Brain Expert Doctor Amen on the Biggest Parenting Mistakes, Divorce & Spanking
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If you're connected, children pick your values. If you're not connected, they pick

the opposite values just to irritate you. We sat down with Dr. Daniel Amen, a world-renowned psychiatrist, brain expert, and 12-time New York Times bestselling author. Amen has scanned over 200,000 people's brains, including those of NFL players and celebrities. As parents of two under two, we hit him with the hard questions like, should you spank your children? Is there a safe amount of alcohol to consume? And how does divorce affect a child's brain?

We are new parents. We're just still figuring things out. We have a one-year-old and a seven-month-old, so super, super honored to be here with you and pick your brain about what you know about the brain and how that affects parenting as well as how we can better ourselves to be good examples for our kids. Thanks for having me. And I have a brand new book called Raising Mentally Strong Kids. It's the instruction manual that should have come with your kids, right? They sent you home from the hospital and

That's like good luck. Yeah. Something that you said in an interview about your book that I thought was really interesting was you mentioned that one of the best things you can do for your kids is to love your spouse. And I'm just so curious, like, why is that? Because I feel like that's definitely different than how a lot of people approach parenting. Well, if you think of the child, they're sort of half you and half your partner. And if you're not kind,

to your partner, they take it personally. Like, oh, maybe something's the matter with me. And if you want to decrease their stress, don't put them in a conflicted marriage or conflicted relationship. And you want to be very intentional.

Of all right, what's the goal? What kind of parent do I want to be? What kind of child do I want to raise? So you match your behavior to what you want. I think of the most important things I teach my patients, know what you want and make sure your behavior fits like,

I don't have any tattoos. I'm thinking about it. But if I got one, it would be, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals? And you have to tell your brain, right? Your brain doesn't know what you want. You have to tell it, you know, I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship with my wife. I always want that.

But I get these rude thoughts that just show up and I don't say them because they don't fit. The other thing, if you want to raise mentally strong kids, you have to be mentally strong yourself. You can't believe every stupid thing you think. You need to be focused. You need to be intentional. These things of mental strength. I'm so curious. You've talked about like

How you used to get so much gratitude and fulfillment and self-esteem yourself by like solving your children's problems. What were those problems? What were those things that your children were trying to tackle and you just came in and fixed them yourself? You know, even simple things like what are they going to wear and what are they going to eat and, you know, what time they're going to do their homework. And, you know, if they had a problem at school, it's like, oh, I could fix it. And then I realized...

I was getting self-esteem and stealing theirs because ultimately self-esteem comes from competence. Are you competent to do your life? You don't want them to suffer.

except you do want them to suffer because it's through suffering that we grow. And so I wrote this book with Charles Fay, who's the president of the Love and Logic Institute. And that's a program that helped my daughter be the amazing human being she is because she and my wife used to fight like crazy over homework. And Tana just...

look, I did second grade. If you don't want to do your homework, you're going to have to deal with the teacher. And you'll make new friends when you repeat second grade. And she liked how it fit and then went, oh, this is on me to do. So she figured out. And now at 20, she's just one of the most competent people I know. She doesn't want you to solve her problems. You create, and the more successful you are,

the more you can hire people to solve their problems and that creates entitlement. And I bet you've never met a happy entitled person. I haven't. What does that look like now parenting a 20 year old? Oh, that must be completely different than a second grader. I see myself always as a good coach. You know, the more I've learned, I wouldn't say my dad was like that. He was more like a bad coach.

Bad coaches notice what you do wrong, and they never let you forget it. Where good coaches, like good parents, notice what you do right and teach you when you could do it. And so I think the most important skill when you're raising a 20-year-old is listening. It's modeling, right? If you don't model...

the message of your life, you suck as a messenger, right? So the message of my life is brain hell. And so, you know, if I came in hungover, you'd never believe anything I said, right? Yeah. And so if I want to be mentally strong, well, it's modeling that. It's not coming home and yelling at people or blaming other people for the problems I have in my life. It's eating right. It's living. Yeah.

the message that I have in my life. How did your relationship with your dad change over time? Because I've noticed you talking about how it wasn't the best at times and how maybe you despised him. And maybe the bigger question is like, what should good dads be doing to make sure that they're doing the absolute most they can to make sure their child is developing correctly? It's time, right? And I'm one of seven. So it's hard when you have seven.

But I had no time with him. And I played every sport. I played baseball, and I played basketball, and I played football. Don't let your kids play football. But I played tennis. I played golf. We come from a family where we played a lot. Never showed up. Why not football? Not once. Well, why not football? Your brain is soft. It's about the consistency of softball.

tofu custard somewhere between egg whites and jello and it's housed in a really hard skull that has sharp bony ridges concussions are bad for brain development right I used to skateboard a lot as a kid my parents were so adamant about me wearing a helmet and I ended up getting grounded because I was so mad because all the cool kids weren't wearing helmets it was it was cool to go to the skate park and not have a helmet on um

And they ended up taking me to the principal's office because they couldn't get through to me. So like, okay, maybe his school principal will get through to him. And so I eventually came around. I got a cooler looking helmet. I put some stickers on it.

to make myself look cooler, appear cooler. But the football thing really got me because both my brothers played football. I played a little football growing up. I ended up getting a tumor growing on my spine when I was 12. So I had to quit football, get that removed. Part of my backbone was taken out. So it was a pretty invasive surgery. But...

Hearing you say that, though, I'm like, I'm thankful that I didn't play a lot of football because I'm sure my brain is healthier for it. I'm sure it is. That's so funny because, you know, I played. But, you know. But you played football growing up. I did. Okay. A lot. And I loved it. And I could throw a football farther than any of my friends. Yeah.

And then later in life, I did the big NFL study. So at a time when the NFL was not telling the truth about traumatic brain injury in football, I scanned and treated what is now over 400 NFL players. And the damage is awful. And as I did that, I'm like, you know, I'm so glad I sat on the bench for so much of my football career. Yeah.

Because that's the safest place to be on the field, be the backup quarterback, sit on the bench. So my self-esteem just went up because I'm like, oh, God was protecting me. Yeah. So I could do the mission of my life. But back to the question about my dad, because, you know...

He is from immigrant parents that were very poor. And he went to work when he was 12 in a grocery store and ended up being the chairman of the board of a $4 billion grocery business, Unified Grocers. So driven, very successful business.

But my siblings will hate when I say this. He sucked as a dad, right? Very little time, notice what you did wrong. And when I told him I wanted to be a psychiatrist in 1979, he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor.

Well, I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. That's bad parenting, right? I find my passion and he basically tells me I'm stupid. How did that make you feel? But I had learned earlier that he had no sway over me. I mean, he swayed me feeling bad about the relationship.

But because he didn't do two important things, time, actual physical time, and listening, he wasn't a good listener. As soon as you said something, he'd tell you how to think. 1972, I turned 18. And Richard Nixon was running against Senator George McGovern. And he told me if I voted for McGovern, the country would go to hell.

But we had no relationship. So I voted for McGovern mostly to piss him off. And then the country went to hell, but it had nothing to do with McGovern because it was Watergate and all of that nonsense. So if you want to have influence with your children, time with them. And there's an exercise in the book, my favorite exercise called special time, 20 minutes a day.

do something with them they want to do. And during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. That part about the 20 minutes really stuck out to me because I'm in this stage with my one-year-old where...

I get up with him in the morning, I feed him breakfast, I'm changing his diaper, I'm doing all these things for him, but it's not like we're having true quality time where we're just playing. And then around dinner time, same thing, I'm feeding him dinner and we obviously, we tag team. Abby's an extremely involved mom. She spends a lot of time with the kids during the day while I'm working and she also, Abby also works during the day too.

But something, when you mentioned that in your book, I was like, okay, maybe like what I should do is Griffin loves to just throw toys into our pool and then I'll go in and fetch them with the pool net and he'll just keep throwing them back in. So we have this game where I just play fetch with Griffin. He throws his toys into our pool and I pick them up and he has so much fun. Like there's nothing...

that he enjoys more than doing that truly what gets me about your version of special time is the no questions thing because I feel like I'm constantly asking him questions and I kind of like even just like simple things because he's one I'm like what

What sound does a cow make? Like things like that. I want to know like what's the purpose behind that element of special time. Bonding. Yeah. As opposed to you quizzing him, which is a good thing to do, right? Yeah. I mean, learning is essential, but you want it to be without pressure. Mm-hmm.

Like without pressure to perform. Today's episode is sponsored by ZocDoc. As many of you know, I recently got diagnosed with ADHD and I truly have ZocDoc to thank for that because they made it really easy to schedule my appointment, which Abby actually did for me. Yeah. Yeah.

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ZocDoc.com/unplanned. ZocDoc.com/unplanned. Now back to the episode. When he's throwing things in the pool, he's developing his brain. He's developing a part of the brain called the cerebellum, the back bottom part of the brain that's involved in coordination. So it's involved in coordination, physical coordination, but also thought coordination, how quickly you can integrate.

new things, which is why all the video game addictions for kids is a disaster for them because their nervous system, which evolved to be physical,

they're not doing it. Their thumb representation in their brain is expanding. And do you know what other animal have large thumb representations? Monkeys. Which is, no. Oh, okay. We're evolving backwards. We don't want to evolve backwards. So keep them away from any screens. You should do it for as long...

As humanly possible. Oh, shoot. Keep them away. No, because those steal their attention. And yes, it gives you a break. Yeah. But...

At what cost? What about... At the cost of increasing their risk of depression. Because the screens were purposefully created to elicit dopamine responses in their brain. It hooks them. And I have five grandchildren. And my first one, nine months, he was addicted to an iPhone. I'm like, no way. But every time I'd see him, phone.

Phone pop up. Phone. And I'm like, no phone. Pop up. Phone. No phone. And it's like so irritating. And his parents ultimately got the message, thank God. But this is so important. This technology has been unleashed on our population. And all the neuroscience research is backsliding.

none of it says oh this is a good thing right even things like baby einstein are not great for kids we let our kid watch miss rachel which i don't know if you've heard of miss rachel but she's a language speech language pathologist he's learned a lot of a lot of words from miss rachel and he can point out like a giraffe and a bird and a bear like when he sees that you know those animals at the zoo because of miss rachel and i'm so curious even in that case where it's

purely educational, not all this big flashy stuff happening on the phone screen. Even that is not good. It's not good for them. Okay. Yeah. The American Academy of Pediatrics came out and said no screens before three. And I'm like, that's still young. Really? Yeah. Because it's a developing brain and you don't want their attention to

to require all the stimulation you get from the screen. So you want to be super careful about that. Anyways, back to my dad, because it's a great story. And it went on as trouble. So...

1979, I want to be a psychiatrist. 1991, I start imaging people's brains. I mean, that's one of my big claims to foreign fame. I have the world's largest database of brain scans related to behavior from nine months old to 105. So I've scanned a lot of people. And I'm like, oh my God, the brain's an organ just like your heart is an organ. You got to get your brain healthy. And so then I got really healthy because

And I started nudging my dad to get healthy. He's like, okay, you see nuts. Because, you know, it's like, why do you want to be a nut doctor? You see nuts. Now you're a health nut. What's with you and the nuts? And he literally made fun of me at gatherings for 25 years. And it was irritating, right? I mean, I sort of disconnected my self-esteem from him. Thank God for me.

But when he was 85, six years before he died, he got really sick. He had mold in his house and then he developed a heart arrhythmia and then heart failure. And I remember going over his house one day and he said, Danny, I'm sick of being sick. What do you want me to do?

And that was the moment. He did everything I asked him to do. In six months, he's lost 40 pounds. He's driving again. He's playing golf. He goes back to work. He's like, with my six siblings, you should listen to your brother. In fact, they would text me. It's like, tell him to stop. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to tell him to stop. And he was like my best friend the last year.

Five, six years of his life. That's really cool. Yeah. What did you tell him to do? How did he lose 40 pounds? I'm like, you've got to stop eating bad things. And he would text me labels of things. And like right in the middle of the label, it says brown sugar. I'm like, no, don't eat that. And so he really, he watched what he ate.

We started exercising like every Sunday I go over to his house and, and he's stubborn. I mean, you can sort of tell he's stubborn. And whenever we do a plank, he had to beat me. And he did a six minute plank one day. Like I'm dying in three minutes. Six minute plank.

And I'm like, you're a beast. - Speaking of healthy foods versus unhealthy foods, I've heard you mention before blueberries, if they're not organic, there's pesticides in that, right? Speak more to that of these foods that some people think, oh, this is like a healthy option, but there might be something in that that isn't good. - And organic blueberries are a very healthy option. I think of them as brain berries. And one of my favorite, you get a three pound bag of organic blueberries at Costco.

is feed them frozen blueberries because it's just sort of like candy. I have a cup of frozen blueberries every day, organic, because non-organic berries hold more pesticides than almost any fruit.

And so if you're at a restaurant and they're probably not organic, don't eat them. And play a game with the kids. What are their names? Griffin and August. So I would have Griffin's game and August's game. And so I had Chloe's game when Chloe was two. And I'd just go, good for your brain or bad for it.

Right. So you're like, what does a cow sound like? Just go good for your brain or bad for it. We'll call this Griffin's game. And if I said avocados, Chloe would go two thumbs up, God's butter. And if I said blueberries, once she knew, she'd put her little hands on her little hips and go, are they organic? Yeah.

Of course they're getting two thumbs up. God's candy. Cute. And if I said hitting a soccer ball with your head, oh, very bad for your brain. Right? And so you're just teaching them in a fun way to love their brain. Because if they love their brain, they're less likely to drink alcohol.

If they love their brain, when one of their friends says, let's get high, they're less likely to say yes. It's like, no, I love my brain. But all along, and they're not too young to just start playing the game, good for your brain or bad for it. I should write a children's book.

Chloe's game. Cute. Are you someone that, I mean, I guess now you don't drink alcohol, correct? But was alcohol something that was part of your life in the past? No. Never? Never.

Well, when I was 16, I got drunk on half a bottle of champagne and a six-pack of Michelob. And I was sick for like three days. My dad thought I was hysterical. I worked in the grocery store. He made me work in the liquor department just to like reinforce these bad feelings. And it just never appealed to me to be out of control.

Like, why do I want to dull myself? A little bit. That was never a problem for either one. And then when I got married the first time, my wife, two months later, tried to kill herself. I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. This is when I'm in medical school. And I knew Robin.

When I was 15, we dated every day. We talked to each other every day for three years. And then I went in the army and she married somebody else very bad. I never knew her dad was an alcoholic or that her dad beat her mom. So I've seen real serious problems with alcohol. And then as a psychiatrist, every day, one of my patient's problems is related to alcohol.

Why is it so common then? If it's so bad, why is everyone drinking? I feel like there's just like, you watch the Super Bowl. Every other ad is a drinking ad. Every other ad. Insurance, alcohol. Insurance, alcohol. Or pharmaceuticals. Yeah, pharmaceuticals. Why is that the world we live in? It's because we're indoctrinated, right? If you watch movies, you're just indoctrinated. Alcohol is everywhere. And we used to think it was a health food.

Right. Oh, you should have a glass or two of red wine a day. It's good for your heart. No, it's bad for your brain. And people just don't get it. And it's part of the indoctrination from our society. I wrote a book called The End of Mental Illness.

And then I have this writing device where I just imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do?

I'd create American society where we're watching a brain damaging sport, right? The NFL owns a day of the week. The NFL owns Sundays. Yeah. That watching a brain damaging sport, getting entertained by watching the demise of these men's families, right? You really understand what happens to their families with brain damage. While I'm being fat,

for alcohol while they're being given Gatorade, sugar water, on the sidelines. And you just go...

This is why we're in the problem that we're in in our society. Yeah. I'm curious how you'd respond to people that come from the field of thought that are like, oh, I'll have a glass of wine here or there, or I'll have sugar here or there, things like that. People that come from a moderation standpoint, how you respond to that. Yeah, everything in moderation is the gateway thought to hell. Because...

As soon as you say everything in moderation, what you're saying is I'm cheating. Ah, nobody's perfect.

And, you know, my wife periodically will have a glass of wine and I'll take a sip and I'm like, why are you drinking this? This is awful. Right? Whenever you have to develop a taste for something, it's probably not good for you. Right? You're overriding the body's natural, ew, this is probably poison. I don't know, my body likes cookies from the get-go. Yes, but cookies don't like you back. Right?

And you want to ask yourself this question. Like, I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. I've actually only dated him. I've only dated Abby.

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I'm only going to love someone who loves me back. And I'm married to my best friend. I'm not eating food or drinking things that doesn't love me. Like, why would I ever be in a bad relationship? Like, I love Oreo cookies, but they make me fat, depressed, and feeble-minded. Why would I continue in a relationship with that, right? Because I also love Honeycrisp apples, and they love me back.

As long as I don't squeeze them into apple juice. Because juice, whenever you unwrap sugar from its fiber source, think orange juice or apple juice, it turns toxic in your body. There's a great YouTube video about it by Robert Lustig called Sugar, the Bitter Truth. And, you know, one of my goals

is to end the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. So if I can get people to love their brain, and then you just this one question, do I love what I'm eating or drinking or doing?

And does it love me back? Can we talk about juice for a second? Because I think... No, let's not talk about juice. Well, that's been an area of conflict in our marriage. Oh my God. Because our son, you know, he has tasted juice. He's, you know, 21 months old. And of course he loves it. I mean, it tastes amazing when you're... Right, because it's mainlining sugar. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Before everyone at this table starts coming for me, it's about

95% juice, 95% water, but he thinks it's juice. Yeah, we'll take a cup and we'll fill it up essentially all the way with water and then he'll see us pour this glass of juice in at the top. And he's like, yes, juice. He loves that word. He goes, juice. Like he wants us to give him juice. So if it's a little bit, that's way better than pure juice. And my dad, again, we used to fight about this because he was a grower for Sunkist. Oh, okay.

I'm like, eat the orange, eat the orange, not the juice. Yeah, I'd be focused on what else can I teach him to love that he loves. So my grandson, Elias, who I love dearly, I love all of them dearly. But when he was a year, he's a very picky eater. And Tana, my wife, was working on one of her cookbooks. And she created something called Avocado Gelato.

which is made with avocados and raw cacao. And it's amazing. Her recipe is amazing. And I have this picture of his face in the chocolate. It was so cool. He loved it, and it loves him back. And every night at home and when he comes to visit, I make everybody brain-healthy hot chocolates.

So I take organic, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, heat it up, put a teaspoon of raw cacao in it, a little bit of sweet leaf chocolate stevia, heat it up, tastes amazing. It's got like 60 calories. I love it. It loves me.

Right? So you just have to find. And most people are creatures of habit. Mm-hmm. Right? So you really only have to find 20 things you love that love you. Mm-hmm. And one of my...

who I adore, ended up with Tourette's syndrome. It's a bad tick disorder where they have both motor ticks and vocal ticks. And the first thing I do with Tourette's is I put them on an elimination diet. We're going to eliminate gluten, dairy, corn, soy, artificial dyes, sweeteners, and sugar. Ticks went down by 90%.

And I'm like, so awesome. Next time I saw him, I said, that's so awesome. He goes, I don't like any of the food. And he came to stay with me. All right, our goal before you leave, 20 foods you love that love you back.

And we went to the grocery store to get it up and down every aisle. When he left, there were 53 foods he loved. You just got to shift your mindset away from, I can't have this, I can't have that, to I get to have this because it helps my brain. And when you get away from I can't to I get to because that's my goal to have a great brain.

It's easy. As long as you stay with the deprivation mindset, you don't change. So we finally got through this really hard...

portion of our journey as parents where we were up in the night all the time doing bottle feedings and Abby was pumping and there'd be you know screaming kids and poopy diapers and we still have two kids under two in diapers right now but it's gotten so much easier but with that whole journey came sleep deprivation

And I couldn't notice, but you've mentioned a lot in your books and interviews how important sleep is for a healthy brain. But what the heck? What are you supposed to do for your brain at that point in your life? Yeah, it's really hard. And so you prioritize it to make it a priority rather than staying up and watching the next episode of Yellowstone. It's like, oh, no, got to go to bed. Catch it when you can. Yeah.

And try to do everything else right. I have active NFL players that I love, that I treat. And one of them signed an $88 million contract. So he's going to play. And it's like, if you're going to do something brain damaging, you got to do everything else right. And Tom Brady actually writes about this in his book, TB12, which is...

I mean, he played until he was 45 years old at an extraordinarily high level. Unreal. Right? But he did everything else right, including he went to bed at 9 o'clock.

Now, if I was married to his model wife, I'd probably go to bed at 9 o'clock too. What does your regimen for yourself look like? Because you don't drink alcohol. When you drink hot cocoa, you're doing it organic and you're making it healthy. What are your healthy habits? I'm pretty routine. What does a typical morning look like for you? I usually get up at 5.30 or 6 and...

make my wife a healthy cappuccino and we sit and chat for half an hour. I'll go walk the dog. I have a huddle with my team. It used to be 8 o'clock, 8.30 and now I've moved it to noon because now I just want the morning to think and catch up. I stretch, I work out. I do a lot of meetings while I walk.

So, you know, everybody's like on Zoom for an hour. I'm like, I'm not a big fan. I'm like, take yourself off. They know what I look like. Not any better looking today than I was yesterday. And I'm usually walking while I do that. Do you lift weights? Very purposeful. I lift weights twice a week. And I'm very purposeful with what I eat and what I do.

And every morning, I start every day. It's actually on my to-do list. My master to-do list. Today is going to be a great day. And when I go to bed at night, I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And I literally start at the beginning of my day looking for all the things I love.

And the bad things will show up and I'm like, push them away. Like deal with you later. And I'm like, what did I love? And recently my mother-in-law died and it was terrible. Two months, but yet every night what went well today. And it really helped me just sort of stay even and,

during that stressful time. I noticed you said you spend the morning with your wife and you spend 30 minutes together just chatting. Is that 20-minute daily time with your kids, would you say that applies to marriages too where a husband and wife should have minimum 20 minutes devoted to each other, no phones, no drilling each other over questions about the kids, but just quality time? How does that same principle apply to...

Relationships require two things. Time. Like actual physical time. Put the phone down. And then a willingness to listen. So if you get really good when Griffin says something, just repeat it. And then be quiet. So he'll keep talking. If you...

I don't think I had any of that, right? It was a skill I had to learn when I became a psychiatrist, active listening. As soon as you open your mouth, someone wanted to interrupt and put their thought in your head. Like, no, just repeat back what he says and then be quiet.

And then he'll say something else. And if he feels like you listen, you're connecting, you're bonding, you're going to have influence over him. Because if you're connected, children pick your values.

If you're not connected, they pick the opposite values just to irritate you. Yeah. Speaking of irritating, I love them so much. But something that's been difficult as he approaches too, which I feel like is a very infamous age for toddlers. We're starting to maybe tiptoe into the tantrum territory. And I want to, like, I'm curious what your feedback would be in the midst of a tantrum. Right.

What do we as parents do? Because I feel like I've just experimented with a few different things, like ignoring or like trying to talk through or even giving in. And honestly, all three of those I strike out every time. Well, absolutely you will. Make it a rule. If you have a tantrum to get your way, the answer is no. It's always going to be no. Go for it. So clarity, you're not upset. It's really important because the ADD kids...

They're masterful at figuring out how to make mama yell at them or how to make daddy beat them because they're conflict seeking. They don't know they do it, right? It's completely unconscious. But my daughter...

Caitlin, who has ADD, when she was three, she used to run up and kick her brother. And I'm like, why is she doing that? And if he didn't chase her, she'd run up and kick him again. And I'm like, oh. I mean, she taught me so much about ADD. But they tend to be conflict-seeking. But if you're calm...

See, when you give into it, you just taught him to have a tantrum to get his way. That's not the message you want because that'll make you crazy over time. And he's old enough to understand. If you have a fit, the answer's no. And initially, if you've been giving in, the behavior will get worse. But if you just stick with it, and if you can't stand it, called man, it's like, can't stand this,

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maybe one, maybe two kids with ADHD because I actually just a month ago got diagnosed officially. I've kind of known that I had it like my whole life. My kindergarten teacher told my parents like, hey, this kid like definitely has it. And I know my parents were like not about it. I think it kind of scared them. So they held me back a grade. And so I ended up doing kindergarten twice and

Which is probably really smart. Oh, really? Yeah. My mom, who's probably listening to this right now, is just like probably cheering and clapping her hands hearing you say that. When's your birthday? June 18th. So it was a summer birthday. Yeah. So you were young the first time you started. And I would have told her to hold you back even if you weren't struggling. Because the younger you are, like I'm a July baby. Okay.

And if I could do it again for my parents, I'd like give them another year. Because if you think about it, you know, for those kids that are born in January, well, you're six months younger than them. And out of just being five years old, six months is a big deal, right? It's like 15% or something. So you're at a disadvantage.

And keeping you back gave you more advantage. Yeah. And so many parents have the idea, my child has ADD, I won't treat them. It's bad. It's unethical to treat them. Right? People have this idea, oh no, I never put

put my child on medicine. I'm like, but if they were diabetic, you'd put them on medicine. If they had heart disease, you'd put them on medicine. I sort of think of ADD like people who need glasses. People need glasses aren't dumb, crazy, or stupid. Their eyeballs are shaped funny. They wear glasses so they can focus. People have ADD aren't dumb, crazy, or stupid. Their frontal lobes don't turn on like they should.

Now, medicine is never the first thing I think about, but I think about it, right? It's in the option of the top 10 things to do. The first thing is eliminate the screens. The next thing is get their diet healthy, make sure they sleep, simple supplements like omega-3 fatty acids. And then I think about medicine.

Even like working out, making that a consistent part of my routine, that seemed to help me. I don't know if there's... I don't know the science to back that up, but it seems like... There's totally a science. There's a whole book about it called Spark, written by John Rady, who wrote Driven to Distraction. This is one of the best books on ADD for adults, really.

my wife who has ADD, if she didn't work out, she'd just be miserable. And, you know, in many ways that was just sort of keeping her balance. Yeah. It's funny when we go to the beach, Abby will like sit and read her book and just sunbathe. And then I'm out surfing or building a sandcastle, you know, like it's like, I, I want to be doing something physically active, um, all the time. And I'm, I'm, I'm working on, uh,

Learning to chill more. Now I read, we both read books together in bed before we fall asleep every night. So something that I'm learning to just relax and not have to be doing something physical all the time. - And you also wanna make sure you check your labs. Like low ferritin, which is a measure of iron storage, is very common in kids who look like they have ADD. And often fixing that can help.

So iron and zinc and magnesium are treatments that can be helpful. You mentioned frontal lobes and ADD, and it got me thinking about how just this year, actually, I just turned 25. So according to science, I guess I'm fully developed. My prefrontal cortex is fully there now. And so I'm curious because we come from a background of we dated in high school. We got married in college. We

When we got married, we were 20 and 21. We got engaged when Abby was 19. I had literally turned 20 a couple days before the engagement. And we had kids starting... We made a lot of important decisions. Yeah. With a half brain over here. Yeah, with a not fully developed brain. Yeah.

And so I'm curious, like from a scientific standpoint, as someone that's scanned hundreds of thousands of brains and you understand it so well, what should we do given that information? Like when should kids get married? When should kids... But you guys are already married and had kids. So I think I stick with it. He's like way too early. But for somebody else, like really nice to each other. You know, hundreds of years ago, they got married.

13, 14. That's insane. Right? From a neuroscience standpoint, it's probably better to wait until your brain is developed. But the brain is flexible. I would just do whatever you can to keep it healthy because having a happy marriage is so much easier with a healthy brain than with a toxic brain.

or a brain that's damaged. So do you tell your kids to wait until their brain is fully developed at 25 for boys, right, and 23 for women? So it's 25 for girls and more like 27 for boys. Oh, no. Okay, so actually I was wrong. This is not a good update. Matt is still not. That is news to me. See, I looked this up. I thought I had it right. Yikes. I'm scared. You know, that's when your insurance rates change.

Right? When you turn 25, your car insurance rates go way down. Car insurance people or insurance people knew about development before neuroscientists. Because why do your rates go down? People make better decisions. They're much less likely to get in an accident and cause damage.

Costs the insurance company money. But, you know, my mom got married when she was 18. My dad was 21. They were married for 70 years. So you guys can do an amazing thing. The trick is to be focused. It's to clearly define what you want. And then just go, okay, it's my behavior. It's our behavior. Getting me focused.

I thought it was funny you mentioned in an interview how you didn't want your daughter to go to school in Virginia because you didn't want her to be that far away. And, you know, she's still developing. She's, you know, 18 going off to college. And it got me thinking because at least from my experience, when I went off to school, you know, I've still I was still a teenager. I was still learning a lot. I just remember feeling like.

this weight off my shoulders that I could make any decision I wanted to. And even though I had to deal with the consequences of whatever those decisions were, it just was freeing to not have my parents telling me what to do. And so we actually both went to school at Missouri State University in Southern Missouri. And so I guess like for me, I just, I think like with

With everything that you mentioned about kids having to deal with the consequences of their choices and that's how they learn. And that's why as parents, we shouldn't try to... Rescue them. Yeah, rescue them. And so for me, I loved that. I loved that good or bad. Like I was the one making the decisions. It wasn't my mom. It wasn't my dad. I was the one making it. And so that was so freeing and it was amazing. And so I guess talk to me more about why...

Why you why you're more on the side of no, I think it's better for kids to stay close to home for college so you have to think of it through the lens I see it and Often I see kids who go away that get suicidal or get depressed or become psychotic and my

went to TCU for a semester and I was not a fan of it at all. You know, take underdeveloped brains, put them with a whole bunch of other underdeveloped brains and she said...

Dad, they would all be classified as alcoholics. Now, maybe it's just TCU. I don't think so. They'd all be classified as alcoholics if they were out in the real world, right? It's just so many vulnerable things happen. And I went to Oral Roberts University. There was nothing.

No drinking, at least no drinking I saw when I was there. I mean, it was settled. It was chill. So it depends on the environment you're in, I'm sure. But I'm not a huge fan of sending underdeveloped brains away

unless there's some structure to the environment. When I turned 18, Vietnam was going on and I became an infantry medic. And that was pivotal for me because ultimately the Army is, or the Marine Corps or the Navy or the Air Force is the ultimate good mother. They have very clear rules. I'm a huge fan of family rules. Like what are the rules? If you have a tantrum to get your way, the answer is no. It's always going to be no, go for it. That's a rule. Um,

The Army is very clear. And when you follow the rules, they reinforce you. They promote you. They give you little ribbons you can wear on your chest. And when you don't follow the rules, there are consequences. And they're swift, they're clear, and they're unemotional. Because ultimately, you know, I think of that as the good mother.

Did you despise any people in the military that were over you and just were so strict? Of course. Yes, I did. But it was so good for me to get away from being one of seven and sort of feeling lost to go, oh, I can learn. I can be promoted. It has nothing to do with growing up with a powerful father. It had to do with me growing up.

And yeah, I loved it. And that's where I learned to love medicine. I didn't like being shot at, so I got retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for imaging. I think that experience when I was 18, if I would have just went to UCLA or Loyola Marymount, there's no way I'd be a doctor today. I needed time to let my brain develop.

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rocketmoney.com slash unplanned. Now back to the episode. Should parents follow that same sort of disciplinary style that you experienced in the military? It sounds like that was really good for you. Do you think that serves a purpose in parenting or do you think that was more so better for you in that stage of your life with you being a young man? Remember these two words and you'll never make a mistake. Firm and kind.

So there's not a lot of kindness in the military, but there was a lot of firmness. And I had like my drill sergeant. I loved, he was actually very kind. And I met a lot of really wonderful people, but the best parents are,

they're firm when you say something mean it but don't hit them don't yell at them don't belittle them don't stonewall them like ignore them just do it in a kind way and you're always rooting for them to do the right thing but when they don't they learn from it like they had this great example um

Chloe did something awful. I'm trying to remember what it was, but Tana, my wife was so mad at her. And we were going to see the premiere of Enchanted, the movie, with Amy Adams at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. We had special tickets. It was the premiere weekend. Tana was so mad. And she's like, she...

never had a babysitter for Chloe because she had been abused by her own sitters. She wrote a book about it called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. So she never had a babysitter. She got a babysitter for Chloe and

And we went. And when we were leaving, Chloe's like, hey, aren't I going? She's like, no, you just can't talk to me about that like that ever. And so this person's going to come and be with you. And here's a list of your chores. And after that, get your homework done. And then she can play with you. And oh, by the way, to pay her, because it's not my fault, she takes toys if you don't have enough money to pay her. Oh, my gosh.

But you see, we only got that behavior three or four times. And then she learned, I only do nice things for people I feel treat me with respect, which is a love and logic saying that I just dearly love. I think mentally strong people only do nice things for people I feel treat me with respect. And spanking, I noticed you brought that up. I know that's a big hot topic in today's world. I think we are both...

Spanked a little bit. I don't know if you want to speak. Maybe we could cut that out. I don't know Everyone seems to have an opinion on it and I'm so curious if you've studied the brains of kids who were spanked versus kids that weren't spanked and what yeah, I think have more problems They have more anxiety. They have more opposition There's better technology around You know think firm and kind and when you feel like you want to when you feel like you want to hit them and

Go, there's going to be a consequence. I'll let you know. And walk away if you can. Because spanking is because you're upset. There's a better way. I collect penguins. And I wrote a book about penguins called The Most Important Thing in Life I Learned from a Penguin.

My oldest, I adopted. He was hard for me. He was argumentative, oppositional. And I'm a child psychiatry fellow, which means I'm in my training to learn how to be a child psychiatrist. And I'm telling my supervisor. And she's the one that said, you need to spend more time with him.

And I took him to a place called Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Have you guys been to Hawaii? We used to live there, actually. So Sea Life Park's on Oahu. It's really cool. It's in the movie 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. That's part of the movie. Anyways, we went to Sea Life Park that weekend because I'm going to spend more time with him. We went to the whale show, and that was fun, and the dolphin show, which was awesome, and the sea lion show, which was funny.

And then we went to the penguin show and the penguin's name was Fat Freddy. And this whole thing changed my life. This little fat, humble penguin climbs a diving board, the ladder of the diving board, goes to the end of the board, bounces, and then jumps in the water. Whoa. And he gets out of the water. He bowls with his nose, counts with his flipper, jumps through a hoop of fire, jumps

And I have my arm around my son and I'm like, okay, I'm a good dad. And then the trainer asked Freddie to go get something. And Freddie went and got it and he brought it right back. And time stood still for me because I'm like, I asked this kid to get something for me and he wants to have a discussion. And then he doesn't want to do it. And I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. And I realized the problem was me.

And I went to the trainer afterwards. I said, how did you get Freddie to do all these really cool things? And she looked at my son and then she looked at me and she said, unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and I give him a hug.

That's so good. And the light went on in my head that even though my son didn't like raw fish, that whenever he did what I wanted him to do, I paid no attention to him because I was sort of like my dad. That's so good. So I collect penguins to remind myself, notice the good things about my life. And then a couple of weeks later, I was at Marine World up in Northern California and I went to the Killer Whale Show. And

One of the killer whales just did everything the trainer wanted. And it was awesome. The other one wasn't doing anything. And so she stopped the show early and she said, you know, I'll be here to answer questions. Like write down. I'm like, so the whale is having a bad day. Yeah. She says whales have bad days. Just like people have bad days.

I said, well, what would the whale do if you got a big stick and beat him when he had a bad day? And she looked at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet. And she said the whale would never perform for me again because the whale wouldn't trust me. It's not a good idea to beat. Because ultimately what you want is trust. What you want is bondage.

Because if you bond with them, they'll choose your values. A question I have for you is that I probably, as a parent, lean more on the, my kid can do no wrong in my eyes. I'm like, oh, he's perfect, like everything he does, when that's not the reality of humans and human nature. Is it possible to overpraise a child? Yes. Okay. Well, you even said to not tell your kids that they're smart, right? That can be damaging. Never tell them they're smart. Oh, okay.

Because if you tell them they're smart and something's hard and they can't learn it, they'll think you lied to them, that they're really not smart. But if you praise them for how hard they work and you haven't ruined them in 21 months, let's just be really clear. Have some improvement to make. Yeah.

They just go, wow, you worked really hard. Then when they come up with something hard, they just work harder, which is ultimately what you want. Because I was never the smartest kid in my class. But after I got out of the army, I was the one that always worked the hardest. So telling your kid that they're smart, not good for their brain. It's not good for their brain. But telling them that you're proud of them.

Oh, that's good for their brain. Good for their brain, right? Or that you love them. But better than telling them you're proud of them 20 minutes, be with them.

show them they're a priority. I have this great story. When I figured out special time, I was young. It was like 1985 or something. And I had a literary agent. So I've written 40 books. And so I've been doing this a long time. And I had a literary agent who had his first child when he was 42. And he called me up one day and he said, my daughter never wants to be with me. She's two.

She said, that's a girl thing. I'm like, no, Carl, you're ignoring her. That's a you thing. And he said, what do you mean? I'm like, do this. And I told him about special time, 20 minutes a day, do something with her she wants to do, which basically at two is come home, sit on the floor and play blocks with her or whatever. Or like throw toys in the pool. And he's like, that won't work.

because he tended to be oppositional. And I'm like, oh, great. You represent an idiot. Maybe we should rethink our relationship. I said, do it. In fact, I'm going to call you in three weeks. So get the party started. And I called him three weeks later.

And I said, hey, Carl, this is Daniel. Daniel, she won't leave me alone. As soon as I walk in the door, all she wants to do is be with me. She grabs my leg and wants her time. It's time. I mean, even if a child loses their parents, because that happens, if there's another adult that pays attention to

to them. And now we're so distracted with the nomophobia stuff. You know, I can't live without my phone. Put it down 20 minutes, just be with them. Something I wanted to end on is in today's world, you know, around 50% of marriages end in divorce and divorce isn't good for kids. It's really hard on them. And I'm sure there's people listening right now who are

have been divorced or potentially are about to go through a divorce or maybe they're going through one right now. And so I'm so curious. There are situations where divorce is 100% necessary and it's the healthiest option just given the circumstances. And so I'm curious, what should parents do to make sure that they're being the best parents possible if a divorce is going on? So I got divorced. And part of the reason I got divorced is I knew the research that divorce is not good for kids. But

Being in a family with chronic conflict is worse for them. Do the best you can to stay healthy through it and to stay connected using these principles. And if you're really super smart, you both should go to therapy to go, how can we parent together where we do the best things for the kids? Yes.

And often, you know, with divorce, you have to make the other person evil in order to justify your behavior. It's much better to take responsibility and go, you know, this didn't work for me. But I want to have the healthiest kids and I want you to be the happiest you can be.

Because ultimately, I tell my patients this all the time, you're going to know that person for the rest of your life. Make decisions that are going to be good 20 years from now. Just don't make them now because you're mad. And what does that do to a child's brain if you talk about your spouse poorly to them? Well, remember, we talked about when we started is they see themselves as sort of half their mom and half their dad.

And so if you're talking bad about the other person, they think you're talking bad about them. And when families get divorced, when the kids are two, three, four, five, six, those children, because their brain is not developed, see themselves at the center of the world. And so if something good happens, they sort of think it's because of them. If something bad happens...

They just carry this sense of being bad the rest of their lives when it had nothing to do with them. And that can go with all sorts of psychological issues later on. Man, the best thing you can do for your child is love their parent.

Well, Dr. Amen, it's been such an honor to have you. I can't believe you've written over 40 books. I can't imagine the amount of hours and time that you've put into the books and then the hundreds of thousands of brain scans that you've done. So if you haven't checked out his new book, Raising Mentally Strong Kids, we'll definitely put a link in the description. Also, where can people find you? Where's a good place for people to connect with you online? So I can go to Amen Clinic. So Amen, like the last word in the prayer,

clinics.com they can follow me on tiktok or instagram at doc amen awesome thank you so much this is awesome ah the sizzle of mcdonald's sausage it's enough to make you crave your favorite breakfast enough to head over to mcdonald's enough to make you really wish this commercial were scratch and sniff

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