GMT Template for guests:

Guest/Guests Names: Hal Runkel, author
Titles: SCREAMFREE PARENTING (New Book)
Company: Broadway Books, A division of Randomhouse
Website: www.screamfree.com
Number for Consumers to call: www.screamfree.com
Segment Contact Person: Rachel Rokicki (At Broadway Books)
Phone numbers: 212-782-8455
Email: rrokicki@randomhouse.com

Questions:

List 6 questions (with your reply to each question) that you’d like to cover during the segment.

What is the most important point you want to make?
SCREAMFREE™ PARENTING: The Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool by Hal Edward Runkel is not just another parenting book. It’s the first parenting book that maintains—from beginning to end—parenting is not about kids…it’s about parents. Hal Runkel’s philosophy demonstrates how parents who pay more attention to controlling their own behavior, and not their kids’, develop stronger, more rewarding family relationships, while simultaneously eliminating the stress and anxiety of child-rearing.

Question 1. You say “emotional reactivity” as a parent can be our biggest enemy. Please explain what it is and where it comes from.
Emotional reactivity is the driving force behind every bad decision, bad pattern, and bad relationship. It is the opposite of responding according to our highest principles; it is reacting out of our deepest fears. Emotional reactivity is what happens when our anxiety gets the best of us, and we act in ways that are actually contrary to our intentions.

Question 2. What responsibilites do parents have to each of their children?
We’re called to launch our children into adulthood with the best foundation for living an effective life. We are meant to help them become self-directed adults, capable of discerning the factors that shape their lives, deciding the direction to take, and living with the consequences of their decisions. That means our main responsibility to them is to not be responsible for them. They cannot become responsible for themselves as long as we consider ourselves responsible for their life and their choices. We are only responsible for our own lives and our own choices. We are responsible to our kids for how we manage our emotions, our relationships. We are responsible to them for how we take care of ourselves. We are responsible to them for whatever we do to create a home that nurtures their self-direction.

Question 3. Why do you say the greatest thing a parent can do for their child is to focus on themselves, rather than the child?
As long as I am focused on my children, orbiting my whole life around them, then I am putting all of my emotional responses into their hands. I become dependent upon the least mature persons in the family to actually lead the family. This is simply backwards. Children are not given to us to become our whole world. They are here to become self-directed, contributing adults. Our calling is to create an environment that helps them do that. This means focusing more on what we’re doing and less on them. How am I going to behave, regardless of their behavior? I have to focus on me because am the only one I can ultimately control.

Question 4. What should a parent do when their child is seemingly out of control?
Make sure they themselves are in the most control possible. So often we focus so much on the child that we lose control of ourselves, which makes things even worse. This can occur with the toddler’s tantrum in the restaurant or the teen’s struggles with promiscuity. Once we’ve brought ourselves under control, however, then it becomes much easier to respond to our child with wisdom and principled decisions. Then we can set and enforce consequences. Then we can better understand what’s emotionally behind our child’s behavior. Most importantly, we then can see our own role in contributing to our child’s situation.

Question 5. What do most parents find to be the hardest part about parenting?
The hardest thing for most of us is realizing that our children are separate human beings. This means having to accept that our kids will continuously make decisions we simply do not want them to make. Does that mean we practice some sort of hands-off, aloof parenting? Not at all. It means that all our interaction with our kids, indeed our whole relationship with each of them, is like interacting with a stranger we’re just getting to know. Having a deep respect for our child’s otherness, their differentness, greatly helps us to remain calm and connected at the same time. It’s when we begin to assume a certain right over our child’s space that we begin to push them into the very choices we’re hoping they avoid.

Question 6. How did your view of parenting change once you became a parent?
There’s an old saying that everyone has great parenting theories, and then they have kids. I did not even begin to develop the ScreamFree approach until I was in training to become a therapist, and by then I already had both of my kids. I sometimes shudder to think about what my parenting would have been like without my training. And that’s a thought that compels me to share the ScreamFree Parenting vision with every parent on the planet; the vast majority of us are operating in the dark. People aren’t kidding when they lament that there’s no instructions that come with a baby, they’re desperately serious!

Final Thought to end segment with:

SCREAMFREE PARENTING is the reader-friendly, parent-friendly guide to achieving the kind of love, joy, and peace we all seek for our families. Written in an engaging, conversational tone, Hal shows the reader how to calm down and operate with optimism and confidence, rather than fear. This book is guaranteed to transform the parenting experience.