Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #564 A Conversation With Madonna King
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
- 0:05Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
- 0:09Speaker 2: wants answers.
- 0:10Speaker 1: Now.
- 0:10Speaker 3: Hello, it's doctor Justin Coulson with a conversation today that
- 0:13Speaker 3: I have been itching to have for months. So a
- 0:17Speaker 3: couple of months ago, Rebecca Sparrow, who has one of
- 0:19Speaker 3: the most interactive, engaging and uplifting Facebook pages on the Internet,
- 0:25Speaker 3: started a conversation about kids in year twelve, year eleven,
- 0:29Speaker 3: and year twelve around the country who are going through
- 0:32Speaker 3: so much pain and I'm going to use the word
- 0:34Speaker 3: trauma as it's associated with their schoolwork because of the
- 0:38Speaker 3: pressure to do well, to get into university, to get
- 0:40Speaker 3: the results, all of the pressure that's on these kids
- 0:42Speaker 3: and the curriculum demands.
- 0:45Speaker 2: That these kids are experiencing.
- 0:46Speaker 3: Well, Beck caught my attention, but she also reached out
- 0:50Speaker 3: to Madonna King, who is the author of the brand
- 0:53Speaker 3: new and wonderful book called l Platters. L Platers is
- 0:58Speaker 3: Madonna King's new book how to Support your teen daughter
- 1:01Speaker 3: on the Road to Adulthood. And Madonna and Beck have
- 1:04Speaker 3: started this big I don't know what I'd call it
- 1:07Speaker 3: a project, I guess to try to help us to
- 1:10Speaker 3: work out what's going on with the curriculum and how
- 1:12Speaker 3: we can better support our children at such a stressful
- 1:15Speaker 3: time of life. Madonna King, who has been an award
- 1:19Speaker 3: winning journalist who has written a bunch of books that
- 1:22Speaker 3: have been so so well received, including Being Fourteen and
- 1:26Speaker 3: now l Players and a couple of others as well,
- 1:28Speaker 3: has joined me for the conversation to day on the podcast. Madonna,
- 1:31Speaker 3: I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for having this chat.
- 1:34Speaker 1: With me, Thanks for asking Justin, can we.
- 1:37Speaker 3: Talk about this evolution, this conversation that Beck started one
- 1:40Speaker 3: day because she was in a bit of a mood
- 1:42Speaker 3: on Facebook that has literally exploded with thousands and thousands
- 1:47Speaker 3: of people becoming involved and creating a whole lot of
- 1:49Speaker 3: input for you.
- 1:51Speaker 4: Isn't she gorgeous?
- 1:52Speaker 1: Like this just worried her because someone had sent an
- 1:54Speaker 1: email and she asked about it, and all of a
- 1:57Speaker 1: sudden she was just inundated, caught up for a cup
- 2:00Speaker 1: of coffee and thought, what can we do?
- 2:02Speaker 4: Because for people.
- 2:03Speaker 1: To actually put pen to paper or to get onto
- 2:06Speaker 1: that keyboard and explain with such rawness what their children
- 2:10Speaker 1: are going through is a pretty difficult thing. So we thought,
- 2:13Speaker 1: why don't we just set up a website and asked
- 2:15Speaker 1: people to upload without identification their story, and so we
- 2:21Speaker 1: did it. It's called testing times at school and at
- 2:24Speaker 1: spelt out and justin it was phenomenal, Like she mentioned
- 2:29Speaker 1: it on her Facebook page and it just went berserk
- 2:33Speaker 1: and there wasn't a day that I didn't cry reading them.
- 2:37Speaker 1: We've got more than a thousand, and they're the ones
- 2:40Speaker 1: we've uploaded. We've not uploaded any that identify as school,
- 2:44Speaker 1: a child, something that paints how someone may have taken
- 2:50Speaker 1: their life. We've been very, very careful in what we've uploaded,
- 2:54Speaker 1: but more than a thousand stories and what they do
- 2:57Speaker 1: is just parents, teachers, medicos and students say how this
- 3:03Speaker 1: curriculum is currently crueling their last year at school.
- 3:09Speaker 2: Talk to me more about that.
- 3:10Speaker 3: I mean, this whole conversation came about as I recall
- 3:13Speaker 3: from somebody who said, what kids are expected to do
- 3:15Speaker 3: in grade eleven and twelve is at least at the
- 3:18Speaker 3: level of university in first or second year UNI.
- 3:22Speaker 2: Am I getting that right?
- 3:24Speaker 1: That's what people are saying. So the biggest jump is
- 3:27Speaker 1: now year ten to year eleven. That's what all my
- 3:29Speaker 1: research shows, and some educators are saying we need to
- 3:32Speaker 1: talk more to parents about that jump. We're demanding children
- 3:35Speaker 1: decide what subjects they choose in year nine, so they
- 3:40Speaker 1: get to the end of year twelve and think, I
- 3:41Speaker 1: didn't do biology, I can't be a nurse, or I
- 3:44Speaker 1: didn't do specialist maths, I can't do economics.
- 3:47Speaker 3: My life's over, which is patally false, right, I mean,
- 3:51Speaker 3: it's so false.
- 3:52Speaker 2: So there's all this pressure.
- 3:53Speaker 3: On our fourteen and fifteen year olds to know what
- 3:55Speaker 3: they're going to do when they're in year twelve.
- 3:57Speaker 1: Or in university, and the stories that are come in
- 4:00Speaker 1: paint this picture where oh my.
- 4:03Speaker 4: Heart goes out to teachers.
- 4:04Speaker 1: Like one teacher just said with such emotion in a
- 4:07Speaker 1: note to us, that she dreads a student asking a
- 4:11Speaker 1: question out of curiosity because that may take her down
- 4:15Speaker 1: a path that she'd love to venture down, but it
- 4:19Speaker 1: means she can't get through the content to the curriculum.
- 4:21Speaker 1: So she pleads with kids just to let's get through
- 4:24Speaker 1: the content. Let's get through the content that's wrong.
- 4:27Speaker 3: That's astonishing. I've got a book on my shelf. It's
- 4:29Speaker 3: one of my favorite books of all time. It's called
- 4:31Speaker 3: The Hungry Mind by Professor Susan Engel, and it's about
- 4:34Speaker 3: how our education system has I think you used the
- 4:37Speaker 3: word crueled, that the education system has effectively stymied curiosity
- 4:42Speaker 3: in kids because we're telling them what they've got to learn,
- 4:45Speaker 3: when they've got.
- 4:46Speaker 2: To learn it, how they've got to learn it, and
- 4:47Speaker 2: why they should have learned it this way or not
- 4:48Speaker 2: that way.
- 4:49Speaker 3: And she found that kids in primary school they only
- 4:51Speaker 3: ask one to two questions per hour other than can
- 4:54Speaker 3: I go to the toilet or like? In terms of curiosity,
- 4:57Speaker 3: it's just not there, And isn't it the purpose of learning?
- 5:00Speaker 1: Isn't the job of the education system to teach our
- 5:03Speaker 1: children how to learn life? Learn learning off quotes for
- 5:07Speaker 1: an English exam when once you graduate, you look up
- 5:11Speaker 1: the quotes. If you can't work this out in a
- 5:14Speaker 1: team environment at work, you ask someone. But those skills
- 5:18Speaker 1: of teamwork and an inquiring mind, curiosity, listening, critical thinking
- 5:25Speaker 1: are not taught or tested. And so we are developing
- 5:29Speaker 1: a graduates that may be academically bright in terms of
- 5:34Speaker 1: the words they can use or the two thousand word
- 5:36Speaker 1: essays they can write.
- 5:37Speaker 4: But I do think that sense of what else can
- 5:40Speaker 4: I learn?
- 5:41Speaker 1: What else can I ask? Where? Might this lead questions
- 5:44Speaker 1: that's being really hammered out of them before they actually
- 5:48Speaker 1: even graduate.
- 5:49Speaker 3: I have two points on this, Madonna. The first is
- 5:52Speaker 3: I used to be a university lecturer. I lectured from
- 5:55Speaker 3: first year psychology through to master's level psychology. And I
- 6:00Speaker 3: can tell you as somebody who has had a lot
- 6:03Speaker 3: of time spent in that university context lecturing. My first
- 6:07Speaker 3: three daughters have all studied psychology in grades eleven and twelve.
- 6:11Speaker 3: Two of them actually dropped out because they hated it
- 6:13Speaker 3: so much. But as I've looked at the content that
- 6:15Speaker 3: they've been expected to be assessed on, I've watched my
- 6:20Speaker 3: year eleven daughters being assessed on content that I was
- 6:23Speaker 3: often asking second year university students to develop. And it's
- 6:28Speaker 3: astounding to me at two levels. First of all, it's
- 6:30Speaker 3: astounding from the point of view that why are we
- 6:32Speaker 3: asking our sixteen year olds to know what a second
- 6:34Speaker 3: year university student might know? But secondly, school teachers. Are
- 6:39Speaker 3: we honestly expecting school teachers to be assessing psychology content
- 6:44Speaker 3: at a second year university level when they're not psychologically trained?
- 6:47Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean?
- 6:48Speaker 1: Like?
- 6:49Speaker 2: This is crazy?
- 6:50Speaker 1: Well? And what underpins that is if we had the
- 6:53Speaker 1: best education system in the world, if our students were
- 6:56Speaker 1: graduating ahead of those in Asia or Europe, you would say, alright.
- 7:00Speaker 4: Well it must be worth it, and that's the opportunity cost.
- 7:02Speaker 1: But some will think it's worth it right, But we
- 7:05Speaker 1: are not.
- 7:06Speaker 4: We're going down.
- 7:07Speaker 1: So at every level I think something is wrong. And
- 7:11Speaker 1: you know I mentioned the website that Beck and I
- 7:13Speaker 1: set up. You know, I just before we got on randomly,
- 7:17Speaker 1: randomly with my eyes closed, picked one note. Let me
- 7:20Speaker 1: read it to you. I work in an emergency department
- 7:23Speaker 1: in a new South Wales hospital. I see people under
- 7:26Speaker 1: twenty five coming in with mental health concerns. The amount
- 7:28Speaker 1: of young people coming to ed with suicidal thoughts, actual
- 7:32Speaker 1: self harm and attempted suicide that report the stress of
- 7:35Speaker 1: year eleven and twelve is the reason they want to
- 7:37Speaker 1: die is outstanding. I see a lot of students at
- 7:40Speaker 1: the start of year eleven when they first realize the
- 7:43Speaker 1: expectations and workload and then increase in term three of
- 7:47Speaker 1: year twelve. These students say things like, I can't keep
- 7:50Speaker 1: up with the work, I'll never get into UNI. What's
- 7:53Speaker 1: the point in living if I can't pass school? I'm dumb,
- 7:56Speaker 1: I'm stupid, I'm a disappointment. I'll never be able to
- 7:59Speaker 1: get a DCT. John. That's just a mental health professional
- 8:03Speaker 1: in New South Wales.
- 8:04Speaker 4: Who is talking about a public school?
- 8:07Speaker 1: One out of a thousand, and yet we don't even
- 8:11Speaker 1: have someone with a mental health background or someone like
- 8:13Speaker 1: you sitting on our curriculum review boards.
- 8:17Speaker 2: Hey, I'm wiping my hand around. I'll do it. I'd
- 8:19Speaker 2: love to be in there.
- 8:20Speaker 1: Yes, but surely if we are looking out for the
- 8:24Speaker 1: mental health of our children. And I get emotional talking.
- 8:26Speaker 4: About this, because some children will fly through, but many
- 8:31Speaker 4: many won't.
- 8:33Speaker 1: Our teaching and bless our teachers, they can't. They can't
- 8:37Speaker 1: teach individually. So are they teaching to the top of
- 8:40Speaker 1: the class, the bottom of the class, the middle of
- 8:42Speaker 1: the class. Certainly in independent private schools they're kind of
- 8:45Speaker 1: trying to lift everyone so that they appear in these
- 8:48Speaker 1: league tables.
- 8:49Speaker 4: Because that is what is required of them.
- 8:51Speaker 1: But what is happening at a very private level is
- 8:56Speaker 1: children are thinking they're not worth it, and their giving up,
- 9:02Speaker 1: and we as adults and educators and just people with
- 9:07Speaker 1: a heart and a head, have to sit down and think, well,
- 9:10Speaker 1: how can we not decrease the academic merit of what
- 9:14Speaker 1: we do. You know not, but we need to deliver it,
- 9:18Speaker 1: perhaps in a different way, or do it in a
- 9:20Speaker 1: way that recognizes a A in physics is not the
- 9:28Speaker 1: road to.
- 9:28Speaker 2: Be Prime Minister Madona.
- 9:30Speaker 3: After the break, let's talk about your meeting with the
- 9:33Speaker 3: curriculum body, you and Rebecca how to sit down face
- 9:35Speaker 3: to face with them.
- 9:36Speaker 2: And we'll also talk about some solutions for parents.
- 9:38Speaker 3: Who are hoping and praying that a curriculum change might
- 9:41Speaker 3: come along, but at the moment there's only so much
- 9:43Speaker 3: you can do.
- 9:43Speaker 2: We'll talk about what we can do.
- 9:44Speaker 3: As parents to help our kids through this troubling time.
- 9:48Speaker 3: That's right after this on the Happy Families podcast, Get Curious,
- 9:56Speaker 3: Not Furious, be where your feeder mistakes lead to mar
- 10:00Speaker 3: high emotions, low intelligence. Have you ever heard these or
- 10:04Speaker 3: any of the other principles I share and thought I
- 10:06Speaker 3: need to stick that on my wall?
- 10:08Speaker 2: Well now you can.
- 10:09Speaker 3: The Happy Family team has pulled out the best justinisms
- 10:12Speaker 3: for a five mini posters, perfect for your home or
- 10:14Speaker 3: even the classroom, and easy to grab at happy families
- 10:17Speaker 3: dot com dot a you. It's the Happy Families Podcast,
- 10:21Speaker 3: the podcast for the time, poor parent who just wants
- 10:24Speaker 3: answers now Today are very sobering conversation with Madonna King,
- 10:28Speaker 3: the author of the fabulous book L Platers L Platers
- 10:33Speaker 3: How to Support your teen daughter on the Road to Adulthood.
- 10:35Speaker 2: I mean, this is the age that we're talking about,
- 10:37Speaker 2: isn't it, Madonna?
- 10:38Speaker 3: That we've got these kids who are leaving high school,
- 10:40Speaker 3: they're emerging into adulthood.
- 10:42Speaker 2: They need our support.
- 10:43Speaker 3: All of this excessive and unnecessary demand is being placed
- 10:48Speaker 3: on them academically, sometimes by us as parents because we
- 10:51Speaker 3: just want our kids to do well in life, sometimes
- 10:53Speaker 3: by teachers because they want the kids to do well,
- 10:56Speaker 3: or a cynic might say because the school needs to
- 10:59Speaker 3: have some high results because it's good for their marketing,
- 11:02Speaker 3: and sometimes on themselves.
- 11:04Speaker 2: Right.
- 11:04Speaker 3: I mean, it's not even an adult that's involved in this.
- 11:06Speaker 3: It's just the kids putting this pressure on themselves.
- 11:09Speaker 1: I think that's the big one. I think parents are
- 11:12Speaker 1: recognizing the need for their child to be happy. They're
- 11:15Speaker 1: wondering why they're so sad and feeling isolated and not connected,
- 11:19Speaker 1: And I think schools do everything they can within it's
- 11:24Speaker 1: a systemic problem. It's not an individual school protr I think,
- 11:27Speaker 1: But what we are seeing, and I'm seeing in my
- 11:29Speaker 1: research is girls quite young, look around, take on.
- 11:33Speaker 4: The messages of those delivered by a social media.
- 11:36Speaker 1: Or in their friendship group, and they see their friends
- 11:39Speaker 1: getting eight out of ten at maths, they're getting six,
- 11:42Speaker 1: and instead of thinking it's like learning to ice skate,
- 11:44Speaker 1: I've got a practice, they think I'm dumb. I'm never
- 11:47Speaker 1: going to be good at maths, and therefore they decide
- 11:50Speaker 1: as young as ten, eleven and twelve that they won't
- 11:53Speaker 1: take that stream. And so I think very much it's
- 11:57Speaker 1: girls particularly, and that's my specialty than boys putting pressure
- 12:01Speaker 1: on themselves and then judging themselves brutally when you don't
- 12:06Speaker 1: measure up and almost giving up, justin almost giving up,
- 12:09Speaker 1: rather than thinking, all right, this is a challenge, and
- 12:12Speaker 1: how do I actually develop a confidence and an independence
- 12:17Speaker 1: in actually nailing this.
- 12:18Speaker 3: It reminds me of two different bits of research that
- 12:21Speaker 3: have really struck me. The one is around perfectionism. So
- 12:24Speaker 3: research shows that perfectionists do extremely well in school because
- 12:27Speaker 3: you've got this fixed way.
- 12:29Speaker 2: Of doing things.
- 12:29Speaker 3: You're in very clearly defined parameters, and then there's a
- 12:33Speaker 3: clear pathway to perfectionism or something close to it to
- 12:36Speaker 3: an excellent outcome. But the research show also shows that
- 12:39Speaker 3: once they get out of high school, perfectionists fall and
- 12:42Speaker 3: fail badly. It's a really it's a recipe for disaster
- 12:46Speaker 3: once we get out of the very clear structures of school.
- 12:50Speaker 3: The other thing that your conversation reminds me of is
- 12:52Speaker 3: a psychological reality called self other knowledge asymmetry, which basically
- 12:57Speaker 3: means I can see what's happening inside my head and
- 13:00Speaker 3: I'm falling apart. I'm one hot mess. You you're getting a's,
- 13:04Speaker 3: you're killing it. You're on the stage getting merrit awards,
- 13:07Speaker 3: and you're this, and you're that, You're amazing. And so
- 13:09Speaker 3: I've got all this self knowledge about my own pathetic failings,
- 13:13Speaker 3: and my only knowledge of you as a other.
- 13:15Speaker 2: Is that you're the star of the show.
- 13:17Speaker 3: Therefore, I assess that I must be deficient and dysfunctional
- 13:20Speaker 3: as a human, and you are perfect and know how
- 13:22Speaker 3: to do it. What we don't know is the mess
- 13:25Speaker 3: that's happening inside the head of the person who we're watching.
- 13:27Speaker 3: That there's an asymmetry between our knowledge of what's going
- 13:30Speaker 3: on between self and other.
- 13:32Speaker 1: And I think our kids are really bright for our players.
- 13:36Speaker 1: I sought the council of a thousand girls age sixteen, seventeen,
- 13:39Speaker 1: and eighteen, and some of them picked.
- 13:41Speaker 4: Up on that and even said, I am jealous of
- 13:47Speaker 4: such and such because she's happy, or I want to
- 13:50Speaker 4: feel contented like such and such. I thought that was
- 13:54Speaker 4: really clever.
- 13:55Speaker 1: Because they're understanding that all of this war paper that
- 14:00Speaker 1: dominates their lives is not delivering that happiness that they
- 14:05Speaker 1: that they deserve in their final year of school. And
- 14:08Speaker 1: I think they've got to start listening to that little
- 14:09Speaker 1: voice inside of them, not the voice outside of them.
- 14:12Speaker 1: They've got a nurture that voice inside of them and
- 14:16Speaker 1: grow that. And I think from a parent's perspective, we've
- 14:19Speaker 1: got to let them fail, you know. And I say
- 14:21Speaker 1: that and people think, well, well, you don't want your
- 14:24Speaker 1: kids fall, and of course you don't, but you know,
- 14:26Speaker 1: just in my own family, I have a daughter who
- 14:30Speaker 1: is quite bright. She works hard, but I'll still remember
- 14:33Speaker 1: this science paper that she did in year ten and
- 14:37Speaker 1: she finished it.
- 14:38Speaker 4: Handed it in, and as she handed it in, she
- 14:40Speaker 4: turned it.
- 14:40Speaker 1: Over and realized there was a mark ten marks on
- 14:45Speaker 1: the back that she didn't see. Well, the crying lasted
- 14:50Speaker 1: for a long, long, long.
- 14:52Speaker 4: Time, but you know what, and I felt.
- 14:55Speaker 1: So sorry for it, And she ended up getting quite
- 14:57Speaker 1: a good mark in any case. But now in your
- 14:59Speaker 1: lef and twelve and she's about to go into externals,
- 15:02Speaker 1: in You're eleven and twelve, the first thing she does
- 15:04Speaker 1: when she gets an exam paper is turns over and
- 15:06Speaker 1: sees the back. She failed, and she learned a lesson.
- 15:10Speaker 1: And I only say that because the more we let
- 15:13Speaker 1: our children fail, even in little things, the more they
- 15:16Speaker 1: learn to independently make a decision. And I think there's
- 15:20Speaker 1: been this correlation where we don't want them to fail.
- 15:23Speaker 1: We're having less and less children, and we've more and
- 15:25Speaker 1: more invested, and COVID's made us want to deliver to
- 15:28Speaker 1: them what we can. But as a result of that,
- 15:31Speaker 1: I think we're almost setting them up for failure. The
- 15:34Speaker 1: moment all those structures, school structures disappear, there's not a
- 15:40Speaker 1: teacher saying, look, do forty minutes on homework on this,
- 15:42Speaker 1: or here's a practice paper or a hand in your draft,
- 15:45Speaker 1: or you know, go home and do the Oh you
- 15:47Speaker 1: don't look well done, and are you okay? Did you
- 15:49Speaker 1: break up with your boyfriend? All of that disappears in
- 15:52Speaker 1: November of year twelve, and that's where, like a big balloon,
- 15:56Speaker 1: so many children just deflate and they don't know how
- 16:02Speaker 1: to get that energy that airback.
- 16:05Speaker 3: I want to wrap it up there, but I feel
- 16:07Speaker 3: like there's a couple of other things that I want
- 16:09Speaker 3: to throw in as well, Ma Donna, and I'd love
- 16:11Speaker 3: to get your feedback on it based on what you've read.
- 16:13Speaker 3: So one thing that I think we need to do
- 16:16Speaker 3: is let kids know that the atar actually doesn't matter
- 16:18Speaker 3: that much at all. We've got universities accepting early entry.
- 16:22Speaker 3: In fact, I think that it's recently to say university
- 16:24Speaker 3: isn't the be all and end all either. There are
- 16:27Speaker 3: so many people who do so many things that don't
- 16:28Speaker 3: require a university degree that make valuable contributions and help
- 16:31Speaker 3: them to lead meaningful lives, and they raise great families,
- 16:33Speaker 3: and they're like this idea that university matters so much
- 16:37Speaker 3: we place this premium on the value of a university education. Now,
- 16:41Speaker 3: I believe in getting all the education you can get.
- 16:43Speaker 3: But I look at my dad, who runs a furniture
- 16:45Speaker 3: moving company, and I think to myself, I love that man,
- 16:49Speaker 3: and I don't really care that he.
- 16:50Speaker 2: Doesn't have a university degree.
- 16:52Speaker 3: He's a great dad, he's got six fantastic kids, and
- 16:56Speaker 3: I just I so appreciate him. I look at the
- 16:58Speaker 3: guy who came and fixed my head either the other day,
- 17:00Speaker 3: or the bloke that's supplying me with gas at my house,
- 17:03Speaker 3: or the person who keeps my lawns green or whatever
- 17:05Speaker 3: it is, or all that sort of stuff, and I
- 17:07Speaker 3: just think university degrees are important and we definitely need them,
- 17:11Speaker 3: but not everyone has to have one, and putting pressure
- 17:13Speaker 3: on our kids to go to university, especially when they
- 17:16Speaker 3: don't know what they want to do. I mean again,
- 17:18Speaker 3: as a university lecturer, formally, I don't believe the kids
- 17:21Speaker 3: should be at university full stop, end of story. University
- 17:24Speaker 3: is a place for adults, not kids. And when I
- 17:26Speaker 3: look at those first years that came through my lecture
- 17:28Speaker 3: theaters and my tutorial groups, I reckon ten percent of
- 17:32Speaker 3: them were ready for university. The other ninety percent wasting
- 17:36Speaker 3: their time, wasting money.
- 17:37Speaker 2: Ridiculous.
- 17:39Speaker 4: So two things I.
- 17:40Speaker 1: Think our schools need to explain to parents and to
- 17:44Speaker 1: children that only up to fifty percent of children do
- 17:47Speaker 1: not sit for a natar many of them go on
- 17:49Speaker 1: to university but we keep hearing, particularly in private independent schools,
- 17:53Speaker 1: that one hundred percent of kids get a NATAR, and
- 17:55Speaker 1: many schools encourage that when you don't need a NATAR
- 18:00Speaker 1: how to go to university, there are other parts.
- 18:01Speaker 4: You don't need an ATA to get a good job.
- 18:05Speaker 4: I think that's really important.
- 18:06Speaker 1: And the other thing I would say is just to
- 18:08Speaker 1: back you about that adults and university.
- 18:11Speaker 4: COVID has had more impact on.
- 18:13Speaker 1: This generation and this cohort of kids than any other.
- 18:18Speaker 1: You know. Mark mccriindle, the demographer, says, from a health perspective,
- 18:22Speaker 1: it was the elderly, but from a social and economic perspective,
- 18:25Speaker 1: it's the kids we're talking about. And I think it
- 18:28Speaker 1: is really really important for us to understand that they
- 18:31Speaker 1: have missed the experiences that you and I had, that
- 18:34Speaker 1: they're big sisters and brothers, had to make judgments, to
- 18:37Speaker 1: take calculated risks, to make decisions and regret them. And
- 18:41Speaker 1: what we are seeing now in first year university students
- 18:44Speaker 1: is children more like fifteen than eighteen. And as parents,
- 18:47Speaker 1: I think we need to gift back those experiences and
- 18:51Speaker 1: be aware that our children are graduating without that competence,
- 18:55Speaker 1: confidence and independence that pre COVID was so easy to
- 18:59Speaker 1: get them.
- 19:00Speaker 2: Gosh, I feel like we could talk about this for days.
- 19:04Speaker 3: We've gone well, well well over time, and yet we've
- 19:06Speaker 3: barely scratched the surface. The work that you and Beck
- 19:09Speaker 3: have done on this, I'm going to call it a project.
- 19:11Speaker 3: I know it's informal and it's just kind of evolving,
- 19:14Speaker 3: but the work that you've done in this project is important.
- 19:16Speaker 3: It's created a conversation that matters, and I love what
- 19:19Speaker 3: you're doing. If people want to find out more about
- 19:21Speaker 3: it and get their stories on your website, whereabouts should
- 19:24Speaker 3: they go?
- 19:25Speaker 1: Follow Beck on Facebook Rebecca Sparrow or go to www
- 19:29Speaker 1: dot Testing Times at school at is spelt out and
- 19:33Speaker 1: you will read what other parents, teaches, students, academics and
- 19:37Speaker 1: medicos are saying. Add yours, but please don't identify the
- 19:41Speaker 1: school or your child. And the more we get, the
- 19:44Speaker 1: more we can present to.
- 19:45Speaker 2: Government and just congratulations on great work.
- 19:49Speaker 3: Additionally, if you would like more information about what Madonna
- 19:52Speaker 3: has to offer for your late teen daughters from age
- 19:56Speaker 3: sixteen up, check out her book l Players, How to
- 19:58Speaker 3: Support Your teen Daughter on the Road to Adulthood. Madonna
- 20:02Speaker 3: such a pleasure to talk to you. I wish we
- 20:03Speaker 3: had more time.
- 20:04Speaker 2: This has been great you too, Thanks Justin.
- 20:06Speaker 3: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from
- 20:08Speaker 3: Bridge Media, with Craig Bruce as our executive producer. If
- 20:12Speaker 3: you'd like morefo about making your family happier, visit happyfamilies
- 20:15Speaker 3: dot com dot a you