Episode 245
Title: The Neuroscience Of Comforting Vs Asking Questions With Kids
Host: Dr. Nick Carruthers & Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
Dr. Nicole (00:00.929) Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Integrative You Radio. So we're going to be talking about this idea of comfort versus questions. This is something that really came to light through, one, a conversation with a client, and two, our experience with having a toddler who...
...who can definitely throw you for a loop at times, having his moments where he's throwing a fit. It's natural to want to comfort him, but when is the appropriate time to use comfort versus using questions to create more clarity for them and also for ourselves?
So I'm going to let Dr. Nick dive in and talk a little more about this.
Dr. Nick (01:01.262) The first thing I want to say is that the reason I started doing this is based on my studies in neuroscience and how the brain and mind develop within the first seven years of life.
Also, the study of human behavior compounded on that. What was first showcased with that client was that, you know, they have a son. Their son is seven, an amazing golfer, literally traveling around the nation competing in, like, the—I'm not a golfer—but U.S. Kids Open or whatever.
Dr. Nicole (01:51.713) Tournaments!
Dr. Nick (01:53.71) Yeah, tournaments on Sunday. But they just started having him also play baseball. He got tagged out—not injured, just tagged—and he lost it. Started crying. The dad was saying how he went to comfort him, telling him it was okay, blah, blah, blah. I asked him, "He wasn’t physically hurt, right?" "Nope," the dad said.
It was just an emotional reaction from being tagged out. And I asked, "You just tried to stop him from crying, correct?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, he never learned why he was crying. He never had that opportunity to figure out why. Was it a good reaction? Was it a bad reaction?" He just learned to stop crying. So that cycle is still going. We learn by asking questions, and that’s the neuroscience side of things.
When you ask a question, you drive the reactive emotional center of the brain, the limbic system, to the prefrontal cortex—the executive center, which is non-reactive. If you were to ask questions like, "Did you feel like you let the team down?"—because in golf, you mess up, and you only let yourself down—he might process it as holding onto more responsibility than he had before.
You can go through all these different questions to help him figure out what created that emotional reaction. Break that down and realize, "Okay, yeah, you let the team down, but it’s not that big of a deal because we have so many innings, so many chances." The best baseball players...
Literally, in the world, have a .300 batting average, meaning they get out most of the time. Nobody is stealing every single base. You get tagged out sometimes, but ask questions like, "How could you do that again without getting tagged out?" This way, they learn from it. You don't want to reduce responsibility, but acknowledge that getting tagged out wasn’t the best outcome while recognizing it’s not a big deal.
Dr. Nick (04:19.694) Acknowledge that, but then go through and ask how they can learn from it. This connects to what I do with Q all the time. Understanding the growth and development of the brain—up to age six or seven, they’re sponges. They're taking in everything, and that creates the programs they'll use for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, a lot of the work I do with adults is undoing the negative programs they learned during those years.
If we can work with kids more intelligently and consciously during the first seven years and install really good programs, they’ll be so much more empowered later. I didn’t initially think about it when working with adults and kids, but Q was freaking out for a while in restaurants. I would grab him, stay calm, grounded, walk him through the restaurant while he lost it. I'd go outside, and the first thing I do is have a candid conversation with him.
"Hey, bud, we’re outside right now. I know you want to go back inside, but guess what? Nobody wants to hang out with you right now."
Dr. Nicole (05:44.883) Ha!
Dr. Nick (05:45.518) I don’t really even want to hang out with you because this is not fun. You’re kicking and screaming, and this isn’t fun energy. Do you want to hang out with someone kicking and screaming? No. So let’s figure out why you’re kicking and screaming so we can stop this and serve you better.
I’ll go through and start asking questions like, "Do you want to run around? Inside or outside? Are you hungry, and the food’s not here yet? Do you want a snack? Are you thirsty? Do you miss Nona, Pappy, and Booker? What’s going on in your little two-year-old brain?" I just start asking all these questions. What’s fun is I’m asking them out loud, but he’s learning how to process information. You process information by asking questions.
Dr. Nicole (06:40.033) Yeah.
Dr. Nick (06:42.114) The quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask. So I’m helping him process. He can’t fully articulate yet, but I see him processing as I ask, making eye contact.
Dr. Nicole (06:57.857) You were doing this before he could talk. He’s talking a bit now, but even before, you were asking questions. When you understand neurology, you know they’ve been neurologically influenced since the womb, let alone after birth. Asking questions helps them think outside the box and process things differently.
Dr. Nick (07:39.79) Yeah. In that moment, I’m asking questions to get him out of the limbic system. Some people argue that toddlers don’t have a developed prefrontal cortex. I ask, "How do you think a prefrontal cortex will develop?" By starting to use it! It’s comical how science can get so technical, but life always comes first, and science tries to explain it afterward.
Dr. Nicole (07:54.217) Yes.
Dr. Nick (08:09.806) Saying a prefrontal cortex isn’t developed is because most people don’t use it until they’re older. But that’s because they weren’t treated like they could use it earlier. That’s narrow thinking.
Dr. Nicole (08:38.561) Well, it’s funny because the phrase, "Correlation isn’t causation," is said all the time. But back before science, people relied on correlation and observation to make decisions and help others develop and thrive. They were more intuitively tapped in based on observation.
Now, systems dictate right or wrong, good or bad, based on studies that, when evaluated, have many variables and opportunities for human error. Then you dig into who funded the study. So we need to blend research with observation. In my 13 years in integrative medicine, most client experiences didn’t match the research I had to read in school.
That’s why practitioners continue learning because the textbook doesn't match real life. This is becoming more obvious as various factors burden our health and minds. We’ve just come out of a period of fear perpetuation, and we need to stop relying solely on outside sources and focus on what serves us and our families.
Helping kids process is huge. Take the immune system, for example.
Dr. Nicole (10:58.625) When a child has an experience, their limbic system responds emotionally, and it gets tagged as good or bad. If they think they let the team down, it gets tagged as bad. Similarly, the immune system tags organisms as good or bad.
But the downside of the immune system tagging things as bad is the rise of autoimmune diseases because the body isn’t processing things properly. Instead of leaving it to a child’s undeveloped brain to tag things as good or bad, help them process through questions, opening their mind to bigger possibilities.
I find this funny because I’ve been listening to the creator of Viome and Moon Travel—companies that are changing humanity. He’s the first company outside the government to send satellites to the moon to gather data, trying to make the moon habitable for humans. His speech was all about questions.
It’s not just about asking questions but asking the right questions. Don’t ask the same question everyone asks. Instead of "Why are you throwing a tantrum?" what other questions can you ask?
Dr. Nicole (13:23.265) Questions that provoke better or different information.
Dr. Nick (13:30.798) Sorry, my internet cut out, so I only caught the last part of that.
Dr. Nicole (13:36.257) I was talking about the quality of your questions. What’s your phrase, Dr. Nick?
Dr. Nick (13:40.622) Well, it’s not my phrase, but the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask.
Dr. Nicole (13:42.209) Yes, and it’s the quality of our family’s life as well. So it comes down to applying these principles. When we, as adults, have an emotional reaction, sometimes it’s taking time to ask, "What is this? Why are you here? What feedback am I getting?"
Dr. Nick (14:08.974) As we wrap this up, I want to emphasize two key points: serving yourself and helping to serve others. When you serve yourself and have a reaction—things don't go as planned—you ask quality questions to figure it out. If you’re too polarized, seeing only bad with no benefits, you can't create questions that help you see the positives.
That’s when you need someone else—a coach, mentor, or doctor—who can formulate questions to help you increase your awareness and see both sides.
The same process works with children. They don’t have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, so you assume they have blinders on. It’s our responsibility to ask questions to help expand their awareness. As we do this, we help them grow their prefrontal cortex intelligently.
Dr. Nicole (15:56.129) Yes, creating a balance between the emotional perception and the logical mind is key, so we don’t lean too much one way or the other. It’s okay to feel a certain way about a situation, but let’s also ask questions to understand the bigger picture.
We’re not trying to suppress kids' emotions or have them only use their logical mind. But we also don’t want kids—or ourselves—living emotionally triggered by everything around us. That leads to anger, fear, guilt, or resentment, which detracts from a happy life or good parenting.
Dr. Nick (17:03.182) The only way to sustainably change an emotional feeling is to change the perception about it. You’re not trying to stop the emotion, but to grow awareness, which is part of the analytical mind. Once awareness grows, the perception changes, and so does the feeling.
When I go outside with Q, my goal isn’t to stop him from crying. My goal is to help him process the situation, and as he processes, most of the time, he stops crying.
Dr. Nicole (17:32.481) Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nicole (17:56.353) All right, guys, we hope this brought up some new ideas about when to comfort versus ask questions. As parents, it’s natural to want to swoop in and make them feel better, but it's important to blend being a loving, compassionate parent with asking questions that help them process their experiences. See you on the next one."
