Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: The book is called Dharma Parenting: Understand Your Child's Brilliant Brain for Greater Happiness, Health, Success, and Fulfillment. And it really centers on these kind of three different brain body types that you guys have pulled from kind of some ancient Ayurvedic tradition there. And you show people how to figure out which of these three their kids are, or some combination of, and then also what you are, and then the whole book goes through that lens, different behaviors that you could get from your kids, and different strategies that you could use that would be most effective based on those kind of brain, body types. So I am super curious how you stumbled across this idea and came to think hey, this could be a new kind of method for parents.

Robert: Well, back in the '70s, I happened to meet this famous saint, and at the same time, I was a PhD student in physiology at UCLA Brain Research Center. So I ended up doing a lot of research on meditation, on consciousness. I kind of had this total interest in consciousness, what it meant, and starting with meditation, that led me to India a number of times, and to get introduced to Ayurveda, which is their ancient system of health there. And once I got involved in it, I am a parent. I've got four kids with my wife, and so I've been through all the challenges. They're pretty easy, actually, my kids, but I watched everybody go through everything, and it occurred to me that oh my God, I never got a manual on how to parent. Nobody told me anything. In fact, my parents weren't particularly great. I grew up in Los Angeles in a kind of weird environment with the movie stars, and Hollywood, and all that stuff. And I just had no idea.

Robert: I went to Berkeley my first year. So that was way back in the, the crazy days. And so it never, never occurred to me what it would take to be a parent. And then you stumble upon it yourself. You're reading stuff. You're trying to figure it out. But once I learned Ayurveda I realized oh my God, this could be so helpful. And so I got with another, my wife and I, and another neurophysiologist, myself, we decided to write this book about parenting from the perspective of Ayurveda and also neurophysiology, so what's going on in the brain. And Ayurveda has been going on for thousands of years, so how did they know that somebody was a Vata person? You have a kid that's so creative, so dynamic, moving around, you can't even hold them, and yet they do get tired a little quickly, they are sensitive, they're the artists. And then you got the Pitta, which is the total athlete, fire. And they're just burning for desires. They want to accomplish this. They want to accomplish that.

Robert: Then you got the Kapha, who's the sweetest, good natured, easy going, little hard to get up in the morning, slow to get to school. And it's like oh my God. And then there's every combination, because you're never one of these things, you're always a combination. And so if you're a Pitta parent, like, "Ah, I've got to have everything on time. Got to do this," and you got a Vata kid, you got to tone down. I mean that kid needs its space. It needs to be an artist. You can't impose all your Pitta ideas of what you want them to do, goal oriented ideas, you got to let them have their joy and just smell the roses. And it's like that. The Kapha kid, you just can't get them out to school. You can't suddenly change things on them. You got to take it really slow and really carefully. And if any one of these states gets out of balance, you're in trouble.

Robert: The Pitta kid, I mean they're the ones that lose their temper. They're pure fire. Fire is just pouring out of their heads, and they can't help themselves. If you don't feed them on time … It's little simple tricks. You don't feed them on time, disaster. They lose it. Something in their gut brain connection is there where somehow not having food on time triggers some neural network in their brain, which stimulates their amygdala and all those mechanisms that are there for anger and madness, and they just can't help themselves. You give them food, no problem. Put them in the heat, either mentally or physically, boom, they have a meltdown. If you give them hot spicy foods, well, they can deal with it mostly, but if you just keep doing it over and over again, they also can have a meltdown. So the trick is keep your kid in balance, be preventative, and know what's actually working inside them.

Robert: I mean a young child is getting millions and millions of connections every minute in their brain. Suddenly at the age of three, you have more connections in your brain than you ever have. But 10 to 17, you're going through, what's called neural pruning, and you're losing these connections if you're not using them. So the brain is also going through these phenomenal changes. You don't even get the connections to the frontal areas of your brain, the myelinated ones, these fast connections until you're 25 years old. So you may look like an adult, you may be behaving like an adult, but your brain's not behaving like an adult. So a lot of things are going on that nobody tells you about. So we tried to help parents by telling them some of the things that are going on in the brain as seen by people thousands of years ago, and is seen by modern science.

Andy: I love these three, the Vata, the Pitta, and the Kapha. How did they discover these? Or where did these come from?

Robert: They go really deep. I mean they have kind of a different view of the universe. They see everything as emerging from consciousness, and they see sort of matter emerging from consciousness. So these are primal forces that are in nature, and the wind and space are Vata, and the fire and a little water is Pitta, and then the earth and space, that's Kapha. So they see these things as being like Chinese medicine. They look at it very fundamental, and they govern everything in the physiology. So every type of pain you experience, every kind of communication in the body, that's all Vata. It's moving quick, very sensitive. Pitta is all the digestion, all the metabolism, then Kapha's all the bones and structure. But nowadays people have actually studied these things from a modern perspective, and they find that a Vata person has different genes expressed as a Pitta person. They have a different microbiome. They have different physiological characteristics. So there is a real scientific validity, but this is something that people just figured out thousands of years ago, and it's sort of time tested over a long, long time. So it's pretty cool stuff.

Robert: And it's getting recognized by science, and people now know that diet's really important. Whatever you eat, food is medicine. And these guys knew that years ago. So it's like we're rediscovering some ancient truths that just weren't there before. And it gives you tricks. If you have two teenagers, and let's say they're starting a love affair, and you got one guy that's the Pitta, and he's the athlete, he's out there hiking, or rock climbing, or whatever. He can stand the cold. He doesn't care how cold it is. He walks out there. And then he's got this Vata girlfriend, who's very slender and beautiful, and she's very delicate and very artistic, but she's always turning up the heat. So they're in this constant conflict. One is freezing all the time, the other is overheated. And as long as they're imbalanced, it's power, it's like the wind fueling a fire, but they get out of balance, and man, that fire gets out of control, and they started arguing, and start going crazy. And it's just a formula for disaster.

Robert: So again, simple little tricks to keep them in balance. And it's their kind of lifestyle things, whether it's diet, or health, or meditation, or stress management, they're just things that Ayurveda knew about a long time ago, exercise, that somehow we forgot, or we never figured out, and so we live in this world of kind of confusion where we have this incredible physiology, but no operating manual to understand how it really works.

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Andy: Okay, so this kind of example that you were just talking about, where you have a relationship between two kids, and you're using the brain body types to kind of inform that is what I thought was a really cool section of the book where you go through every combination and talk about some tips. And then there was another one that I thought was really nice where you have the parent child relationship, and you go through all of the different ones of how your brain, body type as a parent is going to influence your parenting style, and then you actually go through every combination of if you're this and you have this kind of a kid, what could you do? So I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about, I guess we don't have to go to every combination, but just how do they affect your parenting, and then how can you kind of?

Robert: Well, I wish I knew this stuff when I first was a parent. I mean I was clueless when I was first a parent, so I didn't know what was going on. I mean I had kids that were different. I had one child that would finish a meal almost before anybody started, and he had this fire in him, Pitta side, but he also had a very sweet Kapha side, so it's this kind of combination. He was very good natured, very kind of friendly, easy going, really easy. And then I had another boy, these are two boys, and the other boy was also this same combination, but he expressed it in a different way. He would take his time to eat. I mean we'd all be finished before he started, and he's very meticulous about everything, very careful, great athlete. Both of them were intense volleyball players. They play beach volleyball, but two different styles. And they were kind of complimenting each other. They both had this fire and earth element in them.

Robert: And then I had two daughters that are also unusual combinations, more artistic, more sensitive. And again, you had to be aware of what was going on with them. One of them was very, very sensitive, had digestive problems as a kid, and if you push too hard, just total would rebel, react. So you had to give her a lot of space, and you had to recognize that she was sensitive, needed more sleep. She needed structure. She's more of the wind. And she had fire in her too, but she needed structure, but didn't like it. So you do everything you can to create a routine for them, and try to ground them a little bit, but they have this tendency to want to go off and keep doing something different every time. And then the other daughter was much more Kapha. She slept through the night so easy, but she also had a Vata side, and a Pitta side too. And you could see where she had her delicacy of things going out of balance. She could withdraw, and maybe get a little stubborn.

Robert: So everybody is different, but once you kind of recognize it, and you know what to do, it helps now at that time I knew nothing. So my wife and I were just … It's chaos. You kind of figure it out, but when a kid loses their temper, what do you do? Teenage years, I'd say, are the most serious because suddenly, at that point, everything is huge. It's not just take care of this or take care of that, everybody can get into trouble. Fortunately all my kids got through their years very well, but I wish I had known. I could have helped better by knowing. I was just learning about that time, so it did help me a bit. It was just getting this knowledge, and so I could give them more space, because I'm very Pitta myself, very goal oriented. I like to get things done. And I had to be really careful how I impose that on my kids because if I did too much, it just backfired. So to this day I think it has its biggest application in relationships.

Robert: I mean, you're right, parent child. If you're a Pitta parent, you have a Vata child, you cannot impose. You can be controlling, you can set all these goals, and they're kind of looking the other way wondering what you're talking about. They're drawing, or they're loving nature, and you're all off and, "Well, what are you going to ... when are you going to get your essay done?"

Andy: What's your deadline? What's your schedule? Let's go.

Robert: Yeah, exactly. They don't want to schedule. And the Kapha kids are different. If you're a Pitta parent with them, they're like, "Wait a minute. I love my schedule, but don't get me up too quick. I like to sleep in the morning. I like to take a long time eating," and you say, "No, we've got to get to school." "I'm not quite finished yet. I want to taste this." But once you see who they are, it's like oh my God, I just had to give them more space, more time. I had to be not imposing my will on them. And it's very cool once you get it, because if you're out of balance yourself, all bets are off. I mean then it's no hope. If you're a Pitta person out of balance, you're going to be angry, you're going to lose your temper. It's a disaster. If you're a Vata parent out of balance, you're going to have no schedule, your kids are going to wonder where the next meal comes from. And if you're a Kapha parent out of balance, you're just going to pull back, and just withdraw and get depressed.

Robert: So you have to take care of yourself as a parent. You have to be good about what you eat. If you meditate, you got to meditate. I'm into transcendental meditation, that was the thing I got involved in, and it helped. I mean I could be upset or angry as a Pitta person, but I meditated and then what am I doing? I'm not going to control them anyway, so what's the point? Let's just enjoy. So it's all about staying in balance and avoiding certain triggers that can trip you up as a parent. It's also about helping the kid not get out of balance. So making sure they eat on time, for a Pitta, making sure a Vata doesn't get too cold. In the wind and cold, they're very easy to get out of balance. A Kapha, you got to get them out the door, off the couch. You've got to get them moving.

Robert: So each one has their particularities, and you have to kind of be aware that they're often combination, so when one goes out of balance, you got to kind of check and see what it is that's out of balance, and then try to help it get back in balance. But simple things like having good sleep habits, meditating, having good eating habits. I mean that's the kind of foundation of all these systems of natural medicine. They don't want to take drugs. They wouldn't like all the drugs kids are taking that are prescribed to them. They'd think it was nuts. A lot of these are Vata problems. They'd have all kinds of really ridiculously simple solutions, like a Vata kid that has what you might call these days, ADHD, or their attention is wandering all over, I mean simple, like meditating, kids, they get a huge benefit from it. Autistic kids get a huge benefit.

Robert: And also they have the little simple things like sipping hot water. I mean when would you ever tell somebody to sip hot water, but it has this amazing use in Chinese medicine, it grounds these body types that get out of balance, their attention is going all over the place. It's like discovering a whole new archeological dig. I mean there were all these things that people knew thousands of years ago, and why shouldn't we be using them? Why are we giving kids drugs? Or why are we treating them as if they're abnormal?

Robert: Just now coaching is becoming a big deal. And coaching is an interesting thing. We always think of coaching, your sports coach rallying you on, and forcing you to go to run around the field and everything, but there's a lot of coaching going on now that's different, which is more about asking you questions, finding out what you want, and empowering you to do it. And I would think for teenagers, that would be huge. I mean really sitting down and listening to what is bothering them, and not trying to impose something, or give them drugs, or force them to do something they don't want to do, but kind of listening what they want to do, and helping them take responsibility for their own lives, empowering them. And then you have to know, is the coach a Pitta person? It's just like a parent. Is the coach a Vata person? If so, is the client a Pitta person? So okay, two Pittas, no problem. I mean God, every habit change book you've ever read is written by Pitta people. They have no comprehension why Vata and Kapha people can't follow their simple instructions.

Robert: But they're they're so goal oriented. And so I think coaching would be a great thing because it's all about getting trust, and getting to really know a person, and really being interested in the other person views. And now, we're doing another book right now, my son and I and wife, on this is what we call total brain coaching, which is using kind of this knowledge of the mind, body types to coach people, and then using some very good knowledge of habit change, and how the neuroplasticity and gut brain, using that knowledge to help people change habits, because it's hard for some people to change habits, even though they know they can be destructive.

Andy: We are here with Dr. Robert Keith Wallace, talking about how you can understand your teenager's brain, body type, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Robert: But a new experience is fantastic for the brain. The brain loves new experiences, and it's a joy to create new neural circuits in the brain. Attention has a big effect. Every experience you have in the world changes the wiring of your brain. So you're getting negative attention. You're getting stress. It's wiring your brain wrong. It's really about an education, helping them understand who they are, because the best thing that can happen is your teenager comes home, as a parent, says, "Boy Dad, I really screwed up today. I skipped my lunch and man, I blew up," and it's like wow, I didn't have to tell them anything. They figured it out themselves. Okay, maybe they had a reason for skipping lunch, but they knew it. That's so cool. Or, "I really blew it last night. I spent all night playing this game, and I loved it, but oh God, I died today in school."

Robert: Now, if your kid can tell you that as a parent, you're suddenly now like a coach. "Oh well, what could you have done different?" You're not telling them, "You're bad. You shouldn't have done that. I'm grounding you for days," you're asking them, "Well, what do you think might help you break that habit of getting on the game late at night?" "Yeah. I probably should turn off my computer, and maybe I should take a hot bath, or listen to some music, or do this or that." So suddenly you're strategizing with them, but you're not telling them, you're just being a good coach, and kind of asking them questions, and empowering them to figure it out themselves, what they can do.