Ep 228: Repairing Relationships

Terry Real, author of Us, comes on the show to discuss the
importance of healthy conflict in family relationships. We also
talk about why parents should encourage boys to be in touch with
their emotions and debate the dangers of protecting kids’
feelings.


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Full show notes


For many of us, a perfectly harmonious home sounds like a dream.
We’d love it if teens came home by curfew, our advice was always
graciously accepted, and conflict was totally nonexistent. We’d
never have to stress about what to make for dinner or worry about
who our kids are hanging out with. Everything would be perfect
and easy…right?





As nice as harmony sounds, it’s simply unrealistic–and not
necessarily beneficial either. In fact, psychologists (like the
one we’re interviewing today) believe that conflict and
disagreement are essential to building strong, nuanced, durable
relationships with our kids. Without conflict, there’s no repair.
Without repair, relationships never grow and evolve.





To explain how parents can embrace disrepair and negative
emotions in relationships, we’re sitting down with Terry Real,
author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving
Relationship. Terry is a world-renowned family therapist,
speaker, and author of multiple other bestselling books about
relationships. He’s also the founder of the Relational Life
Institute, where he offers workshops for parents, individuals and
couples. He also holds professional training for clinicians to
adopt his unique relational life therapy method.





In this episode, we’re talking about how conflict is essential to
building strong bonds with kids. Plus, we discuss a concerning
parenting phenomenon called false empowerment, and explain why
parents need to encourage sensitivity in boys.





How Embracing Conflict Leads To Harmony


Relationships are never perfect–and they shouldn’t be, according
to Terry. Parents shouldn’t feel bad about having conflicts with
kids, and should even encourage a little disagreement sometimes.
We’re only human, says Terry, and we’re bound to bump heads. It’s
the reconciliation after disagreement that really forms the
backbone of a strong relationship, he explains. 





In fact, for teens to have healthy emotional processing in
adulthood, they really only need to get along with parents about
30% of the time, Terry says. We don’t have to provide kids with a
perfect upbringing–we just have to be human, he explains. If we
can bounce back from the discord and survive all the
complications of our natural human flaws, we can create strong
bonds with our kids.





But how do we find that resolution when conflict arises? Terry
explains a few different methods in the episode. One includes
providing kids with a path to redemption, no matter how much we
want to ground them into eternity. If we discipline them without
offering them a way to redeem themselves, we’re not giving them
the chance to really learn and change their behavior. In the
episode, Terry tells a story about how his own son found a path
to reconciliation after refusing to do his chores.





Another thing we shouldn't be afraid to do is criticize our kids,
Terry says. In the episode, we talk about how we can help our
kids develop healthy self esteem by allowing them to fail and
struggle.



Confidence vs. Self-Esteem





We want kids to be confident; there’s no question about that. So
we encourage them, giving them as much positive reinforcement as
possible. But sometimes we go a little too far, explains Terry.
In our quest to give kids high self-esteem, we might just leave
them with the impression that they can do no wrong–grandiosity,
as Terry calls it.





This feeling of superiority acts as an opposite to shame, which
is what happens when kids don’t get enough encouragement, Terry
says. Disempowering kids and making them feel worthless leads to
shame, while refusing to let kids fail, struggle or take
criticism can lead to grandiosity. And while shame might seem
like the worst of the two, a superiority complex can be very
damaging to teens as they try to swim in the adult world, says
Terry.  If we strike the right balance with our
encouragement, we can avoid cultivating both shame and
grandiosity in our kids, he explains. 





In our interview, Terry shares a tale that helps us understand
how parents can bring kids down a notch when needed. When his son
had a playdate with a friend but spent the entire time ignoring
the friend's wishes, Terry took his kid aside and told him the
truth: that the friend seemed miserable through the whole
interaction. Although this hurt his son’s feelings, Terry
explained that when we invite someone into our lives, we have to
make room for their needs and feelings too. These kinds of
lessons are an essential part of making sure we raise kids with
healthy self-esteem.





Despite the tough love, Terry also believes we need to help
kids–especially boys–embrace their sensitivity. In the episode,
we’re talking about how we can raise boys who don’t suppress
their feelings.





Raising Sensitive Boys


It’s not just parents who might teach boys to feel out of touch
with their feelings, it’s society as a whole, Terry explains. The
patriarchy starts pushing young men away from vulnerability from
around age three to five, often before they can even read! Even
if your home is somewhat liberal, kids are exposed to these
gender dynamics at school, online, and even on TV, Terry says.





Terry explains that girls go through a similar gender-related
experience as they grow older, during the adolescent years.
Around this time, girls are known to become less assertive, less
bold, and generally less likely to speak their minds. This is
also a result of societal conditioning, Terry says, and it’s
something that often keeps young women from becoming their best
selves.





Parents need to be actively denying this gender conditioning, he
says, if we want to raise emotionally healthy kids. He encourages
parents to help sons stay connected to their feelings while
they’re still young, so they don’t have to do the difficult work
of reconnecting to their emotions as adults. The more we can
allow them to be vulnerable with themselves and others the
better.





The same idea goes for girls–it’s important to help them speak
their mind, Terry says. In our interview, he offers tips for
helping teens embrace their emotions, especially when they’re
pushing you away and don’t seem to want to talk about anything at
all. Parents might have to dig sometimes to get teens to share
their feelings, but when they do, the results are worth it, says
Terry.





In the Episode…..


We cover a lot of fascinating material with Terry in this week’s
episode! On top of the topics discussed above we also talk about:


What the if/then method is and how you can apply it

Why dominance is an ineffective parenting tactic

How parents can take time-outs

What we can do to be better listeners



If you enjoyed this week's episode, check out Terry’s website,
terryreal.com. Don’t forget to share and subscribe, and we’ll see
you next week!


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