Naomi Aldort | The Power of Connection in Parenting

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 00:01
So, Naomi, you have um beside books, you also do a lot of courses and have been teaching other people how to uh parent for many, many, many years. If we briefly can touch how it started, that would be wonderful.

Naomi Aldort: 00:18
How it started, um people started me. I didn't I didn't start anything, I was actually a piano teacher, which I still do a bit. I'm a musician. Uh and uh parents started telling me that my that their student, their children who are my students, uh, were getting therapy out of piano lessons. So that's kind of what started it. And then there was a family with an 11-year-old daughter who the parents came to me and said she's been in therapy with a psychiatrist for seven years, and in two months of lessons with me, achieved more psychologically than in seven years of therapy. And they asked me to give the whole family some sessions. They were, you know, the father wasn't her her uh birth father, she was the only child. And anyway, um, I said, only if we do it for limited. I'm not a counselor by profession. I I know that I have that skill because a lot of people always ask me for help, but you know, and we agreed on seven sessions. Well, after seven sessions, they had all the breakthroughs that they didn't have in seven years, and we fixed everything basically. Um, in fact, a year later I met the mother on the street and she said, Can I solve a problem in one session with you? Uh personal hers. So we did. Uh, so that kind of initiated it. And the other initiation, then I didn't go full-time into this work, but it gave me the idea that I have a gift there. Uh, and I started writing, and I had three children that didn't go to school, and I did my own thing and everything. And when the youngest was born, I wrote an article. I wrote articles for newspapers and magazines locally, but I wrote and sent to Mothering Magazine the article about why not to praise, and it was accepted right away, and it was very hard at the time to get into Mothering magazine. So that initiated specifically for parenting, because I started being asked, so they published it, and I started being asked to public speak. And then people called me by phone, by there was no internet, and I had a bunch of people calling me by phone every week and asking questions, and I just answered free, you know. I just shared. And then this one woman from New York that called me every single week said, Naomi, you should charge me. You're putting a lot of time into me. And that's when I turned it around. And um, still there was no website or anything, it was just magazines, articles that I started writing in in Life Learning magazine and other uh home schooling magazines and parenting magazines worldwide, and my book came out, and it's just evolved of its own. It's not anything I ever planned or did much about.

Cecilie Conrad: 03:32
So, what was the what was your first book about?

Naomi Aldort: 03:37
Um, raising our children, raising ourselves is the name of the book, and it is what the title says that in order to raise children, you have to raise yourself. You have to work on yourself, and that's the greatest gift you can give your children is to work on yourself. Because we have we have a choice in life when we raise children. Raising children wakes us up to where we're stuck, so they trigger us behavior-wise and relationship, and the thing with triggers, those are what you need to heal. So either work on yourself and heal while you're triggered, or you control your kids to not trigger you, in which case they are harmed, and you stay stuck, and then they are ready to harm the next generation, exactly. So you either cause harm, uh and that it's harm to yourself because you stay stuck as well. So you don't use the opportunity to heal yourself and to take this. Is true not just with children, you know. We have a culture now that does exactly the opposite of what I teach.

Cecilie Conrad: 04:53
Yeah, I was thinking that. That's not what I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Naomi Aldort: 04:59
Trigger warning, trigger warning, and don't say that, that triggers me. Well, work on not being triggered, be free. Yeah, be grateful you're triggered because that is a learning. You know what you need to heal, you know what you need to free yourself from. So, my teaching and my book is about becoming free as a human being, and as a parent, when you're free, then your child can be free. But if you are not, if you are stuck in emotional limitations uh and triggers, and you can't say this because that feels like this, and you make me feel that the sentence make me feel is absurd. No one but you can make you feel something. Yeah, um, so so yeah, so my book is about raising ourselves, and I have many clients from all over the world. They call by Zoom, sometimes by phone, sometimes by email, sometimes they have a translator, so Zoom works really well. Uh, if they don't speak English, they hire a translator who is with us and can translate. Um, and um, I work with people and I, you know, public speak also in Europe, Australia, but since COVID, I haven't traveled, and I'm really delighted to be able to do all of that by Zoom and not travel. It's so much easier. Yeah, and I have a program, I have a family coming in June from um London. So that's a program that happens in the summer where family can have a workshop for themselves from a couple of days to five days, usually here and there. They do a whole week. It's called Family Intensive Retreat, and it's more intensive than it is retreat, but but it is a beautiful place. I live on an island and there's swimming and boating and climbing trees and endless forest and beauty, uh, and hiking and trails and games, and we have a zip line, and so it is also a retreat, and um but but we spend most of the time, the children have a retreat. We hire babysitters and get them in the playground, etc. But the parents are working hard on themselves, and sometimes the children, depending on age, have some sessions too with me. So I work with the whole family. So that's one amazing program. When families start with that program, it's a jump start. Then they can take sessions and it's like this. They don't need many, every now and then an adjustment or something. Uh, so I work with marriage and pregnancy and birth and and and babyhood and toddlerhood and childhood, and then uh the whole thing in the context of um respecting children's autonomy and letting them do their own learning and everything. But the book is not so much on the unschooling, but I speak in unschooling conferences and I unschooled my three sons as well.

Cecilie Conrad: 08:10
So is it mostly unschoolers you work with, families who already decided to unschool, or is it no?

Naomi Aldort: 08:17
I'm a little different than some of the speakers in this movement. I'm very open to work with anybody on their terms in their ways, just like I treat a child who is unschooled. If they want to go to school or they want to have a rigid schedule or hire a teacher who gives them homework, that's their choice. Right? So I treat adults in the same

Naomi Aldort: 08:46
way. So if I have clients whose children go to school, I work with them within that parameter. It may come up and they may end up taking their child out of school as a result of spending time with me, not always, and it's not always possible. Uh, but if I see a possibility, yeah, I may mention it. If there is a problem and a stress that comes out of the child being in school, I present the question: is there a possibility that they would go to a democratic school, or have you considered unschooling? Um, you know, and again, it depends also on their finances and if both people work and if they need both to work. A lot of parents think they need both to work, and with my help, they realize that they don't have to, that their priorities can shift. So, yeah, so some do change. A majority are doing attachment parenting, natural birth, um, but not everybody, and and a lot of them, yeah, uh, do unschooling. But I try to stay very open so that I get even the religious people who are homeschooling and putting more restrictions in the house. Uh, I like to not discriminate and to respect adults the way I respect children. It's their path, it's their children, and I work with them within that paradigm to optimize it. Because even within a paradigm that the child goes to school, there's a lot that I can teach them. Like, you know, they often parents whose children are in school care about their grades. Well, within a couple of sessions with me, they realize that the best thing is to tell the child I don't care about your grades. And you just, you know, I need you to go to school, so pass as long as you pass to the next grade, study what you the lessons that you love, do as much as you want, the lessons you don't like, do the minimum, and you don't even have to show me your report card. I don't care, I love you, uh, regardless of you know, the grades have nothing to do with love or with who you are or with what you're actually interested in life. And then when you're at home, um, I'm not gonna ask you. I also teach them not to push to do homework or go to sleep early. Uh children learn from the experience, they don't like to fall asleep in the class. Uh, they like to pass the grade just enough to not be scolded or put on the spot or shamed or any of the other atrocities they can do in a school setting. Um, so they learn and find a way to cope. And I ask parents to be on the side of the child and teach them to cope with the, you know, some teachers are great, and some teachers are not so great, and some teachers are atrocious, right? And so to empower the child to deal with the atrocious teacher rather than side with the teacher, which is most what usually parents do before they come to me. The teacher calls and says, you know, your child is misbehaving, and they side with the teacher and scold the child instead of let's see what's going wrong with my child, and how I can help my child and talk to the teacher about making it better for them. But yeah, it could be a good majority or uh 60-70 percent of my clients are unschoolers and home birthers, etc. But definitely not a requirement. I work with anyone without an agenda.

Jesper Conrad: 12:40
All of them have children, all of them need love and care. Exactly.

Naomi Aldort: 12:45
And it also ends up with marriage counseling often, because if the parents don't agree, often the mother wants all this freedom, and uh the father is a little more strict or old-fashioned, or doesn't do as much of the reading and the studying, uh, and gets all anxious about understanding.

Jesper Conrad: 13:07
Yeah, I was like that myself. Uh but but luckily I've um well we had the perfect balance of you not interfering, not really caring too much, no, and me not really listening to you until you came on board.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:27
Yep, now it's perfect.

Naomi Aldort: 13:28
Yeah, I had I had a perfect husband. He he's passed away three years ago, but he just said it's basically he wanted to be involved, he wanted to be involved in the decisions, but then he would say, Let's discuss, but at the end you decide because you know more. And that's the main mistake a lot of couples do, especially about high schooling.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:56
Interesting, your takeaway from this conversation.

Naomi Aldort: 13:60
Yeah, so a good plan. If if one of us knows the material and one of us doesn't, the opinion is not equally valuable or useful for the decision about the kids. So I say to couples, I would say to the men in this case, usually the men, but not always, uh, why don't you read the same books your wife read? Because they really want to be involved in decisions, so we can at the meeting, at our Zoom session, have a conversation where both of you know the same thing, and you don't pay me hundreds of dollars to give you the information that your wife is giving you from the books she read, etc. It'll save you money, and then we'll be on the same page, and you'll have questions that I can answer because you have read, you know where we're going, uh, or where your wife wants to go, and we can come to some, and and then their vote is valuable because they're learning all of this. And of course, if they did that, that would solve the problem because they would understand better. Most of them don't, they just want to dictate their opinion while not really having all the information.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:17
So another problem I see is that very often the father has not been actually interacting with the children to the same extent as the mother, even though the father might be a very good father, caring, loving, absolutely lovely father. Very often they just spend more time at work, they spend more time away from the children. The children start preferring the mother when they, you know, hurt their knee or whatever. And and this is just how it goes. I am not going to judge whether it's good or bad, but that is the situation, which means the mother also has all this information about the personality of the child and the history of the child and how they would, you know, she can predict in many cases much better. How would my child react to this situation? And and um yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's very, very normal. We work with the same things very often with people.

Naomi Aldort: 16:14
And the other thing I advise couples in terms of the marriage is to actually decide who is in charge of what. So, you know, in most families, uh, maintaining the car is not the the woman doesn't choose to do that and she doesn't care about the details. And it's, you know, so why have an opinion? You know, I had my husband buy the car. So it's like, I don't want to have an opinion, I don't know anything about cars. So when we ran out of a car, he went and got another car, and I said, Thank you. And I didn't go into an argument that he should have gotten a different car. You know, it's like, who cares? He did the money. A lot of women are actually better at that. I find that a lot of women do the taxes and you know, money calculations, etc., etc. So either one, uh, but just deciding who is furnishing the house, who is deciding what the house would look like, uh, who is deciding uh all kinds of details, you know, in a household. So in parenting, it's the same thing. You know, there are things I want fathers to have close relationships with the children without the stress of, you know, mommy doesn't let you do this, so I have to, uh I'm going to do behind her back, or all these things that happen that create tension for the couple, which is not good for the children right there, or for the couple. So I think if you sit down and decide who is in charge of what, you know, so maybe, yeah, usually the mother would be uh the better person to have the final word on education. Doesn't mean you don't have a conversation, but more listening to her and looking at all the details. So that's why my husband was very good about that, and he wasn't as skilled. So if the children were fighting and he had a problem dealing with them, he would call me. He called me a miracle worker. He said, Naomi, if I did what I want to do, it won't look very good. Because he knew he would get angry, he'd raise his voice or whatever. So he was wise uh enough to know the differences, to know who is good at what. So, you know, not be bothered about the cars or about uh income or investments. I didn't care about these things. Not that I couldn't, but I I can't stand the subject. Uh, and yet with when with the children, it was up to me at the end of the day.

Jesper Conrad: 18:48
Yeah, I I have a question, and already while answering, uh asking it, uh, I think okay, yes, but that is a too broad question. Uh but why do you think we have in general become so bad at parenting? I think that should be so natural for the most people. Maybe too broad.

Naomi Aldort: 19:09
It would have been natural if you grew up natural, but the human mind, it's almost like I'm not sure there is a natural in modern society, and even in uh original tribal societies, each tribe had its uh dogma, it's the way you do it, you know, what age, what. So I think humans are extremely pliable. Uh who we are is unknown to us. We actually philosophically don't exist because if I erased your mind right now, who would you be? So the mind is a collection of thoughts, none of them are yours. You inherited them, you're keeping inheriting from media and friends, and wife, and husband, and relatives, and friends, and newspapers, etc. So all this material up here, I don't know that that's natural. You know, what's natural about uh, you know, because people say naturally I should spank my child, that's what I feel like right now. And I wrote an article, don't call it spanking, that's a

Naomi Aldort: 20:25
lie. You mean hitting, you mean abusing, right? And you give it a different word so that, well, for children it's called spanking, so it's all right. No, it's not all right, never was all right, don't care what you know. So I have an article about it uh in a magazine from Australia. Uh anyway, so we talk about being intuitive, natural with their children, but many people intuitively want to yell, want to heat, want to control. So, you know, even in small, so I have clients who are the most loving parents, would never punish or hit or anything. They do, they read my book, they you know, and you can still make mistakes. So the mother tells me the story that the child, three years old, got a little shovel and got really excited about digging in the dirt. And so there was a place of dirt right next to the grass. So he dug and threw and created a pile of dirt on the grass, and she told she told him not to do that, and he wouldn't listen. And eventually she she got angry and took him in the house and he had a meltdown. And so I work with her. She she was so prepared because she already studied my stuff a lot, and she changed her ways and all those kinds of things just about overnight. But you know, she got it. It's like that control came out of her, what you call. Natural. It came to her naturally. She said to him gently, let's put the dirt on the dirt and not on the grass. And he said, No, I like it here. That was, you know, what's the big deal of cleaning some dirt off the grass at the end of the day? There's no big deal, no. There's nothing. And when she realized that, that she creates all this fight and meltdown because she ruined his day, you know, he was having such a blast with this new shovel, and she ruined everything. And, you know, it ruins her relationship with him, of course. So when she realized that, she she really transformed. But that's what happens with parents who work with me. I sense how ready they are they are, and I go with them. With her, I could go fast right away. We did the process, the work of Byron Katie. I use for like in the cell formula in my book. The S part is looking at yourself and what thoughts are hijacking you away from love. And with it, away from peace and away from your child, and from being loving and peaceful with your child. She had the thought. And the thought was he shouldn't put the dirt on the grass. I want to keep the grass clean. And that thought is just not true because he did put the dirt off the grass and had a blossom doing that. That's what that was his creation. And the pile on the green probably looked so much better than piling it on more dirt where it's not. And when I do the process, I help the parent um come up with their realization on their own. So what is great about him putting it in the grass, other than it's it's his thing? That's number one and the most important. And yeah, it looks prettier. You can see the pile, it's brown pile on green grass. Yeah, it's just so much nicer. Why is mommy coming and ruining this and telling me to do something a lot less satisfying? So she realized all of that with me just asking questions. So it's her own realization. I don't tell people what to think, I ask them questions so they come to their own realization, as in the soul formula in the book. But it's the S part, the self-realization, the self-talk, the questioning. So that's a long answer to your comment about natural. I don't know what is natural. It's not natural. Everything in your mind isn't natural, but it can be a strong drive. And that doesn't mean that it's the thing to do, right? And we're full of it, you know, men go in the street and may have a natural desire to have sex with some woman that goes by very, very half-naked. And it doesn't mean he's going and doing that, right? So we we suppress our nature all the time, or we want to eat sugar all the time, and we don't, because we know how bad it is for us. Or maybe we want to there's a lot of things we want to do, cross the street in a red light, we're in a hurry, uh, and we don't do it. We know the rules. So no, I wouldn't say that there is a parameter called natural, but maybe on the other side of it, there is a parameter where we go so far from nature that you know, like how we birth or schooling, you know, it's all it all goes against the nature of the human being. You know, a child doesn't learn by sitting in a classroom and being told what to do, with 20 other kids being told what to do at the same time, and they're all the same age, they can help each other, they can only fight with each other and learn about fighting and and competition and and all other bad things that are being learned, not content-wise, but just the setup, is so unnatural and unproductive. So, in that sense, there is a point to using the word natural or authentic, I like to use, you know, authentic parenting, authentic child. Uh, what is real, what is autonomous for the child who is digging in the dirt and making a pile on the grass is whatever satisfaction he's getting in that moment. And they're beautiful mirrors of us because they don't have a lot of junk yet. And you know, we're full of it, we're full of it, but they are empty enough, they're like an enlightened unaware. So it's not enlightened, it's not aware of it, but they're just giving us back whatever we are.

Jesper Conrad: 26:52
What you said just made me think about um justifying how uh earlier in our life when we send our kids to institutions, um there is this inner dialogue where you justify your choices. Um that may even though it felt wrong to leave your child in the in the kindergarten or nursery when they cried when we left, then the person in charge down there said, Oh, hurry away, you will uh the the she will stop crying, you know. And I remember justifying to myself, oh, but I need to go to work, I need to do this. And and that is a thing I believe if people have justified faints over many years, it it's maybe difficult to acknowledge that pain that comes with removing it again and saying, Okay, look at what I did.

Naomi Aldort: 27:49
It's it's very interesting, and your example is very useful because uh it's hard, also because we live in a society that opposes our love, our intuitive. So you bring a child to uh daycare, and they tell you they won't cry, and they're right, they won't cry because you're not there. So what's the point of crying? My mom is or my father is gone anyway, I can't get them. Uh so and then they tell you that the child was happy. It's like, no, the child wasn't happy, the child resigned, and and you know, what am I gonna do until my mother comes? I may as well play. I'm not gonna just sit here and cry the whole day. They're too intelligent for that. Although the first few times, some of them cry the whole day, but the teacher would, you know, distract them and you know, do all kinds of song and dance and pirouettes to avoid the natural reaction of the child. And then you come to pick them up and they said, Oh, they were just fine. The moment you laughed, they stopped crying and they played and they were great, and basically lying to themselves and to you because their own brainwash and indoctrination in having children go through all this pain in order to arrive at what? That we control them? You know, what's what's what's the point? Where are they supposed to arrive? Uh, because on their own, they're arriving all the time in their own language and in their own blueprint, following inside, not outside, which is one of the main things that I teach. You know, when people ask me, so what's the bottom line? It says like keep your child rooted in themselves and not seeking approval. Because we are seekers of approvals, we're addicts. We grew up seeking approval, even as parents. I find that one of the factors in my counseling of parents about unschooling or uh co-sleeping or whatever it is, is that they're worried about what the relatives would say or the neighbors would feel like yeah, would do you know the wrong thing. My mother-in-law is going nuts, she's telling me not to sleep with my child because this and this would happen, or to send them to school because they won't know to read, and they won't know anything, and they won't be able to go to college and all this nonsense, right? And if you're seeking approval, then you fall into the trap of feeling stressed and believing some of that, so getting that into your belief system, as well as fighting with the mother-in-law or with your own parents, and trying to convince them so that you can be approved by them. You know, if I have you understand why I'm doing this, mom, then you would approve of me because you understand that I'm right. And what I teach parents to do is to let go, not convince anybody, not persuade anybody, not explain to anybody why you're doing what you're doing. But elicit total respect. And I give techniques on how to elicit total respect from the in-laws and the parents and the uncles and aunts and neighbors and whoever it is. And you elicit respect by not being engaged, but yes, listening to them, validating their feelings. So we do in sessions and in workshops, we do a mock. I play them, my client, and they play their, let's say, father-in-law, whoever in their family is the most pushy on their dogma. And I have a conversation with them. So father-in-law may say, Oh, your child will never learn anything if he doesn't go to school, da da da da. And I respond peacefully, validatingly, and without getting into any argument, any defense, no defense, no seeking their approval, just completely connecting. If you want to do a demo, I can I can show you how that works. But it's it's beautiful because then people say, Oh, I don't need to fight with him. I don't have to convince him, I don't have to argue, I don't have to tell them they're wrong or that I'm right.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:25
No, no, no, yeah, yeah, I get you.

Naomi Aldort: 32:27
You don't have to do any of that. You just listen and then they have a better relationship with the children because you didn't even fight them. You know, there's no argument about the children. There's it's just totally peaceful, and they feel more accepted because you're listening. I I even teach to be grateful, to say thank you for caring so much. I hear your concern. I understand that you think that they need, and you repeat what they say. You do the basic communication skills of letting a person know that you heard them. So you're worried that if he'll if I don't teach him to read, or if he doesn't go to school and he's already eight years old and is not reading yet, you're afraid he'll never read and never know math, etc., etc. Tell me more about that. Well, what are you afraid would happen in the worst case scenario? You listen to them, you ask for more, you're peaceful because you're not seeking their approval or their agreement or their anything. You're free. And after you have sessions with me, you're free. You're done with seeking approval because that's and defensiveness comes from seeking approval. If you seek the approval of the relatives or whoever it is, then now you're defensive. No, no, I didn't do that. I didn't know we're gonna do that, and share your whole philosophy and why it's right. That's not gonna work. That just creates enemies and and problems.

Cecilie Conrad: 33:59
But I think there is a fine line, I I'm totally on board with you. It's what we're doing. But um I think there is though a fine line between staying with our own truth, which is for many people a very radical truth. And yet being connected to our our relatives and old friends. Obviously, we have been unschooling for many, many years, so much of most of our friends are unschoolers, but we still are connected with people outside of that community and we have family. And I think it's just very interesting how we can navigate because it's beautiful that we listen to each other, and I find it also beautiful within the human mind how we we don't have to be pushovers just because it matters what other people think. If it didn't matter at all, we would be very lonely.

Naomi Aldort: 35:02
Yes, this method that yeah, but sweetie, this method that I teach produces exactly that. You're not a pushover because you you're not

Naomi Aldort: 35:11
if you see the moment you explain your philosophy, you're a pushover, you're justifying.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:17
Yeah, yeah. And then instead of being pushed over, you will be the pushover. I get that. I designed it.

Naomi Aldort: 35:23
No, you don't do either. That that's a pushover either way, because you're sucked into their system. If you argue with them, if you have a conversation about whether your child should sleep with you or not, or go to school or not, then you've been pushed over. You're in their court having their conversation. See, in my method, you stay doing what you're doing. Your passion and your conviction is so strong, you have no need to convince anybody else in that. But you stay connected to that because the way you communicate with them does not have you at all consider being influenced by them, unless they say something really wise. That happens once in a while.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:07
Yeah, it happens sometimes, and I think sometimes the the this community of homeschoolers can be very a little bit, yeah, you know, stay away from me. I I got this, don't and I I think it creates, even though we try to work with all and that's not what I teach. Yeah, we're happy to hear that. I I just wondered how do you, you know, by connecting yeah, connecting by connecting.

Naomi Aldort: 36:36
So if a person says they would uh they would not be ready for college, I've I say, oh, I see, you're very concerned, I appreciate it. You're concerned that they wouldn't go to college. Uh you know, if they're open-minded, I say, would you like to read something about it? Because I've studied the subject, but usually they're not. And in that case, I just listen to them and stay connected and show appreciation. So the relationship actually becomes closer. They feel that I listen to them rather than I shut them off and try to convince them the other way. I let them keep their opinions, they're not feeling threatened by me. I'm loving and connecting and clear about the way I go about it. So it's it's not a detachment, it's a closer connection, actually, with a person. And it doesn't mean you do what they say. You still do what you say, but by not engaging.

Cecilie Conrad: 37:41
When I counsel beginners, I would call it beginners, those who just decided to unschool, the kids are just not started in school, or they're extracted from the school system. It's very often the mothers and the mothers-in-laws that are the problem, or will be the largest threat to the family because it's so it's such a radical and huge decision for people to make. Yeah, and and and they are so shaken by doing it, they're happy and they are overflown with freedom, and and the shoulders go back down, and they start sleeping at night, the kids are happy, but they're still shaking. It's it's a huge pushover of basic ideas, and then if the mother-in-law comes and push them, or maybe their own mother exactly will just keep pushing, then in a way I just find I I hear you with the technique, but I think some of the beginners I talk to, they're not strong enough for that. When I teach them there, so I kind of have to say, could you discuss this with your mother a year from now and try to do something?

Naomi Aldort: 38:57
I see you're misunderstanding something. I get it. Okay. The work I do with them, the mock, they don't have to talk to their mother or to their mother-in-law, they don't have to do any of this. When they do it with me as a mock, they're relieved from seeking approval, they're relieved of caring about what the mother or grandmother or or mother-in-law says, so that they can naturally, as a result of their session with me, they have that strength that you think they won't have. It doesn't bother them. The next time mother-in-law is visiting and saying, Oh, you're still sleeping with your child, I can't believe it, or whatever. It doesn't do anything to them. Okay, so they're either able to do what we practice in the session, or they do nothing and just go about their day ignoring uh the thing and say, Yeah, I know, I know, it's hard for you, or whatever. Um, so yeah, it does it takes sometimes more than one session, but this method, it's the conversation very good method, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:07
It's like me and the style therapy, basically. It's what it's it reminds me of the you know, I'm I'm sorry, I don't know the lingo in English. I maybe you call it style therapy by Pearl. He he did these enactments, it's it's it looks, it sounds to me a little bit as the same. No, it's based more on Byron Katie, and it's my I know Byron Katie, the work, but it goes back to this enactment of being the uh there is also the systemic I didn't get it from Pearl or anything.

Naomi Aldort: 40:40
I kind of invented it, or yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:43
I'm not saying you get it from, I just say it reminds me of some people.

Naomi Aldort: 40:50
I I think it's rather different, but it's it just gives it, it's what happens in the session that actually strengthen the person and cures them from needing the approval of the mother-in-law or the mother to a degree that they can have this conversation with them or they don't have to, but they're rooted in themselves. So when I say you want to raise a child who's rooted in them themselves, what I do in my work is help parents to be rooted in themselves. Yeah, so that they can let the child be rooted in themselves, and so that they don't seem to flip over because of the opinions of other people. And it's true in the beginning, it's harder for them, but the way I work with them produce very fast results, they get very strong, no matter how beginners they are.

Jesper Conrad: 41:41
That's wonderful to hear.

Naomi Aldort: 41:42
They really um they really transform very, very fast. It's it's it's fantastic work, you know.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:48
Very nice techniques, yeah.

Naomi Aldort: 41:50
Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:52
Yeah, I don't know what time it is because I forgot my phone.

Jesper Conrad: 41:57
Give me a second.

Naomi Aldort: 41:58
And not seeking approval also means not praising children that goes together with that famous article of mine that was in Mothering magazine, and then I had a series of three more articles about this subject um in Life Learning magazine, I think. Uh from Canada.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:19
What country, yeah.

Naomi Aldort: 42:20
What country are you in?

Cecilie Conrad: 42:22
We're in France and from Denmark.

Jesper Conrad: 42:25
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:26
Yeah. I did read Life Learning magazine actually.

Jesper Conrad: 42:30
Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:31
Yes, you had it lying around. So I probably read it.

Naomi Aldort: 42:35
So anyway, that was years ago. And um, but I have it on my website.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:46
When I talk about it, uh, it seems very many, many parents think it's very odd to not praise children.

Naomi Aldort: 42:55
Yeah, because they think that when you praise a child, they would feel good about themselves. But it isn't true, they're feeling good about you praising them and become dependent on it. So it's very manipulative, just like rewards and prices, and uh it's all of it is telling a child, do it so that I tell you that you're good. Um, so that dependency, um, it's it's hard to answer it in just a few minutes because but I'll try. I know, but I just think there is a set of three articles on my website that's free, that's called um the price of praise. And it shows how it creates seeking approval. So uh, like my children were musicians. If I praised them about their music, they would become very anxious to always please me in the area of music and in other areas. And there are some children that are so heavily praised. Good job, good job. Job, good boy, good girl. Um, they're not anymore doing things authentically because they want to do them, but because they want to please mommy and daddy and get the reward or get the praise. The praise is a form of reward or a form of I'm loved. They think I'm good.

Jesper Conrad: 44:20
Yeah.

Naomi Aldort: 44:20
And it's the opposite of my goal, which is for the child to be rooted in themselves, do things from inside. So it extracts the child out of themselves and puts them in an anxiety mode. Will I be approved? Am I doing the right thing? And we all suffer from it because we we were praised. Before that, we were spanked in the generation before and punished. And then they thought the great thing, we'll we'll manipulate with praise. We'll tell the child how good they are when they do good, and we won't say anything when they do bad. But it's the other side of the same coin. So now the child actually, in a way, somewhat worse, because if a child is punished and hit, there's something in them that tells them it's wrong. They can see, you know, I'm being hit, and at some point it's like this is wrong. While if you praise them, it's invisible. They don't know that they're hooked, they don't know that they're manipulated, and they lose self-motivation. Now they do things for the praise and not because they enjoy playing ball or to or or painting a picture or playing Mozart. They're now doing it to please another. It shifts because they're so focused on getting the praise. And that's what seeking approval comes from. That's where insecurity comes from. Insecurity is worrying about what others think of me. So you go into a party as an adult and you spend two hours, how you would look, and you know, most people, uh, or women especially, right? And and will I look good? Will they like it? And what do I bring? And what will I say? Oh, did I say the wrong thing? And will I impress them? And you know, am I laughing too loud? Or it's just you lose your sense of just freedom to be yourself because you're so concerned about what they say about me, and that's what it trains the child to do. It's like to begin for the praise to do things, not because I want to, but because when I do this, mommy loves me. She tells me I'm good, and I don't know if I'm good or not. I have to seek it outside. That's insecurity, that's weakness, that's anxiety. So the opposite of anxiety is security being rooted in oneself and asking yourself, is it good? So when people ask me, so what do you do instead? Remember, this is a very short, so go and listen. There are other videos on my website specifically about praise, and there is uh and there's those three articles, and also the mothering article, which is called Getting Out of the Way. So it's four articles in all about this subject. Um seeking approval that we all suffer from, we want to enact it again. So the whole good boy, good girl uh extract the child away from his freedom and authenticity.

Jesper Conrad: 47:35
Yeah. Um, as adults, I I know I I have uh you could uh I sometimes call it the pleaser gene. I could also call it the seeking approval gene. Um it's a way of excusing myself from it. Uh I'm I'm trying to work with it. Last year I uh changed uh we changed our life around. I we were in a situation I could work less.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:04
Uh we changed our lives around. You quit your job, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 48:08
No, no, just in this life, but but my life changed in the way that I quit a job with a high profile and everything, and it has been a wonderful emotional roller coaster of saying to myself, hey, I'm good enough without that title. Um, I'm I'm happy I wasn't fired. Then it uh would have been a different feeling. Here, it was a choice, uh, but but it it is still something I work on, and and um yeah, right now you had to say it was a high profile job.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:40
Yes, yes, just for the record.

Jesper Conrad: 48:45
Uh yes, just uh it's hard to be married, it's one don't marry a psychologist, no, don't marry a psychologist. It's yeah, it's still call on you.

Naomi Aldort: 48:57
No, but but marry a psychologist, you'll grow up a lot faster.

Jesper Conrad: 49:03
Yes, absolutely.

Naomi Aldort: 49:04
There was a big need for that.

Jesper Conrad: 49:06
I needed that, I needed that, absolutely. But as most parents have lived with praise, or the most adults have lived with praise. So, what would your first advice be? Besides we will put out the links to your website. What would your first advice be for people to start working on themselves to seek a little less approval from outside?

Naomi Aldort: 49:31
Well, first of all, to notice about themselves that they seek it, and to notice what they say to themselves and why they do what they do when they're inauthentic, and to notice the inauthenticity all the time. And then they will learn a lot by stopping praising their child. It'll force them to look at themselves. So when they want to say to a child, what a beautiful picture you drew, and they have to shut up because they got instructions from Naomi, try it for a week and see what happens. Uh and and the child is usually already programmed. So the child will come with the picture. Mommy, do you like it or is it good? Right? Because they're used to, they're already dependent. That means harm already done, uh, that needs to be walked backward. And I so I give some freaks and ideas what to say to get out of that mode, and depending on the age of the child. Like, did you enjoy doing it? Do you like it? Um eventually the child doesn't even ask. He said, Look at this picture, I love it. I want to hang it. And they do it themselves. They don't need, you know, they don't need our

Naomi Aldort: 50:46
help. In one of the workshops I was leading uh years ago, I was talking about this, and there was one woman, there were like 200 people, conference, whatever. And this one woman raised her hand at the session and said, I understand what you're saying, but I'm going to keep praising my daughter because she loves it. Of course, addicted to it, dependent on it. And I just said, you know, I'm here to give a lecture and share whatever, and it's up to you what you use. Same attitude as good people, right? Well, at lunchtime, I walk out after I'm done eating, and she's sitting with her daughter at a table. She calls me to the table and she says to me, Naomi, I told my daughter what you said, and I told her that not to worry, that I'll keep praising her. And the child's answer was, No, mommy, she's right, don't do that. So not every child has that insight, obviously, a brilliant kid. But uh, you know, it depends on the age. And but the child saw right away the weakness, the dependency, how much she wanted to be free of this manipulation. It is just manipulation. You know, you praise something because you are trying to manipulate how they feel, to control them. It's just another method of control and manipulation. So I think most children recover quite fast. And depending on the child and what the parents tell me that the child is saying, I guide them to give them some ideas of what they can say to get out of it. If that child is old enough, then what this woman did, like, you know, I'm talking to this counselor, Naomi Aldort, and she suggested that when I praise you, this is this is what it does. Uh, and I'm not going to do that anymore. Most of them say what that child says. Yeah, she's right, great, hallelujah. Uh, once in a while, a child would say, no, no, but I love when you praise me. That's a very bad sign, of course, the child is already addicted and dependent. Uh, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make the shift. I understand how you're used to it, and it actually shows that you're already very dependent on it. So I'm going to also ask daddy to or mommy to not praise me. Uh, you know, we're all gonna work on it as a family to feel free and not needing the approval of other people. Uh, and if it's a younger child, usually they recover simply by the omission of the whole thing. You stop saying good boy, good girl, they don't even notice because they never bother, you know, they never were bothered by it anyway.

Jesper Conrad: 53:41
Naomi, yeah, I follow you wholeheartedly, but there's one thing popping in my mind, which is uh sometimes when uh our daughter who loves to draw dogs, uh show me one, I get super impressed by it, and you can see me. I light up and I say, Oh wow, okay, that is super cool. I'm not doing it to praise her, but but um I would be afraid that I if I was all the time thinking, oh, do not praise, do not praise, that I could also limit my own emotions.

Naomi Aldort: 54:15
Um yeah, you don't have to. No, you don't have to. You you can be yourself, just don't use words that evaluate the quality of her dance, right? You're just there and you're enjoying it's like ah, that was fun watching you. Just speak about your feeling. Or say nothing, it's on your face, you're beaming. It's like my my example in most of my lectures about praise. I give the example of the guy from a workshop who told, who said he was disabled, he thought he was mentally disabled all his life, because when he went down the slide first time in his life at age two, his parents were cheerleaders. They made so much fuss that he thought that something must be wrong with him, that they make such a big deal out of it. And they probably did it about other achievements, right? So people ask me, so what should these parents have done? And I said, nothing. But what if they're excited when he comes down this slide? Smile. You can beam, you can smile, just keep your mouth shut. You know, nobody likes to be evaluated. How would you like to do something? And oh, you look like you're having so much fun washing the dishes, clear dishes, very nice. Would you like that patronizing trend? It's the same thing, you know, we're just constant commentators. Children are playing. Oh, are you playing with your truck? Are you being a fireman? You know, we do all this baby talk and all this constantly, uh it's like they're a lab rat that we have to constantly evaluate and say things about. Just leave them alone. They're fine. So you're there and you think it's really fun, smile, laugh. If they're laughing, child could have come down the slide and and it's the first time, and it we could have the face of just as much. And you don't smile because you know, you you echo the child's feeling, you know. So if the child comes down and looks alarmed, you just give them a hug, and it's like, how was it? You say was scary, and you don't offer to do it again because you see, okay, that was too much. And if they ask to do it again, fine. They want to hold your hand the second time, fine. Just follow the little one. You know, they have their you know, whole university in here, they know what they need. Just follow, don't try to manipulate them to feel a certain way, just be the echo, the mirror of what's going on for them. So if she's happy with her moves, her dance moves, and you're smiling and look like you had a good time watching her, that's fine. But when you start telling her, boy, what a great dancer you are, now you're harming her. If she asks you specifically, and I call it giving feedback. So there is praise, there is feedback. Was my leg straight when I did the Grand Jate? So once you do it again, I'll look carefully. And then you give her feedback about the one thing she asked, right?

Cecilie Conrad: 57:30
And I tell people Jesper, what's going on with the drawings of our daughter? She will come to you and say, Look at this, isn't it great? I just learned this new technique and it looks exactly how I wanted it to look. And she will be proud of what she did, she achieved something, and you will be basically jealous. Yeah, yeah, I'm saying I can't do that.

Jesper Conrad: 57:49
But I'm I'm saying it out loud, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Naomi Aldort: 57:53
So that's that's what there are three articles about praise, because there is the praise as manipulation. Then I have an article about feedback, how to give feedback, and how to get kids who are used to praise to start asking for feedback for specific things. Was it in tune? Was the bowl high enough, whatever it is? And

Naomi Aldort: 58:14
then the third one is gratitude. So sometimes, you know, parents say, Oh, but my child made me breakfast and brought it to bed when I was sick. So you don't have to praise them, you can just say thank you. So gratitude, you know, somebody did something for you. A little three years old brought you a flower. Thank you. Uh, the children were quiet so that you can have a nap. Oh, I'm feeling so much fresher now for the evening and the guests or whatever. Thank you for letting me sleep. That was really helpful. So specific gratitude when when it's called for. Most of the time it's just thank you. Sometimes you can say something specific about what the service that they did, how it helped you. You know, the nap helped you. The the you did yoga for half an hour instead of being with them, and the older brother, you know, kept them, or the or the wife or husband or whatever, then you say thank you. That really helped me. I feel a lot fresher now, or whatever it is, specific. So there is, you know, the general praise as evaluation out the window. Feedback in, very good, but get the conversation going, that it's about feedback. Being authentic, just fine. And when they serve you, be grateful and say thank you.

Jesper Conrad: 59:40
When you feel and that's maybe and on the subject of gratitude, uh, then no, we would really love to thank you for your time. I know I uh have gotten feedback, uh, a mirror I didn't like to look at, which is yes, but you're seeking approval uh very often and still, and and it's something I will uh um yeah, I know it will be good for me to work with it, so I will try to do that. I just want to do the work, it's painful sometimes, but I grow. Yeah, but but but Naomi, uh thank you, and and um we will put up the links to the different articles you mentioned and your website, so people out there listening uh can uh seek you out if they uh want your help.

Cecilie Conrad: 01:00:29
You wanted to say I just wanted to say that your one of your basic ideas, the idea of not praising children, was one that entered my life as a mother fairly early, and I've been very grateful for that. It was a good insight that I picked up when when you were small. It made sense and it did help us a lot along the way.