Speaker 1: No team has consciously wanted this change is to happen,
Speaker 1: which causes a lot of stress. So when we start
Speaker 1: to recognize this is an emerging at all. But there
Speaker 1: are some things that they're going to learn from the
Speaker 1: other bit is we've got to work out how am
Speaker 1: I going to have the conversation because I actually don't
Speaker 1: know an awful lot about babing.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms. We would like to
Speaker 2: acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the traditional
Speaker 2: custodians of this land, and pay our respects to the elders,
Speaker 2: both past and present.
Speaker 3: I'm Cam Dado, I'm Ali Dado.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick thought, quick thought for you, honey. Interesting that
Speaker 2: we are recording today, that this is the day our
Speaker 2: youngest is experiencing her final, her last dat of school. Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: we will no longer be parents of children in high
Speaker 2: school or school. She might go on, well, she'll might
Speaker 2: go on to tertiary education. So how do you feel
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But UNI parents are not involved in the slightest
Speaker 3: either there's no different there's no book weekday, or there's
Speaker 3: no festivals that you go and volunteer at.
Speaker 4: And I will miss it terribly.
Speaker 3: I will miss it terribly, the amount of joy that
Speaker 3: I had working at the kids' schools and being part
Speaker 3: of the parent community and organizing some of the fairs.
Speaker 3: And I loved every second of it. Loved our kids
Speaker 3: in our school years. I thought it was so much fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we made some great friends, yes too along
Speaker 2: the way. Yes, I remember that the school they went
Speaker 2: to in the States, just being around some of those
Speaker 2: dads and doing the working bees, building the play structures,
Speaker 2: painting the flaws in that hall and doing all those
Speaker 2: and you know, you're in the brick at that school.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a community.
Speaker 3: It's a community that you know, it's hard to find
Speaker 3: that again in those school years. You can make you
Speaker 3: make friends for lifetimes, you know, in those school communities.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I'm I'm glad that.
Speaker 3: She's so delighted and happy, and I'm super proud of her,
Speaker 3: and yeah, but I'm sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of It does remind me of that
Speaker 2: doctor Zeus quote, don't be sad that it's over, be
Speaker 2: glad that it happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, totally totally.
Speaker 2: Our guest today is has been of huge assistance to
Speaker 2: parents and children for a long long time many well.
Speaker 2: She's often referred to as the Queen of common Sense.
Speaker 2: Maggie Dent has become one of Australia's favorite parenting authors,
Speaker 2: educators and podcasters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've been wanting to have Maggie on for a
Speaker 3: while and she's got a particular interest in the early years,
Speaker 3: adolescents and resilience which I love that word, and is
Speaker 3: just such a boy champion, which is just delightful. She's
Speaker 3: the mother of four sons, of course, and a very
Speaker 3: grateful grandmother. And Maggie hosts the good Enough Dad podcast
Speaker 3: and has hosted six seasons of the award winning ABC
Speaker 3: podcast Parental as Anything Classic and in twenty twenty one
Speaker 3: she also released a book of the same.
Speaker 2: Name, and this year she has released her What We've
Speaker 2: Discovered is her final parenting book, Help Me Help My Teen,
Speaker 2: Supporting our teens through tough times. Let's welcome into the bathroom,
Speaker 2: the legend Maggie Dent. Maggie, welcome to separate bathrooms. We've
Speaker 2: been fans of you for a long time.
Speaker 5: Indeed, that's pretty nice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I know they call you. What do they
Speaker 4: call you?
Speaker 5: There's a luck queen of common sense. A common sense
Speaker 5: is that just a really nice type.
Speaker 2: Is there pressure? Is there pressure? Being the queen of
Speaker 2: common sense, if you do something a little, you know,
Speaker 2: you get the brain just goes. You know, you have
Speaker 2: tond no.
Speaker 1: Pressure because I see everything from both angles, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? I can see it's this beautiful
Speaker 1: logical reasoning that I got from my dad. Plus I'm
Speaker 1: a country girl who's raised in the bush, and we
Speaker 1: just look at stuff and go, well, that's a dumb
Speaker 1: ass idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes like sometimes it's better to plow around the stump.
Speaker 3: That's sort of that's stuff.
Speaker 1: God, you've got it right, Like just leave it right
Speaker 1: there or else. As I often say, everyone's doing the
Speaker 1: best they can, right, we really are. No one gets
Speaker 1: up and says, how can I be a lousy parent today?
Speaker 1: We really have the best intentions. Yeah, And I'm totally
Speaker 1: passionate about the fact that there's no perfect in parenting.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to me or know that without it,
Speaker 1: it's just good enough. And then you know, when they
Speaker 1: get older and they've got their own family, say look
Speaker 1: back at you and go, God, how did you do it?
Speaker 5: That's good enough?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you make mistakes, you learn from them. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: don't learn from them, but.
Speaker 5: And you do them again.
Speaker 4: I've made it to.
Speaker 3: Adult, hold in the hood and they still like you.
Speaker 4: I think that is that's the best thing. It's like,
Speaker 4: there's my trophy. They still want to hang out with me.
Speaker 2: We talk about in acting, you get a you know,
Speaker 2: each each shot is a take, and then you get
Speaker 2: you have missed takes, you know, so they're like, get
Speaker 2: another shot at can we just do that again?
Speaker 5: One more shot?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, You've got us on a good day or
Speaker 2: on an interesting day. Our youngest daughter it's her last
Speaker 2: day of school. So now we've got three kids who
Speaker 2: are out of school. School, So we were just chatting
Speaker 2: about that before and any advice for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just got to drop a bit of a
Speaker 1: clanger here for you, because we often feel you know that,
Speaker 1: you know, we just got to focus until o're eighteen
Speaker 1: and then they're magically an adult and it's just not
Speaker 1: bloody true.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: So what you've got now is one of the riskiest
Speaker 1: windows is eighteen to twenty four.
Speaker 5: Leaving home, they actually.
Speaker 1: Feel more adult like, but we've still got a capacity
Speaker 1: for being led astray or doing what their friends want
Speaker 1: them to do, or you know, not step up and
Speaker 1: be brave when they need to be.
Speaker 5: And we've got a generation of around.
Speaker 1: This age of a heightened level of social anxiety, partly COVID,
Speaker 1: partly too much time online, and some of them are
Speaker 1: too scared to actually go out into the wide world.
Speaker 5: And there is I mean, this is how weird the
Speaker 5: world's become.
Speaker 1: Apparently there is you know, they actually feel safer in
Speaker 1: their bedroom, in their social you know, connections and friendships
Speaker 1: than the real world. So there's a we used to
Speaker 1: have fomo what do I miss out on when out
Speaker 1: in the real world?
Speaker 5: Now it's fomo.
Speaker 1: Online and it's joemo in the real world, which is
Speaker 1: the joy of missing out up because I'd actually prefer
Speaker 1: to stay home anyway.
Speaker 5: And how weird is this?
Speaker 1: There are actually apps that help your teen make excuses
Speaker 1: for not turning up that doesn't offend them. What I know, right,
Speaker 1: see how different the world is from where you were sixteen,
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen, and God knows me, heavens that's the
Speaker 1: Dark ages. But you can see how it has changed
Speaker 1: so much and why parents can find it's so damn
Speaker 1: confusing because in just that sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty year difference.
Speaker 5: Wow, what did the world do? Yes?
Speaker 2: Why that blows me away that we actually have an
Speaker 2: app to give you excuses. It's like you can't even
Speaker 2: think of your own excuse anymore. There was that article
Speaker 2: you probably saw this years ago. It was on the
Speaker 2: cover of Time magazine. It was called, is Google making
Speaker 2: a stupid Yes? You know that we're having to Google everything.
Speaker 2: I mean people on phones like, oh, I know, yeah,
Speaker 2: some and so wrote that song, or you know, it's
Speaker 2: like we go to Google straight away for all our intel.
Speaker 3: I know, because sometimes I want people to just give
Speaker 3: me a minute and see if I can remember the
Speaker 3: actor's name. I'm like, hang on a minute, hang on,
Speaker 3: let's see if I can get it. But people are
Speaker 3: already going, yeah, yeah it was Tom Jones. I was like, ah,
Speaker 3: damn it, it was right, No, yeah, absolutely right, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And then of course AI pops in and if Google
Speaker 1: was making is dumber, what the heck's that doing? Like seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can actually.
Speaker 5: Ask it to write a piece about all.
Speaker 1: My philosophies around parenting and they'd cover every one of
Speaker 1: my ten books in exactly the number of words you
Speaker 1: give it. And I think, what are we doing with
Speaker 1: upper school education? Like why the hell do we have
Speaker 1: to remember, you know, facts from ancient Egypt and how
Speaker 1: it applied.
Speaker 5: AI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maggie, this is what so body, our youngest say.
Speaker 2: This is what she's exactly what she said to me,
Speaker 2: like two weeks ago, she was she had her trials
Speaker 2: for HSC, and she's doing her HSC. She doesn't really
Speaker 2: need to do it because she's going to go into hairdressing,
Speaker 2: so she's going to get into doing an apprenticeship. And
Speaker 2: then she said to me, I go, well, how are
Speaker 2: you doing with your exam study for modern history? And
Speaker 2: she said, Dad, I don't think. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: going to matter whether the Mesopotamian army and the takeover
Speaker 2: and what they did through Persia is going to really
Speaker 2: matter when I'm putting foils in missiles mcguila Cuddy's hair.
Speaker 5: And I said, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought about stand up?
Speaker 1: But also one other thing in that cam is there
Speaker 1: way wiser than we often give them for an even
Speaker 1: even pre digital I think we often you know, they
Speaker 1: get you know, they get presented as really, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're doing, and they make a
Speaker 1: lis misakes and they're grooty and grumpy. I could always
Speaker 1: find a pathway into a deeper conversation with a team.
Speaker 1: That's really was one of the big motivations with the
Speaker 1: book is if you can set it up in a
Speaker 1: way honest to goodness, they they're actually incredibly reflective because
Speaker 1: they've learned stuff way earlier than many of us did.
Speaker 1: But also, yeah, there's a different awareness of the whole world.
Speaker 1: You know, our global community really impacts them because they
Speaker 1: well they're part of a global one.
Speaker 5: Gollye.
Speaker 1: I grew up on a farm and didn't even have
Speaker 1: a TV, so I didn't even know what was going
Speaker 1: on in the world at alone, you know, in Perth,
Speaker 1: which was only two hours away. So their awareness and
Speaker 1: understanding of stuff, and I think they do talk about
Speaker 1: it among their friends. Yes, you know, it's not all this.
Speaker 1: You know what we see they're all they're worried about
Speaker 1: is how they look or you know, they're watching porn.
Speaker 1: There is a depth to them, yes, and even the
Speaker 1: you know, the tricky kids that I worked with, the
Speaker 1: ones who were really struggling in school, environments, you peel
Speaker 1: under that layer you know they're so judged, they think
Speaker 1: they're all useless, and dive under that and you can
Speaker 1: still have a deep conversation, but how the world could
Speaker 1: be better or who do you think is really important
Speaker 1: at changing things for young people in your school environment?
Speaker 1: They will go with you and that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: just one of those beautiful things. And so for us
Speaker 1: as you as parents every now and then, you know,
Speaker 1: if you create the environment and the situation in a
Speaker 1: respectful way, you can ask some really big questions and
Speaker 1: they will give you really honest feedback, also respectfully.
Speaker 4: I was asked to speak on.
Speaker 3: A panel about one of the sort of not necessarily
Speaker 3: social media, but an app, you know what the kids,
Speaker 3: A lot of the kids use for interaction with each other.
Speaker 3: And so I went straight to body to say, you know,
Speaker 3: ask her questions about it because I don't have the app,
Speaker 3: and she's like, I don't stand where they don't have
Speaker 3: teens on the panel. Yes, right, She's like it affects us,
Speaker 3: like it's and all of her everything I asked her
Speaker 3: was so well thought out. She knew the dangers of it,
Speaker 3: she knew the plus sides of it. She knew what
Speaker 3: it was, what was occurring with it. It was just
Speaker 3: I'm like, you've got this completely covered, Like.
Speaker 5: I don't have to every about you at all.
Speaker 1: That was what was beautiful when I did, because I
Speaker 1: always do a survey, you know. I did it from
Speaker 1: boys to men. I asked the guys and the boys,
Speaker 1: and a beautiful one and early part of the book
Speaker 1: where the teen sort of said, look, thanks just for
Speaker 1: asking us. Most people write about us but never ask us,
Speaker 1: you know, And I mean, how can we possibly without
Speaker 1: their feedback?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: You know, when I.
Speaker 1: Was teaching all those years ago, god, it was a
Speaker 1: long time ago, getting feedback off my students was not
Speaker 1: something we were taught at university, right. You know, I
Speaker 1: would have given them an opportunity of the end of
Speaker 1: a topic that i'd done, particularly in the upper school classrooms,
Speaker 1: I'd sit them all to circle on the floor with
Speaker 1: the lights out, and so let's get real here, I
Speaker 1: want to get some feedback on how you felt I
Speaker 1: covered that part of the course in this part here?
Speaker 1: How could I have done it better? And that just
Speaker 1: wasn't heard of, right, Yeah, But how did I improve.
Speaker 5: As a teacher?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: The feedback from the students.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that shows great humility on your part
Speaker 2: as well. Hey, look, we spent a quarter of a
Speaker 2: century living away from Australia, so there's a lot of
Speaker 2: cultural things that we missed out on and Maggie Dent
Speaker 2: is part of that and so, you know, but we've
Speaker 2: caught up. We've caught up, but there are other people
Speaker 2: that that are not haven't boarded the Maggie Dent train.
Speaker 4: So all on board.
Speaker 2: Can you just give us a little little bit about
Speaker 2: your journey and how did you come to be this
Speaker 2: this person who's one of Australia's favorites.
Speaker 5: I feel like Thomas. Yeah, well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so obviously you've talked about being a teacher and
Speaker 2: that was so long ago.
Speaker 4: But I'm of four boys. That's a big learning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course you have life experience, but how did
Speaker 2: it all sort of get to this point in a n.
Speaker 5: I guess I was raised to be quite curious.
Speaker 1: My dad was an agricultural scientist, So even though we
Speaker 1: were on the farm, which doesn't look like you're going
Speaker 1: to learn a lot, he was always kind of posturing
Speaker 1: questions and encouraging the curiosity in my mind.
Speaker 5: And I was an avid.
Speaker 1: Reader, so I was always you know, but I also
Speaker 1: recognized I was born that the kid that's the observer, right,
Speaker 1: even from a little age, watching growing up and thinking wow,
Speaker 1: on Earth would you do that anyway for teaching? And
Speaker 1: then I realized, okay, I'll go back to the intensive
Speaker 1: breeding program. So I taught for five years and then
Speaker 1: I had an intensive breeding program. And while I was
Speaker 1: doing that, I also, you know, I thought I needed
Speaker 1: to do something around the ages, not full time work,
Speaker 1: so I volunteered it the Albany Hospice, and I was
Speaker 1: particularly good at supporting people who are facing death, and
Speaker 1: I ended up being a death dueler, which was not
Speaker 1: on my list of things in year ten. But that
Speaker 1: journey of understanding what is you know, one of the
Speaker 1: toughest things that we experienced as a human.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: Then I ended up in funerals, and then I ended
Speaker 1: up becoming an authorized marriage celebrant. So I've done over
Speaker 1: a thousand weddings and two hundred and fifty funerals.
Speaker 5: It's about humans and.
Speaker 1: Listening to humans and their stories and their pain and
Speaker 1: their suffering, and then when you apply the science over
Speaker 1: the top of it, you often see there's a layer
Speaker 1: that matches. And then when I stepped out of the classroom,
Speaker 1: I just realized, I think it's more important that I
Speaker 1: helped the troubled kids then teach kids how to write
Speaker 1: a paragraph which somebody else could do.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So I did a postgrade diploma in cancing and therapy,
Speaker 1: and then kind of a year or two into that,
Speaker 1: I realized I needed to work with a bunch of
Speaker 1: parents who had very similar issues with their teenagers at
Speaker 1: the time. So we had a little mini seminar and
Speaker 1: the feedback from them was cheers, you make so much sense.
Speaker 5: That just makes sense.
Speaker 1: So then I burnt out, as you do when you
Speaker 1: work too hard and you want to save every teenager
Speaker 1: that you can. So I transferred some of my notes
Speaker 1: for my professional learning for teachers into a book, and
Speaker 1: that was my first book, which go on laugh about this.
Speaker 1: This is the title of my first book in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, Ready Saving our Children from our chaotic world,
Speaker 1: teaching children the magic of silence and stillness, Like what.
Speaker 5: The want chaotic? I want to buy that chaotic.
Speaker 1: So then years later, let's something else. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing, which is interesting is one of my adult sons,
Speaker 1: because I was going to schools and running seminars for parents,
Speaker 1: and one of my boys just said one day, look.
Speaker 5: Mum, he's the lawyer. One pretty smart.
Speaker 1: I said, Mum, do you know I pay fifty bucks
Speaker 1: to go and listen to Kevin Bloody Wilson at the pub.
Speaker 1: Why don't you charge people to come and listen to
Speaker 1: your seminos? So they don't just they can come if
Speaker 1: they don't belong to a school, right and yeah, and
Speaker 1: that also has evolved into and then you know that
Speaker 1: whole space only women to start with. Yep, but I
Speaker 1: have got apparently a bit of a knack of you know,
Speaker 1: making people laugh what they learn, and I take the
Speaker 1: piss out of men and women, so good way to learn.
Speaker 1: Often we can have up to forty percent of dads.
Speaker 1: But it also was at the time when dads were
Speaker 1: starting to turn up with their big, beautiful hearts, wanting
Speaker 1: to be team parents, wanting to know how they could
Speaker 1: do stuff differently to their own dads. And that's it's
Speaker 1: been a very special part of my work, you know,
Speaker 1: working with dads.
Speaker 3: It's probably going to be a probably be too hard
Speaker 3: a question to answer, but I'll ask it anyway. Do
Speaker 3: you remember any one defining family or child or parent
Speaker 3: that has stuck with you all these years.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's easy. So it's the.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful boy called Matthew who I taught in
Speaker 1: one of my English classes, who was in year nine,
Speaker 1: and he was a literate and I wasn't prepared at
Speaker 1: university for a literate kids who couldn't read or write
Speaker 1: my English class. But he wasn't the one that wanted
Speaker 1: to mess around and misbehavior.
Speaker 5: It was just really quiet and he was just the
Speaker 5: sweetest boy.
Speaker 1: And you know, to shorten the story, one day I
Speaker 1: dropped him home and I had a conversation with him
Speaker 1: away from school to find out he had a solo
Speaker 1: mum and an older brother, and he was just this
Speaker 1: incredibly It was like talking to somebody really smart and wise. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back in class the next week, showed a video about dots.
Speaker 1: I was trying to introduce you prejudice and stuff, and
Speaker 1: I asked THI everyone what it was about, and even
Speaker 1: my brightest girls had no idea just about dots and that.
Speaker 1: Matthew leant back and just said, oh, miss, I know
Speaker 1: what that's about. It it's about color prejudice where people
Speaker 1: think they're better than others because of the color of
Speaker 1: their skin. But we're not all. We're all really just
Speaker 1: one fourteen years of age, completely literate, and we just
Speaker 1: gathered around that lad that year. We helped him put
Speaker 1: his voice onto even those days we had to record
Speaker 1: it on a tape machine what and then onto paper.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, moving on, he left school obviously early and
Speaker 1: really struggled, ended up with some mental health issues, drug addiction,
Speaker 1: got into marijuana, and when I ran into his mum
Speaker 1: many years later, I learned that he had died by
Speaker 1: suicide at twenty three, and it was I realized that
Speaker 1: was a moment that I felt, we've just lost the
Speaker 1: world lost someone special. Yeah, and partly it was because
Speaker 1: of what happened in the school system, but the rest
Speaker 1: of the world also, And that was where I thought,
Speaker 1: nai every single you know, kid matters, whether they're clever
Speaker 1: or they're not. And that's kind of you know, we
Speaker 1: know that the you know, the the number of our
Speaker 1: kids who are choosing to leave our world is way
Speaker 1: too high. The number one killer of fourteen to twenty
Speaker 1: five year olds is suicide. We can change that by
Speaker 1: simply being better humans around them and we have to
Speaker 1: stop punishing and shaming mainly boys before they're six or seven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, in distilling your sort of parenting philosophy, is
Speaker 3: that sort of it? Is it about being able to raise?
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: Is it just about raising children in kindness and respect?
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: But I guess that's that hard thing, isn't it. If
Speaker 3: you weren't raised that way? You've got to like strip it,
Speaker 3: strip yourself back to be able to raise your child
Speaker 3: in a different way and even understand that you were
Speaker 3: raised without respect and kindness because it's your norm. So
Speaker 3: you're just teaching what you know. So where do we
Speaker 3: get stuck in and change the direction for these kids?
Speaker 4: How do we do it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's really interesting, isn't that what children need has
Speaker 1: never changed?
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right, it's just the world around our kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so there's a couple of factors that play into that,
Speaker 1: because today's parents are really aware that you know, hitting,
Speaker 1: hurting your kids actually doesn't necessarily improve the behavior.
Speaker 5: But what it does do is it damages the relationship.
Speaker 1: And we now know how important having a safe base
Speaker 1: to land, which of course is a big theme in
Speaker 1: my book of It's Not Your Parents where's a safe lighthouse.
Speaker 5: Figure who you can go to.
Speaker 1: So the big thing I think it's we just can't
Speaker 1: blame you know that all these social changes where you know,
Speaker 1: parents have to work much harder and longer hours. Kids
Speaker 1: spend many more hours in childcare than they ever did.
Speaker 1: And while early childhood education can be fantastic for kids,
Speaker 1: it's only high quality, right, And so for high quality,
Speaker 1: they need to be paid better, and they need to
Speaker 1: we need to support them better because staff changeovers with
Speaker 1: children under three can cause all sorts of issues around anxiety,
Speaker 1: which of course we struggle with later. But the big one,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest ones, is that in actual fact,
Speaker 1: out of love, we almost do too much for today's
Speaker 1: kids than we did for previous generations. And my challenge
Speaker 1: is we need to return authentic autonomy to our kids,
Speaker 1: at least some of the time, which is not orchestrating
Speaker 1: and over scheduling their childhood and filling it full of stuff,
Speaker 1: but also allowing them to create opportunities to play with
Speaker 1: other children. My challenge is neighborhood play needs to kind
Speaker 1: of be a thing or children playing outside of you know,
Speaker 1: venues like tennis clubs and sporting events like they used
Speaker 1: to do without much supervision, because older children and younger
Speaker 1: children is exactly how mother nature intended us to pick
Speaker 1: up our social and emotional skills. You didn't need your
Speaker 1: parents to read you those books every night to get it.
Speaker 1: You learned it from experience, and so it is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that society has just moved
Speaker 1: away from that and then we made everyone terrified that
Speaker 1: there will be a you know, a pedophile on every corner.
Speaker 1: So you can't let your kids run around outside or
Speaker 1: they're all going to die because someone's going to run
Speaker 1: over them. So we've made everyone.
Speaker 5: Frightened yes of life, and.
Speaker 1: That's really something it's difficult to peel back, but peeling
Speaker 1: it back even a few degrees can make a huge
Speaker 1: lot of difference in the way that our kids step
Speaker 1: into their own you know, adolescence particularly is about taking risks. Well,
Speaker 1: if you've never taken any, guess what, you're not going
Speaker 1: to want to do it now because I want mum
Speaker 1: or dad to step in and help me. And as
Speaker 1: you know can understand, a big message in the book
Speaker 1: is stop rushing in and fixing things for them. They're
Speaker 1: emerging towards being adults. They've got to work out how
Speaker 1: to get through stuff. We're right beside them, yep, but
Speaker 1: we're not picking them up, we're not carrying in them,
Speaker 1: we're not rescuing them. We're fixing stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: and you know that comes from love. I know it
Speaker 1: comes from love to do it because we love them.
Speaker 1: And it goes right back to not wanting to be
Speaker 1: uncomfortable before five. And of course you know, if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard me, I'm the one who growls about the
Speaker 1: changing of the rules of past the parcel.
Speaker 4: Well, I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3: And I've worked as a teacher for twelve years. Maybe
Speaker 3: something like that started in early childhood, and it's just
Speaker 3: been so interesting to watch the changes in the education
Speaker 3: as well, and how much we're so And I understand
Speaker 3: that like logistically, okay, if there's an incident on the
Speaker 3: play yeah, then you have to look at the equipment
Speaker 3: and da da da da da. But it's like we
Speaker 3: have one incident on a playground equipment and that equipment goes.
Speaker 5: And it starts.
Speaker 3: That's it's just so wrong. We don't learn to sort
Speaker 3: of yes, okay, she broke her arm but she's fine.
Speaker 3: What and all the other kids don't get to use
Speaker 3: it now, like we're not letting the children get dirty.
Speaker 4: Luckily, our kids grew up.
Speaker 3: Going to the Steiner Education and when it rained, those
Speaker 3: kids put it on a raincoat and they went outside
Speaker 3: and they played in the rain. If they came home muddy,
Speaker 3: it had been a good day. Like they still did
Speaker 3: outdoor play consistently. And it was all about do not
Speaker 3: overschedule your child. It's exhausting for them. It's meant to
Speaker 3: be playtime. It's not meant to be How can I
Speaker 3: train my child to be, you know, an Olympic athlete
Speaker 3: at the age of five, and a lot of where
Speaker 3: sort of programs sort of think that way. It's such
Speaker 3: an early age and even in the edge, I'm just
Speaker 3: going on a ranch.
Speaker 4: Go go, go out.
Speaker 5: I'm right with you.
Speaker 3: And then we look at the statistics of like the
Speaker 3: kids aren't doing well in math and science, let's teach
Speaker 3: them to it earlier. No, don't teach it to them earlier.
Speaker 3: That doesn't work, like if you're overloading them, like stop.
Speaker 2: We had a teacher, Maggie that was great. She was
Speaker 2: she was the kids were coming to I'm bored. I'm bored,
Speaker 2: and she said good, yeah, goody, good, do something, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was always really great when uh, when when
Speaker 2: she was would talk, when that would come up, and then.
Speaker 3: We would say to our kids, I'm bored, and we
Speaker 3: were like great and they go, oh.
Speaker 1: No, you know what I used to do when they
Speaker 1: did that those I've got this list of chores, which
Speaker 1: one do you want to do?
Speaker 5: They suddenly not bored anymore.
Speaker 1: So Ali I did take a submission to the federal
Speaker 1: government in Australia in twenty thirteen called stop Stealing childhood
Speaker 1: in the name of Education, and I don't even think
Speaker 1: the minister even looked at it.
Speaker 5: So it's one of been one of my battles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, about returning play to its authentic place, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: allowing our parents' time to just chill inside for a
Speaker 1: bit while they run feral.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there is a really.
Speaker 1: Interesting shift besides you know this massive you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a nature play advocate and have been for a very
Speaker 1: long time, and begging back the long monkey bars and
Speaker 1: bringing back logs of wood and all those things is happening.
Speaker 1: But there's been a bit of a shift culturally that
Speaker 1: I heard. It was through an interview in Brizzy where
Speaker 1: a house designer, architectic kind of person who helps do
Speaker 1: those new you know, opening up a new whole suburb.
Speaker 1: Apparently parents are now going for smaller houses because I
Speaker 1: want their kids to share wonderful without their on sweet
Speaker 1: in their own bathroom and a smaller house and a
Speaker 1: bigger block. So they're actually realizing, of course they're not
Speaker 1: going to go outside if you've got one square meteorite
Speaker 1: of grass, right, And I think the common sense part
Speaker 1: of me, of course they're not going to want to
Speaker 1: go outside if that's all they've got to go out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But also I feel we're settling back into a space
Speaker 1: that we were dictated to. What you know, so we
Speaker 1: wanted to get the entertainment room and everyone has their
Speaker 1: own bedroom, and you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we have some children who have spent so much time
Speaker 1: safely on a couch, either watching TV or a device
Speaker 1: that when they see rain, they're frightened of it because
Speaker 1: they haven't seen it, or they don't know what a
Speaker 1: white thing in the sky is, which is a cloud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but my man flying saucer, I feel blessed.
Speaker 4: In my childhood.
Speaker 2: We grew up with a couple of acre is either
Speaker 2: side of us, so we had We made the golf course,
Speaker 2: we made the BMX track. We used dad's gasoline for
Speaker 2: the petrol for the for the to kill with potholes
Speaker 2: and ride our bikes through.
Speaker 3: It, photographs starts and.
Speaker 2: Took the risks and we got brave. And if you
Speaker 2: weren't brave, you got got a bit of curry from
Speaker 2: the other brothers from it, or the boys down the
Speaker 2: other end of the road, you know. So it was
Speaker 2: there was a lot of that.
Speaker 1: I think I had some boys that built a bear
Speaker 1: pit and I didn't want to tell them we didn't
Speaker 1: have any bears, but man, it took weeks.
Speaker 5: That's the best thing.
Speaker 2: Drop bes.
Speaker 3: You got the drop bears carry some rod, Yeah, the
Speaker 3: drop bears.
Speaker 2: Can I can just talk about You've mentioned fear before
Speaker 2: with kids and parents, and to me, a lot of
Speaker 2: it rests on the six o'clock news, and I know
Speaker 2: that you know it's like well, I mean it was
Speaker 2: like that in America.
Speaker 3: Will show you how to survive the storm that's.
Speaker 2: Coming in five minutes, you know, as a little sprinkle
Speaker 2: of rain, and it was all about this the news watch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the news setting up how they're going to be the
Speaker 2: savior of been. In order to do that, to be
Speaker 2: the savior, they had to set up the fear first,
Speaker 2: and it's like turn the freaking news off. I hate
Speaker 2: to say that networks are going on get rid of
Speaker 2: Cameron Datto because that's how big money spinner is the
Speaker 2: six o'clock news. They put news earlier and earlier and earlier.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: One of my recommendations for families is to keep the
Speaker 1: news off for as long as possible for kids because
Speaker 1: you're exactly right.
Speaker 5: But even the way they.
Speaker 1: Deliver the news, if you're if they're reporting on, say
Speaker 1: a fire that's happened, you know, in it wherever in
Speaker 1: Sydney or anywhere, what they do is they don't just
Speaker 1: show you one clip of the fire behind the news reader.
Speaker 1: They repeat it. So it's a car accident, they'll repeat
Speaker 1: it and repeat it. So for children, particularly up to
Speaker 1: five or six, they think that happens over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, which means the world becomes irrationally even
Speaker 1: more unsafe. And also the TV's screens are so much
Speaker 1: bigger now than they used to be, So that's scaring
Speaker 1: the Bejesus out about hips and making it like it's
Speaker 1: almost in their in their lounge room. And you know,
Speaker 1: great for adults, but if you're raising children, you know
Speaker 1: that's something you can just not put into that little
Speaker 1: developing mad because they will take those memories and it
Speaker 1: doesn't take a lot for one of them to stick
Speaker 1: and then become a worry cycle that a child will
Speaker 1: And a quick story when a Victorian bushfires happening, you
Speaker 1: probably were still illustrated.
Speaker 5: So long ago.
Speaker 1: I was still counseling and I had a number of
Speaker 1: little boys being brought to me because they were crawling
Speaker 1: into bed to sleep next to their daddies and they
Speaker 1: weren't getting out no matter what they tried to do.
Speaker 1: And when I explored it with a couple of the
Speaker 1: little boys, they had seen a four wheel drive just
Speaker 1: like daddy's burnt out. So these boys were now getting
Speaker 1: into bed to keep daddy safe at night so he
Speaker 1: didn't get burnt up like they saw on TV. That
Speaker 1: is how easy we can catastrophize what's happening out there.
Speaker 1: It's always been happening, but it shouldn't be, you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream into our children's lives because real and imagined, and
Speaker 1: then the brain and the way it stores memories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: children are very different to growing up. Even I can't
Speaker 1: watch it sometimes I'm really feeling a bit overloaded. I
Speaker 1: can't watch the news now.
Speaker 3: No, I've got to say, yeah, my mental health starts
Speaker 3: and I'll start to wonder why I'm feeling so low
Speaker 3: and like sad, and I go, I've been watching the
Speaker 3: news for four days straight.
Speaker 4: That's what it is. Yeah, that'll get honey.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when nine to eleven happened and how
Speaker 2: the school responded, Yes, so the Stein of school that
Speaker 2: where our kids were at the way they responded when
Speaker 2: nine to eleven happened. They were like, Okay, turn all
Speaker 2: the media off. We don't want the kids seeing the
Speaker 2: buildings falling down. And it was such a structured response
Speaker 2: to keeping them safe and just say, look, there was
Speaker 2: an event or whatever. The dialogue around.
Speaker 4: Even talked about it. It was just the same day, keep.
Speaker 2: Them from it was.
Speaker 4: It was terrific.
Speaker 2: We were running around going, oh my god, it's armageddon.
Speaker 2: What's going to happen? You know?
Speaker 5: But the kids were in Australia.
Speaker 1: I was having to counsel a lot of children who
Speaker 1: had watched it and was sure the baddies just kept
Speaker 1: on bombing.
Speaker 3: Building right, right.
Speaker 1: So even in Australia that they were seeing it, and
Speaker 1: every day it was the same footage, which was disturbing
Speaker 1: for adults, but for children, again, it just looked like
Speaker 1: there were more and more of those bombs coming that
Speaker 1: were in big buildings going down. So I was having
Speaker 1: to unwind some of that. So you're right, like huge impact,
Speaker 1: well done that you were in that school at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it saved It saved a lot.
Speaker 4: So it saved us as well.
Speaker 2: I think because we were I know I would have
Speaker 2: I would have perpetuated the conversation because I was talking
Speaker 2: with our parents about it in Australia and it was
Speaker 2: all you know, it was like something to talk about,
Speaker 2: and it was because it was terrifying, it was and
Speaker 2: it was crazy.
Speaker 3: Moving on, moving on to teens, maybe because I know
Speaker 3: that you are you're well versed in this age range
Speaker 3: as well. Look, teens, as you said earlier, they are
Speaker 3: they do like to take their risks.
Speaker 4: What do we do?
Speaker 3: How do we treat a teen when they've been busted
Speaker 3: doing something that's pretty naughty, Like I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know if we can say naughty for teens, but let's
Speaker 3: say it's a pretty poor choice. We found them with
Speaker 3: some marijuana in their pocket. We've found like the hidden
Speaker 3: bottle of vodka, maybe the underage drinking or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Or the vaping, the vapor that's huge.
Speaker 3: How do we deal with that as parents?
Speaker 1: Well, the very first thing that we are biologically wired
Speaker 1: to do elie is to get angry. It's the same
Speaker 1: as if we lost our toddler in the supermarket. Instead
Speaker 1: it just whooping them up with love, we go ad
Speaker 1: them angry. Apparently it's a dry I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but there's some pretty good science around it.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to say the very first thing you
Speaker 1: do is to go and calm your own what I
Speaker 1: call the glividge art, because when we turn up angry,
Speaker 1: we shut down all capacity to be able to manage
Speaker 1: what's going on because we haven't got the full information.
Speaker 1: How often do we rip into a team where you've
Speaker 1: found something in their bag that an actual fact they're
Speaker 1: looking after for a friend, and we've just shattered the
Speaker 1: plane are.
Speaker 5: That they made me look after their rat bag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is true. I had my boyfriend's pop plants
Speaker 3: growing at my apartment and my father let himself in
Speaker 3: one day when I was away and thought I was
Speaker 3: a drug dealer, and I was like, I swear to god,
Speaker 3: it was even spoke.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: See okay, and then I think the next thing.
Speaker 1: The next thing is recognizing that this is not a
Speaker 1: sign that you've failed as a parent or your kids.
Speaker 1: You know there's something wrong with them because they are
Speaker 1: biologically wired to take risks. They've also got an impaired
Speaker 1: brain which for making good decisions, and if you've got boys,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's even further. We know that the
Speaker 1: gabba gets turned off, which is an impulse inhibiting neurochemical
Speaker 1: in the brain, so they're more likely to make really impulsive,
Speaker 1: poor choices. And also we know that you know, they
Speaker 1: don't always learn the first time they make these things.
Speaker 5: You know when you get it.
Speaker 1: That's why the first half of the book is could
Speaker 1: you please understand what's happening? Because no team has consciously
Speaker 1: wanted this change is to happen, which causes.
Speaker 5: A lot of stress. So when we.
Speaker 1: Start to recognize this is an emerging adult, but there
Speaker 1: are some things that you know they're going to learn from.
Speaker 1: I think the other bit is we've got to work
Speaker 1: out how am I going to have the conversation because
Speaker 1: I actually don't know an awful lot about vapor or
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about those funny colored tablets.
Speaker 1: And it's a really big part of the book that
Speaker 1: I spent hours searching the best places for parents to
Speaker 1: go and get good information or their teens that you
Speaker 1: don't go on a Google search and end up down
Speaker 1: rabbit holes which are absolutely not helpful. And it's beautiful
Speaker 1: because we can keep updating that, which is great on
Speaker 1: our website. That means that when you're going to have
Speaker 1: the conversation, when you've calmed down, and there are ways
Speaker 1: to open the conversation, and sometimes you might need to.
Speaker 5: Drop a queue day before you have it.
Speaker 1: Now that takes enormous emotional maturity for yourself not to
Speaker 1: rip their head off, is you're just going to drop it.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 5: I can't believe.
Speaker 1: How big vafings become, even outside offices.
Speaker 5: You've already so in the seed.
Speaker 1: You get in there, and it's how do I have
Speaker 1: that conversation, because as soon as I sit down with
Speaker 1: a power over my team instead of a curious approach,
Speaker 1: they're not going to come on board and give you
Speaker 1: the rest of it. And then we're going to go okay.
Speaker 1: So this is a challenge. I made poor choice, which
Speaker 1: I can understand because I know all about the brain.
Speaker 1: So what's your plan going forward?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: Is this is this something you know you're planning to
Speaker 1: do or are you already is it struggle? Are you
Speaker 1: struggling with that? Always go through the friends first, any
Speaker 1: of your friends struggling with this, because they're more likely
Speaker 1: to give your feedback.
Speaker 5: They're more worried.
Speaker 1: About their friends than themselves. And you've got to remember
Speaker 1: that for a lot of them, particularly boys that absolutely
Speaker 1: think they're bulletproof.
Speaker 5: Yes, god, I had four of them.
Speaker 1: There's never going to happen to me, don't be ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Only happens everyone else, not me. So once we get
Speaker 1: that sort of a conversation, then we're going to go
Speaker 1: what's your plan A, what's your plan B? You know,
Speaker 1: but I want you to you know the other bit.
Speaker 1: And it's a big part that we don't realize. Everyone's
Speaker 1: got a higher self or an inner compass. We all
Speaker 1: have it. It's a part of the way our mind
Speaker 1: has worked. And I challenge parents to say, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: have each conversation and then let's have another one in
Speaker 1: a couple of days, and you tell tell me how
Speaker 1: you're going to move forward. Because what I've found, even
Speaker 1: if they want to go to a crazy party with
Speaker 1: two hundred teenagers somewhere that you don't want them to go,
Speaker 1: if you say, look, let's have a couple of days
Speaker 1: and we'll revisit this idea, so often they change their
Speaker 1: mind after a couple of days without any input from you.
Speaker 5: As a growing up yep, because.
Speaker 1: We want them to hear that voice. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: a lot quieter than the one upstairs, it says, but.
Speaker 4: Everyone's going to be there.
Speaker 1: It's going to be great, it's going to be everything
Speaker 1: I love you know.
Speaker 3: All Right, We're going to have to leave you there
Speaker 3: for the moment. But hang tight, because there is a
Speaker 3: part two to this conversation with Maggie Dent.
Speaker 4: Catch up with you next week.