Dr. Lisa Bravo: The BRAVO Effect Parenting Framework

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 477 — Dr. Lisa Bravo — The Bravo Effect parenting framework.

Introduction

Lisa Bravo: The most important things — my kids have told me the most important moments for them have been when I have come into their world. So I've come into their room and laid on their floor next to their dirty socks and said, how are you? What's going on? Tell me what's going on for you today. And I want to be a part of what's going on in their world. I come in without a prescribed agenda, but really just understanding who they are in that moment, what they need from me, and how they feel about being in the world on that particular day. And I did that with my kids on a daily basis. I would check in with them at certain points in time — not only when I was angry with them, or they didn't do a chore, or they were in trouble, but really in a very neutral, calm time. I would just want to be in their world and make an effort to see them in a very organic way. This is Dr. Lisa Bravo, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. We're gonna do something a little different today, but I have a feeling a big portion of you guys are gonna like it, and it has to do with parenting. We have talked a lot about parenting, about getting kids into the outdoors, the importance of trying to get them off their devices, and the importance of connection — family connection, whether that's between you and your wife, or you and your kids. We always try to gravitate to the kids, because on Saltwater Experience there's an underlying theme of getting our own kids into the outdoors, raising them with this fishing, outdoor, adventure-type lifestyle that's all about family. Dr. Lisa Bravo has written a book called The Bravo Effect, and she has some really good information and suggestions based on her work as a family therapist and how she's helped parents deal with extreme situations. My experience is that if you can deal with extreme situations, you can deal with regular situations pretty well. So I wanted to get her on the show and talk about the state of our kids right now, our relationships, coming off of COVID and all these changes in the world, and how that relates to our relationship with our children — what social media, the Internet, and video games are doing to our children, both good and bad, and how we can, without placing taboos on things, learn to navigate this world so we're doing the best job of parenting we possibly can, to grow healthy children in mind, body, and spirit, and have a healthy relationship with our kids. So that's what we're gonna talk about today with Dr. Lisa Bravo. She's coming up next. If you like this podcast, please share it with others you know that may like it too — some of your buddies with kids that you fish or hunt with, your social media followers, that would be awesome. This one is a powerful episode, and I know I got a lot out of it. I hope you will as well. If you have any questions or want to talk about the episode, you can text (305) 930-7346 — that's the text line for the show, so send your show suggestions, guest suggestions, comments, or questions to that number, and I'll be glad to hear from you. If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes — that goes a long way toward getting us more listeners and ranking higher so more people can find the show, so we can continue to get better and better guests and bring you better shows. So, Dr. Lisa Bravo is coming up. As a parent of three, I know parenting can be challenging even on the best days. It's also the most rewarding part of my life, something that when I wasn't a parent I had no idea even existed. Now, as a parent of three, I listen to anything I can to help me be better at it, and this podcast may just be one of those things. So, Dr. Lisa Bravo coming up right now. Dr. Lisa Bravo, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Welcome and the Success of The Bravo Effect

Lisa Bravo: Thank you for having me.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. You've got a lot of interesting things going on — the new book, your whole career of helping people. How's the book going?

Lisa Bravo: It's actually going great. We launched it in April, and it hit number one bestseller on Amazon in the first week, and it's been really well received. I think it's a really important topic, especially post-pandemic and with everything going on with teenagers today.

Tom Rowland: Well, I have some of my own — I'm through some of the teen years, still have some behind me. I've got a 23-year-old, a 21-year-old, and a 17-year-old, so I know just enough about parenting to be dangerous, I think. I've learned a little bit more from each child. I tell my poor oldest son, he's like, 'Well, you never let me do those things that you're letting the other ones do.' And I say, man, honestly, we had no idea what we were doing.

Lisa Bravo: The oldest out of the barrel has it the hardest.

Tom Rowland: I know. But I try to be really honest with him — I'm like, listen, man, we really didn't know what we were doing, we had no idea, we were literally hacking our way through the jungle with a machete with you. With your brother we knew a little more, with your sister a little more, and if we had another one we'd know a little more. But literally every day of his life as the oldest child was a new frontier — we had never seen that, never experienced that. Here we are right now getting ready for my daughter to go to college next year, and the empty nest syndrome is real — we're dealing with that at my house. How many children do you have?

Lisa Bravo: I have two children — one is 25 and one is 23. So they're past that squirrelly teenager stage, but I think I've found in my practice, over the last several years, that the adolescent stage has shifted a little later. You know that expression that 40 is the new 30, or 30 is the new 20? I really think young adults present a lot like older teenagers used to twenty years ago.

Tom Rowland: Why do you think that is?

Lisa Bravo: Well, I'm seeing a lot more emotional immaturity, and developmentally, lots of delays in social and interpersonal skills. I think a lot of that has to do with the Internet. They don't have to steep themselves in deep conversations anymore — everything's very superficial, very immediate-gratification. If you don't like this person, you just swipe and get rid of them and move to the next friend group. So I'm not seeing a lot of people having to use the grit and resiliency it takes to be in really intimate relationships, and I think that's affecting our teenagers in negative ways.

Grit, Vulnerability, and Early Exposure

Tom Rowland: That's interesting that you bring grit into intimate relationships — I don't know that I ever thought about it like that. I've read Angela Duckworth's book, Grit, and Mindset by Carol Dweck, two of my favorite books. I immediately gravitate to athletics, hard work, things like that, but there is a tremendous amount of grit in a relationship, maybe even more than anywhere else — it's really easy to give up, easy to just not go down that road. You're saying you're not seeing that grit from young people in interpersonal relationships specifically.

Lisa Bravo: And I think it's very difficult for them to dig deeper too, because their peers are in the same genre where they can swipe left when it gets too hard, and delete people and move on. So it's very hard for teenagers to be vulnerable in the first place, and then when they are, they're also at the mercy of the other person — it's such a precarious place they're in. I think also they're exposed to so much from such an early age. We know now that teenagers' first experience with pornography is 10 years old.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Lisa Bravo: So they have this very unrealistic viewpoint, and access to things we never had access to as children. They have to navigate which part of it is reality and which isn't, and it's very hard for them to define those lines if they don't have a lot of grounding in their home life or among their peer group.

Tom Rowland: So how do you reinforce that grounding at home? That's very interesting.

Rebuilding Connection During and After the Pandemic

Lisa Bravo: That's a great question, Tom. I think the American family has changed exponentially over the last several years, and the pandemic brought a lot of hard times to a lot of people. But I also think there was a silver lining for some families — for the first time in a long time, they had to sit together and figure out how to be together and work out conflict together. There was nowhere to go, they had to figure out how to be families again. For the first time we saw those videos of people making bread together and learning to cook — things we sort of took for granted as a culture because we didn't have time for them. And when that layer of busyness was taken away, it was do-or-die time for a lot of families — you either sank or swam. I'm seeing families that came out with a lot of resilience and a renewed sense of family, and I'm seeing families going through divorce now. This last year has been really telling in terms of understanding where your family is from a mental health and stress-tolerance standpoint.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. One of the things that happened in our industry, the outdoors and fishing, was that — just like you said — there's a silver lining. Just two years ago we were thinking, how do you get young people to go fishing? Because fishing is like a passed-down thing — a grandfather, a parent, a mentor, an uncle or aunt or neighbor teaching something and passing it down. Then when the pandemic hit, we had a record number of people going outside — record numbers of new anglers, new hunters, new people kayaking, hiking, backpacking. It's hard to buy a boat right now, hard to buy tents and backpacking supplies. I see that as something really good that's come out of it, but I also know a lot of people have had a rough time. I read the first chapter of your book, which was really interesting — it's interesting that your book right now is about what you're calling extreme teens, extreme situations where parents are able to reconnect with kids when there's this disconnect going on. And maybe the pandemic, or post-pandemic, is a great opportunity for that. What do you think about getting outside and reconnecting with your kids outdoors — is that part of the plan?

Reconnecting with Teens Through the Outdoors

Lisa Bravo: Absolutely. I think connection is a very organic thing. In my office it's not organic — it's usually kids being dragged in on the heels of some crisis, forced to figure things out together. But when we can find really organic ways to connect with our teenagers, it's really important. Parents of teenagers are often under the impression that our teenagers don't want to be around us, and I think that's a misconception. Every teenager I have met has a desire to be seen and loved and understood. So if we can connect with them in a way that's really intimate and at the core of who they are, they're so much better off moving forward. Being outdoors is a great way to accomplish that. And don't expect your teenagers, when you say we're going fishing and camping over the weekend, to jump up and down excited — expect them to be upset, resistant, not want to go, upset because they can't bring their phone or it won't work. All of that is part of the process of getting away and unplugging, but our teenagers don't know how to unplug, and we are very poor role models for teaching them how. These devices, when online, trigger the reward center of the brain, so kids physiologically have a shift in the chemicals that make them feel good, and they'll feel actual clinical depression being pulled away from those devices. Think of it like detoxing from a drug — they'll be crabby and difficult for a few days, then adjust, come out of their shell, and start telling you what's going on in their lives. It's a great opportunity for parents and kids, as long as your expectations are appropriate.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I've certainly experienced exactly what you're talking about — it's a big drag at first. At the very beginning, when they're kicking and screaming and don't want to go, it's easy for the parent to think, well, this is gonna be the worst weekend of our life — which isn't really why you're going. How does a parent navigate that when the kid isn't at all interested, or just hasn't reset the chemicals yet?

Lisa Bravo: Well, first is anticipating that's how it's going to be. When parents expect the kids to pack the car and be excited about getting up at six in the morning, that's when we get really disappointed, because our idea of what's going to happen doesn't match reality. So part of it is not being attached to the outcome, but understanding it's going to be bumpy — it's a new process for your child, they're not used to being alone with you in this intimate way, and it makes them uncomfortable. It's sort of like bringing a toddler to school for the first time and being upset when they have a meltdown — we know that's part of the process. So when we bring teenagers into the wilderness for the first time, they're going to be uncomfortable, out of their element. But the best part of being outdoors, at least for my kids, was being able to light the fire — that's the best part of camping, hands down. They still talk about being around the fire pit, building the fire, being around that version of danger. I think that was exciting for them.

The Power of the Campfire

Tom Rowland: Yeah, but there's something else there that we've lost touch with, that happened much more when we lived in a more outdoor culture. Fire was part of life. Even when I was a guide out in Wyoming and Idaho, we'd do a lot of overnights, and the first thing you'd do is start the fire, and everybody would end up sitting around it — staring into the fire, or having a conversation, or staring at the stars. Those are three things really missing from a lot of people's lives now. I kind of think of this podcast as sitting around a campfire, that was the idea — we used to have the greatest conversations sitting around those campfires, talking about things you never thought you'd talk about with people you just met that day. It could be the same with your children — there's something about that fire, almost like a meditative state.

Lisa Bravo: That's what it is — it's like a moving meditation with your family.

Tom Rowland: And it's interesting to see kids uncomfortable with the outdoors and then see this transformation — they get away from their phone, whatever chemical resets happen, and now they're dirty, rolling in the mud, playing in the stream, having the greatest time ever, and they didn't even know that was missing from their life.

Lisa Bravo: Right.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's really interesting.

Lisa Bravo: It removes a veil, and it teaches them competence — that they can get through things. When a kid can start a fire — I work with so many kids coming out of wilderness therapy, and it has some of the highest success rates with teenagers, because they get out and learn to depend on themselves in a way they've never had to before. They learn a sense of competency and self-control that we try to instill in them, but generally we just scratch the surface of what they need.

Wilderness Therapy and Letting Kids Struggle

Tom Rowland: It's interesting they have such a high success rate with wilderness therapy — probably some type of program where you're taking kids out and making them fend for themselves. But compared to helicopter parenting, coddling your kids, trying to smooth the road so they never have a skinned knee — what really works is exactly the opposite. What lesson can you take back to parents whose kid doesn't necessarily need wilderness therapy — though I think every kid needs it, personally — when a kid hasn't had a big crisis, is a pretty good kid, and everything's going pretty well, where's the lesson, and how do you apply that to regular parenting?

Lisa Bravo: Well, I think part of it is, like you said, there are so many parents who are so afraid to let their kids struggle, suffer, go without, or fail. We don't allow our children to have any failures. I have so many parents who expect their kids to get A's, period — a C is the average, the middle. But it's statistically impossible for every child to get straight A's. We have unreasonable expectations of our children, and when the bar is set too high, they just don't try to jump over it anymore. Teaching kids how to be uncomfortable in healthy ways, how to fail and fail forward, teaches them resiliency and the ability to know they can start over and move forward even when they hit a speed bump. A lot of parents are so afraid because they're inundated with scary statistics about teen suicide, depression, and anxiety, and they don't want their kid to become a statistic — it comes from a good place, good intentions. But when we over-parent and hover, our children don't learn how to fail forward or start over, and that's detrimental in the long run. It gets really scary when they go away to college — when kids flounder and they're not under our roofs anymore, with a driver's license and a credit card and the influence of people we don't even know. I always tell parents that when their kids are struggling in the younger adolescent years, 14 to 18, that's the best time for them to struggle, because they still have parents and guidance who can oversee what's going on and connect with them and teach them lessons along the way.

Tom Rowland: Right, it's like a safe place to fail — like an athletic field is a safe place. You lose a game, okay, so you're the one who dropped the ball and lost the game — is there a lesson there? You don't want to see your child fail, but that is the best place for them to do it. What you're talking about with A students and expectations was a huge takeaway I took from Mindset, the Carol Dweck book — that C students and D students failed all the time, so every day was a risk, like, I don't know how to do this, so I'm going to try, and failed again. Where the super A student, told their whole life how smart they are, how they're going to Yale or Harvard, be a doctor — they were so afraid to take any risk, because it might expose them as something other than what they were told they were. The takeaway for my own parenting was: reward the kid for hard work, don't tell them how smart they are. That made a big difference with my own kids.

Lisa Bravo: There are a lot of smart kids who don't know how to be successful.

Tom Rowland: Right, C students run the world sometimes, or a lot of it, I guess. It's funny how that happens, because that's not what they tell you is going to happen in high school. But it's real interesting, and I think you're touching on a topic a lot of people are wrestling with. So I'm curious about your practice and how you evolved what you're calling the Bravo Effect — can you tell us what it is, your philosophy, and where your book is coming from?

The Bravo Effect Framework

Lisa Bravo: Sure. Just a thumbnail — I am a family therapist, my background is working with families, but I specialize in working with teenagers. The Bravo Effect was written to give parents a very simple framework for evaluating where your relationship is with your child at any given time. Bravo stands for Behavior, Relationship, Attitude, Values, and Opportunity. The first thing that gets our attention as parents is always behavior — we see certain behavior that makes us angry, frustrates us, or scares us. But if we just discipline the behavior, or react to it, we're not getting beneath it to understand what's going on. So what's beneath that behavior is: where am I in relationship with my child right now? Are we connected, disconnected, is there tension or conflict? What is my child's attitude about what's going on? What is my attitude about my child? What are we co-creating together? A lot of times teenagers can take what we think is a disrespectful attitude, but if we understand what's beneath the surface, maybe they're just being passionate about what they believe in, or having a hard time expressing what they want. A lot of times conflict has to do with poor communication, so a lot of what I talk to parents about is how the communication is going — part of it is parenting style, part of it is connection. When kids act out, we tend to pull rank and become the authoritarian, and that's not always the best way to handle things — sometimes it's better to just go outside and go for a walk. Especially with boys, brain studies show that when teenage boys are face to face with you, their testosterone levels spike because they're looking for conflict, but walking next to a teenager who's in conflict, they're not as triggered. So positioning yourself walking next to them, or driving in the car, are the best times to have conversations, not face to face and toe to toe with fists clenched. Trying to find the times where communication is optimal is the best way to handle connection. Then, after understanding what attitude our child is holding, we try to understand what they're valuing, and what I'm valuing in that moment — maybe I want them to be respectful and I see their behavior as disrespectful, but maybe they're valuing loyalty to a friend by not giving up names. We can look at all angles and understand what's really motivating their decision. And then we find opportunity — the last letter, O. There is an opportunity in every moment, even the most dire ones, and if we can find and expound on it, we can connect through it, and it makes all the difference in how the relationship moves from that point.

Finding Opportunity in Conflict

Tom Rowland: So what would an opportunity look like? Emotions are raging, the kid says, well, I'm leaving home, and you say, okay — where's the opportunity? People obviously say and do the wrong thing in the moment. How do you notice that opportunity?

Lisa Bravo: That's a great question. When we're in the throes of it, it's very hard to see, so as parents we need to unplug ourselves from the moment and take a bird's-eye view — what's going on here that I can look at as a pivot point? With teenagers, in that example, everyone's screaming, the kid says 'I'm out of here,' and we're like, go ahead — but the opportunity I see in that moment is that child still standing there, fighting for their position.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Lisa Bravo: So that's a kid who still wants to have a conversation, who's still in the game. If we can look at that instead of the words — because the words are just the behavior, meant to push us away — if we can dig beneath them and understand, wow, you must really feel hurt and rejected by what I just said, I said it out of anger and I shouldn't have said it, and take responsibility — we want our children to be respectful, but we don't always convey respect to them, we just expect they'll be respectful. If we take a moment and say, here's where I went wrong, here's what I want to take responsibility for, we're not submitting to them, we're modeling what it looks like to take responsibility for our behavior. It teaches them that parents aren't perfect, and neither are kids. It lights up the runway for other opportunities to connect.

Tom Rowland: Well, what a good role model you're being right there, to show that there's some accountability left in this world, that you're willing to take responsibility for your actions, and so should they — because that's not the lesson coming through all the time today.

Lisa Bravo: Right.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's cool, the opportunity thing, because you're exactly right. Given that you have children of your own and have been a family counselor for a while, especially now that your kids are grown, you can step back and take a bird's-eye view. But a lot of times, with your first child, you don't know anything, everything is new — this first act of defiance is brand new. By the third kid you've seen it a hundred times, but the first one, you're so in it, looking right at a tree instead of the whole forest. What would you say success is as a parent?

Defining Success as a Parent

Lisa Bravo: Oh, that's a great question. I think every parent may define it differently, but I believe it's our responsibility as parents to raise emotionally competent, mentally stable, well human beings — to parent the next generation of people. If my focus is on creating emotional competency and emotional intelligence in my kids, I've done my job. I believe that's probably the most important and most lacking part of what we're teaching our children generally in our culture right now. There's been a lot of recent information in the media about mental health, wellness, and stress management with teenagers, and it's really important and timely — we have a huge crisis in our country. Suicide rates have skyrocketed, anxiety and depression have skyrocketed, and it's all connected to how our children feel as they move through the world and how connected they feel to the people in their lives.

Tom Rowland: Right. And we began the podcast saying there's a significant lack of connection because of the Internet. I see it all the time. One thing missing from kids right now is boredom — when I grew up there were three channels on television, and sooner or later there was nothing to do, so you had to go outside, find some friends, get on your bike, maybe invent some sort of game because you had nothing to do. For me that was a creative outlet. I wonder if that's happening as much anymore — it did start to happen more during quarantine, kids playing with the kids two houses away, a baseball game or kickball game. It's an interesting time with the Internet, where it seems like you're connected to everyone in the world when in fact you're really not connected to anyone.

Boredom, Isolation, and Mental Health

Lisa Bravo: Right, it's all superficial. I talk in the book about boredom being a risk factor for suicide, unfortunately. In the last several years I've noticed a trend — summer breaks and spring break used to be a time where my practice would slow down, but in recent years it's been the opposite. There are a lot more kids who don't know how to handle boredom, so they engage in destructive behavior, become suicidal, have self-harming behaviors increase, because boredom instills an anxiety they don't know what to do with. When they don't have school as a distraction, it's very difficult for kids. I think that's why this year, in the pandemic, we've seen suicide attempt rates, depression, and anxiety skyrocket with teenagers.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's really not the boredom that's the problem, it's how to deal with the boredom. We were bored every day — there wasn't anything to do, we didn't have the Internet or video games, we had terrible TV shows, so you were just bored.

Lisa Bravo: And most of us had to watch TV as a family too.

Tom Rowland: Right, there was one TV.

Lisa Bravo: The isolation kids have now — every kid has a TV in their room, they never have to leave, and it creates so much isolation. We think we're giving them a reward by letting them have their own TV, but really it isolates them and separates them even more.

Tom Rowland: So what kind of advice do you give people about the use of devices and the freedom you give kids to hibernate in their room and watch movies or YouTube? What do you normally advise?

Devices as a Privilege, Not a Right

Lisa Bravo: Well, it's easier if you start early and use the Internet as a tool and a privilege rather than a right. A lot of kids think they have a right to their phone, their privacy, their devices. When we're not a good steward of that and expect them to self-regulate at 10 or 12 years old — which is when most kids get a phone — think about what you're doing: giving them a device that gives access to the entire world, and saying good luck. We hope they handle it well, and get frustrated when they don't. It's important to understand what you're actually giving your child, and not having parental controls in place is really dangerous. With teenagers, once that ship has sailed, it's a lot harder to pull back — but for a lot of kids it's really necessary, because they have a hard time self-regulating. Just about every gaming app was developed by people who specialize in addiction — people who build slot machines. So they were built for addiction, and as the brain is developing, we're basically making addiction part of that brain's architecture. Taking it away completely isn't reasonable, devices are here to stay, but having a healthy relationship with those devices is so important, and that means we have to be unpopular as parents sometimes, say no even if other parents let their kids do such and such. And it's super important that we model healthy behavior with our own devices — so many parents are on their devices all the time, but want their kids to get off.

Modeling Healthy Behavior with Screens

Tom Rowland: Right, there's a weird thing there, because a lot of parents make their living on their phone, especially after the pandemic — capable of working anywhere, anytime, which lends itself to more time with the family, but they're on the phone all the time. Yes, they're making a living and providing for their family, but the kid doesn't see it that way — the kid doesn't see trading stocks or answering emails as any different from scrolling Instagram. That's what the kid sees. And I'm bad like that too, because the Internet is really important to my business, and there are people waiting for me to give an answer, but it happens to be dinner time, and I'm telling the kids they can't have phones, but why can I? I know I've been hypocritical about that. What's the advice when that's your business — how do you model that behavior for your children?

Lisa Bravo: Well, that's a great question, because a lot of us work from home and are on call. It's hard to turn it off. But it's super important that we send the message that if dinner time is what you expect your child to show up for and be engaged in, then you don't get to get your phone out at dinner either. That's all there is to it.

Tom Rowland: But how do you ever expect your child to do something if you don't do what you say — do as I say, not as I do? That's not a good approach, though maybe it works for some people.

Lisa Bravo: Right, and our kids are always watching us, we're their sounding board for how the world works. If we're telling them one thing and doing another, it degrades their trust in us — they don't always believe they can trust what we say if we're not being congruent.

Tom Rowland: Wow, and that's a really hard one — being grown up is hard.

Lisa Bravo: It really is hard being grown up, isn't it?

Tom Rowland: It is, and it's really hard being a parent, because it's such a new world, changing so fast with technology. An interesting thing — with my oldest son, who's 23 now, so this was seventeen, eighteen years ago, video games weren't as advanced as today, but were probably built by the same people who build slot machines, designed to get a kid to play longer. He wanted to play video games all the time, and for whatever reason we drew the line — you're not going to have video games until a certain age. Meanwhile his friends all had them, so the only thing he wanted to do at their houses was play video games, and because it was taboo, he was drawn to it even more. Meanwhile his little brother — we finally gave in and got the gaming system, because we saw what was happening — my older son was totally withdrawn at friends' houses, playing video games instead of swimming. So we moderated it and allowed it to an extent, and he was pretty responsible after that. But my younger son always had video games around, could play all the time, and it was never taboo, never off-limits — and guess what, he didn't even want to play much. He'd play a little and say, this is boring, let's go do something else. I really felt it was because we kept it from my older son and drew that hard line. You could say the same about junk food, sugar, drinking — if it's so off-limits and taboo, why do kids want to do it so bad?

The Forbidden Fruit Effect: Video Games and Junk Food

Lisa Bravo: Yeah, because it puts them into a different gear, and if you have a child with any oppositional behavior, that's exactly where they're heading — to the extreme of what you're asking of them. I also think video games become kind of their pacifier, their cocktail at the end of the night. Some people can have a cocktail every night and not become alcoholics, others can't. So you have to understand it's a very precarious situation when your child is navigating this. It boils down to self-regulation and connection — a lot of parents tell me their kids are gaming and then so crabby afterward, and a lot of that has to do with no other stimuli, not eating well, just snacks and garbage all day. Sitting down and talking about it, not from an authoritarian role, but saying, notice how you feel after playing these games — you keep saying you have a headache, or seem really cranky, do you think that has to do with anything — helps them make connections between how they feel and what they're engaging in. I'm seeing so many kids who don't have a sense of their own intuition anymore.

Tom Rowland: Right, it seems like when you take your kids camping or fishing for the weekend and they're resistant at first — of course you don't feel good, you've been sitting on the couch eating potato chips and drinking Monster Energy all day. But they're not going to just say, you're right, dad, I'm not going to drink Monster Energy anymore — they're just not going to do that. It may be a couple years later they say, I don't eat that junk food anymore, and when you ask why, they say, I don't know, I just figured it made me feel bad. Something you said got through. So do you just have to keep reinforcing that, lead by example, show them, look, I feel great, I ate a great meal?

Lisa Bravo: Absolutely, modeling it makes the most influence on our kids. You may not see it in the moment, but it's important to understand how those chips got into the house in the first place, why we have junk food in the pantry. Part of it is we as parents have to understand what we're doing to co-create the situation. Kids need some ability to self-regulate with food, but I also hear from parents who are tired of what their kids eat all day, yet they provided all the snacks.

Tom Rowland: Right. It's funny — just like the gaming situation with my oldest son, we kept a really clean kitchen, no junk food in the house for a long time, because the kids are going to get it eventually at school or somewhere else, so why introduce them to it? Well, it's a joke with my friend, the father of one of my son's friends — every time my son went over there, he'd go straight into the pantry and start hoarding all their junk food, because he never had a chance to get it at home. So there's got to be some balance. It just seems like maybe my kids have that oppositional behavior deep in their DNA, which wouldn't surprise me, coming from a long line of those types. But when you say no, you can't have this, that's exactly what they want. So with things like drinking, I didn't do that — I was careful, I thought, well, I saw what happened with the junk food, so I didn't make a big deal about it, and you know what, they didn't gravitate to it. I think it's probably very personal, kid to kid, what's going to work.

Lisa Bravo: But I think it all goes back to the emotional connection you have with your child, and knowing who they are at the core. If we don't understand where our kids are at emotionally, we're not going to be able to read them well.

Tom Rowland: Right. Well, I love all of what you're saying, and a lot of it comes down to personal responsibility, I think.

Lisa Bravo: Can I say one more thing, Tom? This is a good tip — this is how I used to get my son into the woods away from his video games. We had in-laws with a cabin, and I'd say, we're going up to the cabin, let's go get all the junk food you'd like for the weekend. That's how I would get him — he could pick out whatever he wanted, but we didn't have a lot of junk in our regular house.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, so he's looking forward to that — that's what we did too, and what I've suggested on this podcast: give kids something they don't get at home, whether an ice cream bar or some candy, something they only get on the boat. It might be that one little thing that gets them excited about going.

Lisa Bravo: Kids always think about camping and s'mores, right?

Tom Rowland: Yeah — when are you feeding your kids s'mores at home? They have s'mores cereal now, but that's not a good practice. That's something we would do — take a nice lunch, things they don't normally get, celebrate it, like, this is a special day, here, you can have whatever.

Lisa Bravo: Good tip — whatever-this-is day.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, exactly. That does work, because if you can get them excited enough about going to the cabin or the boat, maybe it's that one little treat — oh cool, there's cool stuff in the livewell, I can play with the bait. We use these little pilchards, three inches long, and the livewell is like an aquarium — kids can put their hands in there, and they love it. Some parents say, man, I just want my kid to fish, but all they want to do is play in the livewell. I say, let them play in the livewell, that's awesome.

Lisa Bravo: That's the appetizer to fishing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, a couple years from now they'll want to catch the bait to put in the livewell, and put it all together. But I was always happy with my kids playing with the bait — whatever, man, you're out here with me, we're together, we're having fun. If your idea of fun is playing in the livewell, I'm all for it. Anyway, I know we're getting close, but I want to talk about your work with professional athletes, since you've worked with a lot of different teams and athletes. How did that start for you?

Working with Professional Athletes

Lisa Bravo: Well, I am a licensed substance abuse counselor, and I had a lot of referrals over time — for some reason in Arizona there are a lot of athletes who retire out here.

Tom Rowland: It's warm.

Lisa Bravo: I think they were referred to me because they had an addiction to painkillers initially, or traumatic brain injuries they were trying to recover from. But what I found is that a lot of these athletes, in a lot of ways, were extreme teenagers. They were very gifted, treated very special their whole lives, and didn't have a lot of self-efficacy — told what to eat, how to exercise, when to sleep, without an internal understanding of how any of that works. Then they have this very successful career, making all this money, going from being a poor athlete to making over a million dollars a year, with a lot of complicated pressure and people relying on them, and they don't know how to handle those changes in such a short time. And when they get injured and released from the team, they go through a very significant depression. Many of them really don't know how to do life, period. A lot of my time was spent teaching them life skills they never had, because they were always at practice — never had to do chores, never had to be part of the family, because they were always being taken care of by somebody else. So the downside is they didn't know how to live an everyday life, have a morning routine. A lot of my athletes, when released, would gain a lot of weight the first year — lay on the couch and eat all day because they were never allowed to before. They had this delayed adolescence for a bit, until they realized that wasn't healthy, and then had to figure out how to get up every morning and have a routine, cook dinner, change a light bulb, all of it.

Tom Rowland: It really is bizarre when you think about this person you've watched on television for years, seeming like such a superstar, but they don't even know how to change a light bulb, never been to the grocery store by themselves.

Lisa Bravo: Right, and for them it's also very embarrassing.

Tom Rowland: Right, they have no idea what they're doing. Is that where a lot of them get these hangers-on that end up bankrupting them, with forty people hanging around?

Lisa Bravo: Yeah, because they've never had to think for themselves, always had somebody to defer to. So they surround themselves with people who tell them what to do, and when you have a lot of money and not a lot of common sense, you surround yourself with the wrong people.

Tom Rowland: You know what this reminds me of — did you see Trevor Lawrence, the quarterback, come out and say football wasn't the most important thing to him, that he had other things in his life? The media persecuted him for it, and I thought, what an opportunity that would have been to celebrate instead — this great, talented quarterback who considers himself a son, a brother, and has other interests in life. That should have been celebrated rather than criticized. He even had to come back and clarify that he was still excited about football, but that if it didn't work out he had lots of things he liked to do in life. Even then, it wasn't received well by the media, which I found to be a bad message today.

Lisa Bravo: Right, but I also think that has to do with his truthfulness — his narrative didn't match what they wanted his image to be.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Or the team should be thinking, aren't we glad we got this guy, he's solid, not going to self-destruct, has a family and other interests — that probably means he's going to be a solid player and a solid leader. That statistic you mentioned before the podcast, about how many professional athletes go broke?

Lisa Bravo: Ninety percent of professional athletes go broke within their first ten years after being released from professional sports. The NFL has actually started working with athletes on fiscal responsibility, which is really good and helpful — because the NFL also stands for, as they say, Not For Long, so athletes remember this could be over in a year, so they need to be a good steward of their money.

Tom Rowland: Right, it's really not that hard — even putting 20% away, invested properly, you'd never have to worry.

Lisa Bravo: But we're talking about young men who don't even know how to make dinner, and we're expecting them to be stewards of their fortune. It's an unreasonable expectation, and they don't have the skill set to manage it.

Tom Rowland: Have you been able, in your career, to help athletes headed down that road of destruction and lack of personal accountability?

Lisa Bravo: It's interesting, because a lot of times I get them after they've fallen — when their marriage is falling apart, or they're in rehab for the third time, or addicted to pain meds and can't even carry their children up the steps. I've seen the downside of professional sports. It's a very difficult thing to be 25 years old and on full disability from sports injuries, and have to live the rest of your life with that. It creates a lot of problems within the marriage — the husband's not the superstar anymore, they're not going to parties, not in the club, and have to be careful about money. How they acclimate to living everyday life after being released is really important, and having a healthy, stable sounding board is critical, because without it, that's when people end up really self-destructing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, you've seen it so many times — it almost happens the same way to a lottery winner who's never made that kind of money before. You get used to a lifestyle, then a bigger one, and then you're living below your means without being used to that benchmark, and you find yourself almost exactly back where you were before — it's almost psychological, going back to making the same amount you made before because that's where you were comfortable. But anyway, I don't want to end this on such a downer — not every athlete self-destructs, and many do get really good advice.

Purpose Beyond the Game

Lisa Bravo: I get the ones who are really floundering, but what I'll say is, if they have a purpose following sports — like Trevor Lawrence was talking about, I'm not just an athlete, I'm a father, a son, whatever however that person defines themselves — a lot of what I do is help them define their purpose so they can define the next chapter of their life and have the pen in their hand. Up until that moment somebody else has been writing the book, and in this next moment they get to be in charge. Helping them understand that's a good thing, not a bad thing, is sometimes tricky.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that'll be our next podcast together — how to define your purpose, because you hear that so much right now. People ask me, how do you know your purpose? Some of it is introspection, and sometimes you just know, but even then it's fluid and it changes, and sometimes two purposes compete with one another, which is a strange place to be. I'd like to talk with you about that another time. So to close out — what advice would you give parents on connecting with their kids, and using it as a checkup for where the relationship is? Maybe it's great for a lot of people listening, because they spend a lot of time together on the boat on weekends, but teenagers are hard no matter how perfect they are. What would you leave us with?

Closing Advice: Being in Their World

Lisa Bravo: I think that's a great question, Tom, because the most important moments my kids have told me about have been when I have come into their world — I've come into their room and laid on their floor next to their dirty socks and said, how are you, what's going on, tell me what's going on for you today. I want to be a part of what's going on in their world. I come in without a prescribed agenda, but really just understanding who they are in that moment, what they need from me, how they feel about being in the world on that particular day. I did that with my kids on a daily basis — checking in at certain points, not only when I was angry or they were in trouble, but in a very neutral, calm time, just wanting to be in their world and make an effort to see them in a very organic way.

Tom Rowland: Interesting. And I guess their world sometimes is their bedroom, maybe sitting down in the gaming room, wherever they are most —

Lisa Bravo: Have you ever tried to play video games with your kids?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, terrible at it.

Lisa Bravo: They're so excited to try and teach you what they're doing. I hate video games, I cannot stand them, but that was a way I would connect with my son — he'd go to the bathroom and I'd control his game for a little while, and his friends would say, what are you doing? And I'd say, oh, Chris, I think I screwed it up, and it would be funny — for him it was part of me being in his world.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's interesting if you can get a kid to try to teach you something, that tends to go a long way. Well, man, I learned a lot, and it made me have even more questions, so I hope we can do another podcast in the future.

Lisa Bravo: I would love it.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I wish you all the very best with your book, The Bravo Effect. Where can people get that?

Lisa Bravo: You can find it on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, and you can get it on Kindle.

Tom Rowland: Okay, and do you have social media, or can people follow you there?

Lisa Bravo: I do — my website is thebravoeffect.com.

Tom Rowland: Alright, well that's awesome. Dr. Lisa Bravo with The Bravo Effect, and a lot of good advice for us parents, and probably prospective parents, because it is a precarious world to navigate right now, if you ask me. Thank you very much for being on the show and for all your good advice, I appreciate it.

Lisa Bravo: Alright, thank you for having me, Tom.

Tom Rowland: You're very welcome. Alright, see you.