Hello, welcome to emotional badass where Moxie meets Mindful.

I'm your host, life coach and psychotherapist Nikki Eisenhower.

And on today's show, I'm sitting down with Dr. Camillo Ortiz, where we discuss child psychology, parenting fears, and independence.

Music independent. The data clearly show this. When we just look at how much time parents spend with their kids, that number has just continued to go up.

And so we know that when parents are around their kids, they tend to step in and quote unquote help their children when they experience what I call the four Ds,

which are discomfort, distress, disappointment, and danger.

And so I see kids having just less practice over time with, for example, being disappointed without someone needing to fix it.

And so I am very worried that well-meaning parents are helping and stepping in and actually creating a bigger problem by depriving kids of those skills that they need to develop on their own.

So am I hearing you say that with the best of intentions, parents are actually accidentally impeding the development of their own children?

You said it better than I, absolutely.

And I want to just make sure that this does not come off as judgmental because I know...

Dr. Camillo Ortiz is a PhD.

He is an associate professor of psychology and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Long Island University.

Dr. Ortiz's latest work involves developing an innovative new treatment for child anxiety that focuses on strengthening resilience and self-efficacy by vastly increasing child independence.

On to the show.

Thank you so much for being here with me, Camillo.

I am here with Dr. Camillo Ortiz, and we are about to have a fantastic conversation about mental health. Thank you for coming on

emotional badass. I'm so looking forward to it. So I met you through my interview of Lenora

Schenese and you work with Let Grow. What are your specialties? My main specialty is parenting

in general and for a while I did a lot of work on disruptive behavior in kids.

And what was the kind of parenting that contributed to disruptive behavior?

And then how could we use parenting to treat children who had high levels of aggression and noncompliance?

...