Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #264 The Gift of Failure with Jessica Lahey Part 2

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#264 The Gift of Failure with Jessica Lahey Part 2 · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast.
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Speaker 2: It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
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Speaker 2: wants answers.
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Speaker 3: Now, kids who can't be frustrated don't learn as well
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Speaker 3: as kids who can. I would much rather have a
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Speaker 3: perfectly average kid who can be frustrated in my classroom
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Speaker 3: than a super gifted and talented kid who has no
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Speaker 3: capacity to be frustrated and tends to give up.
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Speaker 2: And now here's the scars of our show, My mom
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Speaker 2: and Dad.
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Speaker 4: Well, last week we had this incredible conversation with New
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Speaker 4: York Times bestselling author Jessica Lay. Jessica wrote The Gift
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Speaker 4: of Failure, How the best parents learn to let go
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Speaker 4: so their children can succeed.
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Speaker 1: Jessica is a mum of a couple of kids.
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Speaker 4: She's also got a brand new book out that we're
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Speaker 4: itching to talk to her about. But Kylie, oh, by
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Speaker 4: the way, I'm Justin Coilson, got a PhD in psychology.
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Speaker 4: I've written six books about raising happy families, and I'm
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Speaker 4: here with Kylie, my wife and mom to our six daughters.
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Speaker 4: Today we're going to get really practical about the gift
1:02
Speaker 4: of failure, what we're supposed to do about it, how
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Speaker 4: we're supposed to help our children fail in productive ways. Jess,
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Speaker 4: it's so generous of you to come back and talk
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Speaker 4: to us again. Thank you so very much for joining us.
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Speaker 4: Of course, we talked a lot last week about this
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Speaker 4: issue of parents not wanting their children to fail.
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Speaker 1: We want them to be awesome all the time. And
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Speaker 1: something that we.
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Speaker 4: Didn't really go into any depth fond Well, two things
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Speaker 4: we didn't go deep on. We didn't talk about the
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Speaker 4: practical stuff of how to help children fail. But there's
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Speaker 4: one thing that I think we could have maybe spent
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Speaker 4: it just a minute or two on, and I'd like
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Speaker 4: to start there. You touched on it, but we didn't
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Speaker 4: expand on it. You said that it's really horrible for
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Speaker 4: a parent to see their child fail, because we don't
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Speaker 4: like seeing our children experience frustration. Can you talk for
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Speaker 4: a bit about what your research has shown about parents
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Speaker 4: discomfort with their children's sadness, big emotions, failures, frustrations, toll
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Speaker 4: that it takes on a parent when a child's not
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Speaker 4: doing well.
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Speaker 3: Just like the research actually on what makes us share
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Speaker 3: an article, we know that things the articles go viral
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Speaker 3: tend to tap into our like heated emotions like anger
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Speaker 3: and upset and outrage and those really make us act.
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Speaker 3: And it's really similar with parenting. But the interesting thing
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Speaker 3: though about not letting our kids feel frustrated, is that
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Speaker 3: Wendy Grolnik's research shows and she does some wonderful research
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Speaker 3: on autonomy supportive parenting and the what that does in
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Speaker 3: terms of learning and motivation is she did this one
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Speaker 3: experiment where she looked at parenting styles autonomy supportive versus directive,
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Speaker 3: and she found that children of really highly directive or
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Speaker 3: controlling parents. But really the best word for this is directive,
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Speaker 3: because they give a lot of directions to their child,
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Speaker 3: they guide their child through tasks, those kids had much
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Speaker 3: lower threshold for dealing they could just didn't have the
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Speaker 3: emotional wherewithal to deal with frustration, so they tended to
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Speaker 3: give up and not complete difficult tasks, tasks that were
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Speaker 3: sort of created in order to be difficult on purpose
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Speaker 3: to elicit some frustration, whereas the kids of autonomy supportive
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Speaker 3: parents were much more likely to complete the challenging task.
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Speaker 3: And the problem with that is when kids have a
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Speaker 3: really low threshold for frustration and just don't know what
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Speaker 3: to do with that feeling and can handle it and
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Speaker 3: tend to, you know, go helpless and boneless and fall
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Speaker 3: apart and quit whatever it is they're doing. Is once
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Speaker 3: they're in school especially, one of the most powerful tools
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Speaker 3: I have as a teacher is something called desirable difficulties,
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Speaker 3: and it is a task where just being able to
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Speaker 3: parse it and sort of understand the task and get
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Speaker 3: through the task requires us to think sort of much
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Speaker 3: more to be to really it's harder to parse, and
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Speaker 3: so when we don't give ourselves the opportunity, or because
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Speaker 3: we're too frustrated and we just give up, we don't
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Speaker 3: benefit from those desirable difficulties and difficulties. In code learning,
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Speaker 3: it bypasses short term memory, goes straight to encoding it
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Speaker 3: and long term memory. So when kids are able to
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Speaker 3: complete desirable difficulties or tasks with desirable difficulties, they tend
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Speaker 3: to know the material more deeply in the short term
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Speaker 3: and remember it better in the long term. So kids
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Speaker 3: who can't be frustrated don't learn as well as kids
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Speaker 3: who can. That's just that sort of the short version
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Speaker 3: of that whole story, which is I would much rather
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Speaker 3: have a perfectly average kid who can be frustrated in
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Speaker 3: my classroom than a super gifted and talented kid who
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Speaker 3: has no capacity to be frustrated and tends to give up.
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Speaker 3: The average kid who can be frustrated is just going
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Speaker 3: to learn a lot more in my classroom chairs.
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Speaker 2: It's interesting. The other day, our six year old turn seven,
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Speaker 2: and she loves puzzles, and we brought her this one
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Speaker 2: hundred piece puzzle. She's already got one, and she knows
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Speaker 2: how to do that with a She was doing it
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Speaker 2: four and five times a day, so I thought, we'll
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Speaker 2: just extend it and we'll get her a different one.
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Speaker 2: And I wasn't able to help her when she first
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Speaker 2: opened it, but she was so excited about it, and
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Speaker 2: she pulled it out with her cousin and they sat
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Speaker 2: down and they kind of they sat there probably for
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Speaker 2: about ten or fifteen minutes and realized that this was
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Speaker 2: just really hard, and because there was two of them,
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Speaker 2: they kind of got, you know, engaged in something else,
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Speaker 2: and they walked away. But that night she pulled me
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Speaker 2: back in and she said, Mom, can you help me
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Speaker 2: with the puzzle. So I sat down with her and
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Speaker 2: we worked on it together. And she knows, you know,
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Speaker 2: kind of how to do things, and so we worked
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Speaker 2: on it. You know, kind of systematically, and she worked
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Speaker 2: through it and we got it done well. The next
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Speaker 2: morning she asked me if I could help her again,
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Speaker 2: but I was I was doing some ironing and I
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Speaker 2: just wanted to get through a few more items before
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Speaker 2: I sat down with her, and I said, Mommy's just
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Speaker 2: going to you know, finish what she's doing here and
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Speaker 2: then I'll come and help here. And she got a
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Speaker 2: little bit frustrated by it. And the next thing, I
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Speaker 2: turned around and she the biggest smile on her vlie,
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Speaker 2: proud as punch. She'd actually completed the task, and she
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Speaker 2: was just she was just beaming. But I'm wondering, you know,
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Speaker 2: what do I do and what are the things that
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Speaker 2: I can actually say when my child isn't you know,
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Speaker 2: successful in that moment and they really, you know, really
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Speaker 2: struggling with it and are ready to give up. How
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Speaker 2: do I help them work through that?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So one of the things that I have done
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Speaker 3: a lot with parents is help them through you know,
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Speaker 3: when kids get a lot of directions from their parents,
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Speaker 3: they tend to have a really low tolerance for waiting,
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Speaker 3: you know, waiting very long for the answers. And so
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Speaker 3: there's this interesting weaning process that we can do where
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Speaker 3: when our kid, For example, I say kids are working
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Speaker 3: on a puzzle or homework or whatever, and they're like,
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Speaker 3: I need help. Someone come and help me. If you
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Speaker 3: can make a short term excuse and say something like
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Speaker 3: I'm working on dinner right now, I'm just chopping up
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Speaker 3: this stuff, and if you can just give me a
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Speaker 3: minute or so, I'll be right with you. But why
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Speaker 3: don't you read the instructions again? Why don't you look
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Speaker 3: at the picture again? Why don't you look for all
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Speaker 3: the edge pieces first? Sometimes that can be really helpful
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Speaker 3: with a puzzle, if you can help redirect them back
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Speaker 3: to the task and give them an interval, and if
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Speaker 3: nothing else, that interval helps them sit with that feeling
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Speaker 3: of frustration and helps them learn how to deal with it.
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Speaker 3: And of course we will go help. But what I
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Speaker 3: have found, especially as a teacher, is often that redirection
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Speaker 3: and sort of giving them a suggestion as to how
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Speaker 3: to re engage with the thing or maybe a new strategy.
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Speaker 3: Often by the time we get there to go help
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Speaker 3: them with it, they're like, never mind, stay away, I
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Speaker 3: figured it out on my own. I don't want your help.
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Speaker 3: So you know, there for some kids can be a
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Speaker 3: very real process of stretching that period of time out
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Speaker 3: so that they can get used to feeling the frustration
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Speaker 3: so that they have more of a tolerance for it.
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Speaker 3: But it's absolutely possible to do it even with older kids.
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Speaker 1: Kylie, I love that story, Jess. I love what you've
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Speaker 1: said there.
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Speaker 4: So what I would normally say to a parent in
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Speaker 4: that situation is you want to delay.
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Speaker 1: You want to say, as you indicated, I'm just doing this.
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Speaker 4: If you go and get started, I'll be there because
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Speaker 4: by pushing them back in there, they'll have another go.
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Speaker 4: Just you tell me, what do you think is the
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Speaker 4: first thing you can do? You want to just get
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Speaker 4: them going again. But something that you said there that
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Speaker 4: I've never thought of before, and it's really inspired me,
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Speaker 4: is if you just give them a hint, give them
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Speaker 4: a new strategy, redirect them that gives them what. I
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Speaker 4: can't remember who it was, someone wrote a book about
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Speaker 4: tiny wins. It was bj Fog, the guy at Stanford
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Speaker 4: who's behind all of the addictive technology stuff.
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Speaker 1: I'm sure you know who bj Fog is.
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Speaker 4: He talks about how we want to give people tiny
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Speaker 4: wins because as we do that, they have that sense
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Speaker 4: of competence, and with competence comes confidence and motivation, and
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Speaker 4: all of a sudden they're back in. It's classic self
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Speaker 4: determination theory kind of ideas. The redirection with the new
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Speaker 4: strategy is a really powerful idea that's just twigged for
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Speaker 4: my brain.
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Speaker 3: Well, think about younger kids and their executive you know,
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Speaker 3: younger kids, their frontal lobes not even hooked up yet,
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Speaker 3: and so for them, especially something like a puzzle, or
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Speaker 3: you know, with older kids, something like writing a research
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Speaker 3: report requires a bunch of smaller tasks in order to
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Speaker 3: get to the large tasks. So there's the note taking,
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Speaker 3: there's the outlining, there's the blah blah blah rough draft whatever.
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Speaker 3: So often so for in order to build kids what's
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Speaker 3: called self directed executive function, helping them figure out what
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Speaker 3: the small tasks are on the way to the big task,
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Speaker 3: whether that's a goal or an actual physical task. So
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Speaker 3: you could say to your kid, you know, with puzzles,
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Speaker 3: sometimes people you know, put the whole edge thing together
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Speaker 3: and then they find it's a lot easier to put
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Speaker 3: the middle together, and then the kid gets that feeling,
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Speaker 3: that shot of dopamine in the head, the head of
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Speaker 3: dopamine from Oh Wow, I put the whole outside together.
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Speaker 3: Now let's move on to the inside. It takes a
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Speaker 3: task that's normally overwhelming or you know, they just don't
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Speaker 3: know where to start with it, and breaks it down
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Speaker 3: into something that's easier to comprehend and easier to get
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Speaker 3: those small wins.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's bringing into small chunks and getting those tiny
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Speaker 4: wins as a result. We're going to take a quick
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Speaker 4: break in just a sick We want to find out
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Speaker 4: how chores can help children to fail and learn to
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Speaker 4: do life better. That's coming up in just a sec
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Speaker 4: with Jessica Lay, the author of The Gift of Failure,
9:59
Speaker 4: on the Happy Families podcasts.
10:01
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
10:03
Speaker 5: Our Screens Creating Tension at Home, tweens, teens and Screens
10:08
Speaker 5: is a webinar to guide families to healthy, safe superscreen solutions.
10:12
Speaker 5: Bye today at happy families dot com, dot au slash shop.
10:17
Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
10:19
Speaker 2: poor parent who just wants answers now, And today we're
10:22
Speaker 2: talking to Jessica Lay. We've had one conversation with her
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Speaker 2: already about her book, The Gift of Failure, and we
10:28
Speaker 2: are enjoying diving into how we can as parents help
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Speaker 2: our children work through this idea of failure.
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Speaker 4: Help I can be nothing, do nothing, go nowhere, be hopeless,
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Speaker 4: fail at everything, because that's good for your kid. We
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Speaker 4: just don't want we don't want you to succeed with that.
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Speaker 4: That's not what it's about at all. Kylie, you you
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Speaker 4: stumbled across something in Jess's book that really inspired you.
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Speaker 2: I love Jess that you talked about this idea and
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Speaker 2: importance of chores. Can you tell us what this has
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Speaker 2: to do with teaching our children about failure.
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Speaker 3: Well, first, I don't call them chores because I don't
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Speaker 3: know about you, because I don't want to do something
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Speaker 3: that's called a chore. I mean, you're set up for
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Speaker 3: it to sound horrible, right, so, and it also makes
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Speaker 3: it sound like it's something specific to the kid. Well,
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Speaker 3: we call them in our house or household duties because
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Speaker 3: they are part of being a part of the family.
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Speaker 3: Like you don't do them for money. So for example,
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Speaker 3: so there's no in our house, there's an allowance situation,
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Speaker 3: but it has nothing to do with doing household duties.
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Speaker 3: Household duties are things you do as part of being
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Speaker 3: a part of a family and sort of holding moving
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Speaker 3: the family forward as a unit. And there is actually
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Speaker 3: really good research to show that when kids are helping
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Speaker 3: out with the family, helping move the family forward, especially
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Speaker 3: during times of hardship, that kids tend to be less
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Speaker 3: emotionally damaged by challenges in the family. When kids are
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Speaker 3: feeling like they're even if it's something as small as
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Speaker 3: putting their dishes in the dishwasher or helping feed the dogs,
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Speaker 3: that they are a part of maintaining the face family
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Speaker 3: and they're really involved in the family structure. So and
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Speaker 3: by the way, there's a fantastic book called The Opposite
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Speaker 3: of Spoiled by Ron Lieber that is about raising kids
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Speaker 3: with you know, to deal with money, and he is
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Speaker 3: in total agreement. We do not pay kids to do
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Speaker 3: work around the house, but you give kids. You give
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Speaker 3: kids and allowance in order to help them learn about spending,
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Speaker 3: saving and giving and that and budgeting. And that's a
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Speaker 3: really so Ron Lieber's book, The Opposite Is Spoiled is
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Speaker 3: brilliant and I can't recommend it highly enough. So having
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Speaker 3: age appropriate tasks for kids and I actually break down
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Speaker 3: in the book what kids are capable of at all
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Speaker 3: the ages, along with what their cognitive development situation is,
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Speaker 3: what their manual dexterity situation is, what they're capable of
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Speaker 3: doing and at what age. And when you look at
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Speaker 3: that list, there's all kinds of things that even small
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Speaker 3: kids can be doing. And one of the fun things
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Speaker 3: about writing having written this book is people send me
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Speaker 3: videos of things that their kids are doing and are
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Speaker 3: so proud of. There was a dad sent me a
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Speaker 3: picture or a video of his maybe five year old
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Speaker 3: son and two year old daughter, and the five year
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Speaker 3: old son wanted to help with the laundry desperately, but
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Speaker 3: it was a top loading washing machine, and so you know,
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Speaker 3: he can't reach in there very well. So the little
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Speaker 3: boy had set it up so that his little sister
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Speaker 3: was supposed to hold onto his pant legs so that
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Speaker 3: if he were to fall in the washing machine, and
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Speaker 3: don't worry. The dad was right there, obviously, he was filming,
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Speaker 3: and so he said, you pull me out if I
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Speaker 3: get stuck, And so he would pull the pieces out
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Speaker 3: one at a time, hanging over the edge of the
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Speaker 3: washing machine, hand them to his sister, and his little
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Speaker 3: sister would put them in the dryer and then at
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Speaker 3: the end, it was really sweet. He didn't actually get stuck,
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Speaker 3: but he pretended like he got stuck so his little
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Speaker 3: sister could help him out, and she pulled him out
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Speaker 3: of the washing machine. And these moments like they're just
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Speaker 3: so proud of themselves, and we don't give them opportunities
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Speaker 3: to feel like a useful member of the family, a
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Speaker 3: member of the family that's pulling some weight, that has
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Speaker 3: a steak in the family and is not just some
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Speaker 3: precious object that we, you know, we give no responsibilities to.
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Speaker 4: In the Gift of failure, you've talked about a number
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Speaker 4: of things that are so beautifully aligned with I've got
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Speaker 4: a webinar called the Perils of Praise.
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Speaker 1: But can you just outline why do we not want.
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Speaker 4: To say good job, or good sharing, or good helping,
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Speaker 4: or good eating or good running or good.
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Speaker 1: Breathing to our children? Why do we need to back
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Speaker 1: off on the praise.
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Speaker 3: Well, for a couple of reasons. Number one, because it's
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Speaker 3: now just become white noise to them, Because especially kids
14:32
Speaker 3: who get told that all the time, it's just it's
14:35
Speaker 3: you know, they don't even hear it anymore. But and
14:37
Speaker 3: then on top of that, you know, if we're telling
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Speaker 3: them that all the time, that it's it's not a
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Speaker 3: valuable commodity anymore, right they you know, we tell them
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Speaker 3: that for everything. But as a teacher, one of the
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Speaker 3: things that I know is that the more specific the feedback,
14:50
Speaker 3: the more helpful it is. So and by the way,
14:53
Speaker 3: a lot of people misunderstand Carol Dwex's message about crazy
14:57
Speaker 3: and so they're they're very a very simplistic, Like I
15:02
Speaker 3: read the article on it, but didn't actually read the book.
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Speaker 3: Their understanding tends to be, you know, never tell your
15:07
Speaker 3: kids they're smart and only praise them for their effort,
15:10
Speaker 3: which is dumb. That's just not very helpful. So, you know, Mike,
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Speaker 3: common things in our house would be things like, you know, Sweetie,
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Speaker 3: I noticed with that math problem. You know, a month
15:20
Speaker 3: ago or six months ago, you would have just given
15:23
Speaker 3: up because that was really tough for you, but you
15:25
Speaker 3: would like stuck with that for like thirty minutes. I
15:28
Speaker 3: noticed that, and I'm so proud of you for that.
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Speaker 3: And the more specific the feedback is on whether it's
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Speaker 3: the actual performance itself or the effort that went into
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Speaker 3: the performance, the more useful it is. There's even research
15:40
Speaker 3: in education to show that when we give assignments where
15:43
Speaker 3: kids get no feedback, they're just worthless. They're waste of time.
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Speaker 3: Even if it's just practice, it's a worthless assignment. So
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Speaker 3: the more specific the feedback, the better.
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Speaker 1: I love that.
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Speaker 4: And I would add one more thing. Parents would do
15:55
Speaker 4: well to just say to the children.
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Speaker 1: How'd you feel.
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Speaker 4: We want to encourage the reflection because self oriented. When
16:02
Speaker 4: I'm praising myself, I believe it. When someone else praises me,
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Speaker 4: it can feel a little bit empty, it can feel
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Speaker 4: a little bit less helpful, or it can have undermining effects.
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Speaker 4: So that's just a little bonus tip there. Just we're
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Speaker 4: out of time. We've had such a great conversation. I
16:16
Speaker 4: feel like we've barely scratched the surface. So thank you,
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Speaker 4: so very, very very much for sharing what you have
16:22
Speaker 4: shared with us. The book is called The Gift of Failure,
16:26
Speaker 4: How the Best Parents Learn to let Go so that
16:29
Speaker 4: Children can succeed. It's been out for a couple of
16:31
Speaker 4: years now. It's a New York Times bestseller. It's been
16:33
Speaker 4: wonderfully successful, and.
16:35
Speaker 3: It's in fourteen languages. So English is not your first language,
16:39
Speaker 3: then heck go at it with everything from Vietnamese to
16:42
Speaker 3: Arabic to Italian, so out there and other languages too.
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Speaker 4: You can get it in any format you want, audiobook
16:49
Speaker 4: or ebook, or you can buy one of those old
16:51
Speaker 4: fashioned ones that you can fold down pages and highlight
16:53
Speaker 4: and scribble all over as well, which is what I've
16:55
Speaker 4: done with my one. It's been a delight to talk
16:57
Speaker 4: to you, Jessica. I feel like we've kind of become
17:00
Speaker 4: friends over the last little wile. We've been able to
17:02
Speaker 4: talk to you a few times. Now, you have a
17:05
Speaker 4: new book out that is really provocative and really intriguing.
17:10
Speaker 4: I wonder whether or not we could invite you to
17:12
Speaker 4: come back one more time to talk about your new book,
17:14
Speaker 4: because I think you think that parents would love to
17:16
Speaker 4: hear about that.
17:17
Speaker 3: Sure thing. I love talking about the new book. It
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Speaker 3: was product of a couple of years of research, so
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Speaker 3: I love talking about that stuff.
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Speaker 1: Awesome.
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Speaker 4: Well, we're excited about that. We'll look forward to having
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Speaker 4: you on again real soon to do that. The Happy
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Speaker 4: Family's podcast is produced by Justin Ruhlan from Bridge Media.
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Speaker 4: Craig Bruce is our executive producer, Kylie. If people want
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Speaker 4: to find out more about how they can make their
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Speaker 4: family happy, other than buying.
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Speaker 1: The gift of failure. Where should we send them?
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Speaker 2: They can go to happy families dot com. Today you