Parenting Beyond Power: Jen Lumanlan's Insights on Engaged Fatherhood and Child Development

An Educational Journey Turned Parenting Mission

Jen Lumanlan’s shift from a sustainability consulting career to a focus on parenting wasn't incidental. After grappling with the challenges of raising her own daughter, she realized that academic research on child development could serve as a guiding light. This led her to pursue master’s degrees in psychology and education, and subsequently, to the creation of her podcast and book. Her primary goal? To leverage her learnings to support other parents facing similar challenges.

Challenging Conventional Discipline

Understanding the Power Dynamics at Play

At the heart of Jen's approach is the critique of conventional discipline methods such as timeouts and consequences. According to Jen, these methods often perpetuate harmful power dynamics. They emphasize a power-over relationship, where the authority figure (the parent) uses their power to correct or control the child. These traditional methods can breed resentment and a lack of genuine understanding.

Exploring Alternative Strategies

The Shift From Control to Collaboration

So, what can parents do instead? Jen advocates for strategies that satisfy both the parent's and the child's needs, fostering a power-sharing relationship. For example, during conflict, she suggests addressing the situation outside of the moment of crisis. Proactive discussions about recurring issues like tooth brushing or bedtime can pave the way for more harmonious solutions. By understanding and meeting each other's needs, both parties can find agreeable strategies, reducing resistance and conflict.

Identifying and Meeting Needs

The Two-Way Street of Parenting Needs

Parents often neglect their own needs in the face of their child’s demands, but Jen emphasizes that both parent and child have valid needs. Strategies should aim to fulfill both. She introduces the concept of "cherry needs" — the most critical needs that recur for both parents and children. For instance, a child’s need for autonomy can be met with choices that do not compromise the parent’s essential needs, such as brushing teeth in a different room.

Problem-Solving in Real-Time

Navigating Tantrums and Meltdowns

Tantrums and meltdowns are common challenges, and Jen offers peace and empathy as the best tools. Understanding the underlying needs that prompt such behaviors and addressing them proactively or with empathetic responses in the heat of the moment can defuse tension. Validating the child’s feelings and needs even during a meltdown can lead to quicker resolutions and more trust.

Shifting Dynamics with Teens

It’s Never Too Late to Transform Relationships

Parents of older children might assume it's too late for change, but Jen underscores that it's never too late. Even with tweens and teens, shifting from a power-over to a power-sharing dynamic can salvage and improve the relationship. She proposes using phrases like “I’m worried that…” to express needs and concerns, fostering mutual respect and understanding.

Healing From Our Own Childhood

Breaking Cycles Through Self-Reflection

Many of our parenting triggers stem from our own childhood experiences. By unpacking and healing these old traumas, parents can become more conscious and connected. This self-awareness prevents past negative patterns from repeating, helping parents respond more thoughtfully rather than reacting on impulse.

Broader Societal Change

Raising Children Who Challenge Injustice

Jen believes that by fostering power-sharing relationships at home, we can equip children to challenge systemic injustices. When children learn to view all individuals' needs as equally important, they carry this perspective into broader societal contexts, questioning and challenging systems of domination and inequality.

Jen Lumanlan’s insights offer valuable guidance in our quest to raise empathetic, empowered children. By shifting from control to collaboration and addressing the deeper needs within our family dynamics, we not only nurture healthier relationships but also contribute to a more just world. Tune into this enlightening episode of Dads with Daughters for more practical wisdom on transformative parenting.

Connect with Jen and deepen your understanding of parenting dynamics at Your Parenting Mojo.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr.Christopher Lewis [00:00:05]:
Welcome to Dads with Daughters. In this show, we spotlight dads, resources, and more to help you be the best dad you can be.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:16]:
Welcome back to the Dads with Daughters podcast where we bring you guests to be active participants in your daughters' lives, raising them to be strong, independent women. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, you and I are on a journey together. I love being on this journey with you where we have an opportunity to be able to learn together about what it takes to be that dad that we wanna be. And all of us wanna be that those engaged dads, those dads that are there for our kids. And it takes work. It takes time. It takes effort to be a quality parent, and it takes resources.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:55]:
And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to bring you different guests, different people with different experiences that can bring different resources to you, different different opportunities for you to learn and grow. The the biggest thing is that you're open to learning. And that's what I hope for me for you every week when we're talking. This week, we got another great guest with us. Jen Loominlan is with us today. And Jen hosts the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, which was named the best research parenting podcast by Lifehacker. It's been downloaded over 3,000,000 times.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:33]:
After attending Berkeley and Yale and following a traditional career path in sustainability consulting, Jen found that parenting was her toughest challenge yet. She went back to school for a master's degree in psychology focused on child development and another in education and trained as a coactive coach to share what she learned with other parents. She's an author of the book Parenting Beyond Power, How to Use Connection and Collaboration to Transform Your Family and the world. And today, we're gonna be talking with her about her own experiences and these experiences with the book and some of the things that you can take out of this book to help you to be that parent that you wanna be. Jen, thanks so much for being here today. 

Jen Lumanlan [00:02:16]:
Thanks for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:16]:
It is my pleasure. I mentioned the fact that you've got this book that you've put out into the world. As an author myself, I know how much time, effort, passion has to go into putting a book out into the world. And it is a lot of time and effort, and you have to have a passion for it to be able to get to that end point. So tell me the story. What what was it about? You know, I introduced you. You you had this career, but you said, you know what? I wanna go back and I want to do do more work on education, work with parents. But what made you decide that you wanted to put all this into a book that was gonna help others? What drew you to that final point?

Jen Lumanlan

I think I started the podcast because, you know, I had no idea how to parent. And I didn't have the most amazing parenting role models myself either, and so I realized I could look to academic research to help me understand how to go about raising my daughter. And so I kind of figured, you know, I I should get some education on this so that I can put some kind of guardrails around it and know I'm not missing anything huge, and that's what led to the master's degrees. And and then I was kinda thinking, well, it's kinda silly to do all this learning for myself and not share it. So I created the podcast to share that with other people. And then I over the course of of sort of exploring a lot of topics on the podcast that we have over 200 episodes now that are all research based. And I think, you know, it became really clear that I was hearing similar challenges from parents over and over again. And and they're kind of variations on the phrase, how do I get my child to Right? How do I get my kid to put their shoes on in the morning, to eat their breakfast, to stay at the dinner table, to get in the bath, to stay in bed at the end of the night? You know? And that's just the toddler set.

Jen Lumanlan [00:03:59]:
The challenges expand from there. So, what I realized was the the tools that I had learned from others and kind of adapted with putting my own spin on them were really helping parents to kind of address those challenges, those daily challenges on a day to day basis. And at the same time, they also help us to address some of the big challenges that we face out in the world that are related to kind of being in power over relationships. And it turns out that our kids learn a lot about power from our relationships with them and when we're using our power to get them to because it seems like that's the only thing we can do. Right? We just wanna get through the day. It's not we want to use our our power over our kids. We're just trying to get through the day. And we use our power because it seems like that's the only option we have because that's what was modeled for us when we were kids.

Jen Lumanlan [00:04:50]:
And if we can instead see how to be in a power sharing relationship with our kids, then our kids stop resisting us because you don't resist when your needs are met and when, you know, when you're not being sort of dominated by somebody else. And and also that will help us to address some of the social challenges we face that have their origins in these power based relationships.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:11]:
So let's talk a little bit about power because in your book, you do talk about the that that power dynamic, and you challenge conventional discipline methods like timeouts and consequences. And you suggest that they perpetuate harmful power dynamics like you just were mentioning. So what are some other alternative strategies that parents can use when they feel overwhelmed, or when they feel that their child's behavior is especially difficult?

Jen Lumanlan [00:05:38]:
So the I mean, firstly, the challenge with those conventional discipline methods. I mean, if you ever put a child in time out, right, do they come out of time out kind of contrite and ready to apologize for the thing that they did wrong and they never do it again? Right? No. They usually kinda resent being in time out. They come out of it kinda pissed at you, and they do it again. Right? They do the same thing over again. Same with consequences. We can we can withdraw a privilege of some kind. We can punish a child in some way, and we can call it a, quote, unquote, logical consequence because it seems like the punishment is sort of related to the thing they did wrong.

Jen Lumanlan [00:06:12]:
But, essentially, it is a punishment. It is us using our power to say your behavior is not acceptable to me. And until that changes, I'm going to withdraw this thing that you care about. Right? We are using our power to to make both of those things happen. And so what what I want to make sure that that your listeners understand is that I am not advocating that we parents suddenly say, okay. Whatever you want. Totally fine. Totally cool.

Jen Lumanlan [00:06:32]:
Right? I'm just here to exist to enable you to live your best life. No. What I'm saying is that both parent and child have needs. And the way that we use the word need in our culture is a little bit odd. Right? Like, I might say, I can't play with you right now. I need to make dinner. And needing to make dinner is not actually a need. That's a strategy that I'm using to meet my need for food, for nourishment.

Jen Lumanlan [00:07:01]:
Right? And there are a 100 other strategies we could use. I could toss a pizza in the oven. We could go out and get dinner. I could ask someone to bring us dinner. We could have cereal for dinner. So many different strategies we could use to meet that need. And so what I'm saying is that you, parents, are a whole person with needs, and you deserve to get those needs met. And your child is a whole person with needs, and your child deserves to get those needs met.

Jen Lumanlan [00:07:26]:
And the vast majority of the time, preferably if we're not dealing with it in the moment. Right? We're not we're not waiting in for this thing that our kid does over and over and over again, and we're not waiting for that to happen. Then, okay, needs? What what am I supposed to do? Right? Instead, we can actually address that outside of that difficult moment. We can say, hey. I noticed we've been having a hard time with tooth brushing lately. Can we have a chat about that? Because I'd really like for that to be different. I'd like for our evenings to be different. Would you like for our evenings to be different? Chances are the kid probably does.

Jen Lumanlan [00:07:53]:
Because if this is a big deal to you, then, you know, there have been time outs and all kinds of stress around toothbrushing. And then, okay, so we're we're trying to understand how each person is feeling. We're trying to understand what each person needs. And what the need is determines the strategy that we can use to help them meet the need. So I'm happy to dig further into that if you'd like, but I'm curious if you have any questions about that aspect.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:14]:
No. I'd love to delve a little bit deeper into needs because I know that in the book, you do talk about the importance of meeting both the parents and the child's needs, like you were talking about to reduce that conflict. So how can parents begin to identify and prioritize their own needs without feeling guilty or neglecting their children's?

Jen Lumanlan [00:08:32]:
So it's super common for the parents that I work with to say to me, before I started working with you, I didn't even know that I had needs. Because we didn't learn this when we were kids. Right? And so just to be clear on what I'm talking about related to needs, I'm talking about things like rest, like self care, like respect, which is not necessarily having everybody do everything you say. Right? It can be, like, holding someone in esteem and high regard. And we all want respect, and our kids want respect too. It's things like ease. And we just want parenting to be a little bit easier for collaboration, for harmony with our kids. Right? These are the kinds of things I'm talking about related to needs.

Jen Lumanlan [00:09:10]:
And so if we take tooth brushing as an example, right, could imagine if tooth brushing has been stressful because my kid has been resisting it. Let's say my kid is a toddler. My kid's actually 10 by now. But let's say it's a toddler, and I might think, okay. What is my need in this? Right? I might I might have been saying to my child, I need you to brush your teeth. That's not actually my need. My need is for protection of her health and safety. It is for a little bit of ease and collaboration and harmony in the evenings at the end of a long day.

Jen Lumanlan [00:09:39]:
And if you're wanting to, like, explore what needs are, there's a a list of needs in the back of of the book. And there's also a quiz that I offer at your parentingmojo.com, which allows you to go through it's your parentingmojo.comforward/ quiz, and you can answer some simple questions about your child's behavior and get to your child's most important needs that come up over and over and over again. And you may well find that some of those are coming up in tooth brushing. So if your child has what we call a cherry need, right, there's the cherry on top of the cupcake, which is the 3 to 5 needs that are coming up over and over and over again. For many toddlers, autonomy is right up there at the top. They want to be able to have some kind of say over something that feels important to them. Underneath that, we have the frosting needs, which is the next 3 to 5 most important. Underneath that is kind of all of the other needs.

Jen Lumanlan [00:10:26]:
And so we're always firstly looking at what are those cherry needs, and that quiz is gonna help you to understand what your child's cherry needs are. And so even if your child isn't speaking yet, right, if your child is too young to speak, if your child doesn't speak, if you've done this quiz, you can say, okay. What is it an autonomy? Is it possible the child wants to have some kind of say over what's happening here? How can I make that happen? Right? You're not giving the child necessarily the choice, do you want to brush teeth or not? But what kind of toothpaste do you wanna use? What kind of toothbrush do you wanna use? For us, oh my goodness. It it turned out to be I my daughter wanted to decide where we brushed. For a solid 6 months, we brushed in the living room. And so I might initially think, no. She should have brushed her teeth in the in the bathroom. That's where teeth are brushed.

Jen Lumanlan [00:11:10]:
Right? But if I can find the cognitive flexibility to say, alright. What are my needs? Her health and safety, peace, ease, harmony. Does brushing teeth in the living room meet my needs? Yes. It does. Does brushing teeth in the living room meet her need for autonomy? Yes. It does. Then is there a reason why we can't brush teeth in the living room? No. There is not.

Jen Lumanlan [00:11:28]:
And so that's what we did. And so the critical, critical piece here is that when it's a need for autonomy, right, it's not it's not the brushing teeth in the living room. It's some magical solution that will work for every child. If your child has a need for comfort, right, if you've been holding them down and forcing the toothbrush in their mouth, saying, let's brush in the living room is not gonna address that. And so we have to know what is the child's need, and then we find strategies to meet their need. And it feels good to have our needs met, and everybody wants to have it happen. And so that's how it helps us to get both of our needs met.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:59]:
So another thing that your books talk about, and really what you just kind of framed seems to fit in with it, is one of the key concepts you talk about is your problem solving approach, and it it basically what you just described. Are there other parts though of that approach that you could walk us through that would allow for someone to get a better sense of what the approach kind of how an adult would frame that approach, and also how a parent might then apply it to other challenges like tantrums or other situations like that.

Jen Lumanlan [00:12:34]:
What I want to have parents see is that very, very often, these are not isolated instances. When your child is having tantrums, chances are it's kind of about the same thing over and over and over again. And so that represents a huge opportunity because you don't have to wait for the next tooth brushing session to address this. You can address this beforehand while everybody's calm, everybody's rested, everybody's fed, nobody's at the end of their rope. Right? That's the time ideally we want to address this. And that allows us to have more of a conversation. And even if your kid isn't talking yet, kids sense the difference between, you're gonna brush your teeth because I said so, because because I want what's good for you, and you have to brush your teeth so you don't get cavities, and all the reasons that we give them. And, oh my gosh, I really wish that this could be easier for both of us.

Jen Lumanlan [00:13:22]:
I'm trying to figure out how do we meet both of our needs here. Right? Kids know the difference between those two things. And even if you can't fully understand the child's need, they are often willing to come towards you because you're trying. But I also wanna give you an example of, like, in the moment the kid is already melting down. And so I'm thinking of a parent that I coached a while ago whose child was having this meltdown, and it was coming up because the child and the parent were having 1 on 1 playtime in the afternoon, and it's coming time to go and pick the older child up from school. And so the kid has, like, a you know, the kid the the younger child who's at home with the parent is having a fallout on the floor, wailing, hitting, biting, all the rest of it meltdown that's happening. And the parent is trying to reason with the child. Right? Come on.

Jen Lumanlan [00:14:06]:
It's time to go. We do this every day. Why is this so hard? We already had playtime. Let's go. And if you've ever had a meltdown yourself with your partner, with anyone else who's in your life, if you imagine your partner coming back and saying, but I told you a 100 times, this is how we do it. We can sort of get a sense for what it might be like to receive that from our parent. And what do we want instead? What we really want is someone to try to see it from our perspective. And so what I asked that parent to do and what she ended up doing was when the next time the child had the the the meltdown because they didn't have a chance to kinda talk about it beforehand, the parent kinda went in with, oh my goodness.

Jen Lumanlan [00:14:46]:
I hear you. It's so hard to transition out of playtime with me. Right? Because it's so much fun, and you love it so much. And now we're going to pick up your sibling, and for the rest of the afternoon, you're gonna have to share me. You're gonna have to wait. You can't just have the thing that you want right at the moment that you want it. Is that what's going on for you? And the kid is like, yes. And we're done.

Jen Lumanlan [00:15:05]:
And there's no more hitting, and there's no more biting, and there's no more flailing on the floor because the child was heard. And so I'm not saying this magically fixes every tantrum in your child's life, but I can tell you that when you see these things coming, when you see, okay. Yeah. Every day at this time, my kid has a tantrum. Why is that? What need are they trying to meet? Can I help them meet that need? That takes care of, like, a massive chunk of them up front, so you never even get into the tantrum in the first place. And then once you're in it, then the empathy the okay. What's really going on for you? Can I sit with you in this hard time that you're having? And that's where you find the real beauty of, yes. I just wanted to be heard.

Jen Lumanlan [00:15:45]:
I just wanted somebody to acknowledge that it's hard for me to to stop playing with you and have to share you for the rest of the evening.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:51]:
So a lot of the examples you gave were of younger children. And in a perfect world, I would have loved to have had this book when my kids were really young. So if someone is hearing this and they're saying, I've got a tween, I've got a teen, and our relationship's not the best, we're in this fighting, we were fighting together, we're not seen eye to eye, you know, we're, you know, we're isolated, you know, we're we're not where we need to be. Are there things that they can do with this problem solving approach that they can start putting in place even though their children are not at that young age that they can start using right away?

Jen Lumanlan [00:16:28]:
Yes. It's never ever, ever too late to do this. I mentioned that my parenting role models were not the best, and I've thought about this a lot actually. And, you know, what would have happened I guess I do wanna be clear. You know, they were doing the best they could with the tools that they had. And if one of them had learned these tools and had tried to make some kind of shift, even in my late teenage years, would that have made a difference? Yes. It absolutely would have. And so where I would try to start with this kind of thing is to to try to kind of back off where you see that you're using power to get your child to change their behavior.

Jen Lumanlan [00:17:04]:
Not back off completely, but try to use a simple phrase. And that phrase is, I'm worried that dot dot dot. So if your, you know, your your kid is asking to do something, they wanna go out with friends, they whatever whatever is the thing that you're thinking about saying no to. That previously would you would have used your power, you would have made sure that they didn't do the thing that you that they're asking to do, that they really want do, that you don't want them to do. And so instead of of doing that, we can say, I'm worried that you're not gonna be safe. Right? I'm worried that this specific thing is going to happen. How can we make sure this thing doesn't happen? Because what what what the I'm worried that does is it helps me to articulate my need. I am worried for your safety.

Jen Lumanlan [00:17:46]:
If I can know that certain parameters are in place that mean that I think you're gonna be safe, then, yeah, I'm willing to say yes to this thing. Then I don't have to use my power over you to try and get you to change your behavior. I think that what what parents you're describing or seeing is I get actually reading for the first time doctor Thomas Gordon's book on, parent effectiveness training, and he talks about power and influence. And when we've used power over our children for a long time, we tend to find we have less influence as they get older because people don't like being influenced by people who have used power over them. And so if we want to have influence over our children as they get older and and they realize, you know what? You don't you actually don't have any power over me anymore. I'm getting bigger to the point where you can't physically intimidate me, and once I have the car keys, right, I'm done. I'm out of here. You can't control me anymore.

Jen Lumanlan [00:18:37]:
And if we still want to be able to influence our children at that point, we have to be willing to give up some of that power, and I'm worried that is a great place to start with that.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:47]:
One of the other things that you talk about in the book is that many of the triggers, the triggers that all of us have internally, the things that set us off in our own parenting journey with our kids stem from how we were raised. How can parents begin to unpack and heal from their own childhood experiences to become more conscious, connected parents?

Jen Lumanlan [00:19:09]:
Well, that could be another episode by itself. So, I mean, there's a lot there. And what parents that I work with tend to find is that they are most triggered by their child's behavior when they when their child gets to an age where they were having a hard time with their parents. So there's, you know, all the typical toddler stuff that is just hard when the toddler is resisting for the first time, and we used to resist as well. Right? We didn't like it either, being told what to do and that my way is the only way and that even if we try and kind of be nice about it, that ultimately, the kid's gonna do things the way that we want them to do. We didn't like that either. We pushed back against it. And, eventually, we learned there's no point in pushing back because the parent's gonna win eventually.

Jen Lumanlan [00:19:50]:
And so you know, most people find that stage difficult for that reason. And then as we go through life, there was probably an age where we kinda butted up against our parents for for whatever reason. And then when our child gets to that age, then we remember all those struggles. It's like they're they're right here again. They're right here with us, and they remind us of the hard time that we had, the ways that we were dominated by our parents. And I think this, it's especially difficult actually for parents who have done a little bit of work, who are trying to do things differently with their child. Because when their child is doing something the parent finds difficult, there's this kind of tug of war happening in their heads. There's this, I know what my values are.

Jen Lumanlan [00:20:31]:
I know how I want to raise you. I want to be in this power sharing relationship with you, but I would have been punished for doing the thing you just did. If I never spoken to my parent like that, right, they would have hit me. And so it's like there's this this massive, you know, you can imagine this tug of war literally happening inside of our heads. And and it's happening in this moment when our kid is doing something we told them not to do. And the amount of mental capacity it takes to be able to navigate that and also be calm for your child and show up for your child is is overwhelming, and so we snap. And so that's why I teach a whole 10 week workshop called taming your triggers on where does this stuff come from, really digging deep and to start healing those things so that we don't have to carry around the weight of that hurt every day. And, also, really digging deep into the the tools that I've been mentioning that are described in the book and, like, how do we actually use them when I'm feeling triggered? Right? How do I how do I create a pause? Because that's that's the critical phase for especially for people who are triggered, is creating that pause between the thing my child does and my reaction.

Jen Lumanlan [00:21:42]:
And once you have that pause, then you have a moment to be able to say, okay. What are my values here? What's really important to me? What is my need? Okay. This is it. And so the thing that's gonna come out of my mouth is gonna be x rather than, you know, whatever it is that currently flies out in the moment that our child does this thing right now.

Jen Lumanlan [00:22:00]:
And so many times, it is that latter aspect.

Jen Lumanlan [00:22:03]:
And so often, it's your parents' voice that comes out. You're like, where did that come from? Yes. Because our parents raised us using these tools. They they dominated us. Even if they didn't mean to, even if they were doing the best that they could, they dominated us. And so when we're in these stressed moments, the thing that comes out is the thing that was modeled for us.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:22]:
You know, the final thing that I think that I'd mentioned is that in your book, you really talk about transforming the family dynamic and that you say that through transforming this dynamic within our own homes, we can contribute to what you call a broader societal change. So how do you envision parents using these parenting tools to raise children who are capable of challenging system systematic injustices in the world around them?

Jen Lumanlan [00:22:48]:
Yeah. I mean, I see it happening already in the parents that I work with. And there's an example in the book of a parent who parent Maria and her her daughter, Isabelle. And, you know, Isabelle is one of those kids who, from the get go, knew exactly what she wanted and would scream if you held her the wrong way and would refuse to put her shoes on as a toddler. Right? Even even to go to a a nice outing. Right? The parents are like, okay. Put your shoes on. Well, no.

Jen Lumanlan [00:23:13]:
You told me to do it. No. I'm not doing it. And they stand there and stand off for half an hour, and the kid's not doing anything, and and they never make it out. And so Maria very quickly realized that using these power over tools was just gonna result in endless repetitions of that situation and started using these power sharing tools. And the transformation in their own relationship has been really profound. I mean, this is a kid who, I think Maria actually sprained her ankle in the house one day, and Isabelle stepped over her and said, you know, what? What's for lunch? No empathy, no compassion, no nothing. And within a period of months, right, we see empathy, we see compassion start coming out.

Jen Lumanlan [00:23:57]:
We see the kids all around the table, and some of the kids are teasing mom. And and Isabelle says, I'm looking at mom, and it seems like she's not up for being teased right now. Right? Reading mom's cues and being able to say, you know what? I'm not seeing that that mom's really into this. And so that's just within the family. And then we look outside the family, and Isabel sees that there's a kid in the school who has ADHD and is being bullied by the peer group that Isabelle is a part of, and Isabelle says, you know what? No. I'm not I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna be part of this group and goes over and makes friends with a kid with ADHD. So that's, you know, that's a super small example.

Jen Lumanlan [00:24:32]:
And then we start to extrapolate that out to other systems in the world. Right? If we think about things like racism, it's ultimately a power over system. It's me saying, my right to exist as a white person, to be comfortable as a white person is more important than people of color's right to exist in their whole selves. And what if we were to say, you know what? Your needs are just as important as my needs. I don't believe that these systems of domination out in the world can exist when we all perceive each other's needs to be equally as important as our own. And so, yes, it's gonna take some time. Right? This can't be the only way we go about doing these things. Parents are not responsible in themselves by, you know, just alone for solving these societal challenges.

Jen Lumanlan [00:25:16]:
We also need lots of other work as well. But I truly believe that seeing each other's needs as as important as our own is a critical piece of making the world a place where everybody can thrive.

Jen Lumanlan [00:25:30]:
I really appreciate you sharing everything that you've been sharing today. And if people want to find out more about you, your podcast, your book, where's the best place for them to go?

Jen Lumanlan [00:25:40]:
So everything I do flows through your parentingmojo.com. I would definitely advise parents to go check out the quiz at your parentingmojo.comforward/quiz. Because once you know your child's needs, everything just gets so much easier. Because as soon as you see resistance, you can say, okay. Where is this coming from? Is it a need? Oh, yes. It's autonomy. It's connection. It's, you know, whatever that cherry need is.

Jen Lumanlan [00:26:03]:
And then you can very quickly find the strategies that meet their need instead of having to look through the list of 50 needs and say, oh, which one is it? So I would definitely recommend that. I am on Facebook and Instagram. I don't use them super much, but I am there as well. And so, yeah, subscribe to podcast episodes as well, through the through the website. And the book is at Parenting Beyond Power.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:25]:
Well, I really appreciate you sharing all of this today for what you're putting out into the world and what you're doing to help parents be better parents, and I wish you all the best.

Jen Lumanlan [00:26:32]:
Thanks so much, Chris. It was great to be with you.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:34]:
If you've enjoyed today's episode of the Dads with Daughters podcast, we invite you to check out the Fatherhood Insider. The fatherhood insider is the essential resource for any dad that wants to be the best dad that he can be. We know that no child comes with an instruction manual and most dads are figuring it out as they go along, and the fatherhood insider is full of resources and information that will up your game on fatherhood. Through our extensive course library, interactive forum, step by step roadmaps, and more, you will engage and learn with experts, but more importantly, dads like you. So check it out at fatheringtogether.org. If you are a father of a daughter and have not yet joined the dads with daughters Facebook community, there's a link in the notes today. Dads with daughters is a program of fathering together. We look forward to having you back for another great guest next week, all geared to helping you raise strong, empowered daughters and be the best dad that you can be.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:32]:
We're all in the same boat, And it's full of tiny screaming passengers. We spend the time. We give the lessons. We make the meals. We buy them presents and bring your a game. Because those kids are growing fast. The time goes by just like a