Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / The Kids Are Actually Alright: Is parental anxiety too high?

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The Kids Are Actually Alright: Is parental anxiety too high? · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This is parent data. I'm Emily Oster.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of horror stories in the media today
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: about teenagers' mental health, the teenage mental health crisis, as
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: it's been called.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Even before the pandemic, American kids have been dealing with
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: a crisis, rising rates of suicide, self porm anxiety, and depression.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Teenagers are being ruined by social media. They're stuck in
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a kind of arrested development. They've been damaged by the
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: COVID pandemic. They're having sex later or not at all.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: They're being coddled by their parents, and the overwhelming feeling
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: can be that they need to be propped up, that
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: teenagers have gotten more fragile, that they need our help,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: that they need us to be paying more attention to them.
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: New guidelines suggest screening all teens for depression starting at
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: age twelve.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: How do you know that this isn't just they're being
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a teen they don't want me around, and that there's
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: severe depression.
• 0:54
  Speaker 5: You have to really look for warning signs.
• 0:55
  Speaker 6: There are some clear warning signs.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Excessive ritabilitable sleeping or excessive sleeping, sudden severe weight gain
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: or weight loss of sudden drop in grades in school,
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: sudden loss of interest and activities they used to enjoy.
• 1:06
  Speaker 7: You know, all of a sudden, your child went from
• 1:08
  Speaker 7: being the most outgoing, happy, go lucky kid that you've
• 1:11
  Speaker 7: ever seen, to all of a sudden, they're recluse, they
• 1:14
  Speaker 7: don't want to hang out with their friends, or they've
• 1:16
  Speaker 7: got an entirely new group of friends.
• 1:18
  Speaker 6: They're not eating the.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Today on the podcast, My Guest has a different perspective.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Doctor Mattilda Ross, who goes by Tility, is the senior
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: staff psychiatrist at Boston.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: University Health Services.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: She works with college students with serious problems and college
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: students with less serious problems. And it came to her
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: because she wrote an op ed in The New York
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Times about how parents should get out of their own
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: children's way. In her view, some of this horror story,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: some of this talk about the teenage mental health crisis
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: is overblown, that in fact, parents are more worried about
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: most of their kids than they should be. One of
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: the things she says in the article is anxiety about
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: anxiety has gotten so bad that some parents actually worry
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: if their teen isn't anxious. She also tells parents to
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: quote get a grip, which is what actually pulled me
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: into calling her. In this conversation, we talk about this
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: perspective that some of these reports about teen mental health
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: crisis are overblown. We talk about the idea that for
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: many kids, they're actually doing okay, and what they need
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: is for parents to step back a little to allow
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: their kids the independence they need to solve their own problems,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: to make some of their own mistakes, either in college
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: or ideally before, and we talk about what happens if
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: we don't give them that space. We talk about one concern,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: which is that kids have a hard time solving their
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: own problems if we're always solving them for them. And
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: we also talk about the worry that people who have
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: really serious mental health crises actually have a hard time
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: breaching clinicians when those clinicians are treating kids who really
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: don't need that treatment to the same extent, I think
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: this conversation will make people think about some of the
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: ways that we parent younger kids, about some of the
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: ways that we might parent older kids, and about as
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: a society, how we might approach the resiliency of kids,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: recognizing that they need space, sometimes they need help, but
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: they also need to be alone, and maybe sometimes it
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: is us who need to get a grip after the
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: break my conversation with doctor Tilde Ross.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Doctor Tilde Ross, thank you so much for joining me.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: I'm happy to be here, thanks for the invitation.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: So I'd love to have you introduce yourself a little bit,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: let us know who you are, what you do, and
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: then we'll dive into mental health.
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: Great.
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: So I am a psychiatrist. I went to medical school
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: and have a full medical license and did a residency
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: in psychiatry and there's also a board certification process, so
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: it is different from a psychologist, but people often mix
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: them up, which is fine because we do have very
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: overlapping roles in work together quite a bit. I work
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: at Boston University in the student health services, so most
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: colleges and universities have a counseling center where students can
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: go for mental health issues. I am finishing my sixteenth year,
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: which is enough to graduate from college four times over
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: and what does that translate to? So every year I
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: am involved in the care of around two hundred patients,
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: all of which are BU students, mostly undergrads. Two hundred
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: a year multiplied by sixteen thirty two hundred patients, that
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: is going to be the experience base that I'm going
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: to be talking to you from amazing.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So we're going to talk about mental health for kids.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And I reached out to you because of your absolutely
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: fantastic New York Times article, which it was entitled Anxious
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: parents are the ones who need Help.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I made my husband to read it immediately.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And it really came into what I see as a
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: pretty active conversation about mental health for kids, some of
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: which is quite almost apocalyptic. There's a sense of, you know,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: mental health for kids is declining, it's the lowest it's
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: ever been.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It's your article.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Doesn't take that frame, or at least I think isn't
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: isn't quite the same level of concern. So I love
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: you to talk a little bit about that discourse and
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: how that feels to you from where you sit with
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: the students.
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, So I'm going to tell you as a
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: small piece of background that when I found out the
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: article was accepted, I went to our director and I'm like,
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: I just got accepted the New York Times because I
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: wanted her to read it and know what was about
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: to go out there. And she read it, and first
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: of all, she was laughing at all the right parts,
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: which was awesome. And she put it down and she said,
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: the narrative of crisis has got to stop.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And I want to Can I just pause you to
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: read it so to give people who haven't read this
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: a flavor of the article. This is the part of
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: where I laugh the most. But I do have some
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: advice for parents. The first thing I like to say,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: and I mean it in the kindest way possible, is
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: get a grip.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: And so that's a little a little bit of the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: tone of the article. Okay, please continue.
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so I did not know you were allowed
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: to say get a grip in the New York Times.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: They have some restrictions, but that's not one of them.
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: So the language of crisis isn't helping or it's getting
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: to the wrong audience. There is a mental health crisis
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: out there, but it is mostly not what people are
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: talking about. The root cause of most serious mental health
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: problems globally is poverty. Second to that, it is the
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: terrible things that people do to each other, trauma, child abuse,
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: sexual violence. Those are the serious problems in mental health,
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: and those are the people we need to reach. Now.
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: I want it, is it?
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: Okay?
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: If I give you a metaphor because I think it's.
• 7:42
  Speaker 6: Yes.
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  Speaker 5: Okay, So this is a little bit of a long one,
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: but I think it's necessary to capture the complexity.
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: So I live in Boston, and the Greater Boston area
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: is rather notorious for its weather, partly because the weather
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: is often bad, but partly just because it's changes so much.
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: So if you live in this area and have to
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: go outside at all, you pretty much have to do
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: a weather check pretty much every day, and I do,
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: and most people I know do. And oh there's a
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: little caveat that October to April. Maybe keep an eye
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: on the long range forecast because of those nor'easters. Right, So,
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: every morning, look out the window. Is it raining? Yes
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  Speaker 5: or no? Today it was, I wore a raincoat. Now
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: what happens If instead of looking out the window, I
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: decide to call the National Weather Service? It would probably
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: be awesome. They'd probably have all kinds of really interesting
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: information about what is likely to happen today. And I
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: would still end up with the same decision rainco yes
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: or no, but I would feel like it was a
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  Speaker 5: much more informed decision, and I would have had probably
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: an awesome conversation with a really smart professional.
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  Speaker 6: In the process.
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  Speaker 5: So great, that was a good experience. What if I
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: start telling all my friends to do that and they're.
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: Like, this is awesome.
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  Speaker 5: It takes so much pressure off the decision of whether
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: to wear a raincoat, and I'm getting all this extra
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: information too. And what happens if they tell all their
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: friends about it. All of a sudden, the National Weather
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: Service is flooded. They're getting morph calls than they can handle.
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  Speaker 5: At first, they're like, this is great. Usually everyone ignores us.
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: Now everyone wants to know what our opinion is.
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  Speaker 6: And great.
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  Speaker 5: Here's the problem. Logan Airport is also calling. They really
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: want to know if that norriister is coming. No one
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: at the National Weather Service can answer the phone for
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: Logan Airport sometimes maybe even a lot of the time.
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  Speaker 5: That's okay because most of the time that nor easter
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: isn't coming.
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  Speaker 6: But it's a disaster if.
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: Nor isster is coming. And it's not just the National
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: Weather Service, right, it's farmers they got to know when
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: to plant stuff, the Navy they got to know like
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: when their ships need to be in harbor.
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: And then there's like.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: Chinese Bible State Department wants to know, like which way
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: it's gonna blow? Which way is the wind blowing? The
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: National Weather Service has really important stuff to do, and
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  Speaker 5: they can't do it if hundreds and thousands of people
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: are calling to ask whether to wear a raincoat. So
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: that is what it's been like to be a mental
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: health clinician over the last decade or so. You have
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: important calls coming, and a lot of them, but you
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: have orders of magnitude more calls coming that are things
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: that are sure important in the moment, but probably self
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: limiting and gonna get better on their own, or maybe
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: dealt with better in a different way, like with a
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: friend or with a family member.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I like this metaphor.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it connects to why you say
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: in the article, which is like the kids are mostly fine,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: that for the most part, kids are doing okay.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: But what's interesting.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: About what you sort of that metaphor is that even
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: if things are mostly fine, people are still seeking out
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: help that they would need if things were not fine,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: and having somehow the impression that like, this is a
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: thing that you do when you need to know whether
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: to wear a raincoat, as opposed to this is a
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: thing that you do if you are needing to operate
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: airplanes in the metaphor.
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: Right, right.
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: So sometimes kids are not fine, but mostly they're not
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: fine in a way that can be handled by the
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: adults in their world. There are going to be the exceptions,
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: the more serious things, But what kids mostly need and
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: what I wanted to sort of give the message of
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: parent empowerment regarding what kids mostly need is for their
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: parents to kind of be there, to not really freak
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: out about the situation, to handle it and help them
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: move through it. And I kind of feel like parents
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: at the moment don't really feel like this is okay.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: I feel like they think they're not doing enough if
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: they don't get an expert, even if getting an expert
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: opinion isn't always the right thing.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think this relates.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: I want to turn to this question of sort of
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: like what is the problem with the parents, and some
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: of what you're saying relates to some of these points
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: in Abbilas Schreyer's book Bad Therapy, which I've talked about
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: on the podcast before, which I'm sure you've read, and
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: her view that were defaulting to therapy too frequently, that
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: we're pathologizing even pretty typical behaviors and that a lot
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: of the problems the kids have are in fact caused
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: by therapy as opposed to help.
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: Well, I have not read the book, so I am
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: conservative enough to think if I haven't read the book,
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: I should probably not have a public comment. But I
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: did listen to your podcast with doctor Becky Okay, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: which was a totally awesome podcast. By the way, I
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: thought doctor b was right on. So no, going to
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: therapy is fine. I am hard pressed to think of
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: a time when going to therapy harms someone. There are
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: exceptions to that, but it's weirdly academic and not relevant
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: to most listeners. But what I wrote in my article is,
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: so it's not that therapy is going to harm anyone,
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: It's that what is the impact on your real world
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: relationship if you go to therapy as opposed to sort
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: of working things out, you know, with the loved ones
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: that you already have, or with the people that are
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: in your life and going.
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: To stay in your life.
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: So if you go to therapy for you know, some issue,
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: and you go to therapy for several weeks and then
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: you feel better and the issue is resolved, what you
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: learn from that is Wow, my therapist really helped me.
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: If you take the same.
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: Issue and say go to your mom or or go
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: to maybe your good friend, a very similar thing is
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: going to happen. You're going to get through it, because
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: most people get through most things. But in the process,
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: what you're going to learn from that is I can
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: get through anything with my friends, or I can get
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: through anything with my mom as opposed to gosh, therapy
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: was really necessary for me, and the emphasis of the article,
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: and to me, what people might be missing is like,
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: you know, what do we lose? You know what do
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: I lose by outsourcing this aspect of my child's development
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: to a professional instead of just being there.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: I think that there's a parallel to even one step
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: further so, I think we as adults scaffold quite a
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: lot of kid conflict relative to when I was a kid.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: You know, when I was a kid, there was a
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: lot more like everyone's really mean and that you know
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: at school and people are doing all kinds of terrible stuff,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: but it was kind of ignored, or it was sort
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: of like, you guys are gonna work this out, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: you know, like sorry that you feel terrible, but it's
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: not the teacher's job to fix this.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And in my in my sort.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Of the current environment, I think is way more like
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: it's the teacher's job to fix this, like let's have
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: a you know, have a meeting, have a counseling session.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: There's some aspects of that that I think are very good.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: But at some point I sent one of my kids
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: to camp, to sleep Away Camp. And one feature of
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Sleepway Camp is it's like Lord of the Flies, right.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: It's like a bunch of twelve year olds in a cabin.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: The supervision is some sixteen year old who like is
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: just trying to you know, deal with their own emotional
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: relationship with the sixteen year old in the in the
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: boys cabin, who you know, like they got their own
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: stuff going on.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: They're not scaffolding your relationships.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: And it was it was not what I expected her
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: to get out of it, but the idea that there
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: are some things that you can fix on your own
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: with your peers or with or with your parents without
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: something external. It does teach you that that that's possible
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and that it is kind of part of becoming a person.
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: Right, And the stuff that you're fixing on your own
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: as a kid is usually pretty small steaks. But doing
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: that stuff is practice for when you're a teenager or
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: an adult, and it's much much higher stakes. You know, Emily,
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: parent used to be a noun and now it is
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: a verb.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: The nineteen seventies, Yes, now it is a verb.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: So when I grew up, I'm a little older than you,
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: But when I grew up, parents were nouns. They stood
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: around drinking wine, talking to the other parents if something.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Was cocktails, having a cigarette.
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: If something was wrong, you went to your parents, probably
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: your mom, and you know, they gave you a kiss
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: and talk to the other parents, and then when you
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: finally got bored of the adult conversation, you left and
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: joined the other kids. And you know, I'm not saying
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: that things were perfect back then, as you alluded to.
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: I think bullying was really really bad when we were
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: growing up. Much in fact, I know it was really bad.
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: Also serious accidents. There really were terrible things that would
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: happen to kids who were unsupervised around water or you know,
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: things with wheels or the kitchen. So I don't think
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: that things were perfect back then. But now parenting is
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: a verb, and every aspect of it requires thought and energy,
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: and consternation and consulting with your friends and reading a book.
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: And I think it's swung way too far. I think
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: it makes being a parent way less fun, and the
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: kids don't like it.
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: So they don't.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: Want parents to be micromanaging their activities or their friends,
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: or their sports, or their grades, or their college choices
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: or their career. They just want their parents to kind
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: of be there, like a noun.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: So you see a lot of college student You treat
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: college students, and I teach college students, and there's more
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: parental involvement than one might hope you do see that?
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: Where do I even begin? So I hear stories of
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: students whose parents are tracking them on find my iPhone
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: and call them when they're not in class. I would
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: say it is not at all surprising to hear about
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: parents who call multiple times a day.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what do you think?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: So, just like you, that's that seems like it sounds
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: in some ways ridiculous.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: But how do we get there? Like, how do I, as.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: A parent get to calling my kid to see if
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: they're in class when they're nineteen?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah? So, first of all, like I am not antiparent.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: I love parents I love Look, I mean I love
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: literally doing a parenting.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Literally it's an entire jobs being parents.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: And I am a parent, and all my almost all
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: my friends are parents.
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: And it is the world's hardest job.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: I think it is extremely well intentioned. I think parents
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: are doing what they think they are supposed to do.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: And if you sort of think about it, like, yeah,
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: you're told to be involved, right, You're told to be
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: an involved parent. You're told to pay attention, and you're.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Never told that they're limit to that.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: It's like more involved, more time, more time on the floor,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: every moment that you're with your kid, that's that's investment.
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I have to say that doing this work
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: has been really helpful for me because in the moment,
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: you can kind of recognize the urge to get involved.
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: So one of the things that is guided my parent
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: my parenting, sorry, Sharon.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: My position as a parent.
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: When they turn eighteen. So I see them when they
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: turn eighteen, so I see like the consequences of all
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: these decisions, the biggest threats to their health and safety
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: are going to be decisions they make themselves. So that's
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: what to consume and put in your body. Who to
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: get in a car with, who to be in relationships with.
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: For the most part, those are the big things. At
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: eighteen year olds in our culture are going to be
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: needing to make him important decisions about So when they're little,
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: your role is to protect them, but as they mature,
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: they have to take on more and more of that themselves.
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: So those two things are at odds. So as early
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: as possible, you need to let them make their own
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: decisions to the degree that they can. And I'm going
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: to tell you a story. You're probably gonna be horrified,
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: and definitely your listeners will be. So when my daughter
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: was two, she was rather stubborn. There was a twenty
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: degree day. We were going for a hay write or something.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: It was an outdoor activity. She wanted to go. She
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: did not want to put a coat on. It's like, okay,
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: I can bring the coat. You can wear it or not.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: It's your body. And we went on the hay ride.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: I carried the coat forty minutes. This girl did not
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: ask for her coat. It was murder. I was like,
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: oh my god, she's got to be cold. Other parents
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: are like looking at me, like what's going on? Held
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: my tongue. Didn't say anything. Forty minutes. I think I'll
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: put my coat on now, Like, great, put your coat on.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: The urge to protect them is not only socialized, it's
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: like literally hardwired. Evolution built us to take care of
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: these people.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Sometimes it goes against what is natural or what feels
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: like the right thing, And I think for a whole
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: lot of people, it's just easier to protect them than
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: to let them be cold for forty minutes on a
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: hay ride.
• 22:51
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: So John Hyde talks about this idea of cycle of incompetence,
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: sort of treating your kids as helpless or in this
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: case like protecting them and then being scared that later
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: like they had.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: It developed those those skills.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: And the way that I also sometimes think about it
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: is like it's so easy to see the elements of
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: safety that are visible, like the sort of physical Like
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: it's so easy to understand, like the idea of freezing.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: You know, the.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Frostbite, Like you understand, you know what frostbite is, You're
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: familiar with it, Like you watch some videos about Everest,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: you know, like that can happen, probably not to your
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: kid whatever.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: That's very visible.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: But what is harder to put in your head is
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: like Look, this is like if my kid doesn't learn
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: how to make decisions and what it is to make
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: a mistake and how you like then get back from
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: your mistake and put on the coat, like that's bad
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: for them.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: In the future.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: That that's that sort of making those kind of mistakes.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Maybe she wouldn't say it was a mistake, but making
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: those kind of mistakes or making choices that aren't the
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: best and then having to make them again, that's that's
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: how they're going to learn to not make the bad
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: mistakes later.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I would add that sometimes the path of
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: least resistance just favors doing it yourself in some way.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And most of the time you ever watch a three
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: year old put their shoes.
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: On, rights, Yeah, right, so right, it can be so
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: painful getting out the door with toddlers, and yet they've
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: got to learn how to put their coat and shoes on.
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: So so yeah, sometimes when you're in a hurry, you
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: got to just like tie their shoes for them or whatever.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: But if you do that every single time, you're still
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: going to be doing it when they're twelve.
• 24:27
  Speaker 6: Just like it's easier to.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: Remind them to bring their lunch box or even maybe
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: put it in their hand when they're on the way
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: out the door, when actually the consequence of forgetting your
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: lunch box is not having lunch, and you learn a
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: lot better from that then you learn from being nagged
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: yet again by your mom.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this this strikes me as an interesting sort of
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: there there are two things that we that we kind
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: of over scaffold that then you see in the older
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: potentially the older kids. One is the kind of how
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: do you make your own decisions and learn to make
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: good choices when there are bad choices available? And the
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: second is just literally like how do you learn to
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: get up in the morning and function as a person.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Where I think this is partly why people's parents call
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: them before every class, because like, that's what they did
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: in high school. They got them up every morning, and
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: so now without mom maybe they can't get or at
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: least the parents' perception is like, without me, my child
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: will never learn to get up.
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: Out of the bed.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the parent's perception.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: So right, all you think people are familiar children, scholar
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: students are able to get out of the bed if
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: they choose right.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: They absolutely are, and if they don't, there are going
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: to be natural consequences. The you know, in the battle
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: days when we were in college, you probably were just
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: going to like get a zero for your participation grade
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: and like maybe fill the class. Now the world is
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: much kinder, and if you're not getting up for class,
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: probably someone calls an office like mine, and we are
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: each and we drag you in here and figure out
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: what's going on. Either way, you know, your parents don't
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: need to be involved in that, and to some degree,
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: if you're propping them up too much, you can sort
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: of protect them from the natural consequences, and over the
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: long run, that isn't really a good situation.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, an ideal world, you would have developed
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: some of these skills before they got to college. But
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I guess what you're saying is like, even if you didn't,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: it's okay.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: They will learn to buy alarm clocks.
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: There's a reason we call them college kids because they're kids.
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: And there are armies of people like me who are
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: non faculty, you know, university employees whose job it is
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: to help them become adults. Most of it just happens
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: on its own, but some of them do need a
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: little bit of propping up. Yes, everybody loves to complain
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: about administrative bloat. Universities probably complain about it, right, They
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: probably complain about that at round two. But you're probably
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: glad they have a counseling center so that you don't
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: actually have to figure out why someone isn't coming to
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: your class. You can just turf it out to another department.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do like that. That's a fair point.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: So when I dropped my kid at college, should I
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: just not call?
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: Like?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: What what should I do? What should I do? I've
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: tempted to call. It's eight o'clock in the morning, I
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: know she's got class. Should I, like, how should I
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: control myself?
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: Be a noun? Don't call?
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: Just be there, be ready for the call when it comes,
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: you know. So when I was in college, it's probably
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: similar for you. We had like one shared phone for
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: a whole suite of roommates and yeah, yeah, it was
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: probably similar for you.
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Uh, it was like.
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: Normal to call home on Sundays pretty much everyone did.
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: And it was normal for my peers to call home
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: once a week, and that was like the high end.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: Plenty of people it was once a month. So so, right,
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: things have changed, and you might, you know, you might
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: want to check in about something small, and there's texting,
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: and there's lots of different ways of communicating, and I
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: think the once a week model is probably never coming back.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: And it's lovely that parents are more involved in their
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: adult children's lives. And it's actually like really good for
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: your adult prognosis if you have a good relationship with
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: your parents. So, but what I would suggest is, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: this is what I mean when I say like, be
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: a noun like let them come to you, follow their lead.
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: Like you know, as a parent, you are always front
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: of mind.
• 28:40
  Speaker 6: For your child always.
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: It doesn't always feel that way because they're ignoring you,
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: but you are. And when something very good or when
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: something very bad happens, I guarantee you are the first
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: thing they think of evidence for that. You know, whenever
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: anyone is caught on camera unexpected, what is the first
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: thing they say?
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: Hi?
• 29:03
  Speaker 7: Mom?
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: Right, you are always.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: Front of mind. They're not like forgetting about you at
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: home in Providence or wherever. Let them come to you,
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: follow their lead on how much communication they want with you.
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: But like, yeah, if they're not getting up for class,
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: like they may get some grades that they don't like,
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: but that's them, it's not you.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that part is that last part
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: is really hard. That we get so wrapped up in
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: our kids' success and our kids like outcomes that it's
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: to sort of separate is the goal of parenting adults,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: but is pretty hard, right.
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: The job of a parent, and actually this is also
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: the job of a good therapist. The job of a
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: parent is to put yourself out of a job.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: More parent data, including what college kids are actually struggling
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: with and maybe what we.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: As parents can do to help. After the break, I.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Want to tell you that when I was in college,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: I emailed my mom a lot. We had like so
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: we had email, so that was the method, and in
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: like the first week, I wrote her and told her
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: that she needed to send me double A batteries because
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I couldn't get them at school. I went to Harvard
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and across the street from my dorm was a CBS,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: like literally you could see it from the window, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: they sell batteries there. But somehow, like I basically was
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: a pretty functional person, but somehow the idea that like
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: one purchased batteries, I was just like, does just appear
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: like I don't.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I never got the less.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: About battery purchasing, and she she sent the batteries. I
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: mean she remembered this later story later to tell people
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: why I was an idiot, but uh she said the batteries.
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: Well she probably loved it too, because you probably were
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: a really independent young woman and just like the idea
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: that you still like needed her like for batteries.
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah, because but yeah for batteries.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Uh So when you worry about when you worry.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: About kids, about college kids, you know, what do you
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: really worry about? If you said it's mostly fine, but
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: are there things you're you're concerned about?
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: Well, so one thing, and I think this is for
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: parents of every age, but I definitely see it at
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: this level. It can be pretty dramatic. So one area
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: where I do think you should be involved. I don't
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: think you should let your kids put all their eggs
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: in one basket. So young people for whom their entire
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: self worth is tied up in one sort of part
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: of their life, and it could be anything. It could
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: be a sport, or it could be like an instrument
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: that they play. If a young person has an excessive
• 32:18
  Speaker 5: amount of self worth tied in one thing, oh, actually,
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: grades is a common one. Like the kid who just
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: can't tolerate anything below in a for young people, even
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: for adults, it's just not good. But if you're in
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: a situation where you lose that one thing, and I
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: think the reason that I brought up sports is because
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: that's something that is so easy to lose, because everyone
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: doing a sport is one injury away from not being
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: able to do the sport. And if your entire self
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: worth is tied up in the activity and the community
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: around the activity, and then all of a sudden you
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: have to just change gears, that is very, very hard
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: for young people. And I think that this is a
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: way that parents could actually be paying more attention. And
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: a lot of things parents should be paying less attention to,
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: but I think that is an area where parents could
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: be paying more attention. So that is sort of general
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: advice for anyone. So I am a psychiatrist, so I
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: see the most serious the mental health problems that people see.
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: So I have got plenty to keep me up at night.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: But for the most part, it ties to the more
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: serious stuff that I mentioned earlier, So childhood trauma, particularly
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: early childhood trauma, poverty. You would not think it would
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: be so big an issue in a private university, but
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: you would not believe the tentacles that poverty has. There
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: are plenty of other sort of side notes. If your
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: kid's going to live off campus, make sure their smoke
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: detectors work. We'll just leave that one at that.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, leave that one at that.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Wear a bike helmet. Wear a helmet when you're on
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: those stupid scooters.
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: Oh believe me.
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: I have had that conversation. I've had like a conversation
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: with like a law student and they're in the office
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: for whatever they're in the office for, and I've said
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: to them, look like you're here for X, Y and Z.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: Your your biggest health issue right now is the fact
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: that you don't wear a helmet on your bike.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, helmets, That's just necessary.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I always want to yell at them.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: We have all these like eas scooters that are kids,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the brown kids are on and every time they go
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: buy me with no helmet, I want to be like,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: put on a helmet.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Your mom would be upset.
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: No, you should say I'm going to dock your grade.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: That'll really get them to wear a helmet.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I hope those people are not on Michael maff I
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: saw somebody in my class on that forget it.
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: That's like they're done.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: So the last thing I want to ask is, you know,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: we see in these sort of big to go back
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: to kind of this big discussion about the mental health
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: of kids, which I think has gotten a lot of
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: attention with the ambulish fire with John Heights. There's a
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: bunch of this sort of things swirling around here. We
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: hear a lot about like phones, social media. Do you
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: think that that warrants the level of like moral panic
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: or again, would you sort of say, like this is
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: not all that it is made out to be.
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: I was hoping you would ask about phones ic.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're here on my phone.
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: Okay, so I here is where I'm going to start.
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: I mentioned to you that I am speaking from an
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: experience base of around thirty two hundred patients, and I
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: see the most serious stuff that we see in our office.
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: I have simply never had a patient where I thought
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: their primary issue was the fact that they had a phone,
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: full stop. I have had dozens and dozens of scenarios
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: that I know of personally where a phone has saved
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: someone in an important way. So that is speaking from
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: my experience. What do I think about the public conversation.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: It makes me insane. Huh yeah, So you see these
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: graphs and lots of people are saying it, and so
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: the reason that it makes me insane is the disconnect
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: becauding what people are talking about and what I see.
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: I'm like, is the whole old wrong? Or am I wrong?
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: Maybe I'm wrong?
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: That would be possible. Here's what I think.
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: There is a lot of emotion around phones. One hundred
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: percent of people have emotions. Only a smaller percentage of
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: people are going to be vulnerable to serious mental health problems.
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: And right now, one of the things that's going on
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: with this over diagnosis and the stuff I was talking
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: about earlier people seeking care for very minor things. One
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: of the things that you have going on is a
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: massive confusion between normal emotions and serious mental health problems.
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: People are just quite confused. And now that everything's destigmatized,
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: it's sort of shifted. So there used to be a
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: significant amount of mental health stigma. So if you weren't sure,
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: you'd be like, it's probably normal. Now since things have
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: been degmatized, people are much more willing to call something
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: that is normal a mental health problem. I should also say,
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: by the way. I'm not a child psychiatrist. I see
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: them when they turn eighteen, So I don't know how
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: this is playing out in child psychiatry offices, and I'm
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: happy to acknowledge that. The other thing that I would
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: like to say is there is an absence of strong data.
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: When there is an absence of strong data, what you
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: get is strong feelings. And there are definitely a lot
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: of strong feelings on this topic. So here's what I
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: think the Okay, So there's a saying in medicine that goes,
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence, So
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: that basically means it's really hard to prove a negative.
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: So let's say you wanted to find out if eating
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: glitter is dangerous. It's kind of actually hard to find
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: evidence on that, Like is eating glitter dangerous? Like, I
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: don't know, there's no evidence, but the absence of evidence
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: is an evidence of absence. So it might be dangerous
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: to glitter. Probably don't do it because it sounds dumb.
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: How does this apply to cell phones and weak data?
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: It's been almost twenty years, so over a twenty year timeframe,
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That is
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: my opinion, I think it is a lot of talk.
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: I think it is a major distraction from real issues.
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: And the real issues and mental health are poverty and trauma,
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: things that you are hard pressed to find a newspaper
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: talking about. So that's why talking about phones makes me insane.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: So that's so interesting. First of all, my kid has
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: eaten glitter and it's fine. It does show up on
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: the other end in a disturbing manner.
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: We can talk about that later.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: But it's a very interesting position because I definitely think
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: you're out, Like I really hear what you're saying. And
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: then I think what these guys would come back with is,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: you know, well, even if this isn't causing the most
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: significant issues, that it is contributing to attention problems and
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: other things for some kids, or it could affect some
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: kids badly. But I hear what you're saying, which is
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: you don't really have any reason to think that's true,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: and a long period of time in which maybe we
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: might have expected to see well.
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: Right, so there are definitely issues, and all people of
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: all ages should definitely have limits around their screen time.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: And you know, I sleep with my phone on a
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: different floor of the house. All our kids have technology
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: off by nine. And I also think that, you know,
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: when a kid is sort of middle school age, there's
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: this sort of window of opportunity where they still accept
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: your rules and limits. And if they're on their phone
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: too much, then hey, looks like you're not mature enough
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: to handle using a phone, and you get it taken
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: away for a week or two. You know, if you
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: can't subscribe to like appropriate limits like people do, maybe
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: you're just not ready. And I do think people are
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: going to be ready at different ages. I also know
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: because you know, as an adult, I lived through all
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: of this, And I also know that every single adult
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: that I know who got a phone when they first
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: had it went through a phase where they were super annoying,
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: like even like the grandparents, who you would think would
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: just have boundaries around it when they first got their phone, like, oh, yeah,
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: we're having an important Thanksgiving conversation, but look, cat videos
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: are you know. So I feel like every individual had
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: a learning curve with their phone, and so of course
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: young people are going to and there are a lot
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: of emotions wrapped up in it, and then the social
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: side is tricky. But teenagers and the social side has
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: always been tricky.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a really like a very important
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: nuanced point there, which is that you could think that unfettered,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: unlimited access to all aspects of phones at all times
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: for children is a mistake, which I think we both
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: do and also feel that, like saying the problem with
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: mental health is phones, and that's that's how we should
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: that's what we should focus on.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: That that could also be that that may also.
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: Be a missay, like if you just snapped your finger
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: and eliminated phones from the face of the earth, it
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: would not move the needle on the mental health situation.
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: When iota, I guarantee.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: That it's all of these.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: This idea of speaking in absolutes rather than nuance, right.
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: And using judgment and common sense and paying attention.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how did you find the reaction to the New
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: York Times piece?
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: Oh? Well, so, honestly was really fun. The first part
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: I have to tell you, So, my daughter is sixteen,
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: and she's on her school newspaper. When she found out
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: I was going to be in the New York Times,
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: she said, oh my god, that's so cool.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Win.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: That is such a win. That's totally worth it just
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: So, I can also say my husband maybe promise not
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: to reach the comments, which I have not.
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: I have gotten pretty good.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Actually, I mean I like, as a person who trust
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: me does not read my own comments and should not.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Your comments were pretty good.
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: I benefit from like being a mental health professional. So okay,
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: So I got a ton of personal messages and emails.
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: So some of the emails I read the first two
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: words and I was like, eh, not going to read that.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: No, no, that's for me.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: But a whole lot of the emails were from like
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: mental health professionals in various places around the country, and
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: they were overwhelmingly positive. But I was joking about it
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: with my husband later because I was like, what are
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: the chances that a mental health professional is going to
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: reach out to me and.
• 42:40
  Speaker 6: Be like, by the way, I hated your article. You know,
• 42:43
  Speaker 6: it's just like.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Not trust me, trust me. People do write to say
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: that they hate your article. It has happened.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: People do that.
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: Oh, but people do.
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: But mental health professionals are like, they're they're either going
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: to say something nice or they're not.
• 42:56
  Speaker 6: Going to say anything.
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: So yeah, that's oh no, academic everyone else sure, but yeah, parent.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well I'm glad that you could make your have.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Impressing one's kids once teenagers is about the biggest I'm
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: still working on it with my children, but that's that's
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: the win.
• 43:17
  Speaker 6: Was a win, Yeah, it's always the win. Thank you
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: so much for joining me. This was a delight. Thanks
• 43:22
  Speaker 6: for having me. This is a lot of fun.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Parent Data is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: the parent Data team and pix. If you have thoughts
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: on this episode, please join the conversation on my Instagram
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• 43:50
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• 43:54
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• 43:57
  Speaker 2: make better, more informed parenting decisions. For example, earlier this year,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I wrote an article about parenting adolescents where I actually
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: got some helpful advice from some former podcast guests Jennifer Wallace,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Vanessa Crol Bennett, and Karen Natterson about how to stay
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: close to your teenagers and when it's okay not to
• 44:15
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• 44:15
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• 44:19
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• 44:21
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• 44:22
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• 44:25
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