Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #145 University Isn't For Everyone with Adina Glickman

Transcript

#145 University Isn't For Everyone with Adina Glickman · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Both secondary education makes a lot of promises about what
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: its product is and it doesn't always deliver or delivers
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: that particular product to a very small subset of students.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: poor parent who just wants answers. Now. Hello, my name's
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: dobps Justin Coulson, the husband of my podcast partner and
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: wife missus Happy Families, Kylie Coulson, who joins us to
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  Speaker 2: talk today about big kids where the parents by the
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: way of six kids and our second daughter is finishing
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: year twelve. She's in the throes of her first week
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  Speaker 2: of year twelve final exams. Some kids around the nation
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  Speaker 2: started their exams last week. But today we're going to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: dive into this conversation and talk about what we can
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  Speaker 2: do to help our kids get through this really challenging time.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's that time of year when the students are
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  Speaker 3: starting to get really stressed. Parents are getting stressed, and
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  Speaker 3: our Grade twelve students feel the pressure of what they
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  Speaker 3: are going to be doing next year.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's all that society little pressure as well
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: around going to university. But Uni, I mean I say
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  Speaker 2: this all the time, your kids shouldn't go to university.
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  Speaker 2: It's not a one size fits all kind of things.
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  Speaker 2: Some children might be better off doing a trade or
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  Speaker 2: some of the qualification. Some children just need to take
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  Speaker 2: a gap year and grow up and have a little
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  Speaker 2: bit of life experience before they settle in to actually
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  Speaker 2: being adults.
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  Speaker 3: So today on the podcast, we're talking with Adena Glickman,
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  Speaker 3: who is an academic and a life and career coach,
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  Speaker 3: and she's helped many thousands, like thousands of students achieve
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  Speaker 3: their academic and life goals during her almost twenty years
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  Speaker 3: at Stanford University.
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  Speaker 2: That's a big deal, Stanford deal twenty years there is.
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  Speaker 2: We're talking to somebody who knows the stuff today.
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  Speaker 3: She really does. aDNA founded the Stanford Resilience Project and
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  Speaker 3: the Academic Resilience Consortium, a collective of higher education professionals
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  Speaker 3: from sixteen countries Sodana.
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  Speaker 2: It's got this wealth of knowledge in the area of
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  Speaker 2: education and resilience and has a load of useful tips
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  Speaker 2: for parents and students. So aDNA, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Can you expand a little bit on your workforce.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: My work is with mostly senior, mostly twelve year high
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  Speaker 1: school students, helping them be successful and effective and satisfied
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  Speaker 1: in their educational process. I also work with college students
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: once they're in college, when they're floundering or struggling or
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and I also work with recent grads who are sort
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of Okay, now I learned all this, Now what do
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  Speaker 1: I do and what do I want to do with it?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: But largely my focus is on helping students be effective learners,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: so I help them learn how to learn.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: It's been such a crazy year, but specifically it's been
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: really hard on our year twelves. Some of them have
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  Speaker 3: missed milestone events like formals. Some may have not even
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  Speaker 3: been able to do exams the way they expected. What
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  Speaker 3: advice do you have for parents who have children who
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: have been battling through a disrupt GEA I only to
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: throw the hands up and say this is dumb. I
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: give up.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I say, I hear you. And you know, even
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: when when there wasn't a pandemic, there was plenty to
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: hate about school. True, what I hear from a lot
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of parents is my kid's not motivated. And I always
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: think that's simply not that simply can't be true. It's
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that we don't know what they're motivated for. I actually
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: was just talking with a college student this morning who
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: he said, I forget everything. I said everything, I said, Well,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: when you leave, when you leave, you know, you get
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  Speaker 1: up in the morning, do you forget to go to
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  Speaker 1: the bathroom. No, No, I never forget to do that,
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  Speaker 1: and I never forget to eat, and I never forget
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  Speaker 1: my wallet, and I never forget my phone. You know,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: so ask, you know, given the right question, he remembers
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things. When you ask a kid or
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  Speaker 1: observe as a parent, what motivates you. Lots of things
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  Speaker 1: motivate kids. They may not be academic, but they're motivators.
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  Speaker 1: And the and the thing about feeling motivated is that
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  Speaker 1: it's not it's not a threshold that you cross. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: now I've become motivated. It's a place that you get
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  Speaker 1: to that can help booy you to the next thing.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're in a state where the only thing
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  Speaker 1: that motiv I mean, what motivates me is getting to
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  Speaker 1: go outside. I love being out in nature. If you
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  Speaker 1: have a kid who like loves watching, you know, YouTube
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  Speaker 1: videos of puppies, that motivates them. What they feel inside
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  Speaker 1: and what they get out of that matters. So you
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: start to develop a sense and a vocabulary around what
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you're what motivates your child, what they feel like when
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  Speaker 1: they're motivated, how they act when they're motivated, And you say, well,
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  Speaker 1: you know what, let's watch a few videos of puppies
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  Speaker 1: and let's just have a minute to feel good, and
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  Speaker 1: then let's have the conversation about you know, what can
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  Speaker 1: what can we do with this school thing to make
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  Speaker 1: it less you know, abysmal. But you can't do that
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  Speaker 1: if they're just completely pushing it away. So you have
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  Speaker 1: to help find help them find what motivates them and
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  Speaker 1: then use that and then when they're a little older,
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  Speaker 1: actually you can actually start to draw connections. So see
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  Speaker 1: if you can, you know, you can sit to your
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  Speaker 1: city of your kid, what do you think is the
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  Speaker 1: relationship between puppies and math? And they'll be like what,
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  Speaker 1: But it's a game. It becomes a game. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the things that they may like about puppy videos
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  Speaker 1: is that it's sweet and endearing and makes them feel
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  Speaker 1: like there's love. So you say, well, if there's more puppies,
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  Speaker 1: will there be more love? That's a math question, you know,
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  Speaker 1: So you can turn it into something that relates exactly
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  Speaker 1: to the thing that matters to them.
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  Speaker 2: I know that there are some parents who will listen
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  Speaker 2: to this though and going, yeah, but my child as
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: sin as we bring up school, the walls come up.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: There's just no getting through. I think I was I
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: was right into surfing. I would wag school and go
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  Speaker 2: to the beach. To be honest, Well, what's the parents
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  Speaker 2: supposed to do in that instance, because you're not the
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  Speaker 2: boss of your kid?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that it means as a parent,
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  Speaker 1: as your parent, maybe stepping back and saying what are
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  Speaker 1: my grudges against having a son who's a surfer, and
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  Speaker 1: what are my real worries? And most parents will say, well,
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  Speaker 1: I want my kid to be happy. I want them
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  Speaker 1: to be independent and prosperous and healthy. So if I
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  Speaker 1: can say this thing that you want to do precludes those,
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  Speaker 1: then I have an argument. But in fact, there are
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  Speaker 1: pro surfers and they do make money, and they are
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: happy and they are prosperous. So I would say, okay,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: you want to be a surfer, totally fine with me.
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  Speaker 1: Surf Boards costs money, and getting sponsorships is work, and
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  Speaker 1: managing your finances if you don't have enough to really
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  Speaker 1: pay for somebody. To manage your finances is going to
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  Speaker 1: be your job. So there's three sets of skills right
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: there that you're going to need to master and I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and in service of being a professional surfer, let's figure
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: out how they connect to supporting that effort. So it's
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: not in this case, it's not necessarily an abstract connection
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  Speaker 1: between surfing and math and wave and curve. It's you
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  Speaker 1: want to do this, you need to learn about banking,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and you need to learn about how to manage your finances.
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  Speaker 2: It's a kind of a reassuring approach that you've suggested there,
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  Speaker 2: not so much from the academic perspective, although I know
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  Speaker 2: that that's important and I want to acknowledge that. But
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  Speaker 2: I think from a purely personal perspective, what you're saying
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  Speaker 2: to your child is I have these aspirations and dreams
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  Speaker 2: for you. I want you to be your best you.
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  Speaker 2: And my mindset is that if you go and get
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  Speaker 2: into the right university course and study hard and et cetera,
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  Speaker 2: et cetera, you'll have a successful life. But there's so
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  Speaker 2: much value for so many children will thrive if they
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: do a trade. It might not be what the parent
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  Speaker 2: wants them to do. I mean, there's nothing the matter
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  Speaker 2: with trade. We can't live without trades people. But some
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  Speaker 2: parents that I speak to are so fixated on this
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  Speaker 2: university education forgetting that electricians and plumbers and hairdressers and
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  Speaker 2: trades people of all different professions they live wonderful lives
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  Speaker 2: and they make extraordinary contributions. And it's not just honorable,
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  Speaker 2: like it's a fabulous way to live. You don't have
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  Speaker 2: to go to university to have a successful life.
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  Speaker 1: That's somehow the reputation that university now has sort of
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  Speaker 1: it is a guarantee of some sort of success.
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  Speaker 2: And it's just not Yeah, it's almost like if you
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  Speaker 2: don't go to UNI, you're a failure, and you're a
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  Speaker 2: failure as a parent because your kids didn't get there,
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  Speaker 2: and it's just there's stigma attached to not going into
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  Speaker 2: many circles.
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  Speaker 1: Now.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's a damaging thing.
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  Speaker 1: I completely agree. You know, higher education secondarycation makes a promise,
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  Speaker 1: and at least in the States, I think that its
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: promise has not always been fulfilled, largely because in the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: States it's an industry, and it's an industry that needs
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: to sustain itself, and so it makes a lot of
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: promises about what its product is, and it doesn't always
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  Speaker 1: deliver or it delivers that particular product to a very
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: small subset of students. I mean, I worked at Stanford
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  Speaker 1: for almost twenty years advising students. I ran their academic
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  Speaker 1: coaching program, and there were only a small handful of
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  Speaker 1: students who really got exactly what they needed and wanted
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  Speaker 1: out of being in college. Everybody else, I mean really,
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  Speaker 1: ninety six percent, probably ninety five to ninety six percent
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  Speaker 1: of the students I worked with had to adjust the
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  Speaker 1: reality to what the promise had been. Oh so you know,
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  Speaker 1: I haven't found my best friends in my life, and
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  Speaker 1: these aren't the greatest toury years of my life. And
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  Speaker 1: I don't love being in huge classes and I don't
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  Speaker 1: like I don't like this this is and this isn't
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  Speaker 1: working for me. What works for me is exploration or
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: problem solving or projects or you know. And the college
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  Speaker 1: experience is very different from what they really need. So
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  Speaker 1: I think it's most important for parents to say who
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  Speaker 1: who Again, I have to learn who my child is,
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  Speaker 1: not who the child should be. I would need to
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  Speaker 1: know who my child is, what makes them tick, so
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: that they feel seen and heard and so that they
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: can find the thing that that leads them to their contribution,
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  Speaker 1: because that's in fact, the thing that makes a happy person,
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  Speaker 1: you know, is that they feel purposeful, that they feel
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  Speaker 1: they're making me a contribution, that they're valued, and not
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: by their parents necessarily, you know, because we get to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: you know, we get to mind age. I don't think
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: about whether my parents value me. I think about whether
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the people I work with value me, whether the clients
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: they have feel I'm useful to them. That's the contribution.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So at some point your kids are not going to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: be looking to you for that determination. They're going to
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  Speaker 1: be looking inside for the intrinsic value that they have
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: and that they bring it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Ka goes back to what you said before. A children
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  Speaker 2: of the experts in them, and our job is to
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  Speaker 2: help them to actually have the confidence to empower them
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: to live into that expertise that they have about themselves.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: We're not the boss of them.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Are Screens Creating Tension at Home? Tweens, Teens and Screens
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: is a webinar to guide families to healthy, safe superscreen solutions.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Bye Today at happy families dot com dot au slash shop.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: I was a university lecturer for a couple of years
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  Speaker 2: once I finished my postgraduate studies and got my doctorate,
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  Speaker 2: and what I discovered was something that's not unique at all,
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  Speaker 2: and that is that the mature age students, the ones
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: who'd had a gap year, or maybe a gap decade,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: or maybe a gap lifetime. In some cases it was
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  Speaker 2: those mature age students, they weren't trying to get through UNI.
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  Speaker 2: They were trying to get UNI to go through them.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: The quality of their learning was different. How do we
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: help our children to get to that stage? Is it
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: right that we actually just should be encouraging gap years.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously all children mature in different ways at
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: different times, but our seventeen and eighteen year old kids
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  Speaker 2: really ready for what university can be when university works right.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Of course they can be. I think that the way
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: that we need to help our kids is to teach
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: them how to hear their own voice. And that starts
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: with them hearing less of our voice. You know, if
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: we fill up the space with here's what I think
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: is good for you, and here's what I've experienced, and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: here's what I know, and here's what we value as
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a family, and what I think you should value, you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: for survival. We're programmed to take what our parents say
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and integrate it. That's how we survive, you know, that's
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: how we survive. As infants, we make ourselves make sense
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: to our parents, and as they get older, they're still
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: looking for how can I make sure that my mom
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: will take care of me, that my parents will protect me.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: And so we as kids do a lot of agreeing
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: and integrating what we're hearing and saying, Okay, that's that's
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: what's right, that's what the parents say, that's what's right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And there's something in us that's shifting and becoming who
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: we are and becoming independent and separate from parents. And
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: what I think parents need to start to do is
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: earlier than earlier than high school, really start to respect
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that their kids have their own internal compasses and their
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: own internal voices, saying this is what feels right to me,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this is what doesn't feel right to me. And it's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: always my job as a parent, especially when my child
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: is still living with me, to say, okay, I hear that,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: play that out and see where that goes. What do
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you imagine will happen next? Because there's still you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until they're twenty
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: five twenty eight, So it's still my job to help
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: them develop the judgment and be able to anticipate what
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: that idea might lead to. But the basis of it
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: is that they have to be able to hear themselves think,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and they have to see that that may be different
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: from what I think. And they have to learn how
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to tender their own thoughts and their own desires and
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: their own ambitions with my appreciation and my respect, not
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: my effort to replace it with my own, because it
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: makes sense to me.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: So how do we help our students remain resilient? How
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: do we provide some firm direction while also being that
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: soft place for children to land when they're struggling.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that parents feel that because school has
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: such a it's a formal institution and education, formal education
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: is a structure that is now I think alien to
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: parents because it's been a long time since we've been
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in school. It's yeah, they just assume, well, the authority
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: structure of the school knows as much as it should know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: and it's doing the right thing, just like I know
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: as much as I know, and I always try and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. But the fact is that when
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: kids experience, you know, if a kid fails an exam,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: it's not just because the kid didn't study hard enough
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: or didn't learn well enough. Sometimes it's because they weren't
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: told about the exam until, you know, fifteen minutes before
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: it was going to be given, and they weren't prepared
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: or I mean, I saw so many examples when my
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: son was in high school of you know, you've got
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: you've got six classes and assignment and assignments working at
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: cross purposes and and double booked hours and just impossible,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: impossible situations. Parents have to say, yeah, that's not boy,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: they're making a mistake, and I'm really sorry that You've
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: got to, you know, deal with their their error or
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: their policy. And I'm going to help I'm going to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: stand by you and I'm going to help you. But
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it's not all in our it's not all in our power.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: We have to know what we can't fix. So I
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: think that's how to that's how to help students bounce back.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Well, Dinna, it's been really fun talking to you. Thanks
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: so much for your advice, Thanks for sharing what you've shared.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: If people want more information about it, in Iglickman and
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: and the way that you can help their children to
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: boost their academic resilience and to do better at school,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: to find more joy in their learning, and maybe even
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: ways that they can tease out their children's strengths and
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: help their children to be what they want to be
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: rather than what their parents want them to be. Where
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: should they go? What can you help them with?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I offer free consultations. They can just go to away
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: website Adenaglickman dot com, and I would love to talk
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: with them about what great parents they are already.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, you've been really generous with your time. Thanks so
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: much for the conversation.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, great questions.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for Dinna. I hope that you've enjoyed
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: the podcast, the conversation that we've had with Adena Glickman
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: on today's Happy Families podcast. If you'd like to leave
• 17:31
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• 17:33
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• 17:36
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• 17:38
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• 17:43
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• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Oh dear. If you'd like more information about how we
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: can help your family be happier, go to happy families
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: dot com dot au or find us at Instagram or
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: on Facebook at doctor Justin Colson's Happy Families