Speaker 1: Pushkin. Growing up is weird. One moment you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you feel certain that you know what you need to
Speaker 1: be happy, but there's often a very frustrating obstacle in
Speaker 1: your way.
Speaker 2: Adults.
Speaker 1: Those authority figures, often your very own parents, who insist
Speaker 1: that just because they've been around longer, they know it's
Speaker 1: best for you. It can feel maddening. You swear that
Speaker 1: when you have kids, things will be different, you will understand,
Speaker 1: and then, in what seems like an instant, you're the
Speaker 1: grown up. You've got your own kids. It's your turn
Speaker 1: to be in charge, and somehow along the way, you've
Speaker 1: forgotten that promise that you made to yourself. You find
Speaker 1: yourself caught up in that same intergenerational tension that you
Speaker 1: once swore to avoid. In this episode in our series
Speaker 1: on Happier Parenting, I'm talking with someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: break that cycle by changing the way adults and kids communicate.
Speaker 2: Hi. I'm David Yaeger. I'm a developmental psychologist and the
Speaker 2: author of the book ten to twenty five.
Speaker 1: David's book explores the science of how to motivate young
Speaker 1: people effectively, and his effective strategy begins with understanding the
Speaker 1: kids in our life, which admittedly is hard, not only
Speaker 1: because we've forgotten what it's like to be a child,
Speaker 1: but also because it can feel like kids today are
Speaker 1: speaking an entirely different language.
Speaker 2: We have four kids and two teenagers, and you know
Speaker 2: a lot of skibbety toilet rizzler g oughts in our house.
Speaker 1: The slang can be funny and sometimes completely indecipherable, but
Speaker 1: the true parent child communication breakdown often goes much deeper
Speaker 1: than vocabulary.
Speaker 2: There's this equivocation. When adults say listen to me, what
Speaker 2: they mean is do exactly what I say right now,
Speaker 2: without any argument. And when kids say you didn't listen
Speaker 2: to me, what they mean is you didn't make me
Speaker 2: feel hurt. You didn't understand my perspective. And where I'm
Speaker 2: coming from, a lot of times kids have a reason
Speaker 2: for why they don't want to do something, and we
Speaker 2: were uncurious about that. And so because of that equivocation,
Speaker 2: we get into this conflict where we say one thing
Speaker 2: and then they hear another, and then there's this fight
Speaker 2: over our misinterpretations. And I think a lot of times
Speaker 2: what we need to think about is not necessarily having
Speaker 2: our goal be the conventional. Maybe nineteen fifties parents' version
Speaker 2: of listening or respect. It doesn't mean that they subjugate
Speaker 2: their entire will to everything we say immediately, but instead
Speaker 2: we want them to be able to be proactive and
Speaker 2: make great choices that are good for their long term
Speaker 2: health that may or may not align with the immediate
Speaker 2: thing we need them to do right now.
Speaker 1: And part of what we go wrong when we're trying
Speaker 1: to motivate kids, as you've argued, is that we kind
Speaker 1: of have this incorrect model of how young people work.
Speaker 1: So it's the usual model that we bring to how
Speaker 1: the young brain works.
Speaker 2: The conventional model is something I call the neurobiological incompetence model,
Speaker 2: and it's the idea of that young people just lack
Speaker 2: a prefrontal cortex. They can't think about the future, they
Speaker 2: can't plan or reason logically, and because of that, we
Speaker 2: need to make all the decisions for them. That is,
Speaker 2: if young people lack the planning part of the brain,
Speaker 2: then there are risks to themselves into society at all times.
Speaker 2: And once we adopt that view, then our communication approach
Speaker 2: turns into something that I call grown explaining, which is
Speaker 2: where we just explain our thoughts and our plans for
Speaker 2: them and expect them to willingly do whatever we say.
Speaker 2: And although that makes sense to us because we think
Speaker 2: we're more logical in a lot of ways, it doesn't
Speaker 2: work well because young people don't want to be communicated
Speaker 2: to in that way, comes across as disrespectful, and it
Speaker 2: ends up thwarting our goals because young people reject what
Speaker 2: we say, not because of the information, but because of
Speaker 2: the way in which it was delivered.
Speaker 1: And you've talked about two consequences of this sort of
Speaker 1: mode of thinking about young people that we either become
Speaker 1: kind of too authoritarian or too permissive. What do you
Speaker 1: mean there?
Speaker 2: Classic research going back eighty years suggests that for a
Speaker 2: lot of parents there's a kind of nice and nasty dance,
Speaker 2: you could call it, where either we start out saying, look,
Speaker 2: here's the law, here's what we need to do. This
Speaker 2: is very important. You've got to listen to me. And
Speaker 2: when young people don't immediately acquiesced, then we increase threats,
Speaker 2: we increase punishment, maybe we try a little bit of
Speaker 2: bribery or distraction or sleight of hand.
Speaker 1: I think all parents listening right now get this mode. Yep.
Speaker 2: So that's like the nasty part, and then we feel guilty.
Speaker 2: We've fallen off the wagon. We haven't been intentional parents.
Speaker 2: We didn't do what the Instagram video that your spouse
Speaker 2: since you told you that you're supposed to do, and
Speaker 2: you just feel ashamed about yourself. And so we go
Speaker 2: back into nice mode and we become permissive and we
Speaker 2: say they need a little time with no rules to
Speaker 2: just do what they want. But eventually, of course, kids
Speaker 2: being kids, get out of control and we have to
Speaker 2: put the nasty hat back on. And so it feels
Speaker 2: like there's this dilemma that we can either be tough
Speaker 2: authoritarians that lay down the law, or we can be
Speaker 2: kind and friendly and caring but then be pushovers. And
Speaker 2: what I argue is that there's valid parts of both
Speaker 2: of those. You can do a version of both. You
Speaker 2: can have very tough standards and be unrelenting on what's
Speaker 2: important to do, but you can be very flexible and
Speaker 2: caring and concern about how young people live up to
Speaker 2: those standards so that way they can actually reach it
Speaker 2: without all of the fighting and threats and blame.
Speaker 1: And an easier way to do that, you've argued, is
Speaker 1: to come up with a kind of better, maybe more
Speaker 1: accurate theory of what the adolescent brain is trying to maximize.
Speaker 1: So evolutionarily, how should we think about the young people brain.
Speaker 1: It's not this idea that it's incompetent. What else is
Speaker 1: it trying to do? What's its mission?
Speaker 2: Of course, the brain develops, and so there are different
Speaker 2: levels of ability and maturity, but what we try to
Speaker 2: focus on is in the ten to twenty five range
Speaker 2: and even maybe a little earlier, there's a shift in
Speaker 2: motivational priorities, and those motivational priorities can influence what young
Speaker 2: people choose to pay attention to. That is, where do
Speaker 2: they deploy their considerable intellectual powers. And once you think
Speaker 2: of it as a motivation problem and not solely an
Speaker 2: ability problem, then you realize, well, maybe I'm not tapping
Speaker 2: into the right source of motivation. And it's like, our
Speaker 2: conventional view is that kids are motivated primarily by the
Speaker 2: desire to please their parents or at least not piss
Speaker 2: off their parents. And we get offended. We're like, don't
Speaker 2: you know how angry you're making me like right now?
Speaker 2: And it feels like they're trying to intentionally get our
Speaker 2: goat for something. But they've got a different set of
Speaker 2: priorities that often it's especially in the peer group, to
Speaker 2: look in appear like a respect worthy person who deserves
Speaker 2: status and has a good reputation. That is, someone who's
Speaker 2: viewed as socially valuable. And that's a good thing that
Speaker 2: in our evolutionary past helped young people learn how to
Speaker 2: be contributors to our culture and to our society. But
Speaker 2: we often fail to tap into that source of motivation
Speaker 2: and therefore we end up at loggerheads with them. But
Speaker 2: there are examples of great parents, leaders, coaches, teachers who
Speaker 2: do know how to tap in to that drive for
Speaker 2: status and respect, and they do end up with well
Speaker 2: deployed prefrontal cortices where young people can plan ahead and
Speaker 2: be proactive and do what we think is right.
Speaker 1: You've talked in the book about some of these cases
Speaker 1: of both individual people that have done this well, but
Speaker 1: also kind of programs that have done this well. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples that you talk about in the
Speaker 1: book are these so called effective anti tobacco programs. How
Speaker 1: did the tobacco program sort of harness this idea that
Speaker 1: young people really want to be independent and be respected
Speaker 1: and so on?
Speaker 2: Briefly, the bad programs use a tagline to attack teen smoking.
Speaker 2: This is in the late nineteen nineties early two thousands,
Speaker 2: and their tagline was think don't smoke. Now, think about that.
Speaker 2: If I tell you to think, the grammatical implication is
Speaker 2: that you're not thinking, like if I told you to
Speaker 2: smile right now, that's a weird thing to say, David,
Speaker 2: because I'm smiling. Yeah. The implication is that if I
Speaker 2: tell you to do it with a command, that you're
Speaker 2: not doing it, and so think already an insult. But
Speaker 2: then don't smoke. Not only does that threaten your autonomy
Speaker 2: as a young person, and one of the main things
Speaker 2: you want to do in your teenage years is have
Speaker 2: a sense of grown up autonomy and independence, but also
Speaker 2: it's implying I think I'm the kind of person who
Speaker 2: gets to tell you what to do. So again, it
Speaker 2: was very serious insults. In three words, it's kind of
Speaker 2: evil genius situation where it turns out that a desire
Speaker 2: to smoke increased the more that to think don't smoke
Speaker 2: ads were played in those neighborhoods. The alternative was something
Speaker 2: called the truth campaign, and this was developed by an
Speaker 2: adver called Crispin Porter plus Boguski's a guy named Alex
Speaker 2: Boguski who kind of understood intuitively what motivated young people,
Speaker 2: and the truth campaign sought to portray teenagers as flooding
Speaker 2: the streets, fighting back against the tobacco executives, telling them
Speaker 2: to stop killing teenagers and getting them addicted. In a
Speaker 2: famous ad, there's body bags they throw on the ground,
Speaker 2: and someone holds up a sign outside of a large
Speaker 2: high rise building purportedly filled with tobacco executives, and the
Speaker 2: science says smoking kills twelve thousand people a day. Have
Speaker 2: you ever thought of taking a day off? So there's
Speaker 2: no grown explaining about the value of non smoking for
Speaker 2: preventing cancer. It's not like a health class situation. It's
Speaker 2: you're joining your peers to stand up for yourselves and
Speaker 2: what's right and fight against injustice, and that every time
Speaker 2: you smoke and do the unhealthy thing, you're giving money
Speaker 2: to people who think they can manipulate you and control
Speaker 2: you and harm others. And so that taps into an
Speaker 2: adolescent value that people already have adolescent desire for independence, autonomy,
Speaker 2: and a concern for social justice. My colleague Chris Brian
Speaker 2: a brilliant psychologist likes to say it's often far more
Speaker 2: effective to change behavior by getting people to see the
Speaker 2: behavior as aligned with the value already have, rather than
Speaker 2: getting you to care about a different value, such as
Speaker 2: long term health. And we've used that insight in a
Speaker 2: bunch of different ways, for instance, getting teenagers to eat
Speaker 2: healthy buy fruits and vegetables, and drink water rather than
Speaker 2: soda and eat ice cream by saying that to food companies,
Speaker 2: the reason why they create a bunch of cartoons is
Speaker 2: to get children addicted in poor neighborhoods and exploit them.
Speaker 2: And so kids stand up against the companies by eating
Speaker 2: healthy food and the luncher.
Speaker 1: And this also seems to be getting at something else
Speaker 1: that this sort of incompetence hypothesis doesn't it really allow
Speaker 1: kids to do, which is like these new ads are
Speaker 1: kind of saying, hey, kids, you're competent. When you actually
Speaker 1: see what these companies are doing, you will choose yourself
Speaker 1: not to smoke. It's sort of assuming that they have
Speaker 1: autonomy competence, like kind of giving them respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it also it's not like giving them a skill.
Speaker 2: It's not like these commercials are how to say, no
Speaker 2: to your friends kind of thing. And that's what the
Speaker 2: public health establishment thinks is you need to give kids
Speaker 2: a script for how to say no to drugs or whatever.
Speaker 2: But they appreciate the fact that if you look at
Speaker 2: dare where they're going in classrooms and doing skits on
Speaker 2: how to say no to your friends. Almost always in
Speaker 2: those skits, the coolest kid is the kid offering drugs,
Speaker 2: and it's the nerd you're saying no. So now you've
Speaker 2: just shown, oh, a whole group of like twelve year
Speaker 2: olds that dork say no to drugs, and cool kids
Speaker 2: are the ones offering everybody drugs. And the truth campaign
Speaker 2: they're not just teaching a road skill, they're framing the
Speaker 2: behavior in a different way and then assuming that young
Speaker 2: people's creativity and their agency and ability is allowing them
Speaker 2: to figure out how to say no and how to
Speaker 2: not smoke.
Speaker 1: It's striking how much adults still misunderstand young people, especially
Speaker 1: since we were all young ones. But children and adolescents
Speaker 1: just want independence and respect like all people do. And
Speaker 1: when we learn to tap into that desire with care,
Speaker 1: life can improve for everyone, regardless of age. But how
Speaker 1: can you be considerate about your child's need for respect
Speaker 1: when it feels like they're the ones who aren't respecting you.
Speaker 1: After the break, I'll talk with David about the kinds
Speaker 1: of questions we need to ask to build mutual understanding.
Speaker 1: Even in those cases where your child seems to be
Speaker 1: acting completely irrationally, the Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 2: A claim.
Speaker 1: Developmental psychologist David Yaeger is the author of the new
Speaker 1: book ten to twenty five, The Science of Motivating Young
Speaker 1: People and surprise, surprise, what motivates kids isn't all that
Speaker 1: different than what drives adults. So if we want healthy, happy,
Speaker 1: engaged children, we need to take a closer look at
Speaker 1: the strategies we use to motivate our kids. And David
Speaker 1: has found that even well intentioned parents often use strategies
Speaker 1: that at their core are pretty ineffective. And perhaps the
Speaker 1: most common ineffective strategy is the age old habit of nagging.
Speaker 2: There's a beautiful study by Jennifer Silk. She did a
Speaker 2: broader study of maternal depression of moms and teenage daughters,
Speaker 2: and as a part of that study, they brought the
Speaker 2: teenage daughters into the lab and put them in the
Speaker 2: fMRI machine. So there's a huge magnet wearing around their heads.
Speaker 2: And while the teenage girls are preparing for the experiment,
Speaker 2: they listen to their moms nagging them so that moms
Speaker 2: are completing the sentence what bothers me about you is,
Speaker 2: And what they find is that zero percent of teenage
Speaker 2: daughters are like, you know, mom, you have a point.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad you raised all these concerns with my behavior.
Speaker 2: Good chat, I've got a list and i'll get back
Speaker 2: to you. Like that doesn't happen. Instead, what you see
Speaker 2: is a dramatic increase in the teenage girls regions of
Speaker 2: the brain related to anger, and a decrease in the
Speaker 2: dorslateral prefrontal cortex regions related to planning, reasoning, thinking ahead,
Speaker 2: but also a decrease in regions related to social cognition,
Speaker 2: the temporo pridal junction. And that's the basic idea that
Speaker 2: a lot of times when a parent is making a
Speaker 2: request of a kid, we're doing it indirectly, and so
Speaker 2: the kid needs to infer something about the mom's state
Speaker 2: of mind or the dad's state of mind. An example
Speaker 2: is when my kid was really young, I used to
Speaker 2: walk by a huge pile of legos that was a
Speaker 2: mess in the middle of the Room'd be like, do
Speaker 2: you want to clean up those legos? And you would
Speaker 2: be like, no, I don't want to clean up those legos.
Speaker 2: I want to keep playing with the legos. But clearly
Speaker 2: I was in my mind saying clean up the legos.
Speaker 2: And this is the micro example of so much of
Speaker 2: what happens is we think we've been clear what we
Speaker 2: want them to do. They feel nagged, so their TPJ
Speaker 2: is shut off. They're not giving us a charitable interpretation,
Speaker 2: and then we're more angry at them for rejecting us
Speaker 2: and for disobeying us, and then the kids like, why
Speaker 2: is this lunatic yelling at me? And so there's got
Speaker 2: to be an alternative communication strategy that's not nagging, that
Speaker 2: can instead enliven the prefrontal cortex and get them to
Speaker 2: think about how they can change and behave differently.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's two problems with it. One is
Speaker 1: that they're kind of not getting necessarily what we want
Speaker 1: them to do, but it seems like they are reading
Speaker 1: between the lines in terms of something else. There's another
Speaker 1: unsaid part of the nagging that really hurts them.
Speaker 2: So what's that. The other unsaid part is that I,
Speaker 2: the adult, think you're incompetent and that's why I'm telling
Speaker 2: you something so obvious, and or that's why I'm trying
Speaker 2: to control what feels like a personal choice to you.
Speaker 2: When a mom says don't forget your coat, in our
Speaker 2: heart of hearts, we're saying I love you so dearly
Speaker 2: that I want you to not die of ypothermia. And
Speaker 2: what the child hears is my mom thinks I'm so
Speaker 2: incompetent that I can't even remember to bring a coat
Speaker 2: or something like that. And because of that, you need
Speaker 2: to be way more transparent about your intentions than you
Speaker 2: think you need to be. You can't just leave the
Speaker 2: unset part unsaid because young people are in this precarious
Speaker 2: disparity of status relative to us, and they're likely to
Speaker 2: read between the lines in a negative way because they're
Speaker 2: used to the nagging and the yelling, telling and shaming
Speaker 2: and blaming. That's their default, and they'll assume that new
Speaker 2: communication is get more of that, unless we're transparent that
Speaker 2: it's something different.
Speaker 1: And this gets the idea that you've talked about of
Speaker 1: being a warm demander. How do you define a warm
Speaker 1: demander and how does it play into exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of solution you're just mentioning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, warm demander and I also call it a mentor
Speaker 2: mindset in my book. But warm demand is a nice
Speaker 2: frame because you're demanding, so you're tough, but you're also
Speaker 2: caring and warm. Actually, interestingly, that term came out of
Speaker 2: studies of black educator in predominantly black classrooms in Atlanta
Speaker 2: and like the late nineties, early two thousands, and you
Speaker 2: kind of had like a grandma type teacher who was
Speaker 2: unrelentingly demanding in her standards and didn't put up with
Speaker 2: any nonsense, but no kid questioned whether she loved them.
Speaker 2: Members of any group can have this kind of relationship,
Speaker 2: And I call it a mentor mindset because it's your
Speaker 2: approach is to be of course tough, demanding and critical
Speaker 2: so that the young person can make wise your choices,
Speaker 2: grow and prove, etc. Well at the same time providing
Speaker 2: enough support so that way they can meet those higher standards.
Speaker 2: And I do want to be clear, for a long time,
Speaker 2: people couldn't distinguish between these warm, demanding slash mental mindset
Speaker 2: leaders and the authoritarian ones because they're like these kids
Speaker 2: are crying all the time, Like, if the kids crying,
Speaker 2: it's clearly bad parenting. And it turns out in a
Speaker 2: good home, kids cry all the time, but they're not
Speaker 2: crying because the parents are yelling at them and shaming them.
Speaker 2: They're crying just because the standard is like inconsistent with
Speaker 2: what they want. I don't really want to be doing
Speaker 2: the important good thing. But they do move on and
Speaker 2: they figure out how to self regulate in a way
Speaker 2: that in an authoritarian home all you get is just
Speaker 2: you have to bend your will to the parent and
Speaker 2: you have no agency in autonomy.
Speaker 1: And it seems like sort of paying attention to this
Speaker 1: agency and autonomy is really kind of giving the kid
Speaker 1: a sense that you kind of are feeling some compassion
Speaker 1: for the situation that they're in. You're kind of honoring
Speaker 1: their status as maybe an adolescent or a ten to
Speaker 1: twenty five year old that's kind of figuring out their
Speaker 1: way in life. But one way we need to do
Speaker 1: this is to honors kids' status by not telling them stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe not grow explaining. You need to show what you
Speaker 1: want to understand. What are some good tips that parents
Speaker 1: can use to do that better.
Speaker 2: There's this wonderful parenting coach that I write about in
Speaker 2: my book named Loraina Sidella, and she echoes something that
Speaker 2: has shown up a lot in the different research literatures,
Speaker 2: and it's this idea of questioning is often more powerful
Speaker 2: than telling. Before I explain it, I do want to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that most normal parents think this is crazy advice
Speaker 2: because when like the macaroni burning on the stove, and
Speaker 2: the repairman's at the door, and you're late for soccer
Speaker 2: practice and like everything's going wrong, that doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: the time to have a Socratic dialogue, right, And I
Speaker 2: get it, But if you don't treat every single crisis
Speaker 2: as a chance to build a skill, then you've missed
Speaker 2: out on tons and tons of opportunities for the kid
Speaker 2: to learn to proactively manage the conflicts that they have,
Speaker 2: whether it's their internal conflicts, their emotions, or conflicts with
Speaker 2: other adults. So so Lorena has this never waste a
Speaker 2: crisis mentality that I've tried to live that even if
Speaker 2: it's like I'm trying to get three kids out the
Speaker 2: door in the morning so I'm not late for an appointment,
Speaker 2: I've had to learn to stop and pause and be
Speaker 2: curious about why. From their perspective, it's very hard for
Speaker 2: them to get in the car and not wear a
Speaker 2: spider Man costing.
Speaker 1: Which bracketed is why we were fifteen minutes late to
Speaker 1: at our conversation.
Speaker 2: Today, I get photographic evidence to prove this. So the
Speaker 2: idea is ask questions. Okay, so what kind of questions?
Speaker 2: Now there's bad questions. A bad question would be what
Speaker 2: are you thinking? Or why are you ruining my life?
Speaker 2: Those would not be good questions to ask a kid.
Speaker 2: Better questions are things like, you seom really upset? Tell
Speaker 2: me what does it mean to you when I'm saying
Speaker 2: no to the toy? Or what does it mean to
Speaker 2: you when I said this to you? And then they
Speaker 2: usually say something outrageous like it means you don't love me,
Speaker 2: it means you're a bad parent, it means you hate me,
Speaker 2: or I'm a bad kid. The next question is like
Speaker 2: what else could it mean? And sometimes they'll say a
Speaker 2: couple other negative things like this will never get better,
Speaker 2: you know, going to be sad forever. And then the
Speaker 2: next question is, okay, if it meant that, would that
Speaker 2: serve your purposes? Like does that's meet your goals? And
Speaker 2: that's a surprising question for a lot of kids, and
Speaker 2: they're like, huh, no, it doesn't serve my goals to
Speaker 2: think my mom hates me, and then she's a bad parent.
Speaker 2: It's like, all right, well, then what else could it mean?
Speaker 2: And then eventually you can involve them in generating a
Speaker 2: different and better appraisal of the conflict, and then once
Speaker 2: they have that better appraisal, then you can say things like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, if this better thing was true, would
Speaker 2: that meet your goals? And then often they're like, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Very brief example is conflict with my now eight year
Speaker 2: old when he was six, We're leaving the park. I
Speaker 2: played with him all day. He asked for a toy.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, there's no toy, and he screamed
Speaker 2: at the top of his lung publicly in front of
Speaker 2: all the other parents, I want a toy. And then
Speaker 2: I had to ask him, you know, how does it
Speaker 2: make you feel that I'm saying no and just felt
Speaker 2: ridiculous to say, of course, and then he said, yell
Speaker 2: at the top of his lungs, You're the worst father.
Speaker 2: And then I went through this question, doesn't serve your purposes?
Speaker 2: That caught him off guard. No, it makes me feel sad.
Speaker 2: What else could it be? And then he made up
Speaker 2: something good, like it means my dad doesn't want us
Speaker 2: to buy a toy that I'm going to throw away
Speaker 2: and break, because then I'm going to be sad later.
Speaker 2: And then if it's a plastic toy, there's going to
Speaker 2: be more plastic in the landfill and that's going to
Speaker 2: hurt the earth. And maybe my dad doesn't want to
Speaker 2: destroy the earth. And I was like, how would that
Speaker 2: make you feel if that was true? And he was like, well,
Speaker 2: it made you feel like my dad cares about the
Speaker 2: future of the environment and doesn't want me to grow
Speaker 2: up in a trashkeep and also wants me to learn
Speaker 2: how to be responsible. And I was like, would that
Speaker 2: serve your purposes? He's like, yeah, it'd make me feel
Speaker 2: like my dad loved me. I was like, can we
Speaker 2: go with that? And he's like yeah, and then I
Speaker 2: bought them.
Speaker 1: I screen what's incredible is like, if we kind of
Speaker 1: lead with curiosity not judgment, we do two things. One
Speaker 1: is like, we learned that our kids are capable and
Speaker 1: they are competent and coming up with these good interpretations
Speaker 1: and things. But I think it also trains them to
Speaker 1: get a little bit more curious about their own emotions
Speaker 1: and think, well, my first impression of this situation might
Speaker 1: look differently, or maybe my parent has a different intention.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like we're learning to renavigate their
Speaker 1: feelings on this at the same time we're teaching them
Speaker 1: to learn to navigate our new intentions on these things, too, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the.
Speaker 2: Big thing is it's such a pain as a parent
Speaker 2: when your kids fight two rooms over and you have
Speaker 2: to leave whatever you're doing and go over there and say,
Speaker 2: how many times have I told you guys, don't be
Speaker 2: mean and to your brother stop fighting? We're always the
Speaker 2: referee in that situation. We are the only one doing
Speaker 2: the problem solving, And so of course they don't learn. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's because we never asked them to even try to
Speaker 2: do it. If they've never had to piece it together
Speaker 2: in their minds, and if the only time we ask
Speaker 2: questions is when we're trying to make them look like
Speaker 2: haven't I told you this before? The only answer is yes.
Speaker 2: But the implication is we think they're dumb. So if
Speaker 2: that's all we've ever done, then of course we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to keep stepping in as the referee. But if
Speaker 2: we're just tired of doing that, you have to start
Speaker 2: giving them the coach in the head that they can
Speaker 2: carry with them. And I'll tell you what I've seen
Speaker 2: Lorna sidell this parenting coach. I've seen families she's worked with,
Speaker 2: and they do this questioning routine a lot with their kids.
Speaker 2: It's tedious, but eventually the kids know the questions and
Speaker 2: so she can just yell from across the room, what
Speaker 2: did it mean when your sister did that? And then
Speaker 2: they do the whole thing in their head and they're like, Okay, fine, mom,
Speaker 2: I know my sister loves me. We won't fight anymore.
Speaker 2: And so if you want to have the kind of
Speaker 2: house not with no fighting or no crying, but where
Speaker 2: conflicts get resolved in a way where you end up
Speaker 2: feeling excited for them to go off into the world
Speaker 2: and to deal with conflict, and they're going to be
Speaker 2: prepared to live with someone and not get in fights
Speaker 2: all the time and not be alone. You know, in
Speaker 2: their twenties and thirties, these are the times right now
Speaker 2: to teach those lessons. And it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: extra time, but you save yourself a house.
Speaker 1: In the long run, it might seem silly to ask
Speaker 1: a six year old whether something serves their purpose, but
Speaker 1: that's an important first step to helping that child develop
Speaker 1: a key emotional skill that psychologists call cognitive reappraisal. If
Speaker 1: you can reframe your thoughts about a situation, you can
Speaker 1: shift your feelings too, and helping kids practice this skill
Speaker 1: during small moments of crisis will allow them to learn
Speaker 1: to handle the bigger challenges that will come later on.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll talk with David about other ways
Speaker 1: parents can guide kids towards happier behaviors with a mentor mindset,
Speaker 1: from coaching your middle school or through a math class meltdown,
Speaker 1: to helping your teenager make better choices after a night
Speaker 1: of bad decisions. The Happiness Lab will be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. Psychologist David Yeger has devoted his career to
Speaker 1: understanding why young people think and behave the way they do,
Speaker 1: and how parents and mentors can help guide kids towards
Speaker 1: becoming their best selves. David has found that many of
Speaker 1: the interventions adults regularly use aren't very effective, in part
Speaker 1: because they're interventions. In fact, David thinks most caregivers need
Speaker 1: to intervene way less than they think. Take homework for example.
Speaker 2: So my daughter is algebra two and she came home
Speaker 2: and they were doing some kind of factoring. I think
Speaker 2: it's like finding the square. And my temptation was to
Speaker 2: go and like figure out the trick and be like, okay,
Speaker 2: just do this. But I'd seen these great tutors in
Speaker 2: these great mentors, and I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: the first thing they almost always do is ask what
Speaker 2: if you tried so far, and why do you think
Speaker 2: it's not working? Then immediately you know what the kid knows.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to ask that because if they're frustrated
Speaker 2: and they're like banging their head against the wall, your
Speaker 2: temptation is to prevent them from having to revisit those
Speaker 2: times where they weren't getting it. And so that's what
Speaker 2: I did with Scarlett. I was like, all right, show
Speaker 2: me what your teacher told you so far. And then
Speaker 2: she said stuff that I completely forgot because I last
Speaker 2: learned it when I was fourteen. And then I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I see you're stuck here, Well what happened if you
Speaker 2: do that? Then she explained, well, this won't weren't because
Speaker 2: of that, and then I could just be there as
Speaker 2: a guide and I just was curious. I asked her
Speaker 2: to basically tinker with it, but she was always the agent.
Speaker 2: She was always doing the problem solving. And then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden she remembered something the teacher had said
Speaker 2: two weeks before, and then she's like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: where I'm supposed to do it. Now I understand the pattern.
Speaker 2: So I didn't tell her anything about algebra two. I
Speaker 2: didn't actually go read the textbook. I just worked with her. Now.
Speaker 2: The reason why this is important is because when we
Speaker 2: swoop in and say, okay, here's how you factor the problem,
Speaker 2: here's how you find the square. Just do this, now
Speaker 2: try it, then it makes them feel like we think
Speaker 2: that they can't figure it out and that they are incompetent,
Speaker 2: which is not what you want because there there are
Speaker 2: a thousand lessons like that throughout the school year in
Speaker 2: just one subject, and then you've got seven subjects. So
Speaker 2: you want them to have the skill of being able
Speaker 2: to figure it out. But what's is when they're totally
Speaker 2: on their own and they feel overwhelmed and they're like,
Speaker 2: I can't do this. So weirdly, non informative questions where
Speaker 2: you're not really telling them answers, makes them feel supportive
Speaker 2: enough to go troubleshoot. It makes them feel like if
Speaker 2: they're stuck, they could ask you. But ultimately they own
Speaker 2: the thinking at the end. And Mark Lepper in the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety is, the famous social psychologist, did this study
Speaker 2: of the greatest tutors in the Bay Area, and he
Speaker 2: found that ninety percent, roughly of what they said was
Speaker 2: a question, it was not. They were great at explaining physics.
Speaker 2: And I think that lesson still holds today.
Speaker 1: I think it's so important because as an adult, I
Speaker 1: know what it feels like when somebody tells me what
Speaker 1: to do. Right, it's kind of demeaning, and I get
Speaker 1: more pissed off and I get more frustrated. But I
Speaker 1: think we forget that's what's happening with our kids. We
Speaker 1: kind of tell them what to do. I think another
Speaker 1: thing about the questions, and you just illustrated this in
Speaker 1: your algebra story, is that sometimes our kids have answers
Speaker 1: that we don't expect. Right when you asked her, well,
Speaker 1: what did she already know? She actually had some techniques
Speaker 1: that like you're like, oh yeah, I forgot about that,
Speaker 1: And so there are these cases is where our kids
Speaker 1: kind of know stuff that we don't know, or at
Speaker 1: least know things about the situation that we might not
Speaker 1: know that unless we get curious and ask questions, we'd
Speaker 1: never see that, and that affects our ability to help
Speaker 1: them problem solve.
Speaker 2: And I think a big puzzle I had going into
Speaker 2: my book ten to twenty five was why doesn't everybody
Speaker 2: do this? I mean, there's the time issue. You're like,
Speaker 2: you're in a hurry, but like, aside from that, why
Speaker 2: does everybody do it? And I think it goes back
Speaker 2: to the neurobiological and confidence model. If you think that
Speaker 2: the reason why your kid is stuck is because when
Speaker 2: it was explained very clearly by the teacher, the kid
Speaker 2: was screwing around and goofing off and not paying attention,
Speaker 2: and then they came home and they weren't being a
Speaker 2: serious student and they don't care about their future. Then
Speaker 2: you're not curious why they're stuck on factoring the trinomial.
Speaker 2: You're like, this is a character issue. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: not an intellectual issue. And so it feels like we
Speaker 2: need to have a response to the character issue by
Speaker 2: giving them a lecture about how they should have paid attention.
Speaker 2: You need to be responsible, you need to take good notes,
Speaker 2: you should go review. Your teacher already gave this to you.
Speaker 2: And that sounds harsh, but like in our studies, fifty
Speaker 2: percent of American teachers take that approach. Yeah, they take
Speaker 2: a shame and blame approach to a mistake, not collaborative troubleshooting.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a real challenge because parents want
Speaker 2: to prepare their kids for a tough future, like a
Speaker 2: complex world where everyone's unforgiving. And the reality is if
Speaker 2: you just presume most of the time that kids are
Speaker 2: acting in good faith, and if you're seeing all this
Speaker 2: other like reluctance behavior, deviance behavior, sometimes that's a cover
Speaker 2: for the underlying thing, which is it's just actually hard
Speaker 2: work and they haven't figured it out. So you always
Speaker 2: treat it like you're a serious student who wants to
Speaker 2: do it right, and you're gonna get it and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna ask you questions just so I understand. Then they
Speaker 2: feel respected and valued, and sometimes that safety is what
Speaker 2: they need to get out of their heads and stop
Speaker 2: the panic and then start embracing the challenge.
Speaker 1: And this kind of collaborative troubleshooting is true not just
Speaker 1: in the academic domain, but maybe if other domains where
Speaker 1: they like really screw up, right, how can collaborative troubleshooting
Speaker 1: how But a case where your kid has kind of
Speaker 1: messed up, maybe in the social domain or even in
Speaker 1: the moral domain.
Speaker 2: I heard from a ton of parents, far more than
Speaker 2: I even wrote about in the book. But I wrote
Speaker 2: about a couple where their kids either snuck to a
Speaker 2: party or went to a party but snuck booze to
Speaker 2: the party and they came home drunk. And the best
Speaker 2: parents I talked to were like, I've been waiting for
Speaker 2: this for years. This is the best moment of my
Speaker 2: parenting life. I was like, really, I'm just so worried
Speaker 2: about that moment and that no, because we got to
Speaker 2: be honest and the wrong approach, and they told me
Speaker 2: was the yell, tell, blame, shame, the enforcer, authoritarian kind
Speaker 2: of approach, And to be honest, a lot of that approach,
Speaker 2: the yelling and telling comes from our insecurity as parents
Speaker 2: that we feel like, how could I possibly be the
Speaker 2: kind of parent where kids have so little respect for
Speaker 2: my house rules that they would break this So blatantly.
Speaker 2: It's more like we're insulted and offended more than it
Speaker 2: is are concerned with their actual safety. And so the
Speaker 2: collaborative troubleshooting parent and didn't take that offensive approach. Instead,
Speaker 2: they were legitimately curious about how the kid ended up
Speaker 2: having drunk too much, or in the case of the
Speaker 2: speaking out, why did they feel like that was the
Speaker 2: most important thing in the world and more important than
Speaker 2: maintaining the family rules. And usually it went back to
Speaker 2: status and respect. So in the case of a kid
Speaker 2: who snuck out, the kid was just a hypersocial kid
Speaker 2: and was worried that everyone would have this epic night
Speaker 2: and there'd be some memory like they found it golf
Speaker 2: card and got to do donuts on the golf course,
Speaker 2: or they ran away from the cops, or something that
Speaker 2: they would never forget and would talk about until their
Speaker 2: high school reunion or to their funeral. Think about it, like,
Speaker 2: I definitely have stories of hour and a half events
Speaker 2: in high school, Like I f one hundred percent vividly
Speaker 2: remember some of the most fun times, and I remember
Speaker 2: who was there.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to miss out on that, right. There's
Speaker 1: a cost benefit, Yep.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be the person who missed out
Speaker 2: on this epic unforgettable night. So his mom started with
Speaker 2: us like, look, I know you're social. Let's find other
Speaker 2: ways for you to have epic unforgettable knights that don't
Speaker 2: involve lying and cheating. But it wasn't don't be social.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: In the drinking case, there was one kid who normally
Speaker 2: would just sneak like two wine coolers in his pockets,
Speaker 2: but this one day brought it backpack because he was
Speaker 2: trying to be a good friend to a lot of
Speaker 2: other people who asked for boots, and then he ended
Speaker 2: up drinking up most of it and so he got
Speaker 2: super drunk. But again it came from this desire to
Speaker 2: be social to help others, And so the punishment was
Speaker 2: to talk about his drinking and his plan every night
Speaker 2: before he went out. And it was an agonizing forty
Speaker 2: five minute conversation about his plan before he could go
Speaker 2: to a party, and that was a worse punishment than grounding.
Speaker 2: But in the end they started understanding his logic and
Speaker 2: his plans and they could subtly suggest things. And when
Speaker 2: that kid went to college, he didn't have any trouble
Speaker 2: with alcohol and he had the skill, So it's a
Speaker 2: kind of never waste a crisis situation and questioning really
Speaker 2: helps to build that mental muscle in the kid.
Speaker 1: I love these scenarios because they really show that you're
Speaker 1: parenting for the future, right, Like in both of these cases,
Speaker 1: you're talking not about how you solve for this incident,
Speaker 1: but how you solve for future incidents, maybe incidents that
Speaker 1: are going to happen when these kids go off to
Speaker 1: college and you're not going to be there to kind
Speaker 1: of see them out the door and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Kind of curious how you brought this into your own life,
Speaker 1: both collaborative troubleshooting and questions and all the stuff we've
Speaker 1: been talking about.
Speaker 2: I obsess over parenting for the future in specific moments
Speaker 2: that I know because of my sociology friends and colleagues
Speaker 2: set kids up for a lifetime. But I think there
Speaker 2: are a lot of moments in our kids' lives. Trying
Speaker 2: out for a certain sport or activity, definitely taking into
Speaker 2: a class, like applying for a summer job. There are
Speaker 2: these moments where they're going to be freaked out because
Speaker 2: it does have a big impact on their future, or
Speaker 2: they're not taking it seriously and they need to. And
Speaker 2: those are moments where you do have to be tough
Speaker 2: in demanding and unrelenting, but also supportive so that way
Speaker 2: they see a reasonable path and their fears have to
Speaker 2: be legitimate to you. You have to be legitimately curious
Speaker 2: about why they're worried. But there, you know, there's lots
Speaker 2: of crying in my house in those moments where it's like,
Speaker 2: you need to do this thing. But what I will
Speaker 2: focus on is like, how do I be honestly curious
Speaker 2: why you're being reluctant and troubleshoot with you and find
Speaker 2: a solution that works for you. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: lower the standard, but it does matter to me that
Speaker 2: you're on board and that it feels good for you.
Speaker 1: So the next time you're struggling with your kid's behavior,
Speaker 1: try to tap into what studies show is really motivating
Speaker 1: that sense of mastery. Everyone wants to experience agency and independence,
Speaker 1: regardless of their age. So remember that the old neurobiological
Speaker 1: and competence model of childhood is out. The science shows
Speaker 1: that what's in or respect and understanding? How can you
Speaker 1: respect your kids better? Well, stop grow explaining and instead
Speaker 1: get curious and ask questions. Guide your child toward the
Speaker 1: habit of cognitive reappraisal so that they learn to manage
Speaker 1: their difficult feelings as they get older. You can also
Speaker 1: strive to be a warm demander, have high standards for
Speaker 1: your child, but still be loving and supporting to understand
Speaker 1: your child's perspective rather than yelling, telling, blaming, or shaming.
Speaker 1: And finally, use those small moments of crises as opportunities
Speaker 1: for collaborative troubleshooting. It may be a little inconvenient, and
Speaker 1: you might even end up fifteen minutes late for a
Speaker 1: very important podcast interview, but remember that taking the time
Speaker 1: to help your child learn in these small moments can
Speaker 1: make a huge difference. Next time on the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: we'll wrap up our series on Happier Parenting with a
Speaker 1: look at how technology is affecting kids happiness. We'll dig
Speaker 1: into the impact of screens and social media on self image, attention,
Speaker 1: and mental health, and we'll share tips for building a
Speaker 1: plan that fits your family. And if you've found these
Speaker 1: discussions helpful, you'll likely enjoy my free online course The
Speaker 1: Science of All Being For parents. To learn more, just
Speaker 1: head to doctor Lauri Santo's dot com slash parents. That's
Speaker 1: Dr Laurisanto's dot com slash parents until next time. This
Speaker 1: has been The Happiness Lab's special series on Happier Parenting
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos