Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Hi, Dr. Allie Donaldson. So, Dr. Donaldson, I taught you in grade one, grade six, and grade seven. And let’s be clear, you are now Dr. Donaldson. How does that feel to say?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
It’s funny, because I don’t usually introduce myself like that, I don’t usually say “hi, I’m Dr. Donaldson.” So when I hear other people refer to me that way, it still feels a little weird, like the title hasn’t quite set in yet. But it’s surreal in a good way.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You’re in the perfect position to talk to me today about discipline. It’s a word people don’t like, a word that goes with punishment: how do I discipline without punishing? I want to dig into that with you, and we’ll get into the why in a second. There’s so much uncertainty about it, more and more as the generations go on. I’ll hang tight, because I want to talk about how you helped me with a presentation, a deep dive into former students of mine about what discipline actually means. But first, I want to talk about you: I taught you in grade one, six, and seven here in North Vancouver. What do you want to tell me about yourself now that I don’t know?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
It’s been a while since I was your student, but we’ve kept in touch over the years. Right now, I’m a physician. I finished medical school a couple of years ago, and I’m doing my residency in general surgery, based out of Vancouver, but currently travelling around the province for different placements. I absolutely love it. I’ve wanted to go into medicine for pretty much as long as I can remember, probably since I was your student.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You did. Grade one, you wanted to be a surgeon and go to Queen’s.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, I was definitely interested in moving around for my medical education, and I’m glad I did. I had a great time in Ontario, got a great education, but I’m very happy to be back in Vancouver. That’s my day-to-day life. Residency is very demanding, especially surgical residency, both in terms of hours at work and the demands on my time outside of it. But I still manage to make time for my hobbies and my family. Mostly outdoor hobbies, classic North Vancouver girl: hiking, climbing, skiing, and so on.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
I want to talk to you through a few different lenses on this whole idea of discipline: as a physician, what you see in patients and in surgery now, and also your upbringing. You’ve told me that your ability to regulate your emotions is critical for what you do. So first, I want your opinion, as a Gen Z twenty-eight-year-old: why do you think adults hate the word discipline? Parents hate it, and teachers hate it even more. drsuzannesimpson.com Page 1 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I think it comes with a connotation of external pressure. A lot of the time, you perceive discipline as someone else telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing. My experience is that discipline is largely internal, that feeling of needing to discipline yourself, to keep yourself on track with your goals. But I think people recoil from the word because a lot of people have had experiences where someone disciplined them in a way that was punitive or pressuring, or made them feel inadequate.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
I went to you because I have a presentation I do for teachers and parents called securely attached discipline. I asked colleagues, a superintendent, people who’d been around forever, and every single adult over forty hated the word. After I presented it once, a Pro-D committee from a nearby school district asked me to change it to “classroom management,” because people would be triggered by the word discipline. Then I asked former students, including you. I asked kids at the elementary school you and I were at, grade twos, grade fours, some high schoolers, and young adults. What was fascinating is that you all liked the word, and you all thought I was talking about your own self-discipline, exactly what you just described. Whereas the adults take it as punitive, based on their own experiences, and want to replace it with classroom management or restorative justice. There’s a fear of it from the adults, and a deep-seated desire for it from the young people coming up. Have you seen that with your peers?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
To be honest, my peer group as a resident physician is largely very privileged, very well-educated people who’ve had the supports throughout their life to build that internal discipline and stay focused on their goals. So my peer group probably has a slightly different perspective, and we mostly think of discipline as that internal kind, how you keep yourself motivated and on track to achieve your goals as a learner, or whatever they may be. But I will say, in my patients, especially coming out of COVID, there’s a lot of anxiety, you’d know way more about this than I would, in both adults and kids. And I wonder if that contributes to adults’ reluctance to use the word discipline, if they feel it’s adding to anxiety or stress in a group of people who are already struggling more than they might have been in the past.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Good point. One thing I’ve wanted to do is reclaim the word, because we need it. So let’s get into this for you personally. I know your mom and dad, they’re phenomenal. You were born into privilege, I don’t mean money, I mean a loving household that supported you unconditionally. But you also had parents whose kids, you and your brother, I taught both of you, weren’t exactly throwing spitballs at the front of the class. I want to use the term emotional regulation: you were both emotionally regulated. Can you talk about your upbringing, what your parents did right for you, from day one? We know from research that emotional regulation starts that early. What did they do for you?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I definitely grew up with a lot of privilege in every sense of the word. One of the things is that my parents always supported the things I wanted to do, but not in a way that made it sound like I couldn’t achieve it, or like I could just walk up and have it handed to me. They’d say, “you can definitely do that, but you need to get good grades, you need to do these things.” I always felt like my parents believed in me. I never felt like I had to win their approval or their support, that support was unconditional, but they were also always realistic about what I needed to do. Even with school, I never felt like they’d be angry or disappointed if I didn’t get the grade they wanted, but I did feel they’d drsuzannesimpson.com Page 2 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript remind me of the work I’d have to put in. So I was always supported in that way.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Can you define emotional regulation? What does that mean to you?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Emotional regulation doesn’t mean you’re not experiencing your emotions. It means you’re able to temper how they come out, how you project them into the world, the ability to have big feelings but put them on hold and process them later. In surgery, that’s something I have to do every single day. I’m in emotionally charged situations, with people who are critically ill, family members who are upset, people coming in on the worst day of their life, and I need to look after them, take care of them, in very stressful situations where you have to think quickly and work quickly. I am stressed in those moments, I am feeling all the big feelings that come with it, but emotional regulation, for me, is the ability to acknowledge those things, put them on pause, not put them out into the world, and find a way to cope with and process them later, in a way that isn’t disruptive to my work or my life.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Can I expand on that? It’s such a great analogy, you in surgery. You can’t lose it, you can’t break a nail in surgery and fall to the floor in a puddle of tears with a scalpel in your hand. You have to regulate yourself in the moment, which is exactly what my reclamation of the word discipline is about: teaching kids how to regulate their emotions so they don’t just flip their lid. It’s like driving a car with a fast engine: you can regulate yourself and not go three hundred kilometres an hour and get a very expensive speeding ticket. Okay, so at home, for you, let’s move back to your upbringing. How was that?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I think what it really comes down to is my parents’ unconditional love and support, and the fact that I never felt I was going to do something that would anger them or make them stop caring for me. That creates a safe environment to have feelings and express them in a healthy way, when you know the people around you are going to love you no matter what. So I didn’t grow up having to hide my emotions, I was allowed to experience and express them and then move forward. I don’t think I developed any negative patterns around repressing my feelings. I was in a household where it was fine to feel however I was going to feel. I think part of it was also just modelling: my parents are both pretty calm, analytical people, and I saw the way they’d have a stressful encounter with someone while we were out, stay totally calm, and then go home and vent about it later. So it was modelled for me that it was okay to feel what I was going to feel. It’s hard to compare, since I haven’t experienced any other kind of upbringing, but I never had any explicit teaching about how to regulate my emotions. I think I had secure attachment growing up, and it was modelled for me how to control how you’re feeling in the moment, and then express it later, in a healthy way, if needed.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You had a safe haven and a secure base, that’s attachment theory. It’s interesting that you brought that up first, because I’m trying to dig into how you’re so emotionally regulated, and you never got in trouble at school, neither did your brother. You’ve identified connection first, that’s the very first thing you went to, before anything about penalties or consequences. You brought up connection and safety.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, and I’m sure there are a lot of kids who have emotional outbursts at school because they can’t express their emotions in other environments. For me, if I had a bad day at school, my parents would pick me up, I’d probably cry a little, and then go home, so I felt like there was somewhere I could go, or someone I could go to, to feel what I drsuzannesimpson.com Page 3 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript was feeling.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
That makes so much sense. Let me analyze this and tell me what you think: you were connected to your mom and dad, so my guess is you wanted to please them, loosely speaking. You probably weren’t out drinking and driving until four in the morning on a Friday night because you were connected to them, so your behaviour aligned with that connection. What do you think of that?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
That’s definitely true, but maybe just as much a part of it is that they instilled a personal sense of responsibility in both me and my brother. Something they always drilled into us was, if you get an A on a test because you cheated, that’s absolutely worthless, but if you got a B or C and genuinely did your best, that’s so much better. So even with things like acting out or making bad decisions, they always made us feel that the things we did that were dishonest were our own responsibility. I think that’s part of why I didn’t feel the same need to act out, I felt a responsibility to myself to act a certain way, and to act respectfully toward my family and others.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
So they instilled ethics in you. You know what else they did that I love, and research has actually proven this works: process versus outcome. I’m focused on your process, you worked really hard and got a C plus, that’s fantastic, versus you cheated and got an A, there’s your outcome. It doesn’t work. Research has found kids cheat more when parents focus on outcome. There’s more cheating versus just doing your best.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, and similarly, I grew up doing gymnastics, and it was the same thing: if I did an amazing routine, the best one I’d done all year, but placed last or wasn’t on the podium, my parents would be so excited for me, because they knew I’d performed an amazing routine and felt good about it. Whereas if I won but didn’t do my best, they’d still be happy for me, but it wasn’t the same. My family really celebrated hard work and effort more than the wins themselves.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
They focused on the process. Okay, let’s keep going. I still want to lean into your upbringing. Did you ever get in trouble?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I did. In high school, I tried to sneak out a couple of times. I wasn’t very good at it, I got caught every time. Honestly, they didn’t punish me, they just kind of made me feel bad. For lack of a better term, they shamed me. They said, you can’t sneak out, we need to know where you are, we want to know you’re safe, you’re putting yourself in danger, and that’s not okay, so don’t do that. That was the approach. And then I felt guilty, I felt bad for making my parents worried, but I never got grounded or punished. I just got a stern talking-to about respecting the fact that my parents worry about me and want to know where I am.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Probably because they knew that would be enough for you. They didn’t need to flog you. But again, you’re talking about connection with your mom and dad. Some kids would just shrug it off, but you had a deep connection with them from the beginning, and you felt that.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
drsuzannesimpson.com Page 4 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript Yeah, definitely. To this day, I don’t want to upset them, I feel really badly if I do something they find hurtful. I think, and vice versa, as an adult my relationship with my parents is one of mutual respect. As a kid it was the same thing, they didn’t want to hurt or upset me, and I didn’t want to do that to them. So them telling me I’d made them really worried made me feel really bad.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You’re talking about positive discipline, in a way. Listen, I’m tough, I have an expectation and I want it met, I give consequences in my classroom and with my own kids. But what that looks like really depends on the circumstances. Can you identify anything that doesn’t work, on the home front, for teaching your kids, or if they’re in trouble and they sneak out? What doesn’t work?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I think, as you said, it really depends on the relationship. If I hadn’t had a relationship of respect with my parents in the first place, the way they shamed me wouldn’t have worked, because I wouldn’t have cared. The fact that I cared whether or not they were upset is the reason those conversations worked, because I didn’t want to hurt them. I’ll tell you something I’ve seen, having worked with kids in the medical world, that probably relates to the connection between discipline and emotional regulation. Some of the kids I’ve taken care of in the hospital who are struggling the most with their hospitalization, or not coping well with their illness, are the ones whose parents are amping up the kid’s emotions. If the kid is anxious because they’re in the hospital, and the parent piles onto that anxiety, it makes it that much worse. The parent needs to be a source of support in that moment. Yes, the parent is anxious too, that’s totally normal, but in their interaction with the child, they need to be there for them, supporting the kid’s anxiety and trying to ease it, rather than piling their own emotions on top of it. And similarly, related to discipline: I’ve also seen kids having a lot of outbursts and struggling to regulate their emotions, especially during my psychiatry rotation as a medical student, working with kids who were having psychiatric issues. There were some really problematic parenting dynamics, in my opinion, where the parents would complain to other adults about the child’s behaviour, in front of the child. To the medical team, right in front of the kid, about how awful the kid is, how they don’t listen. You could see how defeated the kid would be, hearing their parents speak so negatively about them to someone else. I think that really diminishes the trust a child has with that adult, knowing how negatively they’re spoken of. Obviously if you have concerns as a parent, you have to talk to your healthcare provider, but probably not in that setting, in front of the kid. I think the kid ends up feeling not respected, not supported, feeling like adults think poorly of them. And it’s important for kids to feel like adults see them as a person, value them, and want them to succeed.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You’re circling back to exactly where you started. I didn’t expect these themes to come out so strongly, modelling, first of all, what you just said about a parent’s own anxiety, the kid is going to take that on. Modelling calm and presence, “this is going to be okay,” and that steadiness. But also what you just said, again, it’s all connection, because you don’t feel safe hearing a parent go off about how awful you are. There’s no safety in that, and there’s a huge amount of disconnection in that relationship, a kid isn’t going to feel as attached to a parent who’s going off about their behaviour.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, absolutely. And if the kid sees the parent’s negative reaction to their behaviour or their outburst, they’re probably going to be a lot less likely to want to express emotions to that parent, if they feel it’s going to result in that drsuzannesimpson.com Page 5 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript kind of negative response.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
That’s such a good point. If a kid tells you something and you use it against them later, they’re never going to tell you anything again, because they don’t feel safe, and they’re disconnected. How do you feel about consequences, punishment, or natural outcomes, in your experience or with the patients you’ve seen? Open response there.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
In a totally ideal world, we wouldn’t need the term punishment, because knowing how your actions have impacted others should hopefully be enough to make you not want to do that again. But obviously that’s really hard to foster, especially in kids whose brains and social skills are still developing, who don’t have the same capacity for emotional connection an adult might. I never got in trouble at school, I didn’t really get punishments, I feel like anything I struggled with or did wrong came with a natural outcome, or a consequence of my own action, and I think that’s probably the best way to learn how to regulate your behaviour. But let me think about that for a second, I haven’t thought about it before.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Do you want me to answer something while you think? I’ll take over here. I really think it’s important, whatever you want to call that response, I’ve always leaned toward “consequence,” and I’m okay with it. If you consider it: there’s a reason we have speeding tickets. It keeps people in line, and I’m actually glad when I see police out, because we get people speeding up and down this road, and we had a death here about ten years ago because of speeding, a hit and run. I want ticketing for that. It’s a consequence, and it’s a lot of money, and I want it, because it’s safer for everyone. It deters people, not everybody, but it deters people from speeding and making it unsafe for everyone. That’s maybe my best example. Going back to kids: I gave my daughter a timeout once, and she was terrified. Looking back, I regret it, because she had anxiety, and I didn’t understand that at the time. For my son, he loved it, “great, I get to go to my room, this is fantastic.” So in my household, timeouts didn’t work, for two very different reasons. I had to come up with what worked for each of them. What worked well was things like screens and phones, though we didn’t have to use that much. My focus as a parent was totally on connection, but when I did use a consequence, it was about what works for this particular child, and what would be damaging. For my daughter, being alone in her room at five or six years old was damaging, it terrified her. For my son, I created joy by sending him to his room. So, what do you think?

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I still think, in an ideal world, kids and people would be intrinsically motivated enough that we wouldn’t need something like a ticket, something that’s purely a punishment. I agree there’s a place for those things, because they do deter unfavourable behaviour. But in an ideal world, you’d foster enough empathy in people that it alone is a deterrent to doing things that could cause harm to others. What you’re saying about different consequences affecting people differently is so true, it was the same for me growing up. I did get timeouts as a kid, and I hated them, but they weren’t emotionally scarring, they just worked. My parents would have me sit at the bottom of the stairs, and I’d just sit there and cry.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Right, so they worked for you. They were good, it worked.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
drsuzannesimpson.com Page 6 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript I have no idea how it worked, I could clearly just stand up and walk away, but somehow I didn’t. I think it’s probably such a hard balance to strike, how to create a consequence or punishment that reinforces the lesson you’re trying to teach without it being scarring, like you said.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
Totally. And here’s the thing, you have to feel safe. That’s the one thing I know for sure. If I’m a parent, or a teacher, and I’m implementing a consequence or a natural outcome, the person has to feel safe. There’s no grey area there. For you, at the bottom of the stairs, my guess is you felt safe.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, I was still in my own home, a place I felt safe in, I just happened to be in the timeout zone.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
I have a friend who adopted a child who’d experienced neglect and abandonment throughout his childhood. One time, and she still cringes about this, she drove away from him when they were both upset, thinking, “fine, I’m heading out, you’re on your own.” She wasn’t actually dysregulated, she was trying to make a point. And it was so damaging to that kid, because of his background. I want to read you what you said to me, when I asked what discipline is. I found your answer absolutely poignant, something I don’t think we adults fully consider in this whole quest of disciplining and what it means for the future. Here’s what you said: “Discipline is when I’m taking accountability for my own learning, putting in my best effort, yet maintaining a healthy balance with my education and the rest of my life.” I love this, Allie. I always pause when I present this, because I use it in every securely attached discipline presentation I give. You went on: “In the surgical education world, where missteps have dire consequences, it’s important to have mentors who can communicate very directly with me when I’ve made an error, or I’m not on the right track with my medical decisions. This is crucial to patient care. Yet in order to grow and learn without being crippled by fear of failure, my relationships with my mentors need to be secure enough that I know if I’m disciplined, it’s for the purpose of my own growth, and it doesn’t influence their opinion of me as a person or as a learner.” Think about what you just said about your mom and dad. Wow. That’s so powerful.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, it’s funny, because obviously when I gave you that quote, I wasn’t thinking about my upbringing, but in retrospect, it really does reflect how I was raised.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
And I think the key takeaway is that you do connection first. I always do three wrap-up questions to bring us back to this goal, looking at discipline, how do we discipline our kids, what is this, what do we need to be doing. Here’s wrap-up question one: what’s the one thing parents who are afraid to discipline their children need to know, and what are the first steps, for those who are reluctant to engage in discipline, or teaching emotional regulation, if we’d rather call it that, I think it’s the same thing.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I think what I’d say is that being afraid to teach emotional regulation, and therefore not teaching it, is in itself teaching emotional dysregulation. If you don’t put in some kind of effort, then by definition you’re allowing emotional dysregulation to exist, and I think that’s so much more harmful. Parents are human, you’re allowed to make mistakes, but if you try to put some effort toward helping your kid regulate their emotions, whatever that looks like, as long as it isn’t creating damaging situations, that’s going to go so much further than saying “I’m scared to do this, drsuzannesimpson.com Page 7 GET ON THEIR TURF | Episode 63 Transcript I don’t want to do it wrong,” and backing off, and letting them persist in a dysregulated state.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
That’s good, Allie. Question two: what’s the one shift in perspective you wish society could have about the word discipline? I’m asking partly for what you see in the surgical world right now.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
As we’ve talked about, I think it’s important for people to see discipline as more intrinsic than extrinsic and punitive. The fact that people shy away from the word underscores a fundamental misunderstanding of how constructive and positive discipline can be, when it comes from an internal locus of control and a person’s own desire to discipline themselves into being the best learner, student, doctor, surgeon, person, whatever they want to be. Changing society’s perception of it, from something external, negative, and punitive, to someone’s own goals, motivation, and discipline, that’s what’s important.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You weren’t the only former student who, when I asked what discipline meant to them, thought about themselves, about having what it takes to make their way in this big, bad world of adulting, having the resilience to navigate life. It was interesting, all the students I asked wanted to make their way in the world, and they know that without discipline, they’re in trouble. One kid had dropped out in grade ten and still hadn’t gone back, and he gave me great insight: “I need this in myself, so I don’t use drugs, so I can get to work on time, so I can make money and support myself.” It was critical. It was fascinating that the adults hated the word, but every single young person felt like it’s what they need to be well-functioning adults. Okay, last question. As a twenty-eight-year-old doctor, a young woman, what do you think your biggest empowerment is, from having been raised with discipline, self-discipline, emotional regulation, ethics, connection, and modelling, all the things we’ve talked about? Your greatest empowerment from that.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
I think that having been raised with all of those things, I’ve been raised to feel like I can solve problems. I feel like I have a toolbox of life skills. It’s pretty rare that I’m facing a problem I don’t feel I can find some way through, whether it’s a medical or surgical challenge at work, because I know I have tools I can use myself, and I also know how to communicate with other people and get help when I need it. Same with things happening in my personal life. It’s very rare that I feel frozen, stuck, like I don’t know what steps to take to get through something, whether it’s a personal challenge, work-related, or anything in between.

Dr. Suzanne Simpson:
You’re set up for life. You’ve been set up for life by your parents. Dr. Allie Donaldson, surgeon. If I need a surgeon, you’re the one I’d want to go to, you can take care of me when I’m eighty. Payback time. Allie, thank you so much for your time. Fun talk.

Dr. Allie Donaldson:
Yeah, no, I’m very fortunate. No worries, thank you so much for having me.