Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #211 We Don't Need To Know Everything with Susan Engel

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#211 We Don't Need To Know Everything with Susan Engel · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
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Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.
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Speaker 2: Now, parents and feuchers should let go of the idea
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Speaker 2: that they need to know everything and they need to
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Speaker 2: be right. Way better to be wrong and to not
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Speaker 2: know things and share with your childly experience of getting
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Speaker 2: to know something you don't know.
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Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, My mom
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Speaker 1: and dad.
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Speaker 3: Hello once again. This is doctor Justin Coulson, the author
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Speaker 3: of six books about raising happy families. I've got six daughters,
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Speaker 3: I've got one wife who I call Lylie, but you
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Speaker 3: probably call missus Happy Families.
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Speaker 4: Last week we began a series of conversations with Susan
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Speaker 4: Engel about the psychology of education and curiosity in children.
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Speaker 2: One of the mistakes that people make is the idea
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Speaker 2: that if your child isn't doing something that an adult
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Speaker 2: structured for them, they're not progressing, they're not enriching their minds.
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Speaker 4: It's so great to have Susan back on the podcast
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Speaker 4: this week.
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Speaker 3: Susan's the author of a bunch of books, including a
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Speaker 3: book that I think is compulsory reading for anyone who
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Speaker 3: works in education. If you work with children, and young people,
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Speaker 3: The hungry Mind. The origins of curiosity in childhood is
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Speaker 3: I think it's a must read, and that's what we've
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Speaker 3: been talking about. Susan's also just released The Intellectual Lives
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Speaker 3: of Children, and like Kylie said, she spends the time
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Speaker 3: lecturing and researching in psychology and education.
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Speaker 4: Thanks again for joining us on the podcast, Susan. When
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Speaker 4: Justin was sharing your book with me, he shared a
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Speaker 4: quote that really impacted me and I want to read
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Speaker 4: it slowly. You first of all give us a definition
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Speaker 4: of curiosity by saying that it's the urge to know more.
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Speaker 4: But this is what really grabbed me. You said, it's
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Speaker 4: an urge that has typically sparked when expectations are violated.
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Speaker 4: So good, So let's talk about curiosity. I mean, how
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Speaker 4: do we help our children become more curious?
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Speaker 2: You know? One of the things they talk about in
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Speaker 2: the book is this idea that at birth, children begins
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Speaker 2: seeking patterns and familiar They know the difference between what's
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Speaker 2: familiar and unfamiliar. So right away they show signs of
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Speaker 2: knowing the difference between say, their mother's voice or their
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Speaker 2: father's voice. But often at birth it's their biological mother's
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Speaker 2: voice that they're familiar with because we think they heard
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Speaker 2: it in utero. So and very quickly they know the
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Speaker 2: difference between the people that they see a lot and
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Speaker 2: the people they don't. And then quickly that extends to
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Speaker 2: other things they're familiar with and their ability to respond
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Speaker 2: differently or they do respond differently when they're shown something different.
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Speaker 2: And that's what I call in both that book and
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Speaker 2: the new book a novelty detector. It's one of the
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Speaker 2: most powerful tools that babies are born with. And the
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Speaker 2: second piece of that is that they have a great
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Speaker 2: urge to become comfortable with they're familiar with whatever isn't
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Speaker 2: familiar to them, So they want to incorporate what's new
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Speaker 2: into what they know. So that and when you think
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Speaker 2: about it, none of us could survive if everything was
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Speaker 2: constantly surprise to us. We depend on the fact that
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Speaker 2: many things become familiar in routine, whether it's the people
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Speaker 2: you see every day, or the routines of breakfast or
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Speaker 2: putting your shoes on, or what's around the corner from
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Speaker 2: your house. This is not unique to humans. Rats have
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Speaker 2: this characteristic too. They seek to sort of tame the
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Speaker 2: unknown what is so interesting, So part of it is
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Speaker 2: an urge to make the unfamiliar familiar, and that's there
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Speaker 2: at birth. One of the things that makes humans so
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Speaker 2: cool is they had this particular kind of curiosity, which
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Speaker 2: is called epistemic curiosity, the eagerness to find out more
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Speaker 2: about why things are the way they are, how things happened.
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Speaker 2: You clearly had a lot of that because faced with
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Speaker 2: a sense that you weren't doing well as a dad,
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Speaker 2: or that your kids weren't doing what you wanted them to,
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Speaker 2: you could have done a million different things. You could
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Speaker 2: have stuck with it and been angry and just kept
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Speaker 2: trying the old approach, but you didn't. You not only
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Speaker 2: changed your approach, you wanted to understand more about what
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Speaker 2: under you know, what was going on, the whys and
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Speaker 2: the house and the whats of it all. And that's
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Speaker 2: a fundamental human characteristic and a very powerful one. I
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Speaker 2: could go on and on about all that it explains
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Speaker 2: in human in the best of human behavior, what's interesting
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Speaker 2: about little kids is they very quickly become very familiar
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Speaker 2: with the every day so, you know, the bottle of
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Speaker 2: juice instead of milk is no longer a surprise to them,
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Speaker 2: and the dog walking in the door isn't a surprise,
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Speaker 2: and the grandmother or babysitter or a neighbor who comes
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Speaker 2: in they get familiar with and they start to be
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Speaker 2: interested in a slightly what will I say, a subtler
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Speaker 2: level of surprise. They begin looking for surprise in more
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Speaker 2: fine grain ways. So suddenly it's which toys different from
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Speaker 2: the others, or which animal that they haven't seen before.
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Speaker 2: They almost are looking for surprises in the things that
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Speaker 2: interest them. So go back to the dinosaur expert, the
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Speaker 2: five year old dinosaur expert. Very quickly, they know everything
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Speaker 2: there is to know about They know about everything about
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Speaker 2: t Rex and whatever else the other dinosaurs are, and
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Speaker 2: they begin the real little young five year old experts
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Speaker 2: begin to be surprised about subtler things, Which things that
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Speaker 2: t rex can and can't fight, whether the t rex
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Speaker 2: can or can't stand the cold. I mean, I'm making
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Speaker 2: this up. I know nothing about dinosaurs. But so part
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Speaker 2: of the task for grown ups is to give their
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Speaker 2: children enough experiences, whether it's books or things or stories,
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Speaker 2: or walks different ways to go to school, or noticing
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Speaker 2: things in the grocery store. It doesn't have to be fancy,
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Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be a museum, but giving them
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Speaker 2: enough thing so they can be surprised because the same
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Speaker 2: old things will no longer be surprising to them. And
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Speaker 2: the only other thing I would say about all of
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Speaker 2: this in response to what you said is that curious
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Speaker 2: parents help encourage children to be curious. And it's hard
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Speaker 2: to fake that. When I give workshops to teachers and
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Speaker 2: I begin the workshop by saying, so start by telling
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Speaker 2: me what you're really curious about, many teachers, at least
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Speaker 2: in the United States, are thrown by that question. They
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Speaker 2: think I'm asking about their professional interests in education or
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Speaker 2: curriculum or godess assessment. I'm not. I'm asking them one
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Speaker 2: thing in their life you know they can't get enough
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Speaker 2: of they need to know more about. And the reason
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Speaker 2: I ask them that is because research from my own lab,
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Speaker 2: among other places, shows that kids are influenced by the
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Speaker 2: cureious behavior and conversation of the grown ups around them.
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Speaker 2: So one way to encourage them to notice surprise, to
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Speaker 2: pursue what intrigues them or violates their expectations is to
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Speaker 2: allow them to have experiences that will surprise them and
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Speaker 2: that will offer them mysteries to be solved. And the
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Speaker 2: other way is to be curious yourself.
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Speaker 3: I really love that. And a spontaneous thought has just
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Speaker 3: occurred to me that I want to run by you
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Speaker 3: in this age of perfectionism, in this age that we've
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Speaker 3: got work to do, and children have to learn, and
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Speaker 3: we've got to grade them, and we've got to get
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Speaker 3: them through the curriculum, and in a world where parents
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Speaker 3: are busy and they like the house to be clean,
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Speaker 3: and the children are supposed to be scheduled, instructured and
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Speaker 3: all that kind of thing. And I know that in
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Speaker 3: some ways I'm making a caricature because most people actually
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Speaker 3: aren't quite that extreme, but that general sense of this
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Speaker 3: is what we're all about. We're about productivity and efficiency
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Speaker 3: and maximizing and so forth. I have a hypothesis that's
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Speaker 3: sort of popped into my head as you in saying this.
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Speaker 3: I'm curious about this season. If I was a parent
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Speaker 3: who wanted to give my child experiences where they want
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Speaker 3: to know more because expectations are violated, what would happen
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Speaker 3: if I consistently made intentional mistakes while I was doing
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Speaker 3: things with my children? Would that promote curiosity?
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Speaker 2: Well, as you've probably already caught this from what I've
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Speaker 2: said before, I'm kind of wary of parents being too
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Speaker 2: deliberate about their parenting. In a different book, I wrote
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Speaker 2: Four Parents, I talked about this idea that parenting isn't
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Speaker 2: a job, it's a relationship, and I worry about parents
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Speaker 2: trying to act like it's another thing they can get
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Speaker 2: an A plus in.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Sure, No, that's not quite what I was what I
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Speaker 3: was meaning, Maybe I framed the question incorrectly. I'm thinking,
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Speaker 3: if I'm in the middle of cooking and I decide
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Speaker 3: that I'm going to cook a batch of cookies, and
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Speaker 3: instead of following the recipe, we're going to say, well,
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Speaker 3: what happens if we had too much salt? Why don't
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Speaker 3: we taste the cookies with too much salt? And let's learn,
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Speaker 3: Let's learn through making errors. Or maybe I'm just going
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Speaker 3: to let my child do it with my supervision, but
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Speaker 3: I'm not going to give them any directions, so if
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Speaker 3: they get it wrong, we're going to highlight what they've
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Speaker 3: done and see that this is not in alignment with expectation,
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Speaker 3: and therefore we may not get the same result. What
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Speaker 3: can we learn from that? I'm kind of thinking, as
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Speaker 3: children become their own little naive scientists, they're going to
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Speaker 3: make mistakes. With appropriate parental oversight and intervention, we get
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Speaker 3: to sort of make mistakes together, and as we make
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Speaker 3: those mistakes, surely that's going to help us to learn
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Speaker 3: more than sitting there and following the directions in the
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Speaker 3: recipe book perfectly.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely and one piece. So one thing you're talking about,
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Speaker 2: which is wonderful is speculating outside out loud with your kids.
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Speaker 2: I wonder what would happen if we use cinnamon instead
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Speaker 2: of sugar, Or I wonder what'll happen if we put
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Speaker 2: it the in the fridge before we cook. It's something
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Speaker 2: I have done, because.
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Speaker 3: What happens when you put the deal in the fridge
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Speaker 3: before you cook it?
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Speaker 2: What better? The cookies are better, The butter gets cold
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Speaker 2: and the cookies are more tender.
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Speaker 3: Oh the dough. I thought you said the deal so sorry,
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Speaker 3: So when you put the dough in the fridge, it
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Speaker 3: changes the way the cookies cised.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I never knew that.
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Speaker 3: Really, very good to This has been such a good conversation.
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Speaker 2: Already useful, right, but speculating, being willing to try things
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Speaker 2: out with your kids is wonderful because you're modeling for them.
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Speaker 2: The kind of thinking you want them to engage in,
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Speaker 2: and it's more fun. I mean. So, one thing that
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Speaker 2: this touches on that's very important is that parents and
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Speaker 2: teachers should let go of the idea that they need
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Speaker 2: to know everything and they need to be right, need
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Speaker 2: better to be wrong and to not know things, and
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Speaker 2: and share with your child the experience of getting to
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Speaker 2: know something you don't know, because that's what curiosity is
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Speaker 2: all about, the pleasure of expecting to know something that
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Speaker 2: you don't yet.
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Speaker 3: Now, Susan, when my children were young, I used to
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Speaker 3: say to them, I'd give them an answer, I teach
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Speaker 3: them something. I knew everything, And when they'd say, Dad,
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Speaker 3: how do you know? I would say, well, I know everything,
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Speaker 3: because I thought dads was supposed to know everything, and
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Speaker 3: I'd puped my chest out say I know everything. But
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Speaker 3: I've learned over the years that that was one of
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Speaker 3: the worst things that I could say, because my children
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Speaker 3: not only thought that I became the oracle and you know,
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Speaker 3: the font of all wisdom, but as they got older,
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Speaker 3: I started to discover that I couldn't answer all of
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Speaker 3: their questions and I didn't know everything, and their their
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Speaker 3: faith in me dropped because now I was no longer
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Speaker 3: as impervious to curiosity. You know, like I, I didn't
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Speaker 3: know everything, and they didn't like that I didn't know everything,
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Speaker 3: and I had to I've had to really work very,
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Speaker 3: very hard to undoctrinate my children. I don't know if
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Speaker 3: that's a word.
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Speaker 2: But it's a great word you should stick with.
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Speaker 3: I will thank you to help them to realize, you know,
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Speaker 3: dad doesn't know everything, and neither his mum. But let's
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Speaker 3: figure this out together.
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Speaker 2: That's a great, a great approach. And as I said,
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Speaker 2: when you by by speculating that life, by being wrong,
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Speaker 2: by thinking, Hi, I wonder why that didn't go the
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Speaker 2: way I thought, or I realized that I have no
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Speaker 2: idea what's going to happen when we do this, let's
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Speaker 2: try it together, I wonder what will happen. All of
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Speaker 2: those are the best tools you can give your kid
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Speaker 2: academically and intellectually, which is to think, to speculate, to
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Speaker 2: imagine different endings to something, to reflect on what went
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Speaker 2: wrong and learn from it. Those are the best intellectual
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Speaker 2: tools you could equip your child with, and they happen
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Speaker 2: not by knowing everything, but by showing them the pleasure
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Speaker 2: of not knowing things and coming to learn things.
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Speaker 4: Susan, it's been so nice spending some time with you
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Speaker 4: here on the Happy Families podcast. We're going to continue
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Speaker 4: this discussion next week. If you want to check out
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Speaker 4: some of the books that we've already mentioned, they are
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Speaker 4: for your once again, The Hungry Mind, The Origins of
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Speaker 4: Curiosity in Childhood, and The Intellectual Lives of Children.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll put some links to those in the show notes. Hey,
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Speaker 3: just very quickly, a five star review came through from
13:11
Speaker 3: Lil Louis XIX. I don't know if that's like Little
13:14
Speaker 3: Louis nineteen or something like that, a Roman numeral or
13:17
Speaker 3: something like that, but it was a five star review
13:18
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to read it. Short but certainly sweet.
13:21
Speaker 3: That's what they said about the podcast, and that's what
13:23
Speaker 3: I'm saying about the review because it's five stars, and
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Speaker 3: it just says being a follower of Justin for some
13:28
Speaker 3: time now, but so grateful for him and Kylie bringing
13:31
Speaker 3: these short, sweet and informative parenting podcasts. They're real relatable
13:34
Speaker 3: and these parenting nuggets are easy to digest. Love your
13:37
Speaker 3: voices to guys, so soothing. How nice is that that's
13:41
Speaker 3: so nice. We really appreciate the five star ratings and
13:44
Speaker 3: reviews that have been coming through thick and fast lately
13:46
Speaker 3: via Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
13:49
Speaker 3: Please keep them coming. They take about sixty seconds to
13:52
Speaker 3: jot down and to put into your podcast machine, but
13:56
Speaker 3: what happens is when you do it, other people find
13:58
Speaker 3: out about the podcasts and make their families so little
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Speaker 3: Louis nineteen thank you so much for your five star review.
14:03
Speaker 3: If you do enjoy the podcast, tell your friends or
14:07
Speaker 3: leave a rating and review. We're grateful for Justin Rouland
14:09
Speaker 3: from Bridge Media for producing the podcast and making it
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Speaker 3: sound as good as it does. Also, Craig Bruce is
14:14
Speaker 3: our executive producer, and if you'd like more information about
14:17
Speaker 3: how you can make your family happy, please go to
14:19
Speaker 3: Happyfamilies dot com dot au