Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Have Kids Become Little Shits?

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Have Kids Become Little Shits? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

0:03
G'day humans!
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Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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Here's an uncomfortable
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question that many of us are wrestling with.
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Have children become little shits?
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Is something
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different today in an era of rising ADHD diagnoses, tussles between parents and schools, social
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media bans, questions about free-range parenting and whatnot?
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Today's guest, Ryan Martin, thinks
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that maybe most parenting advice at the moment is just overcomplicated bullshit.
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He's an educator,
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a speaker, a parent himself.
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He's been a principal at an outback school and a teacher in big city
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schools.
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And his advice is refreshingly simple, heartwarming, and full of wit and humor and
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wisdom.
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Ryan has a new book called Little Effers, a book for parents of cranky, crazy, lazy,
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fabulous, amazing little humans.
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He swung by the Uncomfortable Conversations studio.
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I hope you
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enjoy as much as i did the one the only ryan martin
1:04
one of the interesting things about having kids is that before i had kids i was so judgmental of
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people who had kids who were acting up you know in public you'd be on a plane and someone you
1:19
know someone's kid would be bumping the back of your seat or crying or something and you just
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assume that parents are basically the same as their kid and like are defenders of their kid
1:30
and are in control of their kid yeah and then you have kids and you go oh they were just they just
1:36
had an alien they had they had an alien come out of a portal and they were just trying to deal with
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it yeah which is i think kind of what your book gets you know points to we're all just clinging
1:45
on for dear life yeah i think so and i think a lot of parents have this horrible feeling that
1:50
everyone's judging me because they are yes but but it's that ability all things will pass but
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in that moment if you're on a plane and you can't find the dummy or whatever you're using to pacify
2:02
the kid you know that the rest of the place is just absolutely shut this kid up immediately yeah
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and some part of you is like i'm with you somebody was like yeah i'd love to have a kid who's not
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yeah absolutely exactly but you brought it into this world and it's your responsibility
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yeah and that and from that moment of being a complete little arsehole in a plane
2:23
they develop that's developmentally the truth the whole way they just have this ability to do
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things that make you want to crawl under a rock uh and most of the time there's not a rock available
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uh fabulous what's the what is the thing that people don't understand about you know how to
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parent especially when they're starting out that is the best thing to bear in mind i think it's
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Time.
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The time you spend with them, whether it be perfect or whether it be a little bit chaotic, but time will always pay you back in the way you want it to because the young person knows that you're wanting to hang around them or be around them or spend time with them.
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And I think our modern world has probably pulled that back a massive amount because what I experienced as a young person was I'd come home and mum was home.
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But this idea that now we've got both parents working and work hours are long and arduous and you come home and there's mobile phones, there's all these distractions.
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and I think the people that are missing out are the young, the kids,
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who are now looking.
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And I suppose what ends up happening is young kids go looking for attention
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or love somewhere else if they're not getting enough at home.
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And some of the attention that they're getting is not the attention
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that we'd want as parents.
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Do you mean attention from other human beings or attention from devices?
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Well, any type of attention.
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So if it's not devices, it might be the circle of friends
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or the network that they end up mixing with.
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And often because we're so busy as parents,
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we don't have a handle or a finger on the pulse of who are those people?
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What are they doing?
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All of those things that we just don't know.
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How do we balance that with the desire?
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Like there's this whole sort of free range kids phenomenon, right?
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I mean, or philosophy,
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which is that we've become actually too micromanaging of our kids
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and we've become too intrusive
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and we're looking over their shoulders too much
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and we're not letting them out the door enough.
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And back in my day, you used to ride your bicycle around the neighborhood until it was dinner time and nobody knew where you were and you were falling down and you were getting all of the scratches and grazes that you needed to turn you into a resilient person.
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You were climbing trees and falling out of them and all that.
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How do you reconcile that with what you're saying about the need for parents to spend time with kids and know who they're hanging out with?
4:45
Well, I don't know whether there's an argument for this, but there probably is.
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But when you're so busy during the week, the way you overcompensate is to just be completely intrusive and get in their grill, which I don't know whether that's great.
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So you either telling the coach how to coach your kid because you know better or whatever that might be.
5:04
I think the attention is that we're trying to make up because I think a lot of parents feel bad about the fact that they can't be there and can't be as present as they'd like.
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and so the flip side is then I'll stand on any moment that I can get involved in
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when I am available and I think that that's I get it I get where it's coming from but I would go all
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the way back to what you said when we talk about that idea of get on your bike and I'll see you
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when the lights come on in the street and that's the that's what I desperately wanted our kids to
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experience through all the different things that we've done.
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And I think there's still,
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there's still room for that.
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Even in our cities, whether you're not, if you're living in the city
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or regionally, there's room for kids to walk and ride and run and get to the beach, all those
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things.
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We've just got to, I suppose, trust the outside and also try and find a way to,
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how do we balance that relationship between work and home and being a parent?
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How did you give that to your kids?
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I think we went up and down we made some we made massive mistakes over time but we didn't hold on
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to those mistakes and let them be um crushing uh a crushing blow to us but we they grew up on the
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gold coast and probably the gold coast now our two kids are up there now um the gold coast is a
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different beast now this is a part of Australia that is beachy and subtropical Queensland beautiful
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Oh, yeah, Surfers Paradise, but probably a little bit south of there.
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And our every afternoon was on the beach.
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That's what we did.
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That's what they did.
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But we also had different types of jobs.
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We were teachers.
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And so while teaching is a big task, you also can get out of the place a little bit early and go and spend time where it's daylight and be on the beach.
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So that became really important to us.
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And when we returned to Melbourne, that was missing.
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Melbourne traffic and the city sprawl meant that those hours were missing.
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And so we made, I suppose, the decision to move away from that and go back and give them,
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I suppose, in some ways, a little bit more of a free range thing, go out and play in
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the community and we'll see you later on.
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Where did you go?
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From the Gold Coast, we went Northern Territory, lived in community for four or five years.
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And living in community, just explain that jargon turned on Aussies.
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Living in community is, I suppose you would have no more than 500 people in the community and you might be 100 kilometres from a, 100, 200, 300 from a capital centre where you can get on a plane or wherever you might be.
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So it's very regional.
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They would say it's remote regional living.
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And you've just got, I suppose, a general store and a pub and that's it.
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And our kids just got this ability.
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The school was the community hub and they lived at the school playing basketball and going to school there.
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And after hours, they would be there.
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And then any other time that we had, we'd be off out into national parks.
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And that was the best.
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And I can't think of a better time that we had as a family.
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It was just amazing.
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These national parks for non-Australians are sort of like Crocodile Dundee type national parks.
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These are serious tropical national parks.
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Or were they desert parks?
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No, no.
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No, tropical where we were.
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We were 150 from Darwin.
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So Darwin is the most-
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In which direction?
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South.
8:34
Okay.
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So we were, Darwin being the most northern capital city, but it's really a country town.
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Yeah.
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It's not-
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Several hundred thousand people, a lot closer to Asia than it is to Sydney.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Like maybe 500 kilometers away to Bali, which is Australia's favorite holiday spot.
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Yeah, Australia's Cancun.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, it is.
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And how old were the kids when they went to the church?
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They went up there in grade one in kinder and one was in grade one.
9:01
Yeah, right.
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And returned from there.
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This is how free range it got.
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Returned from there and my sister said to me when we came back after,
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I think it might have been five years, and said,
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are you going to teach kids how to use cutlery?
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I mean, I think they could, but they used a form.
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They were wolf children at this point.
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It was a stabbing motion to pick up meat.
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They were outback bushmen.
9:26
Yeah.
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No shoes and cutlery wasn't working.
9:29
Right.
9:29
Okay.
9:30
And we were sort of, but they're nice and they're polite and I'll say hello to you.
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And that was our priority.
9:35
Yeah.
9:35
That was polite as they're picking up their spaghetti with their fingers and mashing it into their face.
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Yeah.
9:41
Correct.
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It wasn't pretty the way they ate.
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But I think that that experience has been really good for them because they're pretty self-sufficient kids now.
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I know that a lot of parents don't get that experience.
9:55
Charlie had the local, the guy looked after the pool,
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he was a dog catcher and he also was the pool attendant
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or lifeguard in the pool.
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He had a collection of saltwater crocodiles.
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Now, that sounds bizarre, saltwater crocodile,
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most dangerous thing in the water probably.
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And for Americans, this is the largest crocodile
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or alligator type species in the world, right?
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It makes Florida alligators look like chiclets.
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Yeah, you'd say the alligator is the golden retriever Labrador.
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Right.
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And the crocodile is the pit bull.
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Yes.
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And it's very different from the freshwater crocodiles
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that people might think of when they think of crocodiles.
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This is a big, nasty death machine.
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Death machine.
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and he said to us, would Charlie like a crocodile as a pet?
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Now, this is where our brain was at the time.
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It was like, yeah, what a great idea.
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What do we need?
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He said, you need a big glass cabinet.
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I'll give it to you and you're just going to put him in there,
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keep him for a couple of months and then I'll take him back,
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I'll put him in the water.
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But it was great and we had kids and probably…
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So this was a newborn presumably?
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Yeah, he's maybe 30 centimeters long.
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Okay, about a foot.
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Yep.
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And once the kids in town knew, and this is probably a real difference of I'm the principal at the school in town, but every kid in the school knew we had a crocodile.
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And so it was just a procession of kids coming and this is the coolest thing ever.
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And Charlie had no skin left on his fingers because every time he put his hand in the cabinet to pick it up, it bit him.
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and that was the way we just went, well, if we're here,
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we're going to give him every bit of this experience.
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And after a few months, much to Charlie's disgust,
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we returned the crocodile and we got a snake.
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Oh, excellent.
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Yeah, so it's sort of, it was that kind of.
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You get a little native python.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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My son's got a python.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And that's in the city, but that's because he's a reptile fanatic.
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He's eight.
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And so we've got a Python in it.
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Charlie was identical.
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That reptile thing.
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Fascinating.
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Just absolutely fascinating.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And I think that in your, you talk about that city experience,
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the city experience doesn't have to just be the city experience.
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They can experience other things like that that just change it a little bit, I think.
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I mean, it also depends on the sort of city experience, doesn't it?
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in the sense that, you know, because we have a family now,
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we live in suburbia, I suppose, I mean, not far from the city,
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but we have a house.
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When I was in New York, you know, we had a lot of friends
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whose kids were being raised inside small apartments
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and their life, entire life was in an urban,
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out on the street in an urban environment.
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And I remember a friend of mine who I worked with in New York
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who was also on Aussie, she came back and she moved up
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to not far from the Gold Coast as well.
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far north, New South Wales.
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And she lives by the beach and she has a son now.
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And we were, I was up there recently and he was playing on the beach with my kids.
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And she was like, we were just watching him like run around in the, in the sand and go
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and explore rock pools and stuff.
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She was like, do you remember how in New York, some people would have these sensory boxes
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for their kids that were these sort of black boxes where they'd have like a little compartment
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of shells and a compartment of sand and a compartment of liquids.
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and the kid would, you know, the baby, we're talking about young kids now,
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the infant would sort of put their hand in and they'd be able to feel
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different kinds of things than it was supposed to be.
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And you'd pay $150 to buy one of these boxes to sit in your apartment
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so the kid could have an experience of feeling these different things.
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Yeah.
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And she was like, I mean, something's wrong, isn't it?
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Where we're buying this thing, like, look around, look at all the sand,
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look at all the shelves, look at all the, like, look at everything.
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It's free.
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Walk past the buildings and run your hands down the side of a building.
14:02
Right.
14:02
What's all that soot?
14:03
No, it's carbon monoxide.
14:04
Yeah, that's right.
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That's what's going into your lungs.
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Yeah.
14:07
So what is that?
14:08
Like, what is that?
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I mean, I think people still know that there's something missing from the way that most kids
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are being raised, but don't exactly know what to do about it.
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Well, you touched on something really important when you said you visit to the beach.
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How quickly your kids adapt to that environment?
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It's instantaneous.
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They don't have to go, what?
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What do I do here?
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They just know.
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No, I think it's inherently built into us to do that.
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And if it's not the beach, it's a forest or it's a trail or something.
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If you put them in nature, they immediately, or even just a park, they'll find.
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I don't think in the city that the argument stands up that we don't have those things here.
14:48
Yeah, you do.
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And public transport will get you somewhere.
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Pretty cool.
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I walked around Barangaroo this morning.
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There's plenty to do there that would blow a kid's mind for two days.
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but the parents have to be invested in using that time knowing that this is really important for a
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young person to do that and what do they give up to make sure they put that in front of the
15:12
young person yeah right and i and i think that's there's there's real tension in that this also
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comes back to the behavioral thing though right like if you're around other people and if you're
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in a place like you know barangaroo is in downtown sydney but uh so there are going to be a lot of
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office workers who are on their lunch break or you know who are hurrying to the office and if
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you've got a little kid who's leaping around uh being rambunctious and noisy then maybe you feel
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like they shouldn't be there if you're on the subway to get to the place then you don't want
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them to be too disruptive on the subway so there's there is a tension between not wanting to bring
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your little fucker out into the world where you're constantly stressed about them being too chaotic or
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disruptive and wanting them to behave we're gonna let that go right i think you know like i get
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being in a confined space on a plane and you're just going shut up you little shit yeah but i i
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think when they're out and they're running around i was watching this morning i went and got a i
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went for a walk and went and got a coffee and there was a dad just in one of the laneways and
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um he was doing a jig or dancing with his little kid and that's the sort of stuff i i find that
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makes me smile it's a bit it's part of one of those heartwarming moments where you go
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yeah yeah that's exactly right that's the stuff you can do they're the minutes that pay you back
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down the track because whatever dad had to do right now he wasn't doing and his young kid felt
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like the center of the universe and i think that's how did how do we do more of that how do we go
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what are we doing rather than us directing the traffic all the time and you know we what what
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do we know about our young people what are the things that make them tick you know like a sensory
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box is better than nothing but what are the things that really get our kids like just pumped and
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excited do more of that you know like that what if that thing though is fortnight or roblox
17:07
oh we probably we probably started that problem a long time ago so i think there's a way you can
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back out of that but but there'd be some uncomfortable conversations and some uncomfortable
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behavior that you're going to have to deal with but there's just that ability to say not now but
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I'm the boss, I'm the parent.
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You know, like you're not running the show.
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We're not doing that now, we're doing this.
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And so I think there just has to be, there's a little bit of tough love
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that's placed in as we weave our way through trying to develop
17:37
these really good young people that can cope with the ups and downs
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and can be more confident in a crowd and can move away from a screen
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and know that I can do a little bit of that,
17:49
but it's not everything that I do.
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And I think we've lost, I mean, I think there's a, the balance of that has, has, has been lost in a lot of families.
17:57
Yeah.
17:57
No, I mean, I'm just trying to channel the parent who says like, it's all very good to talk about the father doing a jig and the kid being delighted.
18:03
And we all want to be in that environment.
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We want to be in that moment where the kid is idolizing us and we're being playful and the kid's being playful.
18:11
But the reality for many people will be they come home from the long hours that they're both working.
18:16
They need to get dinner ready.
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And frankly, if there isn't a device or if they're just trying to spend one-on-one time with the kid without a device, the kid might complain.
18:29
The kid might whine.
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The kid might feel like this is boring.
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Do you want to help me cook dinner?
18:34
No.
18:35
Why don't you go outside and play?
18:36
That's boring.
18:38
What's missing from how to like stoke, you know, my mom even says like, my partner and I are always trying to entertain the kids.
18:49
I feel like it's my job to make sure that the kids aren't bored, which means I'm hauling them out and taking them somewhere to the park, trying to fix the problem of their own failure to be able to find magic in the backyard.
19:05
Whereas in mum's day, she would just leave my brother and I in the backyard.
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And if we complained or too bad, we'd go and invent a game.
19:14
I'm more reluctant to do that for some reason.
19:17
yeah so in come the easy fixes like we'll buy you something we'll let you do digital will you let
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you go on the device or whatever it is what what's missing in that in that well you picked up
19:30
something really important is that when you're in the backyard you and your brother would find
19:35
something to do and i think what parents have look because because for me the big strong piece in our
19:42
parenting has been boredom is the gateway to creativity.
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So when you're bored, you're climbing
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a tree.
19:49
And we were absolutely prepared.
19:52
And I think this is probably for parents to get
19:54
comfortable with, is that we're okay with scrapes, but we tried to avoid scars.
20:00
So that idea of them
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feeling as though it's perceived risk.
20:04
But I think what's happening is when kids say, I'm bored,
20:07
the escape route is the screen and that can't be the escape route because i think you know like if
20:15
if i'm going to cook dinner you're cooking it with me and they go i don't want to no but you are
20:20
this is what we do and so we develop these really important routines where there's connection all
20:25
the time but it's not that the screw we're not disconnecting by saying go and do that
20:31
come and you're going to do this you're going to set the table or you're doing something in
20:35
this process, but it's, we're going to have this up.
20:37
Because I think even that when we cook,
20:40
and I spoke about this in the book, that it's that side-by-side, that it's not, I'm not eyeballing,
20:45
I'm not looking them across the table going, tell me about your day.
20:48
We're just side-by-side.
20:49
And
20:49
you know, on those days when they don't want to cook, they might grunt, but I'm okay with that.
20:53
Because if we get this into a routine, eventually it'll be, how did you do that?
20:57
Or what's going on?
20:58
Oh, I liked the way you've done that with the cooking or geez, you've set the table nicely.
21:02
There's just all these incidental, tiny little gold nugget moments that we have to get back into.
21:11
Yeah, right.
21:11
Every day.
21:12
Yeah.
21:12
So it's about creating a context in which those accidental moments can happen.
21:16
Yeah.
21:17
And parents will say, oh, well, the horse has bolted.
21:19
You know, like they've been doing this for years.
21:21
I'm like, no, no, we all have the ability to shift.
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Like there's some things that, you know, there's things that I was doing when I was much younger.
21:29
I don't do them anymore.
21:30
You shift away from those things.
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And I think parents have got to find a way to be able to,
21:36
the cooking moment is a moment that the kids start to like
21:39
and how do I make it fun?
21:41
We give them more responsibility because if they're standing beside me
21:45
and I'm doing all the cooking and they're just watching,
21:47
I wouldn't want to do that either.
21:49
But if I'm now saying you've got to do this or go and grab the oil
21:52
or whatever it might be, we kind of create an environment
21:55
that feels as though I want you here, let's do this.
21:59
Yeah, yeah.
22:00
Um, how do you think about strictness when it comes to not giving them alternatives?
22:05
Like one of the things that people struggle with is, you know, to go back to the boredom thing and, you know, dragging them into the kitchen instead of having them complain about being bored about cooking or bored of this or bored of that.
22:14
Um, it seems to me that one of the, one of my failings and my friend's failings is that at the end of the day, the kids know that if they complain sufficiently, then we're going to give in.
22:24
Yeah.
22:25
Right.
22:25
If they whine sufficiently, then we're going to give in.
22:28
Yeah.
22:28
I think we've done a pretty good job at like drawing a line in the sand and being like, just because you ask for a, I don't know, a lolly at, you know, just before dinner and you complain and thrash and like cry, that is not going to, that is never going to get you anywhere.
22:43
Yeah.
22:43
And so they don't.
22:45
But we all know parents who do eventually cave in on everything and their kids are absolutely uncontrollable because they've trained their kids to be so.
22:51
Yeah.
22:53
But I also don't want to be a dick, you know, I don't want to be a total asshole to them.
22:56
Yeah.
22:57
And I don't want to feel like I'm uncaring if I feel like they've had a huge day and they're doing a lot of work and they're at the end of their energy and, you know, they don't want to have to invent some make-believe game for themselves.
23:12
Yeah.
23:12
Let's suppose I'm not cooking, so I'm not doing something that can involve them.
23:16
I'm still finishing off my work for the day because it's 4.30 in the afternoon or something.
23:19
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:21
How do you think about strictness versus a sort of lassitude, I suppose, in those situations?
23:28
I think if we go back to maybe the way I was brought up or even going a little bit further back, there was, you will do this.
23:36
It is black and white.
23:37
And then we've gone the other side and we've got, so we're sort of tipped over the other side and it's like, okay, if that's what you want to do, you get to do that.
23:45
and I think it's applicable in schools and this is probably this idea of the warm demander
23:52
that that if I think about the way um my mum used to operate mum was a really warm person but if I
24:01
touched the stove or I did something wrong she would let me know about it and I think that's
24:05
where the strictness sits is that it's you you when you spoke about this idea I'm tired I'm
24:12
exhausted.
24:13
I've got to, I've got to get these emails off.
24:15
Maybe we tip over to that side and
24:17
go, yeah, jump on your screen for 30 minutes, but there's a limit to it.
24:20
We're not just saying it's
24:21
a free for all, but when I'm done, we're doing this.
24:24
So we sort of give them that, that idea of
24:27
it's just in and out, but then we'll do something.
24:30
So I think that the warm, the warm demand for me
24:33
is this idea that, that, that I will, I know you well, and that's not what you're doing right now.
24:41
we're going to do this.
24:42
Yeah.
24:42
But right now, so I've got this, just that little,
24:45
it's sort of like this low variance parenting that I want them to do this,
24:49
but on those days where I'm completely exhausted, we've all got,
24:52
there's no, there's no shaming going there on the screen right now
24:56
because I just don't, but if that's your only go-to,
25:00
then I think you've got a problem.
25:01
What's low variance parenting?
25:04
Low variance parenting is that idea of,
25:07
I think there's a pretty solid structure to doing it.
25:11
And it's that idea that we know our kids well, we have high expectations for them.
25:15
We want them to be polite to people.
25:17
But there's going to be times when we're not in our perfect state and they're not in our
25:21
perfect state.
25:22
And so we just, it's sort of like a rocky boat.
25:26
So the boat's allowed to rock, but it's not allowed to sink.
25:28
And I think that's probably the best analogy around, don't be so hard on yourself.
25:34
You're probably doing a really good job.
25:36
What are the little things that you can tinker with that'll just give you a little bit more chance of being successful along the way?
25:45
I listened to one of the episodes.
25:49
It might have been, I was thinking it was Jimmy Carr.
25:52
Oh, yeah.
25:52
And you were speaking about the British cycling team.
25:56
And I love this whole analogy around one percenters and how far one percenters gets you along the time.
26:02
So if we were talking right now and you said, I can't get my kid off the screen, I don't know whether, no, I know the right thing to do is not, no, the wrong thing to do would be get off the screen, I'm throwing the screen in the bin.
26:15
That's not it.
26:16
But what are the little things you can do over time that will eventually remove that reliance on the screen?
26:23
But we've got, I think as parents, we've got to be really patient about what does that look like?
26:27
For parents that are wallowing in, I've just lost the plot of my kids running riot, well, what are a couple of little things you can do and just build on that across time?
26:37
That's kind of that 1% mentality.
26:42
Yeah.
26:42
It matters, I think.
26:43
Yeah.
26:43
1% meaning you make it 1% better.
26:46
Yeah.
26:46
Today, you don't expect, you don't shoot for perfection.
26:48
No.
26:48
What are some of those things that people could do as examples?
26:51
Make your bed.
26:53
Clean up your room.
26:55
Put your dish in the dishwasher.
26:57
Like, it's not much.
26:59
Make sure when you leave, you say, see you later, Dad.
27:01
See you, Mum.
27:03
You know, it's put your seatbelt on.
27:06
There's so many little tiny things that matter over time that if you think about just that five or six that I've mentioned, if your kids were doing that all the time, I'd be all right.
27:16
It's pretty good.
27:17
They're going all right.
27:18
Most people would observe that and go, geez, Josh's got some good little kids.
27:22
They're going all right.
27:23
Those little fuckers are unreal.
27:25
now some of that some people will be listening to this saying well yeah it sounds easy to say
27:29
clean up make your bed but you know i'm trying to get my kid to make his bed it's going to be like
27:35
flash it's going to be the end of the world there's going to be you know i don't know how
27:39
but i they are that he's going to intentionally make it badly but to show that he doesn't know
27:44
how that it's incredibly arduous he's gonna end up i'm not saying my kid would do this but
27:48
one might, writhing around on the floor complaining, I don't know, I can't do it.
27:53
It's like blah, blah, blah, blah.
27:54
Clean up my room.
27:55
Oh my goodness.
27:56
What about that toy?
27:58
No, that toy isn't mine.
27:59
That was left there by, you know, Jimmy.
28:01
He was here the other day.
28:02
It was not my responsibility.
28:04
Huge, you know, rigmarole because the kid basically doesn't want this to become a new norm.
28:08
What hill are you prepared to die on?
28:10
That's, you know, like if I, we sort of talk about this in education land or in schools
28:17
And that's obviously where most of my work has done.
28:20
And I've probably stolen so many of the things that I do as a parent have probably come from
28:26
school and vice versa.
28:27
But I've got students that have been in my class that didn't pick a pen up for a week.
28:32
But when they picked that pen up, oh my goodness, I didn't miss it.
28:35
Well done, son.
28:36
That's awesome.
28:37
I can't wait to see what you write.
28:39
And so if I knew that my young person, there's no way they're going to put the doona back
28:44
on, but they might put the pillow, I'll just aim for the pillow.
28:48
So it's sort of this, and then when they do it, I am going to make sure that they know
28:52
that I'm that bloody impressed, that I think that picking up on those gold nugget moments
28:59
means that the things that I encourage and reward, they're more likely to repeat those
29:04
behaviors.
29:05
So you just, that blindly asking them to do things and not then noticing it when they
29:11
do it, that's probably the mistake.
29:13
We want to make sure they feel as though when you do that, that makes me feel this way.
29:17
I feel bloody good that you've done that.
29:19
Thank you.
29:19
You've made my morning.
29:20
Yeah.
29:21
Yeah.
29:21
That's, I think, a really important way to sort of, they do the thing you've asked them to do, but it has to be matched with that encouragement and reward and praise.
29:33
And it's not about rewarding them with 30 minutes on a PlayStation or an Xbox or whatever.
29:39
It's the reward of, I saw that.
29:41
Well done.
29:42
Yep.
29:42
Yep.
29:42
Yeah.
29:43
And I mean, I think that's an interesting thing about your work as well,
29:45
is just the reminding people that we often expect kids to meet expectations that are
29:52
unreasonable.
29:53
And then as soon as they do, we bank that as a win and then chastise them for
29:57
failing to meet it in the future, instead of having the positive reinforcement model of
30:02
always kind of encouraging them every time they do get a win and treating the wins as the anomalous
30:08
thing, you know, the thing that require our focus rather than constantly putting our attention
30:13
on the negative things and spending all of our time badgering their kid and making them
30:18
feel harangued about what they're not getting right instead of praise for what they are.
30:22
Yeah.
30:22
I think some of that came out of, you know, people talk about that 21 days of gratitude
30:27
and how that can really shift how someone feels.
30:30
What's the 21 days of gratitude?
30:32
Oh, 21 days is just that if we were having dinner together every night for 21 days, I'd
30:37
So there's three things that for my day that were amazing, you know, um, I had a great
30:42
coffee this morning.
30:43
That was amazing.
30:44
I saw those, that young kid and the dad playing in the, um, in the lane and I got to walk
30:50
around Barangaroo, your turn.
30:52
Now feels, we did it at home.
30:55
We didn't last 21 days, but it was a reminder to the kids that when, when they were sort
31:00
of going, oh, school sucks, teachers suck.
31:03
But there's actually heaps of things that are going on really well in your day.
31:06
What were they?
31:07
And so Charlie would say, oh, the surf was pretty good this afternoon.
31:10
I'm like, yeah, awesome.
31:11
How good was that?
31:12
Get many waves?
31:13
Yeah.
31:14
Well, it wasn't bad.
31:15
What about dinner?
31:16
And he goes, oh, yeah, thanks, mum.
31:17
Dinner was all right.
31:18
Well, you sort of had to structure it a little bit.
31:20
Yeah.
31:21
But we just got them to keep on reminding them that there are lots of really important and good things occurring.
31:28
It's sort of like a gratitude journal in a way.
31:30
Yeah.
31:31
And you can go and buy a 21-day gratitude journal because there was a whole lot of, maybe a few years ago, there was a lot going on for it.
31:39
My daughter said to me at one stage, Evie said, she bought me something for Christmas, which is probably not my favorite gift ever, but it was a gratitude diary.
31:48
And she goes, Dad, I think you need to be more grateful.
31:50
So, all right.
31:51
I think you need to be more grateful for the gratitude diary.
31:54
But yeah.
31:55
She probably saw it on my face.
31:56
it up.
31:57
And she has been a really important part of reminding us all the time as a kid.
32:04
I'm really
32:04
proud that that's the type of young person that she is, that she will say, yeah, but dad, what
32:11
were the good things that happened today?
32:13
Yeah, you're right.
32:13
You got it.
32:14
And I think that's when
32:16
we teach our kids those things, sometimes they can be a really good reference point to pull us back
32:20
online when we're having a bit of a shit week.
32:22
Yeah.
32:22
And you were comparing that to positive
32:24
reinforcement versus, you know, the negative strategy of constantly badgering your kids?
32:30
What's the connection there?
32:31
How do you get out of nagging?
32:33
We sort of work on this five to one.
32:36
And for a lot of parents, I go, that's unrealistic.
32:38
And I go, we have to go three to one.
32:39
It doesn't matter.
32:40
But we're looking for three positives to one negative.
32:45
And parents will go, yeah, but they're just being a little turds.
32:47
But did they put their shoes on?
32:49
Yeah.
32:49
Well, thank them.
32:50
There's one.
32:51
So you've got to look for it intentionally.
32:54
and then it becomes a really natural thing.
32:55
But I think a lot of this stuff is that parents go,
32:58
oh, it's too hard, but we're training.
33:01
When we're doing something in a certain way,
33:03
it's a little bit like learning to kick a ball better.
33:06
You kind of practice and you train yourself
33:09
and you train your brain to look for things that are positive
33:11
rather than looking for the things that are shit.
33:13
So there's a whole conversation about resilience
33:16
that runs alongside this conversation about free-range kids,
33:19
which says, you know, every single human being
33:23
who was ever raised up until three seconds ago in cultural time
33:26
from Shakespeare to, you know, Churchill to everyone,
33:30
had distant, probably authoritarian parents,
33:33
was shipped off to boarding school, more than likely,
33:36
and, you know, just had to make do.
33:40
And they learned in the school of hard knocks, I suppose,
33:45
how to take care of themselves.
33:47
They didn't need praise for putting on their shoes.
33:48
They didn't need...
33:49
And now we've bred a generation of people
33:51
who are incredibly vulnerable, incredibly effete, incredibly pandered.
33:56
Oh, little Jimmy, oh, great, wonderful that you put on your shoes, mate.
33:59
And then he grows up and he's got his anxiety and his ADHD
34:04
and he needs a special comfort pillow when he's doing his, you know,
34:08
final leaving exams at school.
34:10
And he goes out into the workforce and he's got, you know,
34:13
clinical depression because his life has been buffeting him around.
34:17
And if you just kicked him in the ass when he was six years old
34:19
and told him to get out the door and figure out how to put his shoes on,
34:21
then he would have been more resilient.
34:23
Yeah.
34:25
It's one of those things that if we're isolating a conversation
34:29
around three to one or five to one positive to negative,
34:34
I would agree that we're getting kids into this thing going,
34:38
oh, how come no one's saying thanks for doing it in my shoes
34:41
and I'm 21?
34:42
Because it doesn't matter then.
34:43
You do it.
34:44
So you sort of go, I need you to do this now,
34:46
and when you do it, I'll notice it.
34:48
But I'm not going to praise you every time you put your shoes
34:50
on for the rest of your life.
34:51
It's just right now, this is a skill that you're learning and I'm going to notice it
34:54
and encourage it.
34:56
I think what we've done in, and we do this in a lot of places is that we remove the hurdles
35:03
that they need to experience.
35:06
So in schools, for example, if I come home and I go, hey, Josh, the teacher told me off
35:12
today, they said that I didn't do my work and your reaction was, did they?
35:17
I might give them a call.
35:19
well my my you're saving me from something that i probably could manage myself and the comment
35:26
and we're sort of just shifting the language to what are you gonna do about that oh i don't know
35:31
well maybe you need to do this tomorrow so it's us us when we know that it's not a safety issue
35:37
or they're not in danger we're pushing back and saying what are you going to do how are you going
35:41
to fix this what i would suggest or we might give them some suggestions but we're not fixing it for
35:45
them.
35:46
And I think what we're doing more often than not now is saying, I'll go down to the school and
35:52
I'll sort that out.
35:53
And the young person can hide behind the irate parent and that's not helping.
36:00
Or it might be football and they haven't gone very well and they're going, yeah, I know the coach
36:04
is an asshole.
36:05
And the kid hears that and that's not helpful.
36:08
Whereas the comment that would be
36:10
far more beneficial would be, well, what do you need to work more on?
36:14
so we're sort of got to find that balance of not we don't want to be saving and we want to support
36:19
them and give them the structures to do things themselves but we might just have to guide them
36:24
we're sort of we're just putting up guardrails we're not closing it off and saying come with me
36:29
i'll show you how to fix it yeah yeah giving them structures is a is a good way of putting it it's i
36:34
think that's a great framing for me that comes through from your work which is like it's it's a
36:40
counterintuitive thing when you first have babies as well that they actually thrive on predictability
36:46
and structure right because they seem like totally crazy i mean they are they're you know they are
36:51
anyone who has met a two-week-old is fully aware of what a deranged creature it is it really should
36:56
still be in the womb we only gave birth to it because our heads are too big and we wouldn't
37:00
you know women wouldn't be able to give birth if we uh if they were properly developed the baby
37:05
But so, and I, my eyes were opened by the realization that if you're a real hard ass about when they're napping, I mean, I have twins, so you sort of have to be with twins.
37:16
Otherwise you're up all night because you have to get their sleep in sync.
37:20
Yeah.
37:21
If you're a real hard ass.
37:22
Hats it to you because twins, anyone that we know that have had twins is wild.
37:26
That first, you know, eight months or so is not pretty.
37:30
Um, and, but once you get, once you're a badass about it and you sort of, you see how much more relaxed they are when they understand that there's a structure and a consistency and that they're not going to, they're, you're not going to tolerate their shit.
37:40
They feel safe.
37:41
They feel safe.
37:42
Yeah.
37:42
Exactly.
37:43
And I guess I assumed that kids grow out of that, but in actual facts, it's like what you're saying about, you know, putting on your shoes might be the, the triumph today because you're five.
37:55
When you're 15, it's not going to be the thing that you reward.
37:58
Yeah.
37:58
So there's a constantly moving kind of vanguard of expectations that you have.
38:03
And so too, does it go with structure where when, you know, when the kid is six weeks old, the structure that you need to impose has, is around sleep and, and, you know, drinking milk.
38:14
Yep.
38:15
And when they're eight, maybe the structure that you need to impose is, you know, complaining and whining about not being able to go on your device is not going to get you the device.
38:25
and complaining about being bored has no currency actually with me.
38:29
That's not a threat that works, you know, or whatever it might be.
38:32
Yeah.
38:33
But it's not that you're being nasty or cruel or mean.
38:36
It's just like you're providing the structure and the borders
38:39
of what their freedom, of the kind of parameters
38:44
that their freedom exists inside of.
38:45
Yeah.
38:46
So that they have total freedom to manage themselves
38:49
inside the rules that you have set.
38:51
And I think sometimes today we mistake the existence of those rules for being like mean or authoritarian or something like that.
38:59
Josh, you're an arsehole.
39:00
And I'll say to the kid, no, no, I'm doing this because I love you.
39:06
That's it.
39:06
And it's sort of like these stored responses.
39:08
I drop the mic.
39:09
That's it.
39:10
I'm out of here.
39:10
I'm not going to sit and have a one-on-one with you.
39:12
I'm doing this because this needs to happen.
39:14
Yeah.
39:15
Now, and I think the other thing when you talk about, you know, I use the shoe, do up your shoes.
39:20
there'll be parents that you're looking across the room at and their kid is, um, uh, they're,
39:27
they're, they're doing, you know, like they might be, um, capable of doing things at a
39:31
much, much higher level.
39:32
Oh my God.
39:33
One of my kid's friends is doing origami and I'm like, how fucked am I as a parent?
39:36
My kids can't, you know, fold a piece of paper.
39:38
But you, you might be sitting down at the cafe and someone's over there doing origami
39:42
and your kid's got two left, you got shoes on the wrong feet.
39:46
That's not the judgment.
39:47
We just need to be comfortable enough going right now, I'm concentrating on that and well done, smart ass.
39:54
But right now, this is my thing that I need to worry about.
39:58
And I think that helped for me when I think a lot about that book is the book is this scaffolding piece that says, right, what are the things now that you're really struggling with?
40:08
And that might be the chapter that you want to have a look at.
40:10
And it's not, you must do this.
40:12
It's here's some ideas because I've worked with lots of parents and I've seen it go amazingly and I stole those ideas and I've seen it gone catastrophically and I've avoided them like the plague.
40:24
And somewhere in the middle, we've done what we thought was all right with the theft of all these other ideas and gone, we'll give it a go.
40:32
And we have buggered it up monumentally at times and I'm about to go, sorry, sorry, dudes, I made a mess of that.
40:38
I'm probably still doing it.
40:40
I'm sure.
40:41
They're not living.
40:43
They've just moved out at the end of this year.
40:46
And when you've got regional kids that are pretty good at sport,
40:49
they can't stay regional.
40:50
They move on.
40:52
But there's still, I feel like we're doing more parenting now.
40:55
And it's still the same sort of parenting.
40:58
Like that's just shit behavior.
41:00
Or well done.
41:01
We're really proud of you.
41:03
The same lines are being used repeatedly all the time.
41:06
When you say you've seen parenting go catastrophically,
41:10
what causes that?
41:11
most frequently?
41:13
A real lack of understanding of the importance of the role that they have
41:17
at times.
41:18
And then, so that, that might, yeah.
41:21
And that's probably goes down to,
41:23
that's more the parents that are not looking after their kids properly.
41:27
So I've worked,
41:28
I mean, obviously when you're working in schools and special assistance type schools,
41:33
you see some things that break your heart.
41:35
So right down that end, that is just, we don't know
41:39
how to look after our kids and they're not getting looked after.
41:41
So they're being completely ignored and so on.
41:45
But probably when you're in, I suppose,
41:48
in the more mainstream group of parents,
41:50
it's just trying to save their kids.
41:53
And I just don't think that's the right way.
41:56
What does that look like, trying to save your kid?
41:59
I'm going to the school.
42:01
The school's done it wrong.
42:03
And I know, and I reckon most parents have this feeling,
42:08
Three or four years ago, Charlie got himself in trouble at school.
42:12
It was, he was playing, like typically Charlie was playing too rough on the oval and the
42:17
teacher said something to him.
42:19
He was in the football academy, but the teacher said something to him and he came home and
42:22
told me, my instant reaction was defensive.
42:27
I'm going to call up the school.
42:28
And then I took a breath and went, shit, I do this stuff.
42:34
That's not, that's not.
42:35
And now I know this because I work in the space, but I know where it comes from from parents because my instant was, I said, right, someone's told off my son.
42:44
But then you have to sort of take that breath and go, all right, what do you need to do to fix this, Charlie?
42:51
He goes, I don't know.
42:51
That teacher's a bitch.
42:53
And I went, nah, we're not going to work with that one.
42:55
What are you going to do?
42:57
Well, do you want me to apologize?
42:58
Yeah, I do.
42:59
That's what you're going to do.
43:01
Really?
43:01
And I went, yep.
43:02
I said, are you allowed to tackle on the ovaries?
43:03
He goes, oh, it doesn't matter.
43:04
we're allowed to do whatever and i went no no you've been told off you manage it we're not
43:08
managing it so we parked it and then we just checked with the teacher did you do that that's
43:14
it but we could i could have marched into the school it wouldn't have helped no well it also
43:19
depends whether or not the i mean this is also overlaid over an environment or a culture in
43:24
which some parents feel that schools are overly sensitive about um things that would a generation
43:31
ago have been considered normal rough and tumble for kids, right?
43:35
I mean, I remember one occasion that made me chuckle a little bit with my son
43:39
when he was about, I think he was six.
43:42
He must have been in year one.
43:43
And we got a call about his misbehaviour with one of the other kids.
43:47
And I was a bit worried about it.
43:48
I was ready to come down on him.
43:49
And the teacher said that what had
43:51
happened was he had stuck his finger down
43:55
his own pants,
44:00
pulled his finger out and held it up in front of his best friend's nose saying smell this it
44:05
smells like raspberries and the teacher said we have a zero tolerance approach to uh inappropriate
44:14
behavior and you know that's not and i was trying to suppress my giggle and like i spoke to the
44:19
other you know his best friend's parents and everything i thought it was hilarious the kids
44:22
thought it was hilarious.
44:24
But, you know, obviously if you're ticking checkboxes
44:27
on a school disciplinary checklist, I suppose,
44:31
trying to get your friend to smell your poo finger
44:34
and saying it smells like raspberries contravenes
44:36
some Department of Education mandate.
44:39
So it is a little tricky for parents to know, like,
44:43
when does he have to write the letter
44:44
and when does he not have to write the letter of apology?
44:48
I didn't get him to write a letter.
44:49
Yeah, and I can't help it.
44:51
I mean, that's the way my brain operates.
44:53
That, to me, is funny stuff.
44:55
Not cool.
44:56
I'm maybe like, yeah, Charlie, come on, bud.
44:58
Bud, that's pretty rotty.
44:59
Yeah, that's what I said.
45:00
I mean, just don't do it.
45:01
But I think even in schools that have gone down that zero tolerance pathway,
45:05
it doesn't give them a lot of room to move.
45:07
So if we think about zero tolerance, you know,
45:11
I work in a school in Queensland,
45:14
and the principal was talking to me about moving back from zero tolerance.
45:19
And I said, what does that look like?
45:20
He said, well, kids turn up late to a class, and if they get three strikes, they get suspended for a day.
45:26
And he said, we've got the highest suspension rate in any school because of that.
45:32
And he said, I'll give you an example.
45:35
Joe walks into a class, and he's late, and the teacher goes, there you go, that's one strike.
45:40
And the kid says, oh, but I was helping the teacher plug in the computers, make sure they're all charging for the next class.
45:48
No, not interested.
45:49
You're late.
45:50
So the zero tolerance has gone.
45:52
Now, I'm thinking to myself, that kid should be congratulated
45:55
for being so bloody helpful.
45:56
Yes.
45:57
But we go down this rabbit hole of going, if you're late three times,
46:00
you're out.
46:01
So we're removing this ability for kids to tell their story.
46:05
And so even for your young one, his story, where did that come from?
46:11
You still might be cranky about it, but I want to know,
46:13
what led to that?
46:15
And the same thing with Charlie and his rough play on the oval,
46:18
what was going on?
46:19
And he goes, oh, well, there were some younger year level kids.
46:22
And I go, there you go.
46:23
You're a year 12 and you're running around barging over year eights and year nines.
46:28
That's the problem.
46:29
Yeah.
46:29
Fix it.
46:30
Yeah.
46:30
So you're looking for the context which helps make the decision around what you do next.
46:35
Yes.
46:36
Yeah.
46:36
That's interesting.
46:37
I mean, you talk about kids as little dictators sometimes and about needing to remain calm in the face of a little dictator.
46:47
Yeah.
46:47
What's the advice on that?
46:48
Like, because we've been, we've been there as well.
46:52
Right.
46:53
I mean, you know, it's one thing when your kid is just being a bit cheeky and it's another
46:56
when they're being, yeah, a little fucker.
46:59
Yeah.
47:00
Well, you mumble it under your breath, the title of the book, that's probably where the
47:04
title came from.
47:06
Um, I think there's that ability, um, know when to walk, know when to talk and know when
47:13
to, you know, like to say nothing.
47:14
So you sort of got to, there's a couple of bits to this that am I, is this absolutely, I'm not tolerating, you know, like if, I don't know, we were down at the cafe and the key goes, I want a coffee.
47:25
And you go, you're not having one of those.
47:26
Fuck off, dad.
47:28
I'm going to deal with that very quickly.
47:30
That's not good enough.
47:31
The coffee order, I'm probably not getting it and we're out of there.
47:34
But if it's, can I get a coffee?
47:36
And they go, no.
47:37
Oh, damn.
47:37
And they crack it.
47:38
Well, am I just going to ignore that and let it go?
47:41
So it's sort of these, you're trying to find this ability to go, now I'm not tolerating that and I'll call it.
47:47
That's, I'm just going to ignore it.
47:49
I'll deal with it later.
47:50
And that's not even worth saying a word about because it's just, it's beyond.
47:56
But I think the danger is if you're chipping them all the time, then you get this anxious kid that doesn't know where he stands and doesn't know what's acceptable and what's not because we're on them all the time.
48:08
So I think finding a balance around when you talk, when you shut the fuck up, don't say anything.
48:14
It's really, I mean, it's a really useful piece of advice because, I mean, we all know parents who are constantly threatening their kids and then they're not following through.
48:23
So the kid is inundated with a series of phony threats and accusations.
48:27
I'll take your phone off you.
48:29
Yeah.
48:29
No, you won't.
48:30
The kid knows.
48:30
No, you'll never do that.
48:31
Stop doing that.
48:32
No, sit down.
48:33
I told you to sit down.
48:34
You get three, two, one, and then you get to one and nothing happens.
48:37
you know or like you know well yeah exactly i it's really useful advice to remember like make
48:43
your threats count yeah and use them sparingly yeah you know have a nuclear arsenal in your
48:47
back pocket and when you deploy it seriously deploy it and when you don't um then don't
48:52
don't say anything to to begin with yeah um what do you make of punishments and inducements then so
48:58
uh you know the easiest way to get my kids to do something is to say they're not going to have any
49:05
weeks for the rest of the week if they don't do it or they'll get extra time on devices if they do
49:10
or whatever it might be that's gonna uh you know and it doesn't have to be something bad even i
49:14
mean yesterday they were watching tv and i had a disagreement with my partner about whether or not
49:20
they should go to bed or whether they should be allowed to stay up and watch the tv show and i
49:23
was like oh yeah but i read to them i'm reading harry potter to them in bed and so that adds an
49:27
extra 20 minutes on that's going to be late it's a school night and he was like well then just don't
49:31
read to them.
49:32
And I was like, but I want to read to them.
49:34
And so I said to the kids and I gave them
49:37
the choice.
49:38
You want to sit here and keep watching the show and then we don't read?
49:41
Or do you want
49:42
to have a shower?
49:42
Because I'd already asked them to have a shower and they hadn't done it.
49:44
Or do
49:45
you want to have a shower right now?
49:46
And we do read.
49:47
And they're straight up and they're in the
49:48
shower.
49:48
Because they want to read.
49:49
Because they want to read more than they want to watch the
49:50
show.
49:51
So that's a virtuous thing, right?
49:54
Because it's a good thing.
49:55
But those are thinner, right,
49:57
than the bad inducements.
49:59
They're rare.
50:00
It's rarer that I can use an inducement or a threat that is also better
50:04
for them than the thing that they want to do.
50:06
Yeah.
50:07
So how do you juggle that?
50:09
Well, the consequence has got to be doable.
50:11
So the idea that if you don't do it, you won't get lollies for a month,
50:15
that doesn't balance up.
50:18
So what are the things that will hurt?
50:21
It's sort of like the pinch.
50:22
What's the pinch moment right now?
50:24
So if you don't have a shower now, we're not reading
50:27
and there's no TV.
50:28
So they'll make the choice.
50:29
They'll go, we better, we'll do the shower.
50:31
So it's kind of, and I think the punishment also needs to sort of have some context.
50:37
That always helps that if they're going, well, we don't want to read a book and we don't
50:43
want to do that, or they're knocking all these things over, then we're sort of got to make
50:48
a decision around, will you go to bed?
50:52
So we're sort of, we're getting to that point of going, we're giving you these options, you're knocking them all off, then the punishment looks like this.
51:01
Or I need you to do this and they go, I'm not doing it.
51:04
And I go, well, you go to bed.
51:05
So it's trying to just make sure that, you know, like you could send, they don't have their breakfast and you go, we'll go to your bedroom.
51:13
But maybe there's something more like, well, if you're not going to eat your breakfast, clean up the kitchen.
51:16
So it's sort of, you're trying to place it in the center.
51:20
It's a slightly related thing.
51:21
Yeah, it's sort of related to what it's going.
51:23
Oh, I'll eat breakfast.
51:25
All right, great.
51:26
Thanks for eating.
51:27
Because I can then, if they eat their breakfast,
51:29
off the back of me saying we're cleaning the kitchen,
51:31
when they eat their breakfast, I've got the ability to go,
51:34
hey, well done.
51:35
Not ignore, they're now eating their breakfast,
51:37
which is what I wanted them to do, so I should encourage it.
51:40
Yep, yep.
51:41
What if a reward is something that's bad for them?
51:43
So, you know, the obvious thing is you'll get ice cream after.
51:46
You know, we'll have dessert.
51:48
So if you finish, you know, suppose they're not eating their vegetables or something like that.
51:51
You know, if you don't eat your vegetables, then you're not going to get dessert.
51:54
And if you do, and then, you know, a lot of people have a problem with linking those two things.
52:00
So all of a sudden, like you're turning the bad thing, the thing that's worse for them, into the prize to be sought after.
52:08
Yeah.
52:08
And you're turning the thing that really should, they should be habituated into doing, which is eating vegetables, into some drudgery that they have to, you know, get through in order to get to the other thing.
52:19
I don't, they're not going to die from ice cream.
52:22
You know, so going back to that idea of what, what Hilly are prepared to die on, well, if the link between eating their vegetables means that they get some ice cream, sure.
52:31
And, and that's, that's not going to destroy them.
52:35
So I'm comfortable with that being.
52:36
And, you know, if you've got a couple, like, for example, Charlie and Evie, if Charlie ate all these vegetables and Evie didn't, Charlie's getting ice cream, Evie's not.
52:45
Yeah.
52:46
So, you know, over time, Evie can be as stubborn as she likes, but if she really wants ice cream, she knows the gateway to do that.
52:54
Yeah.
52:54
And we're being really clear.
52:55
Yeah.
52:56
And I would be, I'd be pretty stubborn about that.
52:58
I don't know, eat them.
53:00
Yeah.
53:00
It's what we're doing.
53:01
Yeah.
53:02
So, I think that just being kind of sensible about it, because to me, dessert.
53:06
I mean, I think it's a great carrot to tangle at dinner time, particularly when you're trying to get your kids to get used to sort of good eating habits because that, I mean, again, we want kids will for quite some, I remember we had some mates and all their kids would do is eat ham sandwiches.
53:21
And they went on for ages, but they eat okay now and they're okay.
53:24
They're fully grown boys.
53:25
They're doing well.
53:27
And at that time when they're only eating ham sandwiches, I know that the parents felt real shame about that, but it was just a period of time.
53:35
Mind you, there are worse things to eat in the world than ham sandwiches in terms of the nutrition.
53:39
It's delicious.
53:39
It's not that bad.
53:40
They're delicious and you can live.
53:42
You can survive.
53:43
Yeah, exactly.
53:43
That's right.
53:44
It's not ice cream.
53:44
You can live on a ham sandwich.
53:45
But that's that whole thing of parents going, I can't get them to sleep or they're not eating the food that they're meant to.
53:53
Again, it goes back to that thing, all things shall pass.
53:55
They'll get there, but you've got to be kind of pretty strong about just those little steps.
54:00
So if they're only going to eat ham sandwiches, what could I introduce to this that the ham sandwich stays, but what else could I introduce that maybe just is a little bit better?
54:10
I might just put the bowl of greens there and broccoli.
54:12
And when I eat the broccoli, I make out that that is the most amazing thing ever.
54:16
And eventually they might eat the broccoli.
54:18
You know, we try a million different things to try and get them over the line.
54:23
And I think that's, I almost think that's some of the fun part of being a parent.
54:27
And when you get a hack that works, how happy are you?
54:30
You're stoked.
54:31
And how many people do you sell?
54:32
It's, oh, I'll tell you right now, my latest great trick is when they get home from school
54:38
and they're starving, you just shove three of the five serves of fruit and vegetables
54:42
that they're supposed to eat during the day in front of them.
54:45
And they devour it in front of the TV or whatever you're doing.
54:48
Some nice thing where it's like a reward.
54:51
And they'll have the mandarin and an apple on it because they're ravenous.
54:55
and then you don't have to worry about whether or not they eat the vegetables
54:57
at dinner time so much.
55:00
We've had lots of crew that have said,
55:03
you've got to eat your fruit before you go out and play.
55:07
And these kids would be rattled at the start of the day
55:09
because instead of just having a bowl of cereal and some milk
55:12
and going out and playing, the parents were in them going,
55:14
you've got to have a glass of water and you've got to have a glass of milk.
55:16
Just this ridiculous routine and they fought and fought and fought
55:20
and I'm like, it's not worth it.
55:22
Yeah.
55:22
Look, if their association now is the misery of eating fruit every morning,
55:28
good luck getting them to eat fruit at other times of the day.
55:30
And I think you've nailed it in that fact that you get them at a time
55:33
when they are so hungry you could put anything in front of them.
55:36
Exactly.
55:36
They'll eat it.
55:37
So I think that's a really clever parenting hack.
55:39
That's right.
55:40
And do they want something else, you know,
55:42
the first time that I give them fruit?
55:44
Of course.
55:45
And then they can have that thing after they've had the fruit
55:48
and then three days go by and they're not asking for the other thing anymore
55:50
because they've gotten used to it.
55:52
Again, it comes back to that structure, you know, and the sort of repetition.
55:56
On boredom, you were talking about the virtue of boredom.
55:59
I'm a big fan of that idea.
56:02
The, you know, suppose you're taking, suppose your kids are, they're 10.
56:08
Okay.
56:09
You go on a drive, it's an hour.
56:11
Yeah.
56:12
They've got tablets and iPads and, you know, phones and whatever it might be.
56:16
Not theirs, but, you know, but things with movies loaded on them or games or something.
56:20
Yeah.
56:22
um do you take do you let them use it at all in an hour-long drive uh it's a it's a good question
56:31
and as you're asking that question a million things are rolling through my brain around
56:36
uh things that i've noticed about charlie and evie you know and these are things we can't wind back
56:42
their ability to know where they're going is terrible because you remember you know like i'd
56:47
be sitting in the back of the car, bored, shitless, looking out going, yeah, I know
56:51
where I am.
56:51
I mean, I know my way around Sydney probably from some of the family holidays we had when
56:55
I was 10 because I remembered how you come in through Parramatta Road and you go past
57:01
the university sort of down near Glebe.
57:03
And so I remember all those things and it gives me a reference point.
57:06
So I think there's got to be some limits.
57:09
But if your kids jump into the car and they've got tablets with them and they're ready to
57:13
watch Rocky one or Rambo or whatever, probably not.
57:17
But if they're ready to watch those movies
57:19
and all of a sudden you throw on them, no movies in the back of the car, good fucking luck.
57:25
You've
57:25
just, you've just started world war two and there's no need for it.
57:28
I think if you, if the
57:30
rule is that they've got limited amount, they're watching this or they can watch this clip or
57:35
whatever, you gotta get them ready for that before they get in the car.
57:39
But I don't think that should
57:40
be the only thing they're doing in the car.
57:43
I mean, I know when we were, the troop carrier, we used to drive around in the Northern Territory,
57:50
the kids would sit in the back and they couldn't, you know, it was that rattly that they couldn't
57:54
watch anything because they couldn't focus on it.
57:55
Are you saying that jokingly or did it literally have side bench face-to-face seats?
58:01
Side bench face-to-face.
58:02
Side bench face-to-face.
58:02
They're eyeballing each other.
58:06
and they couldn't do that.
58:09
And if they were bored, it was music.
58:11
So it was your song, your song.
58:13
And we'd use an iPod at the time and they'd find a song.
58:17
Those songs still resonate in our family years after
58:20
because they've associated those songs and those moments
58:24
of connection with that bit.
58:27
Now, they still like horrible music, but they also still love all the stuff
58:31
that we used to play and the Beatles and all these great bands
58:34
that we played.
58:35
So they've associated the car trip with something
58:38
that was really nice.
58:40
Whereas if the car trip's associated with arguments
58:43
over screens, you don't want that.
58:46
No.
58:47
So I think you just got to create the structure
58:50
and the boundaries around this is what it looks like
58:52
when we're in a car.
58:53
I mean, I generally have those boundaries being
58:56
that once we're on the open road, if we're on a freeway
58:59
for a long trip, then they can just wait until we're actually,
59:03
wait until you're a bit bored.
59:03
But I still feel bad about it because I still feel like there's something really useful about just having to gaze out the window and muse on your own thoughts.
59:12
I Spy is a pretty ranked game, though.
59:14
It's not great.
59:16
I can think of better.
59:18
Yeah.
59:18
So I don't know.
59:21
Again, it's sort of that idea of just balance.
59:26
It's not all screens, but it's maybe not no screens.
59:29
Yeah.
59:30
So it's somewhere in between.
59:31
Your kids are comfortable enough.
59:32
And maybe there's a show, an episode of a show that they get to watch or something.
59:36
Also, one of the chapters we talk about that idea of walking side by side and the importance
59:44
of the car trips.
59:45
Some of the best conversations I've ever had with our kids have been in the car.
59:49
Yeah.
59:49
So if they're sitting on a screen and you lose that ability to do that, that's a shame
59:54
because they can talk about some stuff that they may never talk about over a dinner table.
59:59
Yeah.
59:59
And that can be really important as well.
1:00:01
So I think you should place those moments when you're all together, what are the rules when we're all together?
1:00:07
What are the rules that we're in a car so that if they feel as though the car trip is something that's a bit sacred, then maybe that changes how they feel about what they want to do during that time.
1:00:18
Yeah, that's interesting.
1:00:19
Put it in a context in the same way that, you know, the dinner table has a context or, as you say, the side-by-side thing in the kitchen or you might be walking the dog and you're walking along side-by-side and you can talk about things.
1:00:30
Because Evie, when I was writing the book, poor love, but she was learning to drive.
1:00:37
And I'd say to her, I've just written another chapter.
1:00:42
Do you want to hear it?
1:00:44
And she wasn't game enough to go, no, because she probably was thinking, no, not really.
1:00:49
I've heard enough of it.
1:00:50
Yeah.
1:00:50
But I read that stuff to her.
1:00:52
And so the connection around the book, and she goes, did you write that about me?
1:00:55
I went, yeah, yeah, that's about you.
1:00:56
She goes, I'm in the book.
1:00:57
I went, well, I think so.
1:00:59
unless they cut you out you're in so that that's been those to be able to talk about even just
1:01:05
they were prompts to talk about something else because we had to drive the kids to sport all the
1:01:11
time and they weren't on their phones because we were talking to them about what's happening at
1:01:16
training tonight what are you doing um and they were hours and hours and i look at them incredibly
1:01:22
fondly so i'm probably um really biased around the importance of car trips in conversation
1:01:28
um but i i just think it's a really powerful moment yeah yeah i think no no devices in cars
1:01:35
unless it's a trip of more than an hour i would say i think that's a fair rule yeah um in terms
1:01:41
of things to do so your kids were quite young when you moved out to uh you know remote yeah
1:01:46
australia yeah uh it's a wonderland when kids are young to be able to go to a national park
1:01:51
to be able to explore.
1:01:53
There's only one general store.
1:01:54
There's only one school.
1:01:56
This great sense of small town life.
1:01:59
Once kids hit adolescence, then they can start to feel like that is a trap.
1:02:03
And so to people who have families who are in smaller communities
1:02:07
where they have teenagers who are just complaining about the fact
1:02:11
that nothing ever goes on here and they were in a big city
1:02:14
where all the cool people are hanging out, what do you do?
1:02:19
well if you've got the if you've got the resources to take them and experience other
1:02:24
sides of life great but a lot of families that are in regional centers don't have
1:02:28
the ability to do that and and and and i would it's fun funnily enough having lived in city
1:02:34
centers i would argue that those kids that are in these regional centers have a big advantage
1:02:40
over our kids that are in the city and they're you know like the busyness and the anxiousness and
1:02:46
the speed of which life is moving by, I'd be pushing back the other way and going,
1:02:52
you country kids have got it amazing.
1:02:54
They won't feel that way.
1:02:55
No, they won't.
1:02:56
It depends if they're 10 or if they're 16.
1:02:58
If it's a 16-year-old girl, she's just going to want to be able to go out with her friends
1:03:01
and put on makeup and be pretty.
1:03:04
If they've got connections that are living a distance away, where we live above Coffs
1:03:14
harbour in a place called Woolgooga, which is on the north coast of New South Wales in
1:03:18
Australia on the east coast, there was distances.
1:03:23
Maybe we'd have to drive 45 minutes to get Evie to her mates.
1:03:27
Well, we made the decision to move there.
1:03:29
Then I think it's our responsibility as parents to give her that opportunity to hang out with
1:03:33
her mates.
1:03:33
Yeah.
1:03:34
So I think that's accepting the sacrifice that they may, the kids don't know that there's
1:03:39
a sacrifice attached to living regionally.
1:03:42
But I think as parents, just to be able to say, if you need to go and do these things,
1:03:47
we're okay with helping that happen.
1:03:49
Yeah, that's interesting.
1:03:51
And as a principal, like just thinking about like discipline of kids, you know, how much
1:03:57
is on the parent, how much is on the school?
1:04:00
Have things changed over the course of your career as a teacher, as an educator, in terms
1:04:05
of either student behavior or the kind of philosophy of how much discipline is okay
1:04:10
from teachers?
1:04:11
Oh, it's changed massively.
1:04:13
When I got in trouble, and I did get in trouble a lot at school, I got in trouble twice.
1:04:19
Once at school, once at home.
1:04:21
And now kids are going home and the parents going, that's not good enough, and they march
1:04:25
into the school.
1:04:26
And so I think around the idea that parents have open access to the principal to argue
1:04:35
the point about what their kid might have told them and the idea that parents think that what
1:04:40
their kids say is gospel, that's outrageous.
1:04:43
How do you deal with that as a principal?
1:04:46
I would always push back to parents that would say, I need to come in and see you.
1:04:51
And I'd always
1:04:51
say, have you spoken to the teacher yet?
1:04:53
And they go, I haven't.
1:04:55
I said, well, that's the first step.
1:04:56
You need to have a conversation with the teacher.
1:04:59
I'd also want to know a lot about what might have
1:05:02
occurred in and around the school so that if a parent does call, that I've got an ability to go,
1:05:08
well, I know a little bit more about this.
1:05:11
But also, I suppose that ability in schools,
1:05:13
schools need to be, I think it's really important for schools to be really strong about the idea
1:05:17
that they are experts in education and that when their parents have concerns, this is the avenue
1:05:25
they should follow rather than parents just thinking, I can just go in and speak to the
1:05:30
principal immediately.
1:05:31
Now, I never have a problem chatting to parents, but I don't think it's open
1:05:35
access around that.
1:05:37
And I also have said regularly, not regularly, all the time, parents have their
1:05:45
kids for 18 hours a day.
1:05:47
Schools have the kids for six.
1:05:50
There's a partnership that's attached to that
1:05:52
and there's responsibility on either side.
1:05:54
And the idea that when a kid comes home and tells
1:05:57
you something, it's really important for a parent to go take a breath, sort of assess
1:06:03
the situation and figure out what the next step would be.
1:06:05
What's often happening is I come home as the kid, tell my mum and dad what happened
1:06:11
and they go straight into the school without even taking a breath.
1:06:14
And then I'll be sitting there as a principal going, actually, that didn't happen.
1:06:18
Oh, so the parent sort of backpedals out of the school, but we lose this ability kind
1:06:24
to connect and have this really nice partnership because it becomes combative.
1:06:28
Are the kids at school harder or easier to deal with than they were when you started
1:06:34
out in your career?
1:06:37
You could argue they're maybe a little bit more difficult.
1:06:40
Maybe, yeah, I don't know.
1:06:44
I reckon that's a good question.
1:06:46
The stats would probably say that kids are more difficult, but in schools where they
1:06:52
preference, this really strong relational type of education and connection with all the stakeholders,
1:07:00
whether that be teacher to teacher, teacher to school and the community and the kids,
1:07:07
those schools do incredibly well and would say, our kids are amazing.
1:07:12
But where schools don't do
1:07:13
that work relationship-wise, I would say clearly that the kids are harder to work with.
1:07:19
Because
1:07:20
when we went to school, and Josh, you might have had the same experience, is teachers were just
1:07:26
respected because they were teachers.
1:07:29
That was it.
1:07:29
You just did what you were told.
1:07:30
It was black
1:07:31
and white.
1:07:31
And I think kids now, kids are looking at their teachers to earn respect.
1:07:39
And their teachers earn respect by connecting with the kids.
1:07:42
It's the same as the way that we
1:07:43
work with our own kids.
1:07:46
We connect with them and that's how we develop a really good relationship
1:07:50
with them.
1:07:51
And we know how to navigate all these interesting curves and hurdles that approach us
1:07:57
as we go through the years of looking after our kids.
1:08:01
The same with school.
1:08:02
There's so many
1:08:03
similarities between the two environments.
1:08:07
I mean, the thing that I'm struck by in the
1:08:10
in terms of the student behavior at schools which i don't quite have a good explanation for is
1:08:18
attention you know concerns like adhd and stuff uh and then the lack of
1:08:26
discipline disciplinary options for the school so like i volunteer as an ethics teacher once a week
1:08:32
and just do one class of you know teaching the kids ethics and yeah um the fact that there's no
1:08:38
like the worst thing that i can do the worst punishment i can give to a kid is just to remove
1:08:43
them from the circle of the conversation and have them sit up the back you know picking their nose
1:08:48
but there's nothing beyond that that yeah which means that the same kid or kids invariably every
1:08:54
single class end up up the back out of the conversation um yeah and it's nowhere else
1:08:59
getting off their nose because they don't really give a shit one way or another and i'm not with
1:09:03
them long enough to be able to build that you know the kind of relationship that you're talking
1:09:07
about where there's genuine respect and consequence.
1:09:12
You know, back in the day, the ultimate consequence
1:09:16
would have been that they got sent to the principal's office
1:09:18
and they were whacked with a cane over their hands
1:09:20
or something like that, right?
1:09:21
And they probably would have ended up figuring out
1:09:24
how to control their attention problems
1:09:26
and to remain in the circle.
1:09:28
Now our attitude is they're very boisterous,
1:09:30
they have attention issues, you know,
1:09:33
we have to sort of meet them where they are and so on.
1:09:36
and it's hard not to wonder whether or not the rise of this debilitating inability to pay
1:09:43
attention yeah is partly a result of indulging it like yeah you know what i mean it's like
1:09:52
you know they're like oh well there's you know he just can't little timmy just can't control
1:09:56
himself and i'm thinking well in every generation up until this one they did control themselves
1:10:02
because they were belted if they didn't,
1:10:04
and so they figured out how to.
1:10:07
You know what I mean?
1:10:08
Yeah.
1:10:08
What do you make of that?
1:10:10
Look, including the previous question and this one,
1:10:15
you bring up a lot of really important points that there is,
1:10:22
I suppose, when parents are looking or schools are trying to find a way
1:10:28
to adjust things or find a diagnosis for a young person,
1:10:32
almost all of the really challenging stuff we see in schools good teaching manages it really well
1:10:39
and we might still need to make adjustments for kids but if a kid's adhd or asd they still can
1:10:45
behave well they can still be kind we don't have to excuse horrible behavior but we might have to
1:10:50
make some adjustments to help them find their way to that kind of balance of just being manageable
1:10:57
in the school.
1:10:58
But we do that in partnership with the parent because the parent's got the
1:11:01
kid for a long time as well and the work that we do.
1:11:05
So there's huge responsibility on schools to
1:11:08
find a really good plan that the parent buys into, the kid understands what needs to happen,
1:11:14
but there's still not, I don't think that that excuse around, oh, well, you know, because they've
1:11:20
got this, they can be a little arsehole.
1:11:23
There might be reasons for them being a little arsehole,
1:11:25
but there's also some really powerful educational teaching strategies we can use that if the parent buys into it and the school's buying into it, well, we've got a pretty strong position to be in.
1:11:39
I think when there's tension between those two, we're fighting, we're pushing uphill.
1:11:46
and and when we we sort of do this work around um well the work i do now around building really
1:11:52
strong relational school cultures but that doesn't mean the the the idea that that would
1:11:58
mean the school is going to be perfect is wrong it just means it tilts the odds in your favor
1:12:03
that if you're more relational that the kids will will will feel as though this is a warm nice place
1:12:09
for us to be and we will because we get recognized for doing the right thing and the teachers see the
1:12:14
gold nuggets and our parents understand that they've got a role to play as well, we all sort
1:12:20
of move in the right direction together.
1:12:22
And it feels almost like we're walking downhill.
1:12:24
So it
1:12:24
feels a little less effort involved.
1:12:27
But in every school, we've got to accept that there'll be a
1:12:29
couple of little assholes that are going to walk uphill no matter how good we make it.
1:12:33
And what are
1:12:34
we going to do with those kids that can be incredibly disruptive if there's one or two of
1:12:39
them in a class?
1:12:40
How do we manage that?
1:12:41
What are we going to do?
1:12:42
Let's assume they're not being
1:12:43
assholes, right?
1:12:44
They're not being mean.
1:12:45
They're not being nasty.
1:12:46
They're just making it impossible
1:12:49
for the rest of the class to focus on the curriculum because they're disruptive.
1:12:53
They're
1:12:53
always moving.
1:12:54
They're always talking.
1:12:54
They're never refusing to put up their hand.
1:12:56
They're,
1:12:56
you know, whatever it might be.
1:12:57
Remember we talked about those, that marginal gains?
1:13:00
Yeah.
1:13:00
It's the same thing.
1:13:02
Like, what is one thing that I need you to do today that will be better
1:13:04
than yesterday?
1:13:06
Is it picking up a pen?
1:13:07
Is it writing something on your book?
1:13:08
Is it standing
1:13:10
in line.
1:13:10
And when I notice that they do those things, I tell them they've done a really good
1:13:14
job.
1:13:14
Now that increases my average of them doing it more often, but it doesn't mean I'm not going
1:13:19
to have shit days with them.
1:13:20
I'm probably going to have still plenty of them.
1:13:22
I've just got to be
1:13:24
good enough to pick the really good moments that are occurring.
1:13:27
And how much do I know about this
1:13:29
young person?
1:13:30
How well have I connected with the family?
1:13:32
And that's the exhaustive part in
1:13:34
education now is we want to know enough that it gives us, it improves our average or increases
1:13:41
our chances of being successful.
1:13:43
Okay.
1:13:44
Bringing it back to the home now,
1:13:46
just the final sort of thing I'd like you to flesh out is this term that you used earlier,
1:13:51
which is warm decider, is that?
1:13:53
Demander.
1:13:53
Warm demander.
1:13:55
Yes.
1:13:56
uh what does that look like you know to put the rub where the rubber meets the road in terms of
1:14:03
in terms of parenting in the household just flesh out what is what is the warm part and what is the
1:14:09
demander part of the warm part the warm parts connection so morning nice to see you great
1:14:17
well and how school car rides together all those things that we you know i'm looking across at you
1:14:23
And I can see that, almost that glint in your eye going, yeah, I do like that when I'm doing
1:14:27
that with my kid.
1:14:29
When they're up in the tree and they're having a great time or you see that they're polite
1:14:33
to the old person walking across, whatever that is, those moments where we're connecting
1:14:38
and we're noticing and we recognize that being a parent is harder than you like, but
1:14:45
easier than you think.
1:14:46
And it's a bloody good thing, an amazing thing that you get to do.
1:14:50
on the flip side when we talk about the demander is that when you cross over the line of what we
1:14:57
expect as a family and what we expect as being a good human i'm gonna let you know we're clearly
1:15:03
going to say to you that is not good enough and these are the things you need to do to make things
1:15:08
right or what do you think you need to need to do to make things right and that will depend on
1:15:14
what where they are at whatever stage of development how much you need to be involved
1:15:18
in helping them correct it over saying you need to fix it
1:15:22
and you know what you need to do.
1:15:24
That in a real nutshell is probably that warm demand.
1:15:29
The warm is the connection.
1:15:30
The demand is these are our expectations.
1:15:33
I need you to follow them.
1:15:34
Great.
1:15:35
I want you to come and talk to my kids and my family more.
1:15:39
Thanks for all the work you're doing.
1:15:41
You're fighting the good fight.
1:15:41
Thanks for being on the show, Ryan.
1:15:42
No worries.
1:15:43
Thanks so much.
1:15:48
you