Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Why Kids Give Up Too Soon — And How to Stop It

Transcript

Why Kids Give Up Too Soon — And How to Stop It · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This is the Happy Families podcast. Hello and welcome. My
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: name's doctor Justin Coulson. Your child comes home and announces
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: they want to quit soccer or piano, or swimming, or
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: art or just about anything. Do you let them? When
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is quitting teaching resilience and when is it teaching them
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to give up too easily. There is actually a magic
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: threshold and every skill that changes everything, and most kids
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: quit right before they reach it. That's what we're exploring
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: on today's podcast. Stay with us. Hello and welcome to
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the Happy Families podcast. Real Parenting Solutions every day on
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are doctor Justin and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Kylie Coulson. Every skill that your child attempts has what
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: researchers call a confidence threshold. Essentially, it's a magic line.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Before they cross this line, everything feels hard and frustrating
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and unrewarding. And after they cross it, the same activity
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: starts to not always but it starts to feel good
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and enjoyable and worth doing.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: The image that comes to mind as you're saying that
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: is a child learning to ride a bike. When you
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: watch them in those early stages, it's really wobbly they're
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: like they're about to topple over and they're constantly putting
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: their feet on the ground to stop their fall. And
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: yet when they break through that, the feeling of freedom
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that they get is they glide through the air. That's
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: what we're talking about, right, It's up until that point,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: it was so hard.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the key word up until that point, generally
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: out of your child's mouth will be.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I hate this.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Well, well that's another one. I was going to say, can't.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I can't do this. It's too hard. I can't do it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So I would say that same pattern applies to pretty
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: much anything, whether it's playing instruments or reading, or playing
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: a shoelace or writing your name or sports. Literally every
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: skill follows this pattern.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And the crazy thing is, in my personal experience, it
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: goes from being hard, hard, hard hard hard. Oh, hang
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: on a sec, I just got it. Like it feels
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: like it's kind of like this, like a light switch.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: You go from I can't do it, I can't do it,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: I can't do it. I hang on, Actually I can
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: do it. Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is my impression of a child learning to
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: write a bike or learning to swim or do some thing.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I can't, I can't, I can't. This is fun.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I want to do more of this.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's right. And this goes back to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the whole competence thing.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: We're always talking on the podcast about competence being a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: basic psychological need, and if you want to become competent,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you need to understand the structure or the process or
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the formula or the framework or the system or whatever
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it is that underpins competence and mastery and that thing.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So to write an essay, kids literally they stare at
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: that piece of paper or they stare at the curse
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of blinking on the word document and just go, I can't.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: But once they understand the structure an essay, tell me
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: what you're going to tell me, Then tell me, Then
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: tell me what you told me. That's the structure of
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: an essay. Once they understand that they have someone guide
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: them through it. They're someone like, oh is that all?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I get that. Now. Riding the essay maybe
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: that's not going to be as fun as riding a bike,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: but but they've developed that sense of confidence.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I can't think of anything that I've quit before I
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: actually got okay, at it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: You haven't said that though your parents didn't exactly put
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: you into a whole lot of enrichment activities when you're
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a child. No, they did it like they weren't sending
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: you off to swimming lessons. And I was going to
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: say horse riding, like I can afford a horse riding,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: But they weren't sending you off to all of those things,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: piano lessons and so on.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: No, But I was just a kid with grit. My
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: dad had a ten speed bike. It was a mail bike,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: so it had the bar across the top. I could
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: hardly touch the ground once I straddled his bike. But
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I was so determined that I was going to learn
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: to ride a bike that I rode around on the
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: grass around our house over and over again. I smashed
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: every light reflect a thing on my dad's bike. But
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I was determined, and and I finally mastered riding a bike,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: not because somebody taught me, because I was so motivated
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: to do so.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And see, I quit heaps of the.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Say with rollerskating. My cousin had rollerskates, and I was
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: going down the hill. I wasn't even on the flat.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I've fell over, busted my bum so many times. But again,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I was just really determined, and as I've matured as
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: an adult, I just have this kind of I don't know,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: this sense I can do hard things. Even when it's
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: really hard, I'm going to give it a go.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, personality characteristics. So what's odd there is that there's
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a bunch of things that I'm not very good at
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that I've persisted at because I want to get competent
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: in them. Surfing would be an example of that, or
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: even cycling. I've achieved reasonable levels of competence in both,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: but these are things that you can't master. There's always
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: another level, there's always more that you can do. But
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I love the sense of progress. I love the feeling
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of progress there. But I've quit roller skating, and i
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: quit piano lessons, and i quit swimming, and I quit Did.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You ever start roller skating? Let's just di real.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: We used to go on the Central Coast. That was
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: a place in man Street called Froggies. Anyone who is
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: on the Central Coast and lived back in the nineteen
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: eighties on the coast would remember Froggies. That was the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: roll skating rink and I went there quite often for
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: somebody who didn't roll about to.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Say, considering what I've seen, I'm really surprised.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Probably about a dozen times I was skating, I've done
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that a dozen times as well. Never going to do
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that horse riding. Dumb stupid, can't stand it, Like I've
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: quit so many things because I never reached that level
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of that competence threshold. That's what this is really about.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: It's the competence threshold.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: But I think it also brings up another point. It's
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: actually about the motivation behind like what's your why? Why
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: is your child doing X, Y and z Okay?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Well, that ties in with basic psychological needs? Right, So
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: are my friends doing it? Or am I choosing to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: do it myself? If the answer is not to both
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: of them, then there's not going to be any persistence.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: And frankly, and none of my friends were really serious
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: about us roller skating, but we skateboard it a lot.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you were serious about surfing. All your friends
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: were doing that.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Yeah, And I love the progress and
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I got to choose to do it. Basic psychological needs
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: drive motivation. Here's what the research tells us. Adults who
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: played sports as children scored thirty four percent higher on
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: measures of Britten perseverance compared to only twenty three percent
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: of those who never played sports. But the key isn't
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: just anticipating, it's sticking through the challenges long enough to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: reach competence. So the stake that we make as parents
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: is letting our kids quit when they're in the valley
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: rather than on the mountain peak. It's really hard to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: say this that kids shouldn't quit before they reach basic confidence.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It's something that they've committed to because they haven't yet
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: experienced what it feels like when the skill becomes rewarding.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And so again I guess I go back to that motivation.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Whose motivation was it to start the activity in the
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: first place. If it's the child, then I totally agree
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: with you. But if it's you as the parent, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: every week is just hard work and there's constant battles
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: getting them out the door, I actually think that that
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: is not a positive.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So the story that we've often shared on the podcast
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: is our eldest daughter wanted to ride velodrome track cycling
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: with me on a Friday night when we lived in
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the Illawarra region. So we went and spend all the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: money and bought all the gear. Even though I was
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a student, we didn't have any money for it. It
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was a huge sacrifice, and after about four or five
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: weeks she decided she didn't want to do it anymore.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: But what she was discovering is number One, she wasn't competent.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: She was in that I can't zone. She hadn't reached
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the confidence threshold. But secondly, she really didn't have the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: relationships and the defeat the way she was being defeated,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: she was just like beliterated, yeah, and it just wasn't
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that important to her. If she had better relationships, I
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: reckon she probably would have been in. It's not that
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: anyone was unkind, but she just didn't have the deep
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: relationships that all the other girls who competed and had
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: been doing so full years and years and years had developed.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So she kind of felt like she was slightly on
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the outer. If I was raising young kids now I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: guess we are with one of our kids, I'd be
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: using this confidence threshold concept in terms of guiding our
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: kids around sticking at stuff. So you want to quit
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the piano, that's fine, but let's get you to a
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: point where you can actually play it. Maybe Grade two
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: level before you quit, because that way, you're not quitting
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: in the valley, you're quitting up on top of the mountain.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I might just add as an extension of this, Angela Duckworth,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: who's world's leading expert on grit, has a rule in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: her house. It's kind of similar. Her kids can quit activities,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: but they can't quit on a hard day. So they
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: can't quit right after a last they can't quit for
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a bad performance or when they're feeling frustrated.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I really love that. I love that because what it's
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: teaching our kids, number one, is that it's okay to
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: have a bad day, but if we're going to make
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: important decisions that are going to change the outcome, it's
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: really important to not do it in that space of
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: high emotion.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the research back set up. Studies show that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: kids learn resilience not by being told about what resilience is,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: but by actually experiencing working through the difficult emotions and
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the difficult situations and the losses and that sort of stuff.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And when we rescue our kids from every struggle, we
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: pretty much rob them of the opportunity, the capacity, or yeah,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the opportunity, the chance to discover their own capacity.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: And I think we've experienced it multiple times with our
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: kids where they've been in that high emotion state and
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: they've wanted to quit, and we've kind of helped them,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: you know, work through that, and they've come out the
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: other side and they've gone, you know what, I actually
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: think I'm going to go back and give it another go.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: You know. It's just it's giving them the space to
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: work through that and sit on the other side of discomfort.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, after the break, we're going to talk more about
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: that discomfort where we call it distressed tolerance or frustration tolerance,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and that's where we're going to dive deep. Okay, So
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: we've talked about this competence threshold. This is an idea
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that I developed a handful of years ago and I
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: teach you to my resilience workshops. Now, my resilience workshop
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: is called ADI Fragile. So let's say competence exists on
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: a curve. When you start something, there's this really steep
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: learning curve, but because you're so bad at something, you
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: get reasonably okay ish at it really fast. Like you
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: go from not even knowing what middle C is on
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the piano to being able to play Twinkle Twink a
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Little Star in about four weeks, and within another few
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: weeks you can play another couple of songs and you're like, yeah,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I'm getting really good at this. And then the music
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: teacher starts teaching you how to cite read, and all
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've hit a level of competence is
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a very low one. And then this competence curve starts
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to plateau. And this is one of the biggest reasons
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that kids want to quit, because they hit this wall
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: in what felt like really exciting progress, really really exciting improvement.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: At the start, you can see yourself getting better every week.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Then progress slows down, stops entirely. It's called a learning plateau.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: And the research around this is really clear. Plato's are
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: not signs of failure. They're not signs of a lack
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of ability. They're natural. They're predictable, like they're supposed to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: happen when you're developing a new skill. They happen to everybody,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: and studies of skill acquisition show that these platos often
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: occur right before the next breakthrough and performance. You've just
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: got to be willing to say I'm leveling out. This
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel good. That must mean that there's some learning coming.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It's interesting. I was having a conversation with your mum
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the other day and I was having a bit of
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: a dummy spit about some challenges that I'm experiencing right now.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: And she said to me, she said, what you're actually
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: saying if you quit now, She said, what you're actually
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: saying is I'm really happy at being a grade five level,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: like I've learned everything I need to learn. She said,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: each time we hit a stumble or a challenge, it's
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: actually giving us the opportunity to level up. It's actually
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: giving us an opportunity to progress and get better at it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: We don't get better while we're sitting at our comfort zones.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: We actually have to feel the friction of discomfort for
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: us to grow.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Well, let's pick up on that discomfort idea. I want
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: to talk about distressed tolerance. Distress tolerance equals life skills,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: which is really what the conversation is that you had
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: with my mum. So when we let our kids quit
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: every time something gets hard, we're inadvertently teaching them that
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: discomfort should be avoided. But you know this, and I
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: know this. Research on child development shows is something that's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: really crucial. The ability to tolerate distress and work through
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: difficult emotions pretty much one of the most important love
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: skills that we can help our children to develop. And
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: studies have shown that when you follow kids into adulthood,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: those who learned to persist through challenges when they were
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: kids doing childhood activities, that is, they've developed frustration tolerance
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: or distress tolerance. It's the capacity to handle difficult feelings
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: without being overwhelmed by them. That skill transfers directly to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: academic challenges and relationships and work situations and every other
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: area of life. Can you tolerate the distress? Can you
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: survive it? It's really about self control. Dunedin study thirty
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: years of research looking at people who had good or
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: bad life outcomes. They followed them across that thirty years
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and basically the people who had more self control the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: ability to tolerate distress. Now, this doesn't mean that you're
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: supposed to endure long periods of trauma and awfulness because
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: it'll make you a better person, will refine you. That's
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: not what this is about. This is basically, I'm able
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to sit in this discomfort of not knowing how to
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: play the piece on the piano. I'm able to sit
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in the discomfort of not being able to paddle my
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: surfboard out through the waves to get out the back.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I'm able to sit in the discomfort of falling off
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: my bicycle on that jump three times in a row.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: And even though I've gone to hospital twice because of it,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I'm going to keep on going because I want to
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: master this jump. Distress tolerance, frustration tolerance, Push through it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Don't go for the quick answer. Get good at de
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: layed gratification. You become resilient.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I was watching a TV show the other day and
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: there was this beautiful scene depicted between a son and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: a mum. There had been a decision made by an
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: authority figure that was unfair, but that there was no
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: way that they could change their mind. This was just
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: their reality, and the sun was really really angry, and
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: he said, it's not fair, Mum, it's really not fair.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Tell me it's not fair. And she was trying really
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: hard to be diplomatic and be, you know, the adult
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: in the room, and she said, you know what, it's
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: actually not fair. I get that. And he said, I'm
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: just so mad, and she said I'm mad too, Let's
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: be mad together. And they just sat in that space,
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: in that really, really uncomfortable space together and it was
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: just beautiful because so often we want to try and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: coddle our kids and kind of just you know, move
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: them through it. But I loved that they were just
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: able to show in such a really simplistic way that
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: it's okay to be angry and I'm going to sit
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: here with you in that discomfort.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think if we rescue kids from every struggle,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: we rob them of the chance to discover that they're
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: more resilient than they think. Often resilience doesn't look like resilience,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't feel like resilience, but the feeling of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: accomplishment and genuine confidence that you get from pushing through
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: something that's really hard. It's something that you can't buy,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you can't inherit it, you have to earn it, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: it feels really good when you do hard things and
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: earn things. Mastery is something that is its genuine status.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It just feels good, whether you're a child or an adult.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Let's wrap this up. Our time is done. When your
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: child wants to quit, you're not just making a decision
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: about soccer or the piano. You're helping them to develop
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: the internal resources that they're going to need to navigate
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: every challenge they'll face as adults. Get them involved in
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: activities that they're choosing. Autonomy will help ideally get them
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: in activities that they have friends engaged in relationship matters,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: and then help them to see progress. Oh, we're out
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of time, but I've got to tell you our daughter, Emily,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: eleven years old. You know how she started surfing with
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: me at the start of the year. She's basically given up.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I haven't been able to get her into the water
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: for a couple of months.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Well, it is the middle of winter and it's freezing.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Well, even though it's the middle of winter and it's freezing,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: she has a couple of friends who go surfing every
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Wednesday morning down at the local beach and have surf lessons.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And I took down there last week and she loved
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: it because she was with her friends and she felt
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: like she made some progress, and she signed up for
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the rest of the term. She doesn't want to surf
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: with me. She wants to surf with her friends because
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: basic psychological needs. I feel confident I'm choosing it myself
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and I'm with my friends winning. The Happy Family's podcast
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Mimhammonds provides
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: additional research and admin support. If you would like more
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: details about making your family happy. Resources in info can
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: be found at happy families dot com, dot a you
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: hm