Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREMIUM: "How to Raise an Awesome Kid (and be an Awesome Grown-Up)" with Dr Billy Garvey

Transcript

PREMIUM: "How to Raise an Awesome Kid (and be an Awesome Grown-Up)" with Dr Billy Garvey · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:06
  I loved this conversation.
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  It's about one of the most persistent, perplexing and provocative questions to plague our modern
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  culture.
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  What explains the explosion in ADHD and anxiety and autism in kids?
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  Is it too much Instagram?
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  Is it not enough Ritalon?
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  Or is it that one of a kind children are being failed by a one size fits all idea about
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  what schools should be like and what parenting should be like?
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  Today's guest Dr. Billy Garvey is a repeat guest.
• 0:41
  I love the guy.
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  He's one of Australia's leading developmental pediatricians.
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  He's a senior specialist who works in his clinic with kids who struggled with behavioral
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  issues, which he also had as a kid.
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  And we talk about his background.
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  We talk about my background.
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  He almost sort of gives me a therapy session here as if I was a 12 year old child and
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  I found it really, really useful.
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  The waiting list to see him at his clinic is literally years long.
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  That's how esteemed he is.
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  We talk about not just what it's like to be a kid, but what it means to be a man, our
• 1:11
  visions of masculinity, of sucking things up, of just making do.
• 1:16
  We talk about permissive parenting fads versus authoritarian parenting, about rigid schooling,
• 1:22
  about the overdiagnosis of mental diseases in kids and whether children are actually
• 1:27
  coddled these days.
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  His research bumps up against some of my intuitions about parenting, which is why I love it so
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  much, because we can respectfully sort of dig into the areas in which I sort of smell
• 1:39
  like he must be wrong, but I know that because he's such an expert, he is right.
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  My sense, like I think a lot of people have, is well, if the greatest generation were
• 1:48
  able to win World War II and they didn't have high rates of anxiety and depression as
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  children, what's going on with our snowflakes today?
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  And Billy, I'm very grateful for the fact that he sort of slaps me down and says that's
• 2:02
  exactly the wrong way to look at the issue.
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  He articulates here the right way to look at the issue, the right way to look about that
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  being a kid, the right way to look at being a parent.
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  He knows what he's talking about, obviously.
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  He also is great at articulating it.
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  He hosts the number one parenting podcast in Australia, which is called pop culture parenting.
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  He's the founder of a nonprofit, a social enterprise called guiding, growing kids that
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  helps children lead meaningful lives.
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  And his book is called 10 Things I Wish You New about Your Child's Mental Health.
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  This is a premium episode.
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  So if you're listening to the free feed, you'll get less than an hour of it.
• 2:35
  It's still worth listening to, but the whole thing is about two hours long.
• 2:39
  So if you want to upgrade, you can do so if you're listening to Apple podcasts with
• 2:43
  one tap in Apple.
• 2:44
  Otherwise, Jonas on Substack is going to be lots of great stuff on Substack coming up.
• 2:48
  We will announce that on Monday, so stay tuned.
• 2:52
  I walked out of this conversation, feeling like I'd just received a bracing, mind-expanding,
• 2:57
  free therapy session.
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  So fire up your inner 12-year-old, take a seat and enjoy the one the only Dr. Billy
• 3:03
  got.
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  I remember years ago, I saw someone talking about like, you know, in terms of healthy
• 3:13
  masculinity and saying there's like four groups of people, they're like, there's men
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  who, you know, have the right beliefs and behaviours.
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  There's men, there's don't, but it really can, to be better, and they will pick up information
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  and education really well.
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  There's people that are a bit stuck that will want to be better once they've been, you
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  know, drawn attention to it in a generous way.
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  And then there's men that don't care.
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  And I was like, when this group will like, we work with the two middle groups.
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  Yeah.
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  And I was like, who works with the fourth one?
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  They're like, no one.
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  Yeah.
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  There was people who just stuck.
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  Yeah.
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  They're probably the people that we need to address the most, you know, in terms of
• 3:49
  the community safer.
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  Well, just in terms of like, which is off topic, but, you know, like the kind of man-box
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  research showing that kind of the intimate partner violence rates, right?
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  Yeah, right.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, broader community violence rates are often from those people that have those
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  symptoms.
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  No, that's true.
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  But is the solution to that to like, try to win over those people?
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  Or is it just a quarantine and police them, essentially?
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  Like, well, I had the risk of being like a hawk.
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  I sort of feel like that group of people, the group who are unwinnable, not just in terms
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  of being, not just in terms of men who are violent sexists, but on any issue, you know,
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  hyper-ideological pro-Israel hawks, hyper-ideological from the River of the Sea, Palestinian, you
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  know, kind of jihadists, you know, hyper-investored trans people who are just committed to the
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  principle that trans women and women, and there should be no conversation about, you
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  know, children's sports or a pediatric gender care or versus the right-wing transphobes
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  who just say, a man is a man and like biology is all there is, the people who are, you
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  know, critical of, I don't know, indigenous land acknowledgments.
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  Like, there's a rump of opinion on any issue, I think, which you just have to give up as
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  being unwinnable.
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  Like, there will be some contingent who the best thing you can do is, it's essentially
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  a law enforcement issue, really, of just trying to minimize their impact on others while
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  you also go about winning over, I think, the much larger majority of people who are,
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  who could play ball, you know, who are at least invincible if you, which I guess, yeah,
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  the space that you're in is one of like, how do we better inform the majority so that
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  we have healthier interactions around this stuff and yeah, and how do you shrink that
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  rump, right?
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  How do you shrink the un, shrink and isolate, like, think about the way we think about extremism,
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  like in terrorism or something like that, like your job is to win over as many hearts
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  and minds as you can out of the pool of potential terrorists so that they don't go that far
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  at the same time as you isolate and try to cleave off the terrorists from the rest of
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  the broader population and then deal with them as a totally, I guess the hard thing is
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  and like, try to stay very much in my expertise, but how effective is that second step of
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  like punitive cleave off, you know, like we know reoffending rates are so high and stuff
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  like that and what I would argue, which is, it sounds like I've planned this, but, you
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  know, one thing I'm really interested in is like, none of these kids are born with that
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  destiny, you know what I mean, they, we know that, you know, example, you know, multi-generational
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  trauma or adverse childhood experiences are all huge predictors of these people who become
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  unhealthy adults that are damaging to themselves, obviously, but also the broader population
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  and its their intimate partners or committing offenses that are violent, you know, that wasn't
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  set in stone when they were born, it's things that occurred during their childhood and that's
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  what I would argue. It's obviously why I do what I do. Yes, right. So the, but I mean, I see that
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  as part of the winning over the winner ball, because what I think you're actually saying is that
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  you're trying to prevent the future sexist domestic violence offenders from becoming that in the
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  first place by addressing children, the children of today who are on high risk paths and trying
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  to view them into more constructive visions of masculinity, right? But is it the case that people
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  who have already fallen down the rabbit hole and who are already in a, who are already might,
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  who are already grown-ups who are mired in an abusive pattern, a pattern of abuse and maybe
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  alcoholism or whatever, that those people are safeable? Yeah, I reckon you work more in that
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  space than I do because I think that, yeah, I don't see like I did adult psychiatry placements
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  20 years ago, nearly, and it was heartbreaking because it was, so I'm going to get discharged
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  and it would be, they'll be back yet, wasn't if it was when, and I imagine the criminal system
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  is a bit the same of like we know, especially in youth reincarnation rates are really high,
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  within five to six years, the majority of them are offending again and back in. So I think that idea
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  of like, is that the solution, you know, like, and obviously there's a greater complexity toward
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  of whether you punish them or not, but I think how do you get to these people? Obviously, the work
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  I do is you get to them as kids and get to them when they're born, when early, like all these kids
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  like who are at the moment in Melbourne, you know, breaking into homes or running around,
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  shopping centers and Mercedes and stuff, they all sent up dozens, if not hundreds of flares,
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  that they were struggling, that they needed more support, that they were at risk of this stuff,
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  and as a collective community, we're not really doing a great job, you know what I mean,
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  of coming around them and coming around their families. I think your question of like,
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  yeah, I, and it's quite funny on a personal level, all these kids I meet, I meet them in clinic
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  and sometimes they've waited three years to see me and I've heard these awful stories about them
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  and I get tricked into being like, oh my god, this kid sounds terrifying and like I'll, you know,
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  bit tense and then they walk down the corridor and they're a kid, you know, even when they're a
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  teenager. In my personal life, I struggle with like, especially aggressive hostile men because I
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  can't put that professional lens over it, you know, my own childhood experience has come up
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  all that stuff and I'm just screw you, you know, I don't mean how dead your own childhood experiences.
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  I just have entered a partner violence towards my mom, you know, domestic violence, I was, yeah,
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  in a lot of fights growing up, you know, witnessed a lot of that and then kind of my, you know,
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  we know that those kind of adverse childhood experiences are big predictors like of developmental
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  trauma and then future adult mental illness and 50% of it starts with 14 and I was in that group
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  of like having adult mental illness because of experiences that I had and it was like I brought
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  up by a single mom who didn't finish high school, you know, and she's a waitress who down in
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  Frankston City Council working her day job and then waitressing at the RSL on the weekends,
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  you know, I spent so many Christmases and years at the Keringel RSL just running around as a little
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  kid, you know, to non-Australians and RSL is a funny Australian thing, which is like, it doesn't really
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  have an equivalent outside of Australia, but a, yeah, a cheaper, affordable place to go and get a
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  roast lunch and a beer. Yeah, I mean, just obviously ex-servicemen, you know, ostensibly for ex-servicemen,
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  but the vast majority of patrons would just be, yeah, people. Why didn't you end up violent?
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  You know, it's a funny question that I was violence. I was violence as a teenager. I was violent
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  even in early 20s. I, you know, sounds like so, you know, falsely hyper-masculine, but I've never
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  started a fight, but I couldn't walk away from mine, even if I knew I was going to get beaten up,
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  because my idea of masculinity was, I stand up for myself, you know, that's what I'd seen culturally,
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  that's what I've seen in, you know, one of my mom's partners, particularly like that idea of this
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  is how I address fear, this is how I address anger, I externalize and become violent, and a lot of
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  kids learn that, especially boys at a young age, you know, really preschool age, they learn this kind
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  of externalizing behavior, and girls we say no, but boys, and so I'd been told that was an okay way,
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  and it was only like through therapy and all that stuff where I actually learned, I was still a
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  little kid in those moments who felt unsafe, and I was acting out to defend myself. How did you have
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  access to therapy from the background that you came from? Was it only once you started earning money,
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  or was it? Yeah, but I earned money at a very young age, I was like, we did often didn't have
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  food in the house, so once I was 14 and nine months, I had two jobs, and then I had three jobs.
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  Is that the age at which you allowed to work in Victoria? Yeah, and so I had three jobs, most of my
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  teenage years. And you spent it on a therapist? I'm on my 20s, I did, because my mom died,
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  run, so I needed it. My mom died in my early 20s, and I was like, yeah, fell into a big hole,
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  like destructive hole of, you know, drinking heaps and partying and blacking out and all that stuff,
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  and realized that, yeah, I was, you know, I was trying to cope with that trauma that had gone
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  through my childhood, but then the loss of a significant attachment figure. And so then I went
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  through that, and I was very lucky, yeah, because I'd watched how much my mom her entire life
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  struggled financially, I made sure. You could even argue like, one of my best mates, I remember
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  telling me this, he was like, I think that's why he became a doctor, because you wanted to make
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  sure you never had to worry about money. You know, I think there's multiple reasons. I hope
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  for me also wanted to help people. Yeah, totally, but it is a very selfish thing for me, like
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  everything I do, the advocacy I do is very selfish, like I don't expect your answer to be the same,
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  but there is something in me that this meets the need about doing all this advocacy for free,
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  and going out and talking about this stuff, I get more out of it than I put in, possibly without
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  sounding too cliché because of little Billy. Like, I'm trying to find little Billy and clinic,
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  but I know most of the kids out there that have those experiences will never meet someone like me
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  and clinic, especially in their childhood. Like I was able to connect with mental health services
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  and adults, but I was never going to as a kid. I could kick that high school, you know what I mean,
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  I was a bad kid, most of my childhood. So I had an experience that I'm trying to just change
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  that trajectory for other people, but not because I'm some great person. It's to heal a part of
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  ourselves. Well, that's a magnanimous thing if you'd say, but I think it's probably true of
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  everybody that, by definition, the reason we do the things is because we get more out of them than
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  we put into them, otherwise we wouldn't do them, but you'll probably just more self-aware than most
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  people. Yeah, well, if that's one minute, I'm okay. What do you still drink? Yeah, and I still
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  I still struggle with it. Like when I'm really stressed, that's my thing. I'll be like completely
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  overwhelmed due to it because I've got too much on my plate that I've put there. This is not
• 13:43
  some hardship thing. I've just put too much on my plate and I'll be like, I can't wait for a
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  glass of red wine. Did you quit for a time when you were in a hole? Yeah, I kind of go dysfunctionally
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  into exercise, like I now two times a day with exercise, gym or run or bike. I'll do two of those
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  things every single day and it's better than cocaine. Well, yes, yes, I'm sure that's true, but the
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  it's still dysfunctional though, you know what I mean? I can't do a day without it, you know what I
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  mean? I just have to do that. So those are my habits. When you say you can't, what happens if you
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  don't? My stress gets worse. Like, you know, my stress gets worse and I kind of, you know, a big part
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  of the two dark times I've had, my sleep is just horrible and so I'm so protective of that that I
• 14:32
  just exhaust myself physically to give myself the best chance to sleep. But then, you know,
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  I, for me, it's like crummy, you know, consumption of media, whether it's on my phone or watching
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  TV and a glass of red wine and just trying to kind of take my head out of everything. That's my
• 14:49
  coping strategy that's unhelpful. And so the, the kid who walks down the corridor who might have been
• 14:53
  on a waiting list for three years to see someone with your level of expertise, who you're saying,
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  like, you can see that they're not as broken as, you know, you've been, as the statistics would
• 15:01
  show that they are, give pain a picture of that kid. Like, how old do they tend to be and where
• 15:07
  are they from and what's, like, can you generalize? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, yeah. So, I mean,
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  we say these kids is three, four, five year olds. So, you know what I mean? I also see them as
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  17, 18, 19 year olds. The story is very similar, you know, they've often not experienced success
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  from very early on frequently, whether it's in socialization, academically,
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  emotional regulation, all these things. And it, whether it was kinder or primary school or high
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  school, they started to be left out. They started to fail. And they, that narrative, became a part of
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  their life. And they are, they from all over the map, demographically, or they basically walk
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  much higher risk if you're indigenous, if you're from a remote community, if you're from a family
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  or society, a group of community members that are experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage sky
• 15:52
  rockets, your rates of like, you know, we've just done a last year, every three years, we measure
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  developmental capacity of kids in school entry. We capture over 95% of kids in the country,
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  and we've just seen an increase in how many kids. So, over 20% of kids will start school with
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  a developmental vulnerability. Like, that's a big flair that these kids are going to struggle
• 16:17
  throughout their entire life. You're saying 20% of kids over 20% of these 20%. So, more than one in
• 16:22
  five kids are starting school with a developmental vulnerability. Vulnerability. Now, is that a true
• 16:29
  snapshot of the state of the world or is that like a diagnostic fudge that developmental
• 16:34
  vulnerability, like, is a diagnosis that we probably could have applied at any point in history
• 16:39
  if we'd been as well. No, we've been in Australia like that. Data overseas is pretty similar. We've
• 16:44
  been measuring it for, you know, years and years now, and we know that even last year was worse
• 16:50
  than the year before. So, you can think about the pandemic in that context and all those things.
• 16:54
  But we know there is an increasing rate of, say, 10-age mental illness. There's an increasing
• 17:00
  rate of developmental vulnerability. These are like not so much diagnostic measures, but
• 17:05
  their clinical measures that we know pretty valid in terms of does this person meet criteria for
• 17:11
  being significantly risking their language development, for example, or their life skills or
• 17:16
  their cognitive development, things like that. And we're pretty good at measuring and seeing how
• 17:22
  they're going. It does, there is alarming signs that an increasing amount of kids are having
• 17:27
  concerns during their development on mental health, which is obviously my area of conflict.
• 17:32
  Yeah. And so, sorry, you're bang on about this, but just to clarify, because I think a lot of people
• 17:36
  are confused about what exactly is happening. Like, is it that we're naming and labeling things
• 17:41
  better or is that there's an actual change? Because like, when it comes to, you know, Australia,
• 17:45
  if you're in Australia, you will be aware of the national disability insurance scheme,
• 17:48
  which was introduced to, what, 10, 15 years ago or something? Yeah, yeah.
• 17:53
  Hugh, what has become a huge government program that is very expensive and provides benefits to
• 18:00
  people who struggle with disabilities. And I've spoken to child psychiatrists about that who say that,
• 18:06
  you know, if you pay people to have ADHD, then don't be surprised that suddenly a lot more people
• 18:11
  have ADHD. It's not that they're lying about it. It's just that they're diagnosed when they
• 18:15
  wouldn't have been like, there's now a benefit to noticing it. There's a, there's funding for it
• 18:21
  so that some portion of the spike in attention deficit problems in young people has to be
• 18:27
  attributable to the way that we're diagnosing and labeling things and funding things.
• 18:32
  To what extent is that a factor? Yeah, I think it's a really important question to ask,
• 18:37
  that if you have to have a diagnosis to get help, you are more likely to want to diagnosis
• 18:43
  and seek a diagnosis, aren't you? If you're struggling with something or your child is,
• 18:47
  and the only, and people tell you, the only way you're going to get therapy, because you can't
• 18:51
  afford it, is if you have a diagnosis of autism, it's going to bias you, isn't it? As a parent seeking
• 18:58
  that, we're very lucky that I work at a big tertiary pediatric hospital and we train developmental
• 19:05
  pediatricians in this space about, like, holistic developmental assessment. So how's this kid actually
• 19:10
  going? Not, do they have autism or ADHD or not? We don't do that. We, holistic diagnosis,
• 19:16
  most of these kids that I have one diagnosis, will have another, such as anxiety. If you don't do
• 19:21
  it properly, you know, really clinically thorough way, that we have national guidelines and
• 19:26
  their guidelines overseas around this, you aren't risk of just seeing autism, do you know what I mean?
• 19:31
  Yes. You, you know, if you have everything's an owl kind of thing. And we have to be careful,
• 19:36
  there's been a really big increase in, for example, ADHD or autism rates, but I think the majority
• 19:41
  of it is, is that we're broadening our perception and our idea of what that condition is.
• 19:47
  Do you know what I mean? Autism, for example, used to be, rain men, it used to be like the cold,
• 19:51
  smart, no social skills, really dysfunctional, but good at one, one good at one thing. You
• 19:58
  know, I mean counting numbers, whatever, ridiculous. That's not true. We know that was never really
• 20:02
  part of the diagnostic criteria, but that's the narrative that got built. And so we've gotten
• 20:06
  better at it with each iteration, but diagnosis still has a risk with it. Do you know what I mean?
• 20:11
  It's still a label, it has stigma associated with it. We know that kids who are diagnosed with
• 20:16
  developmental diagnoses at younger age, they're more likely to have better outcomes because they
• 20:21
  get early intervention, but they're also more likely to experience stigma, which impacts their
• 20:25
  mental health and increases their risk of mental illness. Yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone is,
• 20:30
  apart from stupid people, I don't think anyone is saying that people are intentionally trying
• 20:34
  to game the system because their lives are going to be better if they're diagnosed with a
• 20:40
  mental illness and can access funding for it. But I think I just want to address up front the
• 20:45
  suspicion that a lot of people will have when they read articles about how I think it's just
• 20:49
  something other day that some extraordinary number of people now who are on disability benefits in,
• 20:56
  like I think I'm a Australia, the UK, are young people getting benefits because of mental health
• 21:02
  problems. And this was framed because it was actually from the ABC, the Australian public
• 21:05
  broadcaster now. I remember, because I remember thinking this is slightly biased lefty piece
• 21:11
  because it was all about how insurance companies are probably slow walking the benefits that they
• 21:17
  should be paying to these people who have legitimate conditions because they're suspicious about
• 21:21
  this enormous growth in people who are getting payouts for getting funding for mental health issues.
• 21:28
  And there was another piece out of the UK saying that for the first time in history, the
• 21:32
  proportion of people who are on disability benefits in the UK are now predominantly like 15 to 35
• 21:39
  year olds instead of the over 55s and it's all for mental health stuff. And I think a lot of people
• 21:44
  see that and it's not that they think that that's all phony or made up, it's that they think,
• 21:51
  well, if people manage during Shakespeare's time and they manage during the great generation
• 21:56
  and they manage to do World War One and World War Two. And like, are we just snowflakes at the moment
• 22:03
  and we're just gazing at our navels and like complaining about everything? Like these
• 22:07
  kids just need to kick in the pants and you know what that is? Exactly. I think it's a really
• 22:13
  important thing to talk about. I think this is why your voice is so important in this space, Josh,
• 22:17
  because there are people that believe that, but I think that they can, when they're having
• 22:22
  understanding of it, from a personal level of the stories of these actual kids, but also the
• 22:27
  actual objective evidence around this is that that is not the case. Like, also this romanticisation
• 22:33
  of like what our childhoods were like, in adults around the world, if you took an average, it's
• 22:40
  about 50% of us will have a clinical mental illness in our lifetime. This golden era of our childhood
• 22:46
  is not true. Do you know what I mean? We all had horrible rates of adversity, whether it was,
• 22:52
  you know, the kick in the pants, the tough love idea doesn't exist. You know what I mean? None of
• 22:57
  us is strong because someone was harsh with us or you know, kind of said, none of us is strong
• 23:03
  because someone was harsh with us. No, we know that developmentally, like we think about resilience,
• 23:08
  resilience through example, this like catchphrase that's kind of been completely butchered by
• 23:12
  people that don't actually have any expertise in it, but users, for lots of different ways,
• 23:17
  resilience is not born out of hardship. It's born out of a skill set of recovering from adversity.
• 23:23
  Do you know what I mean? A skill set of recovering from hardship. Yeah, so how do you learn how to
• 23:28
  get back up off a bike? Someone's doing it. Maybe, or maybe you do it. Yeah, how many people have
• 23:36
  had that experience where they just took themselves out at five years old and said, I'm going to keep
• 23:40
  falling over and I'll just keep getting back up. It's because someone supports you and teaches you
• 23:44
  the skill set and says, this is how you do it. This is your balance. I'll support you. I'll be
• 23:49
  able to gauge when you've had enough and we need to stop or I'll celebrate a little for where you
• 23:54
  did really well for a couple of bits and then we'll get back on and try again. Do you know what I mean?
• 23:59
  If a bad cycling teacher who's like an authoritarian style of parent just stands there and says,
• 24:05
  get on that bloody bike and do it again. Otherwise, I'm going to whip you. That will also learn.
• 24:11
  Yeah, what else will happen though? Well, you'll probably resent the person. You'll probably
• 24:15
  do you think you'll enjoy bike riding? Well, you might once you try to try to
• 24:23
  try to a traumatic experience. Once you get proficient at it and once you get proficient at it,
• 24:28
  I don't think it'll matter terribly much. But you don't think there's it. I'm being silly,
• 24:31
  but you don't think there's a chance that you look back and go, got a hate ride on the bike.
• 24:34
  I remember how my dad just forced me to do it even though I was physically and mentally.
• 24:37
  Yeah, I mean, there's a chance. I guess the skeptical answer to that is if the cost of
• 24:45
  having a nice bike teacher is that you have to erect a vastly expensive bureaucracy to employ
• 24:50
  nice bike teacher bicycle teachers for everybody and bankrupt the country in the process and
• 24:55
  turtle. But I don't have snowflakes because I think most people most parents across the socioeconomic
• 25:01
  demographic understand how to support a kid in learning to ride a bike. The problem is we don't
• 25:07
  use the same approach in a social and emotional development. That's what you're talking about.
• 25:11
  Right. This toughness, this resilience, this idea, but empathy, for example, people don't understand
• 25:17
  there is a developmental trajectory of empathy. If you don't understand that, how can you teach
• 25:21
  empathy? No one taught us this. Right. What is the developmental process? So when do you
• 25:26
  learn empathy? When is a child first? Like most of my fellows can't answer this, so it's been
• 25:31
  on to be very amazed if you could, but it's in the first year of your life because we know a baby
• 25:35
  that cries. If another baby hears it, they will cry too. That is the first very primitive stage
• 25:42
  of cognitive development in the specific area of empathy. We know though that as they go up,
• 25:47
  when the second year of their life, if there is to hear another child is hurt, we'll see something
• 25:52
  painful happen to someone else. They seek comfort themselves because they're still very egocentric.
• 25:57
  This is for me. The third year of life, the fourth year of life, they will start emerging to
• 26:01
  early pro-social empathy, which is I can see Josh, a little boy over there has hurt himself.
• 26:07
  I'm going to go over and give him a big hug. I completely ignore the doesn't feel comfortable
• 26:11
  being hugged because that's what I think I would want. I'm still in that. The end of primary school,
• 26:16
  at the end of preschool, sorry, four, five, six years of age, is when they start to develop
• 26:21
  really early signs of higher levels of cognitive empathy, which is what would Josh need.
• 26:27
  You can't teach a kid to do that unless they have those early steps that they've emerged through.
• 26:32
  If you've experienced trauma, environmental deprivation, apparent with severe mental illness,
• 26:37
  or drug use, or anything, you didn't go through those early steps. I meet 16, 17, 18 year olds that
• 26:43
  are still stuck in the toddler years in their empathy or their theory of mind. What else might
• 26:48
  that person be thinking? They roll around the world for two reasons, really struggling, having
• 26:52
  lots of conflict. One, they haven't had their trauma healed, and people are saying, be resilient.
• 26:57
  You had a tough life. You should be stronger because of it. Secondly, no one taught them that other
• 27:03
  people have different feelings. No one taught them how to have pro-social empathy. No one taught
• 27:08
  theory of mind and scaffold it through them. This stuck, and they'll remain stuck through their
• 27:13
  adult life, goes right back to what we started at. That intellectual empathy, you just to
• 27:18
  talk about that second component that you're talking about. This ability of a person to put
• 27:22
  themselves inside the needs of another person, rather than just looking at what I think I would want
• 27:29
  if I was in that situation. Does that not evolve organically? I don't know if we've spoken about
• 27:35
  before, but there's that lovely pediatrics, psychiatric example of the box of chocolates that
• 27:42
  has pencils in it. Yes. What I'm talking about, totally. It's a theory of mind.
• 27:46
  It's this beautiful idea of, yeah, they did it. You're right. With pencils, it's easy with
• 27:51
  chocolates because it triggers probably some of you. I'm probably misremembering the example,
• 27:54
  but you know what I'm talking about. No, it's great. If you have a three-year-old, and the three-year-old
• 27:58
  walks into a playroom and sees a box of chocolates and opens up the box of chocolates on the table,
• 28:03
  and it's got sewing equipment in it, like the classic that we grew up with, then they'll be
• 28:07
  disappointed and go off to the room. If then another kid walks in and you say to the three-year-old,
• 28:12
  what does that other kid is going to think is in that box? They'll say sewing equipment
• 28:17
  because they can't conceptualize. They didn't have the experience I did. If you put a five-year-old
• 28:22
  in that situation, they'll say chocolates. They know it's not chocolates, but they also know that
• 28:27
  kid doesn't have that information. I love that example. I love it. It tells you so much
• 28:34
  about how much sympathy you should have for little kids. It's really because it's such a stupid
• 28:39
  mistake. You see a box of chocolates, you think there's chocolates in it, you get surprised
• 28:44
  when there isn't, and then you're asked to put yourself in the shoes of another person and say,
• 28:48
  what are they going to think is in the chocolate? You don't have the ability to rewind to your
• 28:53
  earlier self and go, are they going to have a blind spot that I just had? You just assume that
• 28:58
  your worldview is the universe's worldview to everyone's ears. Also, when you get angry,
• 29:05
  you go back to that. Do you know what I mean? If someone pisses you off, you can't go,
• 29:10
  oh, hang on, their experience might be different to mine. Do you know what I mean? That might
• 29:13
  be having a tough day, or maybe they don't realize they've just defended me. Do you know what I mean?
• 29:18
  Just angry because you're flooded and you go back to that kind of primitive,
• 29:22
  fight-flight sympathetic firing. I've lost all higher cognitive functionality. Do you know what I
• 29:28
  mean? That's true for empathy. It's true for attention. It's true for emotional regulation.
• 29:33
  Everything. How does it work for attention? Because your attention sits in your prefrontal cortex,
• 29:37
  whether you've got ADHD or not. You can't access it if you're anxious. The problem is,
• 29:42
  like we diagnostically get told, there's a lot of kids that can't concentrate. They're really not
• 29:46
  focusing in class, put them on stimulants, diagnoses them at ADHD. The problem is, a clinical
• 29:53
  symptom and sign of anxiety is difficulty focusing. If their brain is flooded by anxiety,
• 30:00
  they can't access their prefrontal cortex, and ADHD medication will often make them more anxious
• 30:06
  and make them worse. But isn't ADHD medication, I mean, clinically effective? It's really
• 30:13
  clinically effective. 75 to 80% of kids with clinical ADHD will benefit from the medication.
• 30:19
  So what's the problem that you're pointing to? If you have clinical anxiety, you need to address
• 30:23
  that first. I say, because you can't access your higher functioning. You can have
• 30:26
  side of clinical levels of anxiety. If you're anxious or stressed or angry, you can't access the
• 30:31
  parts of your brain that empathy sits within, attention sits within. Do you know what I mean?
• 30:35
  Yes. You and I can have this serious conversation, but if we come in and had a bit of an argument
• 30:40
  beforehand, or one of us didn't feel comfortable, this wouldn't work, because we wouldn't be able to
• 30:44
  both access the higher parts of our brain. Yeah. Yeah. Kids, it's even worse. So if you're
• 30:48
  actually a teenager, these parts of your brain are still developing into your mid 20s.
• 30:52
  So that's why these 16, 17, 18 year olds, if they don't feel safe in school,
• 30:57
  if they feel like there's a risk of harm at home, if they're out in the community and they've
• 31:01
  been beaten up a lot, or if everyone's told them they're not good enough, they feel less than they've
• 31:06
  got insecure self-esteem. They can't access the best bits of them. Yes. I mean, everyone who has
• 31:12
  a job that requires intense bursts of focus and attention that you can't control when they happen,
• 31:19
  like a radio show or a clinic knows this phenomenon that when you are stressed and distracted and
• 31:26
  anxious, it feels like you're pushing a boulder up a hill to try to bring the level of attention
• 31:32
  you need to have a conversation like this, right? You can feel the energy being dissipated as you
• 31:38
  try to do it, and there are other times when you're in a flow state, and that's obviously,
• 31:41
  it obviously gets easier as you learn it, but it's obviously much harder if you're an adolescent
• 31:45
  without these things. Definitely, but I'll also say your conversational skills are because not
• 31:50
  just they would have happened organically, you've worked on them. It's probably in a night
• 31:53
  skill that you had, you had an interest in it and a strength, but then you've worked on it.
• 31:57
  Haven't you? Yes. There's a 10,000 hours thing. Yeah, whatever, you know, or whatever.
• 32:02
  Yeah. Yeah. So, but you've kind of put effort into it. Do you know what I mean?
• 32:05
  Yeah. So, I got ski, the researcher who kind of built all this, is that idea of
• 32:09
  zone of proximal development. Where are you at? How do you stretch slightly from there? The biggest
• 32:14
  mistake we make is we look at a kid's age and say you should be able to do this. You're 12,
• 32:19
  you should be able to have theory of mind. But if they haven't learned that, you're stretching
• 32:22
  them too far and they'll just fail and the kids that fail and fail over and over again just get
• 32:26
  used to it and they go stuff you. Right. And then they're cast out either kicked out of school.
• 32:32
  We know schools that expel kids are worse for the kids that stay behind as evidence of that.
• 32:37
  Do you know what I mean? People would argue that the kid needs to be expelled because my kids go
• 32:40
  to this school. It's a symptom of a school that doesn't have enough support, not, you know,
• 32:45
  a sign that they have firm boundaries. Right. And they kick kids out across that line. Do you know what I
• 32:51
  mean? Yes. The zone of proximal development. What does proximal development mean in that?
• 32:55
  So it's just where you are. So for example, let's go back to the bike. You can ride a bike on a flat
• 33:00
  surface with a parent holding your shoulders. You can turn it a bit and feel confident. You don't
• 33:04
  go sweet BMX track tomorrow. Do you know what I mean? You go, let's go a slightly steep. Let's
• 33:10
  me take my, how much physical support I'm giving your shoulders. Let's get you doing some turns.
• 33:15
  Let's get you going for longer. You succeed. It reinforces that cognitive development in your brain.
• 33:20
  Those neurons fire in the actual specific skill of riding the bike like that. You then reinforce it
• 33:26
  through repetition and succeeding at it. Then you stretch again. Right. And you do that with language
• 33:30
  development. You do that with emotional regulation. You do that with social skills. Social skills. A lot
• 33:35
  of kids get stuck in very superficial social engagements. If you're in primary school and you
• 33:41
  can't go to depth either in letting another kid have a turn asking them what their interests are.
• 33:47
  Do you know what I mean? Self-disclosure. When it's appropriate, you then don't develop deeper
• 33:52
  friendships. You don't get invited to birthday parties. You don't have anyone to play with on the
• 33:56
  playground. Like the playground is a lot of the flies. Do you know what I mean? A lot of kids are
• 34:01
  a lot of it starts there. There's a lot of kids are okay in the classroom. It's got the set
• 34:05
  structure. They've got a teacher who's really supportive. They go on the playground. They fail.
• 34:09
  They sit on their own. They get heated and get into fights. You know, I'm going to get teased
• 34:14
  and it's the only way. I meet teenagers. Teenagers. I've got one I see at the moment who's
• 34:18
  performing at a national level. And he has no friends. And I say, what do you do during lunch? You
• 34:25
  know, he's in high school. There's one group of kids that if I don't say anything, they'll let me
• 34:29
  stand there with him. You know what I mean? Isn't that crazy? But he's just, he hasn't learned
• 34:34
  social skills. So he's stuck. He's been stuck for every decade in not understanding. Firstly,
• 34:40
  how to stick up for himself. Have secure enough self-esteem that he doesn't want to be a part of
• 34:44
  that social group. But also, give him the actual appropriate skill set in social skill development.
• 34:49
  I have other kids where we drop them back years. We go, you're going to hang out with the kids
• 34:53
  that are four or five years younger than you. Now, we protect their self-esteem by saying,
• 34:57
  you need to teach them stuff. Teach them stuff that you're good at. Like, ah,
• 35:01
  actual sports or whatever. But actually, what we want is them to have social success
• 35:05
  with the kid who's actually at their level. And then we build them up and we stretch them.
• 35:09
  And then with same age peers, they can socialize well, feel good about themselves,
• 35:13
  deepen their relationships. And then they're more likely, like, your social and emotional
• 35:17
  development is your biggest predictor of your income, your community engagement, your trajectory
• 35:21
  through school, your adult mental health, your physical health. Everything is worn by that.
• 35:25
  Not how smart we are. Well, thank God. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Yeah. But I mean,
• 35:30
  who guys is that? Obviously, in your line of work, you want to believe that it's and you may go
• 35:35
  right. I don't have to believe it. This is not my opinion. This is the evidence.
• 35:40
  I mean, I just feel like there are certain things that I was bad at socially. And I just never
• 35:45
  had supported remedying. And then I, so I just leaned into whatever strengths I had,
• 35:49
  yeah, my sense of humor and my command of language. And I never tried to be good at the other things
• 35:54
  that I was, but I was excluded. And aren't we all in some ways from definitely
• 35:58
  different groups? Oh, yeah, definitely. But you're the security, like, we're not aiming for
• 36:04
  high self-esteem in kids and us. We're aiming for secure self-esteem. I can fail. I can be excluded.
• 36:09
  I can have negative feedback. But I'll internally be okay about how I feel about myself.
• 36:14
  But we know most of us are not like that. Do you know what I mean? Failure harms us.
• 36:19
  You know, we feel shame. We feel all these things that we just haven't had the protective skill
• 36:23
  sets built. Now, it's really interesting when you think about this from neurodivergent kids
• 36:29
  because, you know, things like this is the way that you're meant to socialize. You're meant to
• 36:33
  maintain eye contact. You're meant to understand in your windows. You're meant to understand
• 36:38
  in jokes, you know, all this kind of stuff. And if you're wide differently, that's where you've
• 36:43
  probably heard about this going back to empathy, the double empathy problem. Do you know what I mean?
• 36:47
  I can't connect with you because I've got a set way of this is how we socialize. And you can't
• 36:52
  connect with me because your brain is wide in a different way. And so we both fail.
• 36:57
  And we just dig into that double empathy. It's called the double empathy problem.
• 37:01
  Yes. It's a beautiful bit of research that I can't remember a name. A guy came up with it,
• 37:06
  but a woman has done all this research and neurodivergent individuals because they have a different
• 37:10
  way. They process all the information that comes through them in their world, sound sites,
• 37:15
  social interactions, everything that someone will fail to connect with them who is neurotypical.
• 37:21
  And so there's even cool research that looks at if you played like the game of passing on a
• 37:25
  message and seeing how true it is from the start to the end through five or six people,
• 37:30
  if you have neurotypical people and you run it say it's 80% clear. If you have neurodivergent people
• 37:37
  and you run it, it's 80% clear. If you mix it with neurodivergent and neurotypical people,
• 37:41
  it's like 60% 50% because it gets lost. Right. Because we just fail so much in the way that we,
• 37:48
  you know, problem solved together, communicate with each other, all of this stuff. And a lot of it
• 37:52
  is because we don't flex enough. We think, no, you should be looking in the eye. It should be
• 37:59
  understanding I'm cross because I'm crossing my arms. Do you know what I mean? And then we go,
• 38:04
  there's something wrong with Josh. I don't want to be using Josh. But if I actually understand,
• 38:08
  oh, he's got a different way that he communicates. Yeah. I mean, we obviously, without denying the
• 38:14
  existence of clinically diagnosable conditions like, you know, whatever you want to call,
• 38:21
  are we calling it autism anymore? Why are we just calling it a spectrum disorder of some kind?
• 38:24
  Yeah. Well, I mean, the beautiful thing is that we'll get better at this. Hopefully we get,
• 38:28
  hopefully we don't want to say this is how it's going to be forever. Like, I hope that I
• 38:32
  improve on the way that I talk about it, the way that we think about it, all that stuff. And
• 38:36
  there's like, the beautiful thing about autism is there's been this amazing push of advocacy
• 38:40
  within that community to say, actually, we prefer, you know, an autistic person as opposed to a
• 38:47
  person with autism. Like, that's language has changed because those people put their hands up and
• 38:51
  see you're talking about me, you know, and that's what I want to continue to grow clinically and how
• 38:55
  we talk about this stuff. But, you know, these are just, these are really vulnerable people,
• 38:59
  for especially as kids, they're really vulnerable to developmental trauma, to mental illness,
• 39:04
  to social isolation, to insecure self-esteem, all this stuff. And it's the system that does that
• 39:09
  to them. It's a system that says, this is, you know, how are you going to be taught? This is how
• 39:14
  we expect you to interact. This is, you know, I don't know. No, I totally understand that, but I
• 39:18
  guess I'm interested in the grays, right? As always, this is sort of my stick is like, you know,
• 39:23
  so you've got these people who are clinically diagnosable, who are autistic. And then,
• 39:31
  aren't we all, you know, aren't so many of us a bit neurodivergent in that brains are very
• 39:36
  complicated and men are from Mars and women are from Venus and my wife never understands
• 39:42
  that I do this and why does my husband look at me that way and why does, you know, didn't you
• 39:45
  understand that obviously when I was reading in bed, I didn't want you to be talking at me,
• 39:49
  this is my alone time. Well, no, I didn't understand. We should have been able to tell from the,
• 39:52
  like our lives in my experience are just a thicket of misunderstandings, attempted apprehensions,
• 40:00
  attempted empathy, failed encounters and so on. And we're all flailing around trying to make
• 40:07
  do and trying to glean as best we can. What other people, what it's like to be another human being,
• 40:12
  some of us are better at that than others. And some of us are just better as you're saying,
• 40:17
  at doing that within a group within a cohort of people who have brains that are wide,
• 40:21
  similarly to ours. Yeah, right. Totally. Yeah, how do you address the, so if you think about the
• 40:27
  social aspect of it, you know, like you mentioned before, you know, you might have experienced some
• 40:32
  isolation or whatever growing up, you know, is that just because there wasn't healthy scaffolding
• 40:38
  in that environment or is it because of a sensitivity in the way that you're wide, you know, you
• 40:42
  either weren't able to pick that up, you took criticism to personally whatever, or you were just
• 40:47
  overwhelmed by the social expectations. Now, we don't, the way that we think about it is not how
• 40:53
  bad are you. We think how much support do you need to succeed in a healthy way? And this is
• 40:58
  where something like masking comes in. A lot of these kids, especially teenage girls, will be masking
• 41:03
  so much where they're just trying to fit in. So depression rates in girls kicks in teenage years.
• 41:09
  And often it's because of a cultural expectation of this is what we expect to you now. If you hit
• 41:13
  puberty, this is the way the world views you, but also you are more likely to conform to society's
• 41:21
  expectations about just maintaining, you know, how you are being calm in an environment, not acting
• 41:27
  out, not lashing out, you can't display anger, things like that. So if you're a neurodivergent
• 41:32
  and either the social expectation or even the sensory experience of being, you know, I'm finding
• 41:37
  this room with that light, there will be a percentage of people that can't see here and function
• 41:41
  well without getting really stressed with that light on them. Do you know what I mean? That is
• 41:45
  a neurodivergence in a big part of the population. You know, ADHD, for example, I can ignore the cars
• 41:52
  that I can hear, but if I'm sitting in a classroom and I have clinical ADHD, I can't. It's so much
• 41:57
  cognitive strain for me to stay on the lesson plan. So I'm exhausted. What do the weight I'm carrying
• 42:03
  through that day in the classroom is more than 80% of the kids. So I'm exhausted, I'm more likely
• 42:08
  to fail, I'm more likely to act out, I'm more likely to externalize to get me out of that room. Do
• 42:13
  you know what I mean? To shut down or to just perform and go, I've got no idea about this in joke,
• 42:17
  but I'm just going to sit here and laugh along. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I'll miss out on that.
• 42:22
  I won't truly have the depth of the friendships. It won't translate to how I feel about myself
• 42:27
  socially, like all those things. Do you know what I mean? So I take your point. I think the beautiful
• 42:31
  thing is more and more people are realizing now because it's become a safer space to look internally
• 42:37
  and say, what was it like for me? What's it like for me now? And I think that's why more and more
• 42:41
  people are going and seeking out. Do I have ADHD? Yeah. I mean, I think it's quite from
• 42:46
  confronting to hear you talk because I don't know about the other people, but I mean I certainly
• 42:49
  think back to adolescence as being a time full of anxiety and exclusion and like, you know,
• 42:59
  you're just trying to figure out who the hell you are and like what and how to engage and how
• 43:03
  to interact. Totally. But if that was destructive to you now, then or more importantly now,
• 43:08
  it shouldn't have been that way. It's okay if it helps you grow. Some negative feedback,
• 43:12
  you feel a bit guilty because you insulted someone, you missed someone's feelings, you know,
• 43:18
  we hurt someone physically, emotionally, whatever and you can look internally and say that.
• 43:23
  But if you've carried that shame, if you were dysfunctional because of it, you couldn't sleep
• 43:28
  because of it, you developed an eating disorder, all that stuff, that shouldn't have happened.
• 43:34
  That should be the experience. It's not this right of passage that you go through
• 43:37
  that your teenage years are destructive to you even in your adult life and your 40s.
• 43:42
  Like we are. Yeah. That's not how it should be and that is preventable. That is preventable
• 43:47
  and that you can catch up much earlier than we do. Like we know all of the research about how
• 43:51
  you prevent this in communities, about how you catch it early. Like emotional and behavioral
• 43:57
  difficulties, the behavioral difficulties in the classroom and the number one reason that
• 44:01
  educators leave the profession because they're not trained in how to identify what's going on,
• 44:06
  how to support that. We know that. That's not my opinion. That's my research. My PhD went into
• 44:11
  schools and said, how do we do this better? And I learned more than I taught. I did 45 sessions
• 44:17
  with educators in six months about how do we better identify these kids and support them using
• 44:22
  the evidence in the real world? So you take your coders on it. You have the strengths of the
• 44:26
  community. You build the capacity of the educators to identify when kids are showing early signs
• 44:31
  and think about what is developmentally evidence-based approaches and understanding why.
• 44:35
  That sounds a bit jargony. What does that look like? So you're sitting here and you're like
• 44:40
  screw this classroom, screw this teacher I hate to suffer. I'm going to steal stuff from the
• 44:44
  classroom and show up later and I'm going to be destructive and it sounds about right. Yeah,
• 44:48
  totally. That was me as well. Why? Why is it? I'm not getting up out of bed to do that. There's a
• 44:52
  reason. What's the reason? Josh might be anxious. Is he anxious? Is there something going on at home?
• 44:59
  Is he unable to focus? Does he have insecure self-esteem? Like, do you know what I mean?
• 45:04
  Yeah, but maybe I'm bored and I think the whole thing's stupid and I just think there are better
• 45:07
  things to do with my childhood than sitting in this stupid room and I talk down to it by this
• 45:11
  dickhead. Great example. I've heaps of those kids in clinic. So how do you reckon you change that?
• 45:15
  Because what's the worry about I'm bored? I've got better things to do than listening to this
• 45:19
  dickhead. What's the worry about that kid that they never learn? That you don't never learn,
• 45:23
  they get kicked out of school, they don't meet their potential, they don't have the capacity to
• 45:28
  be in the workforce successfully, have healthy relationships, respect, authority.
• 45:33
  You're talking about a whole bunch of things that I fundamentally don't think of virtue.
• 45:37
  It's like I don't think the respect for authority is as much of a virtue as we make it out to be.
• 45:41
  Totally. I think that complying with the education system as it says. I don't think the kids
• 45:46
  change, funneled into a corporate environment and being a good little boy. I agree with you.
• 45:53
  I don't agree with compliance. People fight up at me on social media because I was saying kids
• 45:58
  shouldn't be forced to say sorry. Kids need to learn why and they need to choose to do that.
• 46:05
  Moral development shows us that. Our moral should develop because we choose to be who we are.
• 46:11
  Not because someone forced us. That makes sense. I agree with you. I can come with those huge
• 46:15
  risks. This thing that is sticking in the crawl of the, I'm speaking as like 12-year-old Josh
• 46:24
  now. Why do you, adults, set up a system that is so un conducive to my unique version of
• 46:33
  creativity and attention and then try to jury rig new ways of addressing my failure to comply
• 46:43
  with your stupid system. It's not your failure. It's our failure. It's a system failure.
• 46:47
  I 100% agree with you on that. It's not the kid who needs to change its environment and need to
• 46:52
  understand why is this kid not succeeding and because there's an unmet need in that kid
• 46:58
  such as a sense of belonging in that school community. The research shows us that is a protective
• 47:03
  factor in the trajectory of all kids in schools. They should have a sense of belonging in that
• 47:08
  school community. Every single kid I've ever met, probably 15,000 kids, has the potential to have
• 47:14
  a sense of belonging in a school community. How do you foster that? By getting to know the kid,
• 47:19
  by being unconditionally supportive, seeing beyond the behaviour. Josh is screwing around. He's told
• 47:24
  me to get stuffed again. He's trying to cheer through the classroom. This is a time I lean in
• 47:28
  and show him. I'm still going to support him. I'm going to call that out and say, we need to do
• 47:34
  better. We can do better. How do we do better, Josh? Josh, we want you here. This is a better school
• 47:41
  when you're here. It shouldn't be as hard for you. It shouldn't be as hard for us. We're not doing
• 47:47
  something right. What is the need in you? I say, heaps of 10-edge boys that I like. I don't give
• 47:52
  a crap about school. They've either stopped going. They hardly go at all. They go on their violence.
• 47:58
  They go and they check out. The first thing I need to do is make sure they feel safe there,
• 48:02
  and then they need to have a sense of belonging. That academic stuff comes last. I don't care if the
• 48:08
  kid doesn't do the work. I want him to feel like that place values him. Educators are phenomenal.
• 48:15
  They're most important profession. They need to be paid more, supported more, trained more,
• 48:19
  all of that stuff, but I talk to the educators about those families and I say you need to
• 48:24
  proactively build a trusting relationship with them. They don't need to every time the school
• 48:28
  rings or every time the principal walks over to ward them, go to my kids in trouble. They need
• 48:32
  to go. How can we do better to support Josh? Josh really matters to us. We're worried he's
• 48:37
  struggling. How's he going home? What do you find in the ways that help Josh when he's really
• 48:41
  dysregulated? We really care about Josh here and then find Josh's strengths. Josh is great in
• 48:47
  entertainment. He's really funny. How does he have a place here? He has leadership. He has
• 48:53
  opportunity to have an outlet for that here. We noticed Josh doesn't have any friends. He
• 48:57
  should. Why is that? Is it a skill development thing? Is it an emotional regulation thing? Is it
• 49:03
  he doesn't care? He's not trying. How do we scaffold support around that and give him an opportunity
• 49:08
  to succeed in that specific component of his development that he's failing at?
• 49:12
  Like, do you know what I mean? He's not rocket science. I mean, it's not rocket science,
• 49:15
  but it sounds like. It's not built into it. It sounds like teachers need more training.
• 49:20
  But it sounds better. It's also a better pay, a better respect, like the media beats them up
• 49:25
  all the time. Do you know what I mean? And a lot of these kids at what's going on at home
• 49:29
  is so destructive to them and it's not their fault. It's not the parents fault. I grew up in that
• 49:33
  environment. You know, multi-generational trauma just ripples through our communities. We have
• 49:38
  to address that. We have to better support parents, but we need to use the evidence to do it. Most of
• 49:42
  the school programs are not evidence-based. They don't have proper evaluation. What are they?
• 49:47
  What's an example of the kind of thing that you think doesn't work that gets done? Well, yeah,
• 49:52
  if you just roll in and you've got a carbon copy thing that you do through every school,
• 49:55
  you're not actually meeting the needs of that school. Like, in the six schools that ran through
• 50:00
  my intervention, every one of them had different needs in what support looked like, what topics
• 50:05
  they were worried about, what was actually going on in their community. For example, two Melbourne
• 50:09
  schools within a kilometer of each other, we've had to do talk to the parents about setting up
• 50:13
  the project and the, you know, socio-economic advantage school said, Billy, come and talk about
• 50:19
  kids' mental health. All the parents will come. I walked a kilometer to one of the most disadvantaged
• 50:25
  schools in Melbourne and the principal who's amazing said, whatever you do, don't say mental health.
• 50:31
  None of the parents will come because there's a culture of vulnerability just around that terminology.
• 50:36
  So you even just the word. How do you frame that for that cohort? We talked about how do we make sure
• 50:40
  every kid here thrives? Right. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. His strengths base was what they
• 50:45
  could. They could do deal with that. But we knew the other school was going to get way more if we
• 50:49
  talked about mental health because of their level of awareness, the language they feel comfortable
• 50:54
  with is different. How do you use the strengths within that school community? It's quite revealing,
• 50:59
  isn't it? There's really many people who are struggling are more receptive to a message of
• 51:05
  thriving and success. Yeah. And the people who are economically more advantaged are more receptive to
• 51:12
  a narrative of victimization and illness. Yeah. I think that is one way and I kind of understand
• 51:19
  where you're coming from. The interesting thing that I've seen across my work in some elite schools
• 51:24
  and then, you know, schools at the other end of the spectrum is they're all struggling with this
• 51:29
  stuff. They might have different levels of resource. They, you know, but their kids are struggling.
• 51:33
  Their kids are self-harming. Their kids are having suicidal thinking, like, do you know what I mean?
• 51:38
  There's no one who is protected from this. And I think we know better now. When we were growing up,
• 51:44
  we didn't know better. But mental health is just this. It's really interesting. I'd say this with, like,
• 51:51
  respect and trying not to be abrasive. But I think it is kind of the last bastion of snake oil
• 51:56
  a bit, you know what I mean? Where there's a lot of people in the mental health space that aren't
• 51:59
  trained in it. But there's a lot of money in it, you know what I mean? So the ice bath stuff
• 52:05
  comes and goes, you know what I mean? But you know what I mean? So I'm glad you said that because
• 52:11
  I always feel bad that I don't do what I ask for. I'm like, I need to get me an ice bath. I need
• 52:15
  to find myself an ice bath. Imagine if you could get people that interested in, like, understanding
• 52:20
  this. You know, I might have spoken about this before. I always believe I'm on the amount of dads
• 52:23
  that, like, will consume so much media around golf. They'll go to the driving range of practice.
• 52:29
  They spend thousands of dollars on equipment. They spend hours every weekend doing it. They
• 52:33
  care way more about their kids. But they don't approach parenting like that. Because of it'll
• 52:38
  happen organically. They'll figure it out on their own. I know and showed me. Do you know what I mean?
• 52:44
  I mean, I'm so torn. That's why I love talking to you, Billy, because I'm so torn by everything
• 52:47
  you say. Like, in my experience, in my cohort of friends, just anecdotally, with no data.
• 52:54
  Okay. Well, the people who have grown up into the adults who I admire the most are the ones
• 53:01
  who came from families where the parents just loved them as much as possible. God, I 100%
• 53:08
  and didn't try to micromanage and didn't try to learn or overthink parenting strategies.
• 53:12
  And the ones who are most dysfunctional had the parents who were most obsessive about,
• 53:16
  instead of learning about golf, they would be reading all the parenting books and trying to
• 53:20
  micromanage their kids. But there's a difference between being informed by the evidence
• 53:24
  and micromanaging. But I grew to you. Unconditional love. What is that difference?
• 53:27
  So, firstly, how do we know it? Unconditional love and positive regard is the most important
• 53:31
  thing you can do for a kid. Like, your kids growing up that they know you and know, like they know,
• 53:36
  not you know, because every single parent is like my kids know. Right. A lot of kids don't know.
• 53:41
  Right. Do you know what I mean? We know that kids when they come out as teenagers and they go,
• 53:45
  yeah, I felt like love was conditional. I remember one of my friends when I was 15 or 16,
• 53:50
  she came up to me and said, do you have your parents said that like literally said, I love you,
• 53:55
  like those words to you? And I was like, yeah, and she was like, how many times? Like every day?
• 53:59
  She was like, that might have never said it. Totally. Do you say it to your kids?
• 54:03
  Yeah. Yeah, I'm saying. Yeah, all the time. But all the time, yeah, every day.
• 54:06
  So my daughter, like, gets annoyed how much I say. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you love me.
• 54:11
  You know what I mean? She's four. But I don't care. Like if I've gone too far in that,
• 54:16
  yeah, sue me. You know what I mean? I'm glad. But I agree. I can't micro-manager.
• 54:19
  So I agree with you. Like I've got three kids. But yeah, my vulnerability, a good example is,
• 54:24
  this is micro-management. And this is a lot of it coming from ourselves and not our kid is,
• 54:29
  and this is the second group that you're talking about is that I, one of the hardest things I have
• 54:33
  is dropping my kids off at daycare and separating from me. But it's more about me than them.
• 54:37
  And I remember I was rolling out of childcare with EV about a year ago. And I do everything I
• 54:42
  can to get out of doing it. So I'm so bad at it. Like I stressed about it and all this stuff.
• 54:45
  Appealing are off me at four months of age was the hardest thing I've ever done. So I could go to work.
• 54:50
  But even as a three-year-old, I remember her getting really upset and I walked out and I was kind
• 54:55
  of mumbled to myself going past on the educators, God, I'm really bad at this. And she's like,
• 54:59
  yeah, you are. And I'm like a developmental pediatrician. Like thanks for the support.
• 55:04
  I know, 14 and a half years of uni in this stuff, like full-time study about this stuff. I mean,
• 55:09
  over 20 years in a space where I'm kids are with my own kid, my own stuff overshadows it.
• 55:14
  And she picks it up. You know, she picks it up off me. So I can't micromanage her. Like I've,
• 55:19
  you know, so then what does it look like to be spending the time not on golf,
• 55:23
  but on researching how you should be parenting in the absence of becoming overly focused on,
• 55:29
  like I'm totally, how's my kid going? Do you think that? Do you look at that? Of course.
• 55:33
  At all times, constantly thinking about how they're doing. But that's different from
• 55:37
  me trying to learn the latest research about how totally you're not a thriving child.
• 55:42
  You kid might be fine always for a very nice thing. Totally. So what are you doing? They're not.
• 55:48
  G'day, humans. Well, if you've listened to this much of the episode, then you must enjoy it
• 55:52
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• 55:57
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