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"Parents Will Be Dead One Day" — Former Stanford Dean on Why Overprotecting Kids Backfires · The Parent Tap

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the uncomfortable question.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: If your kid has never handled a small risk without you, what happens with the first big one, online or in the real world, when you're not there?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Julie Lycott Haymes spent a decade as a Stanford dean seeing exactly that.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they're going to give us the fix.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: How to hand over control in safe, small doses starting this weekend.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Plus the part they say no one talks about.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: What to do when your grown kid comes back home.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's the most common way loving parents accidentally make their kids less safe?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: What do loving parents do that inadvertently accidentally make their kids less safe?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to go with overprotection.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is a mindset that the world is scary, unsafe, and unpredictable, which to some degree it is.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then the parent decides, so therefore, I have to always be there.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have to always have them in my arms.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have to always hold them by the hand.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have to effectively bubble wrap their existence, protect them from everything I can discern might harm them.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's very lovingly intended, but it leads to a child whose body and mind and instincts are unprepared to meet the challenges that the world presents.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: A child grows stronger, a greater sense of agency, which is a sense of control, greater sense of self-efficacy, which is a sense that I'm capable by literally doing the things of life.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to be there to prevent the horrible things from happening.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the little bumps and nicks and scratches along the way actually teach them to be smarter and wiser and inherently more capable of protecting themselves out there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, over protection.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's a great one to mention.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so you are a Stanford dean.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: What did you see an incoming freshman that made you write how to raise an adult?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I was dean on the Stanford campus from 1998 to 2012.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of that, my colleagues and I began witnessing the arrival of helicopter parents at the university level.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Helicopter parenting started in the 80s, in the mid-80s.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so when those first children to experience helicopter parenting came to college, their parents came with them.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't be surprising.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make clear this wasn't a Stanford thing.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: This was Stanford witnessing on its campus what people were witnessing on campuses all across the country, public and private, small, medium, large, every tier.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I happened to be at Stanford when this trend was becoming noticeable.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So parents were effectively, in the way I'll sum it up is they were still acting like their college student was a child.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So they wanted to argue with the faculty member who taught chemistry about the grade the faculty member gave their child, the way they might have argued with a teacher in the fourth grade or the 10th grade.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: If their student was having difficulty with their roommate, they wanted someone else to handle it, or they wanted to step in and handle it, or they wanted the two sets of parents to handle it, as opposed to expecting that two 18-year-olds could over time work out difficulties.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when any little problem happened, and this was particularly exacerbated once the smartphone came into everyone's hands, because then students and parents were really texting frequently throughout the day.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't until 2007.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was every little thing that went wrong in the life of the college student.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: The student's instinct was, let me text my parent and they'll handle it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Even if the parent is a time zone or five time zones or 10 time zones away.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: My parent is my resource instead of my brain is my resource, my instinct is my resource, the advisors all around me on this campus, my peers are my resources.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so these behaviors were bewildering to those of us who'd been working with college students for a long time to see a change in what 18-year-olds were now seemingly capable of doing, seemingly desiring by way of connection with their parents.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: As a Gen Xer, we were not close to our parents.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was college was freedom.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, I'm done, I'm out, I'm doing my own thing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was striking that millennials, who are the generation I'm talking about at the time, were not didn't seem to mind that their parents were hyper-involved at the very local level of their college lives.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's the harm?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: We could tell that it was impacting their agency, their self-efficacy, their resilience.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: They were being acted upon by well-meaning parents still, rather than being the main actor in their own life.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then this, of course, leads to mental health challenges like anxiety, depression.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: You get a sense of learned helplessness when too much of life is handled for you and ultimately that harms you.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's you called it a fine line.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would say it's more a gradual letting go from the time your kid starts to walk, they're walking away.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And your job is to keep them safe, make sure they don't walk into the ocean, walk into traffic, you know, walk into some poisonous environment.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: But short of disasters and emergencies, you're supposed to be nearby, but let them start to figure things out.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you move from being the handler in their life through their elementary years and to their middle school years to being more of a collaborator to ultimately being a consultant.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you can sort of see that the handlers' hands are on everything.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: The collaborator is kind of the, you know, nearby to help, to assist.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the consultant only gets involved when asked.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we're constantly moving in that direction as parents, or we should be.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's a gradation, it's, you know, the slow movement of change.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: As the child gets older, they should get more responsibility.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: You should have less control.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, rules are important.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Rules like how much screen time and we all eat dinner together and no doing this after a certain time.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's important for families to establish rules and expectations around behavior that are reasonable.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not in any way advocating a laxity.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's really more of a respect that your child is here to learn from you and to be cared for by you until they can care for themselves and turn they've until they've learned enough that they can really figure more and more out for themselves.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a very respectful thing.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: This little being has been given to me by God or the universe, and I'm here to teach it and love it and hold it and feed it and shelter it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but then at some point, right, my delight is that they've grown to a place of capability and they won't need me forever.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully they'll love me forever and I'll love them forever, but they're capable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the goal.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's the win at parenting.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: My I have raised someone who's really capable of largely doing for themselves.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and so I got to get into the phone tracking because again, it's one of those safety tools, but it could be a trust problem as well.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, how would you set that up in your house?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I need to be clear, Ryan.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a parent, my kids are 27 and 25, which means if you do the math, I largely escaped the omnipresence of homes, of phones in the lives of kids.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: My kids are just a little bit older.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I do appreciate that this is an important balance.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've actually written a piece on the harm of what I call surveillance parenting, which is the obsession with knowing every little moment of our kids' lives from the academic grades portal tracking where we find out about our kids' test results before they do.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're constantly in there checking how did they do today at school, as if everything matters.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, the insistence on GPS tracking a child through their adulthood is something I call surveillance.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, you know, prior to these smartphones and these GPS apps, the only people routinely surveilled 24-7 are psychiatric patients, convicts, prisoners, parolees, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: People who've really had to trade their right to privacy because something bigger and scary, sad, or bad has happened.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now we routinely violate the privacy of children in the name of safety.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: So of course, safety matters.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the question is when does it become this kind of surveillance that really undermines our kids' uh sense of I'm in control of my life, you know, I'm not being watched, I'm not constantly being hovered over and managed.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really clear that by the time somebody gets to their teenage years, certainly college, that this needs to be a conversation about how much tracking are we going to do and why are we doing it?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes parents are deeply afraid based on their own lived experience.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I could never imagine harm coming to my kid, therefore I'm going to be watching them at all times.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we don't want harm to come to our kids.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: All of us lived this long by never being surveilled through GPS apps.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So how did how did our parents look after us?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: How did our parents taught us how to be safe and smart out there?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Our parents taught us how to develop instincts around strangers and around different environments.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Those things still need to happen.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So our kid doesn't feel like, well, I'm fine because my parents are watching me, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: We want the kid to know, no, I'm still obligated to survey my environment and figure out who I'm showing up with and their behaviors and mine.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: We can't let our surveillance technology mean that our kids don't feel the obligation to kind of be in charge of themselves.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a balance.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's using technology, hopefully not obsessively, to get the information we need so that we can feel that we know what's going on, gradually reducing that over time as young people age.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: People need privacy.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: People need to, at some point in their lives, go places that they choose to go to without everybody in their life necessarily knowing where they are.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's important to have privacy and boundaries around what we share with others.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's so true.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: How did you raise them so they they come to you when something bad happens?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do they still do that?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what advice would you give parents to make sure that your kids aren't hiding stuff that happens in their life, such as maybe online activity that goes wrong, a bad post, sketchy DMs, scams, whatever, versus they they come to you for anything that they may encounter in their life?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I've learned from the parenting experts I read, and you know, behavioral scientists and psychologists is probably the greatest thing we can offer our children is a regular connection that is, you know, we talk with them, we check in with them, we eat meals with them, we play games with them.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have a healthy connection in life that is loving, that is engaging, where we demonstrate we're interested in them.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not what happened in your homework today or why haven't you done this or you need to do that?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the directive critique style of parenting.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let me demonstrate that I know you, that I care to know you, let me demonstrate a curiosity about what's going on for you rather than judgment.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: When we foster that kind of relationship with children, which starts when they're very, very young.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: If it's going to be authentic, it needs, you hopefully you're starting as young as possible with this, but you can always switch it up if you haven't been doing it that way.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're basically saying, you matter, I respect you, you're a human, I care about you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's the basis that you need to have in place before you can ever have the tougher conversation about behaviors that might be concerning, friends that might be concerning, and so on.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So they come to you if they trust you.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: They come to you to tell you about the scary, sad, or bad thing if they're not afraid of you, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're afraid that your judgment is going to be so large or your punishment is going to be so extreme when they tell you that thing, they're never going to tell you that thing.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so as parents, we have to say, what's the greater harm?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Is it, I would never want my kid to do that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to punish them and make sure they know they that is not acceptable in our house.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: They do it anyway.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've lost any kind of connection with my child, and now they're in greater trouble because they're doing the bad thing and they don't have a trusted parent they can come to, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the trust, the love, the daily connection where they feel seen, safe, and heard around us is probably the greatest protective factor against those things.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we are concerned about something, it's not, hey, what are you doing?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've talked about this, you're bad, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: That whole judgy critiquey thing, it's more, hey, I'm curious.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I sense that some things may be going on.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always here to talk.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here without judgment.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here to help you learn and grow.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly I'm here with love and of course, interest in keeping you safe.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: When our own emotions are regulated and we're not freaking out and we're not anxious or angry, we we become a safer person for our kids to come to.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I do feel my kids are so comfortable coming to us with stuff.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me and my partner Dan feel very proud because as Gen Xers, we didn't really go to our parents for stuff because we were afraid.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, we've raised kids who aren't afraid.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: They they respect us, they know we know a lot, but they don't seem to fear coming to us with things that they've done or had happened to them that, you know, maybe problematic or scary.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I hope my kids will come to with your kids as they as they become young adults and and still have them come to you for, you know, for life's challenges and obstacles, I suppose.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: What are some life skills you feel like every kid should have before they they leave the nest?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote about this a lot.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: You've already mentioned my book, How to Raise an Adult.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is the uh book on the harm of of overparenting.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, in it I was really clear like these are the skills an 18-year-old should have, having a child who is neurodivergent, coming to appreciate that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So my advice sometimes comes across as really strict.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: By 18, they must.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little softer now.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, people need skills.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it this way: parents will be dead one day.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, a long time from now, we'll be gone.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to know that our kids can make it in life without us.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a big picture of why are we parenting and toward what end.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, skills that they need are things like I can ask for help when I need it, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's I can ask for help in my environment.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I can go up to a store clerk, I can ask a colleague or a boss at work, I can flag down somebody if I'm really stuck.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Smartphones have in some ways negated the need for, you know, talking to people, but we won't always have access to our smartphone.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: We won't always be able to go there for the answer.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Our environment is full of humans who can often help us.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And to know that I can do that, that's an important skill, which is undermined if a parent has always done the asking of the hard questions.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: They should be able to make their own appointments, doctor's appointment, dentist appointment, eyeglasses appointment, pick up the phone, get on the website, whatever it is, make the appointment.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is a life skill, and they've got to know how to do it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: How to get themselves from here to there.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Are they walking?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are they biking?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are they using a ride share?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Are they using public transportation?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are they driving?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people need to be able to make their way around their environment.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Reading maps is an important life skill.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, being able to not just have the the you know, the AI voice on your phone tell you where to go next, but you know, when that isn't working, can you read a map?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Can you figure out, you know, how to get from here to there, how to prepare food, how to speak to authority figures, right?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: You go from having teachers to having professors if you go to college, you go from having teachers to having bosses in the workplace.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if a parent has always navigated the tough conversations for you when things have gone wrong with a grade, with a deadline, you're not capable now of being the one to do that.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And now the stakes are higher because it's college or the workplace, and you're frightened of talking to authority.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So these are these are examples of you know, the everyday skills a person needs to have.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Manage money, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: How does money work?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: How do I make more of it?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: How do I protect it?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: How do I spend it wisely?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So filling out forms is the last thing I'll say.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: When parents have always just, I'll fill it out, whether it's the camp form or the, you know, form for school or what have you, then they become the parents who are filling out the college applications and the parents who feel the need to fill out the forms the college is requiring.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're filling out every job application.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then the kid gets a call.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, we want to interview you for the job.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the kid's like, what job?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't even know.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mom, sign them up for a job interview, right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just really taking the reins that you've had in your hand of your kid's life and handing the reins gently over to your kids, standing by.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have it?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do they seem to know what they're doing?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have evidence of that?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be there anymore.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: My kids got the reins in their own life.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I hear the overprotective helicopter parents in my head right now.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to throw this out there.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: How this world does seem more dangerous versus when I grew up.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you could you could attest to that too.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the overabundance of information when something bad happens, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we hear it often.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But is it is it the reality or like how do we manage our fear about that?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what it does, and so it doesn't become your kids' fear as well.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Ryan, I think you're asking the biggest and most important question about parenting, frankly.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the role our anxiety and fear as parents plays in limiting our children's ability to experience the world and grow.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: You said, you know, isn't the world less safe?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it, you know, more problematic uh than it was when you were young?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: When I was young, the answer is no.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Violent crime against people of all ages is down in this country.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So why do we perceive that it's unsafe?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly the reason you said we've got access to everything going on in the world at all times through this little device that lives in our pockets and hands and purses and bags.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're aware of bad things happening around the world, in our country, in our state, in our town, in our neighborhood, far more aware than humans have ever been before.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so it creates this constant anxiety in us.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're constantly scanning the environment for the next threat.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: We get the information with a notice on our smartphone, and you know, we sort of feel like, yeah, I'm justified in being afraid because bad things are constantly happening when in fact they are not.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the chance of being abducted by a stranger is less than the chance of being hit by lightning.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: How many of us fear being hit by lightning constantly?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So um so our anxieties are there and they're real.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not judging anybody as a parent with anxiety because I've had it too.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've done the work to realize the ways in which my fears about what might happen to my kids if they're not perfect out there, what might happen to my kids if they don't get the opportunity.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: My fears make me then handle it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just, you know, double check their work, make sure, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let me, you know, track them, make sure, let me follow the deadlines for them and make sure all of that is my way of my anxiety, it's like, I'm afraid, therefore I will handle it.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out, this I learned from guy, Professor Liebowitz at Yale, who studies childhood anxiety and has figured out that so much of it is fomented by the behavior of parents, right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: When we parents overhandle things, we're basically sending the message, you're not capable.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, I've got you.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're not capable.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's a terrible message to send a child.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Also, when we freak out about things, it's basically giving credence to the fear and instead of helping us and the kids work through the fear.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, we're also afraid of our kids' fears, right?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want my kid or their discomforts.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want them to be uncomfortable.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want them to be in a situation where they don't have the food they love.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want them to be in a situation where they might be alone because I know they're afraid of being alone, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I will curate their environment so they always have the food they love.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're never alone.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: It turns out when we do that, it's called overaccommodation because we can't handle their discomfort or our discomfort.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: We do this overaccommodation.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: It takes these normal fears and discomforts and blows them up into full-blown anxiety.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Professor Lieber, what's at Yale, in terms of trying to reduce anxiety in children, he doesn't do a single treatment on the children.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: He works with their parents.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when he can change the parental behaviors, the childhood anxiety starts to dissipate.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's wild.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: That makes so much sense to me, though.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is it's all it all stems from us, us giving off the fear to our kids.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: The technology that we have access to, safety versus the harm of surveillance, we're offered all of these ways to know information about our children, none of which were available, you know, in the last century, or even, you know, maybe even 15 years ago, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: 10 years ago, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I can get a monitor that shows me absolutely everything that's happening to their bodies, with their bodies, inside their bodies.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can watch their every move.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I can know every little minute point about their school experience.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can request photographs and information from the preschools.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I can get a report.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're getting all of this input data about our kids.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, frankly, we don't know what to do with it.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like if I'm being given all this data, it's gotta be for a good reason.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I must use it somehow.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think we could all, you know, do well by like cutting the amount of information in half and then in half again.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't need to know every day how they did in school, right?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be constantly watching them as they sleep.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, that that sort of obligation to use the technology to be constantly vigilant has got to be increasing.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Our anxiety as parents.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: They talk about how stressed out millennials are as parents, like the most stressed out parents have ever been.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have so much more going for them in so many ways.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're an amazing generation.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: They have all this technology, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: All these opportunities.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they're freaking out because everything is supposed apparently supposed to be known, understood, digested, and then micromanaged to perfection.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's driving them nuts.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I can tell when my my my son, who's two at daycare, has a diaper change or or eats a snack, or we like all this stuff, or has a nap.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And my and five, my five-year-old, same thing.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: The teacher sons home correspondence often about her day.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes too much information for me when I really like hyperfixate on stuff.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it makes me more anxious.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: We just took the camera out of my daughter's room because it was like, we don't need to be watching her anymore at this stage.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: We we trust her enough to go to sleep.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was difficult.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it felt, oh my God, are we are we bad parents?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't want to monitor everything that goes on in her life anymore.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it, but it was a huge parenting moment for us of okay, we're stepping back.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what you mentioned earlier is just how you have to go through those those rungs on the ladder of how you have to make your kid more independent and trust them more because eventually, like you said, we're gonna be gone.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're gonna have to live their lives on their own, they're gonna have to do things.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, I appreciate that pat on the back because it it was one of those things where I'm like, are we just bad parents?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't care as much anymore.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's it's not liberating liberating in a sense.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're good parents because you're recognizing we don't need to put a camera in the bedroom of a five-year-old.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you kept it in, then you'd ask at six.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do we do we keep it in?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: You might still be asking at 10, right?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I know stories from the college level where parents are installing a webcram in the college dorm room, which is, I think, so problematic for so many reasons.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: But they say, Oh, and it's just innocently done.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: We just want to make sure we wake him up.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, you were supposed to have taught him to wake himself up long before he left home for college, and that's on you.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the solution now is he needs to learn the consequences of not waking up rather than you continuing to enable him in not knowing how to wake up by waking him up.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you have done the right thing, and it's gonna be when do we let him walk to school alone, bike to school alone?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like at some point, that time will come, and you're freaking out about that now because they're two and five, of course.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: But at some point you will reach that decision and it'll be important for you.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to say one other thing, Ryan.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned your wife, right?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're in a relationship that created these children.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Relationships need tending.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Too often in modern parenting, it's entirely about the minute micromanagement of our child's every moment.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's no room to be a partner, a husband, a wife, a spouse.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's no room for you time, because you're even when they're asleep, you're like the kid's video is like all you're looking at, right?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time for those conversations.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time for intimacy, there's no time for just let's be a couple for an hour while our kid is on a play date.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, I gotta watch, I gotta make sure, right?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So claim that time, a little bit of time back for yourself and know that it's good for your children to have parents who are doing the work to remain in love.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that takes connection and time.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's such a good point, too, because it's easy to just focus on the kids, especially when they're young and and really let your relationships fall by the wayside.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that that that's often obviously a really bad thing to do because it's hard to, it's easier to stay in shape when you're kind of like going, you already have the routine established, but when you have to get back on the treadmill after taking months off or years off, it's oh my gosh, I can't even walk a mile or whatever.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's so hard.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of how it feels in the relationship game, too.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't keep it constantly working or put the effort in or the work in, it's so much harder to restart it and and get it going again.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes probably interventions of a therapist or or something to help mediate that.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's at least my experience of the whole thing.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a neurodivergent five-year-old child as well.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so you brought that up, and so that brings its own challenges, I suppose you could say.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also she's the most quirky and funny child in the world, too.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of positives for sure, but there's also some some obviously obstacles that we have to navigate through.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we just found out last year about this time that she she had autism.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't sure what exactly was going on before then.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of things to answer still for us as parents, but I think like you said, I appreciate you giving us the acknowledgement that we're doing the right things and that parents can address those those major milestones, you know, earlier than than later.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think you can always put it off.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can always say, Well, yeah, we we can keep the camera, put a pin in that, come back to that later on.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to do, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's also the best thing for the kid is to again let them let them self-manage themselves.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter can go to bed when she's tired, so to speak.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like we're forcing her to her head has to be on the pillow at 7:30 every night.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's just unrealistic.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: With my parents lost 26, and I don't know if that's abnormal this these days, but I'm so glad I did though, because I was very I was able to save up money and get a down payment on a home, and I was lucky to do it when I did.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there's no shame in that.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I do see a lot of stuff on social media where people are like shaming kids for still staying at home and under the nest.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, now as a parent to young kids, I'm like, no way, I want my kids to stay with me.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care if they're 26 or 36 or whatever, as long as they're with me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think as long as you have a good relationship with your parents and you're able to, like you said, coexist and co-habitate.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It could work for sure.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd love to, I'd love to get into that.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: The experience with your son who moved back home, right?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: He moved out, then moved back home.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk to talk to us about that and maybe some of the feelings that you had about your parenting skills and then what what what kind of changed as that went on?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for mentioning this.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: My forthcoming book comes out in May.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually a little pre-book copy.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's Sawyer is my 27-year-old.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he gives me permission to talk about all this.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: His voice is very prominent in in the new book, actually.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh the not so empty nest, a how-to guide for parents and adult children living together.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: He came home uh for the pandemic at 20, but he was already experiencing a lot of difficulties.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: He had left college after two years and was in the middle of a gap year uh where he was working minimum wage when the pandemic happened.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he had had a mental health crisis probably a month or two before the pandemic.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so all signs were indicating this kid needed to come home and the pandemic happened, and he did come home.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: But he was depressed, he was lost, feeling that the world was passing him by, all his friends were still in school, he was now out of school and really struggling in life.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the pandemic, as he says in the book, uh, was a relief for him because the world seemed to stop and it didn't seem to matter that he was also stopped and stuck.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: We got him therapy, we went into family therapy because Dan and I didn't know as Gen Xers what's our role supposed to be in the life of an adult child.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: We were raised with the mantra, you have to be up and out of your parents' home by 18 or 21.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we and boomers were raised.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was like failure if you were back at home.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Our generations were raised with this is failure.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you still hear that narrative out there, which I'm really questioning, you know, head on with this with this book.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were worried, like, what's happening to him and what's our role?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we went to family therapy to learn how to interact with a 21, with a 20 and then 21 and then 22-year-old who was in a lot of ways struggling and didn't possess the confidence that he could do the things that life expected of him.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: We realized through therapy that we were worried about him.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we were handling things and we were trying to make it easier on him.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we didn't have the tough conversations that might have allowed him to process stuff, deal with stuff, do stuff, and ultimately grow.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I really became quite aware of the kinds of helicoptery behaviors we had had in seeing that my grown son had fewer skills and less confidence in himself than somebody at his age should.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we really owned that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we have done too much.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: We have, you know, walked on eggshells around tough things.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't the right way to help you learn and grow.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we learned how to talk through therapy.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: We learned how to have the tough conversations, to raise the tough issue, whether about the state of his room or about, you know, once he started working, you know, is he going to contribute rent to live here?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of this in furtherance of him being a self-sustaining, independent, interdependent adult with us and other people one day.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: We really got there.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Really proud of the work he did.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm proud of the work my partner and I did to understand how to coexist in a way that feels equitable, where we can talk about the tough things and really support each other through tough things without owning each other's experience.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was the biggest lesson.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: We felt very responsible for him.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: We felt we had to own when he had a problem, it was our problem.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: When he had a concern, it was our concern.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: When he had a fear, it was our fear.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's not healthy.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of being enmeshed in someone else's life.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: You need a little bit of an emotional distance, no less love, but just a little distance.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Their life is theirs, our life is here.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can help them better when we're not all intertangled with it, when we can maintain a little bit more of a distance and freak out less, become be advisors, be collaborators, and ultimately consultants in our adult kids' lives.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to get our hands on that book.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's coming May 2027, right?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk to us about your other books, your turn, and how to raise an adult and how we can get our hands on those as well?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my first book was How to Raise an Adult on the Harm of Helicopter Parenting.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's available in all formats in bookstores and libraries.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I wrote a sequel, if you will, called Your Turn, How to Be an Adult.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: So this is for parents.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is for 18 and older.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: People of all decades have said they've read it and it's helped them.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very big book that is really about living your best life from self-care to relationships to them finding purpose and meaning and getting good work done and contributing to your community, coping with disastrous things.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's really a manual for living life.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: These three books kind of go together, right?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is for parents, this is for uh adult children.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is if you decide to live together again, this is how you do so.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you talk about the tough stuff.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you develop stronger, healthier, more loving relationships so that you have the basis for having the tough conversations.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you talk about chores.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you talk about money.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you talk about whether someone can stay over.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is where you move from a hierarchy of I'm in charge as your parent, you're my child, to we're all adults here at different ages and stages.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: We all have different needs and capabilities.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: We can do this, we can live together in harmony.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: It takes practice and it takes work.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's why this is very much a self-help manual as well.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so helpful, especially in this day and age when housing costs are so high, everything is so high in terms of pricing.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of a lot of adult children or young young adults are living with their parents longer, it seems like.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, that's when I'm hearing out in the media.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I again I couldn't attest that as myself, staying at home until 26, 27, somewhere around there.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I had to figure out how to live with my parents because it was a different dynamic from when after you're 18 and all that.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was always like, oh, once I get 18, I can move out and do my own things and like you feel like you know everything, you got the world figured out, and then you realize, man, life's expensive.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, I I kind of need mom and dad still to pay for car insurance or this and the, but it just becomes this different dynamic as you become a young adult or as an adult.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that's just the manual to help us all navigate through that chair.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Living under my again, I'm not ready to get rid of my kids at 18.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm loving it.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought that we had failed and sorry had failed when he moved home and everyone came home for the pandemic, but when he stayed, whereas other people's kids were going back to school or different communities, different jobs.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I thought we'd failed again with the mantra that I was raised with as a Gen Xer of you have to leave home.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now I really consider it a blessing and a bonus since we've done the work as a family to figure out how to live harmoniously, moving from that hierarchy of parent-child to adults of different ages and stages, cohabiting.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's really been quite a blessing, a really a set of bonuses that I really have no need for him to move out now because it's working very, very well for him and for us.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you're right, it's very much an increasing phenomenon.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: More and more young adults are living at home or moving back home, never moved out because of the cost of living, because housing is so unaffordable, wages and salaries have not kept up, student loan debt is so high.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's hard out there for young adults.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the family home is a is hopefully a safe and good place to be.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's not true for everybody, but we can work on making it a more safe and good place for them to be if we work on ourselves as parents.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard place, hard time for them.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a hard time, I think, even for parents.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is everything is just so expensive.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally everything is doubled or tripled in cost, it seems like in the last what 10, 15, 20 years.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And wages are obviously not doing that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's it's it's difficult, I think, for everyone in this moment.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, Julie, the not so empty nest is out May 2027, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when do pre-orders go live?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and and how can people pre-order that?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, pre-orders are already available.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: So on online bookshop or Amazon, wherever you buy books, you can pre-orders pre-order now.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Comes out in May.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Put that in the show notes, put that in the across all the socials and get get the word out.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Cause again, this this sounds super interesting.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, even for someone that's not quite going through that stage.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just feel like again, if you if you have kids, even if you have young kids, eventually we're gonna be there.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think for with the way the world's going.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so prepare yourself as soon as you can.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I know that you your previous books are on the New York Times bestsellers list, and you have all these accolades, and and so I we really can't wait to get our hands on that that that's coming out next year.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: But again, pre-orders are live now.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Encourage my listeners and viewers to go do that today.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you so much for being here.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is definitely one of my more enjoyable interviews.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, someone with such a diverse background, and it's awesome.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I work with deans all the time in my my day life, day to day life.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's kinda it always feels like it's great to kind of connect with someone in that that space and just learn from somebody that's again gone through as much as you've gone through.