Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #770 Adulting for Teenagers with Julie Lythcott-Haims

Transcript

#770 Adulting for Teenagers with Julie Lythcott-Haims · 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: answers Now, good day. This is doctor Justin Coilson.
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Speaker 1: Every now and again on the Happy Families Podcast, we
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Speaker 1: get to talk to somebody who.
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Speaker 2: Is just amazing.
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Speaker 1: In fact, we talk to a lot of amazing people,
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Speaker 1: but well, this one is an absolute cracker. You might
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Speaker 1: have heard of Julie Lythcott Halmes. She believes in humans
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Speaker 1: and is deeply interested in.
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Speaker 2: What gets in our way.
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Speaker 1: She writes, she speaks, she teaches. She's a mentor, She's
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Speaker 1: an activist. She's also the New York Times best selling
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Speaker 1: author of How to Raise an Adult.
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Speaker 2: I have the book in my hand right now.
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Speaker 1: Break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kids
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Speaker 1: for success. Julie Lythcott Halmes as a number two. She
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Speaker 1: has degrees from Stanford, Harvard Law and California College of
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Speaker 1: the Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Black
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Speaker 1: Women's Health, Imperative Narrative Magazine, and on the Board of
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Speaker 1: Trustee at California College of the Arts. Also serves on
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Speaker 1: the advice boards of leanin Dot Org, the sir Ken
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Speaker 1: Robinson Foundation, and Baldwin for the arts. Lives in Palo Alto, California.
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Speaker 2: With her partner of thirty years.
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Speaker 1: They're two young adult children and her mum, and she's
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Speaker 1: a member of the Palo Alto City Council. How in
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Speaker 1: the world she found time to have a chat with me,
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Speaker 1: I do not know, but she joins me on the
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Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast today. In fact, something special is going
1:23
Speaker 1: on here at the moment. We're working on our next
1:26
Speaker 1: Happy Family's Summit. This is going to be the best
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Speaker 1: summit that we have ever done, bar none, and it's
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Speaker 1: all about teenagers. So I thought I would give you
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Speaker 1: a sneak peek of what our next summit is going
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Speaker 1: to be all about teens by inviting Julie Lithcott Haymes
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Speaker 1: to talk with me in the summit. And now I'm
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Speaker 1: going to give you the first little bit of what
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Speaker 1: that summit conversation sounds like, because oh my goodness, I
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Speaker 1: just think she's amazing.
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Speaker 3: Justin thank you for reaching across the Pacific Ocean to
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Speaker 3: find me here in californ from your beautiful Australia. And
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Speaker 3: how could I not say yes to an invitation to
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Speaker 3: be in part of a conversation about teens I'm delighted
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Speaker 3: to be with you and your listeners.
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Speaker 1: So, Julie, there are so many parents who are anticipating
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Speaker 1: this conversation because they're looking at their teens and they're wondering,
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Speaker 1: are they going to make it like they're going to
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Speaker 1: be adults just around the corner. They're going to be
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Speaker 1: eighteen years of age? But will they actually be able
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Speaker 1: to do the adult team that's necessary to survive and
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Speaker 1: thrive as an adult? Now, obviously it's a caricature, right,
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Speaker 1: I'm jesting, but only a little bit you've said, and
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Speaker 1: it's a quote. You're an adult if you're no longer
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Speaker 1: a child, but you're not yet dead?
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Speaker 2: Right?
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Speaker 1: But what's it take though to be an adult?
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Speaker 2: And why is this?
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Speaker 1: Why is it the wize adults often don't feel like one?
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Speaker 3: Okay, there's a lot in this question, no, sorry, so
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Speaker 3: let me try to get at it. So, first of all,
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Speaker 3: the definition is exactly that, it's a very practical definition.
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Speaker 3: Vive childhood. You're an adult an adults as you phrase
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Speaker 3: it in Australia, you're an adult and you're an adult
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Speaker 3: until you Once you've survived childhood, you're an adult until
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Speaker 3: you die. So I say it that bluntly to demystify it.
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Speaker 3: There isn't some special summit you climb and reach adulthood.
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Speaker 3: You are by definition, and adults when you're no longer child.
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Speaker 3: The caricature you know, are they going to make it?
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Speaker 3: Really speaks to the problem in the modern era of
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Speaker 3: not enough young people really feeling like adults or treated
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Speaker 3: like adults. When we adults adults, when we the parents
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Speaker 3: are so worried about will my child make it, that
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Speaker 3: we start to over compensate. We start to handle it
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Speaker 3: for them because we're worried they can't. We better smooth
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Speaker 3: the path that, paradoxically, our desire to accelerate them to
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Speaker 3: adulthood undermines their ability to get to adulthood in a
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Speaker 3: healthy manner themselves. So despite our fears, what we have
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Speaker 3: to do is say I figured it out, I learned
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Speaker 3: a thing or two, I handled my business, I fell
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Speaker 3: down and got back up. My kids need to go
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Speaker 3: through the same process so that they can be healthy adults.
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Speaker 3: And why do we in full blown gen x adulthood
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Speaker 3: not necessarily feel like adults. I think it's because there's
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Speaker 3: this myth that it is the arrival on a mountaintop,
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Speaker 3: and we're supposed to have all our stuff together. I'm
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Speaker 3: not sure if I'm allowed to swear on your podcast,
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Speaker 3: so until you tell me otherwise, I won't. We're supposed
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Speaker 3: to have all our stuff together, We're supposed to be
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Speaker 3: amazing accomplished. That's a false narrative. Adulting is simply knowing, Hey,
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Speaker 3: it's on me, get myself up in the morning, handle
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Speaker 3: my business, my bills, my belongings, my relationships. I'm not
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Speaker 3: going to be perfect, but I'm going to give it
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Speaker 3: my go, my all, and I'm going to learn from
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Speaker 3: my mistakes and keep going. I think that's what it
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Speaker 3: boils down to.
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Speaker 1: I've got a whole list of questions that I'll want
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Speaker 1: to ask you, but I'm going to go off scripts
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Speaker 1: straight away because of what you've said, You've prompted something
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Speaker 1: in me that there are two points that have come up,
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Speaker 1: and I think we should discuss each of them. The
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Speaker 1: first is a meta analysis that came out some years
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Speaker 1: ago now that looked at the relationship between parental anxiety
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Speaker 1: and control, and what they basically found is the more
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Speaker 1: anxious we are as parents, the more controlling we are,
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Speaker 1: and as a byproduct of our control, our children become
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Speaker 1: more anxious, which facilitates increased anxious anxiety in us, which
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Speaker 1: makes us more controlling. So there's this relationship between anxiety
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Speaker 1: and control. Parent anxiety, child anxiety both go up, control
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Speaker 1: goes up. And what I'm hearing you essentially say is
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Speaker 1: we're anxious about our kids' ability to become adults. We're
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Speaker 1: looking at them as teenagers and going, oh my goodness,
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Speaker 1: this kid. They cannot pick up after themselves. They have
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Speaker 1: no motivation, they can't pull it together. How are they
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Speaker 1: ever going to do this? And our anxiety leads us
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Speaker 1: to do things for them to I guess coddle them.
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Speaker 1: That was the word you used, guessing leaning on the
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Speaker 1: work of Jonathan Hate and Greg Lukanov, we coddled them,
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Speaker 1: We support them, and thus we, paradoxically in our if
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Speaker 1: it's to help them, cripple them exactly.
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Speaker 3: So you've just summed it all up. And yes, Greg
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Speaker 3: Lucianoff was actually a student of mine back in the
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Speaker 3: day when he was at Stanford Law School. So there's
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Speaker 3: also a wonderful article that your community should know about
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Speaker 3: if they don't already. It was in the Atlantic magazine
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Speaker 3: three years ago. May twenty twenty headline cover article Anxiety
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Speaker 3: and Children. It draws on the work of Ellie Lebowitz,
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Speaker 3: a professor at Yale, who speaks to how our inability
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Speaker 3: as parents to handle the discomfort of our children leads
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Speaker 3: us to over accommodate normal and natural childhood circumstances and fears.
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Speaker 3: By over accommodating, we're signaling, hey, kid, that thing you
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Speaker 3: fear is such a dire thing that we will curate
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Speaker 3: your environment so you never have to confront it, which
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Speaker 3: turns a natural fear into full blown anxiety. When I
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Speaker 3: read that article, I it was just mortified because one
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Speaker 3: of the examples was when our kid is a little
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Speaker 3: bit of a picky eater, so we make sure they
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Speaker 3: always have the food they want, Like my son only
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Speaker 3: eats white food, so I will put the pasta in
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Speaker 3: my purse and take it with me to the social event.
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Speaker 3: And I did that with my seven year old, and
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Speaker 3: I was like, shoot that I was trying to be helpful.
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Speaker 3: I was trying to be loving. And the advice is
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Speaker 3: do the converse. Empathize with the fear, you know, sit
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Speaker 3: with the feelings of discomfort, but don't try to make
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Speaker 3: the feelings go away, simply be empathetic and then empower
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Speaker 3: them by saying, hey, buddy, I can see this is
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Speaker 3: hard for you. I don't know what it's like to be,
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Speaker 3: but I see this as hard, and I love you
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Speaker 3: and I'm so sorry it's hard. But you know what,
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Speaker 3: I also know one day it won't be this hard.
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Speaker 3: It's that empathy and empower that apparently allows them to
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Speaker 3: tolerate their feelings. And of course we have to regulate
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Speaker 3: ourselves to be the parents who are not flipping out.
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Speaker 3: And the fact that we have such anxiety and fears
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Speaker 3: about our own kids and about life in general, means
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Speaker 3: we don't want to sit with our disk comfort. So
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Speaker 3: all of this comes back to we parents need a
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Speaker 3: lot of therapy, and if we could get good therapy,
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Speaker 3: we could better support our own children.
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Speaker 1: I feel like you've been reading my book and you've
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Speaker 1: just summarized it in like two minutes.
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Speaker 2: It's brilliant.
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Speaker 1: The second point that I wanted to make is a
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Speaker 1: little bit of a departure from that. It's somewhat adjacent
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Speaker 1: and moving into perhaps why this control is so high. Julie,
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Speaker 1: I do this thing when I'm running my workshops and presentations.
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Speaker 1: I'll ask all the parents in the room who want
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Speaker 1: their kids to fulfill their potential to raise their hands,
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Speaker 1: hands up, everyone who wants their kids to fulfill their potential,
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Speaker 1: and you can bet one hundred percent of those parents
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Speaker 1: put their hands up. Everybody understandably says yeah, absolutely, And
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Speaker 1: I point that out one hundred percent if you put
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Speaker 1: your hands up. And then I'll ask, can you please
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Speaker 1: put up your hand now if you have fulfilled your potential?
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Speaker 1: And nobody ever puts their hands up, right, I mean,
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Speaker 1: this is kind of and I'll I'll point out quite clearly,
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Speaker 1: no matter how good your regime is, no matter how
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Speaker 1: much you have done. I look at your regime, Julien,
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Speaker 1: It's like, Wow, this is a person who has achieved
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Speaker 1: more than most people on the planet will ever achieve.
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Speaker 1: And yet if I was to ask you if you've
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Speaker 1: fulfilled your potential, my guess is you'd say there's still
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Speaker 1: a favorit of stuff I really need to do here.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely right, which again gets to there isn't a
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Speaker 3: summit that we're trying to reach and say we're done.
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Speaker 3: Yeah right, I have succeeded. I am an adult. No,
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Speaker 3: I think the joy in life. The exquisiteness of life
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Speaker 3: comes when we recognize, wait a minute, I can keep learning.
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Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I can keep growing. You mean, until
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Speaker 3: I take my last breath, I can still acquire new knowledge,
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Speaker 3: become more useful and helpful to others. You know, have
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Speaker 3: a greater impact than I'm currently having in ways that
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Speaker 3: are meaningful to me. You know, I don't see that
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Speaker 3: as drudgery. I see that as this credible opportunity and
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Speaker 3: speaks to the fact that this is an ongoing It's
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Speaker 3: not about a destination. It's the journey.
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Speaker 1: So here's the question for every parent who's listening to
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Speaker 1: this conversation. A lot of us as adults will say, Okay, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I get it, and ongoing development and personal growth and
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Speaker 1: improvement is part of my life and I'm trying to
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Speaker 1: do that. My question for you, based on the book
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Speaker 1: that you've written or the books that you've written, is
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Speaker 1: how do we teach that to our kids when we
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Speaker 1: so badly just want them to fulfill their potential.
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Speaker 3: Oh, we have to model it, that's the thing. Right,
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Speaker 3: So let me say this right off the bat. We
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Speaker 3: are our kids' biggest role models. Duh, Right, They live
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Speaker 3: with us we feed them, we shelter them, we take
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Speaker 3: them everywhere. We are their biggest role models. Whether we
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Speaker 3: are their best role models is a function of you know,
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Speaker 3: how are we behaving. Are we demonstrating what a work
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Speaker 3: ethic looks like? Are we demonstrating that adult figure out
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Speaker 3: what they're good at and what they love and do
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Speaker 3: that work and behave as that person? Right? Or are
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Speaker 3: we miserable in our jobs going through the motions and
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Speaker 3: our relationships. Right? They're watching us constantly, so we role
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Speaker 3: model it. What we do is we sit down at
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Speaker 3: the dinner table and we say, you know, we want
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Speaker 3: you to fulfill your potential, but you're not going to
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Speaker 3: fulfill your potential at age seventeen or twenty five or
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Speaker 3: thirty nine, ay your parents. At fifty five, I'm still
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Speaker 3: a work in progress. So fulfill your potential is a
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Speaker 3: curiosity about where's my learning edge? And I want you
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Speaker 3: to have that curiosity at twelve, and I want you
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Speaker 3: to have it at twenty two and thirty two and
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Speaker 3: forty two, just as I have it here, you know,
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Speaker 3: as the elder in your life.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: I think we have those conversations, but it's not just words.
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Speaker 3: We demonstrate the behaviors that really are our proof that
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Speaker 3: we are walking the walk.
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Speaker 1: Julie, you have a list of life skills that you
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Speaker 1: say demonstrate maturity the capacity to adult. And I'm using
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Speaker 1: adult as a verb there rather than a noun. Sure,
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Speaker 1: so took us through this list of skills that demonstrate
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Speaker 1: that a person is capable of adulting.
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Speaker 3: Well, I gotta tell you, this book came out in
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Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. Okay, it's eight years old, and I look
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Speaker 3: back at this list and I chuckle now because so
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Speaker 3: much has changed. And of course, if it came out,
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Speaker 3: as you know, as an author, if it came out
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Speaker 3: eight years ago, I wrote it ten years ago. And
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Speaker 3: it feels in some ways out of date or absurd
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Speaker 3: that I would say, you know, an eighteen year old
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Speaker 3: must be able to talk to strangers, must be able
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Speaker 3: to find their way around campus or a new town,
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Speaker 3: must be able to manage assignments and workload and deadlines.
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Speaker 3: Like I felt like these were obvious things in twenty twelve,
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Speaker 3: twenty thirteen when I wrote this. Now, you know, you
12:54
Speaker 3: look at this list, you like, really, an eighteen year old?
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Speaker 3: Are you sure?
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Speaker 2: You know?
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Speaker 3: When I wrote this a decade ago, I was thinking, well,
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Speaker 3: they could be in the military, or they could be
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Speaker 3: in the workplace, or they could be on a university campus,
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Speaker 3: and they got to be able to do these things. Now,
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Speaker 3: I would say, with a little bit more nuance, barring
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Speaker 3: significant special needs, barring significant mental health challenges, barring significant neurodivergence,
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Speaker 3: these are some of the skills we should hope that
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Speaker 3: they would have. So I would be a little bit
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Speaker 3: less frankly authoritarian in my writing style, a little bit
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Speaker 3: less bossy, and a little bit more nuanced. But nevertheless,
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Speaker 3: the list holds. And here's why we their parents. Nobody's
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Speaker 3: gonna want me to say this. I'm just gonna say
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Speaker 3: it because I'm blunt and I try to speak truth.
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Speaker 3: We're going to be dead one day, justin, and we
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Speaker 3: have done our kids a disservice. If we held onto
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Speaker 3: them every step of the way and then we die,
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Speaker 3: then they're bewildered and floundering and lost. Okay. Our job
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Speaker 3: is to teach them everything. Let life also teach them
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Speaker 3: things before we die, so that we can have confidence
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Speaker 3: with our dying breath. My kid is going to be Okay.
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Speaker 1: That is the beginning of my conversation with Julie Lithcott Hayms,
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Speaker 1: the author of How to Raise an Adult, the New
14:20
Speaker 1: York Times best seller. She's written a whole lot more
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Speaker 1: than that as well. But oh my goodness, I can't
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Speaker 1: wait for you to hear about more for our next
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Speaker 1: Happy Family's Summit. It's going to be called, oh, you
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Speaker 1: know what. I'm not going to tell you what it's
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Speaker 1: going to be called yet, but it's all about raising teenagers,
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Speaker 1: the challenges, the good stuff, the bad stuff. Our lineup
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Speaker 1: is not just impressive, it is full of globally renowned
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Speaker 1: experts and they have got so much to share. If
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Speaker 1: you're raising teens, you are going to love this summit.
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Speaker 1: More to come over the next couple of months as
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Speaker 1: we get everything lined up, get everything prepared for now, though,
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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Julie. The Happy
14:55
Speaker 1: Family's podcast is produced.
14:57
Speaker 2: By Justin Rolanin from Bridge Media.
14:58
Speaker 1: Craig Bruce is our executive and if you want more
15:01
Speaker 1: info about making your family happier and our upcoming summit,
15:05
Speaker 1: make sure that you follow us on our Facebook page
15:08
Speaker 1: at doctor Justin Corson's Happy Families