what is the right way to to deal with that

well I'll remind us all that fear is built in to

to children uh

all infants and young toddlers uh

are fearful sometimes they just come that way

however courage the

the capacity to speak

think and act in spite of our fears

that is not built in we have no courageous infants

or young toddlers that I ever saw

that has to be Learned

welcome back to raising men

in a parenting culture that often defaults

to protecting children from discomfort

we might be missing an opportunity

to help them build real resilience

Doctor Randolph Schiffer he's a neurologist

former Marine and the founding director of

the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Brain Health

offers a different perspective

that strength isn't built by avoiding fear

but by helping children understand and move through it

in this conversation

we're gonna explore how storytelling

language and a parent's presence

can shape how boys experience fear

and how those early experiences influence

the kind of men that they'll become

Doctor Schiffer welcome to raising men

thank you for having me Shawn

so most parents I think

and I'm definitely one of them

instinctively want to protect their boys from fear

right and we say don't be afraid or when

when a child is scared but as a neurologist what

you know what is actually happening in a boy's brain

when they experience fear

and when we tell them to suppress it

rather than process it

um what happens

I think that you're correct

we have kind of a parent mythology now

that we need to protect all our children

boys and girls from upsetting experiences

fearful situations difficult topics

uh like death

whatever uh drugs

sex uh

and as a there are consequences for this

and I think they're for boys and girls

all their boys and girls are different

but the consequences in my view

are that we have now a fearful society in itself

these are tangible results

there are um

I mean I can give

what are we afraid of

I think we're afraid of so many things now

we're afraid of failure

responsibility development of responsibility

the capacity to say

there has been a terrible mistake here

and I am responsible this

I can just I can tell we're afraid of death

the wellness movement now is uh

widespread and to for

to that

all Americans

are assumed to want to prolong their lives uh

without regard for whether it's a good life or not

I think we're afraid of life itself

suicide rates have risen 40% over the last 20 years

at all ages I'll just give one example

um

I'm coming back I'm not forgetting the brains

but I'm coming back to I'm just

the context here of what what the results are

in the area I know best in medicine

the consequences of this uh

new kind of parenting

protecting the children from upsetting

fearful dramas uh

experiences we now have young doctors

a major medical center one of the top in the country

not mentioning the name

where in the internal medicine department

the residents

the first year doctors are afraid to be on call

and so they're not on call

they never get the call in that first year

from the emergency room doctor you

wow you have to come

you better come down here because we have this problem

or that they're protected from that

and um

as a result

well the long term outcomes

I think are

I have consequences

yeah that you're

it's not that that's a framing that I

haven't thought of before

which is that some of what ails our culture

and I talk a lot about

what I consider to be a masculinity crisis and

and

a significant portion of that is explained

by what you're talking about

which is we are

at the same time kind of stoking fear in our culture

like through social media and

and you know the whole engagement

economy

but

but are also trying to avoid it right and

and uh

trying to avoid it for ourselves

trying to avoid it for our children

and that's that

that's not the way the world is

it's not the way we've evolved

that's not necessarily healthy and

and I think that the demands for

some of these value development

things are greater now on boys than girls

because we have very powerful

cultural ideas about what it means to be a boy

or a girl a man or a woman

those are changing and I think that right now

my view of the cultural mythos

certainly for young men

has become almost impossibly difficult

because the more traditional masculine type behaviors

leadership strength

courage um

implicit violence those things are still there

although some people wish they weren't

but now in addition

the more traditional feminine values compassion

conflict avoidance

nurture nurtureance etcetera

the young men are now expected to write poetry as well

uh as take command of a Marine Corps platoon in combat

hmm it's almost impossible now the

the women have kind of

of through the looking glass alteration 2 because now

but I think it's less dramatic for them

but now they are not expected

but they have permission to develop more

some of these traditional masculine qualities as well

on top of the more traditional feminine roles

but I think for the young boys

it's more difficult

I think so too and I think

we do ourselves a little bit of a disservice by

these things being associated with gender

as strongly as they are um

because then you have to

then you have to go through this kind of mental

gymnastics to

you know explain that

that it's not necessarily like

like men can exhibit traditionally female qualities

and women can exhibit traditionally

masculine qualities and

and it's it's just a shame that we don't have

gender neutral ways of expressing those things

um

but but

but yeah I mean there's

there is a a challenge

and an opportunity for us to experience the world

in an in a

in a new way by embracing what

you know the traditional values and

and just you could decide

instead of society imposing those values on you

because of your gender you could pick what you want

but then

that imposes upon you the responsibility to pick well

and I think that we're doing that first thing

our culture is thrusting us into the position of oh

okay well

you know the

the the traditional

um the

the traditional roles are no longer valid

so pick what you want and that's freedom

that's great and then

but we're not

embracing the responsibility of doing that well

and I I

I think that's kind of the

that's the illness that is happening there and

yeah so going back to the notion of fear

what is a better way you know

when my daughter is comes to me

and she's claiming to be afraid of

just being in her room alone right

what

how how

what what is the right way to

to deal with that well

I'll remind us all that fear is built in to

to children uh

all infants and young toddlers uh

are fearful sometimes they just come that way

however courage

the uh capacity to

speak think and act in spite of our fears

that is not built in we have no courageous infants

or young toddlers that I ever saw

that has to be Learned

and I think that's Learned uh

from the parents or grown UPS around them

through several mechanisms

one is modeling we demonstrate

they know who we are

we show them how we respond to fears

um and a key thing there is

I think many of us as parents have

now

you're mentioning your daughter talking about her fears

uh I won't personalize this

but how many of us parents

have talked with our children about our fears

so that they can see that we too

are afraid of things and see how we process them

so that's kind of an identification process

it goes on for about 50 years

they learn from us how to deal with um

man that's such a powerful statement

and I one of the

just constant refrains in this whole project has been

that 80% of it is modeling

whatever it is you're trying to impart to your

to your to your kids 80% of it is modeling yes

and but I'm I'm in spite of that

and in spite of being very aware of that

it's never occurred to me

that I need to be

talking to my kids explicitly about my own fears

or that was a way to handle

so I have this interesting

reoccurring situation going on with my daughter

which is why I brought it up

and she's going she's 4 years old

and she's going through a phase where

it feels to me like she is trying

to manipulate me using fear

she knows that

claiming to be afraid of things is a way to get me to

respond

and and so you know

I she recognizes that if I tell her to go into her room

by herself that she can say

I'm scared and I now have to do something

she she recognizes this

but it feels to me like pure manipulation

I don't I don't know if she's

I don't think she's actually scared

but she might be but I also think she to the extent

she is actually scared she's manufacturing the fear

and I'm really at a loss to do what I to

to figure out what to do about that

and I know there is a productive way to handle it

but I don't know what that is

and go ahead

so you think she is um

creating special father time with herself

by these behaviors then you come into the room with her

in this case it's usually when

when she's been acting out

and she's going to her room to take a break

and she's trying to avoid punishment

parenting is the most difficult task in our lives

it's more difficult than marriage

it's more difficult than work

and we all make mistakes we do

but I would what I

what I have been working on

and thinking about is stories

and storytelling because

in addition to identification processes

with the adults and the parents

children learn from the stories

about who our heroes are how they process fear

how their courage comes into play

their conflicts their failures

and so I think so called bedtime stories

and I've written this book

bedtime stories I love to get into this

this is great so uh

the figures the heroic figures in the stories

stay with us to the very end

and the nice thing

the good thing is you can craft the stories to fit your

your children and yourself so that they fit

but if the stories are told

children love stories well

so do grown UPS um

if the lead figures

the heroes in the story are shown to overcome fear

frustration whatever

and develop positive skills courage responsibility

respect for others uh

those figures from the story stay with them forever

all two our

our two boys now age 40 and 38

they still talk about some of the figures from the book

I love that yeah

so your bed

your book is called Bedtime Stories

that will Terrify Children right

and so why why is that such a powerful way

a powerful training ground for

for the nervous system there

well um

remember the um

memory systems and the fearful systems in the brain

are colocated deep in the brain

medial temporal lobes above the brain stem hypothalamic

uh

I mean if you have any doubt about memory

and emotional arousal being connected

uh we don't want to personalize this too much

but if we think now at our age

it's very difficult to meet people

and remember their names but not

if the person you meet is particularly obnoxious

or particularly attractive

those names are with us in a second

because the emotional arousal

it's probably neurological

inside the medial temporal lobes

just locks those all together

so with the bedtime stories

if they're told right

and the stories and the figures are captivating

they'll stay with these children forever

they are legacy uh

to the children and the

the book that I wrote is told in the voice of a father

who has but one year to live

hmm

so the stories are his legacy to the two boys

uh about his values and what he thinks are um

the important things in life

and the children are in the stories too

and the father's in the story

so that's another you

that's one way to make sure that there's engagement

if you put the child and yourself into the stories

in ways they really like that

yeah are you uh is

is the book geared towards a particular age range

of kids um

uh you know I the

the truth is I don't know

I think it's more a book for parents than for children

now it can be read as uh

suspenseful dramatic stories

bedtime stories for children

it can be read that way but I think fundamentally

it's about if our time is limited with our children

which it is for all of us

but what if it were just one year

what stories would we tell them

yeah I've

I love that sentiment

I used to tell stories um to my kids

at bedtime and I

I still do but um

but it's it's less common now for some reason and um

I would make up the stories

yeah and they would all start the same way

so I started this with my son and and

and he was he was in the story

so it was uh

once upon a time there was a little boy named Lake

and he had two dogs named Penguin and chicken

and then one day something happened and he would

lake would just

he loved these stories and he would beg me for stories

and there were so many times at the end of a long day

where I was mentally exhausted

and just I

I really had a difficult time coming up with a novel

story

and um

sometimes I gave into that and man

I just too tired to come up with story today

but most of the time I I

I tried to push through it

and I would normally be successful

you know to some degree

some of the stories were really good

some of them weren't

and

finally I

once I I intimated to a friend

who had a son about the same age as mine

and I said man

you know how do you deal with this

and uh

and he goes you know

you don't he doesn't know any stories

you don't have to make them all up

and he goes he goes

like I'll just tell Cinderella as if I made it up

and it never even occurred to me

that I could plagiarize other people's stories

and pretend that they were my own

when telling my kids stories

and I eventually decided not to do that

because we kind of

have this principle that we don't lie to our kids

about anything

it's I

don't know it's very similar to

to what you're saying

like we need to be able to confront hard truths

and as parents it's our duty to figure out how to

do that in an age appropriate way

um but uh

but I just thought that was an interesting

interesting little point that my buddy made

like you don't have to make up every story

you can tell stories that have already been made up

well here's what I say about lying

um cause I used to lie to my patients sometimes too

interesting a lie is a deliberate

alteration or adjustment of truth or facts

that is self serving

if the time should come

that some adjustment of what we tell our children

or our patients uh

which is not true is done genuinely for their benefit

that's not a lie

interesting I yeah

I think that that's a yeah

that's a good way to think about it

yeah I also I

you know the

it's also

I I

I encountered this interesting definition

of suffering recently

and um

the definition is that suffering is when

you find out that

the map of reality that you have in your head

is different than the actual reality on the ground

and it's that

disjoint that disconnect

that is suffering

and and so when you think about it in that lens

the reason lying is such a problem is because it

results in suffering right

you you are

you are creating that disconnect

or you are allowing it to

you're fostering that disconnect

but what you're what you're

what you're kind of saying there is

there is a there is a place for

for reducing suffering

in allowing some of that disconnect to persevere

you know maybe easing somebody into the transition

into making that realization

is that am I making sense there

I I feel like I'm now just rambling yeah

no I'm

it's the idea I'm still on the stories of yeah

telling the stories and the characters in the stories

in a way that is good for the children at their stage

and that's very individualized

but the there can be uh

children are quite comfortable with magic

good evil spirits

uh

transformations of the household dog into a rabid wolf

beast if the moon rises red in the October sky

they're quite

they are quite comfortable with all these things

but I think the stories were

the hope is to transmit heroic figures to them

in ways that are uh

good for them and

and they'll give you clues about that too

sometimes you can ask them

you know well

you why don't you tell the story tonight

and then it comes from their imaginations

which are which are very creative or a variety

but the transmission of these figures

and there are figures which are not simplistic

um timid

fearful figures which so many children's books are now

I think complex figures growing up

learning to take responsibility to be courageous

to be self reflective and figures like that

they'll stay with these children just forever

and um

I can give one story about that

um yeah

let's hear it if I can uh

I I'm I

I have to be careful I

toward the end in medicine

I developed pathological weeping

so I cry now so um

so that gets in my way sometimes but um

um that's really why I had to quit medicine

is that right I

I I feel like I'm in the process of developing that

I I'm like I

I mean the first 10% of that I

I really find myself

a lot more likely to cry these days than I was

five or 10 years ago you'll see it on this podcast

but anyway as to these figures um

this Frank Marywell

mythical heroic figure at Yale from the 19 or so

always fair always kind uh

always successful well

one time in Vietnam I just walked around the bend

and there were four

North Vietnamese soldiers just standing there and um

the rest of my patrol had gone further down

and I thought well

I'm gonna kill these guys

oh my gosh so um I

step towards them um

to picked up the rifle to do it

they weren't very far away and they didn't do anything

they just stood there looking at me

and then right in the middle of all that

the image of Frank Marywell

intruded into my mind and I asked myself

would Frank Marywell

shoot these four poor Asian guys down

and I decided well

in a second no

Frank Murray wouldn't do it

and I'm not gonna do it either

so uh

I went on my way they went on their way

so that's the power of those uh

those kind of internalized heroic figures

wow of course it was a terrible mistake

life punishes you for every good deed

those guys were on a mission that was evil for us

and which they then carried out later

but I that part I choose to forget

that is such a powerful story

I

I can't imagine being faced with that and

wow

you know what

what made you decide to write this book

the way that you did

when our boys

were three and one this is now 37 years ago

the three year old developed leukemia

a L L acute lymphocytic leukemia

at that time

I I

I I took care of these children

I was always in pediatrics

uh uh

uh

for for some disease treatments

and I knew a lot about the leukemia children

I'd taken care of some of them that time

that disease was 50% fatal

um

but of the 50% who died I knew that it

they didn't all die from the biology of the disease

a number of them died because they

or their families were unable to tolerate

the prolonged and painful treatments

so I designed the bedtime stories

to toughen up the older boy

wow

so so basically what

what you're saying here is that

is that like

the storytelling was

almost a necessary part of the treatment

it was it was

I mean you're sitting here faced with

with having to to accelerate this 3 year old's ability

to really withstand fear and pain and discomfort

and so how did it work you know what

what was that process like

well he survived

um I can't prove what role the stories had but uh

I think they were a comfort for him

and positive for him cause I

of course I knew what lay ahead for him some

so the some of the elements in the story

they're not about well

actually one or two of them are about sick children

but they're about children facing difficult

traumatic conflicts between good and evil

doing the right thing failing even death itself

some children

uh in the squirrel story

the squirrel is an evil animal

who presides over the ragged hole in space and time

between this world and another

and he drags children through it

um

that's just what he does so um

by the way the squirrel was the favorite character uh

of of our boys

so is that right

so anyway the stories

I figured you know

our boy has leukemia but every child is facing

the drama and the struggle of growing up

and it lasts for 30 or 40 years

so maybe all the stories are designed

each one

it's about a different kind of a dramatic challenge

the squirrel it's good and evil

life and death but there are

there are strange there are evil goddesses that come uh

who seek power and

uh anyway

so each story is different

but I thought well maybe um

and I tried to have them

pick up elements of the challenge

which lay ahead for our child with leukemia pain

courage endurance um

maintaining your your own self

maintaining your your school work

your keeping your room

you know variety of things

uh and I hope that those are in the stories

and I hope that maybe you know now um

other children

might be interested in hearing these stories

what was your

what's your son's recollection of that time period

they talk about him both of them will talk about him

I don't ask

you know but it comes up now and then

they mention the squirrel

they mention the bear

um that's the final story

as I say I don't unpack it with them

but I know they're still in their minds

yeah interesting

yeah I mean I love this concept of

the thought that occurred to me when

when you were talking about the way that stories

can be used to to convey these stories

is that is that storytelling

one of the reasons it's so powerful

is because it's another form of modeling

yes it is

and and so

you know I don't have to necessarily

uh model courage directly

I don't necessarily have to face down the lion

in front of my kids

in order to model that kind of courage

I can tell stories about it instead

or stories about other characters

or even stories about them in situations

and then we can talk through how to

how to how to handle certain things and um

I think that's really where the power is there

yes

I wanna touch a little bit more

on your experience in Vietnam

and you mentioned the the story about the the

the 4 um

enemies that you encountered

um

did that

did did that influence your experiences in Vietnam

how did they influence your

the way that you think about this stuff

well the war in Vietnam in the 1960s

was the central fact

in the lives of young men in this country

in the United States yeah

you couldn't avoid it uh

it was so big and so long lasting

you had to make a decision about it

you could go with it you could go away from it

you could go to Canada whatever

but whatever choice you made in later years

you'd have regrets so we were all damaged

those of us who went those of us who avoided it

we were all damaged by it

we all have regrets now and one of the problems I have

is this pathological weeping which um

I think probably is from that

so I didn't have it for a long time

but then about age 60 or so

I'd get up in medicine and in front of groups to talk

and I just

or people would come to see me at the Cleveland Clinic

from far away yeah

they'd tell their stories and I'd just start to cry

so I had to stop but

so I decided to go I went

I went in the Marine Corps

I was an infantry officer but um

I'm scarred by it too

yeah I can imagine

um

I can imagine

Dr Shiver I always like to end these conversations um

by asking people for a principle

so you've got 35 years or more than that

50 years of medicine of war

of fatherhood

if you could distil those experiences

into an operating principle one

and you know

obviously there are many

so you just have to give us one

one operating principle for raising men

of character and of courage

what would that be

um self curiosity

uh that comes more easily to girls and women in my

than to men but self curiosity about our

about who we are and who we wish to be

if that can be begun and nurtured and modeled

that's the most valuable skill of all

that's perfect

Doctor Schiffer

thank you so much for joining us today on

on Raising Men thank you for your time

thank you for sharing this uh

this wonderful book um

I really

really look forward to

to reading it and for sharing those stories

or using them to inspire stories

that I tell to my kids it's such a tremendous way um

you know to model the

the those right kind of values not

not just courage and and not just

you know teaching them to

to deal with fear but also

teaching them to deal with other kinds of difficult um

situations I really appreciate the lesson here

thank you for having me Sean

and if you're listening if this episode challenged

how you view your son's big feelings

I encourage you to try what Doctor Shiver calls

a safe scare this week

put down the device

turn down the lights and share a story that

that matters and check out the book

the book is called

Bedtime Stories That Will Terrify Children

and the link is in the show notes

as always thank you for listening to Raising Men

and you are a great parent

raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez

this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino