Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 2: and speaker.
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
Speaker 3: and course creator. We are two working parents who love
Speaker 3: our careers and our families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 2: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
Speaker 2: From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This
Speaker 1: episode is.
Speaker 2: Airing at the end of May of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Sarah is going to be interviewing Ellen Golinski, whose new
Speaker 2: book is about All Things adolescents. So, Sarah, maybe you
Speaker 2: can tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this book is well. Actually, I'm going to mention
Speaker 3: first that Ellen Golenski is amazing. She's had just such
Speaker 3: a long career of writing about things that she has
Speaker 3: found interesting, and a lot of times those things have
Speaker 3: kind of mirrored different experiences in her life. She's written
Speaker 3: about young children, she's written about working parenthood. I'm actually
Speaker 3: surprised we haven't talked to her about that. Specifically, as
Speaker 3: she is very much in favor of women having choices
Speaker 3: about what they do and how that children can thrive
Speaker 3: under different types of circumstances. But more recently she's focused
Speaker 3: on the teen years and wrote a very comprehensive book
Speaker 3: called The Breakthrough Years, putting together her own kind of
Speaker 3: unique style of research and findings and a lot of
Speaker 3: kind of primary source material from teens themselves. She went
Speaker 3: right to the real source here, which I think is
Speaker 3: refreshing and really really cool. So definitely a fun book
Speaker 3: to check out. But Laura, you're a teen expert too
Speaker 3: at this point, I feel like when you.
Speaker 2: Say yes, so yeah, I now have a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old and a fourteen year old and a twelve year
Speaker 2: old in addition to my younger kids. So we've been
Speaker 2: in the teen years for several years now, have several
Speaker 2: more years to go in it.
Speaker 1: But I'm actually really really liking them. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, you hear various horror stories about teenagerhood or whatever,
Speaker 2: but it seems good. I mean, I guess you don't
Speaker 2: quite have teens yet. You're getting there, No, I don't.
Speaker 3: But I love listening to you chat about the things
Speaker 3: that you do with your teens, the different trips you take,
Speaker 3: the one on one time you spend together, and at
Speaker 3: least for my observation of your stories, I feel like
Speaker 3: you've really enjoyed those times and enjoyed these years a lot.
Speaker 3: So I'm more excited about it than I am scared
Speaker 3: at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know that I
Speaker 2: have any particular advice or expertise because every kid is
Speaker 2: so different, But I think one thing that's been very
Speaker 2: helpful for me, because you know, so I'm just passing
Speaker 2: this along as a tip, is just to you know,
Speaker 2: if your kid annoys you about something they have done that's,
Speaker 2: you know, within the realm of normal adolescent behavior, you
Speaker 2: might just remind yourself of how much.
Speaker 1: Worse it could be.
Speaker 2: So if there are, for instance, I don't know, food
Speaker 2: wrappers all over the car that the child borrowed, or
Speaker 2: if there's dirty laundry in the hall, or I don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean, those aren't particularly things that we've had problem with,
Speaker 2: but I'm just saying those as hypotheticals.
Speaker 1: Here. You could tell yourself, like I mean, your.
Speaker 2: Kid could be addicted to drugs, your kid could be
Speaker 2: in trouble with the law. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 2: worse things that could happen. And if those things were
Speaker 2: the case, and you were offered the choice of like, hey,
Speaker 2: you could have that, or you could have dirty laundry
Speaker 2: in the hall, what would you like?
Speaker 1: You'd be like, oh, dirty laundry. Give me the dirty laundry.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled about the dirty laundry. And so maybe it
Speaker 1: just helps to have that as your mindset to begin with.
Speaker 3: I love it. Do you feel like teens of today
Speaker 3: And I don't know I'm going out on a limb
Speaker 3: here with this one, but do you feel like teens
Speaker 3: are more interested in hanging out with their parents compared
Speaker 3: to when we were teens?
Speaker 1: I think they're There is some evidence that that is
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 2: That people are not as it can be viewed positively
Speaker 2: or negatively. I mean, there's something to be said about
Speaker 2: adolescents and establishing your own independence, and people complain about
Speaker 2: young people needing their parents to intervene in all sorts
Speaker 2: of college decisions or even in job applications, which seems
Speaker 2: crazy because those are of course markers of adulthood. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, like it's not a bad thing
Speaker 2: that your young adult child wants to have a relationship
Speaker 2: with you. That's actually pretty awesome. And so if that
Speaker 2: is a development over time, I'm here for it. Like
Speaker 2: if my kids want to hang out with me, I
Speaker 2: am very excited about that and flattered that that might
Speaker 2: be the case.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Well. I'm excited for everyone to listen to this interview
Speaker 3: because I learned so much from Ellen, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: you will too well. I am so excited to welcome
Speaker 3: author and researcher extraordinaire Ellen Golinski to the podcast. She
Speaker 3: recently released a book called The Breakthrough Years, which you
Speaker 3: are going to talk about, but she's had an incredible
Speaker 3: career even before that as well. So Ellen, welcome. Can
Speaker 3: you introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners.
Speaker 4: I think of myself as a research adventurer because I've
Speaker 4: spent my whole life following questions, questions that I don't
Speaker 4: really know the answers to, and questions that I think matter.
Speaker 4: And it's an extraordinary way to live a life. It
Speaker 4: really is, because you can wander into all kinds of
Speaker 4: places and talk to all kinds of people when you're
Speaker 4: following your questions and finding things that then you try
Speaker 4: to translate into action. So started when I was a teacher.
Speaker 4: Actually I was a teacher of young children, and I
Speaker 4: know what we thought we were teaching them, but I
Speaker 4: didn't know what they were actually learning. So they were
Speaker 4: preschool kids. So I made a model classroom and asked
Speaker 4: them to pretend to be at school. And their visions
Speaker 4: of school were so different than the actual experiences that
Speaker 4: we thought we were giving them. It was shocking. You know.
Speaker 4: They had the very cultural This was a school where
Speaker 4: the kids chose activities, They had a lot of hands
Speaker 4: on experience. The schools that they made these little children were,
Speaker 4: you know, little rows of desks and raise your hand,
Speaker 4: and the culture what a school is was so strongly
Speaker 4: influencing them. Even then, I have found in throughout the
Speaker 4: years that the answers are not what we would expect.
Speaker 4: It's just a very exciting life. When I had a
Speaker 4: first child, I wondered about how we as a culture
Speaker 4: helped people transition into parenthood, and then wrote a book
Speaker 4: about that. Sometimes I start with the idea of a book,
Speaker 4: sometimes I don't, but that began a book that just
Speaker 4: was in me, that was bursting out. I just had,
Speaker 4: I had to write that one, and then I got
Speaker 4: interested in how parents grow, and there wasn't very much literature,
Speaker 4: so I had to actually do an exploratory study, and
Speaker 4: that became a book, and I started to do series
Speaker 4: of studies. After doing research on wrote a book about childcare.
Speaker 4: In the United States, childcare was seen as very evil
Speaker 4: at the time, stranger danger. You know, you wouldn't why
Speaker 4: shouldn't you just stay at home and take care of
Speaker 4: your children? But increasingly that wasn't the reality of most
Speaker 4: people's lives, and so I wanted to find good childcare
Speaker 4: around the country and look at what made it work,
Speaker 4: and that became a book. And then in listening to
Speaker 4: those the stories of parents and the stories of families.
Speaker 4: When we were interviewing and doing the research for the
Speaker 4: book on childcare, I began to see that there was
Speaker 4: the secret thing that people had. It didn't even have
Speaker 4: a name, but it was managing work in family life.
Speaker 4: So we're talking a while ago. But it wasn't cold
Speaker 4: work in family life. It wasn't cold work life. If
Speaker 4: it wasn't called any of those sorts of things. Then
Speaker 4: then I started an organization and did a series of
Speaker 4: studies and in the course of doing those studies, I
Speaker 4: wanted to interview not only the spouse of the employee,
Speaker 4: because we were doing studies about the employees, I wanted
Speaker 4: to also interview the kids. And I found that kids
Speaker 4: it was like the image that I had was that
Speaker 4: parents and children were looking through the same picture window,
Speaker 4: but they were seeing different scenery, a whole different vista,
Speaker 4: very different. And so that led me into what became
Speaker 4: a book called Ask the Children, which is how kids
Speaker 4: feel about their working parents and so on. You know,
Speaker 4: some of the books are intentional, some of them aren't.
Speaker 4: But often when I feel like I have enough to
Speaker 4: say and people don't know it, and it's often about
Speaker 4: bursting the miss you know, the assumptions that we make,
Speaker 4: then it becomes a book.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm actually shocked that we haven't had you on previously,
Speaker 3: just because this podcast is so focus. I mean, our
Speaker 3: tagline is making work and life fit together, and we
Speaker 3: hope to empower women who are choosing. We respect anybody
Speaker 3: who makes either decision, but we felt like there just
Speaker 3: wasn't enough out there for women who do really enjoy
Speaker 3: their careers and want to experience that and have a
Speaker 3: wonderful family life as well. So I feel like we're
Speaker 3: long overdue and we may have to have you on again.
Speaker 3: I get back into those childcare issues and the issues
Speaker 3: you just mentioned, because that is just so near and
Speaker 3: dear to our hearts and the hearts of our audience.
Speaker 3: So that is super cool and I love that. So
Speaker 3: at the same time, you have had a little bit
Speaker 3: of a recent pivot, not really, because actually there's clearly
Speaker 3: a common thread, which is that A you like to
Speaker 3: do your own research, and B you like to go
Speaker 3: straight to the source, not necessarily the adult source. But
Speaker 3: can you talk a little bit about how you have
Speaker 3: kind of focused in on teens and adolescents over the
Speaker 3: recent past with your new work.
Speaker 4: I've practiced a form of reach church called civic science.
Speaker 4: And what civic science means is that you go to
Speaker 4: the source. Your way of saying it is beautiful. I
Speaker 4: don't make assumptions about people. I find out what's on
Speaker 4: their minds. So for thirty years I did the largest
Speaker 4: nationally representative study of the US workforce and the largest
Speaker 4: nationally representative study of the US workplace. And my studies
Speaker 4: were in the news all the time. And why it's
Speaker 4: not that I'm so brilliant. It's that I know how
Speaker 4: to listen, you know, I just I would ask employers
Speaker 4: what keeps you up at night? What are you worrying about?
Speaker 4: And then put it into the study. I would ask
Speaker 4: employees the same question, put it into the study. And
Speaker 4: so it's always breaking new grounds. Civic science is and
Speaker 4: I'm thankful for you for doing a podcast on it,
Speaker 4: because there wasn't enough discussion then and there still isn't
Speaker 4: enough discussion now.
Speaker 3: I love that. But what brought you to the current
Speaker 3: focus on teens? Because I have been through your book,
Speaker 3: not with a fine tooth cam yet, like I want
Speaker 3: to go through it again in even more detail. But
Speaker 3: I am fascinated at the level of individuality captured of
Speaker 3: some of the voices in the book, as well as
Speaker 3: with some of the takeaways, which are kind of a
Speaker 3: mix of some of the things you'd expect and then
Speaker 3: also some things that are a little bit different.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think often getting upset, getting angry, getting annoyed,
Speaker 4: getting thinking they don't get it, they don't get it,
Speaker 4: leads me to the next project. And in this case,
Speaker 4: I was really tired of people in the early childhood
Speaker 4: years saying that if they just had one year of preschool,
Speaker 4: all would be good for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4: You know. Some people didn't do that, but there was
Speaker 4: the sense of it's the foundation and if you screw
Speaker 4: it up, it's too late. And people felt that way
Speaker 4: about my book Mind and the Making, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we have to carry it through. Foundations are critical, you know,
Speaker 4: they're the house of on a foundation, but you still
Speaker 4: building the architecture upwards, and we need to pay attention
Speaker 4: to the older years or we're not going to really
Speaker 4: help kids grow and learn and thrive. And all of
Speaker 4: my work has been around helping families learn and thrive.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's the common theme in it. But I
Speaker 4: started out civic science by going to young people themselves
Speaker 4: and saying, what do you want to know about your
Speaker 4: own development? What should I ask the researchers who study
Speaker 4: people your age if you had one wish to improve
Speaker 4: the lives of people your age, what would that wish be?
Speaker 4: Or what questions do you have about yourself? And what
Speaker 4: don't you understand about yourself? Just a lot of open
Speaker 4: ended questions, which you can do when you're starting something,
Speaker 4: and it took me in a completely different direction than
Speaker 4: I thought I was going. If you just read the
Speaker 4: research on adolescents, you would go in one direction, but
Speaker 4: if you talk to them, you go in a completely
Speaker 4: different direction. And they're what they say. Said to me
Speaker 4: that we talked to thirty eight fourteen to eighteen year
Speaker 4: olds from around the country, even from other parts of
Speaker 4: the world, and they said, why don't people like teenagers?
Speaker 4: That's simple, like, look at us, We're not the stereotypic teenagers.
Speaker 4: Who is you know? That got me to look into
Speaker 4: what is our societal conception of teenagers of adolescents? And
Speaker 4: they wanted, you know, I asked the question in the
Speaker 4: eventual nationally representative study that I did, I ask what
Speaker 4: do you want to tell adults about people your age?
Speaker 4: And they wanted it to be comprehensive. So it is
Speaker 4: a comprehensive book. It is, you know, most books are
Speaker 4: here's you know, here's my point, and you know, I'm
Speaker 4: going to tell you what I'm going to tell you,
Speaker 4: and now I'm telling you, and now I told you
Speaker 4: kind of a thing. They wanted a comprehensive story. That's
Speaker 4: why they're five messages from young people about what they
Speaker 4: want us to know, and it actually aligned with the research,
Speaker 4: the new research. I call it the breakthrough years because
Speaker 4: these are breakthrough years for kids, but also researchers have
Speaker 4: had so many breakthroughs in how they understand adolescens, so
Speaker 4: breakthrough on both sides.
Speaker 3: I love that we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 3: and then get into some specifics. All right, we are
Speaker 3: back and we are going to delve into the breakthrough
Speaker 3: years a little bit. But one thing I loved, loved
Speaker 3: right off the bat was that you opened I don't
Speaker 3: know if you opened or closed, but I read it
Speaker 3: in your book where you mentioned the just you wait
Speaker 3: kind of prophecy. That's like Laura and I's least favorite phrase,
Speaker 3: just in general, like just you wait, because often we
Speaker 3: find that either it's not true and that it potentially
Speaker 3: causes a lot of unnecessary angst. So I would love
Speaker 3: you to delve in to kind of how you addressed
Speaker 3: this particular sentiment I think, especially around teenagers, and how
Speaker 3: it might actually do some damage.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean when young people said to me, why
Speaker 4: don't people like teenagers? That took me right back to
Speaker 4: the birth of my first child. So I opened the
Speaker 4: book with that because he was premature. He was in
Speaker 4: the hospital for a while. He didn't come home right away.
Speaker 4: He was in the hospital for five weeks before he
Speaker 4: was big enough to come home. He was perfectly healthy,
Speaker 4: just small, and he had to gain enough weight for
Speaker 4: them to let him out of the hospital. And I
Speaker 4: brought him home, and you know, there he was my
Speaker 4: perfect little person. You know. Now he was big. It
Speaker 4: was all of almost five pounds. He had ten little
Speaker 4: fingers and ten little toes. And I just was thrilled
Speaker 4: to this little person now who was finally in my house.
Speaker 4: And a neighbor came home over to see him, to
Speaker 4: welcome him to the world, and she said, just wait
Speaker 4: to lease a teenager. And it was like, what, you know,
Speaker 4: I just am feeling so much joy and I've been
Speaker 4: through such agony over you know, would he be healthy,
Speaker 4: would he survive? You know, with foreign prematurely, that's scary.
Speaker 4: And now I've got this jail like since hanging over
Speaker 4: my head for the next ten years or something. Uh
Speaker 4: So I asked that in the study, I ask how
Speaker 4: many people have had heard just wait, And sixty one
Speaker 4: percent of parents in a nationally representative group have heard
Speaker 4: just wait until they're teenagers. Interestingly, to me, parents did
Speaker 4: something else, which is I'd say I'd start the in
Speaker 4: person interviews that I did in between the two national studies.
Speaker 4: I'd start the in person interviews saying, like, if I
Speaker 4: were someone from another country, tell me what it's like
Speaker 4: to be the parent of a child your age, and
Speaker 4: they would to a person, they would say, I'm lucky,
Speaker 4: my kid's okay, my kid isn't this terrible person. So
Speaker 4: it's just the consent options of what adolescents are supposed
Speaker 4: to be, Like, they're so embedded in us that there
Speaker 4: were the opening gambit to every conversation I had with parents.
Speaker 3: Like, even though I'm the exception to the rule, i
Speaker 3: still believe this trope because it's just been what people say.
Speaker 3: And you said something interesting on another podcast was that
Speaker 3: there's actually some data that like expecting badness may make
Speaker 3: it more likely to happen. I found that fascinating. I
Speaker 3: also wonder if it applies in other realms of life.
Speaker 3: But can you share a little bit about that well?
Speaker 4: I wanted to understand when we ask the question and
Speaker 4: what you want to tell the adults about people your age.
Speaker 4: We found that twenty one percent of young people say
Speaker 4: understand us, understand our development. And who hasn't had a
Speaker 4: teenager say that to you? You know, you understand us,
Speaker 4: you don't understand us, you know, And it can be
Speaker 4: sort of something that we brush off. But in fact
Speaker 4: I ask a question that got it that I ask
Speaker 4: adults what they're conceptions of the team brain were. I
Speaker 4: came out of sitting at a conference on neuroscience with
Speaker 4: neuroscientists where they were debating what public thought about teenagers,
Speaker 4: and I thought, well, I'll just ask, and so I did,
Speaker 4: and we don't understand them. What I found is that
Speaker 4: only fourteen percent of parents use positive words, twenty seven
Speaker 4: percent use neutral words, fifty nine percent use negative words.
Speaker 4: The most frequent negative word, by eleven percent, was immature,
Speaker 4: and then another eight percent. So almost one in five
Speaker 4: of us think of our adolescence as deficit adults, and
Speaker 4: we don't understand that they're acting the way that they're
Speaker 4: programmed to act. Their brain is priming them to be exploratory,
Speaker 4: to have strong emotional reactions to things as they figure
Speaker 4: out how to move out into the world and to
Speaker 4: become whom they want to be or to be whom
Speaker 4: they want to be. So it's it's normal, it's developmentally completely,
Speaker 4: it's development necessary for them to be this way, and
Speaker 4: yet we don't you know, a lot of us don't
Speaker 4: understand that. So that I think was a very important
Speaker 4: finding that we actually our adult perspectives. It's called the
Speaker 4: curse of knowledge in cognitive science, where we now know something,
Speaker 4: then we don't remember not knowing it. We can't see
Speaker 4: the world without knowing it. I think that part of
Speaker 4: that is true in how we think about teenagers.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, you can't really strike anything from the record,
Speaker 3: and then you're maybe handicapped by that. Very interesting. You
Speaker 3: also talk about how it is very developmentally appropriate for
Speaker 3: teens to have heightened emotions and how we react to
Speaker 3: that as parents can either be helpful or perhaps very
Speaker 3: hurtful if it's not done right. And it seems like
Speaker 3: that was a common theme that came out. Can you
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yes, I just love I mean, young people are so articulate.
Speaker 4: You know, young people wrote down the things that they
Speaker 4: didn't like that adults said to them, like stop being
Speaker 4: such a teenager. Well, they are a teenager, you know,
Speaker 4: they're supposed to be a teenager. That's what they are,
Speaker 4: and or you're you know, hormonal mess or oh my god,
Speaker 4: puberty or you know all of the things like that.
Speaker 4: And so we need to understand that they're supposed to
Speaker 4: have these very heightened feelings. They're like emotional detectors. I
Speaker 4: thought of it like a Geiger counter. If anyone remembers
Speaker 4: what they are. You know, where you go around and
Speaker 4: you can find metal in the soil. They're supposed to
Speaker 4: be able to be sensitive to emotions. How else will
Speaker 4: they know who are the people that they want to
Speaker 4: be with, Who are the people who make them feel
Speaker 4: safe as they move further from the home. I don't
Speaker 4: believe that there's sort of something called independence that they
Speaker 4: separate and are never connected to us. Again, you know
Speaker 4: that we're always interdependent. In my book The Six Stages
Speaker 4: of Parenthood, I called it the stage of interdependence. But
Speaker 4: they're moving out far, they're into the world, and they
Speaker 4: need that ability to be an emotional detector.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and how about our response to those emotions? What
Speaker 3: are they looking for? It sounds like a big theme
Speaker 3: was to be listened to and not have their feelings
Speaker 3: be discounted. But can you go into more depth? As
Speaker 3: how we can be supportive as parents even in the moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's where I found civic science so helpful, because
Speaker 4: they can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't work.
Speaker 4: They want to be talked with, not at one child
Speaker 4: I call them. Joshua, who is twelve years old from California, said,
Speaker 4: listen with when I was a child's mind, not just
Speaker 4: now I'm an adult mind. So try to take their
Speaker 4: perspectives and understand how it feels to be a teenager
Speaker 4: or how it felt once. But don't say, oh, I
Speaker 4: was your agent and I got over it. You know
Speaker 4: you'll get over it. Explain that they're supposed to have
Speaker 4: those feelings. If they I mean, they really want to
Speaker 4: understand it, they will say, oh, I didn't know that
Speaker 4: was normal. I didn't know we were supposed to feel
Speaker 4: this way. So listen, listen more than you talk, they said,
Speaker 4: Listen with an understanding of their development. And then I
Speaker 4: think also help them learn to solve problems. I ask
Speaker 4: young people for three you know, the most important parenting
Speaker 4: or teaching skills, and they said, listen more than you talk.
Speaker 4: Listen with when I was a child's mind as well
Speaker 4: as now I'm an adult mind, So take their perspective
Speaker 4: and then if we're the problem, then we need to
Speaker 4: be part of the solution. Using young people's words here,
Speaker 4: but they need to develop the ability to solve problems
Speaker 4: for themselves. So using autonomy supportive practices or I call
Speaker 4: them skill building practices, is a way to help them
Speaker 4: learn the skills to manage the world rather than fixing
Speaker 4: things for them.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of skills to manage the world, you go off.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a tangent or sort of
Speaker 3: a subtopic, but executive function comes up a lot in
Speaker 3: this book, I guess because that's one area that's really
Speaker 3: developing and just impacts a lot of how kids and
Speaker 3: teens experience daily life. So how what does that mean?
Speaker 3: And how can we support our kids, even those who
Speaker 3: might be struggling to develop that executive function as I
Speaker 3: know many adults still struggle with that as well.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, it's actually a culmination. It's the fifth message
Speaker 4: because it's to me ties so much together. If we
Speaker 4: help young people and ourselves develop executive function skills, we're
Speaker 4: going to learn better, We're going to thrive better. It
Speaker 4: kind of pulls it all together, I think it's the
Speaker 4: biggest secret. You know, there's always a gap between research
Speaker 4: getting to practice. The research on executive function skills is
Speaker 4: maybe twenty or so years old by that name anyway,
Speaker 4: And yet if you walk into a classroom a group
Speaker 4: of I'm working with the ASAY, which is the school
Speaker 4: Superintendent organization, and they're always saying, if you walk into
Speaker 4: a group of superintendents and you asked them to hold
Speaker 4: up their hand if they've heard executive function, not many
Speaker 4: people will raise their hand. And if they do, they'll
Speaker 4: think it has to do with problems with executive function,
Speaker 4: which is ADHD or other learning problems, or it has
Speaker 4: to do with organizing, or it has to do you know,
Speaker 4: making tabs in your notebooks, or it has to do
Speaker 4: with being able to sit still and be compliant and
Speaker 4: listen to the teacher, and those are all parts of it,
Speaker 4: but it is these are the skills of learning. These
Speaker 4: are how we learn. They are the most important skills.
Speaker 4: And so I think that we need to you ask
Speaker 4: what we should do. And I think it's helping children
Speaker 4: become aware of how they learn, not just what they learn.
Speaker 4: We focus a lot on what they learn, but how
Speaker 4: they learn. So when did you figure out You know,
Speaker 4: you struggled with getting your homework done, but this time
Speaker 4: you did it and it wasn't such a struggle. What
Speaker 4: was different? How did you manage that? What did you
Speaker 4: learn from that? Or you're doing some project on the river,
Speaker 4: let's say, or you know science that looks at how
Speaker 4: rivers develop, in the function of rivers in society, making
Speaker 4: it up, but not just what did you learn about rivers?
Speaker 4: But how did you learn best? What helped you learn something?
Speaker 4: How does your memory work? So executive function is an
Speaker 4: umbrella concept. It's not us thing. It's a set of
Speaker 4: sub skills. There are four sub skills that I think
Speaker 4: are important. They are working memory, which means using what
Speaker 4: you know. It's not enough to memorize something, you have
Speaker 4: to be able to use it put it to action.
Speaker 4: It is being able to think flexibly. Because the world
Speaker 4: changes and we need to change with it. We need
Speaker 4: to understand other people's point of view. That's just one
Speaker 4: example of thinking flexibly. That everybody doesn't think the way
Speaker 4: we do, and understanding different perspectives is really critically important
Speaker 4: to surviving in society. It's reflecting that isn't often seen
Speaker 4: as an executive function skill. These are attention regulation skills.
Speaker 4: The attention when we reflect is internal intention attention, not
Speaker 4: just external attention. We're paying attention to ourselves, we're pausing,
Speaker 4: we're stepping back. It does take place in a different
Speaker 4: part of the brain than default mode network, but it
Speaker 4: is highly linked to executive function skills, so I put
Speaker 4: it in there. And then finally self control, which is
Speaker 4: doing what you need to do, not going on automatic,
Speaker 4: but doing what you need to do to achieve a goal.
Speaker 4: So these are the core skills, and they're the building
Speaker 4: blocks of things that we know are important, like setting
Speaker 4: goals or perspective taking or communicating or collaborating or problem
Speaker 4: solving or taking on challenges. Those are the five skills
Speaker 4: that I outline that are very important, and each of
Speaker 4: them has sub skills that go along with it.
Speaker 3: Awesome, We're going to take another quick break and then
Speaker 3: I want to ask you a little bit about your
Speaker 3: I don't know how you might have applied this to
Speaker 3: your younger self. We'll be right back. So it seems
Speaker 3: like we've gotten some things right about the teen years,
Speaker 3: but maybe historically we got a lot of things a
Speaker 3: little off base. So was there anything you discovered while
Speaker 3: you were doing this research that you might have done
Speaker 3: differently yourself, or you kind of like have seen being
Speaker 3: done that you wish could turn around.
Speaker 4: Yes, this research helped me understand some things that I
Speaker 4: did that worked, and it helped me figure out what
Speaker 4: I did do that didn't work as well. My mother
Speaker 4: was wonderful at listening to us, and particularly if we
Speaker 4: thought that she was doing something that she could do
Speaker 4: better as a parent. She really took our if you
Speaker 4: want to call it criticism or advice, very seriously. I
Speaker 4: didn't realize how absolutely exceptional that was until I started
Speaker 4: spending the night with other kids and saw that there
Speaker 4: you know, that would have been seen as back talk.
Speaker 4: We had to be very polite if we told mother
Speaker 4: that we didn't agree with the decision she made, but
Speaker 4: we could say it, and very often she would listen.
Speaker 4: Not always she was the boss, but that was something
Speaker 4: that I just did with my children. And when I
Speaker 4: asked my children the question that you just asked me,
Speaker 4: because I figured that someone was going to ask me
Speaker 4: that what should I do differently? They said I made
Speaker 4: a lot of mistakes, but the thing that I always
Speaker 4: did was listen to them and do something, you know,
Speaker 4: really listen very hard and try to change if something
Speaker 4: wasn't working very well. So I did that. And they
Speaker 4: also said my son said that I didn't prejudge his friends,
Speaker 4: that they could be from really different backgrounds. They were
Speaker 4: always welcome. I wasn't prejudiced against some people. He really
Speaker 4: valued that because he saw a lot a lot of
Speaker 4: parents who had preseid ideas, you don't hang out with
Speaker 4: these kids. You do hang out with these kids. And
Speaker 4: my son also said that I really valued his pursuing
Speaker 4: his interests. He is a musician. He played the drum.
Speaker 4: Other parents could find that annoying, I assume, but I
Speaker 4: found it wonderful that he brought music into our lives.
Speaker 4: And you know now as his doctorate in music and
Speaker 4: just got selected today as the you know in New
Speaker 4: York State is the artist's the best artistic contribution as
Speaker 4: an entrepreneur in the state. I mean, that's like, wow,
Speaker 4: that's pretty amazing. He would say that it's because if
Speaker 4: that's what he always wanted to do, and he always
Speaker 4: wanted to do music, that I was like helping him
Speaker 4: resident saying, you know, why don't you be a lawyer
Speaker 4: or something. I think the thing that I would do
Speaker 4: differently is to pause more, not to react as quickly,
Speaker 4: the importance of reflection, of stepping back and not just reacting,
Speaker 4: so that learn from looking at the research. For sure.
Speaker 3: Oh that's awesome, and I can imagine that's something that
Speaker 3: requires practice, But I myself will try to keep that
Speaker 3: in mind as a fairly impatient kind of person who
Speaker 3: probably needs to work on that.
Speaker 1: So that's awesome.
Speaker 3: I love hearing it. I guess one more question because
Speaker 3: it keeps coming up in other venues in discussions on teens,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure you get it a lot, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot in the cultural zeitgeist about how we've ruined
Speaker 3: the entire generation.
Speaker 1: Because of phones. How can we, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Address that since they are certainly part of our current
Speaker 3: landscape and reality, and we're not going to be able to,
Speaker 3: as Laura and I say, make it nineteen ninety five again.
Speaker 4: Phones are the kid currency up today, and we're not
Speaker 4: going back to nineteen ninety five or a world without pundes.
Speaker 4: We're just not. And so we have to figure out
Speaker 4: how to use them the best way and how to
Speaker 4: change what's not working about them. I think that We
Speaker 4: always look for a bad guy in the culture, and
Speaker 4: phones have been our recent bad guy, you know, the
Speaker 4: easiest thing to blame. We see mental health going up,
Speaker 4: problems with mental health rising, and phone use parallels that.
Speaker 4: So people say, oh, it's causal. The latest science shows
Speaker 4: that it's not causal. Phones can be harmful for some
Speaker 4: kids if they're used too much, or if the kids
Speaker 4: are already struggling with certain issues. They were not designed
Speaker 4: for children. They need to be designed for adolescents and
Speaker 4: for younger children. The endless scroll, the likes, the figures
Speaker 4: that are perfect when you feel so imperfect. All of
Speaker 4: those things aren't particularly healthy. We need ways of making
Speaker 4: phones better, but we also need to appreciate that they
Speaker 4: open up the world of possibilities to young people. I've
Speaker 4: been on a task force in consulting with a federal
Speaker 4: government that is looking at the whole issue of kids
Speaker 4: online health and safety, and we're very careful to state
Speaker 4: the benefits as well as the potential harms. The potential benefits.
Speaker 4: The best review of the literature out there for people
Speaker 4: who really want to look at the literature besides my chapter,
Speaker 4: which I'm still pretty proud of, is there's a whole
Speaker 4: section in the book on the Digital World is The
Speaker 4: National Academy of Sciences released a report in December that
Speaker 4: summarizes the research on what we know now and what
Speaker 4: we need to know about phones, and the American Psychological
Speaker 4: Association just a few days ago came out with another advisory.
Speaker 4: So the world is trying to catch up with the
Speaker 4: latest bad guy. We've had bad guys before. I've seen
Speaker 4: them come and go, so we have to put it
Speaker 4: in perspective. I think two other thoughts about phones. One
Speaker 4: is that it's a really great place for us to
Speaker 4: help kids learn self control. They are meant their designed
Speaker 4: to be addictive. They want you to do that endless scroll.
Speaker 4: They're rewarding, you know, if you get likes, you want
Speaker 4: to see how you stay in. Of course, the imaginary
Speaker 4: audience for teenagers becomes a real audience. You can see
Speaker 4: how people react to what you post, and so we
Speaker 4: need to help them learn how to manage this. And
Speaker 4: if we can help them learn that, just think of
Speaker 4: all of the things that feel addictive in life can
Speaker 4: be well managed if we give them that foundational skill.
Speaker 4: And then I think we need to worry about what
Speaker 4: phones are displacing. If they're displacing being outside and running,
Speaker 4: that's a time for creativity. It's a time to feel
Speaker 4: more centered, it's a time to be physically active. We
Speaker 4: need that. If they're replacing sleep, I'd love the research
Speaker 4: in the book that Rick hugen Ar that I report
Speaker 4: on from Rick Hugenar at the John Hopkins where he's
Speaker 4: discovered that memories getsolidated during sleep, so they're essential to learning.
Speaker 4: They're not just being rested and rest in recovery. They
Speaker 4: are really essential to learning. So we need to manage
Speaker 4: phone use but not freak out about it. And it hasn't.
Speaker 4: Has the kids told me and know in certain terms
Speaker 4: the internet is not going to be the death of
Speaker 4: the whole generation.
Speaker 3: Well, that is reassuring. I think we both agree and
Speaker 3: I love that perspective. Well, let's end on our love
Speaker 3: of the week. I did give you a warning, so
Speaker 3: I will let you go first. What is your love
Speaker 3: of the week this week?
Speaker 4: Well, this week was my birthday yesterday, Happy birthday. And
Speaker 4: my grandson who usually he's eleven, doesn't usually do things
Speaker 4: on school nights because his mom is really careful about
Speaker 4: making sure he gets enough sleep. We live about fifteen
Speaker 4: minutes away, and he decided to come and he worked
Speaker 4: really hard at finding a present for me for my birthday.
Speaker 4: So what he brought me and I know you can't
Speaker 4: see it on the podcast, but I'm home it now,
Speaker 4: so imagine it is. It's called living Animal. It's a labradoodle.
Speaker 4: He knows how much I love my two dogs, and
Speaker 4: he wanted to give me another dog, but instead he
Speaker 4: gave me a stuffed animal that is big, white and
Speaker 4: fluffy labradoodle and it is just adorable and I'm very
Speaker 4: much in love with him and with this labradoodle that
Speaker 4: I now have.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that is so sweet and it sounds
Speaker 3: like he absolutely nailed it, so that is awesome. Mine
Speaker 3: is going to be a tech tip which is super basic,
Speaker 3: but if you ever are interviewing someone, or perhaps just
Speaker 3: want a deep dive on someone's work, you can actually
Speaker 3: search for their name and Apple podcasts and then be
Speaker 3: presented with a million places that they have done interviews previously.
Speaker 3: So not sharing my trade secrets here, but I did
Speaker 3: it for Ellen, and I've done it for many guests
Speaker 3: in the past, but I've also done it for other
Speaker 3: random people that I've become interested in, because then you
Speaker 3: might expose you to some new podcas, new perspectives, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I realized you could do that
Speaker 3: until recently. But yeah, you can search for the subject
Speaker 3: of the podcast, not just the title. So thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming on. This was amazing and as
Speaker 3: I said, can't wait to Delvin even deeper with a
Speaker 3: fine tooth calm. Just remind our listeners the full name
Speaker 3: of your book and of course where they can find you.
Speaker 4: It's called the Breakthrough Years because I really would like
Speaker 4: us as a society to make these the breakthrough years
Speaker 4: for adolescence. Help us see them as a time of possibility,
Speaker 4: and there are so many resources in the book that
Speaker 4: can help us turn what is often seen as the
Speaker 4: time of storm and stress or a just wait time
Speaker 4: into a time where we can build on adolescence possibilities,
Speaker 4: a time of very sensitive brain development. The subtitle is
Speaker 4: a new scientific framework for raising thriving teens, and it
Speaker 4: really is a framework. It's comprehensive. Adolescents wanted us to
Speaker 4: fully understand them, so the book takes the five messages
Speaker 4: that were most important to them and fully explores them.
Speaker 3: Awesome well Thank you so much again for coming on
Speaker 3: my pleasure.
Speaker 1: All Right, we are back.
Speaker 3: That was so much fun to chat with Ellen Galinsky.
Speaker 3: Definitely check her book out. And now we have our
Speaker 3: Q and A segment. This one came in for Laura specifically.
Speaker 3: You'll see why in a second, and she writes, you
Speaker 3: all have talked about whether or not to have more kids,
Speaker 3: and this is usually it seems like going from two
Speaker 3: to three kids. But Laura, you have five kids. Maybe
Speaker 3: this episode exists, but I'd be interested in hearing more
Speaker 3: about deciding to have kids number four and five. I
Speaker 3: have three kids and I'm probably done, but maybe not.
Speaker 3: And I'm also interested in the logistics. Did you store
Speaker 3: all the baby stuff or give it away and buy
Speaker 3: more later?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the logistics of the baby stuff is
Speaker 2: the least fraught part of that, So it's sort of
Speaker 2: funny that that was in this question. I mean, you
Speaker 2: know there's so many people selling used baby items or
Speaker 2: you can easily buy things. I mean, we've certainly we
Speaker 2: had a great guest many years ago who was a
Speaker 2: foster parent, and basically you can learn like overnight that
Speaker 2: you're going to have a baby in your house the
Speaker 2: next day and she went out to Target and got
Speaker 2: everything she needed and it was fine.
Speaker 1: So I think you.
Speaker 2: Don't need to worry about any of that. Feel free
Speaker 2: to give your stuff away to friends if you'd like,
Speaker 2: because they'll probably give it back to you if you
Speaker 2: get pregnant again, or you know you can purchase it,
Speaker 2: or if you want to store it, go for it
Speaker 2: if that makes thinking about the transition a little bit
Speaker 2: easier than you know. If you have the room in
Speaker 2: your house, then not a problem to put things in
Speaker 2: a closet for a few years while you make a decision.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we don't really get the question of should
Speaker 2: I have a fourth kid or should I have a
Speaker 2: fifth kid.
Speaker 1: We always get the question of should I have a
Speaker 1: third kid. I guess that's just the more common question.
Speaker 2: But I think if you're feeling maybe not done Sarah
Speaker 2: and I have certainly discussed this with people in the
Speaker 2: past and certainly seen this with each other, that if
Speaker 2: you're feeling maybe not done, that may be a sign
Speaker 2: that you do want more, And if your partner is
Speaker 2: open to it or maybe even actively hopeful about the idea,
Speaker 2: then you can maybe just sit with the idea for
Speaker 2: a month or two and see if you both feel
Speaker 2: excited about it, because you can always try for four
Speaker 2: without trying for five, Like you don't have to make
Speaker 2: that as a joint decision for you know how many
Speaker 2: more you're going for. You can simply say, well, maybe
Speaker 2: we're open to a fourth and have a fourth. And
Speaker 2: if you have a fourth and decide it's the most
Speaker 2: awesome thing in the world, and you want to have
Speaker 2: even more kids and you don't feel done, then you
Speaker 2: can go for a fifth. But maybe you will have
Speaker 2: that feeling after four like, Okay, that's plenty, my family
Speaker 2: is complete. I can tell everyone that I feel very
Speaker 2: complete after five, which was not necessarily how I had felt,
Speaker 2: for sure after number three or four. So I mean,
Speaker 2: partly it's that I'm old, like I don't think we're
Speaker 2: having more kids at this point anyway, But I certainly
Speaker 2: have that feeling of my family feeling complete in a
Speaker 2: way that I didn't one hundred percent earlier.
Speaker 1: So I think that's something worth listening to.
Speaker 3: And I will say, just because you feel complete at
Speaker 3: one moment, you might change your mind in a year,
Speaker 3: or maybe the other way around, like sometimes when people
Speaker 3: struggle to have kids, the gap gets longer, and then
Speaker 3: you become at peace with like not moving.
Speaker 1: Back to the baby stage.
Speaker 3: So it's hard to sort of like plan ahead and
Speaker 3: assume that you'll be stuck with a given goal or
Speaker 3: mindset around having more kids, because also you can't count
Speaker 3: on what's going to happen. But I will say what Laura.
Speaker 3: I agree with what Laura says, which is that like,
Speaker 3: if you're not sure if you're done, to me, that sort.
Speaker 2: Of suggests that maybe you're not, because you had that
Speaker 2: feeling right after too that you were not sure you
Speaker 2: were done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean not instantaneously, but I was not like
Speaker 3: totally sure, and then after three I was like and seeing,
Speaker 3: we are good.
Speaker 1: That's it, feeling like this is the family, this is good.
Speaker 2: So yeah, all right, well this has been best of
Speaker 2: both worlds. Sarah has been interviewing Ellen Golinski about her
Speaker 2: book The Breakthrough Years and All Things Adolescents. We will
Speaker 2: be back next week with more on making work and
Speaker 2: life fit together.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
Speaker 3: shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
Speaker 3: and you can.
Speaker 2: Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2: Please join us next time for more on making work
Speaker 2: and life work together.