69. How to Avoid Raising Kids Who Crumble Under Pressure with Dr. Prasanthi Reddy 

00:05 Dr. Ann Tsung Are you struggling to advance your career and sacrificing time with your loved ones because of endless to-dos, low energy, and just not enough time in the day? If so, then this podcast is for you. I am your host Dr. Ann Tsung, an ER critical care and space doctor, a peak performance coach, a real estate investor, and a mother of a toddler. I am here to guide you on mastering your mind and give you the essential skills to achieve peak performance. Welcome to Productivity MD, where you can learn to master your time and achieve the five freedoms in life.

00:51 Hello. Welcome to Productivity MD Podcast. I am your host Dr. Ann Tsung. Today I have Dr. Prasanthi Reddy. She is a board-certified pediatrician and also has a fellowship in integrative psychiatry as well. She was an entrepreneur, as far as she created her own general pediatric practice called Rainbow Pediatrics, and built it up over 20 years and has just recently sold it. Currently, she is a CMO for a pediatric health group, which is a value-based pediatric practice. She has three boys right now in their 20s. And right now, she’s super passionate about building emotional resilience in kids. And so that’s really the primary target: to decrease mental health issues down the line. The reason why I wanted to bring Dr. Reddy on is because, in Productivity MD, we want to be productive in business and life in general, right? And it’s really hard to be productive in our career or any ventures that we want to do without having a stable foundation in family life if you have kids. And so that’s the reason why I wanted to bring you on. So thank you so much for being on the show. Tell me a little bit about why you are so passionate about increasing emotional resilience in children, how you got to this path.

02:11 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Thank you, firstly, for having me on, Dr. Tsung. I was very excited when you asked me to join here. Well, I’m a general pediatrician. I’ve been practicing for 25, 30 years. I’m dating myself. But I realized over the years how much of a challenge it is to raise kids, to do the right thing by parenting. There’s less and less guidance at scenes through my 20 years for parents to follow. As we get deeper and deeper into the digital age, I see even parents now raising a generation of children where they themselves have struggled with regulating emotions. And now they are parenting children, and what I’m seeing is a continual rise in the amount of behavioral and mental health issues. This was even way before COVID. That just primes the kids for having a lot of difficulty when adversity comes. And what bigger adversity was there to challenge this generation than COVID. Once the pandemic hit, it was just unbelievable, the amount of emotional and behavioral issues I was seeing in the practice. So I decided to lend my voice to that and start a social media campaign and start to advocate and teach parents, really, how we can build emotional resilience in kids. It doesn’t take very much time. And, as parents, I think it’s important to see what we can do in it in little bits of the day that you can do to build your child’s emotional growth. We spend so much time on the physical, academic growth of our children. And we just think the emotional part will just tag along if you just, you know, be. That’s not the case anymore. We have to be more proactive in it.

03:45 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I think it’s super important for parents to have self-efficacy, to feel like they’re not helpless, and they can actually intervene now. I think some of them probably feel like it’s too late. And I wonder, what are you seeing that is a problem? Like, what type of mental health problem are you seeing arise in prevalence? And what does it mean even for kids to have emotional resilience, if you do these interventions?

04:10 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Well, you know, having emotional resilience means like you’re emotionally malleable. Right? You’re adaptable to any challenges that come. You don’t take failure as the end all be all. You have language for your emotions. You know how to regulate your emotions. Now, obviously, that’s different for a one-year-old, and it’s different for an 18-year-old. But it’s not even what I’m seeing. It’s nationally, the CDC came out with statistics. 2022, 2023, they came out with statistics that show in the age group of children aged 3 to 18, almost a quarter of them have some sort of mental or behavioral health issue. Either that’s anxiety, a behavioral disturbance, or even depression. Then you look at teenagers in ages 12 to 18, a third of teenagers self-report that they’re having mental health challenges. Those numbers are staggering. Those are kids that are admitting to these issues. You can imagine under the surface how many more kids are finding that to be a challenge. It’s never too late. It’s never too late, right? Even if your child is 18 years old, you can do things to help develop those skills. I mean, we all know in medicine that the brain doesn’t finish its cognitive growth until you’re well into your 30s, right? So it’s never too late to develop the tools to get coping started. And that can translate not just to school and parenting but also, how are they going to be when they have a job? How are they going to be at college? How are they going to be when they have relationships? It translates to so many aspects of life that it’s less and less real-life examples that they can follow. And so that’s why I think parents need to be more proactive in making sure they’re implementing some sort of interventions at different age groups to help their kids.

05:54 Dr. Ann Tsung And so to summarize on that, your brain is always changing, always growing. So it’s never too late. There’s a huge number of percentage, like a quarter — the younger, ages third, and the older, ages like teenagers — to have mental health issues. What are you seeing, and what do you think? I’m guessing I kind of know what the cause is. I’m just wondering what you think is the top causes. And do you think we’re seeing them more because we’re actually measuring, whereas in the past we’re not which maybe there’s a component of that?

06:20 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, I mean, this generation has changed a lot, right? Every generation thinks, “Oh, this generation is worse than the last.” It’s not that. It is that it’s different. And we need to recognize that. First, we’re deep into our digital and social media age, right? So there’s less examples of people actually having challenges and more of this perfect world type of image that kids have to deal with. It’s multifactorial. I mean, there is also helicopter parenting and overprotecting. We tend to be so careful with our kids, and sometimes that doesn’t allow them to make the mistakes. It’s well-intentioned. I don’t want to say that the helicopter parenting is bad. Nothing like that. But we want the best for our kids, and sometimes doing more for them may not be the best tactic. Then there’s also the parents’ generation of having had poorly-developed emotional language themselves. Now families are just busier, you know — working moms, working dads, more after-school activities, less free time to play. Then they also are bombarded by knowledge, right? Real world knowledge. You look at those 1920 movies, and you see that kid on the street selling newspapers. None of the kids on the street read that newspaper. They didn’t know what’s happening in the world. They were just being kids. And now even toddlers have social media access. They know what’s happening in the world, and they’re privy to adult conversations in the world that they previously were not exposed to. So there’s so many factors that go into play. That’s where we are in the scans of time. And so how do we address that? Not to fault that time. It is what it is. But how do we adapt as parents to meet their needs?

07:55 Dr. Ann Tsung So it sounds like not failing enough, not being allowed to fail enough, not being able to observe real-world interactions. So when they meet some sort of rejection or some sort of obstacle because the world around them seems so perfect, that it’s hard for them to adapt.

08:13 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Exactly.

08:14 Dr. Ann Tsung And they feel like they’re always comparing to other people who are better, so it gets them into a worse mental state. Is that?

08:21 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the language for emotions is a big one, you know. Instead of saying, “I’m just upset,” at different ages, you need to go from just crying as a baby to, hopefully, when you’re a teenager, just to say, “I am frustrated with the situation.” How do you drill that deeply into your emotions? This is a learned skill set. I know adults who can’t do it. And so it takes effort to be able to do that. And when we as parents are not using that — as an example, if you are driving with your child in the car and somebody cuts you off, our instinct is to be like, “Okay. Take deep breaths. Look like nothing actually happened. We’re good. We’re all fine,” and keep driving. But what does the child see? The child sees the parents had a challenge in front of them, and there was no emotion that came out of them. How are they supposed to emulate regulating their emotions? I’m not saying you need to go crazy in the car. But in moments like that, those are teachable moments, right? You can say, “Well, that made me quite upset,” or, “That made me very nervous. I need to take some deep breaths and calm my feeling down.” I know it sounds so hokey, but it makes all the difference for the kids to hear, “Oh, my dad who’s always like so cool and calm and collected it seems does also have these feelings.” And so you will see that they’re actually paying attention when you don’t even know it. They can be playing with that kid and they get frustrated, and they might emulate the same behavior. So being an example to your child and vocalizing that instead of keeping it all internally and making it seem like everything is peachy keen is not always the best thing, right? You’ve got to share those emotions and let your child see that you’re dealing with those too.

09:54 Dr. Ann Tsung I think I had the wrong mindset where I got to be calm, cool so that I could be like emotionally stable. But you want to state your feeling and maybe talk about how you’re turning around and reframe it yourself in front of your kids. What are your thoughts about then a couple starting to have unkind tone with each other or maybe some sort of impatient tone with each other in front of the kids? They’re not blowing up at each other. What are your thoughts about stating how you feel in front of the kids? Because I think a lot of parents would just say, “Let’s talk about this later.”

10:25 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, I mean, there’s a fine line, right? Like, as I said, kids are not supposed to be privy to world information, right? There are adult conversations that need to be had in private. But they also need to see if I’m feeling like you’re not talking kindly towards me, what can I respond? How would you teach your child to respond if somebody was speaking unkindly to them? So there is a way. As adults, as partners, we can say, “You know, I think that I would like for you to use kinder words when you talk to me.” Or, “I see that your emotions are big right now. Let’s talk about it later.” That’s fine too. But the child sees that you’re addressing it. Now, you as adults can be like just, “Hush, we need to talk about this later. Not in front of kids.” That can translate to that in the adult world. But what the kids are seeing, we can’t just shut down and say, “Nope, we’re not doing this right now.” They cannot see that. Because they’re going to deal with similar kind of confrontations on the playground. You know, somebody’s going to say unkind words to them or be angry at them. How do you respond when that feeling comes towards you? They’re watching. They’re learning. So whatever it is, whatever language you have in your family, if you have that kind of relationship where you’re able to calm your feelings down, both of you and it’s not one here, one here, then you can meet that and it’s okay for the kids to see that. “Oh, I see why you’re upset. Oh, let me. I won’t do that next time. I’m sorry for that.” That means a lot, right? But if it’s only going to escalate further, probably not the time to do that for the child.

11:47 Dr. Ann Tsung Okay. Got it. If you can resolve it calmly, it’s okay to actually say it. Because the reason I asked is because my husband and I recently came up with a code word. If we ever feel any sort of resistance, if something was said or if something seems sarcastic even though it wasn’t meant that way but it made us feel bad, then we would say “New England clam chowder.” That was the code word. But it sounds like we should just say, well, that made me feel blank. That made me feel like it was sarcasm. But you don’t want to say, “You, you did this. You did this.” You want to say

how it made you feel. But it’s okay to say that in front of the child about how you’re going to deal with it.

12:26 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yes, it is. But again, you want to change that based on the age of your child, right? For a toddler, you might want to say, you know, “I’m sad about that.” Once you resolve it, have them see you reconcile. If you have a middle schooler, you might want to say more words like, “I didn’t like the way I felt when I said that, so I wanted to say sorry to you.” That means a lot to a middle schooler. Whereas a high schooler might look like they’re on their headphones and not paying attention, but they’re also paying attention. And so the question is, if you see your child in that scenario, how would you want them to respond? And you should have somewhat of a similar response if you’re leading by example. But the language changes based on the age of the child. So there’s no blanket statement. But I’m just saying if they are living in a world where everything seems perfect, maybe it’s important for them to see the challenges in life too.

13:18 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, that’s a good point. I think I will start sharing more about real-world interaction, right? Like, if my son was grown up in his 20s and, I don’t know, his girlfriend talks to him that way, I want him to be able to respond. Or my daughter, like the seven-month-old, too young right now.

13:35 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Right. No, it’s something to think about.

13:36 Dr. Ann Tsung It’s how I wish what I want her to respond.

13:38 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, exactly. You know, if she grows up and her husband speaks to her, or anybody, a boss speaks to her that way, how would you want her to handle that situation? You want her to be able to speak up to say that that came across very condescending or whatever it may be. It’s important to teach that language to be able to self-advocate too, especially for our young girls. And so those are all important aspects to think about.

14:01 Dr. Ann Tsung And do you feel like, is there any difference between girls and boys now that you bring up young girls? Any differences in terms of—

14:08 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Oh, I mean, there’s study after study. Of course, there’s huge differences. Huge differences, right? I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that there are huge differences but there are, whether we mean to do and say these things or not, you know. I mean, just in the pediatric world, in the corporate world, you look at how many CEOs are male versus female. There’s multifactorial reasons why that may be. That starts from childhood and infancy, how we treat boys versus how we treat girls, right? There’s a stark difference. That’s a much deeper conversation to be at as far

as gender identity and all of that. But as far as teaching a child to advocate for themselves and regulate their emotions, I think it’s the same. Right? It’s how you approach your child.

14:48 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Now, there’s a great book called Orchids and Dandelions. I don’t know if you have ever read that book. It’s a great parenting book. I tell a lot of parents about it. Because you have two children, right? You can be the same parent to the both of them. But genetically, whatever they’re predisposed to being emotionally and mentally is who they’re going to be. Either you can be the same parent and have an orchid of a child and a dandelion of a child, you know. The orchids need a lot of tender loving care and a lot of teaching and a lot of care and attention, whereas the dandelion will grow in the crack on the sidewalk, right? You’re fine. And so you can have two different kids from the same parent. Your parenting them the same. You adapt your parenting to the personality of the child as well. And so it’s not a one-size-fits-all. You can’t parent both of your kids the same way, because they’re not the same kids, right? Gender are different, correct?

15:37 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah.

15:38 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy And their age is different. So if you listen to the experts, by default, if you have a second child, you’re going to parent differently. And so every child is an individual, and you have to adapt your teaching whether they’re male or female, based on their personality and what their needs are.

15:52 Dr. Ann Tsung Got it, and I know we had discussed a little bit about never too young to even start this. I’m wondering if you can bring up some of the modeling or any tactics from infancy to whatever stage you think you need to change your tactic, change your tactic?

16:09 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, we’re talking about productivity and day, right? So there’s not a lot of time that needs to necessarily invest in this. We’re all busy people. What I tell parents is just quick little things that you can do. I’ll go by age group, I guess. But if you’re looking at infants, one quick tip I can tell you is, even 5 to 10 minutes a day, put down your phone. Sit down on the floor with your child and engage with them. And I’m not talking about just sitting there with them. I’m talking about actively engaging, even if your child is six months old and barely sitting up. “Oh, you’re moving the train this way. Oh, you’re playing with the doll this way. Oh, that’s going up. This is going down.” It’s speaking what the child is doing. Not necessarily praising them for every little thing that they’re doing but just engaging back and forth. That’s important. Or reading a book to

them or singing with them. But putting all other distractions away, especially the phone or something’s burning in the kitchen. You’ve got to dedicate that 5 to 10 minutes. That’s all really it takes you. You don’t need to spend hours and hours with this activity. Even 5, 10 minutes a day makes all the difference for infants.

17:13 Then for toddlers, it’s important to have emotional regulation language, right? Toddlers and the tantrums, we always think about this. Why are you having a tantrum? It’s okay. Those are feelings. You don’t want to squash them. Yes, they’re on the floor and batching their fists on the floor. But that’s their physical way of showing tremendous emotions, so it’s a good thing. So you don’t need to coddle it. But at the same time, provided you’re in a safe space, you can just say, “I’m going to sit with you until our feelings are a little bit better or our feelings are a little bit calmer.” Just acknowledging that you see them and that you may not understand it but you see them, and it’s okay to have these feelings and it’ll wash over, and when we’re calmer, we’ll talk about it, that is everything for a toddler. And having regular play dates for a toddler is important for emotional control and regulation and how to resolve fights and disagreements.

18:06 Dr. Ann Tsung School is fine.

18:07 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy School is fine. School is very regulated, right? It’s very regimented. You have to do this at this time. You have to do this at this time. It’s not free play. So yes, school is great. It’s very pointed, right? You want free play. So free a play time with friends so that they can play whatever it is that they’re playing, and then resolve the issues that come up is important.

18:27 Dr. Ann Tsung Oh, yeah, we had a very rare occasion. They’re playing together. I just saw my son dragging the other boy’s shirt. I was like, oh, my God. That looks really bad. Like, I’m not controlling my child. But they’re fine. They’re laughing or whatever. Or sometimes he would get too excited and would hit him really hard. But that’s what you’re talking about.

18:48 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, and that’s how these emotions and these decisions come out. And like, oh, how would that make you feel talking to them at that level? Then teaching that to them over and over again, it will sink in. It will. Then we have our middle school children who are just kind of in that transition phase. They’re not sure how they fit, and they’re not sure who they are. I can’t stress this enough, and it seems so mean. But policing and monitoring their social media access is key, right? It’s key. It’s everything. Middle schoolers, especially girls who are exposed to social media and consistently in over hours and hours of the day, don’t do well as far as their mental health. So ensure that you talk about it. Having a social media policy is super important for middle schoolers and making sure you follow through on that as parent. You’re going to seem like you’re the worst parent on the planet, because everybody else’s parent is letting them go on Snapchat, whatever it may be. But if you are allowing that for your child,

have strict rules in place. Then for the teenagers, honestly, for teenagers, there’s such a challenge sometimes. They may seem that they want nothing to do with you. But just showing up for them no matter what happens is the best thing you can do for them. By just letting them know that no matter how much you think you’re messing up, I’m here. Whether you want to talk to me or not, I’m here is important. And not shutting the door because your teenager has an attitude. And closing them out is the wrong thing to do. Obviously, this is not for everybody. Generally, I’m speaking. Just showing up for them makes the world of a difference. So in a nutshell, I mean, those are just little tidbits that you can do as a parent, as a busy parent.

20:26 Dr. Ann Tsung A little bit more on policing the social media and rules. Are you talking about duration? Are you talking about different apps? What have you seen are rules that if they allow them to be on — well, number one, get a dumb phone. But yes, their friends will probably laugh at them. Number two, if they have to have it, then what rules are effective?

20:45 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, and you know what? Those flip phones are harder and harder to get for parents too. I recommend a contract, honestly. Every family is different, right? If this is your fourth youngest child, and the three older siblings are on social media, it’s very hard to impose the same kind of rules. But making sure you’re consistent with all of your kids. Okay. Starting sixth grade, we’re going to sit down and talk about our family rules for social media. Whatever they may be, that everything gets policed. Like if you have accounts, if you allow your child to have social media accounts, it’s not for me to say whether you should or you shouldn’t. Less is better. But you will add me as a friend. You’re not allowed to take me off as a friend. And so I can monitor. And talking to them about internet safety very honestly, just being careful not to give out your personal information. Having a conversation like that with them instead of, “These are the rules you must follow,” they need to know the reason why. You might think you’re talking to a fellow 12-year-old girl, but you may not be. So I need to know who the kids are that you’re friending, and I need to personally know them before you approve them is important.

21:50 And then downloading. As parents, you can download apps that can monitor their phones, so much so that you can even turn it off at times you don’t want them to use it specifically overnight or at school time and still allow them to call 911 or call you in an emergency. Internet searches. I talk to kids, as soon as they hit sixth grade, about pornography. Right? It’s important for them to know what it is, as uncomfortable as they might be for you as parents and for the kid to even hear. Because they could be a purely very innocent sixth grader. But it’s better that this information comes to them from the parent than from their friends. What will you do — and it will happen — if somebody comes up to you on a phone and says, “Look at this,” and it’s inappropriate stuff? It will happen. I’ve seen it happen as young as kindergarten. It happens. And so what will you do, is the conversation you need to have. Not like, “If you see that, close your eyes and come around and tell me.” No, we need to give them the tools. You will see this inappropriate stuff. You tell them that this is not okay for me to see, and then you can come and talk to me about it. Right? And be honest. And keeping that door open so they’re comfortable to come to you. Because it’s impossible for us as parents to think about every possible scenario. All we can do is say, “The door is open. I’m not going to get mad at you. But if there’s something you don’t understand, that somebody says or does that makes you feel uncomfortable, come and talk to me and you’re not going to get in trouble for it.” So this is a contract. You write it up. You have the child sign, and you sign. Put it up on your fridge. And you follow those rules no matter what. You follow those rules.

23:24 Dr. Ann Tsung I think the contract idea is great, and the way that you’re teaching them to have self-efficacy about how they would deal with it, not just run to their parents, that’s awesome. This is like off of a tangent. But I am wondering, like, what do you say in terms of like pornography is something inappropriate but without, say — I’ve seen where people they may have kids think sex is bad down the line, right? When they’re in adulthood, they may think like sex is bad. They shouldn’t do this. This is inappropriate. How do you discuss sex in a way, to kids, and what age, so that they know that this is a natural biologic process but, at the same time, have that fine line knowing sexual predators and what pornography, et cetera, what it is, that line? I’m curious on your thoughts.

24:10 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy It’s a little bit of a tougher question to answer because there’s so many cultural and religious factors that play into this, right? Different ethnicities tackle it in such a different way. I’m Indian, and I know in our culture it’s not something you ever even talk about. And so I have to teach my Indian families that these kids are not in India. They’re growing up here, and they won’t be exposed to these things. And so for families that are very uncomfortable with that conversation, I recommend The Body Book for Boys and American Girl’s Your Body for Girls. These are books that parents can buy and read with their child. There’s no necessarily talk that you’re having. It’s just a book that you’re reading. It’ll cover all of these subjects. It allows the child to be able to ask questions and be like, “Oh, my god. My mom just said, whatever, the word for breast. Like, breast. And so it makes the taboo words and subjects a little easier on the child. Now, they’ll be mortified when you do it. But that’s an easy way that can take the parent’s emotions out of it. If you are finding that you are comfortable with it as a parent to talk about these subjects about sex, and if you grew up with a generation that says sex is bad, and that’s your mindset, it’s not going to go down well for your child. Right? So that’s where these books kind of keep it neutral. But it also depends on the child’s readiness. Like, what is their maturity to be able to hear this, right?

25:33 My youngest was 9, 10 when I talked to him. I used him as an example, because every time I’d start to talk about it as a pediatrician — I mean, whatever. You talk about this all day long — he’d run away. So I took them to Barnes and Noble’s. We sat in the aisle, picked up The Body Book for Boys. I said, “We’re going to sit down here. We’re going to read this together until we’re done with this book.” He had nowhere to run. And so we sat there in the aisle of Barnes and Nobles and read the book cover to cover. And yes, he asked questions, you know. Well, does this how this works? Yes, he asked a lot of embarrassing questions, but there was nobody around. It was outside of our home, so he was a little more comfortable asking those questions. And once we had those conversations, he was comfortable to come to me with further questions. So you have to kind of read the room and see the child. Also, parents. One parent may be perfect but not the other parent. I always think it’s better if both parents do it together, because I think it’s nice if both sexes are represented for the child. But if that can’t happen, that can’t happen. That’s okay. I’d rather one parent talk to the child than a fellow colleague or a fellow peer at school. Just the information that kids tell other kids is funny but it’s also concerning.

26:43 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I know this is kind of off on a tangent, but I do feel like this probably plays a role in emotional intelligence as well and also for their safety. Super important to me. Because right now, with a two-and-a-half-year-old, I teach him. I was like, well, he knows. Because I’m pumping all the time for my supplements. He was like, “Nipple? Breast milk?” And I was like, “Yes, this is vagina. This is testicles. This is your testicles. This is your penis. And if anybody else other than the doctor and the parents touch you, you tell us.”

27:13 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, it’s important. It’s important to take the stigma out of it. Because they have innocent heads, right? You’re projecting your taboos onto your child. They come from a place of innocence. So if you just a matter of fact, this is your nose and your toes and everything in between, it’s everything in between, right? But if you say, “Oh, you don’t talk about those things,” then they’re going to start to think that there’s something wrong with that.

27:35 Dr. Ann Tsung Yes, exactly. Exactly. I think in terms of the tactics, we talked about regarding being the teenager part, super, super hard stage. They wouldn’t want talk to you. You brought up like being there for them even if they don’t want to talk to you. You know, I’ve had people who apologized to their kids, forgave them and tries to be there for them, and they still just go up to the room. They shut down and don’t want to talk. I mean, I feel like I was like that too.

28:02 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, we were all teenagers at one point. But there are little glimmers of hope where if you don’t tune into your teenager, you’re going to miss. They’ll just come hang around the kitchen. Mine would do that all the time. You can’t confront them and say, “It looks like you want to talk about something.” No, you just have to be like, “Hey, you want to sit down and have a cup of tea with me or whatever?” You look for those glimmers of opportunity where the doors cracked open a little bit. Because, at the end of the day, they do still need you as a parent. They may say that they don’t, but they do. So look for these glimmers of opportunity or times when they’re telling you a lot. Don’t correct them. Don’t interrupt them. Don’t parent them. Don’t teach them. Just listen to what it is that they’re saying. You will get a wealth more of information than, unless, of course, it’s something extreme. You’ll get a wealth of information. You’ll learn to understand your teenager a little bit better. I often say parents will say, you know, “He doesn’t say a word to me.” But you see them around their friends and they’re like a ray of sunshine. Fine. Drive all of those kids to their next meet. Be in the car. Listen to them. You get a better perspective of who your child is. And it also allows you to participate a little bit more in those conversations so that you’re less likely to shut you out of their friends there. So those windows of opportunity is what you’re looking for. You do need to show up. Yes, if they slam the door in your faces, you can’t show up for them that moment. But that’s okay. Tomorrow will be a different day.

29:28 Dr. Ann Tsung And have you seen that parents have been able to be successful by changing midway about the way they parent, and they’ve been successful in their relationship with their kids?

29:39 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah. absolutely. Yeah, kids are very forgiving. They’re very forgiving. You can be the worst parent. I’ve seen that. Where you have the most abusive parent, yet the child is always gravitating to the parent. Yes, there’s always opportunities to change your parenting style and change your perspective. But consistently, that’s the key. So you can’t be super fabulous parent sitting on the floor playing with the child for 10 minutes and then not for months. That’s not going to be sustainable. But changing who you are and being consistent about it and trusting the long run process that’s not going to change in a day or two, it does yield fruits.

30:14 Dr. Ann Tsung And have you seen that if you place them into sports, or there’s a thought like just get them outside, just get them to do something, get them to travel, do you feel like that works so they’re not on their phone all the time? Just basically preoccupying them with something else.

30:29 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, I mean, it’s important for kids to have activities, to do something outside of school. This is what I mean about free play. Although, we are more now if you’re driving from place to place and that’s all you’re doing and their day is packed, that’s not free play. Right? But if you have an activity or two where they get opportunities to be physically active, to socially interact with others, to find commonalities with other kids, wonderful. Great. It keeps them away from whatever else they might be doing. Now, it’s okay for them to sit at home and stare at space. That’s okay, right? It doesn’t mean they have to have a device in their hands, right? If they’re sitting in the car, it’s okay for them to look out the window. We don’t have to have the movie playing all the time. I mean, those are ways that you can help them. So organized sports and events and activities are important. But you also can overdo it. And that has the opposite effect. When you’re stressing them out to so many activities and you’re self out, too, because you’re just like mommy taxi or daddy taxi, that’s not really a productive use for their emotional resilience. Sometimes you can’t help it. I have elite athletes who that’s what they need to do. That’s a different level. But I’m just talking about, let me put them in football, baseball, basketball one by one by one. It’s a lot. It’s a lot for anybody, much less a child. And so I would rather than pick one sport and do nothing, throw pebbles in your backyard, whatever it is. There’s ways to fill up their time with free play rather than just organized activities.

31:52 Dr. Ann Tsung Got it. Got it. Yeah, we really tried to stay away from screens from our toddler. You see the books, or he’s like identifying cars as we drive. He was like, “Oh, truck. A dump truck. Oh, excavator.” And now he’s getting into the brand names. So, yeah, you don’t always have to have a screen.

32:11 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Exactly. By all means, screens and technology is wonderful. And so, developmentally, there’s lots of tools you can use that help kids with their developmental milestones. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying it needs to be policed. So if you have a half an hour or an hour, that’s it. Yes, your toddler is going to throw a tantrum, but that’s okay. We need to follow up on these rules that we’re sending for the kids and not like, “I’m tired, so I’m just going to let them be on their iPad for five or six hours.”

32:40 Dr. Ann Tsung In terms of the mental health issues, you’re talking about that you’re seeing — is it more ADHD? Is it depression? Is there no difference right now?

32:48 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy No, there is. It’s anxiety. 10% to 15% of kids aged 3 to 17 have some diagnosable anxiety, whether it’s separation anxiety, school anxiety, phobias, panic attacks. Anxiety is a big one. Then there’s just behavioral disturbance, which is just waste basket term of just acting out in school. Then we also see major depression in kids as young as 5 and 6. In teenage years, it’s more, we’re looking at anxiety and depression. So I’m not even talking about ADHD. I’m not talking about learning disabilities. That’s in its own category. You know, I take care of lots of kids with ADHD. I think that’s more of a wiring issue than it is a resilience issue. So I kind of categorize these all emotional regulation issues as separate from that.

33:35 Dr. Ann Tsung How can you differentiate acting out that’s pathological versus acting out that is natural progression?

33:43 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, that’s a really good question. It’s harder to do when you’re the sole caretaker, and the only exposure the child has is you. Right? It’s harder to do. But the best indicators is when you’re seeing these emotional issues outside of the home. When you’re sending them to school, and they’re having the same emotional issues and the teachers have brought that to your attention, then I take that more seriously. Okay. There is more happening. And that you can’t go to your pediatrician as a parent of a child that’s home all the time, say, “Should I be worried about these behaviors?” Maybe absolutely normal developmentally. Maybe normal for a three-year-old to throw down, fall down on the floor and bang their head. It’s not normal for a six-year-old to do that. And so you may not know that as a parent. So it’s important to talk to your pediatrician about these behaviors. During the well-check exams, bring up these emotional issues. “Is this a normal kind of reaction?” My nine-month-old shakes. I don’t know if your seven-month-old started doing that. But I hear a lot of physicians say it’s just one of their — yes, when we’re frustrated, yes, that’s how your baby is going to show frustration. And so that’s a normal behavior. But is that normal for a five-year-old? No, it’s not. A five-year-old should be able to say, “That made me unhappy,” or, “I’m mad.” Whereas a 10-year-old is going to say, “I’m frustrated.” Right? So it translates. There’s a progression in that.

35:03 Dr. Ann Tsung And is there a way for teenagers, older, like early signs of anxiety or depression if they’re not talking to you?

35:11 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, well, by default, a lot of them don’t. But if you’re seeing them more withdrawn and doing activities that they enjoyed before and they’re no longer enjoying — academic decline, social isolation not just from you but from peers are all big red flags. There’s lots of signs before that. But those are big red. That’s when you should seek professional help. And we talk to teenagers. As pediatricians, we talk to them one-on-one. We have confidentiality, so we can’t tell the parents anything unless we find them in danger to themselves or others. But it’s interesting. Because teenagers, up to 12% to 15 % of high schoolers report having serious thoughts of suicide. That’s staggering to me. And to get to that point, there’s so much happening in their lives, right? Forget about the hormonal issues that physically they’re going through. That can compound it. It can be very overwhelming very quickly. So keeping tabs on their peers and allowing them to hang out in your house and just observing what their interactions are like, knowing who their friends are and keeping kind of like loosely knowledge of how they’re doing is a nice way to figure that out. But academic decline is a big one. And again, it’s not an isolation. Often, that can come with substance abuse. It can come with self-injurious behavior. It may be undiagnosed ADHD. There is so many factors. Maybe bullying. Maybe a learning disability that hasn’t been picked up yet. So it doesn’t necessarily mean just because your child has these flags, that something is depression or anxiety. But it just means, as a parent, you need to seek professional help and let us sort through what may be happening.

36:54 Dr. Ann Tsung It sounds, yeah, I’m a long way from there. But oh, my god. The teenager years and the middle school to high school years, I’m like, oh.

37:03 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy It seems daunting. But, you know, as parents, also, we evolve in our parenting style. You’ll have a more concrete idea of who your child is, and you’ll adapt your parenting to that. It seems daunting. It’s just like you’re in kindergarten now, and you’re thinking about 11th grade work. You’re not going to be able to wrap your brain around that. You can do your kindergarten stuff well as a parent, and then you’ll graduate to first grade. Right? It’s true for parent’s parenting too. I learned. I learned each time like what to do, what not to do, what works, what doesn’t work even though I had been teaching parents as a pediatrician for years before I became a mom. You know, once I became a mom, I’m like, oh, that advice is going out the window. You learn. You learn. None of us are perfect. We don’t need to do this in a perfect way. We just need to be doing it mindfully.

37:50 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, I agree. I’m not even in kindergarten. I’m in pre-k. I have two-and-a-half-year-old and a seven-month-old. I’m just trying to have that 5 to 10-minute free time. Like you said, no devices. Yesterday, we’re on the grass sitting together. She was just like tearing up the grass. I’m like, “Oh, that’s so cute.”

38:08 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, those are the memories you’re going to have in your head, right? Those are the moments that you’re going to hang on to forever. Not what you were doing in your career in this moment, right? So, as parents, use that time wisely.

38:19 Dr. Ann Tsung Yeah, so true. We often think that we need to have spent a lot of time with our kids. But no, it’s really a few undistracted quality time with the kids so that you’re connecting with them. You’re meeting them where they are instead of trying to — I’ve seen that a lot where you’re trying to mold them into your definition of success. The kids don’t like that, and they actually pull away. So that’s what I’ve seen too, my mom with me, with my clients with their kids. So being curious is what I’ve learned instead of doing a lot of logistics all the time with them, with the older kids.

38:50 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy And accepting failure. I always say when kids are putting on their shoes in my office, the young ones, and the parents are like, “Oh, that’s the wrong foot. That’s the wrong foot,” I’m like, it’s okay. What is going to happen if your child wears the shoe on the wrong foot? Nothing. They’ll eventually learn that, oh, it’s the wrong foot. They’re just, they’re proud that they put their shoes on. And here we are saying wrong foot, wrong foot. It’s well intension, but that’s just an example of how we missed the whole point of what’s happening in front of us, right? Great job putting your shoes on. Now how about we paint one toenail red and put a little red dot in the back of the shoe? You can match it up next time. Oh, wow. Problem solved. Instead of saying, “You have done wrong.” Right? So there’s different ways to approach these things. But you missed the real pearls of a moment if you focused on getting everything perfectly.

39:39 Dr. Ann Tsung That’s so true for me. Because I’m always like, “Oh, no, it’s this. No. Here, here. Oh, wait. You’re going to fall.”

39:46 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, actually, you know, it’s interesting. Because I read a study once a long time about that showed the babies that are fed in high chairs, the parents that allowed them to be messy and get food everywhere in their hair, on the walls and the floor, when you allow them to do that, those kids learn to use the spoon and feed themselves more efficiently quicker than if you were to sit there and feed them and be careful of not making a mess and not letting them make a mess. Right? It’s so interesting that it can be translated to so many aspects of parenting. But let them be messy, you know. Drop a sheet down. Let them be messy. As long as you have that time to clean it up, let them have that free play.

40:23 Dr. Ann Tsung Nice. Nice. Yeah, that’s what we do with our son. It’s like, yogurt, peanut butter. I don’t know. Spaghetti sauce everywhere. It’s fun. It’s fun at the same time. A good thing we have help.

40:36 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Exactly.

40:38 Dr. Ann Tsung The dog. But thank you. I know we could go on forever. I want to respect your time. What would you say would be like one action for a parent to take, in terms of it doesn’t matter what stage or you can split up by stage? Like one action that they can take to actually start moving forward so that they’re not just listening to an hour of this, and then that’s it?

40:57 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, one action, I would say, for any of the age group is just stop everything that you’re doing and just take 10 minutes to just spend with your child, no matter what that is. Right? I’m not talking about driving and alone in the car. Just sitting with your child on the sofa, on the floor for 10 minutes even if nobody says anything. Just being in the same space and doing the same thing at the same time makes a world of difference. We talk during this hour of every age group. What more you could do? But I think just being a present parent is the best thing you can give your child.

41:35 Dr. Ann Tsung Awesome. So for those of you guys who are like, “Oh, that’s the housework” — I do the same thing to him. “I want to put out dishes. I can’t stand to be on there. I’m using the dishwasher.” But it can wait 10 minutes. Because I remember distinctly yesterday, my son asked me to read a book. I was like, “No, I got to pump.” Next time, I would just say, “Yes, of course, let’s read a book. The pumping can wait.”

41:59 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy You know, you don’t have to create a yes culture every time. But yes, it’s almost like that. Okay. We can wait. We can wait. Let me do this. You want to play truck with me? Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s play five minutes. That’s all. Yeah.

42:12 Dr. Ann Tsung Thank you so much for all the tips. And I hope everybody who’s listening to this, if you have kids, that you’ve taken something, some action away that you will do with your kids, let’s say, by today, by the end of today. I think that will be the first step. It’ll carry the momentum forward. And, Dr. Reddy, if people want to learn more about what you do or contact you, do you have any social media or websites that they can learn more about you on?

42:37 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Yeah, this is early stages for me. So I’m still developing my website. But I do gram and TikTok. I know. I joined TikTok. I have to do it because I got to meet the parents where they are. Growing Minds with Dr. Reddy. You can find me there. And hopefully, I’ll have that website up and running. But if anybody has questions, feel free to reach out to me.

42:59 Dr. Ann Tsung Okay. Fantastic. Thank you so much again for your time, for sharing all of your knowledge of like 20 plus years with us, and for giving parents hope that it’s just a state, and we can intervene at any time. And for the audience who’s listening to this, thank you for your presence and attention in listening to this. The show notes will be on productivitymd.com, all the resources we’ve talked about. So again, just remember that everything we need is within us now. Thank you.

43:29 Dr. Prasanthi Reddy Thank you.

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