Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / High-Achieving Kids: The culture of never enough

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High-Achieving Kids: The culture of never enough · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:00
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm Emily Astro.
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Speaker 2: Thank you.
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Speaker 3: You're welcome, mom.
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Speaker 1: I'm a professor of economics at Brown University. I'm the
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Speaker 1: author of Expecting Better and several other books about data
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Speaker 1: driven parenting. I write the newsletter Parent Data, and this
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Speaker 1: is parent Data the podcast. If you've lifted on this
0:30
Speaker 1: feed before, you've been listening to what I would call
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Speaker 1: parent Data one point oh. Mostly this was me reading
0:37
Speaker 1: my newsletter out loud, and we also included some interviews
0:40
Speaker 1: with experts on a variety of parenting topics.
0:43
Speaker 2: It was fun, but it was also on our back burner.
0:47
Speaker 1: But over time, I've realized that audio is an incredible
0:51
Speaker 1: opportunity to have deeper conversations with other.
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Speaker 2: Experts, with people who like me, love.
0:58
Speaker 1: Data, but are coming at it from a little bit
1:01
Speaker 1: of a different angle. And so this is Parent Data
1:06
Speaker 1: two point zero. We're going to publish it more regularly.
1:09
Speaker 1: It'll be in your feed every two weeks, and I'm
1:13
Speaker 1: going to focus more on these interviews with an even
1:15
Speaker 1: wider range of experts who, like me, love data and
1:19
Speaker 1: like you, love to understand what data means for you
1:23
Speaker 1: and for your kids. But in many cases, these experts
1:26
Speaker 1: are going to bring their own perspective. They're scientists, there
1:28
Speaker 1: are counselors, they're experts in self care, and we'll talk
1:32
Speaker 1: together about how we combine data with these other parts
1:36
Speaker 1: of our life to make the best decisions for our family.
1:39
Speaker 1: I'm also hoping in this podcast to hear more from you.
1:42
Speaker 1: We'll hear from you through your stories, through your questions,
1:46
Speaker 1: and we'll try to bring it together to get into
1:49
Speaker 1: the really hard and complicated parts of parenting. The questions
1:54
Speaker 1: that we have as parents are endless, and my goal.
1:58
Speaker 1: The goal in this podcast is not to answer those questions.
2:01
Speaker 1: The reality is most of them are totally unanswerable, but
2:05
Speaker 1: to help you navigate through them to find answers that
2:08
Speaker 1: work best for you and your family.
2:12
Speaker 2: I'm glad you're here listening.
2:14
Speaker 1: I have a lot of stories to share. My guests
2:16
Speaker 1: have a lot of stories to share. I hope that
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Speaker 1: you'll be willing to share your stories too. So, without
2:22
Speaker 1: further ado, here's our first episode. When I was in
2:35
Speaker 1: high school, everyone told me that junior spring was the
2:38
Speaker 1: most important spring to do everything right to.
2:41
Speaker 2: Get into college.
2:43
Speaker 1: At the time, I was running on the track team
2:45
Speaker 1: and I developed these really terrible shin splints, but I
2:48
Speaker 1: didn't want to take a break because junior spring is
2:51
Speaker 1: the most important spring. So instead I took six advil
2:54
Speaker 1: before every meet so I could get through it.
2:57
Speaker 2: I stayed up.
2:58
Speaker 1: All night pretty I would often make a pot of
3:02
Speaker 1: coffee at ten pm and then drink the whole thing
3:05
Speaker 1: before the morning. When I look back on this as
3:10
Speaker 1: an adult, I find it kind of horrifying. I don't
3:15
Speaker 1: blame my parents, not even for a second. This was
3:17
Speaker 1: one hundred percent self driven. But at the same time,
3:21
Speaker 1: it isn't the experience that I want for my own kids.
3:25
Speaker 1: But when I look around, the pressures that drive this
3:30
Speaker 1: kind of behavior seem almost infinitely worse now than they
3:34
Speaker 1: did twenty six years ago when I was behaving like this.
3:38
Speaker 1: And yet there is this enormous challenge thinking about pulling
3:42
Speaker 1: out of this, especially in particular circles.
3:45
Speaker 2: It almost feels.
3:45
Speaker 1: Like there can be no other way to raise a
3:49
Speaker 1: child to be a high schooler other than to lean
3:53
Speaker 1: in in these ways that really can seem very unhealthy.
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Speaker 1: And so while I simultaneously thinking I don't want this
4:01
Speaker 1: for my child, I am also thinking, well, how could.
4:04
Speaker 2: I possibly avoid it?
4:09
Speaker 1: Thinking through all of this is part of why I
4:11
Speaker 1: was incredibly happy to encounter this book, Never Enough, and
4:15
Speaker 1: more or Less. As soon as I read it, I
4:16
Speaker 1: knew that Jennifer Wallace is somebody that I had to
4:19
Speaker 1: talk to, and I'm going to talk to her today
4:21
Speaker 1: about this never Enough culture, which grapples with these questions
4:26
Speaker 1: of how we arrived at where we are, about how
4:28
Speaker 1: we can support our kids, about what are some of
4:30
Speaker 1: the dangers, and how we can think about pushing back
4:34
Speaker 1: or helping our kids to push back. One note before
4:38
Speaker 1: we get started, I anticipate some reaction here around whether
4:42
Speaker 1: it's really appropriate to focus on what is, in the
4:45
Speaker 1: end a fairly privileged set of problems when there are
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Speaker 1: kids and parents who struggle so much with so many bigger,
4:52
Speaker 1: larger issues.
4:53
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask.
4:54
Speaker 1: Jennifer about this during our interview, and I'm going to
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Speaker 1: leave it to her to answer, because I thought what
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Speaker 1: she said was thoughtful and instructive. After the break, Jennifer Wallace, So,
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Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to welcome Jenny Wallace to talk about Never Enough.
5:14
Speaker 2: Jenny, thank you for joining me.
5:16
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks so much for having me.
5:18
Speaker 1: So when your publisher sent me this book, I wrote
5:20
Speaker 1: back to them this book. I looked up the quote
5:24
Speaker 1: this book is really freaking me out, but it's so good.
5:27
Speaker 1: They didn't accept that as a blurb. But that's really
5:30
Speaker 1: how I feel. This book is incredibly important, but also
5:34
Speaker 1: it's going to terrify a lot of parents. And so
5:36
Speaker 1: when we talk today, I want to dig into that.
5:38
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the problems, and I also
5:40
Speaker 1: want to talk about solutions. But to set the stage,
5:43
Speaker 1: I actually want to read the first paragraph of the book.
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Speaker 1: In one of my early interviews for this book, I
5:50
Speaker 1: met Molly, a high school junior living in Washington State.
5:53
Speaker 1: She began by telling me that many of her classmates
5:55
Speaker 1: on the advanced placement track either went to bed or
5:57
Speaker 1: woke up at three am to cram in all their
5:59
Speaker 1: sty Mollie confessed sheepishly, that she wasn't a night person
6:03
Speaker 1: and told me she went to bed around midnight most
6:06
Speaker 1: nights and sometimes woke up early around five to study
6:08
Speaker 1: before tests or to put the finishing taches on a paper.
6:11
Speaker 1: When I asked her how, as a varsity athlete she
6:14
Speaker 1: maintained her stamina on only five hours of sleep, Molly
6:17
Speaker 1: tightened her high ponytail and answered me without any irony
6:21
Speaker 1: those days I run the laps in practice with my
6:23
Speaker 1: eyes closed. You say that this stuck with you. I
6:28
Speaker 1: can see why, and you started the book with it.
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Speaker 1: Why are you starting here? What is it that makes
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Speaker 1: this the right entry into the problems you're talking about?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, Mollie is somebody that I luckily got to interview
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Speaker 4: over the course of a few years, and she thought
6:46
Speaker 4: of herself as like sort of an average high achiever.
6:50
Speaker 4: But I think you could see in the way that
6:52
Speaker 4: I wrote that paragraph that she had no idea the
6:57
Speaker 4: stress because the pond she was swimming in was so
7:00
Speaker 4: hyper competitive and kids were sort of having this stress
7:06
Speaker 4: Olympics who could have clock in the least amount of stress.
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Speaker 4: That she didn't even understand the pond that she was
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Speaker 4: swimming in and what she was doing to her body
7:15
Speaker 4: and what was being asked of her. She just thought
7:18
Speaker 4: this was what childhood was.
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Speaker 2: This is a very broad question. But why do you
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Speaker 2: think that is?
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Speaker 1: I mean, what is it that is going on for Molly,
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Speaker 1: for kids in this space that is driving this?
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Speaker 4: Yes, so I wanted to know that too. I have
7:34
Speaker 4: three teenagers, and I wanted to understand why my kid's
7:39
Speaker 4: childhood was so different from my own. And you know,
7:43
Speaker 4: there are several factors, but the one that really resonated
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Speaker 4: most with me, and as an economist, I think you
7:50
Speaker 4: might have more to add to this, but it is
7:53
Speaker 4: the macro economic forces that modern parents today find ourselves
7:59
Speaker 4: in and that we're not even aware of these forces
8:02
Speaker 4: that are in our environment that we are absorbing. And
8:06
Speaker 4: you know, when I thought about my own childhood in
8:07
Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies, life was generally more affordable. You know,
8:12
Speaker 4: you could buy a home, healthcare was more affordable, higher
8:15
Speaker 4: education was more affordable, food was more affordable. Parents could
8:20
Speaker 4: be a little bit more relaxed and less intense because
8:24
Speaker 4: they believed, as in generations past, that their children would
8:28
Speaker 4: probably be able to replicate their childhoods, if not do
8:31
Speaker 4: even better, And so there was slack in the system.
8:34
Speaker 1: But over the.
8:35
Speaker 4: Last several years we have ushered an extreme inequality, the
8:39
Speaker 4: crush of the middle class, globalization. It is produced this
8:44
Speaker 4: hyper competitive environment that parents don't necessarily even understand that
8:50
Speaker 4: they are absorbing these stressors and they are becoming, in
8:55
Speaker 4: the words of researcher Tom Current social conduits, passing these
9:01
Speaker 4: this this fearful environment onto our kids in the way
9:05
Speaker 4: that we parent. And this is not to blame parents,
9:08
Speaker 4: because I am right there with you in the trenches.
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Speaker 4: You know, these are these are pressures and forces that
9:15
Speaker 4: are bigger than anyone family and anyone school and anyone community,
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Speaker 4: and I think we need to talk about them. We
9:21
Speaker 4: need to stop personalizing our parenting and start putting it
9:25
Speaker 4: into a larger context.
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Speaker 1: So it's interesting that you talk about the economy there,
9:29
Speaker 1: because I think David Leonhardt has a new book coming
9:32
Speaker 1: out in the in the fall, and which one of
9:34
Speaker 1: the things he talks about is the idea that that
9:39
Speaker 1: it sort of used to be that most people did
9:41
Speaker 1: better than their parents, or that that sort of having
9:43
Speaker 1: your kids do better than you in an income that
9:46
Speaker 1: was the goal, and that that was an achievable goal,
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Speaker 1: and that that has become less true over time, and
9:54
Speaker 1: the expectation that that will continue to be true is
9:57
Speaker 1: perhaps part of part of this.
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Speaker 2: I mean, there's another thing going on.
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Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think about this, which is that
10:03
Speaker 1: as inequality has grown, you particularly in the spaces that
10:07
Speaker 1: you're talking about, and I want to come back to
10:10
Speaker 1: why we are talking about these spaces, but particularly in
10:12
Speaker 1: the sort of upper income spaces. The inequality between you know,
10:17
Speaker 1: very very high income and kind of really also very
10:20
Speaker 1: high but not quite as high income has grown and
10:23
Speaker 1: seems very big. And I think part of this feels
10:26
Speaker 1: like in order to have my kid achieve, they actually
10:30
Speaker 1: need to. The rewards to being Jeff Bezos are so
10:34
Speaker 1: large that I should be able to do whatever to
10:37
Speaker 1: get my kid to be Jeff Bezos because I also
10:39
Speaker 1: need them to you know, go to the moon and
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Speaker 1: rocket whatever is the pinnacle of achievement.
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Speaker 2: So I wonder how much of that is going on.
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Speaker 4: I think that is definitely going on. But I think
10:49
Speaker 4: something that is even more pervasive, and I found it
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Speaker 4: in my own home, is something I call the encore effect,
10:59
Speaker 4: which is is wanting to at least replicate your childhood.
11:04
Speaker 4: Right as you said, that was the assumption that you,
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Speaker 4: you know, the American dream, was doing better than your parents.
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Speaker 4: And now that's no longer you know, a sure thing,
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Speaker 4: and kids are feeling this pressure. I mean, I'll tell
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Speaker 4: you in my own home last summer, my daughter was
11:24
Speaker 4: working at a yogurt frozen yogurt shop and working a
11:27
Speaker 4: lot of hours and saving a lot of money, and
11:29
Speaker 4: I said, what are you saving for and she said
11:32
Speaker 4: for food when I'm in my twenties. And I was like,
11:35
Speaker 4: what do you mean saving for food? And she said,
11:38
Speaker 4: I've been reading about inflation, and I know that milk
11:42
Speaker 4: is really expensive and eggs are really expensive, and with
11:44
Speaker 4: climate change it can only get worse, so I need
11:47
Speaker 4: to save for food. So we're not even talking about
11:52
Speaker 4: the pressure on our kids to be the next Jeff Bezos,
11:55
Speaker 4: which is surely a goal for many kids in this
11:59
Speaker 4: high achieving income bracket. But our kids are also getting
12:02
Speaker 4: the messages that the future is really unknown and you
12:05
Speaker 4: better start saving your ice cream shop money. Now, I mean,
12:09
Speaker 4: that was such a shocking conversation I had.
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Speaker 2: That is a shocking conversation.
12:15
Speaker 1: I'm lucky my kid is only eight and he still
12:17
Speaker 1: thinks one thousand dollars by a house. So I'm working
12:20
Speaker 1: on keeping that going. But actually, this is a good
12:24
Speaker 1: place to bring up what I think is for some
12:26
Speaker 1: people going to be kind of the elephant in the
12:27
Speaker 1: room and the reaction to the book, which is that
12:30
Speaker 1: a lot of what you are talking about really is
12:32
Speaker 1: kind of first world problems, and it is probably the
12:36
Speaker 1: case that you know your kids, and that kids and
12:39
Speaker 1: your soldiers that are not going to have to worry
12:40
Speaker 1: about having enough money for food, that hasn't just the
12:43
Speaker 1: reality of kind of.
12:45
Speaker 2: Where we are.
12:46
Speaker 1: And of course most of the subjects in your book
12:48
Speaker 1: are fairly well off, and there are a lot of
12:51
Speaker 1: kids who have a lot of problems that go far
12:53
Speaker 1: beyond this that I think we would say, in some
12:55
Speaker 1: aggregate sense maybe are worse off. Maybe you wouldn't say that,
12:58
Speaker 1: but I think some people would say are. So what
13:01
Speaker 1: do you say there? Why is this a group we
13:03
Speaker 1: should be thinking about?
13:04
Speaker 3: Yes?
13:04
Speaker 4: I actually asked that exact question with Sonya Luthar, one
13:08
Speaker 4: of the leading researchers Unresilient. She has recently passed away,
13:12
Speaker 4: But I said to her, you know, kind of in
13:14
Speaker 4: a whisper, like, why should we care about these kids?
13:17
Speaker 4: Like their parents can afford therapy, they have every opportunity.
13:22
Speaker 4: Why are we giving Why should I be giving ink
13:25
Speaker 4: and time to these kids? And she snapped at me,
13:28
Speaker 4: and she said, a child in pain is a child
13:31
Speaker 4: in pain, and neither one chooses their circumstances. So she said,
13:37
Speaker 4: we are not putting pain on a scale here. It's
13:39
Speaker 4: not a zero sum game. And I'll tell you I
13:43
Speaker 4: am We'll get into this. I'm sure more in our conversation,
13:45
Speaker 4: but I saw real pain in my travels around the country,
13:50
Speaker 4: talking with families who had lost loved ones to suicide,
13:54
Speaker 4: children who were hospitalized for the under you know, the
13:57
Speaker 4: successive pressure to achieve the pain was real. And yes,
14:02
Speaker 4: these parents, many of them, can afford to treat their children.
14:06
Speaker 4: But we need to talk about this. We need to
14:08
Speaker 4: raise an awareness that this is a real thing, and
14:11
Speaker 4: no one is asking to take resources away from children
14:16
Speaker 4: who are living in poverty or with incarcerated parents, or
14:19
Speaker 4: recent whatever the other set of at risk group of
14:23
Speaker 4: children are. No one is asking to take any resources
14:26
Speaker 4: or empathy away from them. It's just sort of broadening
14:30
Speaker 4: the lens and showing that the impact of socioeconomic status
14:37
Speaker 4: is both at both ends of the economic spectrum. I
14:40
Speaker 4: guess that's what I'm trying to say.
14:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
14:45
Speaker 1: If you had to put blame at the feet of
14:49
Speaker 1: a part of society, and we talked about the macroeconomy,
14:52
Speaker 1: let's not put blame at the foot of the macroeconomy.
14:54
Speaker 1: Now you had to say, you know, parents, schools, extracurriculars,
15:00
Speaker 1: who are we putting.
15:01
Speaker 4: Oh, there's enough flame to go around. Okay, there's You know,
15:06
Speaker 4: the adults in our children's lives are also under an
15:09
Speaker 4: excessive pressure to achieve, right. So you know, we are
15:14
Speaker 4: in a time when, for example, superintendents of public schools
15:20
Speaker 4: in states realize that with their standardized test scores of
15:24
Speaker 4: their school, the taxes and the real estate values go
15:28
Speaker 4: up and down depending on where they rank in their
15:30
Speaker 4: state school. If you're the head of a school, of
15:32
Speaker 4: an independent school, you have to answer to your alumni.
15:36
Speaker 4: I have one quote from a head of school who said,
15:41
Speaker 4: you know, we know what causes mental health struggles. But
15:46
Speaker 4: if we were to take all of the rigor out
15:49
Speaker 4: of our curriculum and maybe make something a little bit
15:51
Speaker 4: more attainable for our students, we'd become a vanilla school.
15:54
Speaker 4: And who wants to send their kids to a Vanella school?
15:57
Speaker 4: So these the adults are a strangely perversely incentivized to
16:03
Speaker 4: keep this achievement culture going. You know, coaches, for example,
16:08
Speaker 4: they need a twelve month a year salary. This was
16:12
Speaker 4: This is different from when I was growing up, when
16:14
Speaker 4: you know, we would have the rec team and the
16:17
Speaker 4: town was the one running it, and it was seasonal
16:20
Speaker 4: and you know it was fine. Now these coaches, you know,
16:23
Speaker 4: need a year long salary. So but the real blame,
16:28
Speaker 4: if if I could say, real, real blame, Okay, so
16:32
Speaker 4: I've the real blame. According to a lot of the
16:35
Speaker 4: researchers and psychologists I spoke to, goes to things like
16:39
Speaker 4: the US News and World Report.
16:42
Speaker 2: So one, oh, that's a good one.
16:44
Speaker 4: That's good, right, isn't that a good So one of
16:47
Speaker 4: the one of the researchers, well, I'll have name nameless
16:51
Speaker 4: said to me, if there's one culprit, it's that D. A. M.
16:55
Speaker 4: And US News and World Report where it is? And
16:59
Speaker 4: I have a whole whole sort of section in the
17:01
Speaker 4: book on the crazy system they use to rank schools
17:05
Speaker 4: and how they manipulate their formulas every year. And critics
17:12
Speaker 4: say it's because you can't have the same top schools
17:14
Speaker 4: or nobody will buy the magazine. So you know, I
17:19
Speaker 4: is there one. There's not one. There's not one factor
17:22
Speaker 4: to blame. I mean universities. I was, I was speaking
17:25
Speaker 4: with somebody about this the other day. You know, universities
17:27
Speaker 4: with these huge swollen endowments, why aren't they expanding their class?
17:32
Speaker 4: Why are we not you know, adding more people. Daniel Markovitz.
17:37
Speaker 4: Daniel Markovitz, who's a Yale Law school professors, you know,
17:41
Speaker 4: really holds higher ed to task, and he says, we
17:45
Speaker 4: should be taking away their charitable status, their nonprofit status,
17:49
Speaker 4: if they are not actually functioning like nonprofits, if they
17:53
Speaker 4: are not actually taking a third of the students from
17:56
Speaker 4: the bottom socioeconomic groups and bringing them up, if they
18:01
Speaker 4: are not expanding. You know, they have these fifty billion
18:04
Speaker 4: dollar damons. How are they not expanding their class? So anyway,
18:08
Speaker 4: there's a lot of blame to go around.
18:10
Speaker 1: This is where I got to in the book and
18:12
Speaker 1: wrote the first part of my imaginary blurb, which is
18:15
Speaker 1: this book is really freaking me out. But actually there's
18:18
Speaker 1: a second section of the book which is about, you know,
18:22
Speaker 1: what is the way we can be with our kids?
18:23
Speaker 2: And you talked about culprits, but at the.
18:26
Speaker 1: End of the day, as parents, what we want to
18:29
Speaker 1: know is what can I do. I can't control New
18:31
Speaker 1: yors US news report. I can't control, you know, what
18:34
Speaker 1: my university does. I can't control my kids' school does
18:37
Speaker 1: to most extent. But I can't control what happens in
18:40
Speaker 1: my house and how I show up for my kids.
18:42
Speaker 1: And you talk a lot about this idea of mattering,
18:45
Speaker 1: and I just love to hear you talk about what
18:48
Speaker 1: that is and how some sense of how are you
18:50
Speaker 1: implementing it?
18:51
Speaker 4: Yes, So in the book, I went in search of
18:56
Speaker 4: who were the kids who were doing well despite the
18:59
Speaker 4: pressures in their entire What did their parents focus on
19:02
Speaker 4: at home? What was home life like for them, what
19:04
Speaker 4: was school like? What were their relationships like with their peers?
19:07
Speaker 4: And I came across about fifteen common threads that these
19:11
Speaker 4: healthy achievers had in common. And as I was looking
19:15
Speaker 4: for a framework to present my findings to parents, I
19:18
Speaker 4: came across mattering. Mattering was first conceptualized in the nineteen
19:23
Speaker 4: eighties by Mars Rosenberg, who also conceptualized self esteem, and
19:28
Speaker 4: what he found in the eighties was that kids who
19:30
Speaker 4: enjoyed a healthy level of self esteem felt like they
19:33
Speaker 4: mattered to their parents, that they were important and significant.
19:37
Speaker 4: And the research on mattering has picked up, particularly in
19:41
Speaker 4: the last half dozen years, and the researchers who study
19:46
Speaker 4: the definition that resonated most with me, and what I
19:49
Speaker 4: saw in the healthy achievers that I met was that
19:52
Speaker 4: they had this high level of mattering, meaning that they
19:55
Speaker 4: felt valued by their families, by their friends, by their
19:59
Speaker 4: ca communities, for who they were at their core, and importantly,
20:05
Speaker 4: they were depended on to add meaningful value back to
20:09
Speaker 4: their families, to their schools, to their communities. So the
20:13
Speaker 4: kids who were doing the worst seemed to feel like
20:16
Speaker 4: their mattering was contingent on their performance or The other
20:21
Speaker 4: group that seemed to also be struggling were kids who
20:24
Speaker 4: felt like that they were valued, but were so self
20:28
Speaker 4: focused on their own resumes that they were never asked
20:31
Speaker 4: to give back in any meaningful way to anyone other
20:34
Speaker 4: than themselves. And what that did was it for them?
20:37
Speaker 4: It lacked social proof that they mattered. So they might
20:41
Speaker 4: have gotten the words of mattering, but they didn't see
20:44
Speaker 4: their impact. And so for people to really enjoy this
20:47
Speaker 4: high level of mattering, they need to both feel valued
20:51
Speaker 4: and be adding value, and that acts as like a
20:53
Speaker 4: protective shield. Doesn't mean that the healthy achievers were in
20:58
Speaker 4: stressed sometimes and anxious and didn't have failures, but they
21:02
Speaker 4: had almost like a buoy that raised them up so
21:06
Speaker 4: that they could bounce back faster because their failures were
21:10
Speaker 4: not an indictment of who they were.
21:14
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. I want to talk more about some
21:16
Speaker 1: of the specifics.
21:17
Speaker 2: But the.
21:19
Speaker 1: Literature that I connected this with is literature on bullying.
21:23
Speaker 1: So when you look at bullying, some of the most
21:27
Speaker 1: interesting research on that is about resiliency and.
21:31
Speaker 2: About taking studies where they take a.
21:33
Speaker 1: Bunch of kids who are all being bullied and they
21:36
Speaker 1: ask like, who does okay?
21:39
Speaker 2: Rather than how can we prevent bullying? They just say, everyone,
21:41
Speaker 2: all these kids are getting bullied.
21:42
Speaker 1: What is it that makes you not suffer from that?
21:45
Speaker 1: That makes you not wilt under that or have other
21:49
Speaker 1: sort of follow on problems. Nobody likes to be bullied,
21:52
Speaker 1: But the thing that they find is it is the
21:56
Speaker 1: sort of centrality of the home environment and having the
21:59
Speaker 1: feeling of having a sibling or even one close friend
22:03
Speaker 1: somebody who is kind of centering you there where you
22:06
Speaker 1: feel like this is you know, this is where I fit,
22:08
Speaker 1: This is where I belong. And I think mattering would
22:10
Speaker 1: be an interesting word. They're like, this is a person
22:12
Speaker 1: to whom I matter, and that's what I hang on to.
22:15
Speaker 1: That's the buoy when people are yelling at me, or
22:18
Speaker 1: in this case, that's the kind of booy when I
22:20
Speaker 1: feel like this test isn't going well, or you know,
22:24
Speaker 1: I'm not achieving to the level like when something goes wrong.
22:27
Speaker 4: I want to talk about the bulliefs because what I
22:31
Speaker 4: have found fascinating in the in the people that I've
22:34
Speaker 4: spoken to have been studying mattering, is that they argue
22:39
Speaker 4: that after food and shelter, it is the need to
22:42
Speaker 4: matter that drives much of human behavior, for better and
22:46
Speaker 4: for worse. So when you feel like you matter, you
22:49
Speaker 4: show up in the world in positive ways. You achieve,
22:52
Speaker 4: you're kind, you're a good citizen, you're giving back, you're generous.
22:56
Speaker 4: When you don't feel like you matter, you you know,
23:00
Speaker 4: bullying is an example. You don't think I matter, I'll
23:04
Speaker 4: show you I matter. School shooters you don't think I matter.
23:08
Speaker 4: I'll show you I matter. So you know, it's both
23:11
Speaker 4: a protective factor, but it's also a risk factor if
23:15
Speaker 4: people don't feel like they matter. You know, domestic terrorism,
23:19
Speaker 4: you can tie back a lot, you could fall inward
23:23
Speaker 4: anxiously depressed. I mean, there's a reason that the National
23:27
Speaker 4: Suicide Hotline uses the hashtag you Matter in their preventive work.
23:33
Speaker 4: So I really see mattering as both prevention but also
23:38
Speaker 4: potentially intervention. And there are states and communities that are
23:43
Speaker 4: that are using it that way.
23:45
Speaker 2: And so as a parent, what does this mean?
23:48
Speaker 1: I mean, does it like just waking my get up
23:51
Speaker 1: in the morning and saying you matter to me?
23:52
Speaker 2: Presumably that's not sufficient. So what does this actually mean
23:56
Speaker 2: in practice?
23:57
Speaker 4: Well, so, how I've adopted it in my own home
24:00
Speaker 4: over the four years of researching this is that I
24:03
Speaker 4: now problem solve using mattering. I now sort of lead
24:06
Speaker 4: my parenting in mattering if I know that that's how
24:09
Speaker 4: my child is going to be the most resilient and
24:12
Speaker 4: the most likely to have this sort of positive fuel
24:15
Speaker 4: to thrive, to back to the world to achieve. So
24:18
Speaker 4: I no longer solve for my kids happiness that I
24:21
Speaker 4: don't even that's not even on my top five priorities
24:24
Speaker 4: for my kids anymore. Their priority is to matter. And
24:26
Speaker 4: here's how I do it. Mattering occurs in life's small moments.
24:31
Speaker 4: It is greeting them when they walk in the door
24:34
Speaker 4: the way one psychologists described it, the way a family
24:37
Speaker 4: puppy would just like unabashed joy, loving that kid for
24:44
Speaker 4: who they are. It is getting a PhD in them
24:47
Speaker 4: and seeing their strengths and pointing it out to them,
24:51
Speaker 4: really having them feel seen and heard and understood for
24:55
Speaker 4: who they are at their core, but then it's also
24:58
Speaker 4: depending on them to add value back to the family.
25:02
Speaker 4: And I don't even use the word chores anymore because
25:04
Speaker 4: I have tried. I have three teenagers now, and oh
25:06
Speaker 4: my gosh, I've written about chores and the importance of chores,
25:08
Speaker 4: and we've tried to do it in our house. But
25:10
Speaker 4: I've reframed it now where we don't even bring up
25:13
Speaker 4: the word chore. We talk about here are the family matters.
25:17
Speaker 4: Here's what we need this week in our family. I
25:20
Speaker 4: need somebody, mommy, I have a deadline. I need somebody
25:23
Speaker 4: to help me grocery shop. I need somebody to help
25:26
Speaker 4: me with my tech. You know, my internet's not been working.
25:30
Speaker 4: So talking about the needs of the family and helping
25:34
Speaker 4: kids feel like they can problem solve with us, so
25:37
Speaker 4: we actually do these and young families can.
25:39
Speaker 3: Do this too.
25:40
Speaker 4: I wish I had started this earlier, but we do.
25:44
Speaker 4: It's a bad name, but we call it family meetings,
25:46
Speaker 4: and it's actually an Alfred Adler idea. He was a
25:51
Speaker 4: contemporary of Freud's. And what the family meeting does. It's
25:54
Speaker 4: just ten minutes a week, literally ten minutes where you
25:58
Speaker 4: sit as a family. Each person runs the meeting, one
26:00
Speaker 4: other person sort of keeps an eye on the clock,
26:03
Speaker 4: and you talk about, you know, maybe one thing you
26:06
Speaker 4: sort of value or love about the person.
26:09
Speaker 3: You know.
26:09
Speaker 4: We go around the table and we start it with
26:12
Speaker 4: like a positive, you know, a positive thing, something we
26:15
Speaker 4: were grateful for this week that somebody did for us.
26:18
Speaker 4: And then we talk about family matters. And we have
26:20
Speaker 4: sort of this list that I keep of things like
26:23
Speaker 4: the shoes when I walk into my house. Even though
26:25
Speaker 4: our closet is six steps away, nobody uses the closet
26:29
Speaker 4: and so we have this gigantic pile and like they
26:31
Speaker 4: you know, they all have two or three shoes, So
26:33
Speaker 4: we have like nine nine pairs of shoes hanging out.
26:37
Speaker 4: And so like that was a family matter, So how
26:39
Speaker 4: can we problem solve that as a family. And actually
26:42
Speaker 4: one of my kids said on Amazon, there is a
26:46
Speaker 4: shoe rack, and the reason I don't put my shoes
26:49
Speaker 4: in is because then I can never find them when
26:50
Speaker 4: I'm running out the door. If we invested in a
26:53
Speaker 4: nineteen dollars shoe rack, we would put our shoes away.
26:56
Speaker 4: And guess what mostly they do mostly they do I mean,
27:00
Speaker 4: this is not a perfect system. So what those family
27:04
Speaker 4: meetings do is they they bolster mattering by saying you
27:08
Speaker 4: have a voice, you are significant, you are an important
27:10
Speaker 4: part of this family. And also you have a responsibility
27:13
Speaker 4: to help us function better, to help alleviate the stress
27:16
Speaker 4: in our environment, and what can you do? So those
27:20
Speaker 4: are just I mean, I have so many more ideas
27:22
Speaker 4: in the book.
27:23
Speaker 2: No, I love it. I love it.
27:24
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it gets, even with little kids,
27:27
Speaker 1: to the idea of you know, giving your kids responsibility
27:30
Speaker 1: and letting them be a yeah, be a part of
27:35
Speaker 1: your family functioning, particularly for families where there's you know,
27:38
Speaker 1: every I mean every family, everybody's busy, but you've got
27:41
Speaker 1: two working parents, you've got three kids. Everybody needs to contribute.
27:44
Speaker 1: And I think our instinct is often to scaffold so
27:48
Speaker 1: much with our kids, sort of make their lives simple,
27:51
Speaker 1: and even especially as people get to older kids, just.
27:53
Speaker 2: Sort of make sure.
27:55
Speaker 1: This is the idea of like snowplow parenting, like make
27:57
Speaker 1: sure everything is out of your kids way so they
27:59
Speaker 1: can focus on this thing, which is achieving in school
28:02
Speaker 1: and you know, running fast or doing whatever is there
28:05
Speaker 1: extracurricular and sort of stepping back and saying, actually, the
28:08
Speaker 1: stuff that's in the way, they need to.
28:11
Speaker 2: Help you get that out of the way.
28:13
Speaker 1: And that's actually also an investment in, you know, being
28:17
Speaker 1: a person.
28:17
Speaker 4: When I was first doing this research, I was having
28:22
Speaker 4: these Sonya Luther again, who's one of the leading researchers
28:25
Speaker 4: I'm resilience. She and I were having this conversation and
28:28
Speaker 4: I said, Okay, like, what can I do tonight? If
28:31
Speaker 4: I'm doing this wrong? What can I do tonight? And
28:34
Speaker 4: she said two phrases that I now have in my head.
28:38
Speaker 4: And it's part of like my parenting philosophy, which is
28:43
Speaker 4: minimize criticism, prioritize affection. So she said, you know, she
28:49
Speaker 4: talked about this negativity bias on how negative things stick
28:53
Speaker 4: with us, you know, multiple times. It takes. You know,
28:56
Speaker 4: some researchers found three to one three positive interactions to
29:00
Speaker 4: to overcome the one negative. And so for parents, one
29:04
Speaker 4: thing to really think about is what can you do
29:08
Speaker 4: to minimize the criticism. It doesn't mean not holding your
29:12
Speaker 4: kids accountable, it doesn't mean not pointing out when they
29:16
Speaker 4: make mistakes. But what minimizing criticism means is separating the
29:21
Speaker 4: deed from the doer. And so if you can you
29:25
Speaker 4: know if a child I don't know does really poorly
29:30
Speaker 4: on the math test, Let's say instead of saying to
29:33
Speaker 4: your child, you know, oh man, what did you do wrong? Why?
29:37
Speaker 4: This is because you're watching TV, so which is really
29:40
Speaker 4: talking about who they are as a person. Instead, it
29:43
Speaker 4: could be let's look at how you're working. What are
29:47
Speaker 4: your working skills? Let's figure out because all kids want
29:51
Speaker 4: to do well, so we have to just make that assumption.
29:54
Speaker 4: All kids want to do well. So as a parent,
29:56
Speaker 4: it is it is how we react in those moments
30:00
Speaker 4: that I think define our relationship with our kids.
30:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just going to say I think having that
30:06
Speaker 1: in your mind in a consistent manner is also very
30:09
Speaker 1: important because we know that, you know, when your kid
30:11
Speaker 1: says I got to you know twenty seven on the
30:14
Speaker 1: math test, your first instinct is you're watching too, you know,
30:17
Speaker 1: is I'm going to react in a way that is
30:19
Speaker 1: not like that. And so the practice of you know,
30:22
Speaker 1: not having that initial reaction is part of this.
30:26
Speaker 2: Okay, I want to play in our last few minutes.
30:28
Speaker 2: I want to play lightning ground.
30:30
Speaker 1: Look, I'd be happy to move to an alfalfa farm
30:33
Speaker 1: and have my kid play in the dirt all the time,
30:35
Speaker 1: but that is not this social environment. Do I want
30:38
Speaker 1: to be the one parent whose kid is the weirdo,
30:41
Speaker 1: whose family is the weirdo family who's not playing competitive sports.
30:45
Speaker 2: I don't want to be that. What do I do well?
30:47
Speaker 4: I would tell you that I am a very ambitious person,
30:51
Speaker 4: and my husband is very ambitious, and I want to
30:53
Speaker 4: raise hard working, ambitious kids. But what I have come
30:55
Speaker 4: to learn in the four years of researching this book
30:58
Speaker 4: is that I want to be ambitious for more. So,
31:02
Speaker 4: you know, when I look at my own life and
31:04
Speaker 4: my own values and what I want for my kids
31:05
Speaker 4: is I want them to be ambitious for their work,
31:07
Speaker 4: but I also want them to be ambitious as a friend,
31:10
Speaker 4: as a partner in my own you know, well being
31:13
Speaker 4: and mental health. So what I'm saying to parents is
31:17
Speaker 4: it's not that we want to not have our kids achieve.
31:20
Speaker 4: We don't want to have no standards because that makes
31:22
Speaker 4: them feel like they don't matter. What we want to
31:24
Speaker 4: do is to be really careful about the messages we
31:27
Speaker 4: are sending where that bar is that we put up
31:30
Speaker 4: for our kids, and to make sure it's adjustable and
31:33
Speaker 4: that it's relevant to each child and so not to
31:37
Speaker 4: be pushing them to excellence, but instead helping to instill
31:40
Speaker 4: this healthy drive that will actually keep them motivated and
31:45
Speaker 4: succeeding in the long run.
31:47
Speaker 2: Second question, my kid is driving this?
31:51
Speaker 1: Parents who say I desperately want my kid off this train,
31:55
Speaker 1: I am totally bought in on this. But all my
31:58
Speaker 1: kid wants to do is ap classes or be on
32:02
Speaker 1: seven different soccer teams, and if I suggest dropping anything,
32:06
Speaker 1: he freaks out.
32:08
Speaker 4: So what I have heard from the parents of the
32:11
Speaker 4: healthy Achievers is that, as Moe mother put it, it
32:15
Speaker 4: is our job as parents to take the kettle off
32:17
Speaker 4: the heat that we are our kids prefrontal cortex we
32:22
Speaker 4: need to put up. When kids are in this hyper
32:25
Speaker 4: competitive environment, right there is this social contagion to do more,
32:29
Speaker 4: be more, get to the next goal. Sometimes parents have
32:33
Speaker 4: to be the use their wisdom and pull their kids
32:36
Speaker 4: back in order to prevent burnout and even worse, you know,
32:41
Speaker 4: prevent the mental health struggles and the substance abuse disorder.
32:43
Speaker 4: I mean, parents know, I'll just leave you with us.
32:46
Speaker 4: Parents know, don't you know let your kid drink or
32:49
Speaker 4: use drugs. We should not be encouraging that. Great. What
32:52
Speaker 4: parents really need to be doing is helping their kids
32:55
Speaker 4: develop the kind of life that they don't have to
32:57
Speaker 4: escape from with drugs and alcohol. And I saw so
33:01
Speaker 4: much of it in my travels that the kids whose
33:03
Speaker 4: parents didn't put up parameters, who didn't sort of put
33:08
Speaker 4: the brakes on when their kids were taking on too much,
33:11
Speaker 4: those were the kids that were reaching for the bottle
33:13
Speaker 4: and the drugs on the weekend to black out. So
33:16
Speaker 4: if we want to avoid that in our kids, we
33:19
Speaker 4: need to help them build a life that they don't
33:21
Speaker 4: have to escape from.
33:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:25
Speaker 1: Sleep, So in reading this book, in many of the examples,
33:30
Speaker 1: it struck me that a lot of what is going
33:32
Speaker 1: on as kids are sacrificing sleep for activities, and we
33:35
Speaker 1: know that sleep is super important for mental health in
33:39
Speaker 1: some ways, how much of this is just sleep? Or
33:42
Speaker 1: put differently, if you just said you must guarantee that
33:45
Speaker 1: your child can be in their bed for a sleeping
33:49
Speaker 1: time for ten hours every night, and you must build
33:52
Speaker 1: your life around that, how much of this is linked
33:55
Speaker 1: up there?
33:57
Speaker 4: I think it's hard to say. I don't think it's
33:59
Speaker 4: just about sleep. I think that's a major factor. I
34:01
Speaker 4: think it's a major factor. But what I think is
34:03
Speaker 4: a deeper factor is this unmet need to matter, and
34:08
Speaker 4: it's linked to it's linked to rest. Right, if we
34:11
Speaker 4: say to our kids, sacrifice yourself at the altar of achievement,
34:16
Speaker 4: we are telling them you do not matter. But when
34:18
Speaker 4: we say to our kids, you need eight to ten
34:21
Speaker 4: hours of sleep, and I'm going to enforce that, that
34:25
Speaker 4: signal you are sending your kids is that you matter most.
34:29
Speaker 4: You matter more than your achievements. So, yes, I think
34:33
Speaker 4: sleep is a factor, but I think the deep factor
34:36
Speaker 4: the roots of this issue, whether we're talking about sleep,
34:39
Speaker 4: or social media or achievement pressure, it is when this
34:44
Speaker 4: universal need to matter goes unmet that is a predictor
34:48
Speaker 4: of psychological distress.
34:51
Speaker 1: Okay, So Jenny, what is your number one biggest takeaway
34:56
Speaker 1: from the book.
34:57
Speaker 4: The biggest surprise to me is that the number one
35:01
Speaker 4: intervention for any child in distress, and this is according
35:05
Speaker 4: to decades worth of resilience research, for any child in
35:08
Speaker 4: distress is to make sure the primary caregiver, most often
35:12
Speaker 4: the mother or the father, that their well being, their
35:16
Speaker 4: social support system is intact. Because, as Sonia Luther's researcher
35:22
Speaker 4: Sonia Luther says, a child's resilience rest fundamentally on their
35:27
Speaker 4: primary caregivers resilience, and a primary caregiver's resilience rest fundamentally
35:33
Speaker 4: on the depth and support of their relationships. And what
35:37
Speaker 4: I have found in traveling to these competitive communities, It's
35:41
Speaker 4: not that these parents didn't have friends, It's that they
35:43
Speaker 4: didn't have time in their schedule to develop their friends
35:47
Speaker 4: to be the source of support that they need when
35:51
Speaker 4: they are going through something, so that they can be
35:53
Speaker 4: strong when their children are under distress, so that they
35:56
Speaker 4: could show up to be the first responders to their
35:58
Speaker 4: kid's pain that you want to be.
36:05
Speaker 2: Jenny, thank you so much. This was fantastic.
36:08
Speaker 1: Thanks really appreciate it, and I'm thrilled for everyone to
36:10
Speaker 1: be able to get the book.
36:11
Speaker 2: The book is called Never Enough and it is out now.
36:14
Speaker 4: Thank you.
36:20
Speaker 2: More parent Data after the break.
36:31
Speaker 3: Hi Emily, this is Jessica calling from Columbus, Ohio, and
36:36
Speaker 3: my husband and I are about to start trying to
36:39
Speaker 3: have kids and I just wanted to know what are
36:43
Speaker 3: the best way to prepare your body? How do you
36:46
Speaker 3: prepare your body for pregnancy?
36:50
Speaker 1: Thanks so, our question of the day is how to
36:54
Speaker 1: prepare your body for pregnancy. The good news is that
36:58
Speaker 1: your body has pretty much been preparing itself for pregnancy
37:01
Speaker 1: since you were twelve, and really since birth, but it's
37:05
Speaker 1: really ramped.
37:06
Speaker 2: Up at twelve. So in fact, there isn't very.
37:08
Speaker 1: Much that you really need to do to prepare your
37:11
Speaker 1: body for pregnancy.
37:13
Speaker 2: You're designed for pregnancy.
37:16
Speaker 1: You will sometimes hear people say, you know, this is
37:18
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to lose weight and get into your
37:21
Speaker 1: best fit shape before pregnancy, but you don't need to
37:25
Speaker 1: do that to have a healthy pregnancy. Fundamentally, rather than
37:30
Speaker 1: focusing on preparing your body, I would think about preparing
37:33
Speaker 1: your life and making sure that you're emotionally ready, that
37:36
Speaker 1: you and your partner are ready for a lot of
37:38
Speaker 1: the changes that come, that you have a plan for
37:41
Speaker 1: how your family growth is going to go, and for
37:43
Speaker 1: how you're going to be as happy as possible as parents.
37:46
Speaker 1: That is where I would put your attention rather than
37:49
Speaker 1: trying to get your body ready because it's ready. There
37:54
Speaker 1: are a few things that I would consider doing before
37:57
Speaker 1: you start trying for pregnancy. One is to start taking
38:01
Speaker 1: prenatal vitamins. That's going to prepare your body with a
38:05
Speaker 1: good dose of folic acid, which is important for preventing
38:08
Speaker 1: birth effects.
38:10
Speaker 2: I would also if you can have a preconception appointment
38:13
Speaker 2: with your doctor.
38:14
Speaker 1: That's not exactly about preparing your body, but it's an
38:17
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about if you are taking prescription medications,
38:21
Speaker 1: how to manage that leading into a pregnancy, and really
38:24
Speaker 1: to answer any other questions that you have as you
38:27
Speaker 1: think to embark on this. As a final note, even
38:31
Speaker 1: if you prepare, prepare your life, prepare your body, it
38:35
Speaker 1: is still possible you'll struggle to get pregnant. Infertility affects
38:38
Speaker 1: a large number of women. If that happens, there is
38:42
Speaker 1: help in a variety of ways, and it's important not
38:45
Speaker 1: to blame yourself for that experience.
38:57
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening.
38:58
Speaker 1: Parent Data is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from
39:02
Speaker 1: the parent Data team and pix. Also special thanks to
39:05
Speaker 1: our house violinist, my daughter Penelope No problem Mom. If
39:10
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39:48
Speaker 2: Write Penelope, write Mam. We'll see you next time.