Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Empowering Childhood: Fostering Independence and Resilience with Dr. Camilo Ortiz
Discover the transformative power of independence in childhood as we sit down with Dr. Camilo Ortiz, a leading expert in clinical psychology. Dr. Ortiz shares his innovative independence therapy, which is revolutionizing the way we address child anxiety by integrating meaningful, self-guided experiences reminiscent of past generations. He offers a refreshing, client-centered approach that challenges conventional parenting norms and emphasizes resilience and mental well-being.
Through engaging discussions, we explore the essential role of childhood activities in cultivating independence, countering the pitfalls of over-parenting, and enhancing both child and parent confidence. Initiatives like Let Grow demonstrate how small independent tasks can instill resilience and problem-solving skills in children. Personal anecdotes vividly illustrate the joy and growth resulting from unplanned adventures, reinforcing the idea that stepping back can lead to profound developmental benefits.
The episode culminates with a poignant reflection on the balance between risk and protection in parenting. Dr. Ortiz highlights the hidden dangers of overprotection, advocating for a thoughtful approach that considers each child's unique needs. By sharing uplifting stories of children overcoming challenges through independence therapy, we underscore the empowering journey of raising children who are confident, resilient, and self-assured. Parents are encouraged to embrace a "good enough" mindset that celebrates allowing children the freedom to explore their passions and forge their paths.
Camilo Ortiz Ph.D
Associate Professor of Psychology
Director of Clinical Training
http://drcamiloortiz.com
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages, preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, sydney Moreau, and hopefully her families all over COVID. They all got it. She gave me a thumbs up, meaning they're better, which is great. Today we're talking about how to build independence in your children, which is a very important topic and a very important need and skill for kids to develop. First, I want to shout out thanks to Abby Blesko for being on last time talking about getting tutoring services and learning support for your children. It was a great show and if you need to avail yourself to services, she can tell you how to do it. I also want to give a shout out to Colorado Public Radio. I was on a 45-minute interview on a panel about parents under stress, following the Surgeon General's advisory about how parents are under stress. If you go to Colorado Public Radio, you can just type in my name, craig Nippenberg Don't forget the K on the Nippenberg and it'll pull up and you can give it a listen. It was a really fun program and basically what my second book is all about, so it really fit perfectly. And also a quick announcement In the past I've done shows of parenting in the news, which I really love following the news as it relates to parents, most of that. Now I've switched over to LinkedIn and post quite a few news stories for parents there, so if you just type in my name on LinkedIn, you can see those as well. On to our show I'm very excited about our guest, dr Camilo Ortez. I'm going to read his background quick and then I'm going to give you a little back story on his being on the program.
Speaker 2:Camilo Ortez, an associate professor and director of clinical training at the Clinical Psych Doctoral Program at Long Island University. He also is a fellow with the Flourishing in Action Project of the Archbred Institute's Human Flourishing Lab. His scholarship focuses on child anxiety and disruptive behavior, parenting and cognitive behavioral therapy for child and adult psychiatric disorders. He is the developer of independence therapy, and that's what we'll be talking about today a revolutionary new approach to treating child anxiety through megadoses of child independence. When I was a kid, we always had megadoses of independence, maybe microdosing, I don't know, because it was all the time. It wasn't like a big thing that we had to do, it was just part of life. Doses of independence, maybe microdosing, I don't know, because it was all the time. It wasn't like a big thing that we had to do. It was just part of life.
Speaker 2:Dr Otez is a critic of his field of clinical psychology, focusing on its ideological capture and unscientific practices. He is the clinical director of the Open Therapy Institute, a clinical and training organization that's trying to turn child psychology to its client-centered, non-ideological roots. I love that he's a licensed pathologist in New York State and maintains a private practice. He's also received his PhD in clinical psych from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Welcome to the show, dr Ortiz.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:And hopefully I got your name right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Ortiz.
Speaker 2:That's good. And I found out he's from Colombia, which some of the greatest bike riders in the world have been from Colombia. So I was like, oh, that's cool, just a little backstory. In both my books I've mentioned the work of Lenore Spanese, who was originally called the free-range child free-range children advocate. She's got quite a backstory about herself and her experiences and then started the Let Grow Project, which is really about fostering independence, and it was through them I get their emails all the time. And there was a story about Dr Ortiz and his new independence therapy program. So I want to welcome you on the show and, if you can maybe give us a first, I'm curious how you got into that specific area.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And maybe tell us about it after that.
Speaker 3:As with a lot of my professional identity, I owe a lot to Lenore Skenazy, and this is, they say, twitter is terrible for mental health, but this is one example of where Twitter was really helpful. I just sent her a message after I saw a talk of hers and I said I'm really interested in this idea of independence and I've been thinking about it myself. I'm really interested in this idea of independence and I've been thinking about it myself. And then we became fast friends and can talk more about how the treatment itself developed. It is quote unquote revolutionary, but it's also a simple, old idea that we've had for a long time, so it's not rocket science and it's not that new.
Speaker 3:I noticed over time that, as many did, that kids were becoming less independent and we were having unsustainable levels of parenting and over-parenting and it was making parents and kids miserable and anxious. And I started thinking about taking some of her ideas through Let Grow, where she was assigning independence activities through schools once a week to kids and reporting really excellent results. And I said what if we did this every day? This is where the mega doses idea comes from. So like up the dosage of independence for kids who are clinically anxious, and so we just had our first study, a peer reviewed study, come out last month and it showed really nice results for the first group of kids who went through independence therapy.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I'd love to see the results. That'd be fabulous, and I downloaded the model for clinicians and I've been weaving some of it in my own work.
Speaker 3:Oh, excellent, yeah. So I made my treatment manual. By the way, I co-developed it with my doctoral student, dr Matt Fassman, and it's free for clinicians on LECRO's website. If you just go to LECROorg, you'll see independence therapy and as long as you're a practicing clinician, you can have it for free and feel free to use it, and we've had actually, I would say, thousands of people now download the treatment.
Speaker 2:Nice, and is there a? I just did the clinical one, but for our parent audience, if they wanted to go to LECRO, is there a part of your project there that they could review and get a sense of it?
Speaker 3:It's not exactly mine, but LECRO does a really nice job of guiding teachers, parents and clinicians to the materials that are applicable to them, so I highly encourage parents to go to Let Grow and you'll see a lot of free and useful materials.
Speaker 2:Gosh Now what I liked. So I picked out the list of independent activities and I'm like I circled a bunch of them. That's what I did when I was a kid all the time Climb a tree, ride a bike, build something, cook something over a flame I was pretty good at that. Swim in a lake or an ocean, explore the woods If you have woods by you. We did. We were fortunate to have that Lemonade stands. My kids all did those. We lived right on the highline canal and so we learned that there were a lot of interested customers, but most people were taking their dogs for a walk and didn't have money with them. So sales were we, interest aside, but sales was we?
Speaker 2:uh, cut something open and see what's inside yeah that and you could do that with seeds, you could do that with rocks or geodes we always had when we explore in colorado. We always had a bag in the back of the truck that had a pick in it where you could hammer and pick and, yeah, explore and find geodes and fossils and all sorts of things there's a great youtube channel I think it's called what's inside where they break open stuff and look inside.
Speaker 3:It's always fascinating to me, that is so cool.
Speaker 2:Walk outside while barefoot. That one is. We used to be barefoot all summer. I do remember stepping on a few things and getting some cuts, but there's good research about being barefoot in the grass is great for developing your microbiome because you're picking up all those bits of the microbiome through your feet and it helps with your immune system.
Speaker 3:It's such a good analogy for what happens behaviorally and emotionally that you get little cuts and that actually is really helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. We all need cuts. That's how you grow. Yes, right, heal up and you grow. Have a mud or a snowball fight. We used to do a lot of that, but with the mud you have to make sure there's not a rocket. That's right, that's the key on that one. Throw rocks at outdoor targets. Cut your hair. I think most preschoolers have done that. They didn't turn out well, no they didn't.
Speaker 3:Just one thing on that. When these things don't quote unquote turn out well, I secretly like that because that actually is where we see the growth. We see kids learn to tolerate things not going exactly the way they want. They learn to problem solve. We'll talk about examples where kids did independence activities that didn't go as planned, and I never tell the parents ahead of time, but I'm secretly cheering for that to happen because that's where we get the really nice results.
Speaker 2:And that's where you learn. I just flashback on a story of my own. We had woods down the street and there was a farmer's field made an electrical fence, and my two buddies and I were down there and of course we had to challenge each other to touch the fence. So David went first and David was a very oppositional young man. We didn't know what that was back then, but he was quite a handful for his mother and he just grabbed that sucker.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And got shocked. And so then I looked at mark and said you're not smart. And mark just tapped it quick and got a shock. And I'm like okay, nip, you gotta go. And so I picked up a stick and I touched the fence and they said that's cheating. I said no, it's not. You said touch fence, I I put a stick on it. So right in that moment I was learning as we went and problem solving I really got interested in getting shocked, but I figured out a way to touch it without you actually see the three iterations of learning that occur.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to be honest, like the three stooges, that's wonderful Going fishing. We did that all the time. Walk around with a blindfold kids love to do that. Yeah, put on blindfolds. We knock around fly paper planes in the park. We used to do the ballsuit planes and then we got into rocketry around fifth grade and those sds rockets are just a ton of fun oh, that's not on my list.
Speaker 3:I I have to add that because I used to do that as well, and that's one where there's a little bit of danger, but it's actually right in that sweet spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're doing it right, it's very safe and pretty simple and it's just a lot of fun Go somewhere without a map or a phone. What a novel concept.
Speaker 2:Imagine that, especially the phone. We had the phone behind, buy stamps at the post office, make a fort outside. We built a tree house when I was a kid up in one of our trees and then, sadly, my mother decided to have the tree pruned when we were in the school and the pruners took out the tree. I was like, oh, I'm just sad, run errands with your parents. This one I really put in all the time volunteering. Get your kids, make your empathy a verb, get out and volunteer.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:This one I've never done Lick a nine-volt battery. What happens when you do that? I'm guessing you learned that one yourself. What happens when you do?
Speaker 3:that it's a super mild version of your electric fence. You get a little.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you just get a teeny shock.
Speaker 3:And you get a little taste of metal. I love it.
Speaker 2:And I love this one Burn things with the magnifying glass. Yes, oh, we loved.
Speaker 3:Maybe not in the dry woods of Colorado.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in Colorado you have to do it on the concrete. Maybe not in the dry woods of Colorado. Yeah, in Colorado, you have to do it on the concrete. We used to burn all sorts of stuff and just loved doing that One. I also you could add on that I did when I was 11, was I started a garden in our backyard oh, I love that and dug it all up, grew carrots and lettuce and absolutely loved tending to my garden lettuce and absolutely love attending in my garden.
Speaker 3:I had that even though I grew up in New York City. We we had a a program nearby that really was life-changing for me at where we would each get a plot of land and there were a few teachers and we grew our own vegetables. And I started doing this. I must have been in third grade and I I actually we grew up without much money and so it actually made a big difference to my family for me to bring home fresh vegetables that I grew on a regular basis, and we also got to go to county fairs and I put up my tomatoes against the tomatoes of little old ladies and win prizes.
Speaker 3:And yeah, getting your hands in the dirt is wonderful.
Speaker 2:It really is A couple of thoughts. The state fair every year you get to see these kids who are in 4-H or their families are farmers and they bring their vegetables in they're so proud or their little calves or sheep and you providing food for your family. That's incredible. We didn't really need the lettuce or carrots, but I was so proud that I could grow something. But yesterday was the anniversary of 9-11. And I remember like it was yesterday. My son was about five at the time and that afternoon I took him up to my friends. He has a. You pick it berry, for strawberries, raspberries, and you go out the field and pick it and we actually helped him plant.
Speaker 2:Some go up there on the tractor and help him plant, and so we went up there and we just worked in the soil picking berries and I talked to him about what had happened and it was just so grounding to have your hands in the dirt yeah and you can eat all you want as you're picking right and then we took the strawberries back home and bought some blueberries at the local store and we made a cake with white ice icing and made an american flag on it and we took it to the firehouse by our house. What what a nice memory. The firefighters yeah, that's a really foundational memory. But the whole thing of working with your hands in the dirt is amazing.
Speaker 3:And I bet you didn't wash the berries while you were eating them.
Speaker 2:You just ate them. No, you just ate them. There was no washing, you didn't wash your hands, you just chowed down and little preschoolers can eat a lot of berries. And you just chow down and little preschoolers can eat a lot of berries. And then one on here that you don't have on here. That, I would have to say, you would not do in Colorado for sure, because it's so dry. But in Missouri we spent most of the spring building models, trucks, whatever model building, and then we'd spend all our money on firework and we'd blow them all up and we had so much fun with firework, but it was that was probably over the line of safe, but we learned a lot so the plastic plane models that you would then paint.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually I literally wrote that down because I had that memory of chewing a million of those as a kid.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, You're building the models. Oh, and I was into woodcrafting. I got my first jigsaw when I was like 10. And I had a little wood shop. It would make different birdhouses or we'd do balls with airplanes. And I still have that jigsaw. If you want to teach a kid to focus and be careful, building something, like a model is wonderful experience and we didn't understand the importance of ventilation back then.
Speaker 2:but the windows open because that glue, the smell of that stuff will kill brain cells. But once you get past that, it's a great experience for your kid and you feel that sense of accomplishment like you did it yourself. And it wasn't under parental supervision all the time, you were just doing it.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And the list goes on and on. There's others that are much more civilized, but I also love mowing the lawn. That was a chore for us boys Since I think I started at 10, it got transferred from my older brother to me and then to my younger brother. Yeah, every Saturday mowing the lawn.
Speaker 3:Most of these independence activities are not actually chores although a few of them are, and chores are really helpful.
Speaker 3:They're meant to be fun and so when kids are in treatment with me anxious kids I basically ask them open-endedly what's something that you would like to do independently that you don't do? And we don't actually always even use this list, because most kids have a bunch of ideas of things they'd like to do and then we just check with parents that it's okay. We've had a couple of suggestions from kids that didn't fly, including. I had a kid who wanted to take an Amtrak as many states away from New York as possible and he started actually researching the laws of what age you had to be on Amtrak in certain states and obviously his mom said no to that one. But most of the time kids have very reasonable ideas of things that they would like to do independently that are a little bit of a stretch, and that's the sweet spot, and so we just take those ideas. It's only when they are a little stuck that we pull out the list, but that actually is pretty rare.
Speaker 2:But then finding that sweet spot. I was 10. I guess I was 11, because my buddy Mark moved to Jefferson City, missouri, which was two hours away from St Louis, and my mom let me take the Amtrak by myself to go visit him for a weekend. At age 10? At 11. At 11?
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I still remember being scared, yeah, but then I felt so confident on the trip back. I did it. I took a train by myself.
Speaker 3:That is amazing and I love the being a little scared. And then you learn something about fear and you learn something about your own capabilities and then you see the confidence rise and actually the anxiety go down. This is a perfect example of what we're seeing with our kids that when they do this stuff they actually are often quite scared at first, but then you see the effects which can last a lifetime. So you know you learn something quite powerful about yourself that I would guess to this day to some degree shapes who you are.
Speaker 2:So it's great to hear it did for sure, and many other experiences. My father I wanted to be camping and hiking and my dad's idea of camping was a two-star motel that's as low as he went. And so I was all enjoying Boy Scouts and my parents would fly in with it. And I can remember this day in fifth grade with my checklist and the Boy Scout manual, preparing for my first camping trip, and going down the checklist to make sure I had all the stuff and I had my parents take me to the store so I could get stuff, because we didn't really do that and I stayed in scouting through. I was 18, went to Canada, new Mexico twice and sailing in the.
Speaker 3:Bahamas once, all through scouting. Wow, this is actually how we start. Our treatment is. The first session is with parents, and I again open-ended the question. I say tell me about your fondest childhood memories, and about 100% of the time it's an independence activity and they don't even realize that this is what we're labeling those things. But it's all the stuff you're saying. And then I will say to them so would you allow your child to do any of these things? And almost always the answer is no way. And I don't lecture them or anything, I just put it out there Interesting. So these are foundational memories for you. You wouldn't allow them in your child. Tell me some, tell me a little bit about that, and then we get into a nice constructive conversation. They talk about their fears and then we get right into it. But it's that discrepancy that I think opens the door, because while they're saying it, they realize what they're saying and they realize there's something, there's a cognitive dissonance there.
Speaker 2:Exactly what I like about your program is one first you have to help the anxious child with their anxiety, learn to take some rest and build up their resources so anxiety reduces. When you feel you have more internal or external resources to tackle the problem, so you're helping them. But then half the program is dedicated to helping parents with their anxiety.
Speaker 3:That's right. And we see a parallel process where at first, when kids are trying independence activities for the first time, they're anxious, parents are anxious, and then we see this beautiful shift in both people, where parents gain confidence in their kids and kids gain confidence in themselves. And that's where the magic happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that it is, and it's them learning to do something. I have a young man right now who's working. His goal is to walk the dog around the neighborhood and so he's working up towards that. He also wants to go up to the little gas station to buy candy or gum on his own, which I totally support. But there's this young girl. So I live by a park not too far from here and I think since she was probably maybe in fourth grade, I've seen her walk her dog every day around the park. Every morning she's out there and she's in middle school now, I'm guessing, but she just looks so confident, dressed for school, walking her. This little dog's not bigger than a cat really, but she walks her dog every day and I'm like God, that's a good parent to me, that's a good kid, take on some responsibility.
Speaker 3:So I've been tracking over time what is considered good parenting, and it's quite clear that in the last decade or two, more parenting has been equated with good parenting more involvement, and I think that's actually quite backward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's actually quite backward. And so the example you're giving is less parenting, less involvement and that actually being good parenting, and it's just not sustainable. When we look at something like just the amount of time parents spend with their kids, that has been going up for decades. And when you ask parents, how satisfied are you with the job you're doing as a parent, that's not going up, that's actually going down, and so we have this disconnect. Parents are spending more money and more time and more energy on parenting and feeling worse about it, and I think we need to switch the narrative where good parenting is doing less over time.
Speaker 2:And doing things like letting your kids be bored and not solving it for them. I also can't stand the term play dates, because it generally means the parents are in charge.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I heard a great. I can never say his name, chakrabadam Hidden Brain.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He did a story on how kids will naturally learn how to problem solve and negotiate and politics when they're playing and they're going to struggle. And then who gets to be the pitcher, who gets to bat?
Speaker 3:first, where's out of bounds? How many chances do you get?
Speaker 2:Touch me and tag right and I don't feel it. And kids will naturally figure it out. But as soon as a parent gets involved, they abdicate to the parent.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. Peter Gray, who's a professor in Boston, talks a lot about mixed age free play and how it basically has become extinct over time. Play is now segregated by age.
Speaker 3:Free play doesn't happen very much, and there are huge advantages to mixed age free play for the older kids in terms of leadership, for the younger kids in terms of having a model to observe about how to act and all of these soft skills of negotiation and controlling your own urges and desires, because there's another person there. This is what all happens constantly during free play, and the moment an adult is there, the kids stop all of these wonderful soft skills and turn to the parent to referee, and so we deprive kids constantly of these wonderful skills when we're there, and so this is why independence activities really require that a parent is not even in the vicinity, because even if they're not next to you, but they're within earshot or eyesight, it changes the dynamic completely between kids. Kids need to feel like they're actually on their own and they can't turn to someone to immediately fix the problem. That's where all the problem solving skills come out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they do, and I got a couple of thoughts on that. I have another memory of my daughter when she wanted to ride her bike to her girlfriend's house and it's about three miles away on a fairly busy road that doesn't have a bike path, and so we agreed to let her do it. But I secretly got on my bike and I rode far enough away. She couldn't see me. She was looking forward the whole time, thankfully, but just enough so I could keep her in eyesight. And when she got down the last hill I'm like, okay, I'll turn her on right home. But I was just like the nervous parent. I mean, what if something happens?
Speaker 3:We had a lot of parents do that, including my own sister and brother-in-law and see what can happen is my niece actually spotted my brother-in-law and was furious that she was actually not doing it independently. So I hear that and sometimes we actually allow that initially, but a true independence activity means you're not there.
Speaker 2:You're not there and maybe not with a cell phone either. Right, because, and we know in research, kids and teenagers, as soon as they need something, they just get on the phone.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And there's no problem solving. It's just text, mom or dad.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:They'll tell you what to do, or they'll send you money or whatever what we call the electronic umbilical cord.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and financially, yeah, they do that as well. The mixed-age play I was privileged to have a younger brother, five years younger, and he had some neighborhood buddies his age and then my two friends moved and so there was a couple of years there that I would spend time playing with them and I would be the quarterback and throw passes to all the kids or teach them on the bat or throw the ball, and it was just wonderful. Now, the other side to that is when I had an older brother, five years older than me, and he had a couple of buddies and there was one or two that you learned pretty quick to stay away from, because if you knew if they came around they'd start teasing you or calling you shrimpy or whatever and flexing their muscles or whatever. So you learn to negotiate the negatives too yes.
Speaker 3:so yeah, this is a great point, because all of what I'm saying does not imply that this is going to go smoothly or there is not going to be problems. But even when that happens, there are important lessons to be learned, and so kids benefit, even when there's a mean kid around or something you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to figure that out. And then you also hear things. One big one for me was hearing from an older girl down in the neighborhood that if you played the Beatles album I can't remember which one but if you played it backwards it was like a satanic song or something and we were like whoa. And she's the first time I heard about a voodoo magic and people get you drinking somewhere. They'd fall asleep and they'd be buried and they'd wake up and I was like oh my gosh, but you hear all the older kids stuff too and what they're exposed to. But there's benefits in that.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're learning about the generation older than you and kids pretty much are always wanting to be older. At my age I want it to slow down, but for kids they're always thinking about the big one is I'm almost five and they could be four in two months. Is I'm almost five and they could be four in two months, but I'm almost five.
Speaker 3:This is one of the oldest findings in psychology the innate urge to be independent and to be grown up, and we see it even at age two. And so this is what independence therapy does it uses this natural urge to be independent to the child's benefit. And my wife and I often talk about my daughter, who's now 23,. But when she was two, she would pronounce, announce that she and she didn't have the language right, but she would say I want to do it by yourself. And at age two she would get very upset if someone would try to do something for her.
Speaker 2:And so it's just it's a no-brainer to use that to a child's benefit. Yeah, I always like to think that the child's first act of independence is when they close their mouth and they won't open it when you're feeding them. I guess that's true. They're starting already, so it starts younger too. I think that first statement of I get to control what goes in my mouth. And your daughter, from what you told me, is a rising pop star she is. You've got to have some tough skills to be able to do that. You've got to emotionally be tough.
Speaker 3:A lot of rejection, a lot of hard work and a lot of independence. She's traveling around the world. She's been getting on airplanes since she was young, negotiating contracts and things like that, and it's really nice to see.
Speaker 2:That is very independent. Now, one thing I think is worthwhile looking back historically in terms of parents have always had anxiety about their kid and the truth is, if you're not watching the preschoolers fairly closely, in ancient times one was going to end up in the stream, floating away, another is going to walk off into the wilderness and fall through the ice or fall in the fire or stick their hand in it. Parents had to monitor. There were real fears, but I know in the was it the 70s? The research on the milk carton kits about child kidnappings and putting the faces on milk cartons, and have you seen that it really there wasn't this dramatic rise in kidnappings historically, but it got in the news and that campaign started and I've seen people attribute that to some of this hysteria for parents.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And now parents are dealing with school shootings.
Speaker 3:Seventy-five percent of our parents are afraid for their kids being shot at school being shot at school, yeah, so when we look at objective statistics on danger and the risk of death and injury very clear they have all plummeted. We live in the safest time we ever have. However, we have this threat detector in our skull that has not changed very much in the last million years, and it has a job to do, which is to keep us safe, and that's wonderful when we need it, but it doesn't like downtime, and so it's always looking for what is the next threat, and the bar will go down over time. And if that threat is that you feel threatened by somebody disagreeing with you or having a different political opinion, that creates the same fight-flight response that walking in front of a lion did a million years ago. And so we have this disconnect between our biology and our environment, not to say there are not still risks out there, but the amount of energy we spend on those risks doesn't match the actual risk.
Speaker 2:Right when you look at the actual math and the statistics. One of my classes for third graders over the years has been it's called the magic hat and it's like this cat in a hat, fluffy hat and I load it with Starburst and then we do various. I teach them predictability and the math behind risk and we talk about okay, let's say, you left your bicycle outside on the street overnight. What's the chance of it being stolen? And then I put an X on one of the starbursts and I fill it with 20 starbursts and every kid gets one and we see if somebody gets the X. If you leave your bike on the street, there is a good chance it's going to be gone. If you leave your bike on the street, there is a good chance it's going to be gone.
Speaker 2:Especially Denver has one of the highest bike theft rates in the US because there's a lot of bikes here and a lot of expensive bikes. But then we say, okay, how could we change the odds of that? Let's say you at least put it up by the front door. So then I'll throw another 20 star verse in and we pass them out and see if anybody got it. And then I say, okay, now we could put it in the garage and make sure the garage is closed and I had a bunch of more Starbursts or you could put it in the backyard and lock it. How?
Speaker 3:visual, that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then no matter the Starburst, we would be next on it only on occasion. And we talk about yes, it could still happen, you could get the one with the Starburst, but you've decreased your risk by just doing some simple things and you can apply that to anything in life.
Speaker 3:So risk is something we talk about a lot, because when we're introducing the idea of independence activities to parents, their mind, as it's designed to do, immediately goes to risk, and that's actually helpful to understand that side of it. What is harder to see is the risk of inaction. And so if you can describe to parents and acknowledge, yes, if you do these independence activities, there is risk, but the alternative is not zero risk. So let's talk about if we overprotect, if we don't allow independence, that is a sneaky kind of risk. But once parents understand that there is actually risk on the other side, then the equation becomes less obvious that we need to protect at all times. It's about two kinds of risk and then it's an easier sort of convincing for the parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the risk risk when it comes to overprotecting. You're protecting your child from an immediate risk that you're worried about them doing. You're not thinking ahead in the future that if you keep doing this, then your child is going to be more risky in life because they don't know how to handle things.
Speaker 3:That's right. Even with something like danger and that's one of the things that the independence activities purposely involve some risk of injury is. Even if our goal was to reduce injury rates as much as possible, the way we would do that would not actually be to make sure our child is never in a risky situation. It is to give them a ton of practice for the risk, assessing it and dealing with it and problem solving, and that actually makes them safer in the long run, which is if we can change the time horizon of what parents are thinking about, then again it's an easier ask of parents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you have to think long term.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:You got to think long term.
Speaker 3:Our brains are not great at that.
Speaker 2:No, and I, like you, mentioned this. I like to say we have ancient brains that are still the same, living in this modern culture.
Speaker 3:Definitely.
Speaker 2:And it's a big mismatch.
Speaker 3:We actually. That's one way to think about psychiatric problems in general. This is what has been called the mismatch hypothesis that one of the big drivers of why we have psychological or psychiatric problems is rooted in the mismatch between our biology and our environment. And anxiety is, I think, the easiest one to see that we have these systems in place that are meant to keep us safe in a in an actually very dangerous environment and the plains of africa where, for example, if you were rejected by your small tribe, that was instant death because you could not survive on your own. And we now live in a time where if a friend doesn't want to be your friend anymore, there's no risk to your physical life. But our brains don't get that and so they panic. And then we see a lot of the problems with social anxiety that we see now.
Speaker 1:And so it's a nice.
Speaker 3:It doesn't explain everything, but it's a nice way to understand why mental health problems happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've used that analogy in middle school talks, because middle schoolers, their nonverbal brains are exploding and they're learning and the friends become everything and they're learning how to be part of the group right and doing things they know are morally wrong, but they want to be accepted and I embrace that. Yeah, that's normal, because your ancient brain is afraid of being excluded, because if they kicked you out, it would literally die. You die.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's not true. Now you can make friends with other kids right, or have friends at home.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's all sorts of friends and you're not going to be left to die. Yeah, and we can just go to King Soopers or have friends at home. There's all sorts of friends and you're not going to be left to die and we can just go to King Soopers for food. We don't have to hunt, we don't have to pick berries, we just go to the store and you'll be fine. But yeah, that ancient brain gets in our way a lot, I would think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we need it occasionally, but it causes lots of problems the rest of the time.
Speaker 2:Lots of havoc. Now one area for kids. So one of my subspecialties is children with ADHD and we know that they have four times the accident rate of neurotypical kids four times the accidental death rate. Because they often don't assess the risks. They just do it, yes, and then end up getting injured. So part of me when I tell parents is you have to. Every child is different and my first book, wired and Connected, which is a brain-based book on child development social, emotional, behavioral is you have to look at your child and how's the frontal inflection? Do they have good impulse control or is it really poor? Then you adjust the parenting towards that child so you don't want to squish that ADHD child's energy and their drive for risk and getting a dopamine juice out of it, but you also want them. You're going to have to focus more on safety. Absolutely Okay, let's really think about that before you go climb the gutter and get on the roof.
Speaker 3:So I get this question a lot, which is, how do we adapt independence therapy to particular populations like kids on the spectrum or kids with ADHD?
Speaker 3:And it's a great question, and I haven't specifically studied independence therapy for kids who have ADHD. But what you're saying is exactly right, which is there are many independence activities that, if they go wrong, there's no chance of serious injury or death, and so for kids who are inattentive, those are the kinds of things that we tend to do, so, for example, painting a wall in your room would be a good match. For a kid with ADHD, riding a bike next to a busy highway would not be a good match, and so we generally start with those that have much less chance of a catastrophic outcome, and then we build from that. But kids with ADHD need lots and lots of practice with doing things that require attention. This is how we build that muscle, and so what ends up happening is many times, because they're not good at those things, parents will do it for them, because it's a hassle, and we again are depriving these kids of the practice that they need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and learning from their mistakes in a reasonable way. And my favorite thing with my, we've done social skills groups for 40 years now and I don't run them anymore. I got too old. But I would always take the middle schoolers and the high schoolers on camping trips and there would always be that kid. I'd give pretty clear instructions like okay, we're going to get the tents out, Now I want you to put your sleeping bags in the tent in case it rains. 70, 80, 80 did that, but you'd always have one or two just left it out while we were adventuring and they came back and had a wet sleeping bag and I'm like I guess I should have learned from that hopefully next time you won't?
Speaker 2:it's all natural and I love best for conferences.
Speaker 3:So I yeah, I talk to parents a lot about how kids learn and we talk about different ways of learning, and a lecture from your parents is probably the hundredth best way to learn, whereas a natural consequence with an immediate outcome is probably the best way to learn. And so something like I talk to lots of parents who get into these daily arguments with kids about wearing a coat or something like that, and once we quit that and we allow a child to be cold, then that often fixes itself. So we call it one trial learning in my field. It takes one time.
Speaker 2:One trial. I love that.
Speaker 3:And then we don't. We, forever, can get rid of that argument, and there are endless numbers of arguments that we can turn into a natural consequence.
Speaker 2:I love that. A natural consequence. My daughter she's 19 now. She joined our family at age seven and she has massive ADHD. She's 19, and she said the other day I think I really need to move out and learn how to live on my own, because that's how I learn best. And she said you give me all these ideas and tell me how to do things, but I just need to figure it out for myself. Credit to her for saying that yeah, we're about that point too.
Speaker 3:I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 2:Now I could go on and on, but just in a brief summary in terms of your treatment protocol.
Speaker 3:So you have it designated as set sessions with the child and then comorbid set sessions with the parent, Not really it's overall it's just five sessions, and the first session is parents only, the second session is parents and kids, and then the other three are mostly the child individually telling us how the independence activities went and then analyzing a little bit about what there is to learn about what happened. This is where we get the generalization what did you learn about yourself when you did so and what did you learn about the world? And then at the end of those last three sessions we tend to bring the parents in so the child can tell the parent what they learned and then we plan for the next week of independence activities. So it's just five sessions. Again, super simple, super short, does not require a lot of expertise. And that's what I like about it Super short, does not require a lot of expertise.
Speaker 2:And that's what I like about it. Yeah, I love it. And then, how long will that go on? For how many weeks do you typically?
Speaker 3:It's probably about seven weeks so by the end. We sometimes go to every other week. So five to seven weeks, five sessions.
Speaker 2:And then your research review that you're doing now. Is that looking for lower reduced anxiety rates?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we published a study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders the first test of independence therapy, first peer-reviewed article and we examined things like the level of anxiety in the child, their own confidence to do difficult things, a parent's confidence in their own child, even how much time parents were spending with their child, which we assumed would go down in a good way when kids are doing more things independently, and so overall what we found was that the treatment worked faster than medication and typical cognitive behavioral therapy, and the effects were just as big for much less effort required from a therapist and from a family.
Speaker 3:So we were super excited by what we found.
Speaker 2:It makes sense because they're doing it. Yeah, they're not just talking about it, and that's one of the reasons our groups for our kids are very interactive. We're playing games, we're going on field trips, kids have to negotiate and learn new skills. It's all they're doing it. We're not just talking about it.
Speaker 3:I was just talking to my new doctoral students yesterday. It was their first class of graduate study. When you have this choice point as a therapist between a cognitive strategy to talk about something or a behavioral strategy to do something, always go with the behavioral strategy Far more powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or matching together, but you have to do it.
Speaker 3:That's interesting, because a behavioral strategy actually turns into a cognitive strategy when you talk about what happened. Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And all our activities would always have a process time after to talk about how did it go. That's right. What did we learn?
Speaker 3:And we focus on surprise. Surprise is the driver of behavior change, and so the biggest question is what surprised you about what happened? And that's where we get the really nice change the bus we had a little girl who missed her bus stop, so the bus went a couple stops past where she wanted to get off. So what surprised you about that? What surprised me was I was able to figure out how to walk back two blocks to get to school. And what does that tell you about yourself? That things don't have to go exactly as planned and I can figure it out. That's the good stuff that we see.
Speaker 2:I love what you just said because I think one of the best blessings you can give your child is when you say that when they call out to you to help, for help, and you say I'm confident in you that you'll figure it out. And then you walk away and let them figure it out.
Speaker 2:So it's really instilling confidence, and I do because I know you have a session, but I want to read some of the benefits on your sheet. So for parents out there, for your kids confidence. And you want that Bravery and toughness. You want that too. The world is a harsh place and you have to be tough. You do have to have an edge to get by Creativity, more grown-up responsibilities and less anxiety. And for the parents, number one time off. You need time off right. Those kids weren't allowed in the house in the summertime. Mom kicked us out For some reason. My sisters got to stay in, they helped my mom or they read books, but every morning mom's with boys outside and we're like great We've had a lot of parents going on dates with all the free time they have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, confidence in your child and less anxiety for yourself, and those are all wonderful benefits of all that, and it's also the feeling and I just love the term nakas I don't say it right, it's a Hebrew term when you have pride in your offspring, and there's so many times.
Speaker 2:My son and I were big into adventures. We actually had a blog Adventure Dad, and it's all out in the wilderness a lot here in Colorado, but around the world, different adventures, and there's nothing like walking with him when he was four up a mountain, holding his hand or carrying him to then him growing older and able to keep up with me till when he was about 17,. We're outside Aspen climbing.
Speaker 3:He's holding your hand.
Speaker 2:And he whooped my butt up that mountain. I was dying and he was so proud of himself. And then he was waiting for dad and that's just an amazing thing. And on Mont Rainier that's ice picks, the whole thing. It was brutal. And we got up about a thousand feet from the top and I was done, I was cooked, and the guy went around and he said, okay, how's your gas tank? And I'm like I got about a quarter tank left. And he said you have to have enough left to get down the mountain. And I thought to myself I think I'm turning around with the other four guys, but my son went to the top and I was more proud of him and more excited about that adventure that he made it than if I had made it Absolutely. It didn't really matter to me, but to know that he did it.
Speaker 3:And this is what we hear from parents constantly. Is this pride and this relief almost yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a great thing to have. It's been a true delight I could talk for another hour with you. It's just been thing to have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's been a true delight I could talk for another hour with you, same here.
Speaker 2:It's just been awesome. I'd love to see your review stuff. When you get it, maybe send it to me and parents. It sounds like the best way for parents to find out about your work is maybe to go to Let Grow. Let Grow is a good place, yeah.
Speaker 3:Following me on Twitter is a good place to see what I'm up to and I'm giving some talks, including a free one for parents coming up in the next. I think it's about two weeks. So it's just a doctor, just the letters D-R and then Camilo Ortiz, c-a-m-i-l-o-r-t-i-z. That's my Twitter handle and that's a good place to see what I'm up to. They can also visit my website, which is drcamilloortizcom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, and we'll put that on the show notes For our parents out there. I hope you enjoy the show. If you can hang on for another minute, you might appreciate this. I always end the show with things of beauty make me cry or just touch me deeply, and this one just happened this past weekend and it was that, again, referring to NACUS this pride in your offspring, but you can also feel that with your clients.
Speaker 2:If you're a clinician, you can feel that if you're a teacher, if you're a coach and I'm a big sports person, and one this week was when tiny Northern Illinois University went to Notre Dame to play the number five team in the country and they're in a different division. This is a small school. They should have lost 60 to nothing and they beat Notre Dame in Notre Dame and their head football coach was this massive man and they interviewed him and he was bawling, he was streaming of tears and he talked about how proud he was of his players, how they were a family, how they fought adversity, how they were tough, they stayed to their game plan and he just cried the whole time and he was like I'm sorry for my tears and I was just like, no, it's okay and it was just fabulous.
Speaker 3:And when this happens with parents, when they get a taste of this nachos as you said, nachos, that's right, you got it. Yeah, I live in New York, yeah, oh that's right. It's very common around here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in New York you call salsa ketchup.
Speaker 3:Sorry, York, you call salsa ketchup Sorry. But when you get a little taste of this pride in your kids, it's addictive and you want more of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, it really is, and when you can say they did it themselves. I was asked on an interview with Colorado Public Radio and they said what are you most proud of that you did as a parent? And I said my son. I get a lot of compliments about him but and they'll say, oh, he's such a god, he's such a fine young man, he's a surgeon. And I say, and what I said was I let him be, gave him the freedom to be who he wanted to be, and that's what I'm most proud of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't me, it was his genetics. Well, I gave him the basis and I allowed him to do what he wanted, including starting a welding shop in our backyard when he was in 6th grade and he started learning to weld and do artistic welding and it was scary with all that fire, but he wanted to do it, and so I just let him go his own direction and that's one of the best gifts you can give your kids. This has been just so much fun and for our audience. If enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and until next time as a parent, just relax and remember you only have to be this side of good enough. Thank you.