welcome to new beginnings with care and where we celebrate the creativity courage and wisdom of people creating change we highlight those who charge you pause make new life and career choices and face turning points welcome to new beginnings and i am thrilled to have joining me after a long hiatus can dolan delvecchio author public speaker extraordinary and we're going to be talking about his latest and most recent book the simple habits of exceptional parents who are but not perfect parents and ken i am so glad to have you on we are doing this via skype you're in massachusetts is that correct i am i'm in beautiful palmer massachusetts is wonderful to be with you karen excellent excellent and it's been i think maybe even three years since you were on this show before and you talked about a long time we talked about your other two books about the pet companion and the games people play you know speaker so tell us a little bit about what led you to author this book in this topic well it's really pretty simple what what led me to write this book is that one of my clients said you give me such specific clear easy to follow guidance it would be great to give this to more people and so she said to me why don't you write a book and it was about the third time  d given that advice and i said ok i got to do this or set about writing it and how long did it take you it took me about two years i guess oh wow it's you know writing is is rewriting it's writing the first draft and then going back in combing and writing over and over again fixing it and it's quite a process and i really like that that way of putting it that writing is rewriting and i actually got that from my husband who's also a writer on one of things that he says yeah yeah so the whole premise around simple habits of exceptional but not perfect parents tell us what that means well and what it means is that there are things we can do every day and their attitudes that we can convey every day that are not complicated in terms of the concepts but they may be difficult to do because of the emotional stuff that's always a big part of our lives and so for example when i talk about using your power always as the power of love and not the power of domination when you've got chores to do and the kids are cranky and are thinking about a lot of things besides doing what you need to do and getting it done you are often going to act in a way that is perhaps quite cranky yourself but if we think about the reality that kids particularly very young children they don't misbehave they just behave they do what comes naturally and if we're going to show if we're going to use our power as the power of love and not the power of domination we have to realize that fact and we have to do some planning and we have to be mindful of the ways that we are providing guid so i'll give you an example when my son who is now twenty six and doing very well was very little he would want when we went to any store he would want to look at the little plastic figurine these little heroes or monsters and he would want them and so i used to call them little plastic fiends and i knew if we went to a store where were you there would be these kinds of figures or maybe even just candy i would say to him before hand eric we're going to the store and these are the things we're going to get and why don't you bring one of your favorite toys so that you have it with you and you're going to see some other things that you are going to want but that's not what we're going for today we're going for x y z whatever we're going for and then because he had his little toy and he knew before hand what we were doing he was less likely to start paying attention to these other things that caught his eye and really demanding  that's the kind of thing that that it it requires it's very simple if you think about it's very simple realize that your kid is full of impulses full of winds and do some work before hand to to help them control that so that you don't see them reaching out or wanting this that thing as something that they're doing to irritate you or they're doing it in a way that you're not prepared for and so you start you start snapping at them and it's that idea that that the simple things also so there's there's the theme that we want to be paying attention to a number of habits when it comes to managing and loving our kids and also creating our own lives because we are the primary role model you and i all parents we are always going to be among the people who loom large in our child's life and we can either be cutting a path for them that shows that life can be joyful and fulfilling and a great adventure or we may be showing them something different that is going to present them with the ideas that maybe life is not so positive or maybe life is extraordinarily challenging it may be in some instances but the way we respond to those challenges is something that our kids are always paying attention to so it's the book is about simple habits that we can practice to be the best parents that we can be but also how important it is for us to craft a life that is as positive and meaningful for us as it can be because that teaches our child through example that life can be good life can be a very positive and joyful experience and i can tell you one thing karen life the fact that we are role models never goes away i was going to say i have i'm thinking of my eighty six year old father and you know the parenting never stops to your point and i look at you know his retirement and his post retirement his choices around health he's very health conscious he exercises he eats well he still lives independently still  drives so you're right i am paying attention to that yes absolutely this he showing you how to be a senior adult yes how to be to care for yourself yes how to stay as active as you possibly can all of that is is a great it's great role modeling for you yeah and for other members of the family and that's very important to keep in mind there's some other simple habits i tell you one that's very important and that is that we want to from the very from the time our child is very little we want to understand that their life belongs to them that my child's life is not my last great hope to to see a particular kind of achievement in sports or in science or in a particular profession that life is there and i should keep in mind that there are potential there are skills their talents are there is to develop i'm supposed to help them nurture their interests but i don't want to stacked their interest or them when i was in college it was immediately evident in some of the conversations i had with some of the other freshman that their parents had told them you have to be a doctor you have to be an engineer and i was i was so grateful that my parents didn't do that that they they wanted me to to get educated but they were harping on me to follow a particular course of action and and i know one or two of these guys who went through the pitch the prescribed professional development that their parents gave to them mostly their fathers and then later in life they they look at it and say you know i'm not all that happy and they made some big changes you don't want to do that you did yeah i will that still goes on as you can imagine oh yeah i have a son still in high school and there's tremendous pressure to i'm not applying it other than you know you have to do your schoolwork and you have to think about college in fact i mentioned that to him last night but other than that i want him to be happy i want him to be independent and but you know there are parents who are very definitely saying the sciences you know see him engineering medical doctor and i think there's also concern as i'm sure you've run into we're in a in a different kind of economic setting so you know there was the industrial revolution over one hundred years ago  wouldn't call it industrial anymore but we're in a new economy and so what the jobs are going to be in the future in many respects haven't been defined right so part of what you have to think about as a parent is being a good critical thinker yes it's so it's so very important and and i'm glad you bring that up because to me what i see and it was validated when i went to hear a particular speaker and i'll tell you about that in a moment but i feel like many people have given up critical thinking and and so i'll tell you a story and that is that i as you know i used to commute from my home in massachusetts to newark where my office was newark new jersey and  i and i would go back and forth at the end of every other week at two in time be driving for a long time and i would listen to whatever radio shows i could find that i found somewhat interesting and kind of keep me awake at the wheel and i was listening one day and it was shortly before the two thousand and sixteen election and there was the host of a call in show and he was talking to one of his callers one of his listeners and the listener sad i listen to this media outlet and i don't like what they have to say i don't agree with them about the candidate and then i listen to another media outlet and i don't agree with them either and i don't know what he and the host of the show sad well i guess you're going to have to come to your own perspective can you do  it was really it was really a shock for me but the guy said no he said no and all i could think of was i'll bet you there's a huge number of people today who are with him in that who saying no because you are so easily in a position to just take in the thoughts and the very shallow analysis that is given to us by their eous broadcasts and it's very important i think to help our kids develop minds of their own the other and what story is going to tell you is that i was  presentation and it was about the various trends some of which you were you were leading into when you were just speaking a few minutes ago and one of the one of the speakers was a futurist so somebody who studies trends in both technology and and social in the social round and projects what are we what are we heading toward and she said there is soon to be an identified  critical thinker and people will hire critical thinkers just the way today we hire accountants and attorneys and others who have professional skills that we no longer or or we are not in a position to to develop and and i realized that that applicable but it's i don't think it's i don't think it's a good idea in particular and so to me we need to be always helping our kids evaluate and make judgments absolutely and an example would be when they're watching watch a show with that so let's say that you are watching a great example is the voice and here you see a show in which there are various values being demonstrated it's a good idea once you watch one of the episodes to talk with your kid about like what values are being promoted here well there is the value of the importance of discipline and hard work in developing your talent there's the value of  knowing that your talent is not connected to how you look that you know in the show the judges hear the voice that they can't see the person when they're first when they're first performing and they have to make a judgment about whether or not this person is highly skilled based entirely on their voice which is what the talent that's being assessed and and then the show is all about competition so you can have a conversation with your kid about what are the areas good points what are the pros and cons of competition competition versus collaboration i believe that if we help our kids to to do that which means we have to be a reasonably skilled at doing it ourselves have salut we whip them to make sense of the extraordinary complexity of our world but again again simple in concept but many people are so rushed and they are so they are so out of practice like that guy who was calling into that radio show they're so out of practice themselves that it would be difficult for them to have that kind of conversation yeah their child yeah i agree i think oftentimes the push to do more be more be places you we don't unplug we don't rejuvenating it we don't rest and that's so essential it it it it's important for how we care for ourselves as well as our children you know in terms of weight in terms of health in terms of rest in terms of not being overwhelmed you know you have to in some respects the simple habits are the simple have it's right the things that that that are fundamental about you know eating breakfast going to bed not taking all the devices with you those are habits that need to be role model does well and they're challenging they're very challenging because they have a colleague who talks at length about this death the cell phone is designed to be addictive yes and all of the apps are we get a beep oh somebody somebody is reaching out it's very compelling and how many of us the first thing we do in the morning is we check on our cell phone and we look do we have any messages that we have that have come in and that these kinds of modern challenges it's so important that we role model i tell the story in the book  what a woman a mom who insists that her kids put away all technology at dinner time and that that is something that her ten twelve year old children were very unhappy about at first but then as it became a habit one of them the older one actually started to like it and said that he does the same thing at lunch because he wants to be with the people he's with instead of physically present but not with them and again simple very very simple but hard to do in the swirl of the lives that the that we lead and i didn't try very recently at a school and the parents were talking about the pressures that we were talking about a few minutes ago about how they're on the they're on the sidelines of the playing field and some of the parents are just so overly invested in their kids skills they're very affected by all the things that we say to them about who they are and what their personal value is and we need to the best way to build our children's self esteem is never to assault it and i believe that parents assault children self esteem unknowingly and unthinkingly all the time give exam and and so for example i mean just a very simple example kids on the playing field and they're not paying attention and the dad or the mom is shouting at them pay attention and you never you never focus focus now it's hard for kids to focus so far better when they come off the field to note that they were paying attention at times even though it was difficult and these kind i saw this scene once it really was a bit heartbreaking i was in a grocery store and there was a clearly overwhelmed mom and she was she was pushing a cart she had a baby in the front seat of the the shopping cart child little boy who was with her and he was kind of hanging on to the cart and she was really berating him it was like she was saying you're so stupid you've got to shut up and i'm listening to this and i'm saying you know those words fall on a small child like arrows to his heart and we need to be really mindful of that there are some things that our parents say to us that they they probably don't mean they're just blowing off steam or they're frustrated it's been a long day but that really hits hard and another part of this is i am not saying that you should give or insincere compliments to your child there was a generation that was stereotyped this probably a generation that is now for the most part into the workforce but you know this idea that all they have to do is show up and they get a trophy yeah the participant i don't think that's a good idea i think that parents should reinforce reality and we were friends and i and my husband were on a cruise not terribly long ago and there was a young woman probably about seventeen or eighteen or nineteen who was doing karaoke and her mom was there and she sad she came to the stage and she said to her mom this song is for you mom i know you love my singing and it was like she was you expected her to be absolutely incredible assists as a as a performer right because she was clearly very confident in their skills had clearly been told a number of times how brilliant she was she was awful awful and all i could think was i don't know what this young person has been told but it is not reality and that's not good no that's not that's not good you don't want to tell people things that are not true you want to compliment them on their sincere traits your child handles their their pat with great care and kindness compliment and them on that you're so gentle and such a wonderful way that you talk to and you you relate to the puppy or you're your little brother or sister that you know you listen very well i can tell you really listening when people talk to you when you really care about what they have to say sincere actually you do you want to give lots of compliments about but you you don't want to tell you don't want to tell your child things that that are not true right or how great that about their skills or about their attributes yeah ken in the last few moments that we have what are some of the most important takeaways from your book i think that they are that we've got to be paying attention when we're with our kids that rare rearing a child is is an awesome wonderful responsibility but we shouldn't go into it have a great deal of thought and and also at the same time life is long we are not perfect we're going to make lots of mistakes and that one of the most important things we can do as human beings is we can learn to be vulnerable we can learn to apologize and we can learn to make sure that we trust that we do not make the same errors over and over again and and i think finally that your child's life is and is is such an awesome gift and so is yours live it to the fullest support your child respect that they're going to need to go through life and make some errors and make some choices that maybe aren't the best believe in their competence believe in your own copy a chance and move forward with courage and with the expectation that their life is going to be a constructive success and yours is as well your the role model awesome awesome that is great parting advice for any parent who is at any age right because parenting continues regardless of the age of your child so they have or else you never ends and it's a blessing it really is a bullet is a blessing absolutely yes well ken we're out of time but i thank you for joining us and i ask the listeners to purchase your book simple habits of exceptional but not perfect parents and i'm assuming it's available