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Factors Behind Rising Anxiety in Young People: What Parents and Educators Can Do · Pediatrics Now: Cases Updates and Discussions for the Busy Pediatric Practitioner

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I'm Holly Wehmint and this is Pediatrics Now,
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cases, updates, and discussions for the busy pediatric practitioner,
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brought to you by the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Health
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Science Center and University Health's new Women's and Children's Hospital.
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Click on the link in this podcast for free credit that may include CME,
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MOC, or ethics credit depending on our topic or podcast.
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Today, I'm talking to Dr. David Yeager.
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He is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and he's written the
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book 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating Young People, a groundbreaking approach
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to leading the next generation and making your own life easier.
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We hope this interview will help in your day-to-day in talking to adolescent
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patients or for your family. I know it's helped me.
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Dr. Yeager, thank you so much for being here today on Pediatrics Now.
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Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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First, let's start off with something that pediatric practitioners see a lot
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of, and parents as well, anxiety.
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Are we in the middle of an anxiety epidemic among this age group, 10 to 25? And if so, why?
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The question is, first of all, is there really an anxiety problem with young people today?
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And the answer is yes, but that problem started really arising in 2008 with
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the Great Recession and the massive economic upheaval and political upheaval that came from that.
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And every year since then, clinically significant symptoms of anxiety have gone up.
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They tripled during the pandemic.
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And so now what people have argued is that, hey, that's like about the same
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time, 2008 is about the same time that cell phones started going up.
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But like, you know, there's no need to appeal to cell phones because a lot of
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other things and like the probably the most significant is this massive changes
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in people losing homes and the workforce and losing jobs and the economic inequality
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that has resulted from that great recession.
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I mean currently the basically
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what sociologists call intergenerational inequality
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so the extent to which your parents wealth and income influences your
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wealth and income that is the worst that it's been in the current generation
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since about the great recession or since the gilded age right so it's like the
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worst it's been in a century and it goes often primarily through education so
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the idea that your parents'
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wealth determines whether you go to college and where you go to college.
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Is stronger now than it has been in the past.
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Raj Chetty's data show that. A lot of people have talked about that.
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So there's massive closing of economic opportunities and striking inequalities.
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So every day a kid is in school, it's reasonable to think about how that schooling
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is going to relate to any economic future for them.
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And that picture is more bleak now than it has been in the past.
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And also they're aware of that. Young people are aware of that.
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Furthermore, like if you actually look at the items on the GAD-7,
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the generalized anxiety disorder seven,
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and a lot of these public opinion polls like the Pew, they choose an item or
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two from the overall scale.
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The items ask about things like, how often in the last few weeks did you feel
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afraid as if something awful might happen?
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Right? Now.
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I understand why if you say that all the time, that's consistent with an anxiety disorder.
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But the main point of most of our media environment on both right-leaning news
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organizations and left-leaning news organizations is to make everyone afraid
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that something awful might happen if you don't watch their show.
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It's breaking news in all caps every single day, all day.
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Right and the the sense of impending doom is not like an accident it is the
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main media strategy it's yeah it
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gets eyeballs and yeah journalists as you know have come out to say that,
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you know feeling nervous anxious on edge like that's how you would feel if you
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feel like the world is ending and no one's doing anything about it and so i
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asked my 14 year old daughter,
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i was like hey you know people are saying your generation is anxious and she's
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like yeah that sounds right. And then she was like, why is everyone saying that?
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And I said, well, I think it's because of your phones.
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And she's like, that's dumb. I was like, why? She's like, I don't have a phone and I'm anxious.
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And I was like, well, why is it? And she's like.
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Obviously because everything is like
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a disaster and you guys aren't solving any problems there's like
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war there's a pandemic there's economic inequality there's
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you know political divisions everyone's yelling
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at each other all you guys can talk
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about is like winning an election or choosing sides and
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no one is actually solving the problem and you're going
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to leave those problems to us to fix after you've
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done nothing and then but but
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you sit there calling us like dumb gen z idiots
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that are just wimps with coddled minds and then you don't expect anything of
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us so what are we supposed to do and that's a pretty good explanation for me
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for why kids would be anxious and to be honest when i tell this to any gen z
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person or any student in my classes they're like yeah that sounds about right.
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So yeah, I don't think you need to appeal to doom scrolling to explain anxiety
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disorders in the younger generation.
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And I love how you quote your child, you know, and that listening to your book,
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that importance of respect and listening.
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What do you think about, Say, for example, my 16-year-old son and my daughter,
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who's a sophomore at UT, especially her where she's already addicted to her
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phone, it seems like I made a huge mistake giving her a phone at age 12.
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My youngest daughter does not have a phone. She's 13.
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But there's this mindset, and I hate saying it, but it's like the horse is out of the barn.
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Now what do you do? Or with my 16-year-old son, do I now take away social media altogether?
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How do you do that? yeah i mean i think
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that you do once they're already addicted yeah
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so i mean addiction i
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mean that's a hard i kind of stand why people use that i i'm not i'm not certain
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it's literal it feels more metaphorical to me but certainly phones demand a
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lot of young people's attention,
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and are things that they have trouble controlling themselves on.
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And I think more than half of them, people actively want to limit their use
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of phones and social media.
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And so it is something that feels excessive to them.
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And so then the question is, well, if it's bad for them, how do you get them to not do it?
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And I'd say a couple of things. One is that I think the reason why it's bad
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for them is not clearly stated in the public. So...
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The evidence is not clear at all that social media is causing them to be anxious.
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So making an argument to them that they'll become depressed and anxious if they're
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on social media, that doesn't feel – first of all, it's not scientifically true.
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But also, that doesn't match their experience at all.
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They're like, no, no, no. This is where I go to learn how to put makeup on or
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to speak out against some injustice or to make my friends laugh or have my friends make me laugh.
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To be known and cared about so like the idea that that place is making me depressed
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at a minimum doesn't feel convincing to a lot of young people and so the only
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thing you could do when you when when adults make bad arguments that's when
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they resort to power and authority and coercion,
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is because you're making a crappy argument i mean like a lot of adults are like do your homework.
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And kids like why like well because if
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you get an a on this assignment you can get into the next class
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and then you'll get to a good college and then you'll get a good job and
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then in your 30s you'll be able to pay for your mortgage like
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that's basically the argument we make to kids to for doing their homework
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as a society and it's a bad argument and so
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and we know that and they know that and
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we after we say it it has no impact on their willingness to
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factor trinomials on the worksheet and so then we
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resort to coercion right yelling telling blaming
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shaming threats you know grounding etc and
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so like if if adults
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are if adults want to stick to a bad argument about not using
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social media then you're basically saying that you're okay with just being authoritarian
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with your kid but there are good arguments and you have to figure out what those
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are with your kid but you know one is helping them realize that the companies
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that the companies make money primarily on their attention.
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And that is what they'd sell. And then I've made this point before that,
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The very adults who think kids are impulsively addicted to their phones have
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their retirement plans, their 401ks, et cetera,
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invested in stocks and technology companies and funds that own technology companies
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where the primary way that they make money is getting teenagers' attention on social media.
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And so it's like a very weird loop that adults
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are like profiting off of the like technology
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speculation that where the the main like
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product of the technology is the attention of
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teenagers and then we turn around and blame the teenagers for
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being addicted to it and i think teenagers at some
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level know that and they think adults are hypocrites and so again
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the moral argument that either you
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know either temperate self-controlled adult and telling you unruly addicted
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teenager to stop you know impulsively and selfishly using your phone that also
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is like not a good argument and it's kind of disingenuous and a little hypocritical in my opinion,
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by the way my my mom uses her phone way more than my kids even use their iPads
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and so I don't think is just kids that are, you know, impulsively using Facebook and stuff.
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But the good arguments are like, all right, well, the companies are trying to
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exploit you and they don't care about you.
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And they're perfectly happy if you become depressed and then turn to your phone
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even more to make you undepressed because they make more money.
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And so don't let them control you. So that's a version of an argument that appeals
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to young people's desire for status and respect right now rather than listening
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to the adults kind of groan-splain the health consequences of their phones.
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You know, another one is the idea that.
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You, it, it's really fun to be with your friends in person and not just,
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it's fun for you, but it's fun for them.
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And there's good you can do for others in your community by being with them.
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I interviewed this one mom who talked about how when their, their kid went to
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a party in high school and ended up talking another kid out of suicide.
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And they're like, thank God that you're a social person who goes out and does
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things. You're not just on the screen because you saved somebody's life.
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Wow. And, you know, that kind of thing appeals to young people's value,
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their contribution, what they bring to the table.
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And, but the conventional argument is that they are neurobiologically incompetent. They're addicted.
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They can't, they're, they're mindless zombies. And I just think that's never going to work.
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I think you have to start from a position of power and competence and a desire to matter.
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And then young people are capable of tremendous self-control and
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if you don't believe me just look at every olympic athlete this
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summer right they're all like 16 year olds who
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are waking up at four o'clock practicing 10 hours a
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day an amazing self-control because being
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an olympic athlete is awesome socially but it's and if you tap into that desire
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to to be socially impressive then there are there they young people have all
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kinds of self-control that is latent and that we hardly ever take advantage of.
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I love that point you make in your book. I love your book. It is transformational.
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I know with my own kids, I have three teenagers.
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And just some of the things that you, the approaches that you have,
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I've tried with them where I'm saying it's the same message,
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but saying it a different way.
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And it's pretty incredible the difference that it makes. So I realize I've been
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doing some things right, but clearly something's wrong.
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And I know you talk about where a lot of parents, and this would apply to the practitioner too,
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where you're either the authoritarian or you give the example or the teacher
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where everything's fine.
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And even if you don't have a pencil in class, it's still great. No problem.
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Yeah, I think that, I mean, look, it's hard to talk to a young person properly.
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Whether you're a teacher parent position nurse
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coach whatever and it's
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hard because many of us have two modes we
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have we have child mode and adult mode and we know how to talk to a four-year-old
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that needs to put pants on in general and we know how to talk to a work colleague
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about attending a meeting or something like that but we don't really know how
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to talk to a 14-year-old that needs to do what we say, but they're also a budding person.
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So just in general, I have lots of
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compassion for anybody who has these challenges and wants to get better.
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Under that umbrella, though, because we kind of don't really have a model,
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then we tend to fall into...
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Two ends of one continuum and the continuum on one
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side has kind of rigor standards demanding
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this and then the other side is like niceness friendliness care concern whatever
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and the if you're over on the first side that's what i call the enforcer mindset
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and that's where you're like look there's there are important standards that
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need to be met for your safety for the safety of society,
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for your health and well-being, et cetera.
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And I'm concerned you're not going to make those choices. You have risky decision-making.
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And so I'm going to enforce them and try to coerce your behavior with threats,
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brides, just like strongly coercive approaches.
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And again, it starts from this position of the young person isn't really competent
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and therefore we need to take the ownership and responsibility and demand that they listen to us.
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And I get that. It makes sense from a certain perspective. The other side of
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that continuum is what I call the protector mindset.
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This also, I think, starts from a position of views of their incompetence.
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So this is the idea that young people have been through so much.
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They're so stressed out. They can't manage what they're doing.
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And therefore, they're not capable of very much. And so we shouldn't expect anything of them.
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In fact, it would be mean to expect a lot of young people who weren't that competent.
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And this one parenting coach I interviewed called this the nice and nasty dance.
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So you kind of sometimes move between the nice protector or the mean enforcer.
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And neither of those really work because on the enforcer side,
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the young person feels disrespected because they're told what to do.
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On the protector side, they also feel disrespected, but for a different reason,
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which is that the adult doesn't believe in them and doesn't expect much of them.
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And so neither of them really end up capturing young people's motivation in the way that we should.
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And that's a great point. And it's easy to do both. Or just for an example,
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the loop of like threatening to take something away, or we can't keep,
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you know, doing this unless you behave this way. And then it enrages her.
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And so I'm catching myself, like, I just got to the part in the book where you're
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talking about ask the transparency, and asking the question and explaining feelings.
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It's, I think it was a mom on a train or a bus and her kids are fighting and people can hear them.
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I don't know if we want to jump to that transparency part yet,
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or if you want to talk about something next before that.
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Yeah. I mean, I think that the, the alternative to the enforcer and the protector
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is what I call the mentor mindset.
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And this is the idea that you uphold very high standards, but you also are very
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supportive and that kind of gives you the best of both worlds.
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So if you're naturally an enforcer, then it's like, all right,
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well, you've got the standards, let's add the support.
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Or if you're naturally a protector, it's like, well, you've got lots of supports,
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so let's add the standards.
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And the combination of standards and support ends up coming across very respectfully
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to young people, and it ends up motivating them to do sometimes what we need
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them to do, and other times just what's in their long-term best interest.
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Now, a question is, when we're being a combination of demanding and supportive,
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do young people know what we're doing?
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Like, are they on board with it?
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And what I've found and what I write about in the book is that young people
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don't always know what we're doing, and therefore they don't always give us
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the benefit of the doubt.
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And so our high standards to a young person, even if it's coming from a mentor
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mindset, could come across like we're being an enforcer.
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Also, our lavish supports, if we're being a mentor, supports to help them meet
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the standard, could come across as being overprotective because you're doing
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so much if that's what young people are used to.
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And so in chapter five in the book, I write about this idea of being transparent
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about what you're doing and why.
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And the rule of thumb is that we need to, whether we like it or not,
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we need to explain our behaviors and the intentions underlying our behaviors
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about three or four times more often than we think we need to.
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And just to give a concrete example, I teach a large undergraduate class and
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I give lots of tough critical feedback and students normally wouldn't necessarily
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like that because they like to feel successful,
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especially on the first draft. They're like, okay, I turned this in, it looks good.
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So I gave a lecture on the first day of class about how I'm giving students
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feedback because I believe in them and think they can meet a high standard.
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A few weeks go by, and now they're doing the first major project.
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A lot of students forget I said that because it just doesn't feel good to get
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all this tough, critical feedback.
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And so I've learned that even I need to be clearer about what I'm doing and
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why than I thought I needed to.
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And I think that's, in general, pretty important because young people are used
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to either the enforcer or the protector, and they'll assume that's what we're
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doing unless we're clear that we're doing something different.
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So are you saying, so add that statement at the beginning, as a professor or
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as a pediatrician, I have high standards and I want to help you, something like that?
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All right, let's take the case of an example of when my wife worked at the nephrology
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clinic at Stanford in the pediatric nephrology.
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So she'd have to educate patients about their medication.
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So before they would do the transplant, sometimes they're on steroids.
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After the transplant, a lot of times, well, always, they have to take tacro
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or other anti-rejection meds.
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So the default is for doctors to talk to the parents in front of the kid and explain to the,
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parents how the kid can take the medicines and what the schedule is and what
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the consequences are for not doing it and then they kind of turn to the kid
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at the last second and they're like all right well this would be really bad
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if you didn't do it so if you didn't adhere with the with the procedures and
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so there's kind of a short education about the consequences of their actions.
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And on average that doesn't work so so
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about 50 of adolescent transplant recipients
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don't take their anti-rejection meds as prescribed similarly with
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outpatient cancer patients so they
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don't take their their chemo correctly
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and what the way
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doctors often respond to that or nurses is with
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harsher threats like we're gonna have to increase your dose we're gonna
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have to bring you in more we're gonna have to check you you know this
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or that so it's kind of like a threat of authoritarianism and
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i wish that would work you know i understand why people do it but again look
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at the numbers 50 percent organ rejection for adolescents and it's like zero
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percent under 10 so it's really bad and like the there's so many miracles in
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medicine that have to happen,
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to take an organ out of one person and put it in another and we've solved those
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as a society and as a culture it's amazing and we can't solve we can't solve
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the talking to teenagers problem,
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And so I think that if now suppose the doctor was just saying,
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all right, you need to be in charge of your meds. And then that was it.
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Well, it could come across like you're giving me all this responsibility.
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You're just you're not going to help me. Am I on my own? Like,
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what if I screw up? There's all kinds of things they could be thinking.
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The minority of cases where adolescents are empowered and educated in an effective
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way, they don't do that. They're very, the doctors are very transparent.
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So first of all, the pediatric heptology clinic at Stanford has a great way
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of only talking to the patients directly and not talking to the parents in front of the patient.
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And they have two or three education sessions directly doctor to patient or nurse to patient.
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Are the parents there? What's that? Is the parent in the room or not in the room at all?
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And some of the conversations with the parent is not in the room. Okay.
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It's like so the kid can't turn to because what
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they found is that the doctor right it's
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like it's like you're drinking from a fire hose and so much stuff you got to
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remember when you've when you've got all these meds and if
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the kid can turn over their shoulder and look at their parent and be like you're
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understanding this right then they don't process it and it's like they know
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that mentally it can offload the responsibility to the adult so the they've
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learned at the heptology clinic to not do that,
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to make it fully clear to the young person that they're in charge and that they have to be in charge.
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But they also have this way of talking to young people so that it's like an honor.
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Like you're honoring the person who gave you the gift of this organ every time you take your meds.
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And then there's something else I've seen. I heard this from a transplant recipient
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who was one of my undergraduate students.
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The minute she turned 10, her parents said, you are now in charge of your kidney transplant meds.
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And they're like, I wish you didn't have to be like this.
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I wish you could stay an irresponsible kid like other kids. And that would be fun for you.
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And it would be less for us to worry about. But unfortunately,
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your life is going to get in the way.
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Something's going to happen. And if you're not fully in charge of this medication,
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then it will fall through the cracks.
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And so they, she had to start filling her own refills.
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She had to, she would personally pack her backup case.
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So if she was at a sleepover and then she was missing a pill,
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she'd always had the backup, but she had personally packed it and decided where
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it went and on and on and on. So she was in charge very early.
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But the transparency part is they had a conversation. like I wish you didn't
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have to go through this and I wish you could just be a kid but that's not the
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case you have to be responsible and so we are your supporters,
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but you're fully in charge of your medication and she hasn't had one day she's
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missed it since I don't know since she was 10.
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Wow that makes so much sense when you say it and when I was reading it and so
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do you advise when pediatric practitioners When possible, ask the parent to
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step out of the room and have that private conversation.
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Well, I think that for me as a scientist, I'd want to run randomized trials with clinics and.
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With the best approaches. I don't think it's as simple as a magic trick of tell
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the parents to get out of there.
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You know, I think that, you know, when they scaled up the medical check,
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the surgical checklist, right, they thought, oh, if we only have the checklist,
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then we wanted medical errors.
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But if the doctor is still a jerk to everybody, even with the checklist,
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then they still don't speak up when they're doing it wrong.
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So the checklist doesn't work at scale because of that. And so I would say that
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what's more important is the tone of respect than any specific choice.
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I could totally imagine an awesome leadership exemplar educating an adolescent
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patient with parents in the room.
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I could imagine them saying, you're in charge. I want you to tell your parents
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what they need to do to support you.
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You could imagine a conversation where you're empowering the kid to be the boss
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and telling their parents what to do.
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Like, mom, I need you to do the refills on this day.
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Dad, I need you to remind me right before I go to here, whatever.
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So I wouldn't say the magic bullet is don't have the parents in there.
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The magic bullet is start from a presumption that young people can be competent
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under the right conditions if we communicate respectfully with them and we truly
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transfer responsibility to them in a way that is transparent that they need
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to take that responsibility.
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And you write about how that, that increase in testosterone would really,
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you know, by understanding that that is, is where they want that respect as
27:33
they're becoming adults, that that's really important and becomes more and more important.
27:38
Yeah. I mean, I think that every pediatrician knows there's,
27:41
there's adrenarche and gonadarche at different axes of pubertal maturation.
27:45
And even if a kid's at Tanner stage one, when you can't, there's no outward
27:50
signs of puberty, gonadarchy could have started. And that's true for a lot of kids.
27:55
And that's why the book is called 10 to 25, is that even at 10,
27:59
kids are like pre-10 to stage 1, their brains could already start being sensitized
28:04
to increases in testosterone and estradiol and related hormones.
28:08
And those hormones affect the brain's reward sensitivity regions,
28:15
like the nucleus accumbens.
28:17
When kids are younger they have an organizational effect
28:20
so that so those hormones change how different
28:24
abilities are localized in the brain but then they also have
28:27
activational effects so certain regions like
28:30
the nucleus accumbens are just more sensitized to
28:34
the prospect of a reward or the prospect the opposite that's something that
28:38
could harm you make you feel bad and and for a long time people thought it was
28:42
just any reward so they would study testosterone in gambling or getting money
28:47
or sex or food. Those are rewarding experiences.
28:50
But in the last decade or so, the neuroscientists have realized that looking
28:55
good socially in front of others is the best reward.
28:59
And that's really motivating for young people.
29:01
And so neuroscience tasks that in the past would have a kid do some gambling
29:08
task and they would win a dollar if they won the gamble had shown adolescents to be worse than adults.
29:15
And therefore they've concluded that teenagers are impulsive and lack self-control.
29:20
But when they changed the framing of the task to...
29:25
The people your age are going to see that you won all these gambles.
29:29
Or the more money you make in this gamble, the more you're going to give it
29:32
to friends that you care about.
29:34
And they're going to know that you gave them money. And they're going to think
29:36
you're awesome because you gave them money.
29:38
And the reason why you gave them money is because we're awesome at this game.
29:43
Then, and I'm summarizing basically all the studies work. But then what they
29:48
often saw is that adolescents perform better than adults, especially when the
29:53
rules changed in these gambling tasks, so like the rapidly changing social world.
29:59
And the way I interpret that is that we have often villainized testosterone
30:04
as the biological source of teenagers' puberty-induced frontal lobotomies,
30:12
where they just make dumb decisions all the time.
30:14
And I think we're now understanding it as a hormone that sensitizes the brain
30:19
to social learning, specifically social learning, but how to feel like a socially
30:24
successful person in your cultural group.
30:27
And then that's really important for survival.
30:29
So testosterone and risk-taking doesn't just make kids jump off a bridge or drink to excess.
30:35
It also gives them the courage to hold somebody's hand for the first time, which is terrifying.
30:40
You could be totally rejected and they could laugh at you for trying to hold their hand.
30:45
Or you could feel acceptance from someone who is attracted to you.
30:50
That's a big difference. There's a big delta between those two.
30:53
And we now understand that the social brain basically gives adolescents the
31:00
guts to take those risks.
31:01
And once they do, then they're on a path to getting more social acceptance or
31:05
figuring out how to do it more in the future. And that's really good for them.
31:10
And David, and how would you, sorry, it's really good for them. And what did you say?
31:15
And it's healthy for them to be socially successful. We know like loneliness
31:19
is this huge cause of despair and suicide and all these other things.
31:23
And so we shouldn't poo poo the adolescent desire for social success because
31:28
it is at the heart of their ability to learn how to not be lonely in our world
31:33
at a minimum, among other things.
31:35
How would you recommend talking to an adolescent about substance use?
31:43
Substances? Yes. Substance use, whether it be drinking.
31:48
That's right. That's really true. I think drinking is the easiest one.
31:53
I mean, in the book, I write about smoking and I talk about how the tobacco companies.
31:58
Are trying to trick. They were trying to manipulate teenagers to get them addicted.
32:03
And if you tell teenagers that. then they're more likely to rebel against the
32:06
tobacco companies and then start.
32:10
Basically not start smoking because doing so would give money to these companies
32:14
that were manipulating you that's the truth campaign and i like that idea because
32:19
it's it's basically making,
32:21
abstinence be the high status respectful thing rather than
32:25
it being what you do because you're listening to grown-ups drinking is a little
32:28
different and and certainly there are examples of kids in high school who have
32:34
like social moral principled reason for not drinking and often it's It's like
32:40
the more self-control it takes to do,
32:42
the more it feels awesome and impressive.
32:46
And so there are examples where kids say, actually, it's much harder to not
32:53
drink in high school. And that's what I'm going to do because it's more impressive.
32:57
And some kids have done that for sex as well.
33:01
But I don't think that works for everybody. Usually that kind of argument works
33:06
in a religious or moral context.
33:09
But another one is an example i write
33:11
about in the book so the this one
33:14
mom had a teenage son who came home
33:17
drunk and this is their oldest son and they use the conventional enforcer approach
33:22
where in the morning they just yelled at him shame blame etc they would say
33:26
things like what were you thinking which of course means you weren't thinking
33:30
so it's an insult and then what happened?
33:35
Well, he just got really good at hiding drinking is what happened.
33:38
And then it became a big problem when he went to college and then he dropped
33:42
out, moved home, whole failure to launch situation.
33:46
But they had a second son and they worked with a parenting coach that I write
33:50
about in the book. And they applied a lot of these mentor mindset tactics.
33:54
And by the time their second son came home after having too much to drink,
33:58
then she was like, I've been preparing for this for
34:01
years this is great she's like rubbing her limbs together excited and they
34:05
had a very long conversation the next day about the steps in his decision making
34:11
that led to him drinking too much and they were legitimately curious about what
34:15
his logic was so they didn't say what were you thinking implying he wasn't thinking
34:20
they were legitimately curious about,
34:23
what what his plan was and it turns out that in the past he would bring like two,
34:30
hard shelters in his pockets to a party because that's
34:33
all he could carry out without being detected but for
34:36
whatever reason at this party he brought it back back so he had like 24 and
34:40
so but once he's at the party with 24 then he just kept drinking and so so then
34:47
the mom was like all right well what do you think you should do and he was like
34:51
i think i should not ever bring a backpack And she's like, that's a great start.
34:55
But they also started the whole conversation from a positive place. They said, look.
35:02
A social person and that's good. And actually this was the kid who had previously
35:08
been at a party and talked to a kid out of suicide.
35:11
And so they didn't denigrate his desire to be at a party.
35:16
And obviously they know the drinking happening because you're at the party.
35:19
But the reason you're at the party is not necessarily to drink.
35:21
The reason you're at the party is to be a socially successful person.
35:24
So she couldn't start from a position of saying your desire to be at the party
35:30
is fundamentally wrong and bad and evil.
35:32
And then what happened is they're like, look, we're not going to formally ground
35:35
you, but before you go out any single time, you're going to tell us your entire plan for drinking.
35:41
And also by the way, your social life and whose car you're going to get into
35:44
and all these other things.
35:45
And you might wish that you're grounded, but that's not what we're going to do.
35:49
You're going to have to have long adult conversations with us. And
35:52
you're not going to like the fact that we're treating you like an adult because it's easier
35:55
to be an irresponsible kid but we are going to treat you like an
35:58
adult who has a plan before he goes out
36:01
and so they just we were
36:03
able to correct his like idiotic plans of how he was going to get home from a
36:06
party before he went out and also how he was going to not drink too much and
36:11
like which kid was going to talk to him and who who was he planning on trying
36:15
to impress and what happened is he became super mature about drinking way more
36:21
mature than his friends and when he went to college he had no problems.
36:25
And there was no parents around. And he knew how to think for himself because
36:30
his parents were legitimately curious about his thinking and asked him honest questions.
36:34
And I think about that a lot, where often as parents, we think the consequences
36:38
of your decisions are so drastic, like dying in a car crash, right?
36:42
Or, you know, getting lost on the way home because you're drunk and then we
36:46
never find you and you're dead.
36:48
And so we resort to very short-term strategies to solve the problem right away
36:54
and prevent catastrophe.
36:57
Like grounding or yelling, telling, blaming, shaming, or saying never go to a party or never drink.
37:02
And then it's like, we've wasted a crisis.
37:06
A crisis is a chance for them to learn that their thinking wasn't adequate.
37:12
But if you never revisit their thinking, you've wasted that opportunity.
37:18
And so Lorena Seidel, the parenting coach that I interviewed,
37:21
she's like, never waste a crisis. That is a chance for your kid to learn how
37:24
to be a more mature adult.
37:25
And in every crisis, treat them like an adult, but expect maturity from them.
37:30
And they might not want that. They may want to be treated like a kid because it's easier for them.
37:35
Because if all you do is ground them, they don't have to think.
37:37
It's easier than that think.
37:39
But you just have to demand that they think about their actions and their behavior
37:44
and how it fits into the kind of person they want to be and the future that
37:47
they want to have and make them do that a lot.
37:49
And then eventually they will know how to do that. But I don't know why we think
37:53
they're going to magically do that the second they turn 18 if they've never
37:57
had any practice interrogating their plans or behaviors.
38:01
And grounding can't obviously last forever. That would be very wrong. And the...
38:08
Adolescent will learn how to not get caught next time basically
38:11
right yeah that what they're learning is
38:14
that you should never have an honest interrogation
38:18
of your actions or your feelings you should just shove them down by by going
38:22
to your room and you should get better at hiding whatever it is that's going
38:26
to get you in trouble in the future that's what they learn and they will find
38:29
a way to do that right yeah and the young people are super creative i mean everyone complains about,
38:35
if a Gen Z doesn't want to work, they're not motivated.
38:38
It's like, well, challenge them to sneak out of the house. And I bet you will
38:42
find out that they're pretty motivated.
38:43
Like, they'll, like, who do I need to lie to? Like, where's the maps of the
38:47
sewers? Like, how am I sneaking out of this place?
38:50
You know, like Andy Dufresne and Spionnick Redemption, they sneak out.
38:54
Like, that's not a brain that's incapable of being motivated.
38:56
That's a brain that is motivated by the kinds of things that are related to their social success.
39:01
As parents and practitioners, How much should we put up with when it comes to lying? Like, is that?
39:10
Yeah, I mean, I think that the put up with is an interesting way to put it.
39:15
I wouldn't put it that way.
39:17
Because when people say, what should I put up with?
39:21
What we mean is, how offended am I going to be when you treat me in a certain way?
39:29
And and so our overreactions and the the yelling and the threats and blowing up are are mainly about,
39:38
what the young person's behavior says about us like i'm
39:41
the kind of parent who has defiant kids and that's
39:44
embarrassing to be that kind of parent right when you
39:47
say let's go home the kid says no in front of
39:49
all the other parents everyone the shame and
39:52
humiliation for the parent kicks in because we're like i'm the kind of parent
39:55
that can't even control my own kids and as kids have talk
39:58
back to them right and so when when
40:01
you frame it that way it's actually not the
40:04
idea of putting up with is not really about the
40:07
kids well-being or their future it's about our reputation in the eyes of the
40:12
imagined audience of other parents so so that's my first reaction to the questions
40:18
i kind of challenged the phrasing but the but the but the other questions well
40:23
okay lying should we let it go.
40:26
The answer is no. I think if you're a mentor mindset, it's like,
40:29
no, I expect honesty from you.
40:31
Because I'm treating you like a serious person because I think you can be a serious person.
40:35
And serious people don't lie to themselves or others.
40:40
But I don't think it's helpful to get super offended that they lie because there's a reason for it.
40:46
The reason is they want to get what they want to get, but the reality of the
40:49
situation didn't work out for them.
40:52
So what we need to find out is, okay, well, what is the thing you really wanted?
40:58
And why did you think this was the way to get it?
41:01
And then you can have a conversation about the problem-solving strategies that
41:05
they needed to have to get what they needed without lying or deceiving or cheating
41:10
or stealing or whatever it was that they didn't.
41:13
That's a great, that's a great point. But is lying, I mean, there's this thought
41:19
that as a teenager, that lying comes along with being a teenager.
41:23
Are we totally wrong there? Am I totally wrong when I say that?
41:28
I don't think it's like a natural consequence of being a teenager,
41:33
I think it's, I mean, again, like what, why do people lie?
41:36
They lie because they want something and the rules of the situation are that
41:42
they can't have it in some way or they wanted something in the past and they
41:47
couldn't have it. And then they took it. And then later they were asked about it.
41:50
So lying is the
41:53
side effect of poor strategies
41:57
to get what they want or to feel the way they want to feel and so
42:02
the underlying problem is that they need a better
42:04
problem solving strategy now the
42:08
the there's also the moral ethical part
42:10
but it's hard to appeal to that for everything and then also adults lie all
42:16
the time just like look at any parent of a two year old the kid's like i want
42:21
that toy and the parent's like oh it's close or we lost it right It's like the
42:25
main way parents deal with crying children is lying to them,
42:30
hoping that they forgot about the toy or the food or whatever.
42:35
And if a 13-year-old sees that, they're like, wait a second,
42:39
lying is always morally and ethically wrong?
42:41
But how about every single parenting decision you just made? It also did to me as a kid.
42:47
And so, yes, I do think we should appeal to morals and ethics too.
42:51
But it's hard to have that be the only thing when lying is often a side effect
42:57
of a poor strategy to get what they want.
43:00
And we need to set the example of being truthful with them about our feelings
43:05
and by asking more questions.
43:08
Music.
43:09
Sounds like. Yeah. Yeah.
43:15
Dr. David Yeager with UT Austin and the book 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating
43:21
Young People, a groundbreaking approach of leading the next generation and making.
43:25
Music.