Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1015 - Beck Delahoy Says Raising Kids is Easy

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#1015 - Beck Delahoy Says Raising Kids is Easy · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
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  Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.
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  Speaker 2: Now, good day, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. This
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  Speaker 2: is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy Families dot com,
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  Speaker 2: dot you, the author of what Is It? Nine books
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  Speaker 2: now about raising happy families, and the parenting expert and
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  Speaker 2: co hosts on Channel Minds hit TV show Parental Guidance.
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  Speaker 2: Today joined by Beck Delahoy. Beck runs a substack called
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  Speaker 2: Lessons Learn. It's my favorite parenting substack in the entire world.
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  Speaker 2: And Beck has very kindly agreed to join me today
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  Speaker 2: to share something that I just loved on her substack
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  Speaker 2: from she was a couple of months ago now, but
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  Speaker 2: it was so so good. Beck, Welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for having me. It's definitely
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  Speaker 1: a bit intimidating hearing why bio compared to yours.
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  Speaker 2: Come on, I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: You very glad that you like it. So.
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  Speaker 2: Beck has a background psychology neuropsychology, writes great stuff about parenting,
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  Speaker 2: and is working on a book that I'm really excited
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  Speaker 2: to read. But we'll talk about that another time. Beck,
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  Speaker 2: what I'd love to do today rather than having a conversation.
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  Speaker 2: I just enjoyed your article so very much. I'd love
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  Speaker 2: you to intro the article about why raising kids is
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  Speaker 2: easy because a lot of people I know do not
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  Speaker 2: believe that, And then if you can just share that
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  Speaker 2: article as it's written, I think that would be the
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  Speaker 2: best way for us to work through this one. Because
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  Speaker 2: it was just so well crafted, so well put together.
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  Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear it all over again.
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  Speaker 1: Raising kids is easy doesn't feel like it a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the times, but I'm going to get to that.
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  Speaker 1: So when we think about how raising kids is now
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  Speaker 1: compared to before the nineteen hundreds, one hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 1: years ago, one in ten infants died before their first birthday,
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  Speaker 1: and close to fifty percent of kids died before they
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  Speaker 1: even turned fifteen. Only twenty one percent of adults were literate.
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  Speaker 1: Most people died if they lived past fifteen, they would
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  Speaker 1: die before they'd hit sixty years old. There were diseases
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  Speaker 1: like small pocks through balamols months and that we're causing
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  Speaker 1: a lot of infection and death. And workers would typically
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  Speaker 1: work sixty to seventy hours a week, with maybe just
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  Speaker 1: a couple of days off per year, and even children
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  Speaker 1: were included in that workforce, whereas today the chance that
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  Speaker 1: your baby will die before they turn one is twenty
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  Speaker 1: times less than it used to be, and in highly
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  Speaker 1: developed nations like Australia, ninety nine point seven percent of
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  Speaker 1: children will reach the age of fifteen, more than eighty
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  Speaker 1: six percent of adults worldwider literate, and the maximum life
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  Speaker 1: expectancy is now about ninety years and increasing at the
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  Speaker 1: rate of three months every year. Around the world, smallpox
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  Speaker 1: has been eliminated and many other infectious diseases are on
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  Speaker 1: their way down, and working hours have decreased by about
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  Speaker 1: fifty percent and child labor rates have plummeted. So all
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  Speaker 1: that adds up to saying that raising children has actually
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  Speaker 1: never been easier. Our children are living longer, they're living healthier,
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  Speaker 1: they're more educated, they have better work life balance, and
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  Speaker 1: so objectively, they're going to have a better life than
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  Speaker 1: any other time in history. They're not going to die
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  Speaker 1: from a simple bacterial infection. They've access to medical technologies
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  Speaker 1: that were unimaginable a century ago, and they're more likely
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  Speaker 1: to not just graduate primary school but also received a
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  Speaker 1: degree in higher education. They can eat bananas and oranges
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  Speaker 1: and chocolate whenever they want. They can travel the world
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  Speaker 1: without risking scurvy, and they can access all the information
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  Speaker 1: that the world has to offer in just a few
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  Speaker 1: taps of the screen. Our concerns for our children are
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  Speaker 1: no longer so intimately about life and death, which means
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  Speaker 1: that on the whole, raising children to adulthood and a
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  Speaker 1: good adulthood is really easy. The problem is that parenting
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  Speaker 1: feels really hard, and a big part of that is
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  Speaker 1: what is called the slow life strategy. So before we
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  Speaker 1: had this sort of fast life strategy where we had
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  Speaker 1: lots of kids and hope that some of them will
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  Speaker 1: get to adulthood, whereas now we're having fewer children and
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  Speaker 1: we're putting a huge amount of investment in each one.
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  Speaker 1: And this is something that gene Pliny, is the author
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  Speaker 1: of Generations, has studied extensively, and she said something to
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  Speaker 1: this effect. She said that kids now are less independent.
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  Speaker 1: Teenagers are taking longer to get their driver's license, they
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  Speaker 1: don't go out with friends as often, and they don't
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  Speaker 1: drink alcohol, they don't have sex as much, they don't
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  Speaker 1: have a paid job. They're taking longer to grow up.
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  Speaker 1: So it's got some good side effects like middle aged
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  Speaker 1: people are looking and feeling younger than their grandparents did,
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  Speaker 1: but this life trajectory is slowed down. And a negative
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  Speaker 1: side effect of that is that we're parenting with much
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  Speaker 1: more intensity than we ever have before. Instead of trying
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  Speaker 1: to divide our time and our money across six, seven, eight, nine,
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  Speaker 1: ten kids, we're trying to put all of it into
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  Speaker 1: just one or two, maybe three children. And so we've
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  Speaker 1: seen this huge shift, so we are having smaller families now,
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  Speaker 1: we have fewer kids, who are investing more in each child,
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  Speaker 1: and each child is now the beneficiary of a larger
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  Speaker 1: investment of our time. For example, instead of just having
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  Speaker 1: maybe one extra curricular activity or none, our children are
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  Speaker 1: now going from gymnastics to sm lessons, to basketball, to
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  Speaker 1: violin or whatever it is, instead of being left to
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  Speaker 1: just kind of sort out their homework by themselves, so
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  Speaker 1: they might be being tutored in four or five different subjects.
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  Speaker 1: And instead of just being left to deal with sibling squabbles,
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  Speaker 1: now playdates are being arranged, social interactions are monitored, and
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  Speaker 1: disagreements are being resolved by adults instead of between peers.
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  Speaker 1: So we see that intensive parenting isn't just possible. Now
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  Speaker 1: it's really become the norm, and it's definitely not all bad.
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  Speaker 1: So we definitely see that there are some benefits to this.
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  Speaker 1: My kids are getting a lot more one on one time,
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  Speaker 1: we're caring about their feelings more, we're protecting them more
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  Speaker 1: from danger. But we're also making this mistake that if
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  Speaker 1: some of a little bit of something is good, a
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  Speaker 1: lot is better, and so we're ranging. We're kind of
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  Speaker 1: stepping into this helicopter parenting territory, which we know is
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  Speaker 1: not so good. So we might believe that we're providing
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  Speaker 1: them opportunities and support for their physical development by putting
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  Speaker 1: them in all these boarding programs, but in reality, we're
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  Speaker 1: seeing that they would get just as much benefit with
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  Speaker 1: unstructured physical play. We think that we're helping them with
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  Speaker 1: academic development by tutoring them across range of subjects, but
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  Speaker 1: we also see that this is actually not necessarily the
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  Speaker 1: best When we factor in student motivation and sociodemographic variables,
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  Speaker 1: tutoring is not actually that great, and it can even
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  Speaker 1: negatively impact student mental health through increasing stress, increasing sleep
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  Speaker 1: deprivation and things like that. And we might think that
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  Speaker 1: we're helping them in their social development through mediating all
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  Speaker 1: their squobbles. But the truth is that they could probably
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  Speaker 1: do better with more opportunities to hurt each other's feelings,
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  Speaker 1: because getting it wrong is a really important step towards
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  Speaker 1: learning how to get it right. But even if we
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  Speaker 1: could see through our intensity of helicopter parenting type of
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  Speaker 1: style was in fact good for kids, which it's not,
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  Speaker 1: it's having a really really bad impact on us as parents.
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  Speaker 1: It's really quite literally killing us in some ways. It's
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  Speaker 1: associated with lower life satisfaction, with increased stress and levels
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  Speaker 1: of depression. And in countries where intensive parenting is the
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  Speaker 1: normal levels of parental burnout are dramatically high, and burnout
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  Speaker 1: itself is related to sleep disturbances and sleep disorders, addiction,
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  Speaker 1: and even suicidal ideation. And so that's why I say
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  Speaker 1: that parenting is so hard now. Intensive parenting is so
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  Speaker 1: widespread that everyone suffers either from burning out trying to
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  Speaker 1: live up to this unattainable perfect standard, or from feeling
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  Speaker 1: guilt about not even trying. And intensive parenting is so
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  Speaker 1: ingrained that a lot of us won't even realize that
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  Speaker 1: we're doing it. We just kind of assume that our
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  Speaker 1: level of over protectiveness our level of engagement in our
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  Speaker 1: children's lives is just normal and appropriate and expected, and so, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's why parenting is so hard now. It's because we're
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  Speaker 1: trying to live up to this really unattainable standard of
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  Speaker 1: what we think we should be doing. And when we
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  Speaker 1: think about how the goalpost of shifts, we see that
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  Speaker 1: we're no longer satisfied now that our children are literate.
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  Speaker 1: We feel like we're only good parents if they're making
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  Speaker 1: it into a really prestigious university. We're not grateful anymore
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  Speaker 1: that our children don't work in coal mines. We now
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  Speaker 1: expect them to become lawyers or doctors or launch a
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  Speaker 1: multi billion dollar tech firm. We don't really think it's
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  Speaker 1: a miracle that our child is alive and healthy at
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  Speaker 1: the age of fifteen. We only think that they're physically
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  Speaker 1: in a good condition if they've made it onto the
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  Speaker 1: school swimming team or the school's track team. And so
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  Speaker 1: I think, really the thing is that we need to
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  Speaker 1: consider lowering the bar again and bringing those goalposts back.
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  Speaker 1: We don't need to make it harder for ourselves by
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  Speaker 1: thinking they were only good parents. If our children now
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  Speaker 1: have a better chance than ever of succeeding in this world.
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  Speaker 1: That's true, irrespective of the fact that you reach them
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  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes a night or not. It's true whether you
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  Speaker 1: put them in violin class or not. They're probably going
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  Speaker 1: to live a good life, way better than our grandparents did,
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  Speaker 1: way better than our great grandparents did. So the next
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  Speaker 1: time we feel guilty about the fact that our children
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  Speaker 1: will probably be in therapy one day talking about how
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  Speaker 1: terrible their child was because we did something wrong that
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  Speaker 1: was never even a thing before, like maybe we did
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  Speaker 1: not buy them the latest iPad or the latest whatever,
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  Speaker 1: we can just kind of remind ourselves that from most
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  Speaker 1: of human history, therapy didn't even exist.
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  Speaker 2: So parenting is hard because we make it hard. I
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  Speaker 2: think that's the take home message back.
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  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, we're just putting these too much expectations on ourselves, Like,
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  Speaker 1: you know, our kids. Our kids are doing all right. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: they're doing all right.
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  Speaker 2: So my plan this afternoon is to take a breath
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  Speaker 2: and go for a walk with the kids with no
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  Speaker 2: expectations and no pressure, And I just think that that's
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  Speaker 2: probably going to be the best thing I can do
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  Speaker 2: with them, or if it's if it's wet and raining.
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  Speaker 2: I might play a card game at the table. I
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  Speaker 2: don't like games, but the kids do. That's that's it.
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  Speaker 2: Keep it simple, keep it simple, and unless they really
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  Speaker 2: do need appropriate therapeutic help, don't try to be their therapist.
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  Speaker 1: Just be their parent. Yeah, just be grateful. Like in
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  Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, the leading cause of death was teeth,
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  Speaker 1: and I don't think my child's going to die of teeth.
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  Speaker 2: I had no idea that teeth could kill. Yep, that
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  Speaker 2: sounds kind of terrifying. I'm imagining a really bad B
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  Speaker 2: grade horror film. But hey, Beck, if people want to
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  Speaker 2: find out more about you and your substack, where do
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  Speaker 2: they go?
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  Speaker 1: So you can just look for me on substack. If
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  Speaker 1: you just type in lessons learned or beckd Alawhate, it
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  Speaker 1: should pop.
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  Speaker 2: Right up and we will link to that in the
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  Speaker 2: show notes. Beck delhoy As always a pleasure having you
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  Speaker 2: on the Happy Families Podcast. Thanks so much, Thank you
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  Speaker 2: for having me. The Happy Families Podcast is produced by
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  Speaker 2: Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer.
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  Speaker 2: For more information about making your family happier, please check
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  Speaker 2: out Beck's substack Lessons learned and visit Happyfamilies dot com,
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  Speaker 2: dot au,