Latest / All Mom Does Podcast with Julie Lyles Carr / RAISING THEM WELL: Gen Alpha with Dave Boden (From the Archives)

Transcript

RAISING THEM WELL: Gen Alpha with Dave Boden (From the Archives) · All Mom Does Podcast with Julie Lyles Carr

0:01
Speaker 1: Purposely Your Life Gud's purpose Listen at purposely dot com.
0:17
Speaker 2: Hey friend, I'm so glad you're here. I'm Julie Lyles
0:19
Speaker 2: Carr and this is the Allman Does Podcast, part of
0:21
Speaker 2: the Purposely podcast network. We are in summertime, summer, summer summer,
0:26
Speaker 2: and we wanted to go back into the archives and
0:29
Speaker 2: give you some of our top episodes all around a
0:33
Speaker 2: specific topic, and that is raising them Well. This is
0:39
Speaker 2: going to be an incredible playlist for you as you're
0:42
Speaker 2: on those road trips at the beach wherever, where you
0:44
Speaker 2: can listen and get yourself really encouraged and equipped up
0:48
Speaker 2: for raising these kids and really making sure that your
0:51
Speaker 2: parenting is on course for where you want it to be.
0:54
Speaker 2: We're going to have six different episodes in this series,
0:57
Speaker 2: and I am so glad you're here to listen. First up,
1:00
Speaker 2: one of my new favorite Brits and his name is
1:03
Speaker 2: Dave Bowden, and he has done some incredible work on
1:06
Speaker 2: a generation that we don't talk a lot about, but
1:09
Speaker 2: if you are parenting today, you're probably right in the
1:12
Speaker 2: trenches with this crew. I want you to learn more
1:15
Speaker 2: about Jen Alpha and I'm so glad you're here. Dave
1:21
Speaker 2: thanks so much for being on the podcast today.
1:25
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me all the way from the
1:27
Speaker 3: sunny UK. Yeah.
1:28
Speaker 2: Absolutely, give the listener a window into your world where
1:32
Speaker 2: you live. I already know there's a crazy dog afoot.
1:35
Speaker 2: Tell me about your life and how you are living
1:38
Speaker 2: there over in the heart of England.
1:41
Speaker 3: Yes, so I live slap bang in the heart of
1:44
Speaker 3: England in a place called Coventry with my wife and
1:47
Speaker 3: four children. So I'm a parent of actually multiple generations,
1:52
Speaker 3: so we have our youngest is jen Alpha, but we
1:54
Speaker 3: also have three gen zs, so my eldest is twenty
1:57
Speaker 3: three now living by the sea in Cornwall, and our
2:01
Speaker 3: youngest is fifteen. I also am a former pastor, so
2:05
Speaker 3: I used to leave a church for eleven years which
2:07
Speaker 3: was a great, privileged, beautiful time. But have more experience
2:11
Speaker 3: recently in school leadership. So I work in high schools
2:16
Speaker 3: here in the UK, and they're not Christian high schools,
2:19
Speaker 3: but they're secular high schools where we're able to bring
2:21
Speaker 3: Christian values and ethos into those young people's lives to
2:24
Speaker 3: help them find a message of hope in the midst
2:27
Speaker 3: of all the incredible challenges that young people face today.
2:30
Speaker 3: So most of my world is spent with young people,
2:33
Speaker 3: with staff in schools who working incredibly hard to educate,
2:38
Speaker 3: particularly around character values, how to build healthy relationships and
2:43
Speaker 3: understanding faith from scratch. So most of the young people
2:46
Speaker 3: we work with have no frame of Christianity whatsoever. So
2:49
Speaker 3: it keeps it quite interesting and exciting.
2:52
Speaker 2: Right right. I want to hear how you became interested
2:57
Speaker 2: in what now feels like very common vernacular to us,
3:01
Speaker 2: this identification of specific generations, which I think as I
3:05
Speaker 2: look in world history, is actually pretty unique. I like you,
3:09
Speaker 2: I have eight kids, and so we have we have
3:11
Speaker 2: parented multiple generations, and then we have ones that kind
3:15
Speaker 2: of fall in between, like technically they're millennial, but actually
3:19
Speaker 2: they're more gen Z And we got it all going on,
3:22
Speaker 2: and now there are a couple grand babies involved, which
3:24
Speaker 2: means we get a whole other set of a generation
3:27
Speaker 2: that we are now begetting to onboard and try to
3:29
Speaker 2: figure out. I want to hear what the journey was
3:31
Speaker 2: like for you becoming interested in this phenomenon of such
3:34
Speaker 2: strong identification of generations, and how that's informing some of
3:40
Speaker 2: the things that you're doing today.
3:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating subject, isn't it, and it is,
3:46
Speaker 3: you know, it's fraught. We've kind of technicalities around when
3:49
Speaker 3: does one generation start and the next one begin, But
3:52
Speaker 3: in essence, generational studies is this idea that every generation
3:56
Speaker 3: sees life through a different lens. And I became really
3:59
Speaker 3: fascinated that with that myself because as a parent of
4:03
Speaker 3: a jen alpha child, I remember speaking to my daughter
4:06
Speaker 3: when she was twelve years old and I said to Siena,
4:09
Speaker 3: my daughter, and I said, why do you think adults
4:12
Speaker 3: struggled to connect with young people today? And she just
4:15
Speaker 3: came out with this line that blew me away. She said, Dad,
4:18
Speaker 3: is quite simply because young people did not grow up
4:21
Speaker 3: in the same world as you lot did. And that
4:24
Speaker 3: flawed me because I thought, I've worked with teenagers for years,
4:27
Speaker 3: like I am a veteran youth worker, you know, I've
4:31
Speaker 3: kind of probably like you like, worked in many many
4:34
Speaker 3: different spheres with families and young people for years, so
4:37
Speaker 3: I thought I was up to date with what's going on.
4:39
Speaker 3: And it was really when she said to me, she said, Dad,
4:42
Speaker 3: you don't have a clue what's going on. And I thought,
4:44
Speaker 3: I need to listen to the voice of the young
4:47
Speaker 3: person here and say, do I really know. And what
4:50
Speaker 3: was interesting at that time was a few years ago
4:53
Speaker 3: the church was talking so much about gen Z. But
4:57
Speaker 3: yet when you actually think about it, Gen alpha has
5:01
Speaker 3: twy ten to twenty twenty five. Jen alpha's already finished.
5:05
Speaker 3: If you've got any grand babies born this year, they
5:07
Speaker 3: can be to children. So we've got this new generation
5:10
Speaker 3: that's emerged. But nobody in the shirts I could not
5:13
Speaker 3: find a book about jen alpha. I could not find
5:15
Speaker 3: very much information about jen alpha, apart from marketing, which
5:18
Speaker 3: is very interesting that research has been done by the
5:21
Speaker 3: world in a secular capacity, so that trying to understand
5:26
Speaker 3: what's going on in the world of teenagers and young
5:28
Speaker 3: people today was fascinating to me, always has been. And
5:31
Speaker 3: then really it is how do we take that knowledge,
5:34
Speaker 3: put ourselves in the shoes of the next generation, and
5:37
Speaker 3: what do we do about it? Because so often I
5:40
Speaker 3: think we hear about Gen Z or millennials and its
5:43
Speaker 3: stereotyp types. Isn't it It's negativity and it's all that
5:47
Speaker 3: kind of it's almost like seen as a bad thing.
5:50
Speaker 3: So there's this division between generations. And as a Christian myself,
5:56
Speaker 3: the Bible's very clear it says one generation will tell
5:58
Speaker 3: of your deeds to the next So if we're going
6:00
Speaker 3: to actually reach the next generation and support them, we've
6:04
Speaker 3: got to be able to tell the story of God
6:06
Speaker 3: to the next generation. So if I was trying to
6:08
Speaker 3: disrupt the flow of the Gospel, one of the big
6:11
Speaker 3: things I do is try to say to separate generations, right,
6:14
Speaker 3: I try to get generations to detach from each other,
6:17
Speaker 3: to disconnect, to hate each other. Because if we can
6:20
Speaker 3: do that, we can stop the story of God being
6:22
Speaker 3: passed down to the next generation. So it's actually really serious,
6:25
Speaker 3: you know, this is kind of serious thing that we
6:27
Speaker 3: have to understand what's going on. Like in the Old
6:30
Speaker 3: Testament Bible says that the sons of Isakha they understood
6:33
Speaker 3: the times and they knew what Israel should do. So
6:36
Speaker 3: it's this idea of I'm so fascinated by understanding what's
6:39
Speaker 3: going on in the next generation, Then how do we
6:42
Speaker 3: as adults respond to it. Because I think you'll probably
6:45
Speaker 3: know this from talking with a lot of parents, you know,
6:48
Speaker 3: I myself, like a lot of parents are terrified with
6:50
Speaker 3: what's going on in the next generation. So they're actually
6:53
Speaker 3: burying their heads in the band and they're struggling in
6:55
Speaker 3: the fand you know, they just don't understand the world
6:57
Speaker 3: our kids are growing up in of AI and hyperconnectivity
7:01
Speaker 3: and anxiety and some of the things that the research
7:03
Speaker 3: I really looked into discovered. So the heart for me
7:07
Speaker 3: is to be able to understand what's going on, but
7:09
Speaker 3: then say, how do we respond so we can love
7:12
Speaker 3: the next generation better and lead them well and not
7:15
Speaker 3: just seeing them as a target, because I've never been
7:18
Speaker 3: into that whole idea of like, you know, we've got
7:20
Speaker 3: to reach the next generation because they are this kind
7:23
Speaker 3: of ethereal blob. And it's the downside of generation or
7:26
Speaker 3: studies is that we can end up lumping everybody in
7:28
Speaker 3: the same basket. Right, But you have to take it
7:30
Speaker 3: a picture sole but it definitely teaches us something like
7:33
Speaker 3: when we were born. The research clearly shows has a
7:36
Speaker 3: huge impact on the way that we see the world.
7:40
Speaker 3: And I describe in the book like a pair of
7:42
Speaker 3: gen alpha glasses. You know, it's like a lens that
7:44
Speaker 3: they see the world through and that affects everything, and
7:47
Speaker 3: it definitely has an impact on how we lead and
7:49
Speaker 3: love them.
7:50
Speaker 2: Right, you know, David, I didn't realize that that gen
7:54
Speaker 2: Alpha had wrapped. I was thinking, oh, yeah, Jen Alfa's
7:58
Speaker 2: got a few more years on it. But you know
8:00
Speaker 2: by this definition, yeah, I mean that is so fascinating
8:04
Speaker 2: to think about. And you're right, there has been a
8:06
Speaker 2: hyper focus on gen Z. I completely track what you're
8:11
Speaker 2: saying here. I can think of many conversations and different
8:15
Speaker 2: teachings I've heard, and different conferences I have been at
8:18
Speaker 2: where gen Z has been discussed a lot, Gen Alpha
8:21
Speaker 2: not at all, And yet here we are with this
8:25
Speaker 2: arc of fifteen years of people that we haven't been
8:29
Speaker 2: paying as much attention. Sometimes topically we've been paying a
8:32
Speaker 2: little more attention, like you say, an AI generation, an
8:34
Speaker 2: anxious generation, But I don't know that we've been really
8:37
Speaker 2: intentional to unpack and understand the perspective of Gen Alpha.
8:42
Speaker 2: And part of that I think comes. It's funny, Dave.
8:45
Speaker 2: You know we've had a trope for a long time.
8:47
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, my mother in law, right, this is
8:49
Speaker 2: supposed to be in stereotypically a relationship that has thorns
8:54
Speaker 2: on it and is difficult and whatever, and then you
8:56
Speaker 2: have people who pop out the other side and go,
8:58
Speaker 2: my mother in law is fantastic. I don't actually why,
9:00
Speaker 2: why are we promoting this prickliness, you know, of this
9:04
Speaker 2: relationship one to another. I see the same thing happening,
9:08
Speaker 2: these tropes, these stereotypes that have developed in terms of
9:11
Speaker 2: relational connection between generations. I'm proudly gen X. I just
9:16
Speaker 2: needed to mention that, and I am interested. Though, how
9:19
Speaker 2: oftentimes we do act like, oh, you know these gen
9:23
Speaker 2: z Ers or this or that or the other, and yeah,
9:26
Speaker 2: and it doesn't create connection, you know, I think understanding
9:30
Speaker 2: each other's differences is a powerful thing. Mocking one another
9:34
Speaker 2: for those differences, acting like your generation is better because XYZ.
9:39
Speaker 2: That doesn't create the kind of connection that actually makes
9:42
Speaker 2: it possible, most importantly for us to transmit the gospel
9:45
Speaker 2: and then, from a secondary standpoint, even create relationship. You've
9:49
Speaker 2: identified in your book on Gen Alpha that one of
9:51
Speaker 2: the things we need to understand hard stop is that
9:55
Speaker 2: this is a generation that is experiencing anxiousness, anxiety in
10:00
Speaker 2: ways that we may struggle to understand. And yes, we
10:03
Speaker 2: can go back one hundred years and go, well, my
10:06
Speaker 2: great great grandparents were coming into adulthood during World War
10:10
Speaker 2: one world you know, and then move forward a few
10:12
Speaker 2: years World War two, and they just buckled down and
10:16
Speaker 2: got it done. What do you mean this generation that
10:18
Speaker 2: can door dash McDonald's French fries to the front poor
10:21
Speaker 2: just feeling anxious?
10:23
Speaker 1: How do you.
10:24
Speaker 2: Unpack this specific characteristic that we see in jen Alpha,
10:28
Speaker 2: which is an enhanced, a heightened anxiousness in a time
10:33
Speaker 2: and history in which you wouldn't think that would necessarily
10:36
Speaker 2: be the case.
10:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really, really great way to frame the question, actually,
10:42
Speaker 3: because the reality is is that it shouldn't be like this, right,
10:45
Speaker 3: we shouldn't have this, in many sense, the safist generation
10:48
Speaker 3: that we've ever had, and in many ways that looked
10:51
Speaker 3: after healthy, certainly in the West. But yet they are struggling.
10:54
Speaker 3: So we have a situation where one in five children
10:57
Speaker 3: in every classroom it hasn't what would be turned as
11:00
Speaker 3: an identifiable mental health challenge. So this is not just
11:04
Speaker 3: anxious thoughts, feeling a little bit worried. This is clinically
11:08
Speaker 3: diagnosed potentially, So it's gone ballistic and we've seen this
11:13
Speaker 3: the mental health trends drop in. You know, we talked
11:15
Speaker 3: a lot about gen Z and how they've really really struggled,
11:18
Speaker 3: and in many ways jen Alfa were born in the
11:21
Speaker 3: middle of that, and obviously since twenty ten, we've seen
11:26
Speaker 3: a huge rise in social media and technology. And twenty
11:30
Speaker 3: ten was a really interesting year because it was the
11:32
Speaker 3: year that iPad came out, the word app that was
11:35
Speaker 3: the word of the year with the Oxford Dictionary, so
11:39
Speaker 3: it was kind of really focused on what was going
11:42
Speaker 3: on in the world. So we see this kind of
11:44
Speaker 3: further descent intowards technology, and that's adding and compiling this
11:49
Speaker 3: sense that young people are struggling to handle even the
11:53
Speaker 3: basics of life anymore. And whilst the world we have
11:58
Speaker 3: access to so much information in the world and the
12:00
Speaker 3: world's getting bigger, young people's lives are getting smaller and smaller,
12:05
Speaker 3: and we're finding that young people are getting caught in cycles.
12:08
Speaker 3: I did some stuff in my local church the other
12:11
Speaker 3: week where I've talked about this key theme about jen
12:14
Speaker 3: al for being anxious minded and talked to parents and
12:17
Speaker 3: it was interesting because I thought it would be like
12:19
Speaker 3: maybe ten minutes slot as part of a talk, right,
12:22
Speaker 3: and we ended up spending an hour unpacking it because
12:25
Speaker 3: one of the challenges we found was that a lot
12:27
Speaker 3: of the parents themselves were really struggling with anxiety. So
12:31
Speaker 3: we've got anxious parents raising anxious children. So that issue
12:36
Speaker 3: of the past has been compounded in compound is getting
12:38
Speaker 3: harder and harder to know how to deal with it.
12:42
Speaker 3: So we've got parents who don't necessarily understand how to
12:45
Speaker 3: manage their emotionally, regulate and manage what's going on for them.
12:49
Speaker 3: And then we've got this next generation who, through school pressures,
12:52
Speaker 3: through social media, through relationship challenges, you know, things a
12:56
Speaker 3: getting harder and harder for them. I mean, relationships have
12:59
Speaker 3: changed so much like for you and me. When I
13:02
Speaker 3: grew up, I would see my five friends and that
13:04
Speaker 3: was it, you know, and you'd go out ike and
13:07
Speaker 3: then you go home and you'd have a break for everybody.
13:09
Speaker 3: Now it's relentless. There's no break for young people because
13:12
Speaker 3: they live their life online all the time, so relationships
13:15
Speaker 3: bleed everywhere, and particularly since the pandemic, relationships again harder
13:20
Speaker 3: and harder for young people to kind of like handle
13:26
Speaker 3: some of the basics. So I work in this secondary
13:28
Speaker 3: school situation and we're seeing right now it would be
13:32
Speaker 3: eleven and twelve year olds I don't know what grade
13:34
Speaker 3: that would be in the States who are coming into
13:36
Speaker 3: school and they have zero basic relationship skills. They don't
13:40
Speaker 3: have any social skills because they missed two years in
13:43
Speaker 3: the pandemic, and then what's happened since is they've never
13:46
Speaker 3: quite recovered. So relationships feel more fractured than ever, and
13:51
Speaker 3: it's making our kids more and more anxious. The pressure
13:54
Speaker 3: of school again since the pandemic, gets harder and harder
13:57
Speaker 3: because you know, in many senses, schools places where we're
14:01
Speaker 3: kind of using young people as these exam factories and
14:05
Speaker 3: their worlds where actually our schools didn't fit for purpose anymore.
14:09
Speaker 3: Big questions, you know, for us to ask, are we
14:11
Speaker 3: raising children for a world that no longer exists? You know,
14:15
Speaker 3: have we got a situation where you can learn on
14:18
Speaker 3: YouTube in an hour more than that they'll learn usefulness
14:22
Speaker 3: in a week in school. So it's compounding the next
14:26
Speaker 3: generation in terms of anxiety levels, and they're going through
14:29
Speaker 3: the roof. And unfortunately, when we had this always on
14:33
Speaker 3: technology mentality all the time, the comparison culture, the pressures
14:38
Speaker 3: that are facing online as well, it means that young
14:41
Speaker 3: people rarely switch off and they struggle to know how
14:43
Speaker 3: to deal with it.
14:47
Speaker 4: You think that you are in the final round of
14:51
Speaker 4: getting all this parenting done. You've got kids who are
14:54
Speaker 4: in high school.
14:55
Speaker 2: You're starting to think about college and you're thinking.
14:58
Speaker 3: This is it.
14:58
Speaker 2: I'm Julie Lyle's car, i am a podcaster and I'm
15:01
Speaker 2: a mom of eight. And here's what I want you
15:03
Speaker 2: to know about George Fox University. It's a different way
15:08
Speaker 2: of doing college. Why because, yes, it's all.
15:10
Speaker 4: About getting a fantastic degree to set your kid up
15:13
Speaker 4: for their future. They have sixty undergrad programs available at
15:17
Speaker 4: George Fox University. But that's not where the story ends.
15:21
Speaker 4: It's also about equipping them spiritually. If you get out
15:25
Speaker 4: of college with a degree, but you don't have a
15:26
Speaker 4: closer relationship with God, that obviously is going to deeply
15:31
Speaker 4: impact what your young adult life looks like. So for
15:35
Speaker 4: your kid is I want you to consider what would
15:37
Speaker 4: it mean for your child to be able to go
15:39
Speaker 4: to George Fox University where ninety three percent of George
15:44
Speaker 4: Fox students say they now have a closer relationship with Jesus.
15:49
Speaker 4: George Fox University is located in the Pacific northwestern Oregon.
15:52
Speaker 4: They have twenty three Division three athletic programs, and one
15:57
Speaker 4: hundred percent of students at George Fox University receive financial aid.
16:03
Speaker 4: George Fox University is dedicated.
16:05
Speaker 2: To their promise.
16:06
Speaker 4: They want every student to be known for who God
16:09
Speaker 4: created them to be. So listen, parents, Yeah, you are
16:12
Speaker 4: getting into some of those final laps, but you definitely
16:16
Speaker 4: want to make these last laps count in a big
16:19
Speaker 4: way when it comes to the legacy of your parenting.
16:22
Speaker 4: So be sure and check out for your student.
16:24
Speaker 2: George Fox dot edu. That's George Fox dot edu. And
16:33
Speaker 2: I see too. Sometimes what's interesting, particularly with say parents
16:38
Speaker 2: who maybe are Gen X and have a Gen Alpha
16:44
Speaker 2: kid that you know was born twenty ten, twenty eleven,
16:47
Speaker 2: sometimes I can even hear dialogue along the lines of well,
16:52
Speaker 2: there's no reason for you to feel anxious and you know,
16:55
Speaker 2: take a breath and move on, which is not really helpful.
17:00
Speaker 2: There is stewing in it, which leads to my next question.
17:03
Speaker 2: Because you know, we have these trends come through parenting.
17:06
Speaker 2: We onboard them out of good intention because we want
17:09
Speaker 2: to be good parents. And here's the thing that people
17:11
Speaker 2: are saying, is now the good way to do it,
17:13
Speaker 2: and that was the bad way. And one of the
17:15
Speaker 2: things that we've seen onboarded for Gen Alpha in a
17:18
Speaker 2: huge way is gentle parenting. And I think there are
17:22
Speaker 2: some auspices around gentle parenting, This idea of helping your
17:24
Speaker 2: children understand their emotions and talking them through their feelings
17:28
Speaker 2: and giving them language for what their psychological landscape looks like.
17:31
Speaker 2: There's some really beautiful things that have happened there. We
17:34
Speaker 2: don't have longitudinal studies on this just yet, so we
17:37
Speaker 2: don't know exactly. And there are some very important nuances
17:43
Speaker 2: and structures around gentle parenting that sometimes get missed if
17:46
Speaker 2: you are trying to instill this as an ethos in
17:49
Speaker 2: your parenting. And it's built off of social media memes.
17:52
Speaker 2: Not to say there can't be some great wisdom in
17:54
Speaker 2: those social media memes, but it's way more layered than that.
17:58
Speaker 2: So we have an anxious generation sometimes in Gen Alpha,
18:01
Speaker 2: that has been allowed to lead the adults by the nose.
18:05
Speaker 2: So that's got to feel scary and anxiety ridden as
18:09
Speaker 2: well for a kid who's like, I don't know what's
18:12
Speaker 2: going on, and these grown ups shirt don't seem like
18:15
Speaker 2: they know what's going on because they're asking my opinion,
18:18
Speaker 2: they're asking me what should be happening, and I don't know.
18:21
Speaker 2: So where does that collision? What do you see in
18:24
Speaker 2: that collision when it comes to gen alpha and some
18:27
Speaker 2: of the parenting trends that we've recently seen.
18:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's loads of nuance in
18:32
Speaker 3: definitions of gentle parents in but a couple of Yeah.
18:36
Speaker 3: The first thing is that all the research about jen
18:39
Speaker 3: alpha shows that the number one influence in the child's
18:42
Speaker 3: life is still the parent. And that's so encouraging because
18:48
Speaker 3: I think a lot of parents I talk to feel
18:49
Speaker 3: very powerless. But time after time study have to study
18:52
Speaker 3: parents and number one influence. So we've got to help
18:55
Speaker 3: parents understand that they do have the power and the
18:57
Speaker 3: influence in that young person's life. And I think there's
19:01
Speaker 3: often an abdication of that of we forget that and
19:04
Speaker 3: we sort of almost try and farm it off for
19:06
Speaker 3: somebody else to do. So one of the trends that
19:09
Speaker 3: we've seen is that GENAL for kids themselves, are using
19:12
Speaker 3: mental health language, and they're things like like trauma informed
19:18
Speaker 3: and very the medical terms, which are very good, and
19:21
Speaker 3: parents have adapted this, so we're using all the right terminology,
19:26
Speaker 3: but there's a challenge around how it actually gets interpreted
19:30
Speaker 3: into the real world. So there's this sense that, well,
19:33
Speaker 3: you know, I can't do this for my child, because
19:36
Speaker 3: my child. I don't want my child to experience trauma. Well,
19:39
Speaker 3: trauma by a clinical definition means one thing, but trauma
19:43
Speaker 3: by an Instagram definition means everything. Right, Yeah, it means
19:46
Speaker 3: anything difficult. And where we're not helping young people is
19:50
Speaker 3: by allowing them to not grow in resilience and to
19:53
Speaker 3: deal with hard things and suck it up and grow
19:57
Speaker 3: in that whole resilient factor, which I think is it's
20:00
Speaker 3: definitely having an impact because parents are afraid to parent.
20:05
Speaker 3: That's the reality, right, parents are afraid to parent. And yes,
20:08
Speaker 3: we need to be more emotionally aware, But I think
20:12
Speaker 3: the biggest thing that we need to teach our children
20:14
Speaker 3: is emotional regulation, not emotional comfort, because I think you
20:19
Speaker 3: can view parenting in so many ways as a journey
20:23
Speaker 3: of emotional regulation. Like, when I'm emotionally disregulated, I'm going
20:26
Speaker 3: to be a peer. Right, if my anxiety is up here,
20:29
Speaker 3: I'm not going to respond well in that moment to
20:30
Speaker 3: you or to a child. And when my child's on
20:34
Speaker 3: that curve going up, it almost doesn't matter what we say.
20:37
Speaker 3: So we need to help be emotionally aware and emotionally
20:43
Speaker 3: kind of sensitive. But I don't think that necessarily being
20:48
Speaker 3: just letting kids do whatever they want, and that kind
20:51
Speaker 3: of like what do you think? How do you feel?
20:54
Speaker 3: Approach always really works because in this ever rollercoasters, certainly
21:00
Speaker 3: as you become a teenager, young people don't know how
21:02
Speaker 3: they feel that, you know, So we're asking these kids
21:06
Speaker 3: and saying, well, you know, like what do you want
21:08
Speaker 3: to do? They want a parent, They want somebody to
21:11
Speaker 3: parent them, and they want somebody to kind of be
21:14
Speaker 3: their role, not try to be their best friend. And
21:17
Speaker 3: again there's huge nuances we know around gentle parenting. So
21:20
Speaker 3: I don't want to criticize that as a whole model
21:23
Speaker 3: because I think there's some things to learn. But certainly
21:25
Speaker 3: when you mirror this idea that a gen alpha kid
21:30
Speaker 3: might put in the Instagram bio I've got ADHD and
21:34
Speaker 3: I've got PTSD because they did an online quiz and
21:38
Speaker 3: they're identifying with their mental health issue as a good thing.
21:43
Speaker 3: And then you've got parents who don't understand how to
21:47
Speaker 3: actually help their kids emotionally regulate those two That combination
21:52
Speaker 3: of those two things is is probably going to lead
21:55
Speaker 3: to more anxiety, not less.
21:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I can absolutely see where that yeah is
22:02
Speaker 2: just rife with it. I know we've spent a lot
22:05
Speaker 2: of time in the parenting world unpacking what we think
22:08
Speaker 2: some of the impacts of the pandemic have been on kids.
22:13
Speaker 2: And we are now six years past the kickoff of
22:17
Speaker 2: the lockdown, and I know in the UK, y'all spent
22:20
Speaker 2: even more time than we did here in the States
22:22
Speaker 2: locked down. Yeah, it feels like to me and Jen Alpha,
22:26
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong. I'm very curious to hear what your
22:29
Speaker 2: perspective is from the studies. I could see how a
22:32
Speaker 2: kid who was born in twenty ten and is now
22:34
Speaker 2: ten when the lockdown begins, the impact of that lack
22:38
Speaker 2: of socialization and being able to be out and the
22:41
Speaker 2: uncertainty of the times, and mom and dad going, yeah,
22:44
Speaker 2: this is our first pandemic. Two legit. I can see
22:47
Speaker 2: how a ten year old that would be a very
22:49
Speaker 2: different experience for them than say a baby born in
22:52
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, or a baby born in twenty twenty, or
22:55
Speaker 2: a baby born in twenty twenty one. And yet we
22:58
Speaker 2: are still calling them all the same generation. And it
23:02
Speaker 2: almost feels like there should be like a pre gen
23:05
Speaker 2: alpha a post gen Alpha. I don't know, I mean,
23:08
Speaker 2: because you know, two of my granddaughters. They are going
23:11
Speaker 2: to definitely be identified as Gen Alpha. They will have
23:14
Speaker 2: no clue about the pandemic and why their mom and
23:17
Speaker 2: dad wore masks at their wedding, Like you know, it's
23:20
Speaker 2: like that's not going to make any sense to them.
23:22
Speaker 2: So how do you unpack that when you take a
23:25
Speaker 2: look at Gen Alpha and you realize the pandemic just
23:27
Speaker 2: falls right practically in the middle of it, I mean,
23:30
Speaker 2: the last third of it.
23:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when you look at cultural studies, one of
23:35
Speaker 3: the things that you consider is cultural milestones. So for
23:39
Speaker 3: me as a millennial, it was nine eleven. You know,
23:41
Speaker 3: it's like kind of life before nine eleven and what
23:44
Speaker 3: happened in life afterwards. So it's not just the event itself,
23:47
Speaker 3: but it's how does the world change. So I again,
23:50
Speaker 3: I can remember vividly where I was in September eleventh,
23:54
Speaker 3: like even as somebody in England, like he was very powerful,
23:57
Speaker 3: and as you know, Julie, the world changed after that,
24:00
Speaker 3: right in so many ways. And I think we've had
24:04
Speaker 3: this cultural milestone for Gen Alpha kids where some were
24:07
Speaker 3: born in the middle of that, some were born just
24:10
Speaker 3: before it, and some lived through it, and it marked
24:14
Speaker 3: everybody in different ways. So to say that they weren't
24:18
Speaker 3: affected by it. Maybe you know one of the poets,
24:22
Speaker 3: Damian Bard and if you've had in the States, but
24:25
Speaker 3: he said this phase, he says, we're all in the
24:27
Speaker 3: same storm, but not everybody's in the same boat. And
24:31
Speaker 3: I thought that's a really powerful statement to make, because
24:34
Speaker 3: your experience of the pandemic was determined by what was
24:37
Speaker 3: going on at home and globally. The statistics are quite
24:41
Speaker 3: scary actually about what went on. So on an education level,
24:46
Speaker 3: I think it was something like seventy percent of parents
24:48
Speaker 3: had zero contact from teachers once a pandemic kicked in
24:53
Speaker 3: and the lockdown started, So that is like a huge thing.
24:57
Speaker 3: A number of children experience can put very differ fort
25:00
Speaker 3: sad things in the home as well. Maybe they were
25:03
Speaker 3: experiencing death in the family or maybe in America there
25:07
Speaker 3: was one hundred thousand deaths that these children had to,
25:12
Speaker 3: you know, like actually experienced very directly. So there's this
25:18
Speaker 3: sense of the direct impact on the child, depending on
25:21
Speaker 3: where you live, but then there's the indirect consequences. So
25:24
Speaker 3: it's almost like the earthquake happens, we've got ground zero,
25:28
Speaker 3: and then we've got the aftermath. So things are just
25:32
Speaker 3: you know, so different in the world full stop. So
25:36
Speaker 3: for the younger generation, what we see in the UK
25:38
Speaker 3: that is reflected in the States as well. The research
25:41
Speaker 3: shows that you've got kids who are developmentally delayed, so
25:45
Speaker 3: socially delayed, like we talked about already, but even practically
25:48
Speaker 3: starting school and not being able to you know that
25:52
Speaker 3: they're still still in diapers. So we've got that kind
25:55
Speaker 3: of developmental delay. We've also got nine out of ten
25:59
Speaker 3: teachers putting the children don't know how to use a book.
26:04
Speaker 3: Now when I say use a book, I don't mean
26:07
Speaker 3: read a book, I mean use one. So what they're doing,
26:10
Speaker 3: it's tapping the book and swiping it. Yeah, so they're
26:13
Speaker 3: currently all because they've basically been raised for two years
26:18
Speaker 3: on technology on the iPads or and they're swiping and
26:21
Speaker 3: going why isn't this working? Why doesn't this?
26:24
Speaker 2: People do the same thing.
26:26
Speaker 3: Maybe the same thing. So it's the cultural consequences around
26:31
Speaker 3: that milestone which are really impacting this generation. So employment
26:37
Speaker 3: trends have changed since then, you know, the hyperconnectivity has
26:41
Speaker 3: increased since then. So our kids are now growing up
26:44
Speaker 3: in a post pandemic world so much so that Actually,
26:47
Speaker 3: one of the debates around jen al for was do
26:49
Speaker 3: we call it generation COVID? You know, do we call
26:52
Speaker 3: it gen z gen C? Which I found really fascinating.
26:56
Speaker 3: So I when I read the book, I didn't really
26:59
Speaker 3: want to talk about the pandemic. It wasn't something that
27:02
Speaker 3: I liked doing, but I found that it was such
27:05
Speaker 3: a major part of the shape this generation. It had
27:08
Speaker 3: to be mentioned. It had to be talked about because
27:11
Speaker 3: this post COVID world that on every level you could
27:13
Speaker 3: go into it can you relationships, technology, even trusting institutions.
27:19
Speaker 3: So in the UK, there was a lot of faith
27:21
Speaker 3: putting the politicians here following the rules and we are
27:25
Speaker 3: probably more than you guys rule followers, and in following
27:29
Speaker 3: those rules, we actually got quite led down by our
27:33
Speaker 3: politicians who turned up they didn't follow the rules that
27:36
Speaker 3: we did, so our kids. That institutional kind of dynamic
27:42
Speaker 3: and environment. So yeah, it's really affected everything, whether we
27:46
Speaker 3: like it or not. And what I find is, if
27:50
Speaker 3: you've talked about it on your podcast, I think that
27:53
Speaker 3: was really good because here most people they're not talking
27:55
Speaker 3: about it even now.
27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've done a couple episodes, a couple three episodes
28:00
Speaker 2: on it and just tried to take a look. And
28:01
Speaker 2: I think we'll still be learning the lessons for a
28:03
Speaker 2: long time, but it is so fascinating. It just drops
28:06
Speaker 2: right in the middle of that generation. And another thing
28:09
Speaker 2: that jen Alf was going to be dealing with that
28:11
Speaker 2: you talk about is that for a lot of us,
28:14
Speaker 2: we are taking a look at AI and we're going, oh,
28:17
Speaker 2: that's really interesting and I can do this, and oh look,
28:20
Speaker 2: it'll just tell me what the best hotel wherever is.
28:23
Speaker 2: But for a generation that is looking ahead and going,
28:27
Speaker 2: what is this going to mean on the landscape? Now?
28:29
Speaker 2: I have some millennial kids who got caught in the
28:31
Speaker 2: center of this because they are senior software engineers. They're
28:36
Speaker 2: far enough along in their careers that AI is a
28:38
Speaker 2: great help to them. But if they had been starting
28:42
Speaker 2: their careers as coders, that would not have been very fun.
28:45
Speaker 2: But my husband and I were talking about this the
28:46
Speaker 2: other night because my grandparents were caught in a really
28:50
Speaker 2: interesting place. They were sharecroppers. They were farmers in Mississippi
28:54
Speaker 2: at the time when agriculture was it was good becoming
28:59
Speaker 2: to that place that you couldn't just have your little
29:02
Speaker 2: farm and really earn your living off of that anymore,
29:06
Speaker 2: And so they would farm for a little while, and
29:07
Speaker 2: they would go down to the shipyards on the Gulf
29:10
Speaker 2: and they would work in the boats, and then they
29:11
Speaker 2: would get enough money saved up and try to go
29:13
Speaker 2: back home. They were having to span a professional, if
29:18
Speaker 2: you will, industrial age situation in which they did not
29:23
Speaker 2: feel well equipped, and they were having to bounce kind
29:25
Speaker 2: of back and forth in a sense, between these two worlds.
29:29
Speaker 2: What do you see for Gen alpha when it comes
29:31
Speaker 2: to AI? What are the things you mentioned already? Are
29:34
Speaker 2: our school systems even what they need to be to
29:36
Speaker 2: prepare our kids for a world that's coming. But we
29:41
Speaker 2: act like this is novel day, right, We act like, oh,
29:44
Speaker 2: this is never in the history. And I'm like, just
29:46
Speaker 2: go back to the Industrial Revolution, go back to the
29:49
Speaker 2: development of the cotton gen go back to the Gutenberg press.
29:52
Speaker 2: I mean there were always people who and I don't
29:55
Speaker 2: mean in a callus or heartless way. I mean, this
29:58
Speaker 2: is the price of innovation, This is the price of
30:01
Speaker 2: accumulation of knowledge and wisdom. But if i'm Gen alpha,
30:04
Speaker 2: that doesn't really help me. Thanks Jules, that's great. So
30:08
Speaker 2: what do AI look like for Gen Alpha?
30:10
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the world is changing at an ever
30:13
Speaker 3: increasing pace. Right, this is now daily, not just yearly
30:17
Speaker 3: impacts that we're seeing. So we've lived through the Industrial Revolution,
30:21
Speaker 3: and we've lived through the Tech revolution, and we're now
30:23
Speaker 3: right in the middle of the AI Revolution, and I
30:26
Speaker 3: don't think as adults we still full understand what's coming.
30:29
Speaker 3: You know, one of the stats in the book which
30:31
Speaker 3: shocked me was sixty five percent of Gen Alpha kids
30:34
Speaker 3: were working jobs that don't even yet exist. So these
30:39
Speaker 3: jobs exists yet. So you know, when it comes to
30:42
Speaker 3: training young people and raising Gen Alpha, we've got to
30:46
Speaker 3: raise them with the tools, not necessarily the information, because
30:51
Speaker 3: they're going to be able to get the information. And
30:53
Speaker 3: you know, just like the Internet revolution, these young people
30:56
Speaker 3: now are being raised in a world where it's hard
30:59
Speaker 3: to know what's really anymore. So we've got this generation
31:02
Speaker 3: where at the touch of a button and spoken word,
31:06
Speaker 3: we can actually say things now and generate entire books
31:09
Speaker 3: just from write me a book about this podcast today,
31:13
Speaker 3: the ol mom does podcasts and it writes a book
31:15
Speaker 3: for you. Generate an image of me as a podcast host,
31:19
Speaker 3: and it will do it for you. You know, we
31:21
Speaker 3: can visualize things and we're giving almost godlike quality right,
31:25
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of how we do this, and
31:28
Speaker 3: that is never ever been known in the history of mankind.
31:31
Speaker 3: And largely children have unfiltered access to this AI, the
31:35
Speaker 3: same as adults. So we haven't yet figured out what
31:38
Speaker 3: it's going to do for us, but we're still kind
31:41
Speaker 3: of living in the good of it, in the kind
31:42
Speaker 3: of early stages of it. So it's going to affect
31:44
Speaker 3: jobs massively. It's going to affect information, and we have
31:48
Speaker 3: to help kids understand what is real and what is
31:51
Speaker 3: not and teach them to learn to discern in a
31:54
Speaker 3: way that we've never done before. You know, this is
31:57
Speaker 3: not just like is it true not true? Kind of
32:00
Speaker 3: like fact checking. This is next level. Every video, every
32:05
Speaker 3: image you see, every idea may have been developed and
32:09
Speaker 3: driven by an AI algorithm. So how do we help
32:12
Speaker 3: our kids learn to discern and seek truth and get
32:16
Speaker 3: guidance in their life and discern the fact from feeling
32:20
Speaker 3: and how do we weigh sources in a way that
32:23
Speaker 3: we've never had to do before because we just didn't
32:25
Speaker 3: need to do this in the past, right, right.
32:28
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be really remarkable because this
32:30
Speaker 2: is something we're all going to take the ride together
32:33
Speaker 2: and then jen Alpha is going to be the one
32:34
Speaker 2: that carries it into their adulthoods and into their next
32:38
Speaker 2: So it is something to really have that eye on
32:40
Speaker 2: and really be watching. Well, Dave, I mean so many
32:43
Speaker 2: fascinating things to consider when it comes to gen Alpha.
32:45
Speaker 2: I'm so thankful that you identified this as a group
32:48
Speaker 2: that isn't getting some of the attention and the conversation
32:52
Speaker 2: that needs to be had. And I want to congratulate
32:55
Speaker 2: you on your new book that you have coming out.
32:56
Speaker 2: I'm gen Alpha. Can you tell the listener where to
32:59
Speaker 2: go to find the book, where to find you on
33:00
Speaker 2: social media, all the places that they can interact.
33:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, So raising Genelfair helping kids navigate everything from anxiety
33:09
Speaker 3: to AI and books available obviously whatever books are sold.
33:13
Speaker 3: And you can find me on Substack Tapeboden dot substack
33:17
Speaker 3: dot com and Raising genelfha dot net.
33:21
Speaker 2: All right, awesome, Dave Boden. I just want to thank
33:23
Speaker 2: you so much for joining us today on the podcast,
33:26
Speaker 2: taking the time. This has been such an enlightening conversation.
33:29
Speaker 2: We've got to have you back because I want to
33:30
Speaker 2: hear more about what you're seeing work and what's not
33:34
Speaker 2: working and all kinds of things. This is just one
33:35
Speaker 2: of those that I could keep on talking. So I
33:38
Speaker 2: just thank you again for your time today. I know
33:40
Speaker 2: this has been so helpful to the listener who is going,
33:44
Speaker 2: I've got these kids that were born between tent it
33:47
Speaker 2: in and five, what are we doing. Thank you so
33:50
Speaker 2: much for the groundbreaking work that you're doing on this
33:53
Speaker 2: next generation.
33:54
Speaker 3: Thank you, and hopefully it'll be useful for for parents.
33:58
Speaker 2: Absolutely it will be all right. Friend, you know what
34:01
Speaker 2: to do show notes. That's where you can easily go
34:04
Speaker 2: click links for all the things that Dave's been talking about.
34:06
Speaker 2: A big thank you to Rebecca, she puts that out
34:09
Speaker 2: for us. Also, a big thank you to Josh. He
34:11
Speaker 2: is the guy who does all the editing and all
34:13
Speaker 2: the things and spruces it up and makes it sound good.
34:16
Speaker 2: I'm so thankful for the members of our team. We
34:18
Speaker 2: also have Debbie who also puts together all the graphics
34:20
Speaker 2: the promotion. Listen, you can't put a show out like
34:24
Speaker 2: this every week without amazing people in the background running
34:27
Speaker 2: around doing all the things. And I'm just so grateful
34:29
Speaker 2: for this team. I want to encourage you to go
34:31
Speaker 2: to Almondes dot com Almandes on the socials. Be sure
34:34
Speaker 2: and like and share the podcast because that's the biggest
34:37
Speaker 2: thank you can give us. And as always, Hey, slide
34:40
Speaker 2: in my DMS, go to Instagram, go to Julia last card,
34:43
Speaker 2: tell me what you're wondering about, the questions, the topics,
34:45
Speaker 2: the guests you want to have that means so much
34:48
Speaker 2: to us And I will see you next time on
34:50
Speaker 2: the Almand Does podcast. Wow.