Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News talksb
Speaker 1: stand Um, your brother, your bra.
Speaker 2: She's my sister, don't you.
Speaker 3: Will beleeve?
Speaker 4: Yes, welcome back. This is the Weekend Collective. That dismal
Speaker 4: piece of music was chosen by my next guest, whichween
Speaker 4: say that with the uh. I'd say that with my
Speaker 4: tongue slightly in my cheek. Anyway, this is the Weekend
Speaker 4: Collective and as you know, I like to let our
Speaker 4: guests choose a bit of our music, and which accounted
Speaker 4: for all the country music we had in the panel
Speaker 4: with Jenny Vernon and Paul Spoonley. And by the way,
Speaker 4: if you've missed any of our previous hours, we get
Speaker 4: them up online pretty quickly. Son, go and check them
Speaker 4: out on the News TALKSBI website or on iHeartRadio button.
Speaker 4: Right now, this is the parent Squad and we would
Speaker 4: have a chat about Okay, well you will have if
Speaker 4: you follow the news vaguely. You can't have missed the
Speaker 4: tragedy around the run It Straight game where a young
Speaker 4: man or On Sattathwait died after playing it in his backyard.
Speaker 4: And look, we're not going to dwell on that, but
Speaker 4: as we know, when you're a kid, you do things
Speaker 4: that maybe if you thought about it a couple of times,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't or if you thought a bit more about
Speaker 4: the consequences. And the question is, so, no matter how
Speaker 4: hard parents try, kids are always going to do unwise
Speaker 4: or dumb things. Is it possible to mitigate that risk?
Speaker 4: Is it something where parents can have a voice in
Speaker 4: stopping their kids or giving them that little voice in
Speaker 4: their head that goes, hang on, tim, do you really
Speaker 4: think you should do that? And how do you do
Speaker 4: that if you're a parent, But also if you're listening,
Speaker 4: what was the dumbest thing you ever did in your
Speaker 4: youth that you thought, you know what, I should have
Speaker 4: listened to my mum or my dad and I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have got myself in so much trouble. But I didn't,
Speaker 4: and I went ahead and did it anyway. And there
Speaker 4: we go. That's I'm luckily I'm still around to tell
Speaker 4: the tale, but to discuss that and other things. He
Speaker 4: is principal psychologist at Umbrella Well Being and as we know,
Speaker 4: has terrible taste of music. And his name is sorry, no,
Speaker 4: I'm just kidding. It's actually not a bad song. Google,
Speaker 4: It's just a way of just a way of loosening
Speaker 4: up for the show. How are you.
Speaker 2: Good, mate, I'm very good. I was just enjoying that
Speaker 2: lovely piece of music and the.
Speaker 4: House Martins, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It is? Yeah, yeah, from way back in the day,
Speaker 2: back in the mid eighties.
Speaker 4: I think, I'm sure that's been covered a few times
Speaker 4: by different bands. I was thinking, I know that tune,
Speaker 4: but maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not their original. They covered it off somebody
Speaker 2: else from the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was just big because they were all singing a
Speaker 2: cappella and it was like, oh my gosh, who's ever
Speaker 2: sung that before? This is nineteen eighty four, So yeah, no.
Speaker 4: Need to apologize for a terrible taste of music.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 4: Hey. By the way, hey, this is completely trivial before
Speaker 4: we get into the If you ever want to have
Speaker 4: a bit of a laugh, there's a website called the
Speaker 4: Pudding dot com okay, and you can give it access
Speaker 4: temporarily to your Spotify and or your Apple Music or whatever,
Speaker 4: and it goes in and it looks at everything you're playing,
Speaker 4: and it basically just pulls you apart on your musical
Speaker 4: days I do it every now and again just to
Speaker 4: tell me how transic I am.
Speaker 2: Oh, that sounds that. That sounds like it sounds like
Speaker 2: something I'd have to have a bit of courage to do,
Speaker 2: because because I find myself getting very defensive over my music,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: Oh, oh my god, I've really taken it backwards today. No,
Speaker 4: you have no.
Speaker 2: I think it was when I was When I was
Speaker 2: growing up in the eighties, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: militancy I think around music. You were you know, you
Speaker 2: were into this music, and if you were into this music,
Speaker 2: you couldn't be into that music.
Speaker 4: And a lot of it was political. It was tribal, it
Speaker 4: wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it very much was. I can remember, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of my kids at school, the kids at
Speaker 2: high school were into you know, sort of Bond Jovi
Speaker 2: and def Leppard and all those terrible hair metal bands,
Speaker 2: and then it was like, no, there's no way on
Speaker 2: listening to that, And it was it was very very tribal.
Speaker 2: And I think I've sort of grown up with that
Speaker 2: sort of sense of having to defend my honor or
Speaker 2: about about my musical choices. But I'm loosening up. I'm loosening,
Speaker 2: are you. I'm not sure, well a little bit. You
Speaker 2: should have seen me back in the day, really, were you?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, something to be a punk.
Speaker 2: I was too too young to be a punk, but
Speaker 2: more in that sort of new wave, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of the Smiths and very independent music and very this
Speaker 2: is amazing and we you know, give the big finger
Speaker 2: to the main stream and that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 2: it was that punk ethos but but but not not
Speaker 2: quite punk itself. But yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: You tell that with your parents to go dound to dinner,
Speaker 4: to the neighbors or something. Were you the child that
Speaker 4: your parents were like, oh, for goodness, please, dog, look,
Speaker 4: can you not wear that shirt?
Speaker 2: Look? I did turn into that, but later on one
Speaker 2: time it was actually one of the first times I
Speaker 2: meet my parents in law. I just had my hair
Speaker 2: cut really short and dyed bright orange, and possibly in retrospect,
Speaker 2: wasn't the best move, but there you go. I was
Speaker 2: only twenty or twenty two or something.
Speaker 4: Well, these the people who became your parents in law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it was obviously got through
Speaker 2: that test, I'm assuming, Well, yeah, no, I got through
Speaker 2: the test. I got you know, it came out the
Speaker 2: other side. We've been happily married for almost thirty years.
Speaker 2: So yeah, thirty years. Next year.
Speaker 4: You got married when you were about eighteen. You look
Speaker 4: a young chap, look at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not quite early twenties. Twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: I think twenty three were very bad to be given
Speaker 4: you twenty three plus quick arithmetic.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows that I was and that I was born
Speaker 2: young enough to be in the Dunedin long and in
Speaker 2: Judinal study, right, so everybody can figure that out. Remember
Speaker 2: we talked about.
Speaker 4: This, Yes, I love that that you're actually part of
Speaker 4: that study. Now, by the way, before we get into it,
Speaker 4: people are going, what's Google talking about? The dned and
Speaker 4: Longitudinal Study is a study where that which is very
Speaker 4: forward thinking because the people who see the benefits of
Speaker 4: the study, many of them probably wouldn't have lived to
Speaker 4: it the scientists who set it up. But it was
Speaker 4: basically tracking a whole lot of outcomes in about a
Speaker 4: thousand children's lives who are born at a certain time.
Speaker 4: You know what's happened in their lives, what's their health,
Speaker 4: what's their diet and all those sort of things, and
Speaker 4: where they are amazing isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's one of the longest, not only one of
Speaker 2: the longest running studies in the world, but also one
Speaker 2: of the studies that's kept something like ninety percent of
Speaker 2: its original participants, which is one of its major achievements.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we got followed up every two or three
Speaker 2: years and we're still being followed up. I went back
Speaker 2: last year, although now they're calling it the aging study,
Speaker 2: not the developmental.
Speaker 4: Just like god that there's not something you needed to
Speaker 4: be told, is it? Ah, that's brutal.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 4: The Aging Study, high doogle?
Speaker 2: I know it's like, oh, is that where I've got
Speaker 2: to in life? But I just got to own it.
Speaker 2: I am getting older and that's okay.
Speaker 4: Good on you. Okay, what's the dumbest thing you did
Speaker 4: as a kid and could your parents have stopped it?
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that. The dumbest thing I can
Speaker 2: remember that springs to mind. There was a group of us.
Speaker 2: We were wandering around Dunedin's streets and we wanted to
Speaker 2: get from one place to another. Rather than go over
Speaker 2: the hill, we went through a train tunnel and the
Speaker 2: train tunnel was alive. You know, there were trains going
Speaker 2: through the tunnel, and so we just bowled through, and
Speaker 2: that we were having all these debates about, oh, if
Speaker 2: you get stuck in a train tunnel, you've got to
Speaker 2: push yourself against the wall because the train sucks you under. Oh,
Speaker 2: freaking each other out. Could my appearance have stopped me?
Speaker 2: But probably not. But you know, I could feel inside,
Speaker 2: I could feel that horrible sort of sense of this
Speaker 2: is not right, this is not right, this is not right.
Speaker 2: I did it anyway, I didn't. I didn't love it,
Speaker 2: I must say, but it was pretty freaky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Because I'm wondering if the reason we put this
Speaker 4: in for a discussion is because well, obviously we've seen
Speaker 4: the tragic events that told and I actually I would
Speaker 4: rather we launched off another news story, but it is
Speaker 4: in the media about people doing unwise things, because it just,
Speaker 4: you know, I just have nothing, but you know, deepest
Speaker 4: sympathies to the family, satisfay, and so let's push that
Speaker 4: to one side, because I can think of dumb things
Speaker 4: I did where in fact that I'll be honest, the
Speaker 4: dumbest thing I did was, you know, I was on
Speaker 4: an age of my traveling for a sports tournament. I
Speaker 4: think when I was seventeen, and my parents let me
Speaker 4: have the car and I just with and I was
Speaker 4: driving friends and I just drove way too fast and
Speaker 4: I look at a particular corner I went round, and
Speaker 4: if there'd been a truck coming the other way, we
Speaker 4: wouldn't be here because I'd underestimated it. I wasn't following
Speaker 4: the law properly, and I was lucky to get away
Speaker 4: with it. And that's the stuff that I think terrifies. Yes, cars,
Speaker 4: I mean they are death machines if you do if
Speaker 4: you make the wrong decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's so many things, and it's
Speaker 2: that teenage years, isn't it too, The chasing of the adrenaline,
Speaker 2: the wanting to do something that's crazy, and the importance
Speaker 2: of your friends. I think too, that's that sense of
Speaker 2: really strong peer pressure in your teenage years. I mean
Speaker 2: that was my example when I talked about my example
Speaker 2: of going through the train tunnel. Everybody else was going
Speaker 2: to do it, so I could not do it. So yeah,
Speaker 2: very much that sense of peer pressure. Felt super uncomfortable
Speaker 2: about it, and that could have ended up quite tragically.
Speaker 2: For there was about half a dozen of us said
Speaker 2: I think there, so yeah, it's it's it's a it's
Speaker 2: a really tricky time. I think.
Speaker 4: I think, well, actually, I think through our initial discussion,
Speaker 4: there is a different way to frame that question. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's it's an easy one to say, how do you
Speaker 4: stop your kids doing dumb stuff? But I think the
Speaker 4: bigger question is possibly because I don't think kids do necessarily,
Speaker 4: I don't think they genuinely do generally do dumb things
Speaker 4: in isolation, I think is the question better framed is
Speaker 4: how do you compete with the influence of your children's peers?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Nice, Yeah, I agree. I think it's partly how
Speaker 2: do you overcome that and also how do you get
Speaker 2: them to listen to that their conscience for one of
Speaker 2: a better term insight, because I knew when I was
Speaker 2: walking through that train tunnel that wasn't the right thing
Speaker 2: to do, but I wasn't brave enough to be honest,
Speaker 2: I wasn't to be able to stand up and say, oh,
Speaker 2: this is stupid, guys, I'm not going to do it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: competing with the peer influence, listening, listening to that wise
Speaker 2: in a voice that we all have at some point,
Speaker 2: and raising kids so that they can actually stand up
Speaker 2: to that and say no, this doesn't feel right to me,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think. I mean, I guess it is
Speaker 4: about how you help your kids.
Speaker 2: I mean it.
Speaker 4: Always comes back to this as well. It's not what
Speaker 4: you do right then when they're confronted with a peer
Speaker 4: group that are a little challenging, I guess it's how
Speaker 4: do you Is it about giving them the confidence that
Speaker 4: they don't need the affirmation of that peer group all
Speaker 4: the time of now, I mean, how do you do
Speaker 4: or that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think so. I think it's that sense
Speaker 2: of self confidence or being comfortable, being able to stand
Speaker 2: up and say, hey, look that I don't feel okay
Speaker 2: about that. But that is a huge thing for a
Speaker 2: teenager to do when a teenager is typically searching for,
Speaker 2: you know, for friendship and recognition and belonging and gosh,
Speaker 2: if I say this, I might you know, I might
Speaker 2: be thrown out of the group.
Speaker 4: And that it's that age where it is part of
Speaker 4: their evolution as human beings that there's a natural pulling
Speaker 4: away from their parents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent absolutely, And the seeking of
Speaker 2: adrenaline and thrills and not being very good at forecasting
Speaker 2: long term consequences either because your brain is still developing,
Speaker 2: so it's really battling against a whole lot of things.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's impossible, but I think it is hard.
Speaker 4: Look, we love your calls on this. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: if you wanted to share with us a story, I
Speaker 4: think sometimes if there's nothing better than sometimes hearing about
Speaker 4: bad mistakes of others, because in fact, is that one
Speaker 4: of the is that one of the sort of approaches
Speaker 4: to take is that to share with your kids the
Speaker 4: bad mistakes you've made, or stories stories of whoa I mean,
Speaker 4: I keep on thinking of, you know, going back far enough.
Speaker 4: The brother's grim fairy tales were written, I think one
Speaker 4: to freak people out just for entertainment, but I think
Speaker 4: as well, they all had a message about stranger danger
Speaker 4: or don't do this, or the boy who cried wolf
Speaker 4: and because he actually doesn't get to that kid despite
Speaker 4: what Disney does with it, that kid gets eaten by
Speaker 4: the wolf.
Speaker 2: They're not that they are grim those I was listening
Speaker 2: to a podcast about it, and their explanation was that
Speaker 2: they were collecting those tales to establish sort of some
Speaker 2: element of what is common law and our society, what's
Speaker 2: the common understanding? And the tales were were we're folklore
Speaker 2: about representing those sort of basic fundamental principles of law
Speaker 2: and society before it was written down, which was quite
Speaker 2: an interesting take on it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I know we've digressed a bit. But if
Speaker 4: you won't want to google the original Brothers Grimm's fairy tale,
Speaker 4: brace yourself because it's you know, I mean, it makes
Speaker 4: Tarantino a lot pretty harmless, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Even Hansel and Gretel. You know, it's like, jeez, leuis
Speaker 2: what the heck were they doing? Oh? He was being
Speaker 2: kept in a cage so he could be cooked in
Speaker 2: an oven. What are we telling our kids? No?
Speaker 4: And then they tempt the witch into the oven, I think,
Speaker 4: and they shut the door and she gets she gets cooked.
Speaker 2: Anyway, And sleep tight, darling, because I won't have any
Speaker 2: bad dreams now.
Speaker 4: It's actually gosh, there's so many questions that are coming
Speaker 4: out of this. But how, I mean, how do you
Speaker 4: get your kids to just have that little voice that
Speaker 4: does make them think twice? There's a joke that exists
Speaker 4: in our family now. There's a family friend of my
Speaker 4: wife's family, and the running gag is because when I
Speaker 4: get together, we sometimes have a have a you know,
Speaker 4: in the evening, we have a chat, we have a
Speaker 4: whiskey or something, and because the conversation always flows, I'm
Speaker 4: maybe have another whiskey and then another one. And I
Speaker 4: jokingly have nicknamed him as Bad Goofy because you might
Speaker 4: remember that the Disney there was Good Goofy and Bad Goofy,
Speaker 4: and Goofy would have come up, Goofy would have that
Speaker 4: moment where something would happen. There'd be Good Goofy on
Speaker 4: his shoulder, going, oh, Goofy, don't do this, because this
Speaker 4: is what will happen if you do this, and everyone
Speaker 4: will be angry with you and you'd be a good person.
Speaker 4: Then Bad Goofy was going, come on, give it a go.
Speaker 2: It's that attraction and the teenage years, isn't it to
Speaker 2: doing that kind of the band stuff, the stuff that
Speaker 2: your parents say no, don't do, I think you can
Speaker 2: be two. Parents can be too strict, and that actually
Speaker 2: push kids into doing more antisocial stuff. If they're really, really,
Speaker 2: really staunched with the rules, you can get the whole
Speaker 2: reverse effect by pushing kids much closer towards that. So
Speaker 2: it's a real going back to brother's grim, it's a
Speaker 2: real goldily locked sort of area. Not be too soft
Speaker 2: and not be too hard.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that ties into I mean, there's so
Speaker 4: many themes that ties into, doesn't it. But I would
Speaker 4: have thought that, actually, that's that's one of the big ones.
Speaker 4: In fact, if you are one of those parents who
Speaker 4: are becoming more and more authoritative, you are pushing your
Speaker 4: children into a situation where they are going to be yep,
Speaker 4: that mum and dad can get stuffed. I'm doing this
Speaker 4: one to assert my independence. Yeah two, but I'm not
Speaker 4: thinking of the consequences because it's all about you, mum
Speaker 4: and dad, and I'm going to make my own decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yep, yep, one hundred percent. And at the
Speaker 2: other end, if your two lacks, if your kids are
Speaker 2: roaming around the streets at whatever are and you don't care,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, no, gee, surprise, surprise, they've gotten into trouble. So,
Speaker 2: you know, parenting teens are such a delicate balancing act,
Speaker 2: I think, and nobody gets it right. And you know,
Speaker 2: as we mentioned earlier, battling against a whole lot of
Speaker 2: natural kind of developmental things as well. So it's super hard,
Speaker 2: super hard.
Speaker 4: We want your cause on this eight hundred and eight
Speaker 4: text nine two nine time. We've got one text here
Speaker 4: just before we go to the break about how do
Speaker 4: you stop your kids making Okay, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: put it in a trivialized way, how do you stop
Speaker 4: your kids doing really dangerous stuff that can really either
Speaker 4: affect their lives in the ultimate Neggard way that they
Speaker 4: lose theirs or that they end up making a bad
Speaker 4: decision that affects them for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4: Because they've got a text here that says we were
Speaker 4: obviously taught not to drunk, a drive drunk or tired,
Speaker 4: et cetera. But one year our school brought home brought
Speaker 4: in a woman in her mid twenties who'd been a
Speaker 4: successful businesswoman before falling asleep at the wheel and is
Speaker 4: now severely disabled. She spoke to us about her life
Speaker 4: before and her life now, and showed us photos of
Speaker 4: her in hospital in the crash, and we were all
Speaker 4: very responsible drivers after that. They I mean, as are
Speaker 4: those actually those are real life stories? Yeah? Do they resonate?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I think they might.
Speaker 2: I think it depends who's telling them, So that might
Speaker 2: have been a really nice example of somebody who's just
Speaker 2: that slight bit older who would be seen as a
Speaker 2: role model by teenagers, whereas if it was their parents,
Speaker 2: they're unlikely to buy into that. So I think getting
Speaker 2: the right and that can that might be really useful.
Speaker 2: Thing is is your team as you a young person,
Speaker 2: do they have some friends who are slightly older who
Speaker 2: are just that slight bit more responsible? And that might
Speaker 2: be from a community group or a sports club or
Speaker 2: a church group or something like that, But just that
Speaker 2: is there somebody that they will listen to because they're
Speaker 2: not going to listen to you as parents?
Speaker 4: Probably right? We love your cause on this. Also, what
Speaker 4: was the dumbest thing you ever did? And do you?
Speaker 4: I mean? Is it? Is it a case of trying
Speaker 4: to pass your lessons on to your kids by saying,
Speaker 4: look I tried this and this is what happened and
Speaker 4: hopefully it sinks that way. I eight hundred eighty ten
Speaker 4: eighty text nine to my guest is Google Sutherland from
Speaker 4: Umbrella Well Being and we'll be back in just a moment.
Speaker 4: News Talk they'd be yes, News Talk said be that's
Speaker 4: the parents squad with Google Southerland talking about how do
Speaker 4: you stop kids doing dumb things I eight hundred eighty
Speaker 4: ten eight or sharing your story about the dumb thing
Speaker 4: you did and what might have changed it for you
Speaker 4: and yeah, let's take your cause. Dean Hello.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it just strikes me as a little bit
Speaker 5: crazy that people don't let their kids grow up with
Speaker 5: them and learn from the sort of silly things that
Speaker 5: you do do in your life. They sort of tend
Speaker 5: to try and I don't hide it.
Speaker 4: Do you mean parents who don't like to admit the
Speaker 4: stupid things that yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and they don't actually have their kids around them.
Speaker 5: A lot a lot of people actually ship them out
Speaker 5: too much. You know, our kids have always wanted to
Speaker 5: come home and pull whatever whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 5: on the weekends and that sort of thing. They were
Speaker 5: all grown up now, but yeah, they know it was
Speaker 5: stupid thing or even done in my life. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, you sort of hope that the hope that
Speaker 5: they can bloody loan that way. I think people, I think.
Speaker 4: There's something to that because there are some parents who
Speaker 4: like to maintain their authoritarian sort of figure in a way,
Speaker 4: then they don't like to admit that they were kids
Speaker 4: and they did dumb stuff as well. What do you
Speaker 4: reckon doogle?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I agree, I think especially you know Deane, your
Speaker 2: point about them just growing up with you, just so
Speaker 2: that it's not a it's not something weird. It's just
Speaker 2: they see you and all your your warts and all
Speaker 2: really and and and hopefully that does rub up rub
Speaker 2: off on them in some ways. They can see that
Speaker 2: you're not perfect.
Speaker 5: You also do a little bit. You're sort of want
Speaker 5: your kids to do a little bit better than you
Speaker 5: do crap. I just mean, you know, you hope you
Speaker 5: can at least prove on bloodies blood and too many
Speaker 5: people don't bother ye.
Speaker 2: You're trying to leave your kids a little bit better
Speaker 2: than you were, and then hopefully their kids will be
Speaker 2: a little bit better than they were.
Speaker 4: Of course, I think Dean, what happens is is if
Speaker 4: they find out that, oh, hey, Dad, you did this
Speaker 4: and you haven't shared that with them, it robs you
Speaker 4: of the chance to say, guess what what you're trying
Speaker 4: to do now? I did it when I was young
Speaker 4: and it played out really badly for me, and I
Speaker 4: don't want you to because if they find out through
Speaker 4: other means, you've robbed yourself of that opportunity, haven't you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well yeah, yeah, yeah, it's quite It's an
Speaker 5: easy way to get your kids to talk anyway. I
Speaker 5: mean a lot of people don't. Yeah, And we've always
Speaker 5: said because of it's a massive accidence in my life.
Speaker 5: And these kids have seen the reason, the results of them,
Speaker 5: and so on and so on and so on, and
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 4: That's good stuff, Dean, thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah, Google, Yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 2: I think it's that, yeah, that they can see that
Speaker 2: you've and they've seen the consequences, especially young, especially when
Speaker 2: they're young. Maybe as a teen it might be a
Speaker 2: different thing, but especially when they're young, if they see
Speaker 2: that those things have happened, they can understand a bit
Speaker 2: more of the consequences. I think great opportunities for kids
Speaker 2: to learn.
Speaker 4: Let's go to Irene. Hello.
Speaker 6: Yes, So I was just rung to say. When I
Speaker 6: was young, and very young, my brother was about five
Speaker 6: or six and I was about seven, and we played
Speaker 6: with these We used to play cowboys and Indians and
Speaker 6: we had this lino and the dad had us in
Speaker 6: the shed and we had a sheath knife and we
Speaker 6: were trying to stab the one er hied in it,
Speaker 6: and the other one was try stabbing their stabbing to
Speaker 6: see if we could catch the air. Oh my god,
Speaker 6: and we're only young and I and for eighty years
Speaker 6: I have thought of that and wondered how stupid we
Speaker 6: were and how stupidly innocent we were doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you're alive to tell the tale. Iran Thinker.
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness. Actually, the old bow and arrow when
Speaker 4: we were kids growing up, I mean it's amazed. I
Speaker 4: mean we were we actually had bows and arrows, which
Speaker 4: had you could, you know, I don't know if we
Speaker 4: I don't know if my brother tried to use me
Speaker 4: as target price or not. I'm not sure. I don't
Speaker 4: think so.
Speaker 2: I remember, you'd remember when things like pohas and tom
Speaker 2: thumbs and all those sort of things were and you
Speaker 2: just throw them at each other, And it was like.
Speaker 4: I don't think we'd do that. Actually, that was one
Speaker 4: of the ones where the school back in the days
Speaker 4: of double happies and tom thumbs and thunderbolts, which were
Speaker 4: really yeah expensively, you wouldn't want to throw too many
Speaker 4: of those around. But no, we had photos, color photos
Speaker 4: shown to us at school of people with eyes blown out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I remember something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was like the fireworks lady or something like that,
Speaker 2: and she came round and talked about fireworks going off
Speaker 2: in somebody's pocket and setting their whole trousers on fire.
Speaker 4: That makes me nervous, terrible. Well, actually, this is Here's
Speaker 4: the thing. There is something in I mean, is there
Speaker 4: something in I don't know what the language how I
Speaker 4: should describe this, but in traumatic examples where people might
Speaker 4: go all that's because these days everything carries a warning
Speaker 4: like or you know, this may contain scenes that were
Speaker 4: upsetting to some of you, as I wonder if we're
Speaker 4: overplaying that stuff.
Speaker 2: Look, I was thinking too more about the role of influencers.
Speaker 2: Actually social media influencers. They're the people that you know,
Speaker 2: young people are looking at and what are they saying
Speaker 2: about this sort of stuff. I think you can get
Speaker 2: two graphics sometimes that you actually put people off and
Speaker 2: they don't look at it or they just get freaked out.
Speaker 2: But I think the role of influencers is huge, and
Speaker 2: there's always been influencers. Let's not pretend it's a new
Speaker 2: social media thing. You know, in my day, before social influencers,
Speaker 2: there were still people that influenced me socially. So I
Speaker 2: think they've got a big role to play as well,
Speaker 2: because they're just that little bit older and you look
Speaker 2: up to them and you want to be like them.
Speaker 2: And that's that's harticles, because you can't control who those are. Necessarily.
Speaker 4: Just before we go to our next caller, this is
Speaker 4: just a text to share someone's the dumbest thing. Dumbest
Speaker 4: thing I did was when I was about seventeen, A
Speaker 4: group of us wanted to get from Cook's Beach to
Speaker 4: Fitty Younger, but we missed the last fairy, so we
Speaker 4: borrowed Mark have Friends dinghy and an outdoor motor from
Speaker 4: a outboard motor from a shed close by, and eight
Speaker 4: of us went over to and back much later. Doesn't
Speaker 4: sound dangerous, but it was the time of the Alaskan
Speaker 4: earthquake and the tides were way high and running very fast.
Speaker 4: The water was about two inches below two inches below
Speaker 4: the top of the boat, no life jackets, and I
Speaker 4: was sure we were all going down, going to drown.
Speaker 4: Crazy crazy thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, those teenage years, aren't it. That's just your go.
Speaker 2: If only we could just put the kids away until
Speaker 2: they were twenty five. But we can't. We can't, we can't.
Speaker 2: And that's and that's the reality of it is, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of going back to Dean's point, who have you
Speaker 2: got in your life? Who are the kids looking at?
Speaker 2: Who are their role models? Who are they seeing and
Speaker 2: what are they learning from those? And I think just
Speaker 2: that's so crucial just to put in the hard yards
Speaker 2: during those pre teen years, because that'll pay off, well,
Speaker 2: hope as much as it can in the teenage years.
Speaker 4: Right, let's take some more calls. Pete god A, it's peedy,
Speaker 4: how are you good things?
Speaker 7: I'll tell you a true story and I don't believe it.
Speaker 7: It's definitely a true story. I have got an arrows
Speaker 7: from me nose. What we're what we're doing is on
Speaker 7: the farm in the winter time, and the were neighbors
Speaker 7: and the farmers was the dry period of the cows
Speaker 7: and putting. His dad was putting these tournament tournament spacely
Speaker 7: swee the space on the tray and me and Ivan
Speaker 7: we were shooting, had the barren arrow, and he thought,
Speaker 7: rather than wasting a lot of time firing the arrow
Speaker 7: and retrieving it, so we thought, oh, what we'll do
Speaker 7: is we'll save that time. Is you go one end
Speaker 7: of the paddic, I'll go on the other end, and
Speaker 7: we'll shoot it to each other, not deliverately, trying to
Speaker 7: aim at each other, but a little bit. What we
Speaker 7: thought we're doing is doing it at probably half a
Speaker 7: dozen times is working out well, and then we probably
Speaker 7: be two or three minutes away from each other, you know.
Speaker 7: They picked it up and should each other again. And
Speaker 7: then the son got in my eye and he's young
Speaker 7: hand and I can't bear the son got in my
Speaker 7: eye and I went through my outside of me nose.
Speaker 7: He went to the middle section, you know, and I
Speaker 7: just sat there and then was the lucky lucky it was?
Speaker 7: It was a target area hit. We had one hunting are.
Speaker 7: If I lost that ord lost me nose or probably
Speaker 7: would have been dead. So what was what was on
Speaker 7: the So he yelled out to his daddy's putting the
Speaker 7: tournaim the sweee on the trailer on his portray of
Speaker 7: the tractor. So cut along through it shortly and all
Speaker 7: the way back on the back of the farm, all
Speaker 7: the way to the house, and he rung up the
Speaker 7: doctor and he was over the doll up phones and
Speaker 7: and rang up Well, we ain't got one thing to do.
Speaker 7: You come down and put them inside the car, which
Speaker 7: is pretty hard, and you got the air and you.
Speaker 4: Well you didn't try to You didn't play that game again,
Speaker 4: did you, Pete.
Speaker 7: So so what happened was the coming back on the
Speaker 7: going back all the way to the back to the
Speaker 7: back of the farm to their house and bring up
Speaker 7: the doctor and he said, you're not fighting arrows to
Speaker 7: each other anymore, are you.
Speaker 4: All?
Speaker 7: The doctor said, just just slide there, just standing them up.
Speaker 7: He called it in tell them to lay down or
Speaker 7: laid down for probably about twenty minutes, and they just
Speaker 7: stroyed up and got up and walked away.
Speaker 4: Well, I think you're pretty lucky, Pete. But thank you
Speaker 4: for that lovely story. They'll probably have a few people wincing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 4: Actually, thanks for you. I appreciate the call. You know,
Speaker 4: somebody's just texted the obvious questions about the boy racer behavior.
Speaker 4: So we see that stuff, and I would suggest that, well,
Speaker 4: I think there's probably a lot of kids who you're
Speaker 4: around town, you think that's going to be doing this.
Speaker 4: You go along because you're curious, and you get the
Speaker 4: ones who are bit closely involved. But then you get
Speaker 4: somebody gets the legs run over or hit by a car.
Speaker 4: Any take on the psychology or what.
Speaker 2: We can do about that, Well, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of and I'm not think we need to think
Speaker 2: about the age of those of boy racers too. I
Speaker 2: think I think they're older them, you know, I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: some of them at least will be teens. But there
Speaker 2: is that whole you know, let's flock to it because
Speaker 2: it's exciting, it's interesting, and everybody else is do I
Speaker 2: think it's a nice counter example of who have you
Speaker 2: gotten your kids? Who is in your kid's life, who
Speaker 2: are they looking up to? And if they're looking up
Speaker 2: to other sort of twenty three twenty four year old
Speaker 2: boy racers, then not surprising that they might become you know,
Speaker 2: influenced by that.
Speaker 4: Well what can you do about that?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 4: Okay, they're drifting into a crowd. You think this is
Speaker 4: I mean, there'll be stories about people who shifted towns. Well, okay,
Speaker 4: we're just going to have to move, We're going to
Speaker 4: shift schools, whatever, neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough because of course, if you immediately say
Speaker 2: to them, don't hang around with them, then of course
Speaker 2: that's a bit like a red rag to a ball,
Speaker 2: and of course they'll hang around with them. There there's
Speaker 2: look at I don't know what to do in the
Speaker 2: exact moment. I think, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: work to do beforehand around who are they hanging out with,
Speaker 2: who are they being involved with, what are they doing
Speaker 2: with their spare time, and maybe also an opportunity for
Speaker 2: parents to look at them at their own behaviors as well.
Speaker 2: I don't have you know this is who knows. But
Speaker 2: if parents are are inadvertently reinforcing or giving the thumbs
Speaker 2: up to that behavior as well, who knows what's going on.
Speaker 2: But I think you've just got to be really careful
Speaker 2: around who's around you or who's around the kids, and
Speaker 2: who they're hanging out with.
Speaker 4: We're going to take a quick break back into the ticket.
Speaker 4: It's twenty one minutes two six news talks that we
Speaker 4: don't forget the sports. Yes, welcome back to the Weekend
Speaker 4: Collective on tim Bevers. My guest is doctor Dougal Sutherland.
Speaker 4: He's principal psychologist today Umbrella well Being. By the way,
Speaker 4: if you want to check out the Umbrella Wellbeing and
Speaker 4: get in touch umbrella dot org dot NZ. I mean
Speaker 4: you get there eventually if you just type an umbrella
Speaker 4: well being. But if you type an umbrella you possibly
Speaker 4: will get what the French called a parapluy, which is
Speaker 4: the umbrellas full rain.
Speaker 2: You get, you get blunt umbrellas. I think was the
Speaker 2: first thing you think, So yes, sorry, I was thinking
Speaker 2: about the boy racer things, and you know, that was
Speaker 2: just one before the break, and I remember one somebody
Speaker 2: and I thought it was quite wise. They're interviewing some
Speaker 2: boy racers who were saying, hey, look, we just want
Speaker 2: sort of the adrenaline of the fast cars. And what
Speaker 2: somebody had done, a community had done, is they said, okay, look,
Speaker 2: we accept that you really like this, but let's give
Speaker 2: you some guardrails. So let's give you a safe place
Speaker 2: to do this, with some broad adult supervision. So I
Speaker 2: think they set them up on a race track or
Speaker 2: something with some with some oversight, and I wonder if
Speaker 2: that's part of it too, is saying hey, look, we
Speaker 2: accept that you want to take some level of risk,
Speaker 2: but let's put some guard rails around you so that
Speaker 2: it doesn't end up in a tragic situation. So that
Speaker 2: that's I was just thinking about that something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, I think that, and then you find
Speaker 4: out that there are some who actually that's enough for
Speaker 4: and there are some for whom the illegal give it
Speaker 4: and giving it to the cops. Element is that is
Speaker 4: the main appeal, and you still get those other sides
Speaker 4: of it, and that's when.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're probably you know, sort of
Speaker 2: the sheep from the goats. They're a little bit of think.
Speaker 4: Hey, are girls or boys worse at thinking ahead and thinking, hey,
Speaker 4: maybe don't do that.
Speaker 2: Boys tend to be worse at it. They tend to
Speaker 2: be more Yeah, they tend And part of that, and
Speaker 2: this is a huge generalization, but the prefront or cortex,
Speaker 2: that bit of the brain that gives you that self
Speaker 2: control is slower to develop in boys than girls. And
Speaker 2: I think we often see that. You just see that.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody says old girls develop faster, you know,
Speaker 2: they're mature, quicker, and they that's there's some truth in that.
Speaker 2: So so boys do tend to be a little bit
Speaker 2: slower in that department. I think too. There's some people
Speaker 2: are just into thrill seeking a lot more than other people.
Speaker 2: There's you know, there's a thrill seeking type of personality
Speaker 2: and they love it and and that was never one
Speaker 2: of mine. But yeah, some people are just into taking
Speaker 2: risks and enjoy the thrills a lot more than other people.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of these conversations we have DOO
Speaker 4: will also come back to as also reminding parents just
Speaker 4: to take time to talk to their kids. Yes, because
Speaker 4: I think you know that they're busy on devices and
Speaker 4: they you know, they get busier and busy, and I
Speaker 4: think we have a generation of kids who extracurricularly speaking,
Speaker 4: I would guess all my kids certainly are busier than
Speaker 4: I was. I focused on one sport and flogged it
Speaker 4: to death. Yeah, okay, a bit of music as well,
Speaker 4: but I mean my kids do ballet, you know, netball, choir, music,
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. It's like, oh, just trying to find
Speaker 4: a quiet moment. Yeah, yep, yep. It is busier and live.
Speaker 2: I definitely agree, you know that. I think I think
Speaker 2: there's just more options, which there's nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 2: but it was certainly and there's also something good about
Speaker 2: kids getting bored and just figuring out stuff to do,
Speaker 2: although obviously that can go awry.
Speaker 4: That's sometimes the where these dumb ideas. Hey, let's try
Speaker 4: and shoot arrows at each other and catch it with
Speaker 4: their hands.
Speaker 2: Gosh, when Pete was talking, I remember that how I
Speaker 2: broke both my arms on a farm bike when I
Speaker 2: was thirteen.
Speaker 4: Oh well, okay, I think as a salutary lesson, you
Speaker 4: should share that to us before we wrap up.
Speaker 2: We were just I was on the back of a
Speaker 2: quad bike and I was leaning back on both my arms,
Speaker 2: and we were shooting down the paddock, counting haybales. I
Speaker 2: can't remember why we thought that was a good idea,
Speaker 2: and we hit a ditch. It wasn't a huge ditch,
Speaker 2: and my arms basically acted as shock absorbers when and
Speaker 2: so I came out and both my arms were well, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was I blacked out for five minutes or so,
Speaker 2: I think due to the pain. And then, of course
Speaker 2: I was fourteen with two casts, and I couldn't shower
Speaker 2: myself or doing anything else like that, which is exactly
Speaker 2: kind of the wrong developmental age. So I had to
Speaker 2: be showered by my parents and toileted by my parents.
Speaker 2: For a good success.
Speaker 4: There's hopefully someone's listening. They'll be thinking, oh, there's a
Speaker 4: one way to write a by one time for one
Speaker 4: more quick call.
Speaker 3: Jeff, Hello, bog Yeah, get mate. You know these boy
Speaker 3: racers are really you know, I lock what's happening. You know,
Speaker 3: we just didn't do so many stupid things. You know,
Speaker 3: these young guys think going out there and do burnouts
Speaker 3: and this and that and causing trouble. And there's one
Speaker 3: hundred police that went into love And I used to
Speaker 3: live in Levan for seventeen years and it just turned
Speaker 3: into a terrible town. So we cannot let these guys
Speaker 3: run a town. They're not they're not kids anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, I think in that case, you're right, Jeff. You
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's people. That's why people are
Speaker 4: seeking constant just for that sort of behavior. I mean,
Speaker 4: are we have we got light on consequences with our
Speaker 4: kids as well? Do you think Google? Sound like I'm
Speaker 4: not my generator an excer, But you know, I.
Speaker 2: Was just thinking back about the stories from Pete Irene
Speaker 2: and Dean about the crazy things that they did when
Speaker 2: they were when they were younger, and that they sounded
Speaker 2: like a generation older than me. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think I think there are no I think I think
Speaker 2: we've been we've generally got a safer society. That would
Speaker 2: be my impression. But maybe that means that people don't
Speaker 2: learn so much. But we don't want to people. We
Speaker 2: don't want to have to use sort of terrible consequences
Speaker 2: for people to learn from. So it's a delicate balancing act,
Speaker 2: but I think, yeah, I think there is. We do
Speaker 2: need to be thinking about people's safety.
Speaker 4: Hey Doogle. Always great to talk to you, mate, Really
Speaker 4: appreciate your time today. And if people want to go
Speaker 4: and check out your work or get in touch, it's
Speaker 4: umbrella dot org dot that's the one. Excellent. Hey, thanks
Speaker 4: so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks mate, appreciated talk.
Speaker 4: Cheers, Bye bye. We'll be back with Christopher Reeve. I
Speaker 4: keep on referring to MS Superman because those who are
Speaker 4: old enough to remember the original Superman Christopher Reeve spelt
Speaker 4: slightly differently. But he'll be with us on a second
Speaker 4: to rap Sport. This is News Talk said B. It's
Speaker 4: eleven minutes to six.
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