Bryan Saint-Louis

Transcription - Harsh Parenting Results and Alternatives

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Were you raised with harsh parenting techniques?

Do you still rely on the same harsh parenting style

you were raised with when parenting your own kids?

But find that you're not connecting with your kids

or getting the results you want

if you're ready to try something different.

My guest will share some tips.

You can begin using right away in just a moment,

so don't go anywhere.

- Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge,

a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere

to take great pride in their role.

And a challenge society to understand

how important fathers are to the stability

and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

- Greetings everyone, thank you so much for joining me.

My guest is Brian St. Louis,

a youth inspirational specialist and speaker

with over a decade of experience

in driving positive outcomes in education and parenting.

And now I brought of his expertise on the program

to help dads listening now.

Brian, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

- Jonathan, thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

And it says an honor.

Thank you so much.

- Brian, what is your favorite dad joke?

- Man.

So I heard this one and I actually like this one a lot.

So someone comes to the dad and says,

"Hey, dad, Sunday was a sad day."

And then he says, "But yesterday was a sadder day."

(laughing)

Okay, all right, good.

We got it.

(laughing)

All right, I love it, we got it left, man.

That's all I need.

(laughing)

It got me.

- All right, but I hope the listener

has got a little left out of that one too, but.

(laughing)

As well.

- I'm sure they did.

That was awesome.

- Oh man.

- Well, Brian, let's start with your story.

How did you get involved with working with youth

and helping parents connect with their kids?

- I was 20 years old.

I used to work in a, as a,

not speaker necessarily at that time, right?

But 20, I was working as a, as a Bible teacher.

And I remembered I was embossed at the time

and there was a group of kids.

I wanna say about 70 kids and it was three of us.

And we were supposed to be basically helping them out

for, for the whole month that this series was happening.

And we were supposed to be teaching in the Bible.

Ultimately, the two other guys kind of stepped off

and found myself being the one having to take care

of a room of 70 kids between the ages of 13, 12, 13 to 17.

- Oh wow.

- Yeah.

And of course, I had some people who would come in

and help out and such, but for the most part,

the brunt of that focus was on me.

But man, when I tell you, I was,

I was so impressed with these kids being able to,

ask answers or certain questions that I had.

But then I also realized that I was very keen on connecting

very well with this age group because, you know,

I wasn't so old, you know, I'm only 20,

even though they said I was old, but I was only 20 at the time

and so I wasn't so far away from being a teenager

and I remembered what it felt like to be a teen,

trying to understand certain concepts

and also feeling like a lot of what was being taught

had no relativity to me.

And so I was very specific and intentional on the questions

that I was asking these kids ended up being such a powerful

time that brought me and led me to continue to do work

with youth when I was 21.

I started working at a youth juvenile detention facility,

just seeing the power of how radical empathy

was able to make me help build stronger relationships

with these youth but also impacting their lives

when they get out of that juvenile detention facility.

Being in that space at such a young age

helped me to see how powerful youth really are

and understanding how much they need strong supports

in their lives because a lot of them,

sometimes we see kids who are acting crazy,

we see kids who, you know, speak out of their disrespectful

and such and I always ask myself the question,

who taught them?

What was it that happened in their background

or their life that got them to the place that they were?

That they were and ultimately I'm not responsible

for who they are before they meet me

but because of the connection that I am right now with them,

now I'm responsible of modeling the proper behavior

that they can now choose to use in their future.

And so this is something that I started

when it was about 2021 and just seeing the power of how youth

are need that strong mentor and youth need that one caring adult

has pushed me to want to continue in the work with youth as well

but then as you said, right, as I got older, became a dad

I'm realizing how powerful it is for these children

to have strong figures in the home.

And so now as I'm also working with youth,

my main focus as well is also uplifting

and supporting the adults in the lives of youth

so that they can also know how to properly connect

with those teens and the children in their lives as well.

- The next question could be a tough one,

but definitely an important one.

Harsh Parenting has been a reality for many generations

and is argued to be effective.

This includes everything from yelling to even corporal punishment.

In fact, some say that we have crime rates

because parents are often too soft on their kids.

I'll give you one example I saw.

There was a post by a very popular pop star bragging

about the fact that she actually uses corporal punishment

on her kids and I believe she's a,

either a Gen Xer or a millennium.

And I looked in the comments and the comments were flooded

with mostly baby boomers who were jumping in there

and congratulating her.

So I'm curious, you know, if this is,

if this rule, this idea that harsh parenting is effective

and we don't have enough of it

and that's why kids are going wrong these days,

is this true or is this a lie?

- I don't think that's true.

We have seen high rates of criminality throughout the years

since the 80s, since the 90s.

And corporal punishment was absolutely a major use

in parenting at that time.

So it's not as though because of corporal punishment,

it made for better conditions.

A lot of youth were treated that way, right?

They had corporal punishment used

and yet crime rates have not necessarily lowered

or were lower back then than they are today.

I think there's a lot of more different factors

that deal with why youth are still necessarily

being connected or getting involved with criminality,

especially with the rise of social media,

they're being influenced in a major way,

which I think can also contribute to what they want

to do or how they're connected to other people around them,

but it's not necessarily for corporal punishment.

And in fact, I mean, when you look at the question, right,

for the fact that people argue as effectiveness

and I know a lot of people wanna say

mental health has also risen in these years,

but in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s,

how many people were actually going to counseling

due to their mental health?

We weren't necessarily seeing a lot of individuals

who were connecting to psychologists, the therapists,

because it was such a taboo concern.

And individuals were not necessarily trying to see

what was going on introspectively in their minds.

And so many of them, the statistics show

that mental health is on the rise right now,

but if we were actually doing the right work

to better ourselves, to connect ourselves

with mental health professionals,

when we were dealing with traumatic events,

we would have seen the same level of mental health

back then as well.

And I know people, for instance, Jonathan,

I know people love to say, well, it worked for me

and look how I turned out.

But I always ask the question,

if you go back to that child that you were,

don't think about the child, the adult that you are today.

I'm not talking about the adult that you are today.

I'm talking about that inner child that you were.

What was it that you're inner child needed?

Not that you're an adult and you can see things

in a better perspective.

What was it that you're inner child needed?

Did they need all of that punishment?

Did they need all of that yelling?

Even if it happened once or twice,

did they need it happening 10 times a week

or 10 times a day?

Right?

A lot of times we sometimes look at the perspective

of who we are today, but we don't look back

at who that inner child was

and what they probably needed better

in order for them to live a better life,

not just focusing on the impact that it has on our today,

but realizing that child probably needed

a little bit more love.

And if we looked at it that way,

maybe we would have a different perspective as well.

I can weigh on those two a little bit

from a slightly different perspective.

A lot of these arguments tend to reside in,

especially in conservative religious organizations

and denominations.

This is where we really tend to see that argument stick.

And I can tell you from my observation

that a lot of those same adults that are arguing

that have