. He doesn't need to say, "I am chewing with my mouth full." He just can ignore. Okay? He can say, "That's not kind." He can say something like, "Sorry you had a hard day. Don't take it out on me." Right? Um he can try to diffuse it. And one of the things that I have found is very good for diffusing sibling issues and this is what the advice I gave my second child.

33:30 Okay, when his elder brother was always bragging at him, I'm better at math or I'm better at basketball or you don't understand this or you can't do that. Or when his elder brother was controlling him, you need to listen to me, you need to do this, you need to do that. One of the tools that I gave him to diffuse that type of demoralization and control was to agree. Okay, agree. Here's here's how it goes. Okay, the older brothers, the older sister says, "Oh, you can't do fifth grade math." Well, you know what's 72 time 60 65? Huh? You can't do it.

34:03 Right. And I my recommendation to the islander sibling was to say, "Wow, you're right. You are just Albert Einstein reincarnate. You are just the king of math. You are just the best math math magician ever. I'm so impressed. Wow. All hail my sister, the math PhD. Right. Just agree. Okay. She says, "Oh, you know, you're chewing with your mouth. You're not chewing with your mouth closed. You're right. I'm a barbarian. I'm univilized. You are like, you know, Queen Elizabeth herself. You are so well-mannered. You are so well put together." Right? And just make a joke out of it. Just agree, you know?

34:42 Oh, you never do this. You're right. I never do anything. I'm so rubbish. Poor you that you've been saddled with a brother like me. It must be so hard to be my big sister. Wow, you're just so amazing. And obviously, it has to be natural to the kid to make that kind of joke. It's a little sarcastic. It's true. But it diffuses that type of bullying to just completely agree with it. Yep, you're right. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yep, you're right. I get all the attention. Of course I do.

35:08 Yes, yes, yes. You have to do all the chores and I just lie in my bed. Right. And uh that complete uh agreement can be an an kind of an easy way out. Now, not every kid is built to do to do that. And so for other kids, you just want to help them to bolster up their uh their skin, right? To to build a thick skin. Again, something I teach inside the studio is exactly how to help children build a thick skin and become unoffendable. Okay? And one of the ways that they need to do that is that they need to see that this type of insults, these types of bullying is more about them than it's than it is about me.

35:43 Okay? It says more about her. So, one of the things I teach my child is that when someone calls you a name, okay? When someone's being mean to you, it doesn't mean that much about you. It means a lot about them. I mean, it might be it might mean something about you if someone's criticizing you, right? Someone's saying, "Hey, you never help with chores or you're lazy or you should look at yourself. You should ask yourself, are they right?" Okay, they might be right.

36:05 They might You might have something to work on, but if they're just being cruel or mean, that is an indication of their character, not of yours. So if someone says you're so stupid, it's usually more of a confession than it is an accusation, right? It's usually more what they feel about themselves, it's a projection onto you and you don't need to engage with it. You can just feel a little bit sorry for them because I feel sorry for people who are cruel, right?

36:29 It means that they're insecure. It means that they haven't been taught good communication skills. It means that they're stuck in a really impoverished mindset and you just need to kind of feel sorry for them and hope for the best for them, if that makes sense. But not take it on for yourself, right? to kind of look away. Hey, can I support you? You seem like you're a little, you know, you seem like you're having a hard day. Is there something you want to share? That type of thing. All right, let's keep going with our next question. These are some really good questions. I'm actually going to read several of them together because I think they're all along the same lines.

36:59 Okay, we're going to talk now about people pleasing. Dinund says, "This is great advice, Avital. How do we ensure appropriate respectful behavior from the children without having them become oversensitive to others standards and expectations for their behavior? I'm not sure how to draw the line between authentic self-expression, of course, barring aggressive or hurtful expression, and people pleasing. Thank you for your guidance, which is similar to this next question from Emily. She says, "Oh, I'm so excited to ask you a question." And she says, "My question is, how do I keep my kids from becoming people pleasers and thinking that their value comes from others approval while also encouraging them and teaching them to be respectful and pro-social?" Um, and Country Bumpkin, who says, "Question, how do you know if your child needs direction or attention?

37:48 I have three little ones, five and under, and I typically lean towards a more old school way of parenting with less hands-on attention on my children and more independent play. I often wonder if my oldest needs more attention because he's extremely moody. I have learned he needs more direction for sure, but are there any signals for which it might be? Thank you so much. Okay, so let's start with this peopleleasing question. Now, one of the things that I've noticed in modern day parenting, another modern day parenting myth that we're about to bust right now and let me know if you've come across this is the idea that we shouldn't be authoritative to children. We shouldn't tell them no or yes or do this or do that. Um, and we should encourage children to talk back to us, to refuse to listen to us, because then they won't be people pleasers. They should follow their authentic self. They shouldn't just do things because I've asked them.

38:37 They shouldn't just do things because the teacher says. They shouldn't just do things because it's the law. Um, but or because their parents told them to or because elders told them to, because a sibling told them to. They need to listen to their authentic desire. Many adults today, many of my students feel like they don't even know what they want. They don't even know their own self because they spent their whole life just pleasing others, just bending over backwards to do what other people have asked them to do, just uh, you know, being good girls, just following the rules, right? And they don't want their children to just be good girls and just follow the rules. They want their children to have a spine and to have a say and to be uh, you know, clear on what they want and not to be people pleasers.

39:21 Basically, and the trouble with this is that if you discourage uh any form of obedience and even of compliance and even of cooperation, then it's not that you raise a child who isn't a people pleaser, but you actually raise a child who is antisocial, a child who can't follow the rules, a child who doesn't respect authority, a child who doesn't get along with other people. Because part of having friends and relationships and part of being a law-abiding citizen is that you don't always just follow what you want. You don't always get to just impulsively do whatever you desire.

39:59 You actually have to dampen and control your most base instincts and impulses in order to be thoughtful and cooperative and compliant with the social norms. So let's get a bit more clear and define what people pleasing is. Okay, people pleasing is what happens when I not only follow rules and respect authority and am thoughtful and considerate of other people, but in fact I trespass my own boundaries. In some respects, I violate myself in order to please others. It's not so much thoughtfulness. It's not so much, you know, giving and generosity and compliance and cooperation as it is uh destructive self-sacrifice. Okay, so let's break this down. You do want to raise a child who pleases others. Okay, you do. Recently on one of my videos I said that if I raise my boys to always be emotional and always cry and always express their feelings and be very emotional and then I do I am concerned that a a hyper emotionally expressive man is sometimes not that attractive to women in the future. And someone was like ew that's disgusting. Why are you even thinking about who they'll be attracted to? they they shouldn't have to, you know, suppress their emotions in order to to find a partner who'll be attracted to them in the future. And okay, I get where this person's coming from. I understand what they mean. But here's what I mean. It does matter how other people see us. It does matter that our children find favor in the eyes of people around them. It does matter that adults around them want to mentor them, want to take them under their wing, want to have them over for playdates, want to teach them in their class. It does matter that other children want to play with your children. It does matter that their future partners find them to be attractive, you know, reliable, wonderful, helpful uh partners. That actually matters. It matters that they are socially attractive. It matters that in the future they'll be sexually attractive when they're grown-ups. It matters that they should actually garner favor from their surroundings so that they can have meaningful lifelong relationships, friendships, mentors, a community, a support system. Okay? And someone who just does whatever they want and is only socialized and taught by their parents to just follow their inner impulses and just listen to their voice and only follow their own desires easily becomes entitled. selfish, narcissistic, and frankly unbearable. Right? Most people do not like people who don't know how to moderate their own desires a little bit to fit in with other people as well. Right? We don't like that. That that doesn't go down very well with society. Okay? And so there's a difference between being a people plea there. Well, there's there's there's a middle ground between being a people pleaser, someone who bends over backwards and twists themselves into pretzels and gives up on all of their needs and completely demolishes their sense of self and their ego and their self-care and their boundaries just for other people, just so that other people are pleased and like them. That's a people pleaser. And on the other side of the spectrum is someone who's only thinking about themselves, you know, doesn't care about the rules, doesn't care about social norms, doesn't care about uh, you know, presenting themselves as polite, well-mannered, thoughtful, uh, you know, cooperative and sometimes obedient to society's laws and rules and expectations. There is something in the middle and that person in the middle is someone who has boundaries, right? knows that no, if I need to sleep, I'm not going to stay up all night doing things for other people.

44:10 If I need some alone time with my partner, I'm not going to invite everybody over just because they want to come over. If I am exhausted or busy at work or need time with my baby or whatever, I have boundaries and I'm able to say no when it's too much for me. Okay, that's the person who has those boundaries. And the person who is generous, the person who is thinking of others, the person who is actually trying to be a helper, to do more chores, to do more volunteer work, to invite people in, to be gracious, to host, uh, to be thoughtful of other people. Okay, so let's come back to Emily's question. Okay, I think it was Emily who wrote, "How do I keep my kids from becoming people pleasers and thinking their value comes from others approval while also encouraging them and teaching them to be respectful and pro-social?" So, Emily, you've answered your question inside your question. You do both by also teaching them to be respectful and pro-social. You teach your child that there is such a thing as benevolent authority, as positive social norms and expectations. Okay. Not every norm and expectation and authority is oppressive and tyrannical. Your parents for the most part, okay, 90% of the time, 99 maybe, parents are a benevolent authority. They're a positive authority.

45:36 They are good leaders. They are people that you should respect and listen to. Okay? And this isn't some, you know, tyrannical, oppressive, archaic, old-fashioned, uh, religious, um, angry, patriarchal, respect your parents, respect your elders, finger wagging type of thing, okay? But rather, it's pro-social. Parents want the best for you. Parents sacrifice a lot for you. Parents are on your side. Parents love you more than they love themselves. And parents have life experience. They have a fully developed prefrontal cortex.

46:12 They have legal responsibilities. And so when they say something, you should respect it and you should listen to them. Okay? Parents aren't tyrannical bad dictators. They are good leaders. Okay? Now, branch that out to other things as well. Okay? Being well-mannered is not oppressive. Telling children to say please and thank you. How can I help? Cleaning their plate. Those things are not tyrannical and oppressive, okay? They're not making them be people pleasers. They're making them have basic human decency. They are the building blocks of a well-run civilization where people have basic respect for each other, right? It's just good common sense because when you behave that way, other people reflect it back to you. You get you garner more favor in the eyes of other people. They want to invite you to their parties. They want to, you know, uh include you in their projects. They want to mentor you. They want to support your goals and dreams and aspirations.

47:10 And so being well-mannered is just pro-social. Okay? It's not people pleasing. It's just pro-social. Here's a kicker for you. A little bit of self-sacrifice is pro-social. Okay? A little bit of self-sacrifice is good for our children to learn. Not always putting yourself first. Not always pushing for your own needs. say, "You know what? You can have the seat. I wanted to sit here, but let me give it to you. I will sacrifice what I wanted for you." Why? Why do I teach my kids get up and give someone else the seat, right? Why don't I teach them? You don't need to be a people pleaser. You just sit your butt right down where you wanted to sit. You take care of yourself. You don't need to move. You don't need to make space for other people. You should take up space. You take up space. You know, you sit in that seat. No, I don't teach my kids that. I teach my kids, you know what? someone else wanted to sit there, move over one.

48:07 Okay, there are plenty of chairs. Just move over one. Okay, why do I teach them that? Because a little bit of self-sacrifice and putting others first most of the time, some of the time in some ways, right? It creates the type of society I think we all want to be part of. We all want to be part of a thoughtful society. We all want to be part of uh a a family. Just talk about your own family and your own home where we don't fight over who's sitting in what chair. where other people care about us as much as they care about themselves. Where if I'm taking a drink for myself, I say, "Wait a minute. Would you like a drink? Let me get you one for you, too." Right? Thoughtfulness becomes the norm. Generosity becomes the norm rather than narcissism and grabbing for myself. Right? So, a little bit of self-sacrifice, if we all do that, that creates a great environment at home.

48:54 Okay? That creates a great feeling. I can tell you that I have that with my adult siblings. Right? No, don't worry. I'll pick up the bagels. I'll go I'll babysit the children. Let me sweep your floor for you. Why do we do these types of things for each other? Because we create a great family environment where everybody's feeling better and feeling supported because we're always focused on how we can give, not what we can take. So self-sacrifice is good. Where does self-sacrifice become bad?

49:20 Self-sacrifice becomes bad when it's too much. Okay? when it's completely unrescrocated or when you're self-sacrificing to an authority or a leader or a rule that is bad, that is oppressive. Okay? So, when I when I say children should respect authority, people always say to me, "Oh, but you know, in Nazi Germany, people shouldn't have respected authority. They should have rebelled against authority." And I say, "Yeah, because that was a bad authority." Okay, here's where values come in. You teach your child values.

49:50 And if the authority or if the person or if the relationship that they are bending over backwards to please is not a good one, okay, it's abusive, it's toxic, it's got bad values or something like that. That's when we set boundaries. That's when we say no. That's when we say I'm I'm not listening to this authority. I'm not going along with your plan. I'm not doing it just to please you. I'm not sacrificing of my own integrity, of my own self, of how I need to live my life, of what I believe in in order to please you. That would be people pleasing. Okay? Generosity, kindness, thoughtfulness, self-sacrifice is not people pleasing. That's just being a good person. And that's just building good relationships. People pleasing is sacrificing something that's against your values or against your boundaries. Okay? when you're giving more than you've got to give. When you are hurting yourself in the process of giving others, okay, when you're depriving from yourself and making yourself resentful and exhausted and depleted and burnt out in order to give to others, that's people pleasing and that's something that you want to avoid teaching your child. Okay, so Dian says, "How do we ensure the appropriate respectful behavior from the children without having them becoming oversensitive to others standards and expectations for their behaviors?" Well, we do it exactly like that. If someone's being oversensitive, if if someone's being overdemanding, someone's demanding something from our children that is too much, that is unex unacceptable, okay?

51:20 That is not age appropriate, that is not developmentally appropriate, that does not align with their values or with your values, more importantly, right? That's when we teach them to politely decline. Okay? That's when we teach them to say no. Right? Just like you want to teach your child not to go along with the bully in the class, you want to teach them to actually stand up to them. Okay? You want to teach them to hit back if someone hits them and they don't have an adult to get help from to protect themselves to defend themselves. Okay?

51:49 You do stand up to bad actors. You do stand up to people who are using you, to people who are negative influences on you. That's where you teach them to say no. And they can say it politely in many cases, not always, but sometimes, right? They can say, "No, thank you." They can say, "Sorry, that's not for me." Or they can say, "I wish I could help, but I can't." Or they could say, "You could give them a code word like, "I need to ask my mom." Or, "Uh, sorry, it doesn't sound like I can do that." Or whatever.

52:18 But that's where you teach them to back out and to bow out, right? But to save face wherever possible. Okay? So, we don't need to raise people pleasers, but most of us are not at risk of doing that. Okay? Being respectful to grandma and grandpa, right? Shaking someone's hand even when you don't particularly want to, but that's the polite thing to do. Uh, sitting where you've been told to sit, saying please and thank you. Um, you know, holding in your tantrum just, you know, because you're in the middle of someone else's party and you don't need to destroy their birthday party.

52:52 These are not peopleleasing demands. These are basic pro-social uh you know behaviors that we should and must demand of our children. Um however there are the rare cases right of someone who is um de overly demanding of someone who's um you know uh not accepting them for who they are, not loving them, not not tolerating them uh you know that kind of thing where we need to teach them to stand up for themselves. Uh, Dan and Emily, let me know if this answers your question. I would love to hear if you have any push back or any resistance or if it doesn't make sense. Uh, or anyone here who wants to ask a follow-up question on that. Uh, please feel free. I do want to just say again that this is exactly the type of thing that I teach inside the studio.

53:41 So, we go step by step on how to coach them, right? We answer these questions really in depth. We give you the the systems and the approaches and the methods to really have those types of conversations at the dinner table and to give them to equip them with understanding what are my values, what do I stand for, how do I stand up and set a boundary right inside of the studio uh you will unlock a a bonus miniourse on how to set boundaries on how to follow through uh on how to coach these types of mindsets on how to make decisions that are complicated. Those are exactly the type of thing that you get inside the H Higham Studio. If you haven't checked it out yet, hi.com/ststeudio. We're opening doors tomorrow. It only opens once a year.

54:21 Okay, the next question was from Country Bumpkin who asked, "How do we know if our child needs direct uh direction or attention?" Okay, so I actually think that this is a relatively easy one to understand. Okay, and and and I'm going to go a little bit behavioralist for this just to make it really clearcut. Now, obviously in real life, nothing is super clearcut, okay? In real life, there's complexity, but as a rule of thumb, just to kind of set your mind at ease and give you clarity, if a child is behaving badly, okay, if they're making poor choices, if they're being unkind, destructive, disrespectful, uh rude, uh non-compliant, all of that stuff, they need direction. Okay? they need to be uh redirected and corrected. Bad behav bad behavior gets correction. Okay? And as soon as they are behaving well, as soon as they are doing things you want to see more of, that's when they get attention, that's when you adore and love and layer on the eye contact and the connection and the joy and the thank you so much and I love this and you're doing so well and and I see you working hard at that, etc. Right now, as I said, things are not usually this clear-cut, but the idea is to remove all of your big wonderful motherly attention and love from bad behavior so as not to reinforce them.

55:52 Okay? You don't want to make that a successful mechanism for getting more and more attention from mom because that will just encourage the bad behaviors. You want to discourage the bad behaviors by actually withdrawing attention. Kind of almost ignoring them and just redirecting them. Okay, I'm not going to let you throw that. I'm taking it away. Oh, I see that you can't sit nicely at the table. I'm taking you off the table. Okay, you kind of just go through the motions of setting a boundary without giving it all of that attention, without much eye contact, without many words, without layering on more and more conversation and touch and connection.

56:26 In fact, it's a good time to give the other kids attention. It's a good time to, you know, to to to love on something else or to be really busy with your cooking because bad behavior should get withdrawal from you and just a a redirection. As soon as the child is behaving in a patient way, they are controlling their impulses. They are regulating themselves. That's when give them a lot of attention. Hey baby, has it been a hard day for you? Do you want to come sit on my lap? I would love to hear about your day. Or you know, I just love you so much. You're just so sweet.

56:56 You're just so cute. I love you. you know, so much fun to be with you, etc., etc. That's the time when you're really giving them all that good juice, okay? And because just just think about it in a logical way, right? Um, we want to give a lot of uh encouragement to positive behaviors, okay? And those are also the times when you can do the coaching because bad behavior is not a teachable moment. It's not a moment when you can lecture. It's not a moment when you can do mindset coaching. It's not a moment when you can talk about what's on their mind or why they're behaving this way or figure out the unmet needs. No, none of that is available when a when a kid is behaving badly. What's available is simply to redirect them to stop the bad behavior, to put a boundary on it, to follow through with that, and then you can really encourage them and give them a lot of attention for their good behaviors.

57:44 Okay. Okay. Let's see if we have time for one or two more questions. And I have one here from TVTG who writes, "I'd like to take the advantage of asking a question, please." Of course. I have four children, nine, seven, four, and seven months old. I do struggle with tolerating their bad habits, and I do get annoyed by it. I guess my question is how to deal with that. Okay, so my friend, this is a huge question and this is something that I address really in depth inside the studio. You know, piece by piece. we actually go through it and I don't know I don't have enough context here about what you mean by the bad habits what are the behaviors that are troubling you how do you want to address them but I want to give you a bigger picture of how you can change your children's behavior and make parenting more enjoyable because you say that you get really annoyed the reason that we get really annoyed as parents is um you know there are several reasons but the big meta kind of reason right the overarching reason is because we don't feel uh confident and empowered in our role as a leader. We don't know exactly what we're doing. We don't know exactly what our vision is. We don't know exactly what our values are. We don't know what our morning routine is.

59:00 We don't know what our Christmas routine is. We don't know how we approach sibling rivalry. We don't know how we approach a work life balance. We don't know what our fitness routine is. We're lost. Okay? And the thing is that you as a parent are the captain of a ship. That is really the best analogy for what you are. You and your partner, your co-founders of this endeavor and you captain the ship. And much of the time it's you captaining the ship, right?

59:25 Solo. Okay. And a captain of a ship has to have several things down. Okay? They have to feel that the ship is run smoothly and tightly. That the crew know who does what and when. Right? that there are uh really wellestablished routines, right? It's a welloiled ship. It's a well-run ship. People know where they're supposed to stand, what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it, who's in charge. So, that's one of the things that a captain really needs is to feel this sense of clarity that they are able to lead their crew with conviction and with confidence. But another thing a captain really needs is a course. Okay? They need a path. They need a north star.

60:12 They need direction. Okay, many of us are just parenting by the seat of our pants. We're on autopilot, right? We're just repeating what we saw at home or doing the opposite of what we saw at home or oscillating between them, being too harsh, too soft, confusing. Um, and a captain can't steer the ship if it doesn't know where it needs to go. A captain needs a destination. Okay, you as a parent need a destination. You need to know where you're trying to get to. Why did you start this family? What are you trying to create? What kind of atmosphere? What kind of adults are you trying to raise?

60:52 What kind of marriage are you trying to form? What kind of home life? What kind of community? What kind of friendships? What kind of routine? I summarize all of this with the word culture. What kind of culture are you trying to create at home? What kind of ship is this? Right? Is it a big cruise ship? Is it a yacht? Is it a sailboat? Is it a paddle boat? Is it a canoe? What are you doing? Where are you going? Right? If you are a leader, and you are by virtue of the fact that you're a parent, but you don't know where you're trying to lead people.

61:21 You don't know what the promised land even is, then you're going to feel annoyed all the time. You're going to feel frustrated, irritated, lost, resentful, let down, uh like you want to escape your life and feel trapped all the time. You're always going to feel that irritation because you don't know where you're leading people to and you don't know what the solution should be, what the routines, traditions, rituals, rights of passage. You don't have a path. Captains need a destination. And then you can imagine them with their compass, with their map, right, with their coordinates trying consistently to steer the ship in the right direction to adjust. Now, if you think about yourself holding a compass, if I have a north star and I'm always trying to align north and always trying to go north, right, then I I have a driving force. I have clarity. I have conviction. I know how to adjust myself when I get off course because I know where I'm trying to go. That's your vision. That's your values as a parent. If I actually shift the needle of the compass, even just one or two degrees to the right or to the left, and you now run that line down way into the future, okay, 10 years ahead, you're going to veer in a drastically different direction than you initially thought. Even though it's just a tiny change of degree, okay? Every small shift in our leadership, in our vision, and our values, and our compass and guidance for our children leads to drastically different outcomes in the future. And that's why we need to calibrate. That's what the studio is.

63:04 That's what I help you do to calibrate your compass to be clear on where you are driving your family. You know, you're driving your family somewhere different than I'm driving my family. You have your goals, your vision, your lifestyle, your culture, your heritage, your religion, your belief system, your country, your nationality, your family, your vibe, your tribe. You have you. Every single one of my students, I have thousands of students inside. Every single one has their own family culture.

63:34 But what all of us need is a compass and clarity and direction on how to chart the course to get to those destinations. Okay? How do we build a resilient relationships? How do we raise children who are mentally tough and able to withstand life's uh adversities and challenges? How do we raise children who feel a deep sense of belonging to something that's larger than themselves? How do we raise children that are able to establish lifelong relationships?

64:04 These are exactly the types of things that are on my vision board. Okay? And starting May 1st, I can help you craft your vision board and get really clear on your family values, on where you're going. So, my dear, you're asking me, "Why do I get so annoyed by my children's habits and behaviors?" And I'm going to answer you. The reason you get so annoyed is because you don't have clarity on your role as a leader. You don't know how to steer your ship. Now, if the captain doesn't have a north star, doesn't have a destination, just kind of at the helm going, and a storm hits, okay, no one in the crow crew knows what they're supposed to be doing. There's chaos, there's mayhem, there's stress, there's anxiety. Now, as parents, storms hit us all the time. It could be a diagnosis, it could be a divorce, it could be moving school, it could be moving country, it could be losing a job, it could be a disease, right? We get hit by lots of different storms in our parenting life. And as captains, we have to be able to hold the helm, to direct, to steer because we know where we're going. And we have to be able to instruct the crew because we have authority. We are leaders. They listen to us. They know their positions. They know what to do. They know their jobs.

65:20 And then we can weather those storms. We can get through them. And we can get to smooth sailing. Okay? And we can even reach our destination eventually. Okay? I'll share with you a little personal story from my own life. I have um you know we me and my husband have moved countries twice and we've been we've moved house I think nine times and we've been through lots of different ups and downs and changes in career and and and and work and and travel and all sorts of things. Um but I have been crafting a vision for our family and for our extended family for a very long time.

65:51 the type of home that I want, where I want it to be, uh what type of friendships I want to create, what type of community I want to create, what type of relationship I want with my extended family, uh those types of things, what type of uh experiences I want with my children and my husband, right? Is it game night? Is it books that we want to read? Is it understanding more about our family roots and history? Is it all sorts of debates and socratic conversations? Uh is it uh chores and household work together, team cleaning, uh work ethic? Um is it playfulness and games that we want to play? Right? These are all different things that I've been crafting in my vision for years and years and that all my students craft every single year as we go through the studio cycle. Okay? And just last week, one of the things from my vision board came to fruition. Okay? It happened to be a campfire with extended family sitting around and singing classical songs and and you know kind of uh kind of oldies, you know, oldie goldie songs together. Okay? And this was something that if you'd have told me 10 years ago could happen, I wouldn't believe you.

66:52 I'd be like, "No, there are so many barriers to that ever happening." Like that's never going to happen for a million different reasons, right? because of relationships, because of uh different locations, because of connections, because of different cultures, because of clashes, because I just would feel like gh the mental load and I would feel resentful and it would be too much to take on and how would I even establish it and the time management and the budget management, all this different stuff, right? But piece by piece by piece by piece, you work towards your vision and it takes time, but it comes in the end, right?

67:25 You build towards it. But if you don't even have that vision, if you don't even know what you're trying to build in your family, then you can't ever get there. Okay? And that is what I want to help you with inside the studio. I don't want you being a drift. I don't want you just sailing on the seas, wasting all your resources, wasting all your gas, wasting all your food that you have on board, not getting to where you're trying to go, not taking your family to a better place, to a place of meaningful relationships, to a place of strong mentality and resilience and values, right? That's the goal. So, you might still be a bit annoyed by habits here and there, okay? But overall, you're going to feel a weight off your shoulders. You're going to feel that you hold your chest higher, your chin high, clarity, and you're going to feel confidence, conviction, and clarity in your leadership, which is what really creates that sense of enjoyment for us as parents. That's where we as parents feel like, wow, this is the greatest adventure of my life. I'm really living out my values. I'm really doing the things I wanted to do. I'm really being the parent I wanted to be. I'm really creating the home I really wanted for my child. All right. It was worth it. It's hard work. It's, you know, it's it's tiring. It's draining, but I'm getting there. I'm getting somewhere. I'll build I'm building something meaningful. I'm building a meaningful future. Because that's by definition what you're doing as a parent is that you are building the future. And so, if you don't have a vision for that future, then it's just going to happen to you, right? Tik Tok will do it for you.

69:01 Culture at large will do it for you. Big culture, as I called it, will do it for you. No, you need to create your culture inside your home, right? To be visionary, to be a leader, to be entrepreneurial in how you create your home. And that's something that I can help you do inside the studio. So, join me at hyam.com/studio. I'll see you on the inside. Thank you so much for joining me, whether live or in the replay. I will be going to welcome everybody into the studio and I will be coming back here to answer the rest of our very wonderful questions which I really look forward to getting to uh hopefully throughout this week. Much much love and I'll see you on the inside. Bye.