Showing Up as a Conscious Father with Jon Fogel

0:01 Welcome to a very special episode of parenting and you with me Dr. Shafali. Today I'm so excited to be joined by a very dear friend of mine, John Fogle. He is a parenting researcher, a husband, a dad of four who knows that parenting isn't about perfection. John has built a following of over 1.5 million by making neuroscience and psychological research practical and applicable for parents. He's the author of punishmentfree parenting a fantastic book that focuses on the brainbased way to raise kids without raising your voice. He's also the host of the Whole Parent podcast and founder of the Whole Parent Academy, where he helps thousands of parents from all over the world ditch the power struggles and build relationships that actually work. He also speaks at events on podcasts, and he has a really uncanny ability to break down complex ideas with humor and a whole load of heart. So, I cannot wait for you to enjoy this conversation.

1:09 Joining me now is my dear friend, father of four children, and parenting educator John Fogle. He's just written an amazing book called Punishment-Free Parenting: The Brainbased Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice. He's also the host of the Whole Parent Podcast. Welcome to my podcast, John. I'm so happy to have you here. I am so excited to be here. You have been one of my inspirations for literally like a decade. I am so excited to be on the podcast. So tell us why did you focus on a book on punishmentfree parenting? You know my second book was called out of control, why discipline doesn't work and what will and I think that's why we vibe so well. I think we have the same approach. Tell us in a nutshell what punishment free parenting looks like and why you felt it was so critical. Yeah, you know, when I set out to write the book, you could kind of argue that my initial draft of the book was really more that subtitle, the brainbased way to raise kids without raising your voice. And then after writing it, I went back through the book during the editing process and realized really the thing that I'm offering to people is that neuroscience teaches us as well as the principles of conscious parenting, but that neuroscience teaches us that punishment effectively doesn't work. that anything that we're doing that's creating that negative fear-based relationship with our kids is actually working against the way that they learn.

2:36 So, I didn't really set out to write a book called Punishment Free Parenting. I set out to write a book about neuroscience and about just practical wisdom for normal parents on how to effectively discipline in a way that does work. And in the end it just popped off the page that wow what I'm talking about here is not using punishment which as you know and you have been talking about for literally decades at this point is the way in which so many of us were taught that we were supposed to parent and we're supposed to relate to our kids. Yeah. So just briefly you know when parents come to me saying that their toddler is not listening and they're hitting them and or their teenager is defying the rules. What would you offer that parent in terms of neuroscience that's just crystal clear, easy for them to understand so that they can stop even considering punishment for these behaviors?

3:30 Yeah. You know, the thing that I go back to over and over is this concept of beginning with the end in mind, which is something that comes from the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's not actually something that I reference that much in my book, but it's the way that I talk to parents about it. And the metaphor that the author uses in that book is that if you're trying to climb a wall or get to any goal and you immediately just start trying to work towards that goal without starting and and thinking about where you're trying to get to, you often wind up climbing the ladder leaned against the wrong wall. We wind up doing the thing that's actually not contributing to the goal.

4:07 And so I offer parents to start simply by saying, "Okay, what do you actually want for your child?" And you probably put this better than anyone in your kind of seinal work, the conscious parent, where many of us are unconsciously trying to fulfill our own desires and our own needs via our children, you know, without even considering what we want for them. But if parents begin with the idea that they want to raise a child who's selfdisciplined, who makes good decisions because they're an ethical human being, who is fulfilling their greatest heart's desire and is seeing the world in a in a beautiful way and and interacting with that world and contributing to it, that you wouldn't ever begin with punishment. And that's where I think we really want to begin because if you tell people you just have to stop punishing your kids without actually doing the selfwork of realizing why you're punishing your kids because you're trying to achieve compliance rather than actually teach them how to fulfill their own dreams and hopes and desires, you're always going to wind up defaulting back to punishment because ultimately punishment is about trying to control someone else. And so if you're still trying to control your kid, you're going to return back to that well of punishment over and over and over. So you have to start by doing your own work and saying, "What do I really want for my child?" And that includes what do I really want for myself? Because if you're not fulfilled in your own walk, if you aren't receiving in your own soul fulfillment, then you're going to try and go to your kid to get that fulfillment. So it really begins with us and doing our own work and saying, "What do I really want to do?" So for that parent of the toddler who thinks that the toddler is being a bad toddler, you know, I often tell them about the toddler's brain. And many parents don't understand that the toddler's brain or the teenager's brain or the brain of a strong willed child or an ADHD child is just wired differently. And if we understood that it was wired differently, we wouldn't place agency think our children were being manipulative. So in terms of that toddler brain, what are some of your key giveaways in terms of neuroscience that you tell parents? If only they understood this, they would understand their toddler. Yeah. In a phrase, the thing that's come back to me is the book has now been out for over a month and parents have come back to me and said, "Okay, what did you take away from the book?" And I'm sure you've received this in your books. You don't always know what's going to resonate, but in a sentence, your toddler is not giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time.

6:47 So whenever you are experiencing these dysregulation behaviors, whether that's attention seeking or, you know, tearing up the house or yelling at you or, you know, being disrespectful in some way, all of these things are signs that your toddler is having a really difficult time. And usually that is really simply solved by saying, okay, is your child hungry? Are they tired? Are they not feeling connected to you? Have they not really connected with you? And so, you know, had their attachment needs fulfilled. Are they just going through a phase? Toddlers have to go through a neural pruning phase during two to three years old, as you know, where they have to seek out their own autonomy. Until that point, they don't even understand that they're separate from their parents. And so, when they start to build that autonomy and they start to gain that agency, sometimes that's going to look like saying no just to find out whether they can. And as soon as you start seeing your children's behaviors not as some sort of weird, you know, oh, this is evidence of their, you know, sinful immortal soul that's corrupted by something, which is a lot of what we've been taught, you know, through through our own systems, Western culture. As soon as you stop viewing your toddler through that and and realize, oh my gosh, my my kids probably doing the best that they can. They don't have a way to do this effectively. They're hitting because they don't know how to solve their problems without hitting. they're throwing food because they don't know how to say, "I'm finished." As soon as you realize that it's all communication, that all that behavior is communicating with you, you can start to look not for the symptoms, but for the underlying causes, and that can be transformative.

8:23 And by the way, your teenager goes through the exact same neural pruning. So, if you're, oh, well, why is my toddler saying no to me about everything? same exact reason that your teenager is saying no to you about everything because they need to learn that they have agency and autonomy. And contrary to popular belief, the way to handle that is not to say, "Okay, well then I'm going to clamp down. I'm going to nip it in the butt. I'm going to control you." It's actually to fulfill those underlying needs. So if your toddler is constantly pushing for control, if you give them a measure of control, they are going to stop pushing for it. They're going to have their needs met by any means necessary and you are getting in the way of that as the parent. You will see amazing transformation in behavior as soon as you start to meet those underlying needs. I love that. So, John, I didn't really realize that you have four kids.

9:14 So, how on earth do you keep your sanity? And what are some of your biggest triggers, if you can be honest, that you're working on in your journey as a conscious parent? Absolutely. Yeah. And this can be called conscious parenting. I mean, at its core, this is conscious parenting. The first thing that I'll say is that I start the entire book, the introduction begins with the sentence, I was not always a punishment free parent. Mhm. And so my parents did a really pretty amazing job given their circumstances, given what they came from. I have very few criticisms based on their context that of how my parents raised me. That said, was shame employed, was demanding fear really and calling it respect, unquestioned compliance, unquestioned obese? All of these things were also part of my upbringing. Not to mention the fact that I was part of an American education system which insists upon compliance and obedience at all costs and you know tests kids to to the point of depression at this point. And so because of that I I can say that my triggers generally stem from when my kids do the things where I was punished, shamed in some way made to feel inadequate. When my kids do those things, those things feel threatening to me. And this is why we say, you know, there's no time in the mind. When your kid does that thing that you were shamed for, that you were punished for, you're transported in an almost metaphysical way back into that kitchen where you were, you know, taught to sit and face the wall or do whatever or, god forbid, somebody hit you, right?

10:50 We feel that fear in those moments. And so my triggers, a big one for me that I talk about in the book is when my older kids are mean to my younger kids. I was the youngest. And so I see that kind of injustice of I'm bigger than you. I'm stronger than you and I'm gonna take this toy from you. Boy, that boils my blood. Another big one is when we get into the place where I'm saying I'm trying to give them an explanation for something and they're not listening and they're just pushing and pushing and pushing. You know, sometimes I'll just snap. And then the the little things, the whining. And you know, one of the things I don't talk about in the book, but I've talked about other places, is whining is literally our children's evolutionary way to get our attention when we want to ignore them. And so, am I different than other parents that whining doesn't affect me because I have an Instagram account? No. Absolutely not. Whining drives me up the wall, too.

11:41 And so, really, all of those triggers are there. The difference between what I'm now doing being a punishment free parent, being a fully conscious parent and what I did before all of this is not actually how I feel in those moments. It's number one how I choose to respond to those feelings. And number two, when I make a choice that's not in line with my values, when I do default and I sometimes do yell at my kids and I do get frustrated, I go and I seek to reconcile. And that's really the heart of the book is sure we can talk about all the best possible practices, but something that I learned from you was you're not always going to be that person. And so when you're not that person, how do you then go back and and try? You can't undo what you've done, but how do you go back and honestly connect and reconcile in a way that's effective? And that's the other big thing that people are coming away from the book is feeling like, "Oh man, I sit online. I get all this parenting advice and it all makes me feel like crap because I can't live up to this perfect standard when in reality we're not being called to live to a perfect standard.

12:48 We're being called to do our best and when we mess up to come to our kids and say, "I should have been better in this way." So, what's something you would say you keep repeating even though you know better? Is it yelling? Is it shutting down? What's one go-to default like kind of knee-jerk instinct in you that you can't get out of? Like for me, for instance, it's, you know, saying yes when I should either just be quiet or say no. I tend to give in and acquies.

13:17 This is a vestage from the people pleaser in me and I end up in a lot of trouble. What's something that you're working on that even though you're so conscious, it's just such an old part of you that keeps showing up? Yeah. So, I was raised in a household where nobody was putting their hands on me. When I was a little bit older, sometimes I said some things to my mom that might might have earned me a quick slap across the face, but I'm talking about, you know, when I'm 16, 17 years old, talking back.

13:44 When I was a kid, nobody put their hands on me. And I actually in the research for the book, I do a lot of neuroscience research and stuff talking about generational trauma. But one of the interpersonal pieces of research was go my dad has passed away now eight years ago. And I went to his brother and I said, "Growing up in your household, I always thought of his my grandpa his dad as being a very quiet person. I said, "Was there yelling?" I don't know why my dad yelled. And he said, "Yeah, you know, we got yelled at, too." So for me, it's yelling because that has literally been a generational, you know, going back five, six, seven generations that I've been able to to find at least four generations where everybody when we when this regulation happened, people yelled.

14:26 And that has been my biggest struggle. And that's why I said raise kids without raising your voice. The truth is I don't even raise kids without raising my voice. But I am doing a lot better. I'm never going to be fully broken of this. My only hope is that my kids will have a different starting point than I have. And I probably yell about 90% less than I used to. Wow. And it's so fascinating that that was your book title, like how to raise your children without raising your voice. I mean, did you you made that connection? It's because of this yelling in your family somewhat. I think that's why the the title resonated with me. So, a big part of my whole platform has been I am not myself any better than anybody who I'm working with. I'm just trying to do the work. And I and I didn't go to school to get all of the degrees and all of the education. And this makes it so that I can communicate with parents, I think, on a more peer-to-peer level. And part of that is I accept good advice wherever I find it in the world. Sometimes that good advice comes from neuroscience textbooks.

15:26 Sometimes that good advice comes from amazing books like the parenting map and the conscious parent and others that you've written. And other times somebody from Germany sends me a message and says, "You know what would be a great subtitle? How to raise kids without raising your voice." And it immediately connected with me. So that was actually something that if you read in the acknowledgements, somebody else came up with that subtitle. I gave them credit in the acknowledgements, but it was a mom from I think she's from Germany. She speaks German. she might be from Austria, but she speaks German. And she said, you know, I've always thought in English this would be a good subtitle.

15:59 And I said, you know what, that perfectly encapsulates my experience of parenting. And so, I didn't even have the consciousness to come up with that title. I had to go out to into the world and I received that wisdom and I grabbed onto it and I said, I love this. But like you said, it's because it was familiar to you because of your own history. So you know that's how we work in this world. Nothing is really original anyway. Things resonate with us because it is embedded in us to begin with. Absolutely. Who cares who came up with it? It's the energy behind it and the book's entire kind of vibration that it resonates with, right? That it mirrors. Absolutely. John, this is so insightful. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back for more amazing insights on parenting. So, when you do raise your voice today and you lose your and you're this amazing, you know, educator, how do you then talk yourself off the ledge of guilt and shame or or maybe you don't? And and I have my way because I mess up very consistently, but I have a method to get out of it. What's yours?

17:14 because so many parents struggle with guilt and shame. I wrote the whole book and then I removed the first chapter which is going to become a book on its own and I added a chapter and the chapter that I added was about this exactly. It's chapter 8. It's my favorite chapter in the whole book and it's called reconciliation repair. And it all begins with the premise that if punishing our kids is an ineffective way to discipline aka teach them, right? If punishment does not teach, if it only curtails certain behaviors in certain environments, then how should we teach?

17:50 And that's the first seven chapters. The eighth chapter says, if punishment isn't working for your kids, why do you assume that it's working for you? Mhm. And so if you beat the out of yourself every single time you raise your voice, you're not learning. You're just shaming yourself. If punishment is an ineffective teacher for your kids, why are we acting towards ourselves as though it's an effective teacher for us? And by the way, one of the big big pieces which I think you again this is a big principle that you have too is that whatever we model for our children is what they are going to that's going to become their internal dialogue. And so if you are telling your kid you're wonderful and I want you to you know learn from your mistakes and you know sometimes you win and sometimes you learn and all these great mantras and then your kid watches you beat the out of yourself every time you make a mistake. What are they really going to learn? They're going to learn that punishment is effective. So what I tell myself every single time I find myself punishing myself is I go, "John, if you're going to be punishment free parenting guy, you need to also be punishment free for parents guy." Yeah.

18:58 I love it. And and actually the reason we're yelling at our children is because we're too hard on ourselves. So because we're so hard on ourselves and we're perfectionists and we take on the burdens of the world and we've been pleasers and competent people who want to achieve. When we see our child struggling or helpless or acting disrespectful, we we actually internalize it because we take it personally and because we're so hard on ourselves and then we end up yelling at them because the internal critic is so loud in us, we we project it outward onto our children. If we were lovely with ourselves and compassionate when our children are acting like fools or whatever they're acting like, we wouldn't insh, we would allow them their moment. But because we've been so hard on ourselves to do everything, to take on everything personally, we then take their disrespect very personally and that's why we actually end up yelling at them.

19:58 you know, every ancient wisdom tradition, which was my field of study before I got into parenting, was the cognitive sciences of religion, studying world religions. And one of the things that sticks out, as you said, there's, you know, there's no original ideas. They're just repurposed and repackaged for different contexts. One of these concepts that people have heard whatever their religious tradition whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, doesn't matter is this principle that you should treat others the way that you would want to be treated or that you should love others in the way that you love yourself. These are the ways that we talk about the golden rule or whatever. That said, how many of us are so bad at loving ourselves, right? that we transitively wind up not loving others well either. Right? That's the thing is that, you know, if you're supposed to love others like you love yourself, depending on what tradition you come from, and then you don't love yourself, you're not going to love others. And because our kids are so, you know, we have this struggle with this personal differentiation between us and our kids, we look at our kids, we go, they're really just an extension of me.

21:04 Mhm. that when we feel that way now, it's not just them doing the thing that we don't like. It's kind of like us doing the thing we don't like. Yes. And because we're so willing to be so hard on ourselves, we can be so much harder on our kids than we would ever allow someone else to be. Exactly. And we don't even realize we're doing it because they are an extension of ourselves in our subconscious. We vomit our feelings and our relationship about ourselves to them, you know, and that's what I teach in conscious parenting that you can only love them or accept them or attune to them to the degree to which you love, accept, and attune to yourself. Absolutely. And that's how our children are a mirror. So people think that our children are a mirror because they're here to kind of teach us something independent of ourselves.

21:55 Meaning if our child is kind or generous, they are here to be our teacher. But that's not what I mean by our children are our mirror. Our children are our mirror in terms of how we are with them is how we are with ourselves. And the relationship is an exact echo of the relationship we have with ourselves. This is irrespective of who they are independent. So if our child is being mean to their friend, this doesn't mean it's because they learned it from us. Or if they're nice to their friend, it doesn't mean that they learned it from us. What I mean by a child being a mirror is that it's the relationship we have with ourself that will get replicated in the relationship with our children. And so if we're yelling at our children, it's you can be pretty damn sure it's because you've been yelling at yourself. Just before you yelled at your child, you were feeling some type of way which was critical and deprecating and degrading of yourself. I talk about this in two ways in the book. The first way is that whatever that problem is that you find with your kid, the most annoying thing about your kid is the thing that you find most annoying in yourself. Yes, that's number one. The thing two, I love what you're saying about the mirror because I think it goes both ways. Yes, if we show our kids empathy, love, and respect, they are way more likely because of observational learning that you go all the way back to Albert Bura and the Bobo doll experiment, all this other stuff back in psychological history. Yes, we know that they're more likely to be kind and respectful to others if we model that at home. But I think that it goes so much deeper than that is what you're saying is our children actually show us the parts of ourselves that we're unwilling to see.

23:33 Mhm. And so when you see your child doing that thing or acting in that way that feels so wrong to you, the moment and opportunity there again because your child is not giving you a hard time, they're just having a hard time is to say, "Why is this so triggering to me? Is this so triggering to me?" Because I myself struggle with this and I've buried that and I've stuck that in the trunk of the car. I'm not looking at that. And that's why many of us have this amazing opportunity to heal not only for our kids but alongside our kids. When we have kids, they open up a new part of us. What modern neuroscience tells us is that our brain actually softens. It becomes more plastic when we have kids so that we can make these types of changes. So I think it's brilliant that in so many ways what conscious parenting has been telling us is now being so validated in the research and in the fMRI scans and the brain scans that we can now see. Yes, there are mirror and we have an opportunity to change. Yes. So John with your four kids I don't know how many years they span but are you a very different parent now with child number four? I mean, it's so obvious you obviously are, but but tell us, is there one child that particularly triggers you more than others? And if so, why? You know, I think probably my oldest. And the reason why that is is because I have four kids, they range from 8 and a half down to only four months old. And my oldest triggers me the most because it's the first time I've ever had to parent an eight and a halfyear-old. I've parented many four-year-olds. Now, they're all different. I've parented three three-year-olds, two four-year-olds, four fourmon-olds, and they're all different and they're all unique and and you know, before having kids, I kind of rejected the mystical and I rejected the spiritual in many ways and and I kind of said, "Oh, people are just, you know, their brains and their neural pathways." And then you have kids and you realize, "Oh my gosh, there is a spiritual element to each one of these humans that I I am I'm witnessing. I'm not dictating. I'm watching this unfold, but a lot of the behaviors are pretty consistent, and I know how to handle my my three-year-old is much more challenging with his defiance than than my older two kids are, but I'm so much better at staying calm and patient, and I have so many more tools in my tool belt to to be able to handle those tricky situations that it's it's not as triggering to me versus when my eight and a halfyear-old y old does something now that's a new thing that I I'm not prepared for it and I have to go back. But I will say parenting becomes so much easier. No matter who your kids are, like no matter which one of them triggers me, I'm I'm so much less triggered by all of them now that I've gained a level of consciousness. And it's all it's just it's ever adapting, but I don't get nearly as triggered even by the things that would have triggered me before. So, it's hard to even say he's the most triggering because comparatively if I knew what I knew now, if I if I loved myself the way that I love myself now, man, it would have been so much easier when he was three and four and five, I'm glad that I went through those experiences because now when I talk to parents and what I'm writing in my book and subsequent books and giving talks on and speaking about is, hey, I've been there with you. I know exactly how you feel. I know that feeling of I can't believe I want to scream at this tiny little human right now. 100%. Do you think you would have even been so effective if you had never gone through the hell? Right. I know for sure if I had an easy compliant child, I wouldn't have been the pioneer of conscious parenting the way I was. So in a paradoxical way, you know, I think the greatest teachers of self-development are those who have really suffered at the hands of their own unconsciousness.

27:37 Otherwise, you simply will be unrelatable, right? And and and that's the price you pay in life to achieve wisdom. You have to go through treachery. I mean, people think that wisdom is something that you were born with, but I really believe it's something you develop and choose. out of the the hardships of life. Absolutely. So, John, before I let you go, just tell us a little bit about parenting with your partner and how do you both make sure that you're keeping yourselves in check? How has that been a teacher for you? How do you both keep each other conscious? Yeah. So, my first was no cakewalk, that's for sure. And part of that is he's very sensitive. He's highly sensitive. He kind of has explosive tendencies. I don't like a lot of these labels, but you know, highly sensitive, very explosive, deeply deeply emotional, somewhat self-critical. And a lot of that mirrors what my partner has experienced growing up. Now, she didn't have what we have with him. She didn't have the freedom and expression that he has. But it also means that in many ways, she was intuitively the conscious parent. She was intuitively the thoughtful, resilient mom. That said, she has her own struggles, the people pleasing. When you're so overwhelmed by the screaming, you're a little bit easier to just kind of give in to whatever because you just want to keep the peace. So, a lot of our parenting dynamic back and forth is me saying, "Where are you called and gifted and how can I have the humility to say even though I wrote a book about parenting and even though I know all this neuroscience and I know all this stuff, where is she just able to say, "Hey, you got this one wrong." and accept non-defensively that that's probably accurate because this person has my best interest in mind. This person's never out to get me. So, that's number one.

29:39 And then number two is knowing and learning how learning how to parent better also makes us more effective partners. Sometimes it leads to the end of relationships when one person says, "I'm not going to heal. I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to assist in this process." But for me and my partner, it's been the opposite. As we've grown into better parents, we also grow into better and more empathetic partners. As I as she learns empathy for our kids, she develops greater empathy for me. As I develop greater empathy for her, I develop greater empathy for my kids. And so that's been the real challenge. We still fight about parenting. We still disagree about how to do and handle the situation. She often says, "I try to turn everything into a teaching moment. Sometimes you just need to, you know, put Bluey on and make dinner. And, you know, not everything has to be Instagram worthy parenting moments. And, uh, I remind her that ice cream is not a dinner. If our kids really want it, ice cream, we can always have ice cream after dinner. So, it's a struggle. It's never perfect, but it's also been a beautiful, beautiful way to grow closer. And I've never been more in love with my wife than I am now.

30:48 Wow, that's amazing. Are you going to have more kids? You know, I don't think so. I think we may have more kids in our lives. We were licensed foster parents. That was part of the journey that got to whole parent. And it's very possible that we will take in more kids. But as far as biologically having kids, our fourth was a girl. And we kind of felt like it was always going to be four, but we always were like, would it be different to have a girl? And then we did. I think this is the perfect conclusion to where we are. You were waiting for a girl. It was a helpful moment. Oh yes, yes, yes. Well, that's amazing. And you do such good work out in the world. Everyone should check out your Instagram. Just whole parent w h o l e p a ar a r e n t everywhere you can find it. My website is wholeparentacademy.com.

31:39 I love it. I mean, that's how I found you. And I just find that in a male's voice, you impart such wisdom. And I think more voices like you are so important for fathers out there especially. So for those listening and your your partner is sick of Dr. Shafali's voice. Well, now you have John Fogle to go to and maybe your male partners will resonate more with a voice like yours, John. So thank you so much for coming on this podcast and for all the work you do and check out his book, PunishmentFree Parenting. It's awesome.

32:12 Yes. And you know what? Just to add to that, just as a final thought, in many ways, I did write a book to people's husbands. So, if that's what the book you're looking for, this is the book for you. I love it. I love it. Thank you, John, for everything you do. Thank you for coming and joining us on the podcast. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. I hope you all enjoyed listening to this amazing conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on my podcast and I will see you the next time on Parenting and You with me, Dr. Shafali.

32:44 Parenting and you with Dr. Shafali is for educational andformational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, psychotherrapeutic, coaching, health care or other qualified professional advice, diagnosis or treatment.