The conversation unfolds with an exploration of the profound principles of parenting, emphasizing the necessity for parents to provide their children with not merely their wants, but their essential needs. Dr. Ricky articulates that the fundamental aspects of parenting should revolve around establishing structure, boundaries, and leadership within a nurturing environment. The discussion delves into the philosophical underpinning that parenting is not merely a task but a sacred honor, where the ultimate goal is to cultivate well-adjusted individuals capable of navigating the complexities of life. Dr. Ricky asserts that by setting clear boundaries, parents prepare children for the realities of life, which is replete with rules and consequences. He elaborates on how a permissive parenting style, which indulges every whim, fails to equip children with the resilience they need to face future adversities. Through this lens, parenting is redefined as a leadership role, where parents must guide their children with both authority and compassion, thereby fostering an environment conducive to growth and emotional stability.

Takeaways:

• The podcast episode emphasizes the necessity of providing children with structure, boundaries, and leadership to foster their development into successful individuals.
• Dr. Ricky articulates the critical importance of engaging with teenagers on their own terms, thus enhancing parental influence and connection.
• A significant point discussed is the 'stop rule', which encourages individuals to focus on desired outcomes rather than getting bogged down by immediate problems.
• The conversation highlights the idea that children require resilience training, as it equips them to handle life's inevitable challenges more effectively.
• The hosts reflect on the pivotal role of calm authority in parenting, advocating for a balanced approach that combines discipline and nurturing support.
• The episode underscores the value of cooperation over conflict in familial relationships, promoting a culture of understanding and collaboration.

Hey there.

Welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

This podcast is all about providing clarity and life and mission.

And my name is Aaron Santemeyer and I get to be your host.

Today.

We have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us on the podcast Dr. Ricky.

We get to sit down and learn from him.

Had fun reading his book, Spaceship Parenting.

Dr. Ricky.

He's a doctor, obviously, so he's an endocrinologist, a geriatrician.

Just had a phenomenal time engaging in conversation.

I bumbled the first question I asked him, so he's very kind in that I sold him in like 300, well, 400 episodes or so.

I have not bumbled the first question, but he was kind to me in that process, but just had a great conversation on the importance of providing what our kids need, not necessarily what they want and what the importance of being a parent and importance of leading, creating boundaries and creating structures.

Just very insightful on meeting our teenagers where they're at so that we can engage in their life and help guide and direct those conversations, but to be a learner of them.

So just really enjoyed and it was, you know, obviously I've written a book on parenting, too, so it was fun just to hear another medical person or a doctor who has written on parenting and some similarities and thoughts we have on it.

But it is a great honor to be a parent and really appreciated Dr. Ricky being on the podcast.

Do want to ask you to continue to subscribe to the podcast.

I know the podcast I've subscribed to.

There's one that I listen to.

They show up on my feed every Monday or Tuesday and I know what I'm going to be listening to throughout the week.

And I'm thankful for all you who have listened in through these many, many episodes.

Grateful and appreciative of you.

Also continue to send in your questions for Back channel with Foath.

That's where we sit down with Dick Foth and get to learn from him.

It's always fun to get his wisdom and his insight and experience through his years of ministry time in D.C. time leading a Bible institution, but just great spending time with Dick.

Well, there's no time better than not to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

So excited to be here today with a new friend, Dr. Ricky, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Ricky.

I spend a lot of time.

One of the joys of being a podcast host is you get to spend time learning about people.

You get to read their books, those type of things, but maybe somebody listening in has not had that opportunity yet.

And so rather than me sharing the things that I think are important to share about you, how about you share about what you would like the audience to know before we jump in today to some, to a pertinent conversation on parenting.

Thank you.

Yeah, look, I'll give very briefly about my background because it's very odd that an endocrinologist and geriatrician, medical doctor, will be writing books about relationships and parenting.

And so people might be somewhat bemused by that.

So just very briefly, I, as a doctor, I actually was promoted quite rapidly through leadership.

And through that I received a lot of leadership training and discovered that there actually is a great science to.

There is a simple science to managing humans and how to do it better, which we often don't apply.

I would argue also that that's actually what the Bible is all about, teaches us what society should be teaching children and doesn't, which is how to take on the things that are really important in life, which is how to be a decent human who's good at relationships, who can be a good husband, wife, parent, colleague.

And that's really what the Bible is all about, is teaching people how to be a better human.

And the purpose of that actually is to make us happy because humans who have good relationships are happy.

So in my experiences in medicine, by all kinds of interesting divine design and not my own, I ended up being becoming a teacher to other doctors about relationships, managing teams, and the sort of softer skills in medicine.

So I started running courses at my hospital teaching doctors how to manage people and how to relate to patients better and how to relate to colleagues better.

Because running teams is a big deal in medicine.

Yeah.

And that really grew and I ended up becoming a director at my hospital.

And one of my major portfolios was management training, so leadership training for other doctors.

Anyhow, my, my wife is also a doctor and one day she said to me, you know something, I need continuing professional development points to maintain my registration.

So I'm going to come to one of your courses.

I'll get the day off and I'll get points.

And then she said, I don't think I'll learn anything and I'm sure it'll be boring spouse to encourage you, but I'm going to come along anyway.

So I said, great, thanks for the encouragement.

So she came along and There were about 50 specialists there.

And she walked out of the meeting and she said to me, wow, that was absolutely amazing.

People loved what you had to Say you should write a book.

And I went, wow.

I mean, I never thought that I had the skill or the ability to do that.

And she said she must be obeyed.

Said, no, what you were teaching was amazing.

People loved it.

And you should write a book.

Wow.

So once my wife commands me to do something, I'm generally going to do it.

So I started writing.

And so I've written quite extensively about relationships, really based on very simple scientific management principles that apply to all humans.

And, and I guess part of that is also, you know, the religious formula we're given from the Bible, which is how to be good people.

Yeah, good deal, primarily.

And have good values, which guides everything.

Well, one day I would love to have you back on to have that conversation, because I think that would.

A lot of our people listening into this are missionaries and serve on teams, both from the leader and the followers on.

So I'd love to have that conversation.

And, and Dr. Ricky's up at 2:30 in the morning, so we won't have that conversation today.

So we'll find a time that's better for him, not 2:30 in the morning because he's in Australia.

So I'm going to jump in, start asking questions about your book on parenting so you share.

The parents are giving their kids what they want, not necessarily what they need.

And those three things that they need are structure, boundaries and leadership.

Can you share more about those?

Wow.

Okay.

So that's a huge question to start with.

I'll try and give a really simple, straightforward answer.

So the, one of the fundamentals of parenting is that we are actually trying to give our children the tools that they require to be happy, successful humans.

So we're not just bringing up children to give them what they want all the time and indulge them.

Surely our goal is to create human beings that are going to go out into the world and be happy and successful.

And the real world has boundaries that exist in everything.

And so if you're going to give children the tools that they require to deal with the world, they need to learn to stay within boundaries and understand boundaries and consequences.

So whether you are in a relationship or you go to work one day or you go to school, there are rules.

And those rules are not a negative thing.

Because, for example, in a marriage there are boundaries.

We don't cheat on each other, we treat each other a certain way.

And if you go outside those boundaries, the consequences are that the marriage is going to suffer.

And so giving children an understanding of predictable boundaries and consequences is a meaningful way to prepare them for real life because when they go to work, they're going to have to arrive at a certain time and they're going to have a certain job description.

They're going to have to get along with other people.

And I guess that that's one of the very interesting things about being human is that humans have boundaries.

And when we deal with each other, we'll deal with each other's boundaries.

And one of the difficulties in a permissive society, and we're living through times of great permissiveness, is that when people are taught that they can get whatever they want all the time, that's not a realistic way to prepare a human for life.

Because when you get married, when you deal with other people, when you have friends, when you go to work, other people are not going to indulge you by giving you what you want all the time because they're mostly going to be trying to get what they want.

And so teaching children realistic boundaries and, and in fact, one of the evidence based ways to make children happy is to give them predictable boundaries and consequences in a calm, non angry way.

So we're not looking to punish our children or restrict their growth.

We're looking to give them an infrastructure that they can build their individualism on, if I can put it that way.

So I hope that's a reasonable answer.

This is the second thing that you referred to that I'll also talk to and I've got a chapter in my book called Be the Manager.

Okay.

And that speaks to what you were saying earlier about leadership.

So everyone in the modern day wants to be a friend to their child, but actually children need parents, not friends in, in the, in the home.

And the reason, the reason, one of the reasons, I believe, why we see so much chaos in modern homes.

And this is a very interesting existential question which my book asks, which is prior generations managed parenting.

Well, they didn't see it as a stress.

My parents, everyone just parented like it was what humans are designed to do.

We have kids, we parent them.

Dogs have litters of puppies and they parent them.

They don't find it stressful.

There are aspects of parenting that are stressful, but we're designed to parent, otherwise we couldn't survive.

So why is it that modern parents can no longer cope with parenting?

So my friends who are 20s and 30s, they barely leave the house and they talk all the time about how their houses are out of control and they're not coping.

And unfortunately the side effect of that is that we are living through times of Greater luxury, abundance, quality of life, health than we ever have in history.

And yet we have the highest level of mental health issues amongst our kids.

So the kids are the most unhappy and dysfunctional yet living through the best of times.

So what's going wrong?

And one of those things is leadership.

So in a house where children are the leaders, which is what most of my parents do with their children, the children tell the parents what they want and what to do is that children are emotional and immature.

We know that that's what a child is.

They're an emotional, immature being.

So if you run your house with the leader being someone who's emotionally labile and immature, how would you not expect a despotic, chaotic regime with lots of expressed emotion and complete chaos?

So I guess that's the answer to your question, hopefully, that parents are actually supposed to be managers, leaders of their houses, but.

And that boundaries and consequences are actually tools that prepare humans to be happy and successful.

So they're gifts, they're not punishments if applied correctly?

No, and I love how you shared that.

They're not meant to be.

The boundaries are there to help them give a structure for them to grow.

And, and I think that's.

I loved.

You said it eloquently like you wrote a book about it.

So imagine that.

So can I just say something to a missionary's apologies because I'm sure you want to get on to other questions.

No.

You know, in religion we talk about God as being the father.

And so you know that God's a parent to us.

And if we want to understand modeling, role modeling of parenting, then we can look to God because God parents humans in a sense, and God gives us an infrastructure that has roles.

So the Bible is full of rules about things that are good things to do and things that aren't good things to do.

And so there's no difference between that and parenting.

God is parenting us.

He's saying, hey, if you want to be a happy, successful individual, if you steal, if you lie, these are things that are going to create a corrupt, unhappy society.

It's going to make a lot of people unhappy and it's going to make you unhappy.

It's a high risk strategy.

So be a good person because people will like you and you'll be happy.

And so that infrastructure doesn't inhibit your ability to be creative and to be an individual and to do beautiful, amazing individual things, but it's the infrastructure that, that humans are built on.

Yeah.

Love it.

Dr. Ricky, you also write about the importance of training our kids.

For resilience.

And, and so what are some reasons you focused on resiliency?

And how do, how do parents begin to focus on that?

That's a fantastic.

And get very broad question.

So I'll start by saying again, the same simple principle that when you're bringing up a child, surely what you're doing is trying to give them the tools that they require to navigate life successfully and with happiness and success.

And one of the difficulties of the world that we live in is that no human is immune from suffering and challenge.

And we know that all humans are going to have relationships that break down friendships and that don't work.

Challenges in relationships, people that they know are going to die.

That's the reality of life.

People, they are going to suffer.

Nobody lives without emotional and physical pain.

And so if we don't prepare our children for that reality and how to deal with that, then what we're doing is very simple.

They're unprepared for life and they're going to be knocked down by the challenges that they face.

So in child psychology models, fascinatingly, the thing that prepares humans for resilience is micro traumas, repetitive micro traumas in a supportive environment.

And in fact, there's actually very interesting studies on ptsd, post traumatic stress disorder, which shows that you're much more likely to develop post traumatic stress disorder if you didn't grow up in a supportive environment that allowed you micro trauma.

So helicopter parenting makes people at high risk of ptsd, as does an unloving home, which didn't give people the support they require.

So we've got to allow children to take knocks in life, and we've got to give them tools to get up again and get back on their bike and keep riding when they fall off.

And if we hover over them all the time, you know, encouraging them to wail and cry about how difficult life is and how negative everything is and how, you know, the problems they face are so terrible.

And we keep just indulging that with, with showering that with lots of positive affirmation.

What we're actually doing is we're conditioning children to be negative and miserable.

And we see that in social media, and we see that in the world we live in today is this incredible focus on negativity and misery, but without providing the answers of how to get out of that.

So what we see on social media is nihilism.

Everything is about how bad the world is and how terrible the world we live in.

If you look at sexual politics, how bad men are, we're Horrible.

And male, female relationships, it's a horrible thing.

You know, sexual attraction is horrible.

You know, religion is horrible.

All these, everything's horrible.

And.

But no one's providing an answer to that.

And so as parents, what we really want to do is provide our children with an attitude that says, you're going to struggle, you're going to suffer in life.

Now, what are the values and the fundamentals that guide you through that?

And certainly besides faith and aspiration and values and all of these things, a positive can do attitude is the path to happiness.

So, okay, you fell down.

Now what are you going to do?

I'm going to give you a hug.

Now get up and get back on the bike and keep riding.

And if you're waiting for too long, get back on the bike and keep riding.

You know, that's, that's how people are successful in life.

And it's not about being an unloving, uncaring parent.

The whole thing about that evidence is that the child does need the emotional support or they won't grow up resilient.

But at the same time, giving people what they want all the time doesn't prepare them for resilience because you're conditioning someone that, that they will always be able to get what they want, which is not what's going to happen in life from other people.

And just a second corollary to that very briefly, is that when we keep teaching children that crying and shouting is what gets them what they want, what we're conditioning them to do is to behave very badly in life to get what they want.

The tool we've given them is not resilience or positive attitude or how to get through difficulty with positivity.

We've taught them that if you shout and scream, you'll ultimately get what you want.

And that's a terrible conditioning for happy marriages, happy relationships, being a good parent, being a good person.

And it's not a recipe for happiness, and it encourages the sort of negative cycle of what we see in the world today is you have a problem.

Woe is me.

Everyone else must give me what I want and cater for my problem.

And the real answer is no.

We all have problems.

We're all imperfect.

Now what are we going to do with that imperfection to make the best life for ourselves, for other people?

How do we keep moving forward positively even though we're imperfect humans?

Yeah, it's good.

You know, I wrote a book on parent called A Caring Family.

And that's one of the things that I had written about also was the importance of resiliency and helping kids bounce back to a new normal.

And this.

This reality that they are going to face bumps and bruises and they are as a family, but as you said, creating those.

Those environments where they can do that in a way that the parents are able to help them get back up, encourage them, and help them learn and process through those lessons.

I think one of the mistakes I've made as a parent would be, is, you know, a lot of times I didn't want my kids, maybe helicopter parenting is.

I didn't necessarily want them to go through the challenging times because it was going to take a lot of extra effort for me.

Right.

Because, you know, it's easy.

If you prevent it, then you don't have to.

You're not necessarily responding to it.

And I think I, as a parent, obviously, you can't go back and do it all over again, but at the same time, things I probably would have did differently on this side of.

My kids are 20 and 22 at the present time, so they're a little older, but when they were younger, I could have did better, for sure.

So you write about this idea of being a calm authority.

What does a calm authority look like as a parent and some reasons that you think this is vital?

Thank you.

Well, first of all, well done for writing a book, because writing a book, as you know, requires tremendous resilience.

And also to speak to what you just said, children aren't looking for perfection in their parents, and we can't provide it.

And so I think all that we can do is.

My wife actually says all these things to me.

If I get things wrong, she's like, oh, what did you write in your book?

And that's the truth.

None of us are perfect husbands or wives or parents.

But understanding what we want to be, what we want to aspire to, is half the battle.

One is at least to aim, to always be aiming to get better.

Yeah.

So you were asking about calm authority.

I think one of the difficulties we see in modern homes is that because there's this fashion of parents being children, being following their children and not being leaders, so they want to be friends to their children rather than being leaders to their children is that children are immature and emotional.

And so if you allow that to lead your home, then your home is going to be emotional and immature.

And that's chaotic.

And so there's an incredible human response to calm authority.

So just as an.

As an interesting thing, when we do training for fire drills at work, you actually have a marshal wearing a vest.

So they have an orange vest that the marshal wears.

And the reason why they do that is because real life studies have shown that humans in crisis will actually follow someone wearing that vest.

And if that person remains calm and leads, people will follow that person.

And so parenting is no different.

Our children are in this overwhelming world, and they feel very anxious if their parents don't lead.

And so if we can lead with calm authority, you don't punish your child out of anger.

You punish them out of love.

So if you're just saying to a child calmly, with a lot of authority, that's not a behavior that is acceptable.

And if you do that, then this is the consequence that will follow.

There's no anger.

But the child knows if you do carry that through, I'm not going to do that, because I don't want that consequence.

And that's a very important life lesson, because our actions do have consequences, and we all need to learn that from an early age.

And often we are the masters of our own destiny in many ways.

If we do good to other people, good comes back, and if we do bad, bad comes back.

And so teaching children that.

That there are boundaries and consequences is very important.

But in terms of calm authority, when parents start to shout and scream and become unhinged, then that reduces the whole home to being an emotional tinderbox, where everything is emotional.

And once things drift into emotion, you can no longer navigate out of that in a peaceful way, because everything is on a war footing.

So I think one of the jobs of parents, in the way that they treat each other in their marriage and the way they treat their children, is to be calm and to be a leader.

And to be a leader requires authority.

And authority requires you to have certain boundaries that you present to your children that they can't actually cross.

Say, actually, the parents are in charge.

We're going to let you play and have fun, and that's good.

But at some point, you're gonna have to go to bed because it's sleep time.

Yeah, yeah.

Good deal.

Good deal.

I love it.

You mentioned earlier in the world we live in, about parents that are just so stressed out about being a parent, and you write about this idea that sometimes parents are feeling that parenting seems a lot harder than they thought it would be or a lot harder than it should be.

Any words of encouragement to a parent that's living in a different culture, and they're just thinking, this parenting thing is not what I thought it was gonna be.

It's a lot.

Or any words of encouragement for Them?

Yes.

I mean, that's very important because we talk.

We've been talking about all the challenges parents are facing.

And I wouldn't like to be glib about the fact that parenting is enormously challenging.

And if you read the Bible, even God seems to find parenting humans challenging at times, in a sense.

You know, constantly having to deal with people not doing the right thing and bringing up children is no different.

They're going to do things that.

So just look, I think one of the things about parenting is that it is enormously challenging.

And it's much more so, I think, than we realize.

So my wife and I are both medical doctors, and we thought we knew what we were getting ourselves in for when we decided to have kids.

But really, when you have a baby, I think your world is turned around in such a profound way and far more than you could have predicted.

So I think, look, maybe smarter people than me know what they're getting themselves in for.

But I would say, I think most people don't realize how different your world is going to be when you have kids.

So there is no more challenging and exhausting a period of life, I think, than having a newborn baby that requires 247 care from parents.

And I think there are so many challenges that happen with that, with, you know, your dynamic of your relationship changes because prior to that, you were.

Your marriage was everything and, you know, having fun and being together and doing great things together.

Now you lose all of that.

In a sense, the spontaneity is not there because you got a baby crying all the time and you're not getting any sleep.

So parenting is very, very hard.

But the thing I would say to be encouraging to that is a few things.

The first is that I think it's a great pity that humans are not taught how to parent.

So if you understand that it is one of the fundamental skills of life that determines so much of human happiness, your skills as a parent are so important.

Why don't we actually teach children at school how to be better parents?

It's much more important in many ways than geography and parenting can be taught.

And that's what my book's really about, is that there are simple principles that you can learn that are easy.

And why don't we actually teach humans how to parent better?

Because like anything in life, when you know how to do something, it becomes easy.

So you often have things.

I've got a kid in my family who's very humble and exceptional at maths.

He's actually kind of a math genius.

One of My kids.

And he's very humble, and he used to do incredibly well in tests.

And I would say to him, well done.

You did so well on this test.

And he couldn't understand it.

He said to me, why are you praising me?

The test was very easy.

So that's the answer, is that if you have a skill to do something, it becomes easy.

And so one of the answers to this is, if we actually teach parents skills and we prepare them better for what parenting is going to be at school, in a way that we bring people up, then parenting does become much easier.

And just to spin this around very positively, I think parenting is one of the most beautiful, amazing things in the world.

So for all the fact that it is exhausting, you know, there's 8 billion people on the planet because people keep going, hey, I want to have kids.

And so I think there again, we have this great negativity in the world around everything that everything's become so negative.

And I could speak to why social media is that way, but it would be a different conversation.

But just to say that there's nothing more beautiful than falling in love with another human, starting a family, bringing another life into the world, and being able to shape and guide that life with the right values and to create another human being and give them the tools to be happy and see them being happy and being a happy family together, there simply is nothing greater that you can experience in the world.

So I wouldn't like to put a negative spin on parenting that it is hard, but anything in.

In the world that's worthwhile takes hard work.

That's true.

Parenting is no different.

And I love.

I love how you're.

You bring us back to center that it is a gift and it is an honor, and it is a.

It is a privilege to be a parent.

And.

But in a world that makes everything has a negative spin on everything, it can easily bleed in, for sure.

One of the.

And that kind of leads me to one of other questions I have for you.

You share about the importance of cooperation and that cooperation can accomplish more than conflict ever can.

How in a home can parents model what cooperation looks like and then move that forward rather than focusing on conflict?

Is that a fair question?

That's an exceptional question.

So just to speak to that, I mean, my background really is in organizational psychology.

So, you know, the training that I've had is in managing teams in a hospital.

Yeah.

And there's no difference.

And we know everyone knows the term stakeholder engagement, which is really the same in any human relationship.

The thing that works best in terms of getting cooperation is stakeholder engagement.

And stakeholder engagement is about giving someone a voice, about letting them express their opinions, about making them feel heard and valued, and making them part of the conversation.

But it doesn't take away the ability to guide that conversation, because a good leader in a team at work is still setting the tone in terms of values and direction, but at the same time making sure that every member of that team feels included.

So in a home, there are many aspects to that.

The first is how couples treat each other.

So if parents treat each other in a certain way, that doesn't encourage the idea that they're promoting cooperation.

That's not helpful.

So the parents themselves have to be united in the way they bring up their children.

But I think one of the other things is to allow children to express their opinions.

And within the limits of what boundaries you need to provide, you give them as much personal freedom as you can within those boundaries.

So it's often possible to give children choices, but you're giving them the choices that you're choosing.

Yeah.

So you're not saying to them, do you want another sweet or lollipop or chocolate?

You're saying to them, okay, you're hungry.

What do you want to eat?

These are your choices.

Yeah.

And when they say, I want a lolly, you go.

Or in America maybe call it a sweet, you go, no, that's not what's for lunch.

This is for lunch.

So as much as possible to give choices, guide those choices and give them a voice, listen to them and allow them to be individuals and be themselves and celebrate that with them.

But at the same time, you can still guide and direct proceedings as a calm parent.

So, yeah, so there's a.

There's a chapter in my book, particularly about adolescents, called work with, not against them.

And that's actually something I got from work.

Okay.

So as a.

As a medical leader, I was head of the.

My hospital, doctors for the hospital and also for my state, I was the head of public hospitals for the Australian Medical Association.

And a lot of meetings I went to were very adversarial because as a doctor, you're always trying to get more money for your patients, and you're trying to establish services and you deal with bureaucrats and administrators.

We just want to save money.

And that clash of humans often don't understand that a clash of agenda is not.

Actually does not necessitate emotional conflict.

We all have our own job to do, and we have to work together within that.

So I used to As I was walking into those meetings, I always used to be saying in my head, work with, not against them.

Work with, not against them.

Because sitting in those meetings, hearing other people what they have to say, encouraging them, being positive, and then gently trying to guide them towards what was necessary to make the world a better place is stakeholder engagement.

And that works.

And so it's the same with teenagers.

Teenagers are trying to become individuals.

That's what they're supposed to do as teenagers.

They are transitioning from childhood to adulthood.

They need to work out for themselves what their personal boundaries are, what they stand for, whether they want to follow their parents.

And the best way for you to be an effective leader as a parent is to work with them, to understand where they're coming from, to spend as little time pushing them down, criticizing, shouting at them, and as much time building them up and working with them, and then in some way having a hand in guiding the way that building is constructed.

And the more you fight with them, the less likely they want you on the team that's building that infrastructure.

For sure.

For sure.

I got one or one or two more questions for you.

I really valued your chapter on engaging teens on their terms.

Do you have.

Can you share some brief thoughts on engaging teens on their terms?

Yes.

Look, first of all, as my book I think, hopefully, humorously puts across, teenagers are not always the easiest people to deal with.

So I have a lot of fun with my kids.

And one of the ways I do that is that I'm not trying to impose myself on them.

I allow them to set the agenda and the tone and talk about the things they want to talk about.

And so by doing that, I don't tell them what music they should like or listen to or what TV programs they should watch.

Rather, they tell me what music they like listening to and what TV programs they like to watch.

And by doing that, it's an incredible, incredible bonding experience because my kids actually love the fact that I know about their memes and their anime is a big deal.

Around the world now, people watch anime and.

Which is very interesting.

Another interesting social study, which I could talk about why kids don't like Disney because it's work and it's not real.

And they like anime because anime actually has men being strong and women being women and men being men.

And kids actually like that.

So it's quite interesting.

So.

But I get on their wavelength and I take interest in the things that they're interested in.

And then we have a lot of fun because I get their jokes, they Love the fact that I get their jokes, that I understand their lingo, that.

And then I can send jokes, you know, I text them and I'll use their, you know, fashionable funny memes and sure.

Jokes that are in jokes for them.

So I think there's incredible importance in bonding with your teenagers.

Not telling them what they should like and who they should be, but rather celebrating who they are working with that person and just come back to parenting fundamentally.

They still know that there's certain boundaries that I have given them that I won't compromise.

And they know that I'd be very disappointed if they didn't stay within those boundaries.

There's certain behaviors and certain values, religious values, behavioral values that I subscribe to and I expect them to.

And you can't control your teenagers.

If an 18 year old decides that they're not going to follow the same path as you.

You can't actually control that anymore.

You've got to build that from the beginning.

So, yeah, so I think there's a huge amount to be said for the more you cooperate with your teenagers, the more you work with them, the more you run their wavelength, the more they're going to share their world with you.

The more they share their world with you, the more role you play in guiding that world.

And when you sort of push them down and fight with them, they push you out.

And then you have no influence anymore on where they go and what they do.

Yeah, love it.

And I think, you know, one of kind of a tag on that.

One of the things I wrote about was this.

The idea of.

And not engaging my kids where they were at, how they were feeling or where they were at, when their emotions and then demonstrate a possibility when they were younger.

There was a time when they shared that with me when they were teenagers, which I really appreciated because I was missing an opportunity to hear where they were really at and then to listen and then to, you know, pray and invite the Holy Spirit into those situations.

But I was just trying to get through it and move through it or not feeling like a safe place for them to share.

And so just as you're saying, of, of yes, they understood, you know, where we were at, where we, what we believe about God, what we accept in our home.

But at the same time, those things, out of meeting them, where they were at, I was missing that.

So I was very thankful that, you know, that they had the courage to share that so that I could recognize that and pivot, you know, I mean, and take it and move forward.

So, last question seems like books are.

Companion editions, are two books.

I don't know.

We, we have, we're kindred spirits.

I would say that I'm not a. I'm not like leading states, medical states.

I'm not that.

But listeners know I'm 400 episodes into this thing.

You know, I love medicine and that's something that I super enjoy being involved in.

And obviously we have the same passion for, for people to be healthy and whole and.

Yeah.

So I think we have a lot of similar passions.

For sure.

So for sure.

But your book, what you have that I don't have.

You have creativity and you have great humor.

And so those.

That's what I loved about your book.

Just the way you.

Thank you so much.

The creativity that you write with, the humor that you instill in that.

That's not me.

I don't have that level of creativity and humor.

And so you did a phenomenal job with that and made.

Made the book enjoyable to read and engaging to read.

Yeah, it was with great principles throughout it.

And that takes a lot of creativity and a lot of intentionality.

And so that's.

Those were some things that I loved about it.

So I got one more question for you.

Firstly, let me say thank you.

That's very.

Those are very kind words and I greatly appreciate that.

Thank you.

And they're true.

So I don't say that.

I don't.

So they're kind and they're true.

It's true.

I really appreciated it.

It was fun and at the same time it was engaging and I learned a lot, which was excellent.

The stop rule.

So what is the stop role and what importance does that have in the family and being a parent?

The stop rules actually a rule that I came up with years ago and then discovered that someone else had kind of beaten me to it because it's also one of the seven, seven habits of highly effective people in a way which is that you should always think in outcomes, not in problems.

So it's obviously, you know, I think, you know, I think one of the great, you know, as King Solomon said, you know, there's really nothing original under the sun.

Someone's always thought of something before you.

But I think outcome based thinking is incredibly important and that's to teach kids and all humans to think in outcomes rather than problems.

So the stop rule says stop.

Identify.

Identify your desired destination and walk calmly in the correct direction.

And what that really means in life is that if instead of getting overwhelmed by problems, we just keep our eyes focused on where we want to go.

Everything Becomes simple.

So if I know what direction I want to go in, I can just draw a straight line in that direction.

I can start moving forward one step at a time, and it doesn't matter how bad things are.

Five steps later, I'm five steps further towards where I want to be.

And so I think teaching children to stop and think before they do things is very, very important because a great many tragedies and disasters happen in life.

In fact, arguably most tragedies and disasters, human disasters happen in life.

Things that we.

That are consequences of what we do.

Because people think without, or they act without thinking, and they do terrible things.

And it only takes one moment to run a life or end a life.

And so people do impulsive things, whether it's drinking or drinking and driving or taking drugs or doing something really stupid.

So to try and teach kids to always think about where they want to go in life is very important.

But just to speak to that in a very simple way with social media and with texting and emailing and WhatsApp messaging, I think one of the stop rules incredibly important for that.

And I apply it all the time in my own life, and I try and teach my kids to apply it.

And that is when you receive a message on your email or your phone and it makes you emotional, don't respond and hit send, stop and think about what you're trying to achieve in that setting.

So if it's your, your wife, your husband, or your friend, what you don't want to do is ruin that relationship.

And so responding in anger is the last thing you want to do because that doesn't achieve the outcome that you're looking for, which is to have a happy relationship.

And invariably, if you stop, calm down, in most circumstances in life, you get perspective, which is why people who come as an outsider, when two people are fighting, they usually go, why are you guys fighting?

This is silly.

Like, and the two people don't see that, they're so angry and so taken up in that fight that they can't see truth and obvious truths, that would.

Would solve their problem.

So if you can just stop and calmly think about what you want in life and then do things in your own interest.

So I guess the other thing is to act in your own interest in life.

These things sound very obvious, but it's not what human beings do.

Most human beings act out of emotional expedience and impulse and do damage to themselves by doing that.

So if you can stop and identify what you're trying to get out of a situation or in any given circumstance, and then you actually do the things that are good for you, that's probably a sensible path to go down.

So I think teaching kids that.

That's.

I call that the stop rule.

I teach it to doctors at work as well, because I think it's a very important life rule, is to always think in outcomes, not in problems.

And the other nice thing about thinking in outcomes is that it gives us positive energy.

So when we know where we want to go, we feel positive, we know where we want to go, we've got a direction, we feel like we can do it.

When we become overwhelmed with problems, we feel terrible and negative, and we lose hope.

And that's what leads to, you know, a lot of depression and misery and sadness.

So having a direction, feeling that you can get better, that gives positive energy and makes us feel better.

Yeah.

And it makes our lives better because we're actually doing the things we should be doing to make our lives better.

Yeah, for sure.

And you're an endocrinologist, so you understand all the hormonal interactions of all those things and the cortisol levels.

And you could.

You could.

You could probably speak a day just.

Just on that part.

I could make a joke about that.

That.

I'll make a joke about that.

Because in truth, what I always tell my colleagues is that endocrinologists actually know absolutely nothing about hormones and endocrinology.

We just know a lot more than other doctors who may know more than the average person.

So actually, I think being.

Becoming wiser in life is to recognize how much we don't know.

And actually, the world's this incredibly magical place, and it really is physiology and.

And the way the human body works, it's all magic.

And we always don't know more than what we do know, but it's exciting that we know something.

Yeah.

And you're right.

The human body is a miracle.

Once you start learning all the things that could go wrong and all the things that it takes for it to go right, it's a humble walk.

So, Dr. Ricky, it's been fun hanging out with you today, learning from you, and we'll put links to your book in the show notes.

Would you pray for us today?

Thank you so much for doing that.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's lovely to hear that we have such congruence in the way we think.

Yes.

So a prayer.

God, first of all, thank you for the privilege of speaking on the show and for Erin inviting me.

It's.

It's really very special.

And humbling.

We're living through times which are preoccupied with darkness and negativity and where the world seems to have lost its way when it comes to understanding what is good and what is bad.

And there's so many who go against the godly way and the moral way.

And we have so many challenges with all this focus on misery and negativity.

So I pray that we, as individuals, for Aaron and his family, for all the people listening, for all the world, that we all remain on a positive path, moving in a positive direction towards your light, towards goodness, towards making ourselves better people, making the world a better place.

And we pray for your help in bringing light and happiness and joy into the world, as it should be.

And thank you for the wonderful world that you've given us.

Amen.

Amen.