Episode 267 — ATTENTION Is the Beginning of DEVOTION

August 07, 2025•39 min read

Guest: Dr. Stephen Cowan • Date: August 7, 2025

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Episode Overview

Dr. Stephen Cowan returns with timeless insight on something every parent needs to hear: attention isn’t just a skill—it’s a reflection of love. This isn’t just about your child’s attention. It’s about yours. Because where your attention goes, transformation begins.

About Dr. Stephen Cowan

Stephen Cowan, MD, is a board-certified pediatrician with over 35 years of experience and a subspecialty in Developmental Pediatrics. A fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a clinical assistant professor at NY Medical College, Dr. Cowan bridges Eastern and Western medicine. His holistic approach empowers parents and honors the unique ecology of every child. He’s the author of Fire Child, Water Child, and several children’s books, including The Lost Elephant. He lectures internationally and serves as a member of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture.

https://www.drstephencowan.com/

You’ll Discover

Why Interest = Attention, and Why That’s So Empowering for Parents (3:53)
How Labels Create Suffering and Miss The Child’s Full Complexity (8:50)
Why One-Size-Fits-All Medicine is Outdated and Dangerous (14:14)
An Overview of the Five Arcetypes of Attention and What Each One Seeks (18:05)
The “Wood” Child: Movers, Risk-takers, and Planners (20:45)
The “Fire” Child: Joyful, Charismatic, and Easily Bored (24:27)
The “Earth” Child: Relationship-focused and Harmony-driven (28:02)
The “Metal” Child: Perfectionists Who Notice Every Detail (30:58)
The “Water” Child: Deep Thinkers, Dreamers, and Visionaries (33:16)
Why Presence Is The Ultimate Attention and How It Can Be Trained (37:21)
When ADHD Meds Help—and When They Absolutely Don’t (44:12)
How Turning a “Should” Into a “Would” Unlocks Compassion (51:34)

Referenced in This Episode

Full Transcript

Len Arcuri (00:04.104)
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. If you're a parent navigating autism, this episode is a powerful reset. We're exploring attention, not just your child's, but yours. Because where your attention goes, transformation begins. Dr. Stephen Cowen returns to the show. His insights in episodes 14, 15, 16, 104, and 105.
have helped so many parents shift from chaos to clarity. He's a developmental pediatrician who blends Eastern and Western medicine. And in this conversation, he reveals how your presence shapes your child's path in ways that most people overlook. The secret this week is attention is the beginning of devotion. Welcome back, Dr. Cowen.
Stephen (00:55.85)
It's so good to be here. Thank you, Len. You know, I love your podcasts and they're so insightful and you don't limit yourself to one little box. So you get all kinds of really great people to expound. And I think that's what parents need. They want those trusted voices. So it's good to be back.
Len Arcuri (01:22.3)
Fantastic. Well, you hit the nail on the head. You, for me, are truly a trusted voice. And I know we talked about recording today and we talked about some topics or some concepts that really resonated. So today's title is actually a quote. Would you like to share who authored the quote and why this particularly really resonated with you? It's something that you wanted to share.
Stephen (01:43.692)
Yeah.
Stephen (01:47.776)
Yeah, so Mary Oliver, who is one of my heroes, a wonderful poet, lover of nature, and I've been a big fan of hers for many years because she lived on Cape Cod where my family always goes.
in the summer, my little kids when they my kids when they were little grew up you know going there every summer very special place where they could just roam free on the beaches and things so she has this quote from her writings her journal writings that is you know attention is the beginning of devotion and it resonates the reason i brought it up to you is because it resonates with something i've been saying for
30 years to parents and to kids, which is kind of a no-brainer. Every parent, when I say what I'm about to say, everybody nods, yeah, of course. And that is interest equals attention. When you're interested in something, it's much easier to pay attention to it, right?
No brainer. Everybody knows that you don't need a double-blind randomized controlled study to say that when you're interested in something, when something we say catches your attention, it nourishes this kind of mind that's all in. so interest is the same as caring, something you care about, you pay attention more wholeheartedly to than something you don't care about.
So in the world of attention in kids, you know, in the ADHD world, the million dollar question actually is, when someone comes to me, you know, my kids having trouble paying attention, etc. I always start by saying, well, what are they paying attention to? Right, because that flips the tables, because we're always paying attention to something. Even when you're daydreaming, you're paying attention to that dream. So
Stephen (04:00.502)
The mind is designed, there's no attention center in the brain. The mind is designed to pay attention. What parents actually mean and teachers mean is they're not paying attention to what I want them to pay attention to. So you dive a little deeper into that dilemma.
How do I get my kid to pay attention to the things I want them to pay attention to? Or the teacher says, how do I want him paying attention to the thing that matters to me?
Stephen (04:34.998)
And they'll never say that matters to me. They'll say that matter, that's good for him or her, right? So they kind of remove the reality, which is this is important to me and I need you to pay attention to it. Parents will do that sometimes. Is this other, so we have caring is attention. Attention is caring.
or devotion, which is what Mary calls it. And then this other piece, which is that...
Everything we're attracted to, we're distracted by.
So when we bring up distraction, that's just an attraction. It's a word game, right? But everything that we're distracted by is the thing that we're attracted to. Let's say you have a daughter who's sitting in class and she's not listening to the teacher because she's busy seeing what her friends are talking about in the two seats over.
So she's attracted to the social dynamics of that tribal peer relation. And that's overpowering her attraction to what the teacher is talking about. So the million dollar question is, how do I get a kid to care about something they don't care about? Or how do I attract them to what matters to me?
Stephen (06:13.454)
that is more attractive than the thing they're attracted to. Whether it's a video game or TV or playing outside, it doesn't really matter. When you ask the question in this way, you can see that rather than blaming the quote victim, the child has a distract ability problem. We take back
a sort of power of understanding, it's my job to make what I'm talking about more attractive to my child. Or if I'm a teacher to my student. Nobody likes to take that because the answer is often, well, other kids aren't having a problem listening to me. So why should I have to do this with your child?
And once you throw in that should,
everything gets very confusing. I shouldn't have to do this for your child, meaning elevate the material so it's more interesting to your child. I should have a generic sort of presentation and everybody, all the good little robots, should be able to pay attention to it. That was the start of my own journey.
in examining my own attention issues when I was a kid.
Stephen (07:50.883)
and then realizing in my developmental practice and my pediatric practice
Stephen (07:59.234)
that there is one size doesn't fit all kids, right? That there are all different kinds of ways of paying attention, all different kinds of interests. And that diversity of mind is what made humans one of the most powerful species on the planet. Because if Len's interest
solves the problem better than Steve's. As a tribe, we evolve. We problem solve. We adapt way better than, you know, a lizard, 20 lizards kind of pay attention in the same way, but humans have these multiplicity of styles. So as a medical doctor,
One of the most frustrating things I've experienced is this one size fits all model in everything. We stamp a label on somebody, whether it's ADHD or asthma or autism or, you know, diabetes or whatever, you name it. Every single label we've invented has no context to it. So it's an out of the context statement.
right, which is very dangerous. Anytime you take something out of context, you can provoke suffering. Let me say that again, because this sometimes needs to be dissected a little bit. Anything, and Len you may do this with a quote of mine, you may take it out of context and pump it out there so that it incites interest, which is cool, but there's always a risk.
of taking words out of context, statements out of context, the news media does it all the time, and it provokes suffering because you can twist it in all different kinds of ways and it loses the richness of the local ecology, right, the local context within which this flowing conversation is taking place. Yeah? So,
Stephen (10:16.596)
What I was trained in is label gunning. I, in fact, when I was at the big medical centers in New York City in my training back in the early, you know, early 80s, the faster I could label something, the more pats on the back I got.
which made me feel proud and smart, right? Because speed, diagnosis equals intelligence. What I've come to realize after almost 40 years of practice is that's dumb medicine. The reason it's dumb is because it doesn't honor the individual powers of each human being, the complexity.
a human. That it dumbs down complexity to make our us look smart as doctors.
because we can give you a label. And yet the label has no context, no individual complexity. You know this from your two kids. They're completely different human beings. That was such a revelation to me. In medical school, they didn't teach us that. And then I had two kids, a fire child and a water child, who couldn't be more different. How is that possible? How does one?
generate from the same egg and sperm living in the same womb, eating the same food, living in the same house after they're born, going to the same school, diverge so diametrically in their style, their temperament style, their way of paying attention, their
Stephen (12:16.424)
way of the things that turn them on. How does that happen? So when I first had these two kids, I went running around to all these developmental specialists and said, wait, what's going on here? How come nobody ever teaches this? It's got to mean something. The divine power of human diversity must have a purpose to our different ways.
of paying attention. So that led me on a path that took me through homeopathy and then into the world of Chinese medicine because that helped answer the question way better than the temperament studies I learned in my early days of my practice. The Western temperament studies really kind of make it even worse. It's the
The easy child, the slow to warm up child and the difficult child. Now, two out of those three, nobody wants. Everybody wants that one, the easy child. Turns out the easy child is sometimes the one with the biggest problems. Because you're not supposed to be easy when you're growing up. You're supposed to push buttons. You're supposed to challenge the authority and challenge conformity and you know, that's part of growth.
Len Arcuri (13:23.153)
you
Stephen (13:43.854)
So for me, I find when we look at subtypes of anything, you're starting to nuance a more refined understanding of our individuality. A study just came out this year from Princeton on
four subtypes of autism.
That raised my antenna because I've been talking about five subtypes of autism for years and years and years and years. you know, nobody really, this is going phenotypically on behaviors and on things kids are interested in. Not degree of, it's not like spectrum degree of disability.
It's literally different styles. Well, this study using AI looked at genetic patterns of these four different types of behaviors, including interests.
and identified these genetic patterns associated with them. It's a huge breakthrough, major, major breakthrough. Just like they, a study recently came out, I was just at UCSD in San Diego, meeting with their integrative team. And I was excited to meet with them because within their GI world, they just found
Stephen (15:25.85)
they just discovered looking at real-time dynamics in the microbiome are circadian rhythm of the whole community that there are certain times that are more active than others so in dumb medicine which is just one size fits all medicine here's your probiotic it doesn't matter when you take it or just take it right has no bioidentifiable connection to
to Len, it's not so specific to your lineage or the time of day that you're taking it. There's no context.
And so, you know, how many people take a probiotic and say, I don't feel good when I take it. I get bloated or it did nothing for me or whatever. So nobody's looking at the deeper aspects of how we are connected to planet Earth. Right. And what that circadian rhythm. And that's important because that affects attention. You know, there are some morning people.
Len Arcuri (16:37.938)
Yep. No doubt.
Stephen (16:38.318)
There are some evening people. There are some afternoon people. There are some nappers in the afternoon, right? There are different styles of when we're most, mind is most turned on and most interested in participating in group education. Well established.
Len Arcuri (16:55.676)
And that's well established, right? In terms of like there's, there's chronotypes. Some people, you know, are morning people. Some people are more night owls. so there's a lot to this where there are, and I love the concept of circadian rhythm because that is so important. So, so before you go on though, would you mind just at a high level talk about
Stephen (17:03.372)
Yeah, right.
Len Arcuri (17:18.844)
the five archetypes that you identified. And then with this new study, the four, is there overlap with them or are they totally different constructs?
Stephen (17:21.526)
Yeah, let's run through those. Well, yes. No, no, no, there's a huge overlap. So I was just going to make that bridge, but you jump beat me to it. So what's exciting about circadian rhythms, cellular circadian rhythms is it's connected to planet Earth, right? Sunrise, midday, afternoon, sunset, night. Well,
Three thousand years ago, the Chinese elicited a chrono map associated with the organs.
And it's no accident that in There is this relationship there between What wakes up early in the morning? So around One to three in the morning your liver wakes up
Stephen (18:23.638)
Liver is wood power in Chinese correspondence thinking. Wood like springtime energy, wood like a tree growing out of the ground. That's kind of wood energy. Three to five you move into the digestive system.
and then it goes through this clock all the way to about 3 p.m. where you're now in the small intestines you've moved through
heart circulation, then small intestine, and then it moves into the down regulating into the adrenal glands, the kidneys, the bladder, you know. So there is this amazing ancient wisdom that relates to intermittent fasting, which we've talked about before, which is really important in understanding what's best for your chronotype. So you have to know that. Now in the five
what a phase theory of Chinese medicine that I've written a lot about and kids seem to love there is this idea that we have a one kind of organizing principle around which our systems and our attention move let's for the sake of argument today so we don't get too down in the weeds
Let's just talk about the way what we pay attention to of the five, the five types. So wood pays attention to movement. Okay, so think about that. So wood people grow up to be entrepreneurs, we call them movers and shakers in the world, right? All about movement, future directing planners, schemers, risk takers.
Stephen (20:25.73)
That's the wood motto, right? And movement attracts them.
On the other hand, stagnation, stillness, irritates them. Almost, more than irritates, disrupts their sense of being.
Len Arcuri (20:45.48)
Yeah, it's threatening.
Stephen (20:58.686)
So they have trouble with sitting still. They may have. I once had a kid who came to me. I'll never forget this. I've had several since. It was a girl, a real wood type. And she came to me because she couldn't read. And she was like nine years old. They wanted me to diagnose dyslexia. But she was a real wood type, natural athlete.
Right? In anything. She was a natural athlete. Really great at that. Early riser in the morning. So I said, let's do an experiment. And I was in my office in New York City, which I don't know if you ever came to. I think I mainly saw you up in Westchester. She came to my office in the city, and I gave her a book, and we went for a walk. No problem reading as long as she was walking.
Len Arcuri (21:41.893)
Chester. Yeah.
Stephen (21:52.822)
No problem. Read beautifully. But sit her down to read and she can't read.
That's a wood personality. So they're attracted to and distracted by movement. So if the trees are fluttering outside, then I'm looking at that rather than this teacher who's standing still in the class. If I want that teacher to get her attention, get that teacher moving and she'll pay attention. But I have to.
elevate the conversation and inspire the teacher that you can easily hook this fish if you just start moving around. Right? Simple fix, but nobody wants to see the relationships that trigger positive, effective attention.
Len Arcuri (22:32.712)
Amazing.
Stephen (22:46.498)
I'm going to take a detour before I get to the other four. So we got wood, the entrepreneur, the mover and shaker. Here's a little detour. no, let me finish the other four so it doesn't throw everybody off.
Len Arcuri (22:59.066)
Okay. And if you do, just, I'll just throw the plug right behind my shoulder is the book Fire Child, Water Child, which is one book that is such made such a huge shift in our family dynamic reading it. But it's still, it's, it's incredible. It's even more relevant than it ever was. I had to take this book away from my son, Ry, who's 18 now, cause he loves this book and always has to have it near him.
Stephen (23:05.429)
You
Stephen (23:11.256)
that's now almost 15 years old and it's still around the world.
Len Arcuri (23:26.149)
But the book is powerful and again, the five that Dr. Cowan is going to go through, being the first one, if you want a deeper understanding, that book is a powerful read and I'll include it in the show notes. So now I'll hand it back to you.
Stephen (23:39.34)
Yeah, and there's stuff on my website about it. And basically, I adapted what was classical Chinese medicine philosophy, going back thousands of years and studied and nuanced over the years, adapted it to our modern era of kids and attention. So we could say, using Mary Oliver's quote, that wood people are devoted to motion.
to movement and forward looking. OK, fire, the second. So wood is springtime or sunrise. That's the correspondence. Fire is summertime. Where you're not moving and shaking as much anymore, you're relaxing. You're taking it easy. These fire kids light up a room with their joy. That's their high level spiritual word. If freedom.
is wood, joy to the world, and celebration is fire. Big energy, they light up the room, very charismatic people. These are our natural entertainers. These people inspire the world to look on the bright side. And they can be real leaders in a very different way than wood.
summertime, take it easy, flowers are wide open, everything's chilling, everything's relaxing, right? So these kids don't really wanna work so hard. And if something's not exciting and elevated and fun, which is what they're attracted to, they'll pay attention if it's fun and exciting, they'll look for something else.
to turn them on with that joy, that sense of celebration, wonder, awe, you know, this kind of wow effect. That's what turns on Fire Kid. Consequently, their struggle with boring, that's their trigger. They can't handle boring when they haven't developed their skills.
Len Arcuri (25:48.614)
Yeah.
Stephen (25:56.074)
Wood can't handle sitting still if they haven't developed their skills. Fire can't handle their their highest degree of why they're here, the gifts they have to bring to us. What I call to kids, their hero, their inner hero. It can't come out. If boredom, they have no tolerance for boredom. So so that's the challenge, right? Because there's a hell of a lot of things that are boring in the world. And for fire kids who are attracted to fun,
Len Arcuri (26:04.37)
to create a wide-angle.
Len Arcuri (26:19.88)
I'm not that's you're seeing.
Stephen (26:26.014)
and stimulation that become we say they start having sensory stimulation or sensory seeking behaviors right you've heard that phrase sensory seeking behaviors so they're seeking stimulation because that's what they're attracted to so how does that look
Len Arcuri (26:26.536)
and the relationship that we have with the United States.
Len Arcuri (26:39.24)
That's really speaking to the engine. So that's speaking to system way too, because that's what they're trapped in too. Right. That fuels their engine, right? Are they more likely to be kind of addicted to technology, social media? I mean, all kids are.
Stephen (26:54.798)
Both wood well, it's a different kind of technology So wood is attracted to the wood kids attracted to video games where there's a lot of hunting and killing First-person shooter games fire not so much the fire kid will just endlessly doom scroll YouTube's
Len Arcuri (27:04.754)
Yep.
Stephen (27:17.606)
finding the funnier and funnier YouTubes, know, or cat videos or whatever, depending what it is, anything that's going to make them laugh. And that you can endlessly doom scroll that, right, and get lost in it. Different attraction with the technology. Again, we're not labeling all technology as bad or this particular technology. It depends on who you are and what you're attracted to. Then comes Earth power.
And the kid with earth power as their prime power, we have them all within us. These are our peacemakers, our caregivers. What turns them on, what they're attracted to is like team spirit. They want everybody to get along. That's what turns them on. Right. So it makes them feel empowered in the world when everybody's sort of
taking turns and sharing and it's like the kumbaya moment, right? So imagine what kind of triggers them, pushes their buttons. A, when people aren't getting along, when there's conflict, sometimes competition. And when they have to sit by themselves and work by themselves in a classroom, the
are group thinkers. They would rather work in a group than work alone because alone is like devastating for earth kids. And in our factory model of education, we expect kids by third or fourth grade to work by themselves.
And so that's when you start seeing an Earth kids attention problems, because they're looking to connect, you know, what's everybody doing? And now they're lost and worried. So they manifest. So wood manifests their frustration with anger and oppositional behavior. Fire manifests their discomfort with drama queen meltdowns. Silliness.
Stephen (29:32.948)
Impulsivity. Earth is internal worrying. You know, mommy was upset this morning when I went to school. I hope she's OK. Meanwhile, the teacher is yammering away in the front of the class, and she's still worried about the disconnect at home, or who's going to sit with me at lunch today, because that's what they're interested in. Right? But the factory model, what's that?
Len Arcuri (29:55.592)
It really comes down to connection, right? I was just going say it really comes down for them to connection. That's the key word,
Stephen (30:02.43)
all relationship relationship relationship is everything now earth is is probably you know at its deepest core the word the high word we have freedom for wood joy to the world fire its harmony is earth's word spiritual power word right harmony harmonizing
like everybody's singing together, right? That's what they're here to bring to the world is harmony. So relationships are so key, healthy relationships. And isolation triggers this endless worrying that distracts them. Then comes
metal or what I call gold power now because the metal people that I meet go metal isn't elevated enough for what a gold person really is which is this elegant refined connoisseur you know the designers the architects the engineers in the world that make beauty and perfection and order rules matter too
to metal people, right? Everything in order, all the, everything organized. There's a lot of autistic kids who have metal power, a lot of metal power when they're lining up all their cars when they're little in a particular way that we don't understand. And they're so meticulous, right? And it matters to them. So when things are out of order, that actually can trigger
some discomfort, which shows up as an exaggerated rigidity that we might call OCD behavior. That's a type of attention problem. You're hyper focusing on the little tiniest thing that's off. Right? So now, unlike the distracted wood kid who's scanning around looking for something to engage in that's movement,
Stephen (32:19.67)
sort of the classic ADHD kid. This kid is like a microscope hyper focusing and can't you know the teacher has moved on to something else and they're still erasing the letter i because they don't like the way it looks on the page.
Len Arcuri (32:33.16)
I'm very familiar with this.
Stephen (32:35.496)
I know you will. So that's metal. So now we have wood, fire. Earth is the harvest season. Metal is the autumn season where everything's preparing for the winter, refining. You're getting all these seed pods that are very perfect little or neat little packages for the seeds to get blown, you know, and survive. It's very, very beautiful time.
And then we have water, probably the most misunderstood of the five heroes. I just finished teaching 500 teenagers in San Diego from 50 countries. This model up on a stage and we brought kids up so that they could, there's a questionnaire I have on my website that you can do to see.
your percentages, you know, of the five because we have them all, which is your strongest and which is your weakest. The weakest shows you what you need to work on. And I've gamified all this so that there are exercises you can do. But it's all geared to creating a healthier form of flexible attention. So what are our like poets or philosophers?
Mary Oliver is a water personality. So was Darwin. So was Einstein. So was Leonardo da Vinci. So was Bob Dylan, who you just saw. Weird people that dance to the beat of a different drum. There's a lot of kids on the spectrum that get labeled that actually are just these deep thinking water people that are kind of on the periphery of society. But what they're paying attention to is beyond our comprehension.
Right? They're like paying attention to something that we don't even understand because they're seeing something in the world of fantasy or dream. They're the are dreamers. And we need them in the society because they come up with ideas nobody ever thought of before. Right. If I had met Einstein when he was three, I would have diagnosed him with autism. He wasn't speaking.
Stephen (34:56.482)
There was no school at the time. His mother homeschooled him.
He did terribly in math in elementary school. He was a math genius, right? But he saw a new way of perceiving the world, the relativity, right? Quantum physics, a lot of the quantum physics people have this water personality. They're seeing deeply Galileo was one, thought deeply, throwing stuff out of a tower.
in at the University of Padova throwing them out of a tower to watch them drop right. I always use this example when parents are complaining to me that their kid keeps throwing their food on the floor. I said well he might be the next Galileo he's testing gravity right. So these are unusual people and what they're interested in is mystery, deep mystery or fantasy or like science fiction.
Kids like this love science fiction. I went to an engineering school because I'm good with art. And I realized very quickly that all these Asperger kids in the engineering program that I played chess with are not my tribe, really. You know, I had to teach them how to talk to girls because they were in the corner of the dance talking about Star Trek, obsessed about it, right? So this is another type.
Len Arcuri (36:27.005)
Mm-hmm.
Stephen (36:31.742)
could say another type of autism, another type of ADHD. These are our space cadets, our daydreamers. They're sitting there like this in the class, just not hyper, not hyper focused, not worried, not the drama queen, just thinking about a spaceship to Mars.
Len Arcuri (36:53.33)
Right.
Stephen (36:54.006)
And then the teacher is like, Steven, Steven, are you there? Are you listening? And so they're paying attention to something, but it has no relevance to what's going on here. Now, you said a word that I think is really important at the beginning of this conversation.
You said the word presence, very important word to me, as a form of attention. So we don't often use that term. And I want to make a distinction between presence and now. Now is a very emergency way of being. There's no past, no future, it's just now.
That often is a trigger for fight or flight behavior and all the stress associated with that, right? You're in an emergency. Presence means a wide-angle view of everything that's going on around you, right? You're noticing the teacher, you're reading the room, you're noticing the rules of the room, you're noticing the other people in the room, but you're taking it all in at once.
including presence, including the past and all the other times you were in that classroom and the future. Where is this going? What is this teacher talking about? I wonder what she's going to connect that to next, right? So presence is a huge big picture view.
And when you pay attention that way, here's what it takes.
Stephen (38:40.544)
wood, fire, earth, metal, and water all working together. Then you have presence of mind and you have no attention problem and they all can be trained. One of the great revolutions of my career, during my career over the last 40 years, was neuroplasticity.
I mean, it's the gift. a way, feel, this is why your podcast exists, because you're always promoting this positive, hopeful potential to rewire the brain, to reconnect things, because the brain is so malleable and adaptive. The human brain can make new connections. That's neuroplasticity. So the approach to training attention
that I use is first figure out, what's your prime directive? What's your fire person? Is that your highest power? OK. So that's the CEO. And the other four have to work for fire. So what does that mean? Well, the American Academy Pediatrics came out with a policy statement two years ago labeled relational health.
We've been pushing and pushing, I'm on the section for developmental disabilities, for this term to be the new way of understanding the growth of children. That relations to, when you're well-related, that relationships determine how adaptable you are, how successful you'll be in life. And what they found is that when you have secure,
Len Arcuri (40:03.912)
section four.
for this term to
Stephen (40:30.092)
relationships. It's an antidote to trauma. Huge statement. Straight medicine. So there's an ancient model for these five in relational health. Wood feeds fire just like spring makes summer. That's how you make fire with wood. Fire makes the earth. The ashes make the earth. Right? So if I'm
just like summer makes the harvest.
So these are helpers. Wood would be a helper of fire. Movement might help a fire kid pay attention better. Sports, things like that. Wood, fire. Thinking ahead is wood. That might help a fire kid be more present. Earth is caring for others and understanding interrelationships, harmonies. That may help a fire kid pay attention better when he's more in a team.
Fire feeds the metals in the earth just like harvest makes autumn So that a helper there metal the top of a mountain of stone brings the water just like autumn makes winter So now you have a relationship there right so now metal feeds water and water feeds wood
Right around, if you imagine it as a clock with a 10 o'clock is wood and 12 o'clock is fire and 2 o'clock is earth and 5 o'clock is metal and 7 o'clock is water, you can see an arrangement that's very ancient and it's the way things grow on planet earth. Right? So there's a circadian rhythm to those things. So water is nighttime. Wood is sunrise.
Stephen (42:29.772)
Fire is midday, Earth is afternoon siesta, and metal is sunset. And each of these resonates around that time for all kinds of reasons. And we can now start organizing exercises, games, nutrition, all kinds of therapies for different times of the day, for different ways of promoting presence of mind.
And there are some maps that I create of these for each kid. Every chart has a map of a kid with the head being whatever your highest power is. And then you want to look at the low ones. The two legs of a fire person would be metal and water. The two helper, those are the challengers. Water puts out fire, fire melts gold, melts metal, right? Those are the challengers. That's often the button pushers. So we want to help.
those harmonize and it's a very creative way that works when we really put your mind to it and parents can do this you don't need a specialized person to do this it's all kind of exercises games that you can play at home that practice to help grow your attention to be more present in the world so you're not walking off a cliff or into traffic or seeking
dangerous things in the world, right? Fire people are more prone to addictions because they want to get high all the time because they can't tolerate boring. So there is a way of training that. And rather than just going for the quick fix, one size fits all model of Adderall, sometimes
You know, I originally developed this model because I found that 70 % of the time that I prescribed medications for ABD, it not only didn't work but created terrible side effects. But 20 % of the time, it was a home run. And I needed to understand why that was. So turns out, wood kids, these meds work really well.
Stephen (44:45.238)
I'm not anti meds. Fire kids just makes them kind of, you lose the sparkle, that charisma. Earth kids just worry more when they're put on these stimulants. Metal kids develop even more OCD behaviors and water kids try to kill themselves on the same dose of the same med. And I've seen this over and over again. before you treat what you treat, you have to know who you're treating.
That's the motto of everything I've done now over the years and it's so different than what you experience when you go to the pediatrician where it's a one-size-fits-all factory model, you're 12 months you get this shot not knowing who the kid is.
Stephen (45:35.072)
That in a nutshell, my friend, is
the devotion of attention, right? When we are devoted as parents to our child, our first job is to understand who that child is and who we are and to think back where we were when we were seven or 12 or 15.
Right? Because often there may be a kind of conflict there in styles and that can be adjusted very easily. When we are devoting, devoted to our own self and devoted to our child, that's the power of love, right? Love is attention.
Stephen (46:32.972)
Bottom line.
I see my job, just to finish, because I know we're almost out of time. I see my job honestly is working with a child to inspire them to love themselves, to appreciate the inner hero, inspire parents to see the potential in their child and develop that through games, through exercises, through diet, through various different modalities, herbs and supplements and things.
to potentiate that about. But also, my third hat is to get the teacher to fall in love with this particular child.
Stephen (47:19.916)
And that's my real mission.
Len Arcuri (47:26.182)
And so whether it's the teacher or the parent, which I think is even more powerful concept, it sounds so obvious, but to really take, to have the intention and to take the time to truly understand your unique child. mean, just that step, which 99.9 % of parents probably miss, maybe and never find it, or maybe they do down the road. But with that deeper understanding,
You've listed off so many ways that that can inform what actions done, way, what time of day. And it just is so incredibly useful to increase the odds you meet your child's needs.
Stephen (48:07.468)
Yeah, practical. But you said something very, very telling. Taking the time. You know, when I teach medical students, fourth year medical students, I'll put up a slide of a clock and I'll say the most alternative medicine is time.
taking time to stay curious, right? To devote yourself to taking time to understand what your child is attracted to and why, what that serves in them. That's loving them. Because we all have something that matters to us. And when you can probe
below the emotions, below the behaviors, below the emotions to finding out what matters to a particular person, any person. That's love.
Stephen (49:15.02)
Because now you can honor that thing. There's no shame in certain things. When what matters to us is something that makes us feel fulfilled in the world, we can kind of design a program in the ideal world that meets those needs. And then they're paying attention.
The problem really is, the overwhelming problem for parents and teachers is when you have a programmed system of education that doesn't allow for that. You know, that's where the, you know, I can't blame teachers or parents because nobody's got time. That's the biggest complaint I hear. I don't have time to walk, go for a walk every day with my kid. Or the teacher says, I don't have time to.
stimulate this child's attention or the famous line, I'd have to do that for every kid. And I said, no, you wouldn't have to because they all have different ways of paying attention.
This is why nature, spending time in nature is so profound. There's a school up here that I support that is a nature-based school, after school program and summer program, very dedicated teachers that are working on the river and nature. And you see the way different people are attracted to different things, just going for a hike.
something calls the attention of one kid, something and what I've shown is, you know, you can learn something about that person in this model of the five, five phases, five elements by what they're just going for a hike, what attracts their attention or take them to a museum and see what painting calls which kid.
Len Arcuri (51:03.186)
Right.
Stephen (51:09.012)
Or here's the other one I've done. Years ago, I took some students to the mountain near me. And I said, watch different kids come down the mountain. So the wood kid comes in the mountain, no turns, just chh.
The fire kids like Santa Claus laughing ho ho ho all the way down, falling laughing, getting up falling laughing. The earth kid just cares about going up in the chair lift so they can share some candy with each other and tell stories. The metal kids making perfect S's down the mountain. And the water kids lost in the woods somewhere and it's time to leave.
Stephen (51:50.4)
nothing wrong with any of them. Just different style. And we need those different styles to solve problems. And we have a lot of problems in the world today.
We'll talk about not giving away your power in our next conversation.
Len Arcuri (52:10.428)
Yeah, we'll continue this conversation. That'll be the next episode. But thank you for that expansive take. think the nuances here really do matter. And when we started, we talked about the idea of the word should, right? And how kind of dangerous of a word that can be in terms of how much friction it can cause as well.
Stephen (52:32.65)
Yeah, it can limit, right? It can limit potential. Sometimes there are shoulds and should nots, but you have to use it like it's a very sharp sword and recognize the harm it can cause. Use it like a scalpel, not like a axe.
Len Arcuri (52:51.76)
Right.
Right, especially if it prevents you from that attention of who your child really is. Right. So the idea that my child should be doing X, Y and Z can just create so much stress. So I think there's a lot.
Stephen (53:02.691)
Yeah.
Stephen (53:09.568)
Yeah, I think even more than more than stress should produce his shame. There's no accident they both start with S.H. They should produce his shame invariably. You should know how to do your shoes, tie your shoes. Now the kids are ashamed. We're using shame to incite. That's not the way to elevate the game.
so that they're inspired to learn how to tie their shoe or ride a bike or do their math homework.
Len Arcuri (53:43.782)
or a parent who feels like my child should be talking conversationally right now. And again, there's nothing wrong with having that desire, but if you're looking at it through the lens of should, it just produces so much friction and misery that takes you out of presence and being the product.
Stephen (53:56.919)
Yes.
takes you out of presence, beautifully said, takes you out of presence. And if you just took the should and made it a would, I would like my child to have conversation. It's a softer, encouraging way to try to problem solve than should, which has this power of pressing down on you and friction. You're using that right word, friction, that can stifle hope.
Stephen (54:31.958)
well said and I think that's what your parent coaching the work you're doing is you you said it to me in the past you know it's it's the how right that how is leaves should out of it
Right? And so that makes it really beautiful and loving and encouraging. So encourage is a great word because you're putting the courage in somebody. Encourage. Not forcing it. Yeah. Cool.
Len Arcuri (55:02.766)
Absolutely. No, this was dynamite and yeah, no, Dr. Conner, including the show notes, a lot of the links to many of the resources that you mentioned. no, I think this is just such a powerful, different way of really looking at what's happening. And again, all this, as I'm hearing it, just feels so much more empowering for a parent to see a path forward of what's really going to
to resonate, how do you build that connection and meet your child's unique needs? Because as much as we wish it was simple, kids are complex, we're all complex, the nuances matter.
Stephen (55:44.31)
Yeah, you know, complexity is the thing people get scared with. And I want to embrace it, love the complexity. The map of the five phases is a map of complexity that gives parents a roadmap of understanding their child and understanding how to navigate complexity in a way that's so logical. You know, it's so, it's basic sanity, right? How to grow a tomato plant.
I need water, right? I need the seed. I need the sun. I need the soil, right? I need the minerals in the soil. OK, that's water, wood, fire, earth, metal. So it's very ancient wisdom. And when I apply it, everybody calms down a little bit. And they realize they're on a journey. And there's nothing better than that.
Len Arcuri (56:39.656)
And no true words. This is a journey and it's all about how you're traveling it. And you have a hundred percent control over how you do navigate. And a lot of what you shared, know is absolutely going to resonate so much with our listeners. So as always, thank you for the gift of this conversation. You're a star. really do wish more people can hear what you have to say. So I love that we recorded this discussion and thank you again for everything that you do.
Stephen (57:06.424)
Thanks for the invitation. You're great to talk to, even though I did most of the talking.
Len Arcuri (57:11.248)
All right. Thanks again. Be well.
Stephen (57:14.562)
Take care, Lynn.

Len Arcuri

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