After COVID, pediatric OPDs across India filled up with a particular kind of case. Mothers came in exhausted, bringing children who could not sit still, could not focus, ran constantly, threw objects, could not hold a conversation with the parent for more than a few seconds. The mothers were not neglectful. They were devoted. They had rearranged their lives around the child. And yet the child's behavior was escalating.
When asked what they did when the child became fidgety, the picture became clear. They would say: Sit here. Don't behave like this. Be a good child. Be a good child. Repeated with urgency. Repeated with a rising voice. And the child would become, as Antano Solar John observes, all the more the bad child. The instruction to stop being difficult was producing more difficulty. The visible behavior of the parent, which any observer would call well-meaning, was worsening the exact condition they were trying to fix.
This is the gap that separates parenting advice from parenting science. The techniques parents read about, the routines, the consequences, the praise schedules, operate on the surface. What operates underneath is something the parent is not aware they are transmitting. The parent in the OPD is not screaming because they are a bad parent. They are screaming because they are frightened. That fear is broadcasting before the words come out. And the child is receiving it.
Parenting style in the conventional sense refers to the visible pattern: authoritative versus permissive, structured versus free-range. What none of those frameworks address is the inner state of the parent as the primary signal the child tracks. Children, especially young children, are calibrated to authority figures. What the authority figure assumes is real becomes real to the child. The consequences of that mechanism, once you see it, change everything about how you think about parenting advice.
The question worth asking is not what should I do when my child misbehaves. The more consequential question is: what am I already assuming about my child before I open my mouth?
About fifty years ago, a doctor named Milton Erickson worked with patients in ways that confounded the medical establishment. People came to him with challenges ranging from eating disorders to athletic performance and left without the problems they had arrived with. Nobody could study what he was doing. The medical board considered revoking his license. The legend goes that the inspector assigned to assess Milton ended up on the same flight as him, and returned to say Milton should be allowed to continue. The results were undeniable. The mechanism was invisible.
Milton Erickson had polio twice. The first time, doctors said he would never walk again. He taught himself to walk by sitting at a window as a child and noticing the smallest micro-muscle movements in his body, exercising them hour by hour, month by month, until full function returned. He was also tone deaf and colorblind, seeing only purple. Because he was tone deaf, when he walked past a church and heard what he assumed were voices talking, he went inside and found a choir. He noticed they were all moving together in synchrony. He went home and tried matching the breathing and movement of the people around him. He noticed an immediate sense of connection. This was how he discovered unconscious rapport through mirroring.
John Grinder and Richard Bandler, students of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, went to study Erickson using unconscious modeling. Instead of analyzing what Milton did, Grinder mirrored him for two weeks and then went back to California to work with patients presenting the same conditions, without knowing consciously what he was doing. Over months, Grinder and Bandler replicated Erickson's results and eventually codified the principle Erickson had been using intuitively. That principle is presupposition.
Erickson demonstrated this to groups of medical doctors. He would bring several people onto a stage, place them in an altered state where they were awake but highly receptive, and then look carefully at a corner of the room. After a pause, he would say: What's the color of that dog? One of the people on stage would say: It's a brown dog. Someone in the audience would stand up: What are you talking about? It's a black dog. No dog existed. The word 'what' in the question assumes a dog is already there. That assumption, transmitted by someone in deep unconscious rapport with the listener, becomes the listener's experience. The assumption is the instruction. It skips past the listener's critical faculty and installs a reality.
This is not a technique available only to hypnotists. Every authority figure uses presuppositions, usually without knowing it. Verbal presuppositions are built into sentence structure. Nonverbal presuppositions are built into posture, timing, tone, and body tension. When a parent leans forward as the child reaches for a jar, bracing to catch it, the nonverbal message is already sent: you are about to drop this. The child is in a state of deep unconscious rapport with the parent. The parent is an authority figure, which amplifies the signal. The assumption travels and lands before a single word is spoken.
When parents receive a diagnosis for their child, something specific happens. A doctor accurately identifies autism. The parents did the right thing by seeking help. The doctor did the right thing by diagnosing accurately. Autism is a wide spectrum. A specific child may carry three or four characteristics from that spectrum. That specific child, with those specific characteristics, is who the parents took into the clinic.
Then the parents go home and search the entire spectrum. They read every symptom from A to Z. In their minds, they are being responsible. They want to be prepared. But they begin to see a child who has all of those symptoms, not the child who has three or four. Now the presuppositions begin. One symptom in the literature is carelessness with objects. The next time the child reaches for a jar, the parent moves to catch it before anything happens. That movement, that readiness, that lean, is a nonverbal presupposition. It says: you will drop it. The first time, the second time, the third time. By the fourth time, the child drops the jar. The parent now has evidence. The child now has a new pattern. A symptom that was never organically part of that child has been installed.
The hospital staff who follow these cases observe something that seems counterintuitive. They say the mother creates more disruption than the baby. This is not a criticism of the mother. It is an observation about where the actual source of the escalating behavior lives. The child is not deteriorating in isolation. The child is deteriorating in relationship. The relationship carries the presuppositions. The presuppositions shape the behavior. And because the relationship is defined by genuine love, the child is in exceptionally deep rapport with the parent, which means every unconscious assumption transmits with exceptional force.
Authoritative parenting, in its real form, must address the internal layer. Not just clear boundaries and warmth, which is the textbook definition, but clear internal assumptions. What you believe about your child's capability when you are alone, before they enter the room, is already shaping what they will do when they walk in. The parent who genuinely sees a capable child transmits that in their breathing, posture, and pace. The parent who has quietly decided the child will fail at the next task transmits that with equal precision. Children do not receive your words. They receive your state.
The good parenting tips that hold up under scrutiny are the ones that change what the parent actually believes, not just what the parent says. Auditing your presuppositions is not a soft skill. It is the technical core of every parenting style that produces lasting results. When a parent shifts their inner assumptions, the child who has been labeled difficult, hyperactive, or careless begins to behave differently. The nonverbal environment they inhabit has changed. The parent changes. The child follows. That sequence, invisible but precise, is how real capability gets installed.
Full transcript
After COVID, we suddenly got this, because mothers were very difficult. It was really difficult for mothers to take care of the kids. So they gave me... So what are they not able to do because they're hyperactive? Because they are hyperactive, they will not sit at a place. They cannot focus on anything. So give me an example. If they could focus, what would you want them to focus on? If they could focus, they would at least speak and have a good relationship with the parent, okay? Okay. I mean, they just leave on running, and then they cannot sit in a place, and few of them are so fidgety that they'll throw everything over here. Okay. Now, before the child becomes fidgety, what are the parents doing? Okay, they themselves are very apprehensive, yeah. But they'll come to the OPD and they'll start screaming, You're fine. Sit here. Don't behave like this. Be a good child. Be a good child. So he'll be all the more bad child. Yeah. Absolutely. So you have to start there. Okay, so a long time ago, Milton Erickson used to do this. You could sit. I mean, be comfortable. A long time ago, Milton Erickson, you know a lot of these installations is modeled from a hypnotist called Milton Erickson. Have you heard of Milton Erickson? No. Okay. So you know John Grinda, the creator of NLP? No. Okay. So. You know? Hypocrite. Yeah. Good doctor. Okay. Okay. Okay. So about 50 years ago, there was a man named Milton and people used to go to him and they would have different challenges and outcomes that they want to achieve. You know, some people wanted to win the gold medal somewhere and some people just wanted to get over simple things like bed wetting or eating disorder. And Milton would just keep talking to them and as they talked, they would all go into like one dream world. And when they come back, they know time has passed. They don't know what happened. But then when they would come back and meet Milton again, they wouldn't have the problems that they've had before. The only challenge with what Milton did was nobody could study what he was doing. In fact, there's a legend that goes that the medical board got so angry with him that they decided to cancel his license because he was a doctor. And they said, this guy is not able to explain the results that he's getting, so we shouldn't allow him to do what he's doing. And the legend goes that, you know, apparently the guy who was supposed to go and inspect Milton was on the same flight as Milton. And, and, and then he went back and said, Milton is doing great job. He should be allowed to do what he's doing. Now, there was an anthropologist and some of you might have heard of him. His name is Gregory Bates and he was married to the famous Margaret Meads. And he, one of his passion was to study societies, but he was also interested in studying geniuses and how they do. And Dr. John Grindor and Richard Bandler were actually students of Gregory Bates. And every time Gregory would send somebody to go and see what Milton is doing, they all would have the same response. When they come back and Gregory would ask, so what does Milton do? They all go, so finally, Milton sent John Grindor and Richard Bandler. And John Grindor came up with this idea that if I'm gonna study a genius, I'm not going to do analytical modeling, which he was well trained to do. But then he came up with this method of unconscious modeling, where he picks up very similar to what you did yesterday, but more systematic, where you have like a six months of mirroring and a parallel context where you can practice. So John would go there and he would mirror whatever Milton is doing. And if Milton is working on someone with asthma, then John would tell his team back in California, get me some people who wanna get over asthma. So he would mirror Milton for like 15 days and then he would go back to California and he would work with those people not knowing what he's doing. And over a period of a few long months, John and Richard were able to develop the skills that Milton had. And that is, and that is how they, they were the first people who were able to replicate that everything that Milton did. They were able to get the same results that Milton was able to want to create. And then they did something very interesting. They made it even better. You see, because Milton was polio struck when he was young and doctor said he was going to die and he somehow survived, but he was paralyzed. And most medical doctors said that he could never in his life walk again. And there was a time when Milton was sitting by the window and he was, as a little child, he was just sitting by the window and he was watching the streets. And then he used to see like all these children playing and the beautiful leaves just, you know, flowing with the wind and the flowers. And Milton just had this desire in his heart. What would it be like if I was just there on that road? And he felt his chair rocking. Now, Milton being who he is, he had that thought again and he felt the chair slightly rocking. So Milton thought if the chair is moving, I must be moving it. So he paid attention to his body and he noticed very small set of muscles having a very small movement. Today, we call them as micro muscle movements. And he noticed that and what he started doing is for hours together every day, he continued to hold on to that small movement and exercising those muscles. And month by month, the clusters of muscles that he was able to exercise started increasing and then he was able to walk again. And as luck would have it, polio struck him the second time, he became paralyzed. But Milton being Milton, he learned again how to walk although everybody thought it was not possible. But one of the side effects of Milton is that because he had polio and because his teats were like, you know, not properly formed, Milton used to talk in this voice and he would say, sit in that chair. Not because it was intentional but because that's what he could do. In fact, he was colorblind. The only color he could see was purple. So he was also tone deaf. So this is how he discovered mirroring. So what happened was Milton was once walking by the road and since he was tone deaf, he can't hear people singing. It all sounds like he's talking. And then he hears like these lots of voices talking together. So he goes inside a church to see what's going on and it's a choir and everybody is like singing. And Milton, since he can't hear the song, he notices them and notices that they're all moving together in the same way. So Milton thought maybe that's what gets people to feel connected to each other. And he came back and tried doing that. He started breathing the way someone was breathing. He started moving the way someone was moving and he noticed that there's an instant connection that he could feel with the people. Now, one of the things that Milton used to do, now Milton used to only teach medical doctors because he thought whatever he's doing is too powerful and it has to be only in the hands of medical doctors and all of his documentation is like so long, like real medical literature, some good stuff for you to read. And one of the things he used to do is he used to get a group of doctors and he used to do demonstrations of trance induction. And then in the middle of it, he would bring like three, four people up on stage and he would officially put them into what is called and some blumenistic trance, which is they're awake, but they're in a different altered state. And then he would look very, very carefully towards the corner and he would look for a while and then he would say, what's the color of that dog? And somebody in the audience, the people who are sitting on the stage, one of them would say, it's a brown dog. And someone in the audience would invariably get up and say, what are you saying? It's a black dog. Now, the linguistic technique that is used in that elicitation is called presupposition. When you are in unconscious rapport with somebody, the things you assume becomes the reality of the person who you are in deep rapport with. So if Milton believed there's a dog and he was in so much unconscious rapport, and if he were to presuppose in his language, meaning assume there is a dog in his language, it's called presupposition, then most people who are in rapport with him would likely see a dog there. It's very simple, but when in the hands of people with authority who have natural unconscious rapport, it's very dangerous when they're unaware of what it can do. Okay, for example, there are people who say that they do this past life regression. Now, see, I'm not saying anything about past life regression. What I'm saying really is the technique that they use for past life regression. When you look at those videos, what do they do? They do the ancient, done to death, boring, hypnotic inductions that anybody does on the planet. Not very different. Not very different from classic hypnosis. And then they ask, who were you in your past life? Now, is that a presupposition? You guys get presupposition? Is there a dog there? Is that a presupposition? No. Is there a dog there? Is that a presupposition? No. There is a dog there. Is that a presupposition? No. What's the color of the dog? Presupposition. Did you have a past life? Is it a presupposition? No. Who were you in your past life? Presupposition. You get it? So there's an assumption that there is. And if you are vulnerable and someone has put you in a deep, altered state, if they ask you when did the aliens kidnap you, you will create memories that are not true. And that is why you have all of these things when you watch the process by where they arrive there, it's all templated. The same nonsense, you know, two hours of ritualistic, tiring transinductions, and the person is almost like, it's worse than taking halogens. And then the same technique, a simple technique called presuppositions. And for me, what is dangerous is not what hypnotists do, it's what people who don't think they're hypnotists do with presupposition. For example, there was a study that they tried to do that every child, one in five child has been, gone through physical abuse in their young age. Now, the way they did that study, and if you read through some of the documentaries, is they go and ask, so when you were a child, what's that uncle who touched you in a way that's inappropriate? You hear the presupposition in that language? Okay, tell me about your childhood now, what happened? You hear the presupposition? There was no linguistic presupposition, but there's a tonal presupposition, indicating something wrong happened. It's very different when you say, hey, what happened in your childhood? Now tell me about your childhood, what happened? You get that? So there's verbal presuppositions, there's nonverbal presuppositions, and a lot of times people induce beliefs, and then they say, I just asked them a question. But remember, when you are an authority figure to somebody, a question can change the way they think. Yeah, so, pardon me? It's like leading the person. It's more dangerous because it doesn't look like you're leading, and yet you have let the person to a particular answer. So when it comes to ADHD and other things that happen with children, one of the dangerous things that John Grinder spoke about is that, imagine the situation, okay? So there's a mother and a father, and they're really wanna be great parents, and they love their child, and they're expecting, and then this child is born, and they feel so much love, and that's the child's entire world to them. And suddenly, when the child is like two years old or three years old, they start noticing that the child isn't necessarily behaving like the way the other children do. So they're questioning themselves, you know? Am I doing wrong with my parenting? Is something wrong with me? Did I miss out? Was I busy with my work? And they have all these apprehensions, and then they go and meet a doctor. Now, a doctor accurately diagnoses and says, you know, your child had, let's say, for example, autism. Now, the parents did the right thing, the doctor did the right thing, so far everything is good. Now, autism is a wide spectrum. Okay, what it means is they can be ABCDE, EFG, HIJK, LMPQ, RST, UEWXYZ, and more symptoms, out of which maybe three or four is applicable to that specific child. Okay, so far everything is good. But then what happens after that is now the parents go to Google. What does autism mean? How do I take care of a child who has autism? Now, the child maybe has, you know, A and F and G and K symptoms. Now they're reading ABCDE all the way to Z. Now, in their head, they think this child has all of those symptoms. So, let's say, for example, one of the symptoms is they're careless with things. The next time the child picks up a jar, the parents are getting ready to go catch if it falls. You remember presupposition? You remember verbal and nonverbal presupposition? This is a nonverbal presupposition that you might drop. The second time, the third time, the fourth time, the child drops. And now there's one more element from the spectrum that was not originally part of the child that is induced. So, I think if you're working with parents, and especially children, and if you want to help them in this particular way, you have to become like a genius at helping parents drop their presuppositions that aren't real about the child. I know at this moment it feels impossible to do, and every time it's easier. When you follow the same child, you see the child deteriorate. And the whole hospital staff will come and say the mother creates more fuzz than the baby. So, it's easier for you to help the mother change? Yes. Wow, good luck. That only means you haven't tried yet. Okay. For the next step, I'll make a list of what I could do. But it's not impossible. Remember, the whole idea of installations is those very situations that looks impossible to change, you can actually make it happen. We never like to complete our video without giving you the opportunity to personally evolve and launch your legacy. Imagine for a moment, what would it feel like when you are impacting the world positively? So much. And enhancing your business, your health, your family, and legacy, all of this together, simultaneously, continuing to grow leaps and bounds, fast and smoothly. You've got the right motives. We believe Antonone Harni will be able to help you launch your legacy in compressed time. Get extension installation based fossil evolution and keep making the difference. Starting with yourself. Now. Antonone is beyond my thinking in his capability, ability, understanding. And I felt how can he can read me or my emotions also so well. He is amazing. He is a God sent gift to me. With every up, things are getting more and more refined. And as I was telling you that a lot of things are happening now where I'm able to see through a lot of things very clearly, that what's required without getting stuck with things. So earlier it was like even if I'm able to see through something, I will get stuck into certain emotions and all that. All of that is gone now. And it's more like that I am spotting everything a little early than I was earlier. And hence being able to very well adapting that what's coming my way. You do not have to be Michael Jackson or a TV star to be doing something meaningful where people are connecting to you. Back then I think you had to be like do something really extraordinary for you to shine as a personality, for people to know you, for you to impact the people around you. But today you can create impact in so many ways.!