Welcome to Papatriarcat! The podcast that reflects on parenthood in the 21st century by trying to free it from the patriarchal model!

Welcome to my first episode in English! I hope that my pronunciation will be pleasant enough in this new exercise for me!

In France, we have a culture of punishment that is still deeply rooted in society and parenting practices. It must be said, we have an unfortunate tendency to reason by pointing out the negative aspect of things. So of course, when it comes to parenting, we have this same facility to point out behaviors that we do not like in our children and to wish to correct them with negative actions such as punishment or other violence.

The first reference I read about my guest of the day was during my master’s degree in management and coaching. The subject was then to save time and energy with the teams to move towards effective interactions and as we say “win – win”. I was very surprised to find his work again as a source among people who defend punishment in France as a universal and effective or even learning parenting tool. So, I said to myself, “What if I went to ask directly at the source?”

My guest of the day is Dr. Alan Kazdin, Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and Director of the Yale Parenting Center. He was president of the American Psychological Association in 2008 and is the author of 49 books for professional audiences on topics such as parenting and child-rearing, child psychotherapy, cognitive and behavioral treatments, and interpersonal violence. His work has been translated into several languages around the world.  All this ended up being named “The Kazdin Method  “.

Here we will exchange parenthood, neither nice nor mean but based on evidence, on science. You will not find in this episode any moral advice but simply what is effective and proven by science. You may feel in agreement or disagreement depending on where you place your moral values. I will not express mine in this episode.

To prepare for this interview, I based myself on his book “The Everyday Parenting Toolkit” and his free course “Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing” which you will find the link in the description of this episode.

Speaking of ABC, I would like to quickly detail these 3 letters which means:

– A for Antecedents: all the messages, attitudes and context that will lead to the behavior

– B for Behaviour : it is a question of identifying the behaviour that poses a problem and especially its positive opposite which is adapted.

– C for Consequences: what can happen when the behavior occurs. Be careful this can be negative but, as we will see, especially positive.

This is a summary basis for a better understanding of our exchange. I invite you again, perhaps after listening to this episode, to follow the online course which is very complete and in which all the necessary nuance is developed.

In this episode you can hear us talk about “changing the child”. I want to clarify that it is not a question of changing WHO THE child is but simply of helping him to find behaviors adapted to certain specific situations.

What I thought was essential in Dr. Kazdin’s work was the emphasis on positive interactions with children. While in France punishment is often the first intention, are there other paths? Maybe we just don’t know how to do it! Can this be learned?

How do we know if the behaviors we expect from our children are normal or accessible? How to implement all this?

Is punishment effective or learning? What are we talking about when we talk about time out?

Finally, I will come back to the French practice that is back in fashion in the media, awkwardly compared to Time Out and called “File in your room!”. We will see what Dr. Kazdin’s opinion is  on what is proposed in this practice.

Let’s start our episode right away! I hope it will bring you clues for effective solutions in your lives as parents.

I wish you a very good listening.

Cedric Rostein (CR)

Can you describe to us in general what the Kazdin method is? Is it a universal and miraculous guide to make children obey? Do we have to act according to this method all the time? Is it a method to become the perfect parent?

Alan Kazdin (AK)

So the name Kazdin method, something to which I greatly object. And it was never my idea to have that name, that’s a separate story. And the reason is these are techniques derived from decades of laboratory work and human work on how to change human behavior. And it’s very well based on science and it’s been applied to many populations. So what the Kazdin method is is the utilization of various procedures that can change human behavior and can do so in a way that is often easier than the day-to-day techniques that we often use. It is not designed to get children to obey. It’s designed to develop behaviors and habits. The parents can determine what those habits are, but the method will get you there more effectively. We change behavior, we change the brain and as a result, we change people’s emotions and how they view themselves in the world.

CR

Is it a tool that we have to use all the time with children?

AK

I consider this as a toolbox. If you are happy with your parenting and you’re happy with the results and you love the way your child’s developing, I wouldn’t use them at all. If you’d like your child to be more cooperative, if you’d like your child to be more altruistic or more honest or nicer to a sibling and your methods aren’t working or you’re screaming and punishing: we have a way with this method to get those behaviors faster and more securely and in a more enduring fashion. And so it’s like a tool. Most homes have tools and you only use them when you need them. If you walk around the house with a hammer and pliers, you’re probably a little strange. But if you use those from the toolbox when you need them, you’re probably pretty well off.

CR

Okay. (laughs)I really like how you describe the situation you speak about. About behaviors. What we need to change in our relationship with our children. How do you clearly identify the behavior that is causing a problem?

AK

Well, the parent is the arbiter of that. The usual criterion outside the family is: is some behavior interfering with how the individual functions in everyday life? For a child, it would be in the home with siblings or with neighbors or it might be at school. That is, the child is not just being in a little bit of trouble, but now is interfering in a significant way. So those things are problems. And so the parent can say, you know my child just never listens. And the fact is the child listens often, but not often enough for that parent. Well, we can get the child to obey and listen more if that’s what they want. And we can also tell the parent what normative rates are for listening. But the parent kind of arbitrates where to intervene. Sometimes the schools do. And so we respond to that.

CR

Does it happen sometimes that a parent asks to change a behavior, but it’s just normal in child development?

AK

Yes, very often. With very young children, parents are often concerned that the child will not eat “at the right time”, will not sleep “at the right time” and will cry for no good reason. Well, no good reason, there are endless ones. Science shows that bone growth is painful for some children and so what looks like no good reason… So yeah, the initial thing is to educate the parent. A one and a half year old child came to my clinic and because he was having problems at school the problem was when it was nap time at school. Nap time at school, everyone takes a nap at 10:30. The child wouldn’t go to sleep. So they sent them to my clinic to get treatment so we could change the child’s behavior. I called the teacher and had an hour long conversation about child development and sent the parent home. Because parents and teachers,we all have these beliefs about how things should be, when in fact, in nature there’s this distribution of great variability. If a child refuses to go to sleep at 10:30 and the child’s eight years old, that may be something. If the child’s a year and a half, the teacher and the parent have problems.

CR

When I read your works, I had the impression that your proposals are often aimed at changing the parents and not the child. Am I wrong?

AK 

No. Changing children has turned out to be rather easy. And remember, my work started out with the most aggressive and antisocial children. They were hospitalized because of how severely disturbed they were. So we work with parents to teach them the techniques of changing child behavior. Many of the things they do, do not develop the behaviors they want. So we work with the parents. We don’t need to work with the children actually.

CR

Actually, we spoke about the behavior we need to change. You said that we need to encourage the opposite positive behavior. But how do we clearly identify the opposite positive behavior?

AK 

Easy. Easily. Easily. And here’s how it goes. The parents say, I want to stop my child from doing that. And so we ask, we train them to think this way eventually. So we ask, “okay, that’s fine. What would you like to do instead? What would you like the child to do?” “Instead of screaming with his sister and fighting with her and taking her toys? I’d like him to play nicely with her and share toys.” Great, we can develop that. What do you do now? “Whenever he gets in, he argues with her. I scream at him and Iput him in this room.” So what does science show? Science shows that it will not change the child’s behavior and it will not develop habits. It just won’t work. It’ll work that moment because you’ve locked the child away,but it’s not going to change that. So what do you want? You want him to play nicely? We can develop that. Actually, that’s not that hard. So we think of always what do you want in its place. You don’t like the way your spouse does this? Don’t complain about it. What do you want your spouse to do instead? We can develop that. That will build a habit. The habit changes the brain. We’ll build a habit and then we’re done. We don’t have to continue this program anymore. And so the positive opposite is “what do you want?” You want your daughter to play your son, to play nicely with the daughter? Well, we can do that. We can do that with shaping and simulations and great praise. That’s not difficult to do. But if you keep all relying on punishment, we can guarantee it’ll only stop in the moment and it won’t change the behavior overall and it won’t develop the habits you want. The trouble is, as you well know, the brain, our brain is hard, is wired to pick up negative things. And so what happens when the bad, in quotes, behavior comes out? We respond right away and that’s it. The technical term for that in psychology is called normal. So we have to train the parents to do other things.

CR

I just asked you – just before – how do we know that a behavior is normal or not in child development? But how do we know that the behavior we want him to get is accessible for him?

AK

You’re right that behaviors are differentially accessible to different people, but we can develop it. There’s a way there are a couple of ways of developing even when you don’t have it. And so if someone starts out there but it’s very much like I don’t know if you play … do you play a musical instrument?

CR

Yes. Percussions. African drums.

AK

Well, it’s very much like if you know a musical instrument, it’s very much like that. We can get the inaccessible behavior by starting out with the scales, the preliminary beats, the preliminary thing. And eventually, when you see the very end, you say how did that person get there? And so you don’t see the beginning. The violinist and the pianist are working on scales and chords and practicing, and the Rachmaninoff piece is not accessible. Same thing with behavior. We can do the various parts and make it accessible. When you get to the end, you don’t realize all the things that you did along the way. So we can get the accessibility as part of the program. We train where you are. And when we’re training parents to praise, it looks like it’s completely inaccessible because all the parents think they’re great and they’re all pretty horrible at the kind of praise we’re talking about. We train it note by note, chord by chord, measure by measure until we reach the final Rachmaninoff piece.

CR

You know, in France we use a lot of punishments for children, including the saying that if they are not enough. It would be better if they were different. You talk a lot too about praise and other positive behavior toward the children,how to make an effective praise, because we don’t really know it in France, I think.

AK

So we say to parents, to help them,that there are two kinds of praise. The praise you’re using now, keep it up, do it, don’t change it. It’s great for relationships. Do even more. Now there’s a second kind of praise. And this is the praise that changes human behavior. And it’s very likely you’re not doing that. And here’s how that praise goes. For a young child, that praise has three ingredients. First of all, it has to be effusive. I’ll demonstrate in a second. It should say exactly what the child did and then it should do some affectionate, nonverbal part like touching. So if your child now plays nicely with his sister, you run over to the child and you say in French of course, “that was fantastic! that was great!” And now you say what it was. You were with your sister and you played nasty without arguing. And now you touch the back of the head or you rub the shoulder or you give a little kiss. Whatever you do, those three components are shown in research to make a difference. Is that the usual way to praise? No, don’t change that. And… but it’s part of the toolkit. You want to change your child. There are some things to do and one of them is praise. With those three ingredients repeatedly. After you do this for a while, you stop. And the behavior, we’ve now built the habit. You don’t have to keep doing it. But we have to practice with our parents because they all think they’re pretty good at this. And they start out and say “oh, great, that was good, you played with your sister, nice job”. No, “that was great!!!!” And we model it, we shape their behavior because in your words, their behavior didn’t seem accessible. Now we build it in the parents and pretty soon the parents are good enough to do that. We’ve practiced that endlessly. We have to build the habit in the parent because the one thing that’s so important here, so important here is that when people understand and when they have knowledge, you can change their knowledge and attitude but that doesn’t change their behavior. So we don’t want a parent understanding what we’re doing. That’s a luxury, that’s nice, but it will not change human behavior. And parents don’t really feel the same way with their children. They say to their child, you know, not to hit your sister. But what they don’t know is the findings from research. Knowing does not change much human behavior. We all know to eat broccoli and spinach. When’s the last time you had it? Don’t answer it’s rhetorical. We all know not to smoke. We all know, we all know, we all know, we all know to get the vaccines. Human behavior isn’t influenced very often by knowledge or attitude. But parents often say “you know better, why are you doing this?” And it was frustrating because we had a president, I forget his name and the country, who did some sexual things with one of the interns. And the public was, why did such a brilliant man do this? He knows better. Well, from the standpoint of social science, there’s no surprise, because knowing better rarely means doing better. And so in the child, we can get the child to do things without having the child necessarily understand better.

CR

Isn’t it weird for the child if a parent doesn’t usually get very effusive in praise? Maybe … iit doesn’t scare the child?

AK

Well, you don’t jump out of a closet and say, great,

CR

Laughs

AK

Of course there’s a reason here, but you go to a child and you’re effusive. But we have to get it. So it’s not just “good job, good job,good job”, no, we have to get so there’s some enthusiasm in it and that’s easier for some parents more than others. But it doesn’t have to be shocking. So the child has just a mild heart attack because of the surprise value, and you do it a few times and actually the child smiles. The research shows the child loves it. Now, with an adolescent, you can’t be loud. That’s a different story. The same in three ingredients, but they’re a little different for an adolescent.

CR

Just before we talk about the consequences, can you just tell us about antecedent, please? I understood that it was important for the behavior to be in the good environment.

AK

So a fallacy of the approach is that it consists of reward programs. No, no no, no ! It has three components: what comes before the behavior you want, how to change and craft the behavior and then the consequences. And those are the rewards. But the antecedents are so important, they dictate what behavior is going to be. So what you do: there are all kinds of antecedents. So one of them is instructions, the obvious one, what you say to the child. Another one is your facial expression. And one of the most powerful ones in developing behavior with a human being is a challenge. So a parent can say to a child, in a very playful and mischievous way, this antecedent: I’ll bet you can’t, bet you can’t set the table with the silverware. You can’t do it. A five year old can’t do that. When you’re older, you can, but I’ll bet you can’t. I bet you can’t really set the table, you know how. But the child will now say with a spout, I can, I can, no, I can do it, I can do it. And the parent now says again, with another antecedent. It’s okay, you don’t have to. When you’re older, you can set the table. “No, no”, a child says, I can do it now.I can do it now. And now the parent weakens and says, okay, why don’t you put the silverware up? The child does it. And now you go to the child with special praise. Because antecedents aren’t the key. It’s the whole thing. Now, the child does the behavior. We have antecedents, the challenge. We have the behavior. Now you go to a child and you say, “that was so great the way you did that. I didn’t think you could do that.” And then the next night, you say to the child, “I’ll bet you can’t set the table two nights in a row. No five year olds can do that. It’s okay, I can do it. I can do it.” So there’s one antecedent, one antecedent: a challenge. Another antecedent is giving choice. Choice is an antecedent. When people are given a choice, old and young, they’re more likely to engage in behavior. So you go outside with your child, it’s cold outside. If you say to the child, “It’s cold outside, put on the red sweater.” That’s a horrible antecedent. That’s a horrible antecedent because it has an order in there put on. Now, if we can have please in front of it, not to be polite, but to tone down the aggressiveness of “put on”. And an even better antecedent, instead of just saying please, put on the coat. The please changes the parent’s voice. And when the parent says please, the word is. Is important. It changes the voice and the look. And that change gets the behavior a better way. We see. “We’re going outside. Put on the red sweater or the green jacket, please.” Now, this has a choice. And choice in humans leads to better compliance. The psychology research is very clear. Choice has two components: the real choice we have in our lives and the illusion of choice. And there’s no question on research. The illusion of choice is much more Important.

CR

In France, which you described as a choice, it’s called a false choice. False choice. And some people say that it’s not good for children because we are not honest with them.

AK

Did those parents tell their children about Santa Claus?

CR

No, I don’t think so.

AK

Oh, that’s interesting. And they tell the children the truth about everything from the very beginning? That’s admirable.

CR

That’s a good question.

AK

It could scare children. I mean, I appreciate the principle, but they never lie to their spouse. They always say exactly how they feel to their spouse. That’s wonderful. I admire a person who can take a principle from Emmanuel Kant and apply it to all of their lives without exception. However, we want to change behavior. An antecedent temporarily used to get your child to where you want with a habit, without punishment or with minimal punishment. And if you count that false choice as too much of a negative, that’s fine. I’m not interested in changing anyone’s philosophy of parenting. I’m not interested in changing anyone’s parenting. I have a toolkit. You want it? That’s great. You don’t want it? I’m not selling anything. I get no money for this.

CR

Yes, it’s true. And that’s why I like it very much. Let’s talk about consequences there. Dare we even call them punishments. In France, we tend to think that punishment alone is learning. It’s okay, if I punish my child, the behavior will change and if the punishment is not enough, I will punish stronger. What do you think of that? And what are the practices you recommend? In what context?

AK

So one has to be sensitive to three perspectives. One perspective is one of a more of a religious one and in this case, referring to the Bible, some people believe very strongly about sparing the rods flowing to the child that you have a moral obligation to punish. You have to understand that perspective. The other one is a cultural one, which you say in France is punishment, and the other one is how to change human behavior. And that’s the only one I can speak to. And if you want to change the behavior we know so much about punishment. Punishment is only temporary in its effect. It doesn’t build habits. It often is not a form of justice in terms of … Only a tiny bit of mild punishment is needed to be effective. And if you want to develop the behavior, you develop the positive opposites. So if you want to punish, I can’t interfere with your values or your religious beliefs if you want to change behavior. Corporal punishment, for example, has horrible consequences long term for many children related to aggression, mental illness, poor health, dying at a younger age of corporal punishment. And so that level is really a problem, and the research is very clear on that. Punishment is a brief time out or taking away a privilege serves the purposes in terms of changing behavior. But you’re not going to change behavior with punishment as a general rule because punishment temporarily suppresses. It doesn’t build habits. And what usually happens is that the escalation, and it’s called the parenting trap, that is shouting didn’t work. I’ll shout louder. Shouting louder didn’t work. I’ll hit. Hitting didn’t work. I’ll shake and hit even more. And what the research shows, and I’ve seen it clinically endlessly is it doesn’t help. As a matter of fact, you want to be careful in punishing your child because you’re modeling. You’re modeling how to control human behavior. And the more you punish, the more you teach your child to punish others. And what the research shows of the parent who punishes a child has a child who interacts that way with his peers. That is to say, if the parent is sarcastic, the child is very sarcastic with peers. If the parent hits the chair and it goes on. So the punishment research is very clear. That said, science rarely overcomes cultural beliefs. And I’m not here to pontificate. I’m here to say this. If you want to change behavior, we have tools that don’t have the side effects of punishment that are temporary and make you more effective in your life. You want to punish this for the next two years or you want to change it in the next three weeks to be done. It’s up to you.

CR

What tools can we find in the consequences? I think about time out and planned ignoring.

AK

Sure. So timeout is a very difficult consequence to convey. In one way, it’s easy. It’s a period of time in which the child does not have access to all the things that are wonderful in the environment. But the reason it’s difficult to convey is parents often are teaching not how to change behavior, but what justice is. Let’s say the child broke an heirloom that goes back five generations. It even has the initials of some Neanderthal. And a child breaks this wonderful thing. And now a psychologist comes in and says, “all you need is two minutes of timeout”. The parent can’t possibly do that. You broke an heirloom and I’m going to give this child two minutes of time out. No, no, this is an heirloom. I’m going to give the child three years of time out. So what does the research show? The research shows the duration of time out after a minute or two makes no difference in impact. And so we have to teach parents, you develop the positive opposites, you make the child make the child learning to be careful with things, not to touch things, not to play with things. But there’s no way to put that bowl back together again. And a year of time out, or taking away your college years or taking away your bicycle, or you can’t visit your uncle in Montmartre. Those are ridiculous.They’re not going to do anything. So we have to have parents distinguish,what are you doing that’s for you as a parent, as opposed to for the child, as training him. You want to punish your child because it makes you feel better or realize that it’s catharsis for you, for your child, two minutes of timeout or takeaway a privilege for a day. That’s what the research shows. I’m not here to change what you’re doing. I’m here to make you more effective. You want to punish your child, that’s done in my business. But if you want to change your child, that’s not going to do it.

CR

Just about timeout. If I well understood, we do not lock up children and we do not physically false them.

AK

No. That will harm the relationship and it won’t develop the behaviors you want. The positive opposite develops a much closer relationship, much more positive, and you get the habits you are.

CR

Okay, what about planned ignoring? 

AK

So one of the problems is that parents unwittingly attend to behaviors they don’t want. That is to say, the child will do something, and they’ll run over and attend to it. “I told you not to do it.” So ignoring is not a good change technique. It’s very weak. So we use ignoring only to get parents to stop giving attention to something that they want. For example, the two children are watching television and they start to make noise, and the parent walks in: that’s parent attention for making noise. Either ignore that, ignore that completely if you can, and then run in there and praise when they’re good, when they’re quiet. So planned ignoring is a tool to have parents stop giving attention to things you say you don’t want, because when you give attention to them, that’s a low grade praise.

CR

Okay, thank you. What to do when the child refuses timeout?

AK

Easy. You always have in your pocket, in your toolkit, a loss of privilege that doesn’t require the child to agree. It’s a small one. “You go to timeout now for two minutes.” “No, I won’t.” Okay, so there are two ways to handle that. One is to say, “okay, I’m going to ask you one more time. Go to time out.” “No, I won’t.” “Okay. You cannot watch TV, television, or you cannot play your video game for the rest of the day” and then you’re done. Now, there’s another thing that will be counterintuitive. So the answer to your question have in your pocket, so to speak, a privilege you can take away that doesn’t require compliance. Now this will sound counterintuitive. If you want to use time out, you could practice with the child walking to the timeout room when everyone’s happy, just say, let’s say “we’re going to do a practice time out.” “What does that mean?” “Oh, nothing. We’re going to just walk to the timeout room.” I’m going to say “you go time out and you’re not going to stay in time out. We’re just practicing”. Okay, “go to time out room” and a child walks to the room. You run over to the child and say “Isaid go to time out and you did that. That’s really great.” What does that do? It does two things. One that you can hardly imagine. It increases the likelihood of compliance in areas you are not talking about. You develop general compliance and it also makes the likelihood for the child to time out. So you can develop that behavior if you want as well. That’s not hard to do. Interesting, no?

CR

Yes, very interesting. I was just thinking about it sounds like training for me and that’s okay. But I really like this because it sounds like what you said at the beginning of the episode, you know, about the violinist and pianist just training to get access to the good behavior. It’s okay.

AK

And as you know, as you know, brain studies of the brain of building habits show that musicians you can see in the brain the musicians who have practiced a lot and those who have not practiced so much, those who are experts are knowing that. So we’re changing habits,but we’re also changing the brain. We want to build these behaviors so they’re stable.

CR

Another question: we often talk about attachment theory in and secure attachment with child development experts in France. Can the applications of timeout or planned ignoring or current sequences endanger the secure bond with the child?

AK

So there are two answers. Attachment theory. There was once thought that people have secure attachments or insecure attachments and they reflected adjustment. Well, the research shows the nuances. There are many people with insecure attachments who are doing really well in life and are happy and some people with very secure attachments that aren’t doing so well. In other words, it’s not so clear as it once was when the area began. That said, you want to improve your relationship and attach it with your child, cut back on the punishment. First thing to do, cut back on the punishment and get more towards the praise and developing behaviors together. So insofar as compatibility with attachment theory, this one is there. Stop all the negative. No, cut back on the reprimands. Forget the nagging, couple reminders, positive opposites, praise, develop behaviors. Those build attachments, not punishing. Punishing. A shove pushes away, praise and hugging and touching brings closer together. Everyone knows that part.

CR

In a few words. What message would you like to pass on to parents who are listening to us and are experiencing difficulties in their parenting?

AK

So the goal is not to change how people parent. The goal is to provide some effective tools that have been studied in science that make life easier for everybody. Our research shows that once you use these techniques and reduce punishment: relationships in the home improve, parental depression goes down, the child’s happier at school with peers. So there are side effects here that parents would want. But if you’re having trouble changing behavior, there are some techniques now that you’re probably not using that could make life a lot easier.

CR

Okay. I just would like to ask you about the timeout that is promoted in France. Okay? I don’t know if you remember, it’s a long question, but I really like to have your opinion on this. In France, a highly publicized method recommended this concerning timeout. It’s to isolate the child locked in his room. Not locked with a key, just the room is closed, if after explaining three times, the behavior continues. There is a list of examples of infantile transgressions to be banned gradually from the age of twelve months, one year. Here is the list. Talking too much, talking too loudly, shouting, cutting off, making too much noise. Mourning. Not obeying an injunction or dragging them out. Refusing to say hello or thank you. Being a bad player, leaving the table during the meal. I’ll stop here. The list is so long. The time of confinement is fixed by the parent in proportion to the fault committed as a sense of justice, I think you said. Finally, if the child refuses to go to his room, then the timeout will be increased with no time limits. What do you think about that, please?

AK

There’s only one problem with everything you said. It’s just one little problem. It violates everything we know from research. Hearing any of them makes me want to jump out of my basement window. They violate what we know. First of all, the research shows you don’t need to put in a locked room at all. The child can sit in a chair in any room, even with other people there, in a corner for two minutes.

That’s it. More is not better. Research is very clear on that. Isolation is not better. Changing any of those behaviors on your list that you read, it won’t work. It just won’t work. Some of those behaviors go away with child development. As a child gets older and you want to develop behaviors? We know how to do that. Timeout is a move in the wrong direction. What does wrong mean? It’s not moral. It’s anti what we know from science. There’s no right and wrong. We can make it so. No. If I were to tell parents, if you said to me, how can we make a parent really ineffective? I would take that list and say, let’s start there. That’s a perfect list to make the child so the parents so they don’t change any behavior. Now let’s add some screaming in there and let’s add some corporal punishment. And now we have the imperfect parent who gets exactly the horrible behavior that they fear. So no, no, please. Please. The person who wrote that, I would ask them to justify that. And I welcome anyone to say to me, is that your opinion or is that science? And I’m happy to provide resources, make sure the person who gave you that list has that same attitude. And my attitude isn’t special. That’s how science works. If I can’t show my sources or the evidence, then it’s all opinion. Don’t listen to me.

CR

I can just tell you that this list and this advice, it’s just about psychoanalysis.

AK

We go to evidence. We don’t go to gurus, we don’t go to evident people. You know, I love Galileo, but now I accept everything that Galileo didn’t know. Galileo is still important, but we don’t follow Galileo. We follow quantum mechanics and other things right now. And so Freud, wonderful, marvelous, whatever: the techniques he suggested, the therapies he uses and these advice, now they happen to violate research because we know more. Because we know more. So there’s no reason to say anything negative about Freud. Nothing at all. Except that you want science or you want to go back to your favorite guru. I’m agnostic. You do what you want in your life. But if you want science to change your child in a way that builds relationships and change behavior, by the way, there are these great advances. You don’t want them. I’m not selling anything.

CR

Thank you very much, Alan Kazdin for this interview.

AK

It was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.