Brain Power with Dr. Eko

EP. 32 | The Impact of Parental Love on Child Development, with Dr. Ebere Azumah

• Dr. Hokehe Eko • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Curious about how loving your child can shape their entire future? Join us for a heartwarming conversation with Dr. Ebere Azumah, CEO of Love Your Menses and an esteemed OBGYN. Dr. Azumah shares invaluable insights on understanding our children's actions as signals for attention and the profound impact a nurturing environment can have on their self-esteem and development. Learn how your actions and words can become the powerful inner voice of your child and why creating a supportive community is crucial for their well-being.

We also delve into the importance of teaching self-love and wellness, particularly during sensitive talks about sex and menstruation. Discover the significance of building strong relationships with your children and the role of self-care practices in promoting a positive body image. Dr. Azumah emphasizes the power of small habits and provides resources like children's books and life coaching to help guide this educational journey, ensuring our kids grow up embracing their uniqueness with confidence.

Finally, explore the journey of boosting self-esteem through positive reinforcement and embracing individual traits. Hear personal anecdotes from Dr. Azuma and me about overcoming insecurities and the transformative power of smiles and supportive environments. We highlight the critical role of representation and positive reinforcement, especially for children in minority communities, and share exciting updates on international parenting collaborations that are making a difference worldwide. Tune in for an episode filled with love, wisdom, and practical advice to help create a brighter future for our children.

Contact with Dr. Azumah:
Website: www.loveyourmenses.com
Instagram: loveyourmenses

Find the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and check out the video version on our YouTube channel!

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Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Hello parents, welcome to another episode of Brain Power with Dr Eko. Such a pleasure to be with you today. I have an amazing guest. I know I say that about all my guests, but they are all amazing. I have an amazing guest today to share with you Dr Eber Azuma, ceo of Love your Menstes, amazing OBGYN and a mommy as well. So I'm going to let her introduce herself. But welcome to the show, dr Azuma.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Oh, thank you so much, dr Eko. Thank you also listeners. My name, as she said, is Dr Azumah. It's always a pleasure to be in your presence. Dr Eko is a good friend and she's also a part of Love your Menses. She's our vice chair, our vice president of Love your Menses. We trust her, we believe in her. She's totally passionate. So it's an honor to be here with you and to speak to your audience. Thank you so much.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Thank you for coming on. So we're going to have a wonderful conversation together today, together about the importance of loving your child right, and why it's so critical to do that, and the ways we can do that as parents. So tell us, what is your take on how can we love our children?

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Love is so important. As a pediatrician and as we've had conversation and it's most times when children act out it's because of it's a cry for help. They're seeking attention Because kids are so innocent in general and Loving your Menses has taught me so much. I'm not a pediatrician but I'm an OBGYN women's health expert. I have a public health background and I've written children's book. So loving your menses to us was a tool for us to get to the child, to let a child know that we love them. We want the child to know that loving yourself is important because if we have self-love we do better as a community.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I mean, we've talked about adverse childhood events and how they lead to negativity as adults right, adults do not just become quote unquote bad people. It started from somewhere and most times studies will show it started at home. It started at home. I remember listening to someone that was caught up in crime and when I listened to the person share their story, the person said no one ever told me I was loved. Like no one ever told me I was loved. The person said I could not remember being hugged as a child and that touched my heart. So I make it my challenge, our organization's challenge that when we see a child we love on them. You know we take permission, obviously from their parents and we take permission before we hug a child, right, because we want to teach them about setting boundaries. But I've realized any at-risk child I see, maybe from a single parent, family really poor or is a bully. I try hard as an individual to just love on them because I want them to say someone loves me. And it was beautiful when one of my daughter's son, my daughter's friends, was like your mom loves us. Every time she sees us she's so happy. Every time she sees us she's so happy. I mean, now it's become second nature.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I remember one of my babysitters was quitting and one of the reasons she quit was because my house was filled with children. When she said it I was like I was a little bit defensive and I sat down and I meditated. I was like you know what she's, but that's what I'm called to do. I have children around me to create a safe space for children. So whenever I hire a babysitter I have a conversation and I say do you have a problem with other kids coming over? Right, it was just a miscommunication. I mean people can choose not to work because they don't want children. That's okay, it's just. When hiring now I make it a point of duty to let the person know that I will have children over Cause. It's just, I want to make sure children can grow up knowing that one person in their community loved on them.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Yeah, so loving your child is very important for two things. One, our action as adults becomes a child's inner voice, right? So loving them would teach them to love themselves. I think life is hard, even as good people, still hard. I mean, I'm not a perfect person, but I'm not a bad person. I have good intentions, but life has not prevented me from having challenges. And sometimes, when I meditate or ponder, I said, if I was a bad person, how hard would it be? It would be harder, right. So loving yourself one again, like I said, loving children allows them to have good self-image because an adult voice becomes their inner voice, absolutely.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Oh, that's so important and there's so much research that shows it. Even just takes one person, one stable, wonderful adult in the child's life that will speak into the child's life, makes all the difference. They don't even need a whole crowd, just one person. So I think what we'll take away from this is that we as parents, as adults, we choose to be the person, that person in a child's life, not just our children, but, like you said, the children around our children as well, because that also impacts the way our children form relationships as well. So thank you so much for that. Well, of course, since you are the menses expert, there's no way we're going to let you get off this podcast without talking to parents about how best can I talk to my girls about their menses to make them embrace it and to show them that it's nothing bad and nothing to be scared of. So tell us.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

All right. Oh, my goodness, this is a topic that I love. Just listen to your kids. Listen, you know. I've heard parents say what is the right age to teach a child about sex? What's the right age to do this, to do that? And from my experience and the experiences of people that have mentored me, it's just true listening. Your child will tell you. When they are ready, your child will come to you and say, mom, I heard someone talking about sex in school. What does that mean, you know? And that is the time you say, okay, it's time to have that conversation.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

And parents, we need to reprogram ourselves, divorce ourselves from our personal expectations or parental expectations. For example, this week, this month, me and my child, we are working on self-regulation. Okay, so we want to teach her how to regulate her emotions. So your question about one timing for menstruation and how to bring up the topic is important to just say have a relationship with your child. Relationship with children is not perfect. I really hope I would not vent. I really hope I would not use my voice to yell when I'm trying to talk to my child, but this week we had a conversation on self-regulation and I was teaching her what self-regulation means controlling yourself. And I shared my example with her. I said, daughter, do you know, when I interact with you, I apply self-regulation.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I was raised in a culture where our parents don't really converse with you. Your voice is not really heard. However, they use whoopings to get their disdain and love to you. You know, like you do something, they smack you. You know that's your way of saying oh, don't do that again. So me as a parent, we know that is not the most effective tool and we want to change the trajectory of our children. I have to self-regulate, you know I have to learn not to do that. I have to like reprogram myself. And I was telling my daughter, like self-regulation is working hard to overcome your emotions and to be a better person. And I said hon, it's not easy for anyone. So you can self-regulate in school. You don't have to always talk while your teacher is talking. You know.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

The same way, I tell parents listen to know where your child is ready for that conversation on menstruation. They could be ready when they see me wearing this t-shirt love your menses, right? I mean, I walk around with that so I can have a kid. That is very intelligent. Say, mom, what does love your menses mean and then you can appropriately guide the child. But before you guide a child in menstruation conversation, you have to love your menses or pretend to love your menses, because if you don't love your menses it's going to be hard for you to teach someone else to love their menses. And if you want more information on how to teach a child, you will have a children's book, maya learns about menstruation. I don't have it on me. Um, it's a conversation that we wrote between a child and a doctor having the dialogue. Our reviews on amazon parents have said it has helped them in that conversation.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

But the most important thing is loving your menses or loving yourself. And loving your menses does not mean that we love it. It's almost paradoxical. It just means we will love our body. We'll program our minds to love our bodies. I'm a big fan of Proctor and Gallagher consultation. I'm not a consultant with them or coach, but I follow Bob Proctor's principles and he talks about the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind, he believes, is it does whatever you want it to do. It believes whatever you feed into them. So even if you don't love your menses, but if you keep loving yourself, loving your menses, you will eventually love it. You will say, oh, this cramp, I'm loving my menses, I'm loving this is natural, first of all. Okay, as a physician here, please get evaluated if you have dysmenorrhea, for treatment, but you know.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

but I'm saying after that you can program yourself to love your menses and there's other things you can do right To aid in loving your men drinking more water, which will help the cramps not hurt as much. Eating the right thing. See, yeah, living by example. I love it like moving your body movement. It helps things take less. And yeah, so, because all of those things are connected, so wonderful.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Can I get to that? There's something about life. Life is not easy. It's not. Most people, or some people, would go through alcohol and drugs because it's the easier fix, quote unquote. But the consequences are worse. But when you exercise it releases endorphins and makes you happy. When you talk to your friends, it releases things that make you happy. When you hug your dog, it releases serotonin, like to be happier and better.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

And loving yourself involves skills, skills. You got to learn those skills and that's where life coaches like myself and Dr Echo falls in. And if you don't want to go to us, there are books that you can read. Most people that are happy, most people that have been successful in this thing called life, love to live trails so they have books for you to read. But loving yourself, loving your mentors, those are skills that we can teach you. There are people that it's more natural for them than others. Thank God, for example, I'm more natural as a mathematician than something else, but that doesn't mean I cannot be a good writer, right, it's just I have to work a little bit harder to develop my English writing skills. Again, I have to say we are coaches, so our mindset is different. We believe you can change anything in your capacity. I mean again, there's caveat to it, right, but we believe that in the majority of things you can change.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Yes, absolutely, and I just interviewed a pediatrician earlier today and he was talking about how small habits make such a big difference. You know so, for example, with when we talked about drinking water. If you just decide, okay, I'm going to drink one extra cup of water this week, just for this week, one extra cup a day, that's it. And the more you do that, then it becomes a habit. But then it's a habit that's also helping you with your menstruation, with your overall health. So anything is possible, like it's possible to change the way our brains are wired and function, if we just start somewhere and stay at it, one small step at a time right, yes, yes, and, like you said, that's a skill set right, that's a skill, that's a programming.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I didn't think of it that way, but it makes sense. Now I'm going to leave this webinar, this podcast, knowing that every small habits that I do, like hugging my child, even though I'm uncomfortable doing it, it's a good thing. And, you know, trying to find positivity everywhere you go, like I was saying way you go, like I was saying I personally have a positive baseline than most people. However, I used to shrink when I'm in other places in the past because I felt like everybody was looking at me, like why are you too happy? Then I started doing coaching, listening to Tony Robbins, going to Procter Gallagher's conferences, listening to them, and I'm like, oh, they're teaching people to be like me.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

So I have a treasure. What is it called you have?

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

acres of diamond in your own fell Right, because people like will be looking at me funny and I'm like, oh, like there's something weird about me. And then I go and people are trying to learn to be happy like me. I was like, oh, my goodness, how I've been blinded with my own diamond. I mean, imagine many of us are like that. We have diamonds and we don't know this. But when we seek more information then you begin to realize the diamonds in your own farm I love it, diamonds in your own farm.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

And you know, it can be as simple as starting deciding that you're going to smile. I remember I didn't used to smile a lot either, because I was extremely shy. And, oh my goodness, what happened? I was young and I was playing and then I was. I remember I was when I was growing up and I chipped my front tooth and I still I still didn't realize it was chipped because nobody said anything. And then, when I moved to the US, this kid pointed at me my very first day at work. I was like teacher's mouth is broken, and that was the end.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

I stopped smiling for like two years. My mouth was always chopped because I was so, so anxious about it. And then then I realized you know what my I went to the dentist, finally got that fixed. Even then it's still because at this point it was a habit, right. So it's just been slowly, slowly over the years, like just making my going from that person who didn't smile to the smile. And I can tell you it makes such a difference because when you smile, you light up your inside even more than the gift you're giving someone else, and it's free right.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

You have a beautiful smile, like it's so interesting you're sharing that the most bright and beautiful thing in your body is your smile, because I was looking at you and I was like, wow, she's so blessed with teeth that you could see, you know. It's like so cool, you know, and it's interesting how that beauty, that diamond, was what was being covered, right, yeah, so it's really cool and I'm a person of faith and I pray to God to open my blindness each day, because there's just so much. I mean, we can even do an exercise, we can look at our pictures when we were in our 20s. Remember you were self-conscious at that time. You saw so many negative things. Oh my God.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

I did that. I found a picture of me in med school and I was like, oh my goodness.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I was looking good. Yes, yes. And one reason there was a disconnect between us realizing how beautiful we were was because of the voice in our head. Were was because of the voice in our head. Our parents did not, do, you know? They were trying to protect us, right? They wanted us to focus on school. That's why, you know, we are now physicians. But they failed in building our self-esteem by letting us know, yes, that lady might have dreads, she might be cute, but you're cute. You know telling children that, yes, that lady might have dreads, she might be cute, but you're cute. You know telling children that, yes, that person, that image, might be beautiful, but her beauty does not negate from your beauty. Like, we can all be beautiful together, you know.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

And one thing in my household that I'm very grateful we do is we don't use negative words. It has a caveat to that, because my daughter is extremely sensitive. So when she goes somewhere and they say something negative to her, she's calling me. Well, this person just said that my eye looks like this because she's not used to it. And you know, I like that. That she's not like. Whenever someone says something negative, she remembers it because we don't use that. And now I'm teaching her how to overcome negativity, right by reminding her of who she is, because I want, when she's in her forties and fifties, when my voice is not the one in her head, when her subconscious has been trade, trying to see the greatness in her, that she will continue to see herself as beautiful. And I will have to wait to reflect 20 years and be like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. You know, we see our environment. Our environment programs us not to see how great we are. You know, especially people that are minority, but we. I belong to a group I think you're in that group too of physicians and black physicians, and one of them said oh, my child just came to me and said I wish I was a different color, you know, and the person was disheartened because they felt they were raising their child to love themselves, even as a Black person. And I just reminded that person. You know like, continue to encourage your children, but it's not the child's fault that the images around them does not reflect them.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

However, as parents, we can cop that out right. We can cop that out by decreasing their screen time. We can cut that out right. We can cut that out by decreasing their screen time. We can make a difference by creating organizations that focuses on Black and Brown people. They need us to do that and that's why I love Love your Menses.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

We have staff of different ethnicity because it doesn't matter, but we want to be a reflection to our kids that Black is awesome, black is beautiful, so is other races, but we don't have as much representation. I know that intentionally, with my team, I always tell them put off Black images. They're like, but that's not enough. I'm like that's not what we care. We can't make it enough, because the young kids need to see us. I think it's beautiful being a Black physician, being a Black public health person, being a Black non-profit leader, because we have the ability to really impact a child, a child of color, to know that they could be cool with their dreads, with whatever it may be. Loving ourselves, anything. Loving yourselves does not chip in someone else, and admiring another person does not chip in who you are absolutely not.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

And yeah, and that everybody's beautiful. Yep, yeah, that's so. No, that's such a wonderful and I love that you pointed to parents too. We need to accept ourselves as beautiful, because only I mean from us our kids will learn to accept themselves the way they are. Right, because they are soaking up everything. I mean kids soak up what we do more than what even we say. So so important for us to model that for our kids. So, parents, love on yourselves and fall in love with yourselves I mean in a good way, not in a conceited way so that you can teach your children as well.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

So yeah, and, in terms of that, avoid pointing out negative things about yourself in front of your kid. You know, if you're overweight, obese, whatever it may be, don't point it out to them, you know, but just point out your good side. And if you don't think you have anything good about yourself, then don't say anything bad about yourself in front of your daughters, in front of your sons, please, please. We as African Americans, we as Black people, we need to change that paradigm. You know, and we talk about different laws of the universe, and one of them is the law of attraction. You attract things, or even the law. I think there's law of vibration, there's more, but if you believe that you're good looking, the law hears it and makes you good looking. It just takes small things and you can look the best. I mean, some of the finest people on this earth might not be chosen as a model, but models. That's why they're professional models. You don't need to be a model, you just need to be a good mother to your child, that's all we need.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

You need to be a good parent Parent to your own self, be a good parent to yourself and be a great mommy to your child. That's all we need. You need to be a good parent Parent to your own self. Be a good parent to your son, be a great mommy to your kid. Yeah, and daddy and his dad.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Yeah, so wonderful. Thank you so much. That was really packed full of very simple but impactful things that we can do as parents to boost our children's self-esteem, to boost our self-esteem so that we can help the community at large right the people we are in contact with help them keep growing and thriving. So what's one last tip you're going to give to our parents on how they can help their children and how they can fall in love with their children?

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Okay. The last tip I would say is be in love with learning, be in love with improving. Self-improvement doesn't mean perfection, but sometimes we get hung over perfection that we fail to move. I don't know if I'm speaking to someone else, but I'm speaking about myself. Sometimes I'm like I can't do it, it can't be perfect, I just can't. I'll just stay where I am, not even try. But that's okay to try, because we're trying to leave a legacy. There are great people I mean people that I've met that when I meet their parents, I say, wow, you did a great job. And when I listened to that parent, I realized that their child is great because their parents are great. And some of us might not have quote-unquote great parents, but that doesn't mean you can't change that right. You might be born poor, but if you die poor, it's on you.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Absolutely. If you die poor, it's on you, because we all have a chance the space between when we're born and when we die. We have a chance to make it better, right? So thank you so much, dr Azumah. We have a chance to make it better, right? So thank you so much, dr Azumah, and please tell our parents how we can find out more about you and your amazing organization and just where to find out about you and how they can work with you.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

Thank you for asking that you can find us by going to our website. It's loveyourmensescom. It's not love your men. That's one time I went somewhere a man, you see what you believe or you see what you want to see. The man was like you're so cool, love your men. I said no, it's men's fit and it's good. He was so cute and then I had a conversation with him about men's this but he really thought it was men Like plural. It's wwwloveyourmensescom and there you can find me. Or if you want to email me, email me at info at loveyourmenses. com. Again, thank you so much for having me. I look forward to speaking to you and if you guys need coaching or just to have a conversation, you can reach out to me. I'm Dr Azumah. Thank you, dr Eko.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Oh, thank you. It was a pleasure, as always, chatting with you and joining forces with you to do the amazing work you're doing. Eight countries I can't wait to go visit all of them.

Dr. Ebere Azumah:

I mean, and now they're going to be nine countries. Someone in Jamaica has reached out to us. It's like, oh my God, wow, wonderful, that's wonderful yeah.

Dr. Hokehe Eko:

Thank you so much, parents. I hope you gained as much. I hope this was insightful for you as it was for me, and we'll see you on the next episode. Have an amazing day.