Out with Aggression: Raising Sweet Boys with Tosha Schore

24:40Elliott:Yeah. I know you didn't mean to hurt her feelings, but her feelings got hurt. And so we need to apologize. How long do you think you need to do it? You know, we talked about it. What are some ways you can show her that you're sorry. And we brainstormed together, right? You know, I could bake her cookies. I could draw her a picture. I could text her. I could call her like we sort of have this whole thing. And I said, OK, you know, how long do you need? You think by the end of the week you could do this? He said, yeah. I said, OK. I said, do you want me to check in with you? And he said, no. I said, OK, I won't nag you during the week, but I'll just check in.

25:17And then at the end of the next week, at the end of the week to make sure it happened. And so I did. I laid off. I laid off. You know, he was middle school, I think, at that point. Or maybe, no, he must have been younger than that because he wouldn't have needed a babysitter. So maybe, I don't know, 10 or something. He wasn't tiny. And at the end of the week, I came back and I said, just checking in. Did she get the apology? And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, we're good. I texted her. You know, we talked. We're good. I'm like, okay. And so it wasn't forced, but I did hold a limit around repairing that relationship.

25:51Elliott:Yeah, I like that. And you've got him to think about how to do that himself rather than going, you need to apologize and do it now. Yeah. Right. Because who wants an apology from somebody who doesn't feel sorry at all? Yeah. Like if I had made him do it that night, it would have been so disingenuous, right? He would, he didn't, he did not feel sorry one bit.

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27:41Yeah. So it's interesting that you asked that question. Yes. So it's not a completely different situation, but it tells me that things are, the situation is a little bit more challenging, let's just say. A lot of parents, when they come to me, they say, you know, my kids, friends, parents tell me he's amazing or he's great in school, but then he comes home and he's a monster. Like, I don't know who they're talking about. And I say, that's fantastic. That's what we want. Yeah. Because we can hire a therapist, you and I, right? We can be like, okay, I need someplace to vent or we can go out with a friend and have coffee and, you know, bitch or whatever.

28:23So our kids can't do this. We are that person for for them. We are that person for them. So it's a good scenario when they're able to hold everything together out in the world and then things fall apart at home, as long as we have tools to be able to deal with it, keep everyone safe and help nurture their emotional intelligence and whatnot. If things are spilling out into school, it just means we need to really lean into what's going on at home. Sometimes it means that we need to make sure that there's no external situation that's driving that aggression, like a child being bullied or something like that, right, being treated poorly.

28:59So we wanna make sure there's nothing external that's causing that. But assuming we've checked that box, then starting at home is easier because it's embarrassing and it's hard to deal with aggression out in public. But the more that we listen to it at home, the more that we connect with our child at home, the less we're gonna see it in public. And we've really only talked about stay listening and listening to the big feelings, But they're like, we need to lean into connection in lots of different ways. And so in terms of being proactive and helping our boys through aggression, we want to nurture our connection with them.

29:35We want to create more good times. There's so many negative times where we've got a kid who's struggling. Maybe they're spitting and maybe they're punching or breaking things or whatever. And we're constantly like on the defense. It's horrible. and they feel horrible about themselves because their feedback is always negative or interactions with them are always negative. So can we up the positive connection? Like I teach a tool called special time. Are you doing one-on-one time with your kid where you just set a timer for, it could be for five minutes, it could be for half an hour, but it could be for five minutes.

30:07And you can call it special time. You can call it whatever you want. It doesn't matter, but they get to lead, right? I say, hey, sweet boy, I've got five minutes. We can do whatever you want. It's a window into their world. It's a break from you trying to control everything. It shows them that you care, that you're willing to put everything on hold, your work, your siblings or whatever for them. And even though it just like five minutes seems so short, I have parents tell me all the time it completely transformed their relationship with their sweet boy.

30:41Elliott:I love that. If I say that to my kids, they just show me what they're playing on the computer game. Oh, I love that you bring that up because 10 years ago, I would have said something different. I would have said, no, right? Let's keep it. Let's not have screens during special time. And now I think more nuanced about it. I think there are kids who are quite addicted to screens. And for some families, it does make sense to have special time exclude screens. But there are some kids for which that is really an important part of their identity and who they are. Right. They're going to go and they're going to be game developers or software engineers or whatever they're going to go on to be.

31:22I don't have any of those, but I hear about them. And so we want to show that we're interested in what they're interested in. So even if to me that seems completely uninteresting and I'm not a gamer and it bores me and sometimes offends me for five minutes, can I set a timer and be pleased with him?

31:41Elliott:Yeah. And just listen to what they took. Yeah. Yeah. I had a therapist who said to me, I said, I felt disconnected from my kids. And she said, well, what do they do? And I said, well, they love computer games. And she said, do you know anything about the computer games? I said not really she said well why don't you sit with them and ask them questions and so I did I sat down with them and said so tell me what you're playing tell me who these characters are and they were like you want to know about this and they said yeah I'd love to know and they couldn't believe it and they were elated and they did not stop talking and that led to us having a cuddle and going downstairs and making a drink and talking about other things it was transformative Genuinely transformative I love that So what advice I mean we've talked a bit about When your kids get angry And it can be really triggering For a lot of people Who have got a history of perhaps their parents Being yelling and cycles of perhaps even violence But aggression And they really don't know how to deal with it When their kids are yelling and having meltdowns Is there any advice you'd give to those parents?

32:56Yeah, lots of advice. Sometimes I like to be really practical. So one thing I learned from my mentor that works really well, and this sounds kind of funny, but, and I actually was going to say this to you earlier, Elliot, when you brought something up, you can actually just drop down to the floor when you don't know what to do. so when you feel like i'm about to explode i'm about to yell i'm about to do what my parents did to me that i swore i would never do to my child what would happen if you literally drop down to the floor and just like laid on your back in the middle of the kitchen or your kid's bedroom or wherever you are it's actually quite interesting right you're both laughing right like yeah i'm thinking can i try at a supermarket does that work in a local supermarket you could i i wouldn't recommend it i'll say tosha said i should be doing this okay blame her quite dirty down there as well oh yeah it's kind of nasty but yeah but at home it can be really great because your kids will get curious they will often laugh they'll often you know sort of crawl over to you if they're little or come over to you if they're bigger be like you're right over there and you want to be sure that you're not worrying them right so you You can sort of have a fake tantrum, but you want to have kind of a smile on your face so that you're not scaring them.

34:20But the other thing that it does is calms your nervous system because it's pretty hard to exert power over somebody when you're smaller than them. And most of us are bigger than our children until they're teenagers. And so we can get kind of puffed up. So that's something that's just like really practical that parents can do in the heat of the moment. I'll try it tomorrow. I'll try it tomorrow on the school run on the way back from the school. We'll see how it works. I want to know. You're laughing. I want you to try it. I want to know how it works. I'm telling you, it's always hard for people to start.

34:55They're like, oh, Tasha, really? But then they do it and they're like, OK, I finally did it. Like I have clients, I'll take them a year. They're like, why didn't I do this? I had a question about neurodiversity. So we get a lot of requests to talk about neurodiversity more. And so many children have a diagnosis of autism and ADHD. And how do you think this shows up for children who do have those additional challenges in neurodiversity? What do you have to say to that? Yeah, so I would say that most of the families that come to me have a child who is neurodiverse in some way, may or may not be diagnosed.

35:30but there tends to be a lot more aggression that I see in kids with neurodiversity. I feel like what I've seen is that the strategies are the same. We want to lean into connection like via special time or thinking about how we connect with them in a way that feels good to both of us. I always tell parents like make a list of things that you do that when you do them together, you both feel good. You smile, you laugh and let's do more of those. I think play can be really, really good, not just for neurodiverse kids, but for all kids. And I think we don't lean into it enough. So rough and tumble play, but it often will need to be modified.

36:11Like if you have a child with sensory challenges, you need to think about like, how close can I get? How loud can I get? So I'm thinking about a family that I worked with a long time ago who had a child with ADHD and sensory processing challenges. and when he would get aggressive, what they figured out to do was to have a blanket and throw it over him and hug him really tightly. Not in a mean, aggressive kind of a way. The parent was calm, but it helped with his sensory to be hugged tightly and it helped with the sound and the light and just sort of the sensory input to have the darkness. So we're doing the same kinds of things.

36:56We're basically reaching for connection, reaching for connection, but we're absolutely considering how the child is feeling. Now, I would say that sometimes I have families with neurodiverse kids who feel like they can't, for example, hold a limit because of the neurodiversity. And I push back on that a little bit because I really do think it's our responsibility to keep everybody safe and to create an environment that's going to lead our child to be able to live sort of his, what I call like sort of his biggest, bestest life. Like I worked with a family not long ago whose child was was neurodiverse.

37:29And he was in the habit of calling his mother names like bad names like the B word and all kinds of things like regularly. And it wasn't even just like when he was angry, they'd be playing a game or something and he would just be like, you be, you know, whatever. And it got bad. And she was hesitant because of his neurodiversity and didn't want to be harsh with him. And we had to figure out sort of what to do. And so we were thoughtful. But rather than hold a limit kind of in a direct way, we said to him, hey, I know you don't ever mean to hurt me, but those words really don't feel good. I'm going to step away.

38:13and we practiced her every time he called her the name to say that non-shaming but just say hey I know you don't mean to hurt me but this doesn't feel good I'm going to take a moment and I'll be back and she would just do this every time and it broke the pattern for him it broke the habit so yeah we have to modify but we're always leaning into connection we're never going to punishment to shame it just doesn't work does that answer your question yeah it does

38:44Elliott:and you say we're never leading to punishment or shame with neurodiverse children with any kids but with or with any kid yeah okay interesting so even if if you have a child that does call you a horrible word you wouldn't punish them for doing that you would just you would just say once they've calmed down, that wasn't okay. You've upset me by saying it. Well, yeah. So, so it's interesting. Okay. With those kinds of, we'll call it verbal aggression. I think of it in two different ways. Like one situation is, let's say your kid is, is pounding on his brother or, you know, about to throw a dish in the kitchen and you move your body in and you hold that dish and you say, Hey, sweet boy, I cannot let you throw that, or I cannot let you hit your brother or whatever it is.

39:32And he says, you know, you stupid ass, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. You've held a limit and he's letting out the steam of the pressure cooker. To me, that's, that's within the parameters of me stay listening. And I say freedom of the, freedom of the mouth at that point. Like it's just, it's just words. Like that's just words. Like that's just, we've all said things we don't mean when we're heated. And yeah. So I would not come back and have a conversation with a child after that. I would not come back and say, hey, you know, I really don't like when you call me this, or you know, it's not okay to do that because we think we need to educate them.

40:14But the truth of the matter is when I, generally when I ask a parent in that situation, do you think your child thinks it's okay to call you a stupid ass, whatever, you know, they're like, no, no, he knows it's not okay. Right. He knows that's not the problem. The problem isn't that he doesn't have the information. So giving information isn't going to solve the problem. So I, it just is going to land as shame. Yeah. Just like it does for us. Let's say we like send an email at work to the wrong person and it's bad and we feel horrible about it. And then like our boss comes back and it's just like, you know, dude, like, I can't believe you did that.

40:52Like, this is bad. What does that do?

40:55Elliott:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course it's bad. Yeah. No, it was bad. But that's different. That's one situation, right? Like when I'm holding a limit, for example, and then there's sort of explosion coming out because the feelings are coming out, the healing is happening. It's part of the healing. Okay. But then there's like the drive, I call it drive by. And that's more like the example that I gave a moment ago with that kid he was just sort of like playing cards. And all of a sudden it's like, yeah, you dummy. Why'd you do that, dummy? It's like, what? Like, we're having a good time. Why are you calling me that?

41:26And that's different. And then I would hold a limit. But I wouldn't come back and have a conversation.

41:33Elliott:And you wouldn't then punish a child. And I wouldn't punish them. For anything they do when they're angry. So you wouldn't punish them for saying horrible words or for throwing things around or for if they what if they hit a parent would you punish them for that no i wouldn't punish a child because i don't see it as a resolution to the problem yeah ultimately i'm trying to figure out how do i help this child stop the aggressive behaviors what is the bigger issue here and in order to help him resolve those behaviors i need to be his person He needs to know that I have his back all the time. He needs to know that there's this sweet boy.

42:19And sometimes there are these nasty behaviors that are glommed on top of him. And it could look like spitting. It could look like pinching. It could look like calling names. It could look like breaking things. And he needs to know that I am not going to get confused. I am not going to think that those behaviors are him. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not going to punish him. I'm not going to say those behaviors are okay. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's okay. I'm saying we need to interrupt. We need to connect. We need to do our special time. We need to hold those limits lovingly. We can be playful in lots of ways, but I'm not going to punish.

42:55We can be playful sometimes in the heat of the moment. I got a family, the dinner table, you know, throwing food. It just wasn't working to be harsh and to punish. It was just not going away. So why would we keep doing something that doesn't work? At work, we'd be fired for that. At parenting, we just keep doing it over and over again. Right.

43:12Elliott:Yeah. So I had her do something we call the vigorous snuggle, which is kind of leaning in and being silly with a child when they're doing something. So he would throw this food and she would just kind of get all silly and be like, do you know what happens to little boys who throw their food at the table? And then we just put something silly out like they get their elbows licked. And then she's like going for his elbow. What does that do? It creates laughter. It creates connection. It creates closeness. Laughter heals, right? It releases fears. Nervous laughter is a real thing. It's the surface level of the fear that drives the aggression, but it's a place to start.

43:57Elliott:Yeah. And I really don't see there's ever a place for punishment. It just doesn't work. and then so once you've once the elbow has been licked do you then say please don't throw food anymore joella you're pushing me no i don't because does your kid think it's okay to throw food at the table yeah okay yeah yeah yeah fair enough i um i mean actually food throwing is not an issue in our house, but I'm relating it to other things that happen. Throw it out, throw it out. Because that's a proactive strategy to stop the escalation as well, isn't it? Are there other practical strategies that you would recommend to stop the escalation of anger?

44:43So a lot of it is the pre-work. So a lot of it is the connection that we talked about already. We talked just very briefly about play, but one thing I'll say like about the vigorous snuggle that I just shared or play in general, when a child, you have to get to that child pretty early in the aggression for it to work. Most kids, once they're pretty angry, if you try to be playful with them, it doesn't land well. It just makes them more angry. Once the train has left that station, it's probably going to look more like holding a limit, right? That I can't let you, that physically blocking whatever needs to be protected, whether it's another child or yourself, right, holding a pillow in front of you or whatever it is.

45:30That play, the proactive stuff happen ahead of time.

45:36Elliott:What would you say then, what does emotional resilience look like in boys? Boys who are who are progressing well with translating their own emotions? What would you say? How do you know you're doing a good job and you're not screwing it up, Tasha? Yeah, I think you know you're doing a good job, Joely, because the incidents of aggression are going to become less intense and less frequent. And that's just the bottom line. The more you lean in with connection, the more you show him, I'm not scared of you and I'm not scared for you. Like, I'm not scared for your future. The more he can sense that energy and you lean into holding loving limits, to using play strategically, to connecting, the less aggression is going to happen.

46:26I just see it over and over and over again. And the more willing, for example, your child's going to be to come back and apologize when they do mess up. Yeah. it's not that they're going to be perfect it's not that it's going to disappear a hundred percent just like it doesn't for us yeah so Tosha I'm repping for the girl dads I have two girls so all the parents I have girls and boys but this question is particularly around the girls so everything that we've spoken about does the same apply for girls does anything change Yeah, no, I don't think anything changes in terms of the strategies. The reason that I think it's so important to address this in boys, one is because we see more acting out of aggression in boys in the world, in our families, in our communities.

47:15And like I said at the beginning, I think it's because we don't, we're not able to hold space for their feelings, whereas we're much more comfortable listening to girls. I think that's because we feel less threatened by them. One thing I was thinking about, like, how does our gender, for example, affect how we respond to aggression? And one pattern that I see very clearly is oftentimes women who I work with are quite scared because unfortunately, most women have had some form of abuse, whether it's verbal or physical or sexual, often at the hands of men. And when our child then, our boy child raises his voice or raises his fist or starts to kick, we suddenly lose sight of the fact that this is our five-year-old and we're like back to our college boyfriend or whatever it is.

48:11So we can get triggered in that way. For men, what I see this pattern, the pattern looking really different, oftentimes they're wanting to shut down their boys' feelings, not because they think it's bad or they even want them to man up or anything like that. Mostly what I see is they want to protect them from the shame that they experienced as a child when they showed vulnerability. wow yeah that's really interesting yeah yeah I think I've seen that dynamic play out definitely and how do you find the dads respond so obviously I have daughters but for the people that you've worked with if their son is being aggressive to their mother it must be really hard for the dad to stand by and just look at that and I've had that in my family and my friendship groups and the dads have dealt with it in a range of different ways, I would say.

49:08But do you find that the dads come to you and they really struggle with, how do I respond to a child that's getting bigger and potentially trying to run the house? How do we deal with that? Yeah, it's a great question. And I see it actually quite often. And in heterosexual relationships, it shows up a lot when I'm coaching couples. And it's interesting because oftentimes the dad feels like he needs to come in and protect the mom, but the mom actually isn't feeling like she needs protection. So I often ask parents to start by having a conversation with each other because what's happening is that the dad needs to know that if she needs help, he doesn't want her to get hurt, right?

49:52So if she needs help, that she'll ask. And she needs to know that he trusts that she can handle it. So oftentimes it starts with a conversation. But I'm also thinking about a family that I work with who I love this dad. He's an older dad, like in his, I think, 70s. I don't know exactly how old he is. He raised, he has grown children close to my age. And then he has a second marriage and his wife is a social worker and works in a school and they ended up taking in out of the foster care system, a young boy. And they came to me when he was about 13. And the dad said to me, I can't, I'm afraid to leave the house.

50:36Like he's, he's hurting my wife. Like he'll hit her and I'm afraid to leave him alone with her. I, you know, I can't, I can't do this anymore. It's either him or me. Like we, we cannot all be in this house. He was at the end of his rope. And he, we worked together. He did like a 180. I think he's so impressive to me because he had already raised children with like a much more traditional approach to parenting and his kids happened to be easy and they happened to be, you know, turn out fine and all of that. And then all of a sudden, like the strategies that he had used back in the day were not working.

51:11And I had him do all the things we've been talking about here. I said, this kid, he needs to know you're his guy. He needs to know that you are not scared of him, that you're going to be there for him, that you're not going to let him hurt her. You're going to keep everybody safe. It's like taking that responsibility off of him because you're noticing that he is not able to do it and bringing it on to you. And he would do things like rather than send him away and punish, right, when he would hit or call a name or something like that or take something away from him, he would move towards him. He started every day after school, no matter what, no matter the report for school, however many times he got in trouble and all the things, they'd play catch or basketball in the driveway out front.

51:58No question, not if he was good, regardless. They started going on fishing trips. He was really firm in holding his limits. Things completely turned around. I mean, the kid is like leading his Boy Scout troop. It's not like a rainbows and unicorns. He still struggles. He's not doing that well academically. He still gets in trouble sometimes and all of that. But there's no more fear leaving him alone with his wife, right? Because he was able to hold a limit and listen to the upset that came out and not get offended by the names he was called when it was in that sort of stay listening bubble, if you will.

52:39So yeah, it's a lot, but even hard situations can absolutely turn around. These kids need to know that we've got them. I know I keep saying this, but we have to show these boys we're not scared. And we are oftentimes. So we have to start with working on our own fear.

52:58Elliott:Yeah. Yeah. And it can manifest in a variety of different ways when you are scared of them or when you're nervous that they're going to lose it. I know that I think, oh, I better navigate this really carefully in case I make my son angry. And then he has one of his meltdowns that's going to last for a while. So I tiptoe around him a bit when actually that's probably not the best way of dealing with it at all. And when you're trying to tiptoe around it, do you feel like it's because you're trying to avoid that big meltdown? Yeah. And why? Why do you think you're trying to avoid that? often it's time I think we've got to go and I don't it's gonna be late for school again and so I do everything in my power to stop the meltdown because I need to get him to school or I need to you know we need to leave the house whatever it may be I don't think I'm particularly scared of the meltdown itself because he doesn't like he's not violent at all he just has his you know 30 minutes of shouting getting upset and and that's okay I can deal with that completely fine it's just more got things to do yeah I think time is one of the things that leads us parents to show our worst when we're pressed for time we're we're not very good at keeping our cool the other thing is when we're in public spaces so that's why I really want parents to lean into these tools when you're home and to plan for them.

54:30Like we talked about at the very, very beginning, right? Because how would your mornings look different? If I'm not saying this is true, but let's say your kid has this big upset every morning or every other morning. And what would happen if you started the morning an hour earlier? I know that sounds horrible. I'm not a morning person, but how could you be present for him differently if you weren't worried about being late for work or them being late for school? It's just a different energy we're able to show up with.

54:59Elliott:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could get up earlier, but... I'm with you. I'm with you. And would you say, like, the man-children of this world, you know, like Putin and Trump, then they didn't have this opportunity to express their emotions in a healthy way when they were younger? Well, I mean, I don't know their stories, But yeah, I mean, hurt people definitely hurt people. And I think that really the best thing that we can do, not just for our families, but for the world is hold space for these sweet boys and let them show us how hard things are for them. Because even though the reasons that they're upset might sound completely trivial to us and dumb, they're real to them.

55:50You can't argue with somebody with how they feel. You can't try to convince somebody to feel differently. So if we can just meet them where they are, we're going to be able to move them to a better place much quickly than if we're sort of standing in what we think is the better place and screaming to them, could you please be over here already? We have to kind of meet them and slowly, slowly take that journey together.

56:16Elliott:I love that. Thank you, Tosha. this has been so useful and you know selfishly personally I have loved every second and I'm going to start using what you said immediately yay um you know I feel really grateful I've had the opportunity to talk to you and I'm sure lots of people listening will feel exactly the same um you have got a brilliant course that is starting on the 6th of October called Out With Aggression, which helps boys reduce violent behaviors and become more loving, calm and happy. So how can parents join that course if they're interested? Yeah, they can go ahead and just click on the link.

56:59It's Parenting Boys Peacefully slash OWA for Out With Aggression. You can always just go to my website, Parenting Boys Peacefully, and you'll find it there.

57:09Elliott:Parenting Boys Peacefully. Thank you, Tasha. Thank you very much for joining us on To Be A Boy. Thank you so much for having me.

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