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- [00:00]
A
We want to welcome everyone and our listeners to the Thriving Kids podcast this week. And our guest, Dr. Ruben Para Cardona from the University of Tennessee. We're so glad to have you with us. In terms of introducing yourself to our listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about your work and how it relates to our topic this week of parent child relationships?
- [00:26]
B
Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for the invitation. It's always wonderful to share space with you and reflect on issues that are so close to my heart. And I say close to my heart because my program of research, I'm an academic, but is completely fueled and motivated by my childhood experiences and experiences related to parenting. So my program of research refers exactly to that, to parenting. How is it that we can nurture kids? What is the good? What have we learned from the science about the best approach to raising kids, to nurture ourselves as caregivers? And also how to share these jewels of parenting to as many populations as we can. So for 20 years, I have invested myself in adapting programs for various populations, particularly disadvantaged backgrounds. But also I'm very interested in understanding the process of change as we engage in parenting, because as caregivers, we definitely change as we try to be the best parents we can be.
- [01:31]
A
That was a Beautiful summary of 20 years of research right there. Now, the great thing is you include these Easter eggs where if we've got a listener who's, you know, engaged in a particular task. You said the word jewels. So I want to start off, you know, when you think about your research, your career in this, in this area, what's the first jewel that you think of as one of your main talking points for building strong parent child relationships?
- [01:56]
B
You know, I think reflecting a lot on this, and I think one of the risks we have in our modern world is the emphasis on doing what are the skills that I need? What do I need to do with regards to parenting? But we have lost the. And we're losing the ability to slow down and reflect on why is it that we're doing what we're doing. So I would say in terms of a jewel on parenting is the ability of parents to reflect. Why did I become a parent in the first place? Maybe it was something I had not planned and I became a parent. Or maybe it was always there. Yeah, I want to be a parent. But if we dig down, what is the motivation? And I always, whenever we start parenting program, I say, well, I don't think we become parents because we say, oh, we're going to bring humans into this amazing Welcoming, loving world where they will have all the certainty and they will be loved and there will be no challenges. No parenting is a lot about ourselves. Ourselves. It's a lot about our need for transcendence. It's about our anguish, about what is going to happen when I die if we go deep down. So I think one of the jewels is to reflect on the ethics of parenting. It's like, what is ethical about parenting? If I make this decision on a human being, what is my ethical mandate as I'm responsible for giving life to these human beings? I would say in terms of the jewels of parenting, the first one is to reflect what's the ethics about parenting? Because so much of parenting comes down to ethics. And then after that, there are very specific tools about the skills that we need. This very practical skills in parenting that we have learned through many years of science are effective in that combination of ethical mandate and skills. Is how is it that I tell my story about parenting if my kid is not doing what he or she, I'm expecting from he or she, rather than say, no, this kid is not following directions and all that, it is about me that I'm not raising that kid or parenting that kid in a way that I'm not setting my kid for success. So if you see those big jewels is where am I coming from in terms of parenting, the skills, and whenever I need to direct my parenting, what are the guiding principles for that?
- [04:25]
A
So for those of you who are just listening and not watching us on video, you would have seen for about the past three minutes that my jaw was sort of hanging open as I reflect philosophically on the ethics of parenting, my decision to become a parent to my wife and my nine and six year old children, and just a sort of like basking in the fact that you brought tears to my eyes in describing some of that beauty of parenting. So, okay, outside of the fact that I'm gonna start crying, let's go into the ethics of parenting that you're talking about for a second. So if we're trying to kind of, you know, ground parents in the ethics of parenting, what do you mean by that? Can you, can you expand on that topic a little bit more?
- [05:06]
B
Yeah. You know, in family therapy, I'm a family therapist by training. I. My Master's and PhD is in family therapy. As I was going through my training, it was fascinating to understand how to learn techniques about helping couples and families. But I was always concerned about, well, yeah, but what are the guiding principles? One of the developers of family therapy models that Most impacted me is Ivan Bosserman jniag. He survived a concentration camp. He was a psychiatrist by training. And in his reflections he said, when I get out of here, I wanted to really impact the family therapy field. And he wrote a beautiful theory containing sexual family therapy that addresses the issue of justice and ethics in family therapy. A couple of key principles that apply to parenting. The first one is asymmetry. The concept of asymmetry in a couple relationship, you want an equal balance between what you give to your intimate partner and what your partner offers you, right? Intimacy, connection, communication. In parenting, there has to be a symmetry. Parents have to be psychologically stronger, have to be emotionally stronger, financially stronger, and provide that base. And eventually, over time, when parents get to their last phase of their age, then that asymmetry balances out, right? And the children can support parents. So a critical example of this, if an adolescent yells back at me and I get very frustrated with. It's a natural reaction, a human reaction, right? Why are you saying that to me, Dad? I need to regulate myself and say, I am the parent, I gotta be emotionally stronger and it's my responsibility to guide my kid, so I cannot reciprocate in the same level. That would take us to an escalation. Well, because I'm saying this and like I need to regulate myself and then go with practical ways of addressing that situation in which I am the parent. And another principle that I truly love is the issue of the destructive entitlements. Whenever you hear destructive story like we in our parenting programs, we emphasize a lot the need to motivate kids. Oh, well, you're going to motivate your kid. If they clean their room, if they prepare their bed, you're going to give them a star. And then at the end of the week, you're going to give them a big prize. Many parents say, why am I supposed to do that? The world is not like that. That pretty much indicates the presence of what is called a destructive entitlement. What does that mean? Whenever you as a kid did not receive a nurturing parenting experience, a motivating parenting experience, you develop like this destructive entitlement. The world is a mean place, therefore you should be ready for that. Rather than offering your kid what we know through science is what is most important in parenting. Offering nurturing parenting practices, positive parent child relationships and encouragement. So those have been within the realm of ethics, some of the most important principles I have followed. And they have become wonderful because in 20 years that we have worked primarily with very low income parents, we face These challenges. So before getting into the doing, we engage in some reflections about your family of origin. We engage reflections about what was it like for you to growing up. And there's a beautiful awareness of, say, oh, what I did not receive is what I'm struggling to give. And that's where the ethics and the healing experience comes together.
- [08:46]
A
And I think what you're describing is something that has been a criticism at times of some evidence based parent coaching models where you can start with sort of an ideal, like in the sense that, like, I'll look at a lot of the models that I was trained on early in my career where we knew that the ideal was to get parents to a kind of balance of nature and structure through an authoritative parenting style. But there was less of a reflection like you're describing, where you begin in a reflective exercise with parents in saying, you know, what was, you know, the intergenerational attachment style is transmitted to you, which basically is kind of how I hear what you're saying in the sense that, like, if you're trying to build this more secure attachment with your child, but yet this is what you experienced perhaps growing up, you know, how do we kind of bridge that gap? How do we set some intentionality for you in the way that you're thinking about your parenting? And so, you know, when you get to that point with parents and you've been able to say to them, we might be, you know, addressing things that you didn't receive as a kid, or we might be, you know, trying to undermine this destructive entitlement, you know, where do you start in telling them how they would, you know, do, say, relationship first aid with their kid? What are some of those initial jewels? Even before you get, I'm trying to, trying to use your language here, ethics jewel skills. But if we're in the reflective ethics exercises, what's the next pivot? What do you move to after you've gotten them reflecting on their history?
- [10:19]
B
That's a wonderful question. Thank you so much. Because after many years of doing these, an editor of a journal said, ruben, you talk in our board meetings about this, but you have published a lot about the positive impacts of the parenting program you deliver. But you haven't talked a lot about the process of change. And I truly think Jay Levow, the editor of Family Cross at the time, for that, because he was telling me, slow down. Can you reflect and tell us about what happens in that process of change? So that led to a paper.
- [10:53]
A
Well, just as a reaction to that, I can't tell you the number of times when we have been training young clinicians in these kinds of, you know, parent coaching models where we'll say, like, look, you have an evidence base here, but your expertise, what you develop over your career, is to exactly your point, getting beyond what parents will see as Dr. Binder. That was what one parent said to one of my clinicians, that, like, I'm learning skills. You're teaching me out of a binder. How am I supposed to do this? And making this appearance much more of an individually defined collaborative process of change. So, yes, let's get into that. What does that look like?
- [11:33]
B
Absolutely right. And thank you so much for highlighting that because that led. Thanks to clinicians, that led to the title of that paper that I titled, Healing Through Parenting, because I think we were focusing a lot on parenting outcomes, which is great, but we were overlooking the healing process for parents as we learn how to parent better. In our program, we start with a skill which is the beauty of evidence based. We use a lot, the Generation PMTO intervention model. And the first step is to engage in very practical skills about how do you give directions to your kid? Please pick out your shoes. So we usually go like that. We give it directions and we go very.
- [12:19]
A
And for our listeners, this is parent management training, the Oregon model, which you can look up and Google and find all these skills indexed. But yes, keep going.
- [12:27]
B
Really beautiful. And it really helped me because, as you can tell, I love to talk. And when I was giving parenting interventions, one of the challenges I had, I was talking too much and not doing enough. So this intervention, pmto, helps you to start with skills in terms of, like, instead of talking to your kids about doing things, how do you do it? So we engage a lot in role plays. So parents react to that very great. It's fun. They see their mistakes, their, you know, long sentences and all that. But the second component is about encouraging your kids to do behaviors on their own. And by doing that, you want a couple of things. You want to develop, promote the development in your kids. But as you promote that, you want to strengthen the secure attachment, the emotional bond with your kid. So, for example, instead of saying your kid, make your bed. Oh, in order to make your bed, you're gonna take the pillows, you're gonna do this with the sheets, et cetera. And then if as kids engage in those behaviors, you reward your kids, you give them a star, and if they accumulate five stars during the week, you give them an extra 30 minutes of the park playing ball. That component was when the most trauma parents had experienced in their lives or neglect, they reacted the most negatively to that component. So to your question, the way we do that is we just put on the table, we pause on the skill and say, it's been our experience that when parents struggle a bit with this component is because they oftentimes didn't receive these type of experiences as kids. And then we read narratives from other parents who have gone through the process. And then parents open up and say, well, yeah, it's hard. I never experienced being rewarded. My dad only hit me if I didn't do things. I never was paid attention when I was doing something right. So there's a process of loss and grief that we need to honor as parents are providing something new and beautiful to their kids. So you need to hold those two realities, like personal grief and loss, while also healing as you are engaged in delivering those skills.
- [14:43]
A
And I mean, I'm so struck by the way that you kind of operationalize this, because when I'm working with parents and we get to that point, because to exactly what you're saying, it's kind of like we'll reflect on these processes, we know where we're trying to get in a relationship, then we might start doing evidence based skills. And to your point, one of the biggest reactions we'll see is when we start talking about positive reinforcement and parents start telling us, why do I need to lower the bar for my kid? Why do I need to give them a reinforcer for something that they should be able to do otherwise? Or you know, why do I need to give them encouragement if this is something they've done 30,000 times? And you know what I'll often ask, as kind of an operationalization of that is I'll say like, you know, what was it like for you growing up? The parent will say exactly what you're saying, that I didn't get this, my parent didn't say this. And then I'll often get this rationalization, this thing that happens for all of us that's about cognitive dissonance. It's I didn't get it, but I also turned out fine. So therefore that method must have been okay. And then my key next question is, and what's your relationship with your parent like right now? And I've almost never heard, oh, we have a close and supportive relationship that makes it so that I feel so comfortable talking to them and feeling like they're love and support. It's more often that when someone's reacting in that way, they'll say, I don't know I have a hard time talking to them at this stage. You know, it's hard to kind of understand each other or I feel kind of distant, or I don't feel like they've ever approved of me or any number of these things that we can then say, do you want your kid to feel differently? We're not trying to criticize your parent. Maybe it was a different age. Maybe they were dealing with different resources. Maybe there was different stressors. Like, we're not trying to say they failed or anything. We're just saying, how do you want to do it differently? How do you want your kid to feel different at the end of the day?
- [16:31]
B
Exactly. And this takes me to the ethical dimension again, because one of the phrases that impacted me the most when I was learning this with one of the regional developers, Marion for Gadgets. You know, we had great conversations. This leads to great conversations. And she was saying, well, Reuben, we live in a culture of punishment. How many times are we stopped by the police to say, sir, you were driving at the speed limit. Congratulations to you. You have a voucher here to go whatever you want to. We don't have those structures as society. Right.
- [17:03]
A
And that means I would just love. By the way, I felt such pride at the fact that I'm driving really carefully at the beginning of school year right now in school zones and stuff like that. And I'm feeling very proud. I do feel like there should be like a police officer in the school zone giving me a thumbs up and being like, thanks for keeping our community safe. Just saying. But yes, keep going.
- [17:22]
B
If you think that thumbs up, you would be like, exactly.
- [17:26]
A
I'd be like, exactly. Like Officer Jones. Thought I did the right thing going through the school zone this morning. But yeah.
- [17:32]
B
So, yes, I think the biggest lesson we've learned is that reflecting on these issues is a way of slowing down and not only jumping to the skills, but what is informing my parenting. And it's beautiful when you realize as a parent, you have the opportunity to create a new legacy. A legacy in which you have human beings that will be supported step by step to do new tasks. They will. You will be with them, coaching them, mentoring. And as they achieve successes, they will be rewarded. And the rewards is just an instrument to the most important thing, which is the strengthen the parent child emotional bond. That's where you want to get, is the secure base and strengthening that. And at the same time, you are preparing your child for the world.
- [18:21]
A
Yes. So on the note related to this culture of kind of punishment, how do you reconcile the fact that we do have a culture that focuses on the consequences for stepping out of line alongside also a lot of complaints as a culture about millennial gentle parenting and that kind of movement. How do you speak to those intersecting themes?
- [18:49]
B
I continue to figure that out. I continue to figure that out. But I could say the culture of punishment is the emphasis or it's like a tunnel vision. Right. As a person of authority in the system, as a parent, you get my attention when you do something wrong only. So that sets up a dynamic that is like, wow, my parent doesn't see what I'm doing. Right. They are not seeing that I did this homework and they didn't even notice. Right. So that's cultivating culture of punishment in terms of consequences. I would frame that within a culture of accountability. That is our primary responsibility as parents, to prepare our children to the world, to let them know, hey, you're not alone in the world. You're frustrated at the grocery store because there's a line of 20 people. Well, so other 19 people in your community, you don't exist alone. You're speeding up. Well, you're self centered because you can terminate someone's life or you can hurt them if you get into a crash. So I think the realm of consequences is presented within this beautiful scheme of accountability and being in community. So it's our responsibility to teach our children how to be in community inside the home and that laboratory. Those experiences will teach our children to be in community outside. Yesterday somebody cloned my credit card because I use it at a gas station. And my kid was like, why does that happen? So it's important. It's important, right? To talk, engage this conversation. I mean, that led to a beautiful conversation of accountability. So. And led to my telling my daughter, you know, when I give you a consequence that you don't like is because I'm helping you to discover new ways to be accountable and think about the other.
- [20:41]
A
I'm also sorry that merely getting gas caused you to then have to likely switch your credit card and all different ways of paying. It sounds like this is fresh right now.
- [20:50]
B
Well, but yeah, you know, it's happened like seven times, so I already have my routine. Oh, here we go again. You know, it's like in, in the past seven years, it's just the lack of accountability. The selfishness that we live in the world is increasing and for multiple factors and we need to prepare our kids for that. So I think it's a beautiful balance, right. In terms of like, beware of a culture of punishment. But also firm consequences for our children is a primary. It's an ethical responsibility because it's our ethical mandate to teach our children the beauty of accountability in a society.
- [21:33]
A
Well, this is where, you know, I think that what you're talking about brings up for me also a kind of reflection on how difficult it is for parents at any stage of society to hold in mind the notion of accountability and kind of nurturing at once. Because we see these kind of pendulum swings. Like I go back to the fact that in previous talks in my career, I used to show parent audiences how, you know, punch charts and behavior reinforcement was actually something that came up at the beginning of the 20th century, early 1900s. And we can see these kind of pendulum swings also related to historical variables from society based around kind of positive reinforcement to, you know, gentle parenting. Themes that we might find very similar in 2025 to say what was going on in the late 60s, early 70s to a culture focused on punishment, say during the Reagan administration. You know, when we're, when we're looking at like kind of parenting and how it relates to this kind of context all the way to the fact that now, so we've had like a dominant gentle parenting, I would say age. And we're embarking now on something where we're seeing a huge rise on social media of the term fafo. Have you seen this term?
- [22:50]
B
No, no, no, no.
- [22:52]
A
It is defined as F around and find out. Which apparently is a parental reaction to. I see all these people online saying validate your kid, talk about their emotions, you know, see how they're feeling. Like, you know, avoid giving a consequence while you understand the situation. And you see the pendulum swing back to these parents who are saying like, I don't need to Talk. I'm a CAFO parent. And I'm sitting there going like, no, no, no, no, no. The truth is somewhere in the middle, there may be moments where your kid needs to fafo. And then there are also the baseline, which is, I think more what you're describing, which we want our kids basic expectation to be that we're going to come at them gently. And then in the moments when we need to emphasize accountability or ensure that those boundaries are there, like we kind
- [23:38]
B
of can, you know, I can think about a beautiful clinical case. I was the lead therapist. This was an adolescent who was acting out 13 year old. But this kid, his parents relinquished the parental rights, the grandparents relinquished the parental rights, and it was the great grandparents raising these 12 year olds. So you have a 77 and an 83 year old raising an adolescent. And because the kid had been exposed to so much loss and trauma, one of the challenges was that they were not enforcing rules. They were very permissive. So in one of the sessions, I was like, how do I get through this? And I'm an experiential family therapist. I try to create experience in the room. So it was a room without windows. And then I turn off all the lights, and then I ask the kid, how does this feel? Scary. And does this feel like when you are not given rules and you're not given a sense of direction by your great grandparents? Yeah. And then I turn on one light. Does this feel like a rule in your life? Like it gives you a sense of direction and protection? Yeah. And I would turn it off again, and it was a beautiful experience of the importance of rules and in the life of the kid. Because when we get into this permissive stance, kids feeling dark and deep down they need that protection when you implement rules, they may and react and all that, but deep down they feel secure because they say, okay, somebody's in charge of this ship and he's taking me to a good end.
- [25:16]
A
I am just, again, this is like a parallel process to the beginning and end of the podcast episode that my mouth is just agape because I'm noticing the convergence in our metaphors. I will frequently use the example where I will say a kid who's functioning without boundaries is in a dark room where they can't see the walls. Our job is to shine a flashlight in the walls and say, the wall is here. Like, no, this is where the boundaries of the room are. I'm gonna create a space where you can exist in this room fairly freely. You know, there's gonna be certain constraints, but I want you to kind of be doing this. And then, you know, there's gonna be moments where I show you the wall, like you're gonna hit the wall. And we know we've reached the edge of the room and that kind of thing. So I'm just. I'm loving the convergence of metaphors and these kinds of things.
- [25:58]
B
It's beautiful, right? Because when you start sharing these stories and you find common themes is cross culturally multi ethnic, you see these common pillars of parenting that are caught. The importance of positive involvement. The importance of boundary setting. The importance of boundary setting within love. The importance to promote accountability.
- [26:20]
A
Yeah. So this relates to kind of how we can tie this up. Because the reality is, for all of our listeners here, we have both converged on metaphors today. Converged on the Color of shirts that we've chosen for the recording of the podcast in the pink and purple range, but just converging on kind of a closing out point of what we can leave parents with. If you were to say, I want to put, you know, I want to be a canary on a parent's shoulder and put one or two thoughts in their brain as they go forth from this podcast, listen to interacting with their kids, what would you put in their brains as fundamental like here, one or two reminders as you're, you know, working on evolving your relationship with your kid over time.
- [27:07]
B
Wow, that's a great.
- [27:08]
A
I know it's hard to boil down someone who has such elegance and discursive thought into that, but, you know, you
- [27:14]
B
know, I lost my parents in a period of five years and that, that really brought me back to the importance of embracing life and being in the here and now, in the present, and not take anything or anyone for granted. So what I would share with parents is regardless of your background and acknowledging all the challenges you have, make sure to focus on the present here and now. You have today to make a difference in that kid. You have today to communicate love to that kid. Don't withhold words of love. You have today to learn to teach your kid how to be in the world, how to make their bets. Because the way you do that, make the bets, homeworks and all that, those are the skills they will need when it's your time to pass so they can leave without you physically present. And also know where you're coming from and what's your baggage and resources and strengths. I mean, know everything, where the pitfalls, but also the challenges. So you can know what can be your blind spots in which you can go. Like, you know, this issue of destructive entitlement we talk about, but also your strengths. If you come from adversity, teach that you know, resilience to your kid and say, don't feel bad if you don't have that iPad. Don't feel bad. We're resilient and you will get there. And, and most importantly, don't forget that you only have today to be a parent. And it's also your opportunity to heal from anything you have to heal. So as much as you give, you receive.
- [28:48]
A
God, that was beautiful. Dr. Rubin, we thank you for being a guest on the Thriving Kids podcast. And I am fairly sure that we will have people running to find more videos of your elegant, you know, musings on parenting just from this podcast. And we can also include any resources on your work in our show notes so that people can do a deeper dive on the kinds of exercises that. That you've outlined, even just during these 25 minutes of nuggets. Thank you so much.
- [29:16]
B
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. And I think the plain shirts fit very well for both of us.
- [29:23]
A
Yes, exactly.