Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #75 I Turned Out Fine

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#75 I Turned Out Fine · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: It's a Happy Families podcast with Dr Justin Coilson, where
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Luke and Susie, parents of three little boys, and this
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  Speaker 1: is the podcast for those of us who are time
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  Speaker 1: poor parents. But just one answers, Now, when I was
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  Speaker 1: a kid, you turned out all right, didn't you say?
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  Speaker 2: Well, this is the line that we can sometimes hear
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  Speaker 2: and sometimes even think as parents that whole it happened
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  Speaker 2: to me when I was a kid and not turned
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  Speaker 2: out all right.
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  Speaker 1: And so it's a decision between whether or not you
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  Speaker 1: parents your children, allowing them or encouraging them to do
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  Speaker 1: the things that happen with.
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  Speaker 3: You because because you turned out all right.
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  Speaker 1: And when someone who tells us that maybe that method
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  Speaker 1: is not the right method, and we fight back with
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  Speaker 1: I turned out all right, is that a justifiable response
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  Speaker 1: or do we need to stop, take a step back
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  Speaker 1: and maybe reassess the situation.
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  Speaker 2: Dr Justin Coilson from Happy Families dot com dot Au.
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  Speaker 4: That's it.
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  Speaker 5: I know I've heard of him before. We've had a
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  Speaker 5: conversation or two, haven't we.
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  Speaker 2: You've talked about resilient You've got a book about resilient
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  Speaker 2: kids actually how to raise them, and and this is
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: a great question. I think in the midst of that
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  Speaker 2: whole Oh, our kids are going to be fine. Our
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  Speaker 2: kids are going to be resilient and perfect. Is that
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  Speaker 2: happened to me when I was a kid. I turned
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  Speaker 2: out okay, Therefore I.
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  Speaker 4: Can do it to my kids as well.
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  Speaker 5: You know, I was on the Telly I can't actually
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  Speaker 5: remember which morning show it was, but it was one
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  Speaker 5: of the one of the morning shows about a year ago,
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  Speaker 5: and they were doing a poll about whether we should
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  Speaker 5: be making it illegal to smack our kids, right, And
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  Speaker 5: I think I was the only voice in Australia that
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  Speaker 5: was saying it should be illegal. You know, it's not
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  Speaker 5: okay to smack your kids. And the overwhelming response from
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  Speaker 5: people on social media as these things were read.
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  Speaker 4: Out was well, I was a smack.
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  Speaker 5: I was smacked as a kid, and I turned out fine,
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  Speaker 5: and I just kind of it's been under my skin
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  Speaker 5: ever since it got in my crawl because the research
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  Speaker 5: evidence is absolutely indisputable. There is not a single piece
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  Speaker 5: of evidence that shows that there are any positive outcomes
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  Speaker 5: from smacking our kids. And we've got fifty sixty years
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  Speaker 5: of research evidence on this. Now about abuse, I'm talking
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  Speaker 5: about what Americans called spanking. Okay, so the research from
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  Speaker 5: around the world looks at spanking or smacking rather than
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  Speaker 5: abusive behaviors, and I will suggest that that is on
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  Speaker 5: a continuum of abuse anyway, and the research shows there's
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  Speaker 5: no but there's no there's no justifiable reason for it.
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  Speaker 5: And yet we hear again and again, well I was
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  Speaker 5: smacked as a child, and I turned out it's.
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  Speaker 4: Not just smacking.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've got we've gone through that debate because
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  Speaker 1: you're not advocating for lack of discipline or of course,
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  Speaker 1: like there's you know, you're really strong and discipline.
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  Speaker 3: It's just how you go.
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  Speaker 4: I just don't need to be guided.
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  Speaker 1: But there's other areas other than smacking where this kind
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  Speaker 1: of justification comes up a lot. We've talked about alcohol
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  Speaker 1: and whether or not you allow a teenager to try
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  Speaker 1: a beer while it's under your and that's what happened
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  Speaker 1: to me. So therefore, and I turned out, Okay, great example.
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  Speaker 1: So everything that we go through where someone challenges bike helmets, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we didn't wear helmets when we were a cure. And yeah,
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  Speaker 1: my parents drive cars without.
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  Speaker 3: Seatbelts, sometimes without seats.
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  Speaker 1: My dad drove a car without a license for years
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  Speaker 1: out in the farming community. He turned out fine, he
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  Speaker 1: could drive, he was no problems. But then when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to your kids, like when how does how you
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  Speaker 1: were brought up justify turning out fine to this? And
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  Speaker 1: so this is an interesting thing to explore. How valid
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  Speaker 1: a response is I turned out fine to making some decisions.
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  Speaker 4: You're getting be steamed up already. Oh gosh.
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  Speaker 5: Well, there's two psychological things. I'm going to get a
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  Speaker 5: little bit technical for a second. There's this thing called
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  Speaker 5: an anecdotal fallacy. Okay, So an anecdote, it's something that
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  Speaker 5: happens to you or to someone. Therefore you've got to
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  Speaker 5: sample size of one one. Yeah, And it's a fallacy
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  Speaker 5: because well, a fallacy is just this idea that's incorrect.
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  Speaker 5: So something happens to me, and because it didn't lead
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  Speaker 5: to anything negative for me, therefore it could happen to
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  Speaker 5: everybody else and nothing negative will happen to them either,
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  Speaker 5: And it flies in.
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  Speaker 4: The face of what research is all about.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 5: Research says, let's look at what happens with everybody and say,
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  Speaker 5: on every this is the outcome.
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  Speaker 4: We can ext normal.
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  Speaker 3: The normal curve, and we go through this. In radio research,
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  Speaker 3: all the time.
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  Speaker 1: If we try and program a radio station to the
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  Speaker 1: weird good, the things that turned out fine in spite of,
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  Speaker 1: then we would actually would never achieve the things that
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  Speaker 1: we want to achieve. If we the program towards the
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  Speaker 1: weird bad, the thing the bad things that happened in
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  Speaker 1: spite of it would be horrible. We program towards the
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  Speaker 1: normal curve.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where because everybody in the middle.
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  Speaker 5: There's a few people at the either end of the spectrum,
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  Speaker 5: but everybody sort of sits in the middle. So the
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  Speaker 5: anecdotal fallacy pretty much means if if it happens to
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  Speaker 5: you and you turned out fine, maybe you're a little
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  Speaker 5: bit weird.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly what else?
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  Speaker 5: Oh, Well, there's a thing that psychologists call the availability heuristic,
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  Speaker 5: and that's where we kind of rely on information that's
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  Speaker 5: easily accessible to us so that we can make our judgments.
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  Speaker 5: But the reality is we don't know everything, and so
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  Speaker 5: if we're just relying on what we know, well, I mean,
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  Speaker 5: that's kind of what we how we get through life anyway. Right,
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  Speaker 5: But if there's a whole lot of research out there
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  Speaker 5: with experts telling us we've studied this with.
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  Speaker 4: Tiens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people.
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  Speaker 5: That's supposed to diminish our reliance on that availability heuristic.
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  Speaker 5: But a lot of people don't pay any attention.
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  Speaker 1: So point number one is you've got a sample size
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  Speaker 1: of one. Maybe you've got five people around you, and
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  Speaker 1: you've got a sample size of five with anecdotal stories.
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  Speaker 1: But in this go, well, you're only you've only got
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  Speaker 1: five stories available to you. Let's have a look at
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  Speaker 1: one hundred or a thousand or ten thousand. I'll see
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  Speaker 1: whether it's consistent with the rest of them.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 5: But more than that, guys, I think that I turned
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  Speaker 5: out fine is an arrogant dismissal of what is an
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  Speaker 5: often well thought out and deeply evidenced.
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  Speaker 4: Well substantiated point of view. I turned out.
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  Speaker 5: Fine is a statement that requires no perspective. It requires
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  Speaker 5: no engagement with an alternative perspective. It closes off discourse
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  Speaker 5: and promotes this singular point of view that's completely oblivious
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  Speaker 5: to any other alternatives that might be enlightened. Sorry, I
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  Speaker 5: used a lot of big words then.
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  Speaker 2: But basically you're saying you're only really thinking about the
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  Speaker 2: people who are your fans when you say I turned
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  Speaker 2: out fine, yeah, with the people who are your enemies
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  Speaker 2: say the same thing about you, I guess so.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, well so when I in some of the teaching
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  Speaker 1: I do with sort of media students, one of the
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  Speaker 1: things I'm talked about is feedback, and I go, if
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  Speaker 1: you get a complaint that is ridiculous and wrong in
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  Speaker 1: coming from someone who's completely unqualified, my challenge to them
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  Speaker 1: is you still need to stop and look and go
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  Speaker 1: what can I learn from this? What's in their opinion
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  Speaker 1: that maybe can help me do what I do better?
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  Speaker 1: Because I go otherwise you're just being arrogant that you
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  Speaker 1: know everything. Maybe any bit of data can help you
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  Speaker 1: see something more. So, even in this situation, you go
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  Speaker 1: in the end, you might disagree with the premise of
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  Speaker 1: the research or whatever, but at least be open to
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  Speaker 1: explore there's other information than just your anecdotal experience. Don't
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  Speaker 1: be so arrogant to block off the possibility of learning.
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  Speaker 5: And what I'd also say, Luke, is that you know
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  Speaker 5: you're saying that about somebody who doesn't know anything.
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  Speaker 4: So when an expert who spent years.
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  Speaker 5: Or decades researching a certain thing has something to say,
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  Speaker 5: it's probably.
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  Speaker 4: Worth being open.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely Okay, so we're taken away the arrogance, we're
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  Speaker 1: taken away the dismiss or there could be other information
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  Speaker 1: outside of our own experiences.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, but last of all, I mean, what's fine anyway? Right?
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  Speaker 5: I turned out fine? Where's our threshold for fine? Is
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  Speaker 5: it staying out of the police station or the mental
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  Speaker 5: institution meaning you turned out fine? Or is it some
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  Speaker 5: other kind of a benchmark when we say I turned
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  Speaker 5: out fine? If we're doing the exact same thing that
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  Speaker 5: happened to us that research suggests is not a good
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  Speaker 5: thing to happen, I would argue that perhaps we didn't
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  Speaker 5: turn out so fine, and it would be valuable to
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  Speaker 5: at least consider our ways.
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  Speaker 1: And isn't it one of the most common things that
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  Speaker 1: we say as parents that I just want my kids
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  Speaker 1: to have more better that we Actually we don't want
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  Speaker 1: our children to turn out with the same possibilities and
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  Speaker 1: opportunities that we have, no matter how good our life was.
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  Speaker 3: We want more for them, don't we.
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  Speaker 4: So we've got to be better, So.
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  Speaker 3: We have to do things something different.
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  Speaker 4: Does that mean that we didn't turn out fine? No,
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  Speaker 4: I'm now confused.
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  Speaker 2: Doctor Justin Coilson, thanks for leaving us with the question.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, make us think for ourselves.
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• 8:17
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• 8:20
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• 8:24
  Speaker 2: go to Happy Families dot com dot au. Or if
• 8:26
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• 8:28
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