You Punish a Kid for Coming Home, Not for Leaving

0:00If you get into a fight with a spouse and then they're like, "Don't do that. I'm going to have a panic attack. Don't talk about that thing. I'll have a panic attack." What they do is they threaten you and say like, "If you continue, then I will I will punish you in some way." And so what happens is you stop. And so they learn that if they threaten you with a panic attack, you stop. And so you train them to bring up their panic attack issue and then it becomes part of their identity cuz then they're like, "Oh no, if I talk about my mother, I have panic attack."

0:29And then it's like, "That's my That's my threat wall for everybody." And so and then everyone reinforces that and trains them that "Oh, if you need to get me to stop, just tell me that you'll have a panic attack." There were like, you know, there were days where like Layla would be not in as good of a mood because of whatever and I would try and this is, you know, earlier in the relationship and I would try and be like, "Hey, what can I do? Like let me do these things." And uh she would still stay in a kind of a bad mood, right? And so then what happened is I would then get stern and be like, "All right, like do your own thing. I will I'm going to just stop talking to you."

1:08And what would happen is that she would then snap out of it as soon as I got mean. And so then what she taught me is that if I am mean, she will stop being in a bad mood. What happens immediately after I get mean? She stops. So I learned that. I mean, it's like kids cry, parent gives them a cookie and you now teach them to cry to get cookies. Like it's just like so simple. And the other piece is if you reward too long afterwards, you still teach them something but not what you intended.

1:37So if you train a dog and then you will give the cookie after 30 seconds, the original thing that you tried to reinforce is no longer associated but they do make an association with whatever thing you gave them. So the question is what did you associate with the reward? And so like a parent, for example, fast forward has a teenager who sneaks out of the house, right? And then they come back at in the middle of the night, and then as soon as they walk in the door, they punish them. And so, what happens? You punish your kid for coming home.

2:09And then they're surprised the kid doesn't want to come home. You didn't punish them for leaving, you punished them for coming home. If I'm being nice to her when she's having a bad mood, then she's like, "Okay, I should reinforce this rather than extinguish it, which is what it was before." Which is like, I'd be nice, I'd be nice, I'd be nice, I'd have nothing back. She'd just continue to stay in a bad mood. And so, I'm like, "Well, that doesn't work. I'll switch tactics." >> Mhm. >> But it did make her feel better, she just never told me. I would get angry that she's in a bad mood at something else because now it's just like affecting me. Yeah, I had this bad conversation with so-and-so, and I'm like, "Okay."

2:44>> Or like, now I've realized if he's in a bad mood or mad mad about something in general, I used to get mad that he was mad. I'm like, "This is ridiculous. You're ruining my day." and whatever. And now, I actually go the opposite and I become really playful and funny and sweet and loving. >> Yeah. >> And then that tends to actually de-escalate the situation. >> Yeah, when she's all like girly and cute, I I usually like, people try to avoid punishment.

3:07Right? That's what they try to do. And so, if your spouse punishes you, then if you can't feel like you can escape, then the only thing to do to try and get them to not punish you is punish them for punishing you. And the hope is that if you punish them, that they won't punish you again because they got punished. But then that person starts the next countermeasure and then it just How do you teach a kid to talk? Like, we're just organisms and like, we reinforce. Think about it as a baby.

3:36Like, humans teach speech with zillions of reinforcement cycles. So, think about it. Baby doesn't do anything, then baby makes a noise. Ooh. Hey, look, they're making noise. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Baby makes more noise, more noise, more noise. Eventually, one of those noises approximates a word. Then, we freak out. So, then it makes more and more and more sounds like that because it gets positive reinforcement. And then all of a sudden it makes a full word, everyone freaks out. And then, it starts making more noise and more words, people freak out more. And then, what do we do? We tell it to shut up cuz it talks so much.

4:11And so, like it's just these reinforcement cycles that happen over like that's how we That's how we human. And so, we just have to look at whenever there's a marriage Oh, it's like the thing with with Layla. If the guy gets mad and then the girl shuts up, if he wants her to be quiet, he realizes mad equals quiet. And thing is is punishment uh like is like reward timing for these things matters a ton. And so, if you start talking and someone cuts you off or you you say a statement and someone disproves it or undermines you or says it's stupid, you don't learn not to talk, you learn not to talk in front of them.

4:47And so, the learning super specific. People think it's general. It's very specific, like how you learn. Now, if that person punishes you in enough situations in general, right? Like then you might, you know, generalize the learning. And and punishment and reward also sit on separate They're not 1 + 1. They actually are separate. And so, you can have someone who has punished you a lot and rewarded you a lot, and that is what creates conflict.

5:14And so, it's like I have this parent that I have good memories with. I also have terrible memories with them. And so, that's why you have this huge struggles. You have tons of reward and you know, and reinforcement tons of punishment. And so, you're like they text you, and you're like, "Man, I would love to have access to more of this positive, but I don't want to risk this negative." But they don't cuz otherwise, if as people describe it, they describe it as zero, as like as though they canceled out, but they don't. You feel both completely on separate graphs. What's crazy is that if people learned this stuff, so many relationships, I feel like would actually be so much better.

5:50People don't like the idea of training cuz it makes people feel like they don't have free will. But, if you train someone, which you can, then like if you want your wife to do something more than whenever she does something that you like, reward her. >> And you can use it to your own benefit, you know? I mean, I think that's why you have to, you know, marry somebody who you trust. Uh like I I know when Al is training me and I think he knows when I'm training him and it's always like for the better.

6:16Like I don't think we've ever done it intentionally for the worse, right? And then we'll figure out that it's like thinking through like, "Okay, what [clears throat] am I accidentally doing that is, you know, punishing this person?" Like, "What thing that I'm doing that is a byproduct of them being in my environment that is punishing to them?" And it's like, "Okay, well, [clears throat] how can I not do that?" >> And training's that maybe the taboo word. We could If I wanted to be politically correct, I would say motivate or encourage. Like, "I'm encouraging her to do these things. I'm motiv- But like fundamentally, they do something, you have an aftereffect.

6:45That is a cycle of reinforcement. Punishment, you can't It's really difficult to You don't teach things with punishment. You get people to avoid a specific thing. So, if you punish someone for sneaking out of the window, you don't punish sneaking out, you punish sneaking out of the window. And so, they still want the thing they're seeking, the reward that they're trying to leave the house for, they're going to just try and find another way to get it.

7:09And so, whereas punish Punishment creates lots of new, different, innovative ways to get around, reward focuses on one behavior. If I have a carrot, everyone comes for the carrot. But if I hit it, it could do 100 things. So, like punishment sprays the activity of like what someone's going to do afterwards, but reward focuses. But it's funny cuz if everybody knows the game, it doesn't make it less effective. It actually makes it more effective because then you you can understand what they're trying to do faster. It's just a better way to communicate. At the end of the day, you have to organize your environment to change the way you behave. Like it's the easiest way to change behavior is to change someone's surroundings. The ultimate is that two people are working something that's mutually reinforcing.

7:52Which is why couples that build businesses together have a far lower divorce rate because they have a mutually reinforcing thing. It reinforces both of them. Why do you guys work so much? Because we both do it and we both get reinforced at the same time for doing it together. We're just like we're just little rats with levers getting pellets. >> Yeah. >> And like our business is a little pellet machine. And so we're like, "Ooh, content, content." This is a really interesting one.

8:17So you think about people want to ascribe reasons why. They say, "You know, when I was a kid." And then you can just cut all of that and just say, "When you do X, you're rewarded for it in some way." That's it. Cuz otherwise, if you weren't, you would stop doing it. >> Yeah. >> It's not because of who you are, it's because of what happens when you do it. If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling roadmap that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

8:53Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, I appreciate you and uh enjoy.