Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Ezra Klein’s Late-Night Panic Google

Transcript

Ezra Klein’s Late-Night Panic Google · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This is parent Data. I'm Emily Oster. Hello as recline.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Hello Emily Oster.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It's great to have you here. Thanks for joining me.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I'd love you to tell people who you are and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: what kind of kids you have.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: I am a calm list at the New York Times.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: I am the host of the podcast The Ezraclin Show,
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: and I have adorable kids, one of whom is two
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: and one of whom is five.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, and are they generally good? Before we get into
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: what your problems are, would you say generally you like
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: your kids, they're good.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Do people come on and you ask that and they're like, no, actually,
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: thank you, m.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: We just started this series, so I'm going to you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: asking until I get what I'm looking for.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I love my kids. Yes, they're wonderful.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's your what's your late night panicable?
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: My late night Well, it's not really a panic Google
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: because I don't Google. I understand how Google works, and
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: so I won't ask it any important questions late to
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: night or have it since they were very young. But
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: my like thing, the reason I don't Google anything is
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: that it feels to me like no advice on what
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: to do about any behavioral question, right, Like what to
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: do about them not eating the food on their plates
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: or eating enough healthy food, or you know, the thing
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: with their brother or whatever. That the world just full
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: of parenting advice that, like actual behavioral stuff, has no
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  Speaker 3: evidence behind it. It's just like a million books of
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: like somebody's opinion. And so it's like very hard when
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: you're like running through like a Reddit thread or something.
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  Speaker 3: It's just like this parent did this, and that parent
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: did that, and this book says that. So I'm like,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: where should My question for you, I guess is if
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I am looking for good information in a late night
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: panic thing, where do I go?
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  Speaker 2: Because I know it isn't Google.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So let me ask you when you had your kids
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: were a littler, surely you had some questions that were
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: more factual, like is this normal? Like what should they do?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: What?
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  Speaker 1: Like should they be crawling at this age? Do you
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  Speaker 1: ever do any panic googling?
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: I did a lot of panic buying of things when
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: they were younger. I would like a lot of late
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: like panic amazoning of this or that thing to get
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: them to sleep, you know, like I like, right now
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I will say that one of my kids, you know,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: just like every night needs a second touch to get
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: down to bed right, just to put him down too,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: and he like goes down and then it gets up
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: and he just like starts calling for us and doesn't
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: really need anything, just like need somebody to come back in.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: But he sleeps in the room with his brother, so
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: I can't really just like let.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Him yell all night.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: And this is sort of my point though, like this
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: is the kind of thing I would like to get
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  Speaker 3: some good information on, but I don't believe that any
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: information I get has any evidence behind it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: So I don't want to go for good.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: I basically write everything like Google search and then add
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Reddit just for ideas. But I don't know, maybe that's
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: somewhere should be going.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think the problem is that in
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: this space there's nothing that would constitute what you want
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in terms of an answer, right, Like there's no like
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: randomized trial where half the people tried for two days
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: not going back in, and half the people tried going
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: back in, and then you could see, well, how many
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: days would it take on average before they would stop
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: yelling and how does that impact their similar or whatever?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Is like like that's the kind of answer you would.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Like, right, yes, And that for everything, right. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I'm like fascinated by discipline and the question like whether
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: or not to do it and to what degree? And
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: so I've read about like respectful and infant parenting, and
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I really like simplicity parenting and all these different things.
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  Speaker 3: But they're all just somebody telling you what they do
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  Speaker 3: and what they like, with nobody virtually ever, just saying well,
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: you know, we had a cohort of parents who did this,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: and the kids turn that well. And so it's like
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I read these parenting books and like an interesting way
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: to structure my own thinking, and like, see if I agree,
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  Speaker 3: But it really is just like what intuitively appeals to me.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I find myself a little bit shocked there isn't more
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  Speaker 3: evidence on how to just parent generally.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a fair it's a particularly fair
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  Speaker 1: critique of this. Things that are in that, I would say,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: in a category of discipline or behavior modification, right, that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: we don't really know. You hear about gentle parenting, you
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: hear about you know, consequences. People say, well, consequences are bad.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Other people will say, look, the studies show that consequences work.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You will say, what does that mean work? Well, it
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: work they improve behavior, Well, what if they don't work
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: in some aggregate sense, and then you're down a rabbit
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: hole of where you just want other people's opinions.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or like does one two three magic work? I've
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: done that before, like one two three. Then you're on timeout,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: but does it work one of my kids? And I
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: was like, fine, I love time out right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, Like has he just hacked the system completely?
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: It's just it's interesting, like as a parent that I
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: have given up on the idea of there being information
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  Speaker 3: right in terms of parenting. I don't google things because I,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: like everybody, Google is trying to sell me something. It's
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: just like trying to get advertising impressions and affiliate links
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  Speaker 3: and Reddit is okay, and you know for something that's
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: like such a profound, fundamental human experience that this many
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: people are doing the idea that there is no wire
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: cutter for parenting beyond I think some of the work
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: you're trying to do.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, but your stuff that's more about what.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But my stuff's not in. My stuff's not as much
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in this space.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: And all once your parenting it's just like God, bless
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: you go with God.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I say this in a surprisingly large number of these
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: these short conversations. But the word parenting as a verb
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: dates only to the nineteen seventies. So this idea that
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you're doing an activity parenting, that that's new, And I
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: wonder if that's part of the issue that for a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: very long time people are just like, well, you're kind
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of trying to keep them alive and just you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: not worry so much about exactly what you're doing. And
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: we're now all of a sudden involved in this verb
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: called parent which there's a correct way to do it,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: as opposed you're just like you're asking reddit the way
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: other people would have asked, you know, their mom or
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the people in the next door, right, And there's probably.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: A lot more social it is.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: It was more social dynamics that like you parented like
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: other people parent I don't really buy this thing that parenting.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: I know people say this.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: I know it's true that the parenting is a verb
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: is relatively recent, but I don't know. I've read enough
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: history to know that people thought about how to bring
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: up kids before like nineteen seventy one, and so I
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: think this is a slightly like language changed.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: But I mean you could go like read like the there's.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: All kinds of stuff about how to parent in the Bible, right,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think you should understand a fair amount
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: of the Bible is parenting advice. Now, some of it
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: is you should stone a kid if they're being really,
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: really really bad, and I again would like to see
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: some evidence that stoning them would help.
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  Speaker 1: But so what do you do in this information Google vacuum,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: just people on Reddit?
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  Speaker 2: I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, you just feel your way forward, you you
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: know you? I don't know, actually, right, I'm really blessed
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: to have good kids and the problems have not gotten
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: like significant enough that the fact that, like the what
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  Speaker 3: you do seems like completely unanswerable. And I like reading
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  Speaker 3: some of the books, and I do find most of
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  Speaker 3: the books are most useful in how to parent yourself though, right,
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  Speaker 3: Like that I think is the most interesting thing to
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: me about parenting. Books like the ones I really like, like
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: simplicity parenting, I think is a better way of thinking
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: about your life than it is about your kids life.
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  Speaker 3: And that's true for a bunch of them, Like how
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: to keep yourself somewhere grounded and resourced, it seems always
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  Speaker 3: like way harder than like the question of how should I.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Be responding to my child? So I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: I guess I try to do that, but I, you know,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: like I like, there are all kinds of things that
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: come up that I wish I could actually get an
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  Speaker 3: answer for. Beyond you know, it's whatever my partner and
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  Speaker 3: I can sort of agree on and we can actually
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  Speaker 3: manage to do and then you know, but I you know,
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  Speaker 3: and we try to love them and be decent to
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  Speaker 3: them and each other, and I think.
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  Speaker 2: They'll all basically work out.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, but yeah, like I would like to believe
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  Speaker 3: somewhere out there somebody had written one of the books
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  Speaker 3: on the parenting shelf that had some evidence in had
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  Speaker 3: a parent, but apparently not.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just wonder if the answer is that the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: things that we know matter are pretty basic. You know,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: love your kids that have the things that really like
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: matter in the first few years, having a stable place
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  Speaker 1: to live, having enough to eat, you know, not being
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: exposed to toxic stress. That those are things that you
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: that you're doing by default. And then the question of
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  Speaker 1: what the right thing is is just what is working
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  Speaker 1: for you as a parent, Like you, if it's fine
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  Speaker 1: for you, if you go back into your kids room
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  Speaker 1: every night and do the second touch. Then it's fine.
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  Speaker 1: And the place where that becomes problematic is if every
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: night you're like resentful and angry that you have to
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: do that, then that's probably a thing you want to change.
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  Speaker 1: But if it's just this is working for me, but
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out if other people think it
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: might work for them, but it's within well within the
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  Speaker 1: bounds of you know, giving your kid enough to eat
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and having a safe place to live and loving them,
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  Speaker 1: then it's fine.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my basic theory.
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  Speaker 3: And then then obviously you get you know, you just
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: try to move your way through the difficulties as they
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: come up. I have sort of come to the conclusion
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: years ago when I launched, or was one of the
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: people launched a box, I read a bunch of management
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: books and ended up believing they were all full of
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: lies because the thing they don't say most of them
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: is it different people are different and need to be
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: managed really differently, and like the strategy that I work
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: for one or one organization doesn't work for another or
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: another organization.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: And I do think kids are like that.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: The you know, one of my one of my children
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: is really connected to the question of how his parents
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: are feeling right and what they what they if he
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: is if we are upset with him.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: He is very upset.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: And another of my kids like as much more doesn't
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: really you know, feel it that way. And so they
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: just need different styles of parenting because a signal that
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: would reach one of them will not reach the other.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: And so, I mean, I do think that's also a difficulty.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: And it's just like with all I guess human relationships
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: that people are, people are different. Unfortunately the styles need
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: to be bespoke. Yeah.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Now, I feel like when you manage both adults and children,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you learn that parenting and like running a company are
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: quite similar.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Sometimes, Yeah, there's something to do that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks Ezra, This is a treat. Great to talk to you.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Emily,