Have you ever felt the urge to yell or hand out a punishment during a chaotic grocery store meltdown? It is a moment meant to stop the behavior fast, but what if it is actually turning off the exact part of your child’s brain that learns lessons?

In this episode, I sit down with parenting author Jon Fogel to dismantle the massive misconceptions around discipline and childhood tantrums. Jon shares how traditional punishments backfire on our kids’ nervous systems, and explains why our child’s biggest meltdowns are actually a cry for connection and emotional tools rather than a sign of a bad kid.

In this episode we cover:

• Why traditional punishments work against a child’s brain and block them from learning lessons

• The power of getting curious instead of furious when your child has a major behavioral blowout

• Simple neuroscience brain hacks, like the color game, to bring a dysregulated child back online

• Why society holds toddlers to adult standards while adults throw tantrums with road rage

• The history of terrible parenting advice from the 1930s that is still impacting our families today

• How to take a beat and do no harm when your own triggers flare up in public

• Why doing the hard work to build emotional trust now makes the teenage years a total breeze

Connect with Jon Fogel on Instagram @wholeparent, visit his site ⁠myparentlab.com⁠ and buy his two books Punishment-Free Parenting: ⁠https://go.shopmy.us/p-71062269⁠ and Set My Feelings Free: ⁠https://go.shopmy.us/p-71062356⁠ (paid links)

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00;00;00;03 – 00;00;21;21

Jon Fogel

It’s literally get curious, not furious. It’s how do we immediately pivot to curiosity about our kids behaviors? Because they’re almost always communicating a fundamental unmet need. A lot of times we just assume that kids are giving us hard time when really what we’re experiencing is them just having a hard time in our presence.

 

00;00;21;23 – 00;00;40;29

Dr. Mona

Hey y’all, it’s me, Doctor Mona, and welcome back to the show. Quick pause before we jump in, I always like to remind you all because I need to say thank you. You continually make this a top 30 parenting podcast in the United States by sharing and downloading and sharing and downloading and subscribing and setting up those automatic downloads.

 

00;00;40;29 – 00;01;06;12

Dr. Mona

So really can’t stop, won’t stop. Do that all the time. Today we’re chatting about punishment free parenting. And remember, punishment is not the same as consequences. And more on that later. Taking away screen time for a messy room that has nothing to do with the screen. A forced apology in front of grandma. Putting your child into a dark room because you’re upset at what they did.

 

00;01;06;15 – 00;01;32;10

Dr. Mona

Yelling until the room goes quiet incessantly. I get it. One off yelling is going to happen. Pop pop on the button for undesired behaviors, aka corporal punishment. Punishments may seem like they help short term, but they do something really problematic. They shut down the learning. And remember, discipline means learning. We want our kids to learn how to behave, how to communicate.

 

00;01;32;10 – 00;01;51;03

Dr. Mona

All of those things. And by doing this, we’re not allowing that to happen. Punishment that is random or shame based or way bigger than the moment calls for, does not build a skill that just makes a kid focus on how unfair you are being, or how big your reaction is. And that is different from a consequence. A real consequence connects to what actually happened.

 

00;01;51;10 – 00;02;11;29

Dr. Mona

You draw on the wall. You help clean the wall or no more marker access. Punishment and consequence are not the same thing. Even though we use the words like they are. Today’s guest is Jon Fogel. He is a parenting researcher, a data for and the author of Punishment Free Parenting the Brain Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice.

 

00;02;12;01 – 00;02;35;22

Dr. Mona

He also released a children’s book called Set My Feelings Free, which does something most Feelings book do not. It teaches kids to move through big emotions with their body and breath, not just a vocabulary word. Today we’re getting into what punishment really does to a developing brain the differences between punishment and consequences. Why telling a kid to take a deep breath mid meltdown is not going to work.

 

00;02;35;24 – 00;03;01;25

Dr. Mona

And when regulation games can help versus when they fall flat, you’re going to really love this conversation, but please make sure to download it. Subscribe if you have not and make sure you tag Jon at Whole Parent, PedsDocTalk and the PedsDocTalk podcast when you share it on social media. Let’s get into this incredible punishment free conversation.

 

00;03;01;27 – 00;03;07;13

Dr. Mona

Jon, thank you so much for being here today. It’s such an honor to finally connect with you via podcasting.

 

00;03;07;14 – 00;03;16;20

Jon Fogel

Thank you, Doctor Mona, it is an honor to be here. One clarification I should say the set my feelings for you. I am an author.

 

00;03;16;22 – 00;03;18;15

Dr. Mona

Oh, I’m not the only author.

 

00;03;18;15 – 00;03;35;03

Jon Fogel

Yes, my wife is also a coauthor on that book as well as I am not a co illustrator. She illustrated the whole book. So we are co-creators. But, she helped she she I helped her write it or we helped each other write it. There is one page that was all me, and that’s.

 

00;03;35;03 – 00;03;35;20

Dr. Mona

I that’s at the.

 

00;03;35;20 – 00;03;38;04

Jon Fogel

Back. We can talk about that later, but. But the rest of it.

 

00;03;38;04 – 00;03;57;12

Dr. Mona

Is so much. Well, we’ll have to get your you have to get your wife on. By the way, we are juggling schedules. He’s on the show. Wife is handling the kids. They’re switching off. They’re doing the parenting thing that all of us are very familiar with. And Jon, I was mentioning before we started this conversation right now, that I love connecting with people on my Instagram via podcasting.

 

00;03;57;12 – 00;04;09;13

Dr. Mona

It has been an incredible medium to network, and I just feel like I’ve gained these amazing friends across the space thanks to people who come on my show. So thank you for now being my new best friend on podcast.

 

00;04;09;15 – 00;04;25;05

Jon Fogel

Yeah. You know, and I think we’ve scheduled this and we scheduled this months ago, but it’s fun to also just go back and forth. I think a lot of people don’t realize that the healthy like psychologically healthy parenting community, if that’s a thing. Yeah. Like we’re all very interconnected now. I guess I shouldn’t say all there are those outliers.

 

00;04;25;05 – 00;04;47;15

Jon Fogel

There’s a couple of big creators who are like, I’m not going to, you know, be involved with others, all these other people. But most of us don’t don’t do this whole like, oh, you should follow me. And not this other person. And doing this, you know, shots from the gallery like we so so I’ve just enjoyed getting to know you and seeing your content come through and just nodding along and liking and resharing a lot of stuff that I can.

 

00;04;47;17 – 00;05;11;16

Dr. Mona

Yeah. Thank you. And a feeling is mutual. Yeah. And we’re talking today about punishment free parenting. It’s like a tongue twister. But also, you know, your inspiration for writing this new book with your wife, Set My feelings Free. So you wrote punishment free parenting to help adults rethink discipline and understand the emotional drivers behind behavior. And now you’ve co-written this book, Set My Feelings Free, that speaks directly to kids about feelings.

 

00;05;11;18 – 00;05;19;01

Dr. Mona

What made you feel it was important to bring those emotional skills directly to children, instead of only teaching them their parenting advice?

 

00;05;19;01 – 00;05;45;09

Jon Fogel

Well, what has become really clear on social media is that the videos that go viral, I mean, we could this could be a whole a podcast about like how to how to do social media well, but the videos that go viral are the ones that give people quick fixes in their most difficult moments. And so time and time again, the stuff that I put out that’s like, this is what to do when your kid’s having a tantrum at the local grocery store or whatever, like that stuff comes out.

 

00;05;45;09 – 00;06;05;18

Jon Fogel

But the truth is, 90% of good discipline, 90% of it. Forgive me saying winning those moments, like really knowing and parenting within your values is what you do. The other, you know, 95% of your day, or maybe only 65% of your day. If you have a really strong willed kid who’s just kind of going all over the place.

 

00;06;05;21 – 00;06;27;02

Jon Fogel

But what I’ve found over and over is that parents who practice the tools outside of the kind of difficult moments, are the ones that wind up being able to draw on those tools, and this just has to do. That’s actually the basis of the book punishment free parenting is the reason I called it punishment free parenting, which is not actually a title that I that I love all the time because I feel like it.

 

00;06;27;04 – 00;06;40;26

Jon Fogel

It can alienate people. And they say, well, does that mean if I’ve punished my kids once, or if I plan to punish my kid again, then I’m not allowed to read this book or that this guy’s going to tell me that I’m a terrible parent or something like that. The answer is absolutely not. The book is still absolutely for you.

 

00;06;40;28 – 00;07;01;01

Jon Fogel

It’s more about why punishment usually is ineffective or why it works against the brain. And specifically, it’s that when we are in a dysregulated state, when our when our nervous system is flooded, when we are in survival mode, if you’ve heard any of these different things, and this goes for adults and kids alike, it’s really hard for us to learn.

 

00;07;01;03 – 00;07;20;15

Jon Fogel

It’s really hard because our brain actually turns off the regions of our brain that is, that are for learning and for moral thinking and critical thought and long term decision making. Those parts of our brain kind of go dark, and then the part of our brain that is designed for survival just to kind of keep us alive comes online.

 

00;07;20;18 – 00;07;39;10

Jon Fogel

And what this means and what I learned early in my parenting journey from actually becoming a licensed foster parent was when I first heard it, is that if you punish a kid to teach them a lesson, you wind up turning off the part of their brain that learns. Yeah. And so, so often when people are saying, well, what do I do in the moment?

 

00;07;39;10 – 00;07;55;12

Jon Fogel

What do I do in the moment? I really want to say, okay, well, here’s this tool that you can use, and that’s what’s up my feelings for you years. It’s just tools that you can use in those disregulated moments. But really the tool is going to be a thousand times more effective if you practice it. Not in those moments.

 

00;07;55;12 – 00;08;16;07

Jon Fogel

Because your kid is not going to learn in that moment how to implement that tool and come to self-discipline and self-regulation, which ultimately is the goal. Right? Like, I don’t want you to raise a kid who never who who needs you to regulate all of their feelings for them all the time. They’re never going to come to that unless you practice those tools outside of that setting.

 

00;08;16;11 – 00;08;44;23

Jon Fogel

And so it is one thing to talk about it in punishment free parenting. And really, the only the first chapter even really mentions punishment in any sort of substantive way. The rest of the book is just how do you know what to do instead? If you’re not going to use punishment, here’s all these other tools that you can have boundary setting and, you know, discipline consequences in modeling proper behavior and, you know, teaching your kids to navigate their emotions and repair when you get it wrong and all of that stuff.

 

00;08;44;23 – 00;09;11;16

Jon Fogel

And there’s a step by step method at the end of punishment for parenting that’s phenomenal. It’s the best part of the book. It’s the part of my book that my wife helped me write, so it’s unsurprising that it’s the best part. But, you know, that whole book is about what to do instead of punishment. At the same time, if that stays in the abstract, if parents never learn how to apply that in the moment, they’re going to wind up going, oh, well, this I don’t want to punish my kid, but I don’t know what else to do.

 

00;09;11;18 – 00;09;27;01

Jon Fogel

I don’t want to yell at my kid, but I find myself raising my voice in my head every single day because like when I get into those moments, I don’t know where to go. And so we wrote Set My Feelings Free with the idea that one, there’s all these neuroscience tools, all these behavioral psychology tools that nobody is using with the kids.

 

00;09;27;01 – 00;09;52;19

Jon Fogel

And I don’t understand why. It just doesn’t make any. It’s never made any sense to me why we don’t use this stuff with kids. And then two, so the parents can have a book that they read. You know, maybe it’s once a week, maybe it’s a couple times. You know, some kids get obsessed with the book and they read it five times every single day for two weeks, whatever it is, where they can draw on these tools and, and then they can go through and, and when they have those big feelings, when they have those overwhelming moments, they can go, okay, what can I do?

 

00;09;52;19 – 00;10;07;07

Jon Fogel

Instead of punching my little brother in the head, what can I do instead of, throwing my cereal against the wall? What can I do instead of, you know, melting down all over the place in the grocery store aisle? And. Yeah, that’s why we did it.

 

00;10;07;10 – 00;10;31;23

Dr. Mona

I’m so excited about it. I can’t wait for it to be a staple in our in our, book rotation. Like you said, when my parent, my kids really start to love a book, it’s coming out every night. And we’re rereading it and rereading it, and it’s just so nice to have books like yours on the market, especially geared towards children that are speaking to these values, speaking to, again, copying things like that, which I love, what you mentioned about teaching and discipline.

 

00;10;31;23 – 00;10;56;04

Dr. Mona

And, you know, I feel and I think you feel the same, that sometimes people are afraid of the word discipline. They think it’s means punishment, when in reality the root of discipline is teaching, right? We are teaching our kids how to behave and teaching our kids what is preferred or non-preferred behaviors. Right? And one of the most amazing things, which I don’t think people may realize is the person who wrote the foreword of your book, or I guess the I don’t know if it’s the or intro is.

 

00;10;56;06 – 00;11;13;14

Dr. Mona

The forward is Tina Payne Bryson, who was the coauthor of one of my favorite parenting books, which is, the whole brainchild. Yeah. So how is that experience? Obviously, having her? How did that happen? I’m just curious. Like, how was that connection, how was working with her to get that intro, before done? That’s an honor for you.

 

00;11;13;15 – 00;11;44;25

Jon Fogel

Yeah. No, it is an honor. So, Tina and I have become friends. Maybe a podcast exclusive. I’m actually really good friends with her husband now, which is. You think it’s kind of funny? I was texting him yesterday about the start of baseball season, but the really how this all came together was that I asked Tina liked some of the stuff that I had been putting out on social media, especially around, I think the early stuff that she was liking was about just validating kids experiences and not gaslighting them when when they have, you know, a big feeling to, you know, saying this isn’t a real problem.

 

00;11;44;25 – 00;12;00;27

Jon Fogel

Stop, you know, thinking about this. And she had liked that stuff and actually, one of the things that you don’t realize is that most of us do run our own accounts. So when Tina and Bryson like something like, it’s actually Tina Payne. Bryson like. Right. Yeah. Right. So we went back and forth a little bit and I said, would you be on my podcast?

 

00;12;00;27 – 00;12;21;11

Jon Fogel

And she said, I don’t do a lot of podcast, but maybe I’ll, I’ll make time for yours. And then after we did the podcast episode, I, we just connected so well, we talked for like two hours and, it just became clear our backgrounds were pretty similar and our approaches are obviously very similar. And really, the book that I was writing is, is kind of an update of the whole brainchild.

 

00;12;21;15 – 00;12;44;04

Jon Fogel

Yeah. You know, it’s it’s it’s almost a sequel where it’s just like, here’s everything that’s in the whole brainchild. But like for 20, 25 years, instead of, you know, for 2012 years, because the world is very different than it was 13 years ago, 14 years ago when that book came out. And so I eventually I had to, like, actually ask her to write the foreword.

 

00;12;44;06 – 00;13;07;18

Jon Fogel

And I did something that, like, I can’t believe I did. I, I literally sent her voice notes. I was like, okay, you’re my favorite parenting out there. I mean, I, I swear to you, I should put out the voice notes. They’re they’re so embarrassing. I was like, you’re my favorite author. You’re my favorite parenting voice. Your book, The Whole Brainchild, was the first book parenting book that I ever write.

 

00;13;07;18 – 00;13;08;06

Jon Fogel

It’s like, yes.

 

00;13;08;06 – 00;13;08;21

Dr. Mona

Changed.

 

00;13;08;21 – 00;13;32;07

Jon Fogel

My life, changed my life. And would you please, please, please consider writing the foreword to my book? I would be so honored. I don’t know if you’re ever gonna, like, listen to this or get this, but I’m just like, please, please, please consider it. And I think I made them as like, videos, like I sent her these. I texted her these videos of me asking her, like a proposal, and she, she, got back to me and she was like, I would be honored.

 

00;13;32;07 – 00;13;51;29

Jon Fogel

But I don’t forward books that I have not read every word of, and I don’t know if it’s going to fit into my schedule to read it. And if there’s anything that I want you to change, you have to change it. Otherwise I will not write the forward. I do not put my name on stuff. My name is like me on the cover of your book, unless I agree with every single word of it.

 

00;13;52;01 – 00;14;13;28

Jon Fogel

And I was like, that’s a tall order in the world of parenting because like, we are so so she’s basically said, send me the PDF and I’ll I’ll tell you if it’s even worth changing what I need you to change. And she got the PDF and she read it like on a plane or something like that, and she emailed me back or texted me back and said, this is the first.

 

00;14;14;00 – 00;14;30;28

Jon Fogel

I think she said that. Maybe I’m misquoting her. I don’t want to miss her, but I think she said, this is like the first book that I’ve ever forwarded where I haven’t asked them to change anything. Amazing. That’s how much I agree with all of this. And maybe me is one of the only books or something, but but essentially, like, you nailed it all.

 

00;14;30;28 – 00;14;49;03

Jon Fogel

And the reason that was so important to me, I’m getting my PhD in developmental psychology now, but I wasn’t then. The reason that was so important to me is because peer review is really important to me. Yeah, I come from an academic background, just not in developmental psychology. And so peer review is very important to me. And this was kind of peer review in its own way.

 

00;14;49;03 – 00;15;04;02

Jon Fogel

It was sending this to a peer who I don’t even think of as a peer, I think of as a mentor. But she would consider, you know, like people who write parenting books to be her peers and setting it to appear and saying, what do you think? And she came back and said, I think it’s I think this is verifiable.

 

00;15;04;02 – 00;15;20;11

Jon Fogel

I think it’s locked in. And, you know, credit to everybody who helped me along the way to get to that point. I have so many people on my list, you know, if I ever get an award that I’m going to just be standing up there listing people who, when I had early success on TikTok, who got, you know, got with me and said, hey, Jon, you’re getting this wrong.

 

00;15;20;14 – 00;15;37;14

Jon Fogel

Like, I have a guy over at that who’s a he was a former dean of the Chicago School of Psychology who would just text me, be like, you’re wrong about that. You should change that. In this video. Yeah. And so having all those people in my corner to say, like, this is it got me to that point where I could send her that manuscript and her go, yes.

 

00;15;37;22 – 00;15;41;26

Jon Fogel

And then she wrote the, the foreword and kind of the rest is history.

 

00;15;41;28 – 00;16;02;11

Dr. Mona

I, I love it. I think, you know, we talked about how it’s your first parenting book. You read my first parenting book, Whole Brain Child. I love that you said that you sort of updated it a little bit in terms of bringing it to modern parenting. I still think it’s a wonderful book, as we both agree. And so I just think it’s, it’s such a, such an amazing story to see how that happened.

 

00;16;02;14 – 00;16;27;21

Dr. Mona

And speaking of Whole Brain Child. So I loved it because of course, I’m a neuroscience nerd. And they talk about if you if for any listeners who haven’t read, the whole brain child, I think it’s useful, but it talks in a simple way how the brain works. So like the upstairs brain, the downstairs brain, left right integrate integration, explaining why you can’t explain logic in the middle of a meltdown is basically the take home message that I got from the book, which obviously makes sense.

 

00;16;27;21 – 00;16;51;16

Dr. Mona

And it inspired us. And, you know, we get it. So of course, all of those concepts can be very abstract, right? A lot of parenting books talk about neuroscience and emotional regulation, but when those start to feel abstract for families in everyday moments, it’s hard to apply it. So how did you want to translate those bigger psychological ideas into tools?

 

00;16;51;16 – 00;17;04;05

Dr. Mona

Whether it’s in Set My Feelings Free or whether it was in punishment free parenting? Now let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors who support helps us keep bringing you this show.

 

00;17;04;08 – 00;17;26;18

Jon Fogel

Oh yeah. Well, so this is actually, I think when I say some of my our weaknesses are our greatest, you know, advantages. There are greatest unfair advantages. I, like I said, I have an academic background, so I know how to do research. I know what peer review rigor looks like. I know how to cite things that, you know, need to be cited.

 

00;17;26;18 – 00;17;42;04

Jon Fogel

I know how to delve into these all of these pieces. And this is like before, I so like lots of people think they know that now, but they just know how to punch it into an exam. But I knew how to do that. Like go to the library even. Right. But mostly online. Right. Like to do like the journal searches and to the.

 

00;17;42;04 – 00;17;43;21

Dr. Mona

Dewey Decimal system.

 

00;17;43;21 – 00;18;05;21

Jon Fogel

Yes. Yeah. To like really no. To really know what you’re doing. And so I knew the academic background, but I didn’t have any of the foundational neuroanatomy. And so what was interesting is that I can apply it so simply to parents because I still remember what it is like. How many years did you go to medical school?

 

00;18;05;21 – 00;18;32;07

Jon Fogel

And, you know, out of undergrad, you’re taking anatomy probably as a freshman, right? And like for me, it was actually like, oh, this stuff happened recently. So I remember what it was to think I knew anything about the brain. No, no, nothing. And so as I updated that knowledge and as I learned more from books like The Whole Brain Child, but also from like actual neuroscience textbooks and stuff, then all of a sudden I could go, oh, I’m not just like losing this in the abstraction.

 

00;18;32;09 – 00;19;16;05

Jon Fogel

And my actual academic discipline is also in something very unique, so. Well, it’s actually not unique, but I think it’s unique. I have a master’s of divinity, so this means that I have basically a degree in ancient languages in the Bible. And basically what you do as a pastor, if you if you care about scholarship, many don’t. But if you actually care about scholarship, what you’re doing on a week to week basis is you’re going back to this thing that everybody thinks that they understand, that very few, if anyone actually understands that, has enormous amounts of research written about it, and then somehow giving people a 25 to 35 minute TEDx talk about that material

 

00;19;16;08 – 00;19;39;07

Jon Fogel

every single week, people who again think that they already know. So I don’t talk about religion in any of my books at all, but actually it is the process of learning how to, communicate with people who have deeply held beliefs that may be harming them, that may be harming their kids, and helping them to see a more healthy version of that.

 

00;19;39;09 – 00;19;59;26

Jon Fogel

That actually allowed me to to think in the terms that that applying the neuroscience to people who don’t know it at all. So if you can teach, you know, a roomful of 60 year olds Hebrew that they’ve never understood, it’s actually not that hard to teach. You know, a roomful of parents who want to know that, you know, this is the part of your kid’s brain that’s active when they’re throwing a tantrum.

 

00;19;59;29 – 00;20;12;15

Jon Fogel

And so it’s kind of a weird skill set, but I like I liken it to like I already translate impossibly, impossibly complex things to adults all the time. So like, this is not that different.

 

00;20;12;22 – 00;20;32;24

Dr. Mona

I love when you bring in lived experience into our parenting world and parenting advice. I used to be a resident assistant, and I’m, I’m sure you know, a part of being a residence assistant and one of the biggest institutions in the country, which is UCLA, are on campus. Housing was the largest of any public school. We had a huge on campus housing, and I was also assistant resident director.

 

00;20;32;29 – 00;21;02;19

Dr. Mona

And one thing I learned conflict resolution. Yeah, I learned healthy conflict resolution. And how much does that help in parenting, right. How much do those skills translate? So I love hearing when you can bring those skills that aren’t necessarily parenting into the parenting realm to help other parents understand the importance. And along those lines, you know, we one of the core ideas in your parenting work is that behavior is often a child communicating something they don’t yet have the skills to regulate or express.

 

00;21;02;19 – 00;21;23;27

Dr. Mona

And I believe in this so strongly. And we could do a whole separate episode on educating parents on the why and the getting curious behind behavior. But in Set my Feelings for You, you introduce breathing, grounding, and movement tools to help kids process emotions. So how does teaching those skills early change the way parents and children can handle big feelings?

 

00;21;23;27 – 00;21;30;10

Dr. Mona

And if you want to just give like one example for a parent to be able to take home today, that might teach the book a little bit.

 

00;21;30;12 – 00;21;46;10

Jon Fogel

Yeah, absolutely. No, I’m happy to give you I have to give you as many examples as you want. Like, the truth is there’s there are so many different tools that you can use. And just to your point, before we get to that of the behavior of communicating, I mean, this is literally when people ask me, okay, so what you have chapter one is the problem with punishment.

 

00;21;46;10 – 00;22;06;00

Jon Fogel

What’s chapter two? It’s literally get curious, not furious. It’s how do we immediately pivot to curiosity about our kids behaviors? Because they’re almost always communicating a fundamental unmet need. Right. And and a lot of times we just assume that kids are giving us a hard time when really what we’re experiencing is them just having a hard time in our presence.

 

00;22;06;02 – 00;22;32;23

Jon Fogel

So insight my feelings free. We basically leverage five different psychological and, nervous system like integrations that you can do. So we have breathing as one of them, which is just a stimulation of the vagus nerve, which then similarly, you know, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system to activate and can calm them down. That’s lots of fancy terminology for when you get really upset.

 

00;22;32;23 – 00;22;51;17

Jon Fogel

Your body floods with adrenaline and cortisol, and you need the antidote to be flushed into your bloodstream through your adrenals. And the only way to do that, all of these are ways to do that. But one of the main ways you can do that is by breathing. Get into all the evolution behind it. But I think it’s really interesting that breathing can have this profound impact.

 

00;22;51;24 – 00;23;15;15

Jon Fogel

The problem is take a deep breath. Almost never works for kids, right? So instead we that is the one tool in the book, the breathing tool that we just lifted straight out of, like the, the, the sphere of parenting advice that you see online. I didn’t come up with that in any way, but it’s the smelling, you know, smell the can or smell the rose blow out the candle.

 

00;23;15;20 – 00;23;42;04

Jon Fogel

Yeah. And so we just decided, okay, we’re going to start with this one because it will get parents comfortable and it’ll be familiar. And we want to start with familiarity. So so we started with that one because so many people who are going to read this book are coming out of the like. Here’s the truth. We when you write a book, most of the early people who get that book and read it are people who are following you on social media and hearing the things that you’re talking about.

 

00;23;42;06 – 00;24;01;14

Jon Fogel

And so because of that, we were like, okay, they’ve heard this tool before. So breathing in to smell the rose, feel my body through my nose, let my breath go. One, two, three through my mouth I set it free. Like, this is this is the thing. And by the way, when you said, memorable, it’s going to be added to your rotation.

 

00;24;01;14 – 00;24;18;17

Jon Fogel

I’m so excited that it’s gonna be added to your rotation. But it’s also set to the tune of twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. You do not have to sing it, but we also know that music is very a very, very strong mnemonic that people can use to memorize these things. And we want people to be able to draw on it in those moments.

 

00;24;18;20 – 00;24;41;05

Jon Fogel

But if you’re looking for one tool that I think is probably the most effective tool that we have in the book, I have only one. True, I guess I have two cognitive tools in the book, one for fear, but then one for, cognitive sensory processing. And in that one, what we’re having a kid do is when they’re disappointed, they’re going to look for colors around them and they’re going to name those colors.

 

00;24;41;12 – 00;25;03;04

Jon Fogel

And the reason why my my first book had a rainbow brain on the front is because of the power of identifying colors in my own kids lives as like a regulation tool. So it sounds crazy, but when my kids are really upset about something, we will literally play the color game anywhere where we are, we will go and say, okay, well, let’s find something red.

 

00;25;03;07 – 00;25;21;17

Jon Fogel

And we look around and go, okay, we’ll wear something red and okay, you know, kids don’t always want to do this. Sometimes they push back and they go, I don’t want to play the color game. I said, okay, I’m going to play the card game by myself. This marker is red and I’ll hold up something blue and they’ll say, that’s not red, it’s blue.

 

00;25;21;17 – 00;25;45;21

Jon Fogel

Well, yeah. What I wanted their brain to do is identify a color, connect that to the word that is associated with that color, and create that neural like fire, that neural pathway. And in so doing, they actually start to integrate their brain back online and start to bring the parts of their brain back online that are that are kind of needing to be brought back online.

 

00;25;45;23 – 00;26;05;23

Jon Fogel

And so just simple things like that, those simple tools that you can leverage can like totally transform it. So in the book, it’s a girl who wants to go outside. It’s clearly she thinks she’s gonna have a pool day or a beach day. She’s got, you know, her swimsuit on, she’s got her beach ball under her arm, she’s got her towel on her arm, she’s ready to go outside.

 

00;26;05;23 – 00;26;28;01

Jon Fogel

And there’s just sheets of rain. And she plays the color game as a way to move through and navigate. And that actually opens up. The next page opens up to a page. My favorite page in the book, it’s a spread of all of these different, this living room where you can go through and find all the colors, but you can also find like a bunch of hidden, hidden items that my wife has hidden away.

 

00;26;28;01 – 00;26;51;26

Jon Fogel

There’s a penguin and in the shape of a pillow that if you know it’s there, you can look for it. And the idea here is just that searching and doing that identifying of colors can be incredibly regulating and integrating for parents. And I can’t tell you, like literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have learned that tool not from the book, but but from other videos that I’ve made and have told me like this changed my life.

 

00;26;51;28 – 00;27;09;19

Dr. Mona

So those yeah, they’re like little brain hacks, right? I mean, like how we get get our brains back online. I love how the way you describe that, because when parents can understand that a dysregulated brain is not working online, like we said, right? It’s it’s flooded and there’s a lot of hormones and there’s a lot of stress there that we’re trying to ground them.

 

00;27;09;19 – 00;27;16;22

Dr. Mona

And this is sort of a grounding, exercise. And I love it. I, I will be singing it to the tune of to you said twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

 

00;27;16;24 – 00;27;17;16

Jon Fogel

A little song I.

 

00;27;17;16 – 00;27;36;07

Dr. Mona

Will, I’m all in. I love singing to my kids. I’m not a world class singer. But you don’t have to be. And I love it. I love when books can connect music like you said. So don’t worry, I will be one of those people reading and singing along at the same time. And I think, you know, going back to your point, like you’re talking about these really great examples, right?

 

00;27;36;07 – 00;27;51;26

Dr. Mona

So we have the, the song to the about taking a deep breath, but also this color game. And your advice to families when they’re using this is obviously using it when they’re not so dysregulated. Correct. Right. What does that sort of what would be that advice on when you would incorporate this for a family?

 

00;27;52;00 – 00;28;13;23

Jon Fogel

Well, I mean, I think I think you want to do all of these things, all of the different emotional, what I call emotional regulation games. You want to play the emotional regulation games when they are not dysregulated initially. Yeah. And then you can bring them in in those difficult moments. And because they are they’ve been repeated hopefully a bunch of times.

 

00;28;13;23 – 00;28;46;01

Jon Fogel

But at least a couple times your kid has much more capacity to be able to like grab on to that and use that. And so I mean, I hope that parents use these tools outside of dysregulation. First thing in the morning after, you know, at bed right before bed, you know, they go to sleep. But ultimately when this book is going to pay for itself in spades is when the parent is at the grocery store and the kid’s having a meltdown about wanting to get, chocolate covered sugar marshmallow bombs.

 

00;28;46;08 – 00;29;06;27

Jon Fogel

Yeah. And, you know, they’re up on the highest shelf and the kid is just laying on the floor kicking and screaming, and we’ve all been there like, I don’t don’t think that my kids don’t do that. They do that absolutely. So the difference is I have these tools that then I can leverage and use in those moments. My kids know the tools and these are just the beginning.

 

00;29;06;27 – 00;29;24;20

Jon Fogel

The interesting thing is the very, you know, the last page before the end of the book, my wife did these beautiful, pages too. But the last page before the the end pages of the book is, is the page that’s written by me. And I tell you how each of the tools work, and it’s for adults. You don’t have to read it to your kid, although you can.

 

00;29;24;20 – 00;29;51;15

Jon Fogel

Some kids, like my nine year old, loves reading that page because he loves learning about it. Yeah, but you can learn how the tools work so that you can make up your own tools. And you actually like. The funny thing about this is, I mean, you you’ve, I’m sure, encountered a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy in, in your work, you know, going through in the medical field, all of these tools come from different disciplines of psychology.

 

00;29;51;17 – 00;30;10;05

Jon Fogel

I actually didn’t make any of them up. I just couldn’t believe that they weren’t being used with kids. Right. Like the color game is just like telling a person who’s having a panic attack to identify things in the room with them and name their color, has been a tool that we’ve had for 30 years. Why aren’t we doing that with toddlers?

 

00;30;10;07 – 00;30;44;07

Jon Fogel

Like, I have never understood why we don’t use those things like like diaphragmatic breathing, which is that vagal stimulation, breathing like we’ve known for years that this is a this is a way to help adults navigate through anxiety. But we don’t do it with kids. And it’s because I think oftentimes we view the reasons that kids are melting down and we go, these aren’t real reasons to be upset, and we don’t have the same perspective and empathy to go, oh, this whether or not there’s this is a legitimate reason to be throwing a tantrum right now is irrelevant.

 

00;30;44;07 – 00;31;03;19

Jon Fogel

The point is, the child’s brain in an MRI machine would look exactly like that adult having a panic attack. And so I look at that and I go, okay, like, what is the symptom management here? And the symptom management is these tools. And so that’s why I wrote the book. It’s again, I didn’t come up with any of this stuff.

 

00;31;03;24 – 00;31;07;28

Jon Fogel

I just applied it to kids.

 

00;31;08;01 – 00;31;27;06

Dr. Mona

Now let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors who support helps us keep bringing you this show. Oh, and I appreciate that. And also a testament to to you. I love when I talk to fellow creators that that give credit where it’s due. I do the same thing, you know, like when I’m as I’m writing my own book, too.

 

00;31;27;06 – 00;31;43;20

Dr. Mona

I’m like, you know, as I’m sourcing information and coming up with my own words and coming up with all the people who’ve inspired me before me trying to give credit to that. Right? Like you’re like, hey, this is there. But here is what I noticed was lacking. And same thing when I’m writing my book, about limits and boundaries, I’m looking.

 

00;31;43;20 – 00;32;02;06

Dr. Mona

The literature has always been there, but how have we not explained it in this certain way and how we’re going to take that? And I love that you’re doing that. For children, and, you know, parents often hear advice about helping kids regulate emotions, but the real test comes in those chaotic moments. You mentioned the grocery store meltdown a few times.

 

00;32;02;06 – 00;32;20;10

Dr. Mona

You’ve done videos on that as well. The bedtime protest, the sibling fight. What does it actually look like for a parent to use these ideas from, whether it’s your first book or is it my feelings free in the middle of a real emotional moment? Like what do you hope that they can remember from all this they listen to or read on a page?

 

00;32;20;12 – 00;32;49;28

Jon Fogel

Yeah, I think if you could take away one thing from this episode, it’s in those moments. First, do no harm. It’s so hard to parent during those moments. Your trauma comes back online the way that your parents, what they did to you. And again, I it sounds like I’m saying that capital t trauma what they did to you know, I’m just saying like the way in which your parents navigated your big feelings.

 

00;32;50;01 – 00;33;21;08

Jon Fogel

One of the coolest parts of punishment free parenting is one of the last parts I wrote. I went back into. I tried to keep history out of punishment free parenting because if I was going to write a history book, it’s all I would write. I love history, yeah, but I couldn’t help going back to the mid 1930s and 40s when a lot of our parents parents were being indoctrinated into how to parent effectively.

 

00;33;21;10 – 00;33;46;17

Jon Fogel

Right. Many of our baby boomer parents had parents who were around and they were kids in the 30s and 40s. They were like, you know, depression era kids, the Greatest Generation types. And the prevailing advice for parents at that point was show no affection to your kids. Do not pick them up. Do not. And it was it was because of a misunderstanding of germ theory.

 

00;33;46;17 – 00;34;12;15

Jon Fogel

They thought that any contact with a child is more likely to get them sick. So like, don’t ever pick kids up. Don’t touch them. Psychologically, they’ll be fine if you totally ignore them 99% of the day because they’ll adapt and you really can’t hurt kids that badly. And the same people who are coming up with these this advice were actively doing things to kids that they would never recover from.

 

00;34;12;21 – 00;34;34;08

Jon Fogel

I mean, it’s horrendous, like the of the Little Albert experiment where, this guy Jon Walton convinced, or classically conditioned this little kid to be terrified of this rat, this white rat, and then never unconditioned, never deconditioned. And the kid just, like, was ruined for his whole life because they, like, they terrified him of this rat over for no reason, just to prove that they could.

 

00;34;34;11 – 00;34;57;17

Jon Fogel

And this is the guy who was writing pamphlets. Literally. He was the guy who was writing pamphlets to send home with new moms in the hospital. And so it’s it’s hard because so many of us are still deeply impacted by the fact that that’s that’s the world that our parents grew up into. I’ve talked to people who say, you know, I never my mom never hugged me until the day I left for college.

 

00;34;57;24 – 00;35;18;12

Jon Fogel

Yeah. Right. And and when you when you appreciate that, like, this is the hand that they were dealt, I think you can have some empathy and some understanding and realize that maybe their inability to navigate your big feelings was was about them as much as it was about you, right? Like it was more them. They were just trying to survive.

 

00;35;18;14 – 00;35;44;29

Jon Fogel

That being said, all of us are impacted by those, by that relationship, all of us. You know, this is one of the only things that Freud got right. All of us were deeply impacted by the relationship that we had with our primary caregivers. Yeah. And so when we then get in these moments and our kid is screaming or melting down, I can give you all the scripts in the world, I can give you all the tools in the world, I can give you all these pieces.

 

00;35;44;29 – 00;36;10;09

Jon Fogel

But unless you can consciously pause before you fly off and go into that place like none of it’s going to be impactful, because your child may be dealing with a dysregulated brain right at that moment, but you are too. And so, you know, the the biggest thing is like what you feel the heat, you take a beat. Like if you feel yourself getting to that place, just pause.

 

00;36;10;11 – 00;36;31;10

Jon Fogel

Like no harm is going to come. Or far less harm, I should say, is going to come from you pausing for 30s before you flip your lead. Then. Then from you feeling like I have to do this or that and the other. And I guess the second takeaway then would be, you know what? You also don’t have to like not everything is requiring of your reaction or response.

 

00;36;31;10 – 00;36;56;05

Jon Fogel

Yeah, kids learn so much through their own navigating of the world and, do nothing. Parenting is actually a lot better than a lot of people want to make it out to be. The parents who stay back at the park and let the kid fall off the slide research increasingly shows us those kids wind up with better outcomes, and the parent who’s hovering constantly and catching them every single time they stumble.

 

00;36;56;12 – 00;37;15;23

Jon Fogel

Yeah. And so I recently recorded a podcast episode of my podcast about that. I wrote about that in my book. Obviously, Jonathan Haidt wrote about that in his book The Anxious Generation. But, you know, it’s all these different things. If you can just feel the heat and take a beat, number one. And number two, realize that sometimes the most effective parenting that you’re going to do is nothing at all.

 

00;37;15;26 – 00;37;43;20

Jon Fogel

Then all of a sudden, all of the tools on the page, in fact, my feelings for you are going to pop out because now you know what you need when you need it. And that becomes the ultimate tool, the discernment to know when these tools are necessary. And then they’re going to pull your kids out. And I just walked out of Panera today and some, you know, I want to say baby Boomer probably was walking out with me and said, I just want you to know your boys are like the most well-behaved kids I’ve ever seen.

 

00;37;43;27 – 00;38;03;19

Jon Fogel

And I was like, I didn’t know how to respond because I was like, yeah, I mean, I navigated the food, not getting to us very quickly. And they were annoyed by that by playing a game with them. Yeah. I navigated not having the food that one of my kids wanted by adjusting on the fly and getting something else.

 

00;38;03;22 – 00;38;32;23

Jon Fogel

I navigated, the soup being too hot by, like, counting down backwards from from 50, like one and us at a time. Like, I navigated all these things. And her reaction was, oh, your kids are well-behaved when in reality, like, I don’t want to be this guy, but like, yeah, because like the every time that they were navigating something hard for the last many years of their life, we’ve done these things and now they know, okay, here’s what I can do.

 

00;38;32;26 – 00;38;44;08

Jon Fogel

And in one of those cases, I wasn’t the one leading it. My nine year old was. So that’s the other thing is like they learn this stuff. And, it’s funny because one of my very early videos was about using one of these tools in that same Panera.

 

00;38;44;15 – 00;38;55;05

Dr. Mona

I love that. And, you know, it’s I’m curious your thoughts. So whenever someone compliments me on my kids behavior, meaning, wow, your kids are like on airplanes, like your kids are the most well-behaved on an airplane.

 

00;38;55;05 – 00;38;56;01

Jon Fogel

Yeah, I hate that they.

 

00;38;56;01 – 00;39;16;12

Dr. Mona

Are so polite. I get it now. And I want to be clear. My my son is six. My daughter’s three at the time of this recording. Now I have mixed feelings because I also know as a mother that we have had to have those moments where they’re not behaving as I want them to, so I can teach them how to behave in these situations or what is preferred behavior.

 

00;39;16;19 – 00;39;31;02

Dr. Mona

So then my thought always goes to so then if you think that I’m doing a great job now, what were you thinking? If you saw me two years ago when my four year old was having a meltdown in the middle of the store because he couldn’t get what he wanted, but I let him through that. Like, what would your thoughts would have been then?

 

00;39;31;02 – 00;39;50;00

Dr. Mona

It’s just an interesting it is because like, they’re they’re of course telling you that because they saw something good. But what if your kids. Because I’m sure your kids have been just like my kids, that in order to get them to be like that, right, we had to go through the trenches of like teaching them. So like that, I’m like, do you know that there was a this is all by design.

 

00;39;50;00 – 00;40;07;05

Dr. Mona

Like I had to teach my kids how to get to this level at nine years of age, six years of age, that I will do these tools. But yeah, now they understand that there’s limits to when we go to a restaurant that they’re not going to throw food, but five years ago I was in the trenches just like most of other.

 

00;40;07;05 – 00;40;15;03

Dr. Mona

But I’m curious your thoughts on that perspective of like the compliment. But also, would you have said the same thing if I was my kids were not behaving in your eyes.

 

00;40;15;05 – 00;40;37;22

Jon Fogel

So the thing that I try to remember is when my kids melting down in the grocery store and I think this isn’t punishment for parenting, but when my kids melting down in the grocery store, there is a strong urge for me to say, all these people are judging me for being about this moment, right? When in reality, the truth is, half the people don’t even notice because they’re on their phone or their own little world.

 

00;40;37;22 – 00;40;45;09

Jon Fogel

So like they don’t notice. Then the other 49% of people are just so, so glad that it’s not them.

 

00;40;45;12 – 00;40;46;06

Dr. Mona

Right?

 

00;40;46;09 – 00;41;00;19

Jon Fogel

Like they’re so glad that it’s not their kid. They’re so glad that their kids are 20 now, or 30 or whatever, or they never had kids maybe like, and then 1% of people are judging you and that 1%. It was never about you.

 

00;41;00;21 – 00;41;01;21

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;41;01;24 – 00;41;29;04

Jon Fogel

Like and that’s the thing that I try and remember because it can feel very like you can feel like you’re parenting in front of a crowd. I think when people come up to you and say, like, your kids are really well-behaved or they’re whatever, I think that they’re trying to pay you a compliment. But I think that those same people probably wouldn’t be like, you are a bad parent if your kids like, here’s the here’s like the really frustrating part for me is that actually when my kids behave well, I’m praised.

 

00;41;29;06 – 00;41;31;20

Jon Fogel

But when my kids behave poorly, they’re shamed.

 

00;41;31;23 – 00;41;32;28

Dr. Mona

 

00;41;33;01 – 00;42;00;13

Jon Fogel

Like actually most adults have so much empathy for other adults, even parents. Unless you as a parent are doing something that’s overtly just triggering to them, like they’re kids screaming and you’re just like, here’s another lollipop and here’s another, like something that like, they really like some older generation. It’s just like, that’s bad parenting. Like unless you’re doing something that’s like that, which 99% of time we’re not doing those things, like we’re just trying to navigate the the emotion in the moment.

 

00;42;00;15 – 00;42;21;00

Jon Fogel

We’re actually getting the benefit of the doubt. For most of the people at public, the problem is as a society, we we hold kids. I say, I’ve said this a thousand times. I’ll say it one more like when we see an adult out in public, either doing road rage or like whatever, most often we go, man, they’re having a really hard day.

 

00;42;21;07 – 00;42;22;13

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;42;22;15 – 00;42;26;26

Jon Fogel

And when we see a kid out in public screaming or a tantrum wherever we go, oh, they’re really entitled.

 

00;42;26;29 – 00;42;27;26

Dr. Mona

Yes.

 

00;42;27;28 – 00;42;37;21

Jon Fogel

I hold fully developed brains to the standard of toddlers, and we hold toddlers to the standards of adult, fully adult developed brains.

 

00;42;37;24 – 00;42;38;10

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;42;38;13 – 00;42;57;21

Jon Fogel

And and so I look at those moments and I go, well, I’m like, I always look at those moments as teaching tools to say to that, lady, you know, just to go like, yeah, well, we’ve, you know, we love working together or something like that, like, oh, like it’s all or I’ll say it’s all of them. It’s all of them.

 

00;42;57;23 – 00;43;02;14

Jon Fogel

Because I want to remind those people that, like, kids do. Well when they can.

 

00;43;02;17 – 00;43;03;17

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;43;03;19 – 00;43;15;06

Jon Fogel

And I don’t know if I said that. Exactly. And punishment free parenting, but that’s a great doctor off screen concept. Kids will do as well as they can. And I think so often we don’t remember that.

 

00;43;15;11 – 00;43;32;29

Dr. Mona

I agree with what you said about the holding standards. I think I’ve done a post about that too, and it’s so true. I mean, I love what you said also that they we get the we get the, the kudos if they’re behaving well. And then when they are not behaving well, the kid gets a shame. The there’s also shame for the parents like oh they don’t know how to control their kid.

 

00;43;33;02 – 00;43;52;13

Dr. Mona

But I love the way you framed how to handle judgment, because I think we all have been there. I mean, I, as a pediatrician, someone who loves parenting my son, he is an amazing six year old, but he has had the most intense meltdowns compared to my daughter. When I look back now, I’m like, oh shit, my daughter’s actually a really easy, easy kid.

 

00;43;52;13 – 00;43;52;20

Dr. Mona

I put.

 

00;43;52;20 – 00;43;53;15

Jon Fogel

That in comparatively.

 

00;43;53;19 – 00;44;10;23

Dr. Mona

Right? Comparatively. Right. Because my son, I didn’t know anything different. I just thought that this is what it was, that I’m going to have a kid with big feelings and meltdowns galore, and I’m just going to continue doing the things that I did. And it’s so important to remember that when those eyes are on you, that the 1% that is probably judging you, what is the point?

 

00;44;10;23 – 00;44;33;16

Dr. Mona

Like they really have no value in your life. They’re not important to you. And if they are, because we’ve got an often a message talking about judgment, we’ve often gotten judged by our son’s behavior, by family members like you guys don’t know how to handle. You need to be more strict with him. You need to punish him. And we never dealt with corporal punishment with our son that we didn’t do timeouts with our son.

 

00;44;33;16 – 00;44;56;08

Dr. Mona

From a personal perspective, I felt like he didn’t need that. And, you know, I told my family, I’m like, I need you to just to believe in us. You know, he right? He understands. He’s just a big feeling, kid. And lo and behold, six year old now is able with the tools kind of what you mentioned. Now you have placed it beautifully in a book, how to handle those big feelings when they come, how to regulate in those moments.

 

00;44;56;08 – 00;45;11;24

Dr. Mona

But that took all the time that we had in the last six years. And it will continue to happen. Like, yeah, it’s not done. Parenting doesn’t end when your kid turns six years old or when your kid turns 18. It’s a lifelong game that I think so many parents forget that they’re in and that they sign up for it.

 

00;45;12;01 – 00;45;21;28

Dr. Mona

Yeah. Now let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors who support helps us keep bringing you this show.

 

00;45;22;01 – 00;45;29;28

Jon Fogel

For now. And the world is also just way not set up for kids. Yes. And put you in America.

 

00;45;30;01 – 00;45;43;12

Dr. Mona

I went to Spain. By the way. This. Oh my gosh, Spain is so child friendly. And I was like telling my husband I’m like, this is why American parents are so stressed. Because they are. Our society just doesn’t support kids. Like, yeah and yeah.

 

00;45;43;12 – 00;46;15;17

Jon Fogel

And as the world moves like this is a lot of what I’m seeing, doing, doing like getting the PhD right now is that so much of the research that’s coming out right now. Right. Like that’s the stuff that that I’m writing papers about because like the I’m in the midst of it and like, it’s never been harder for kids to, to like, find their way through this world, which, which is so incredibly insane for me to say, again, as a history nerd to go, oh, well, but what about slavery?

 

00;46;15;17 – 00;46;41;08

Jon Fogel

What about the Holocaust? What about this? What actually, like this sounds absolutely out of left field. But like capital T trauma, actually, kids are almost built to to be able to regulate that and figure it out with supportive help. Yeah. Versus like the and I don’t want to like demonized screens but like the the use of screens to navigate every single emotion that a child has.

 

00;46;41;11 – 00;46;42;19

Dr. Mona

You know I how I feel about that.

 

00;46;42;21 – 00;47;11;16

Jon Fogel

Right. Yeah. So to avoid like any feeling that a kid has just by shoving a tablet for them, like there’s no neural wiring to to get through that, the way in which schools today have increasingly cut funding for the arts, cut funding for physical education, reduce the amount of time that kids spend in independent play and peer based play in school, in service of trying to, you know, meet some sort of academic standard, like class sizes being what they are in comparison.

 

00;47;11;16 – 00;47;29;18

Jon Fogel

Right. Like all of these things, even during like the baby boomer generation, we had, you know, all these schools are popping up all over the place because we can’t we don’t know where to put all these kids. Like they still had smaller class sizes. First of all, than we do today, their teachers were proportionally paid much better than ours are today.

 

00;47;29;20 – 00;48;06;14

Jon Fogel

And they had basically 50% of their time was independent learning. Yeah. Now when we look at our kids, we go, oh, well, I like the number of kids that I experience just anecdotally who they’re struggling. They’re highly sensitive, they’re ADHD, they’re, you know, diagnose odd or whatever. And a lot of that stuff doesn’t it doesn’t appear at two and three and four in and then all of a sudden or it’s there but like the parents are managing it and then they wind up in some sort of traditional environment and then all of a sudden, like, it just flies off.

 

00;48;06;16 – 00;48;27;02

Jon Fogel

When I look at that, I go, like, we’re just setting people up to fail, like we’re setting kids up to fail. And that’s all on. Teachers, like teachers, are actually the ones who are experiencing this. The worst, like they’re experiencing the greatest symptomatic result of this. But literally, like all of the things of modernity that are causing an eye is going to have a big impact on this.

 

00;48;27;09 – 00;48;46;26

Jon Fogel

Yeah. And like social media has already had a big impact. Like I look at this and I go, the reason why punishment free parenting, it needed to be written now is not like like I hold parents to an extremely high standard. But I’m also I try and be incredibly gracious and say like, I’m right with you. I struggle to, but here’s the best possible way to parent.

 

00;48;47;03 – 00;49;11;18

Jon Fogel

Like the reason why I navigate that is because I am very sure that parents have to be excellent now, because the world that their kids are growing up into requires excellent parenting, which is so it’s it’s not fair. And as my dad used to say, life isn’t fair, but we are all raising kids up. Maybe one of the hardest times in human history to raise kids.

 

00;49;11;18 – 00;49;26;29

Jon Fogel

Maybe the hardest time in human history to raise kids. We don’t know what they’re going into the world for, and that’s why it requires excellent parenting to and all of these emotional regulation tools to be able to do that. And yes, we also need to become more kid friendly as a society. While doing that.

 

00;49;27;01 – 00;49;50;14

Dr. Mona

I, I could not agree more. And, you know, I talk about the sort of belief in like passive parenting versus active parenting. So I don’t talk about the way we discipline. But in terms of like, but active parenting is not helicopter parenting. It’s actually with intention. Right? It’s like wanting to change with your child, to learn about them, to connect, to actually really treat this as the most important role you will do in this world.

 

00;49;50;14 – 00;50;15;28

Dr. Mona

If you are a parent like, it doesn’t mean that everyone has to be a parent. What I’m saying is that if you choose or have been in the circumstance that now you have to raise a child, it is a role that really matters. And I see this from a developmental standpoint, a health standpoint. I understand, like you very well, that it’s not easy to raise a kid, but I know and I remember when I held my son and he had a stroke and a seizure and he was born and I turned to my husband, I’m like, this is our son.

 

00;50;15;28 – 00;50;35;15

Dr. Mona

Like, whatever happens, we have to take care of him. Like, this is our kid. Like, I know, I don’t know what the future is going to hold. And for us, thankfully, you know, he is doing great. He does have he’s neurodiverse and you know, he has sensory issues. But that’s okay. Like I we’re navigating that, right. Like everything in parenting is a navigation.

 

00;50;35;15 – 00;50;52;19

Dr. Mona

And it’s not to say that we we shut down our feelings and say, oh, but you can’t say it’s hard because I know it’s hard like, but it is something that we have to take with intention. And I wish more parents would understand that intention is not hard work. It’s not like extra time. It’s like you are teaching so beautifully.

 

00;50;52;19 – 00;51;14;03

Dr. Mona

It’s how you reframe your brain to get curious. It’s how you teach your kid in those little moments, rather than yelling at them that they’re waiting for their food, I’m going to bring some levity and play a little game with my kid and do a countdown together. And it’s all those little moments where they’re going to grow up, and they’re now going to be part of a society that now is more regulated, because that’s our job.

 

00;51;14;03 – 00;51;24;12

Dr. Mona

I want to raise people that won’t start wars, that will learn how to conflict resolute and who have emotional regulation. Well, those people that work guaranteed. Well, you know, yeah.

 

00;51;24;12 – 00;51;27;27

Jon Fogel

I mean, well, I’m going to tell you two secrets. Can I tell you two secrets?

 

00;51;27;27 – 00;51;28;24

Dr. Mona

I love secrets.

 

00;51;28;29 – 00;51;30;18

Jon Fogel

You love secrets. Okay. These are, I think.

 

00;51;30;19 – 00;51;33;11

Dr. Mona

Know, like, thousands of people are going to be in our secret. Okay.

 

00;51;33;13 – 00;51;52;29

Jon Fogel

Okay. There’s they’re going to hear it. Okay. First. First thing people ask me all the time how I made the move from, like, religion and like cognitive sciences of religion. So when I say religion, I’m not I don’t come from like a fundamentalist tradition. Traditional. Oh my ways. Right? Never wrong. Like I come from like a kind of sciences of religion.

 

00;51;52;29 – 00;52;14;23

Jon Fogel

Like, oh, this is how people work through their stuff, right? And and this is, I’m ecumenical. I used to work as a chaplain at a hospital where I counseled Hindu patients and, Buddhist patients and Muslim patients and Jewish patients and Christian patients and atheists and like all of them. Right. So, like, people ask me a lot why?

 

00;52;14;25 – 00;52;31;23

Jon Fogel

And I said, because I, when I was growing up, I saw religion as a tool to make a better world. Yeah, I saw this as like, oh, and I think all of us to some extent say like, oh, well, like, this is a way for the world to be better if people followed in my case, it was the teachings of Jesus.

 

00;52;31;23 – 00;53;01;04

Jon Fogel

Right? Like you can follow the teachings of Jesus. The world would be better. When I realized about five years ago, as I was going through a lot of the stuff with my own kids and I was learning, I had I had a really strong world, probably neurodiverse sensory overload. Kid, he’s nine now. He’s driving. But yeah, but as I was going through that myself, that was also coinciding with me realizing, oh, actually, we it’s really hard to change adults.

 

00;53;01;06 – 00;53;26;05

Jon Fogel

It’s better if we just do a good job of instilling empathy and emotional regulation when they’re kids. Like, I took the the long game, which is a very not American thing to do. Americans, we’re on a four year election cycle, so we are always just trying to fix things in the next three years. I took the long game, which is a more like East Asian perspective of like, okay, if we’re going to solve this problem, let’s solve it for the next 50 years.

 

00;53;26;08 – 00;53;52;23

Jon Fogel

Like, and I went, oh, the more kids that can learn empathy and perspective taking and emotional regulation and conflict transformation and self confidence, like then the world will just be a better place. And so that that’s my first secret is that when people ask me how I got into this, it’s like, well, I had all these tools and I was a licensed foster parent, and I had the counseling background and I had all the stuff, right, like, I had what I needed.

 

00;53;52;29 – 00;54;12;08

Jon Fogel

And the practical experience of raising a kid who was challenging. But really the the big shift in my mind was realizing, oh, you change in adults is hard. Yeah. If you really want to fix the world, you got to, as Michael Jackson said, you gotta start with the kids right. That was that’s secret one.

 

00;54;12;10 – 00;54;12;21

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;54;12;25 – 00;54;43;20

Jon Fogel

Secret two is that I actually think that the world itself would be a infinitely better place if every single person could just learn the fundamental tenet of humility. And the thing that I think great parenting teaches you is humility. And this is why I used to think like my kids. So I’ll give you the Panera example again. Right.

 

00;54;43;26 – 00;54;59;24

Jon Fogel

So like we’re out, we’re out and we’re like doing all this stuff. People often ask me, they’ll say like, oh, so how do you know to do all that stuff? One, because I learned how to listen to my kids. I learned what each kid needed, and it meant that I couldn’t decide ahead of time what they needed.

 

00;54;59;27 – 00;55;19;03

Jon Fogel

I had to be able to approach it with humility and go, I don’t whatever. Two people go, well, that’s really hard. Everything you were doing is really hard as a no, actually, I stopped saying that parenting is the hardest thing that we’ll ever do. I used to say this all the time on my account. You say parenting is the most important and hardest thing that you’re ever going to do.

 

00;55;19;05 – 00;55;38;12

Jon Fogel

And I stopped saying that. I still say it’s the most important thing that most of us will ever do, but stop saying it’s the hardest, because the truth is, when you actually apply these, these tools and you’re going to see this doctor money, you’re going to see this as your kid goes from 6 to 9. It was actually okay when you brought up Tina that first podcast episode with her.

 

00;55;38;14 – 00;55;56;03

Jon Fogel

I asked her a question. I said, so is it hard to raise teenagers? Your kids are all like 20s and above now. I said, this is harder. I think she has a 19 year old says, is it harder to raise teenagers? And she goes, oh yeah, you know, each child, you know, each thing comes with its own, each stage comes with its own challenges.

 

00;55;56;06 – 00;56;19;18

Jon Fogel

And I said, get real. I said, get, get, get serious with me. After all you did when they were toddlers, your kids were harder as teenagers. And she said, absolutely not. She goes actually, parenting teenagers is a breeze. It’s easy. Parenting middle schoolers is easy because if you do the work when they’re four.

 

00;56;19;21 – 00;56;21;08

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;56;21;10 – 00;56;36;29

Jon Fogel

Your kids trust you. Your kids come to you with their stuff, your kids navigate. And so here’s my good news to you, my 18 month old, my daughter. She is probably the most challenging 18 month old that I’ve ever had. I have all the humility in the world to go. I don’t know what you need yet, and I’m going to figure it out with you.

 

00;56;37;01 – 00;56;53;14

Jon Fogel

Right? My my four year old is in some ways the second most challenging four year old I’ve ever had. Compared to my oldest. My nine year old is a please. This kid is easy. This kid is the kid who was like, we don’t know what this kid’s gonna be able to, you know, like in my in my mind, I’m going, right.

 

00;56;53;17 – 00;57;14;29

Jon Fogel

You’re going to be able to go to kindergarten like he’s the terror for his teachers. Like he scrapes his knee and he cries for two hours like, I won’t ever going on the slightly. There’s a slide at the water. He’ll never go down it because he’s too afraid. This kid is rugged. He’s rough and tumble. He goes to an outdoor school where he’s in the subzero temperatures and he doesn’t complain about it.

 

00;57;14;29 – 00;57;42;03

Jon Fogel

Just does it. He starts fires in our backyard. He carries a knife with him everywhere he goes. This is not a kid who you would ever think. It’s like, oh, highly sensitive. Oh, neuro. Neuro doesn’t know. And it’s not that I’m neurodiverse. Like I’m super ADHD. I was diagnosed when I was 11. My wife maybe as well. But like those things are benefits when you actually raise a kid to know themselves.

 

00;57;42;05 – 00;58;01;06

Jon Fogel

Yeah, those things become their greatest strengths. And so I’ve stopped saying the parenting is hard because I go there. There are moments that are hard. But actually at Panera, that was easy. It was so much easier than my kid screaming for the whole time. It was so much easier than then, my kids losing their temper over every single thing.

 

00;58;01;08 – 00;58;13;20

Jon Fogel

Then we went to Home Depot. After that, my kids followed me through the store. We got what we needed to go. We went out, walked out the door. They said, can I have a lollipop? I said, not today. They said, okay. They put them back and we walked out like easy, I know.

 

00;58;13;20 – 00;58;15;25

Dr. Mona

But they were put in right.

 

00;58;15;28 – 00;58;18;11

Jon Fogel

It took a ton of time to get there.

 

00;58;18;17 – 00;58;19;10

Dr. Mona

So I know.

 

00;58;19;14 – 00;58;40;08

Jon Fogel

We’re going to get you’re going to get there. You’re already there. I don’t want to be patronizing. You’re already there. But but you’re you’re going to see as your six year old becomes seven, eight, nine. Because I remember when my oldest was six and I was just it was just getting easier. What you’re going to see in three years from now, when your book is out and the world is celebrating you, and you’re a New York Times bestseller and everybody’s not flocking.

 

00;58;40;08 – 00;58;55;18

Jon Fogel

They didn’t get your signature. And I’m just like, yeah, I know her. But you’re going to remember that is this conversation. You’re going, oh my gosh, wait, Jon was right. Actually, parenting is not the hardest thing in the world. Yeah, it’s the most fun, easiest thing in the world if you actually do it the right way.

 

00;58;55;20 – 00;59;20;21

Dr. Mona

Oh, I love that. It’s true. You’re right. I mean, it is. It is. It is impactful. And I think when you’re in that trenches, especially for a lot of parents listening in those first 4 to 5 years, which are notoriously thought to be the hardest. But like, like we just discussed every phase can be hard. But to the point, you mentioned about Tina, that when you have the foundations and listen, if you’re listening to this in your kid is eight, it is not too late to start.

 

00;59;20;21 – 00;59;39;06

Dr. Mona

Build foundations right? Like that’s the point is that when you understand that there are foundations to be built, when you understand, there’s a reason to start to get curious versus to start attacking your kid. When you realize that you are one part of the equation of a power struggle, like you will learn to step back a little bit and say, what does my kid need?

 

00;59;39;06 – 01;00;00;08

Dr. Mona

And I really love that you mentioned learning to know your kid individually, because so much of what I think gets lost is that individuality, the fact that my son needed a different level of attunement and a different level of interaction during his meltdowns, my daughter needs way more comfort. My son needed a little more isolation, and I know that now.

 

01;00;00;09 – 01;00;20;06

Dr. Mona

Like it wasn’t that I just left him alone. It’s that he needed when you got near him, he would just get more upset when you just needed to stay close and stay calm and see less, right. That my daughter needs all the words in the world. It’s so. It’s so different, but totally you. I mean, I think me and you could like, talk about parenting forever and maybe we should have our own little podcast on.

 

01;00;20;06 – 01;00;21;24

Dr. Mona

But for now, since we both.

 

01;00;21;27 – 01;00;23;17

Jon Fogel

Remember my point.

 

01;00;23;19 – 01;00;42;13

Dr. Mona

It when you step back and look at both of your books together, right? They seem to share the same goal of helping families build emotional awareness, regulation, emotional understanding. If parents consistently apply these ideas at home, what do you think their lives would look like in 5 to 10 years? Like what is your dream for them?

 

01;00;42;15 – 01;01;05;11

Jon Fogel

I think it’s beyond 5 to 10 years, actually. Yeah, I think I like to zoom out and go, like if you’re if you’re just trying to make it to 18, I’m like, I that’s such a small that’s that’s such a small view of your kid’s life. Yeah I, I think at 18 you, you might not have the if you do everything that I say, your kid might not get straight A’s.

 

01;01;05;13 – 01;01;24;06

Jon Fogel

If you do everything that I say, your kid will probably still have a lot of pretty bad emotional breakups with with people in their life. They might not choose the college that you want because they’re not going to be blindly obedient. They might not do all of the things. I think what’s more interesting is, what do I think that your life will be like when you’re when they’re 30?

 

01;01;24;08 – 01;01;41;05

Jon Fogel

And what do I think their life will be like when they’re 30? And I think if we start from that goal of going, how do I want my kid to live from 32 to 80? Yeah, to live the better two thirds of their life. How do I want them to live then? I think they’ll be good at repair.

 

01;01;41;07 – 01;02;14;21

Jon Fogel

Yeah, I think that they’ll be able to regulate their own emotions. I think that they’ll be self-confident, to be able to to navigate the challenges of the world. And absolutely, we got to get in there. But I think actually the real fruit comes out when you look at the long term. And I think if you want to look at your life 5 to 10 years from now, I promise you, if you do the stuff that I’m talking about, your whole life is going to feel a lot less complicated and a lot less fights and a lot less screaming and, yeah, I think that you’re going to you’re going to have a great time because

 

01;02;14;21 – 01;02;17;28

Jon Fogel

parenting is my favorite thing that I do, and I do a lot of stuff that’s really fun.

 

01;02;17;29 – 01;02;38;17

Dr. Mona

Jon. It is such a light talking to you. Like I said, I love reminding parents to parent with intention and that should not be scary. That should be empowering, that you have this great role that you’re doing. And it’s just very obvious that all of the education you do, your books that you’ve written, obviously this new children’s books that you’re feeling free is all led with that intention.

 

01;02;38;17 – 01;02;58;12

Dr. Mona

That final question, just embody that. Right. Like, this is a lifelong experience and we want to raise children that love themselves and know who they are. And I, you, you you read that in many times. You know, you talked about, the identity of your kid and their self. You know, who they are. And like, that is such an important philosophy for me because, again, we’re not just managing tantrums here.

 

01;02;58;12 – 01;03;16;12

Dr. Mona

Like, I think so many times parents think like, I need to fix the solution now, which I totally respect. Like my kid’s not eating, my kids not doing this. But you and I are both encouraging parents to sort of zoom out and think about that value of what they’re raising their kids with, and that is why they’re this is why we give the advice that we do.

 

01;03;16;12 – 01;03;19;18

Dr. Mona

So thank you so much for being here today.

 

01;03;19;20 – 01;03;20;27

Jon Fogel

Thanks for having me.

 

01;03;21;00 – 01;03;31;20

Dr. Mona

I need to know because everyone’s going to be asking me, but you have to tell everyone where can they go to stay connected? Where can they go to get your book? Not only punishment free parenting, but also set your feelings free, or set my feelings free. So my.

 

01;03;31;20 – 01;03;32;03

Jon Fogel

Feelings and.

 

01;03;32;03 – 01;03;32;17

Dr. Mona

My feelings.

 

01;03;32;17 – 01;03;50;24

Jon Fogel

For you. Yeah, buy my books. Wherever books are sold. Doesn’t matter to me. I just want you to get them in your hands. Set My Feelings Free comes on on April 28th of this year, 2026. My book came out last year, so it’s available everywhere. You can also get the audiobook for my book. I read it, I think I’m pretty good at that.

 

01;03;50;24 – 01;03;52;01

Jon Fogel

I think I like I like how.

 

01;03;52;03 – 01;03;53;09

Dr. Mona

You have a good podcast voice.

 

01;03;53;10 – 01;04;11;19

Jon Fogel

I got a good I got a good voice for that. I really appreciated being able to do that. And then you can find me at Whole Parent Everywhere and check out my my podcast. You can check out I have a membership with a ton of courses that you can be a part of. Yeah. Find me online and say, hey, I came from the doctor about a podcast and I love it.

 

01;04;11;21 – 01;04;34;10

Dr. Mona

Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Jon. If there’s one thing I want you to walk away with, it’s this. So much of discipline also comes down to understanding the nervous system yours and your child. When a child is dysregulated, just like we chatted about, their brain cannot access learning, logic, reasoning, or good decision making in that moment.

 

01;04;34;13 – 01;05;02;06

Dr. Mona

So trying to teach a lesson mid meltdown is like trying to teach swimming during a rip current. It’s just not the place and time. Jon’s point about regulation games is the game changer. I want you to hear you practice these tools like breathing and grounding. When your child is regulated, not in the middle of the storm, so that by the time the storm actually hits, these tools are building over and over and are familiar and easy to reach for.

 

01;05;02;08 – 01;05;30;10

Dr. Mona

That is exactly the idea behind his children’s book, Set My Feelings Free. Teaching kids these skills through play before they need them in real life. I would love to hear what resonate for you. Head over to my socials at PedsDocTalk or the PedsDocTalk podcast, and drop a comment on our latest post about this conversation and if this was helpful, share it on your stories, tag the PedsDocTalk podcast and Jon Fogel at Whole Parent, because someone in your circle probably needs to hear this too.

 

01;05;30;12 – 01;05;45;24

Dr. Mona

Don’t forget to subscribe and download this episode so you never miss future conversations. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for using punishment free parenting, and I cannot wait to chat with another guest next time on the show. Stay well.