Speaker 1: Pushkin. I really thought parenting was what I saw on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds really embarrassing for me to say that.
Speaker 1: Like many expectant parents, journalist Michaelan Ducleff had some rather
Speaker 1: idealized notions of motherhood. Like I saw the pictures of
Speaker 1: the babies and heard about mom's snuggling and having this
Speaker 1: you know, incredibly romantic version of what a mom is doing,
Speaker 1: and so that was what I envisioned. Michael Line wanted
Speaker 1: to be the perfect mom, making sure she gave her
Speaker 1: kids all the opportunities she didn't have growing up. This
Speaker 1: was my opportunity to create the person that I wish
Speaker 1: I had been. I could have gone to Harvard or Yale,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm going to create this child that
Speaker 1: could do that. I also thought that, like I just
Speaker 1: instinctually would know how to parent. But when Michael Line
Speaker 1: and her husband finally had their baby, Rosie, the reality
Speaker 1: wasn't what she had envisioned. Oh my gosh, the fantasy
Speaker 1: crumbled very quickly. So Rosie's a very intelligent kid. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like throw her under the bus. She
Speaker 1: is smart and funny and really strong, but she's also
Speaker 1: super like strong willed. Rosie also cried a lot, which
Speaker 1: terrified her parents. They just couldn't figure out what they
Speaker 1: were doing wrong. My husband said to the pediatrician, you know,
Speaker 1: if she's not eating or sleeping, she's crying. And if
Speaker 1: pediatrician kind of laughed and was like, well, that's a baby. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Michaelene and her husband powered through Rosie's early years. By
Speaker 1: the time she was to all that emotion turned into
Speaker 1: chantrums and she was having just lots of tantrums, like
Speaker 1: one or two a day, and I had no clue
Speaker 1: how to handle them. Michaelne was a science journalist with
Speaker 1: a PhD, so she decided to turn to what she
Speaker 1: knew best. I really thought that I could parent with science,
Speaker 1: that I could like, you know, look up papers, read
Speaker 1: the original articles, and you know, they would tell me
Speaker 1: how to get the baby to sleep, they would tell
Speaker 1: me how to spa tantrum. They'd tell me all these things.
Speaker 1: But after diving deeper into parenting resources, Michaellean realized that
Speaker 1: many of them weren't actually evidence based. One popular book
Speaker 1: on sleep training, used by many parents to teach their
Speaker 1: children how to sleep, was written in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: The author, a guy named John Henry Walsh was a
Speaker 1: sportswriter with little pediatrics training. He also wrote about guns
Speaker 1: a lot, and he blew off his hand like in
Speaker 1: some gun accident. But he's one of the first people
Speaker 1: to write about sleep training and offer this like insights
Speaker 1: into why you need to sleep train. And you can
Speaker 1: see if you trace back, you can see kind of
Speaker 1: the sources of some of our weird ways of parenting
Speaker 1: in these often men sometimes who didn't have children, but
Speaker 1: coming up with all this advice and these ideas that
Speaker 1: were not science based at all. To deal with Rosie's tantrums,
Speaker 1: Michael Lean scoured books and blogs and newsletters for advice,
Speaker 1: but nothing seemed to work. And we were just in
Speaker 1: these awful power struggles where like she would have a
Speaker 1: tantrum and I would try to help her, and I
Speaker 1: would get angry and it would make her tantrums worse.
Speaker 1: Like I would lie in the bed in the mornings,
Speaker 1: like the five am before she got up and just
Speaker 1: kind of dread being with her, like dread her waking
Speaker 1: up and dread my time with her because it was
Speaker 1: just such a struggle. And also I just felt like
Speaker 1: I was failing, like day and day out that period
Speaker 1: of time was really, really hard, and just thinking about
Speaker 1: it now I almost almost makes me want to cry
Speaker 1: because it was my husband. I were trying so hard,
Speaker 1: right like, we wanted to be better parents for her,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to help her, but our upbringing and
Speaker 1: our culture just had not trained us. Humans have been
Speaker 1: parenting for a very long time, but the experience of
Speaker 1: parenting can change from generation to generation. These days, many parents,
Speaker 1: like Michaeleen feel like they're anxiously white knuckling through crisis
Speaker 1: after crisis. There's a lot of evidence that having kids
Speaker 1: can bring a deep sense of meaning and life satisfaction,
Speaker 1: but studies also show that the day to day duties
Speaker 1: of being a parent can still reduce our happiness. For
Speaker 1: many moms and adds. Today, parenting is a draining, stressful,
Speaker 1: and anxious business. But it's not just parents that are
Speaker 1: feeling it. Over the last few decades, our kids have
Speaker 1: begun reporting levels of depression and anxiety that have never
Speaker 1: before been observed in human history. The Center for Disease
Speaker 1: Control found that thirty seven percent of teens report having
Speaker 1: poor mental health and that one in five has seriously
Speaker 1: considered suicide. These statistics are absolutely devastating. They're the reason
Speaker 1: that I got interested in studying happiness in my Yale
Speaker 1: students in the first place. But for me, these awful
Speaker 1: statistics also raise a puzzle. It feels like modern parents
Speaker 1: are putting in more work and energy than ever before,
Speaker 1: but all this effort doesn't seem to be translating into
Speaker 1: more health and happiness for their children. The studies suggest
Speaker 1: it might even be having a detrimental effect. So in
Speaker 1: this two part episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll explore
Speaker 1: the ways parenting has gone astray, what expectations and pressures
Speaker 1: might be to blame, and what can moms and dads
Speaker 1: do to hinder to themselves and experience less anxiety and
Speaker 1: more joy when raising a family. And before we do,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a bit of a caveat This
Speaker 1: episode is pretty personal for me, but full disclosure, I'm
Speaker 1: not a parent in myself. Still, I get to work
Speaker 1: with a lot of parents and their kids at Yale.
Speaker 1: I see the levels of anxiety that young people and
Speaker 1: their parents face. That experience has made me incredibly worried
Speaker 1: about parental burnout. It's also convinced me that society may
Speaker 1: need some serious structural changes and a new philosophy when
Speaker 1: it comes to raising happier, healthier kids. The mind is
Speaker 1: constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But
Speaker 1: what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds
Speaker 1: are lying to us, leading us away from what will
Speaker 1: really make us happy. The good news is that understanding
Speaker 1: the science of the mind can point us all back
Speaker 1: in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with doctor Laurie Santos. I remember it was winter. We're
Speaker 1: living in our little town San Carlos, California. We bundle
Speaker 1: up our little baby. I mean he wasn't even one,
Speaker 1: he was maybe eight months old. This is author and
Speaker 1: educator Julie lith got Hames. You know, he is a
Speaker 1: little bundle. He's like a little peanut. Julie was taking
Speaker 1: her son Sawyer on a wholesome adventure in the fresh air,
Speaker 1: and we take him to the kiddie park in our
Speaker 1: community that has this sort of infant toddler park. There's
Speaker 1: this little toddler sized slide which must have been three
Speaker 1: feet off the ground with a very gentle slope. My
Speaker 1: husband is on one side at a slide, I'm on
Speaker 1: the other. We gently place him at the top and
Speaker 1: he's looking at us with round eyes. He's looking like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing to me? And in my mind
Speaker 1: I said, oh, my goodness, my child is afraid to
Speaker 1: go down the slide. The couple anxiously closed in on Sawyer,
Speaker 1: intent on holding him every single inch of the way down,
Speaker 1: and we were like, okay, we're on the slide, it's
Speaker 1: going to be fine here, aren't we having fun? But
Speaker 1: Sawyer didn't look like he was having fun. He seemed terrified.
Speaker 1: And when I came to realize, Laurie is his facial
Speaker 1: expression was a mirror of ours. I thought he was afraid. No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no. He was looking to me for how
Speaker 1: should I feel? Oh, mom's afraid, Oh dad's afraid. What
Speaker 1: is happening to me? We were looking at him with fear, like,
Speaker 1: oh no, our eight month old is on a slide.
Speaker 1: Will he survive? Sawyer, as you may have guessed, did
Speaker 1: in fact survive. He's now a healthy twenty something who
Speaker 1: has successfully navigated lots of adversities on Kitty playgrounds and beyond.
Speaker 1: But Julie still remembers how grip with anxiety. She was,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, if I could go back, because that
Speaker 1: was the beginning of just a decade and a half
Speaker 1: of overparenting. Julie, like me, works with college students. She
Speaker 1: served as a dean of Freshman and Undergraduate advising at
Speaker 1: Stanford University for over a decade, and like me, she
Speaker 1: saw the same high rates of stress and anxiety and
Speaker 1: depression in her students. She worries that the overprotectiveness she
Speaker 1: gave Sawyer could be more widespread and could be harming
Speaker 1: an entire generation. My heart was going out to my students.
Speaker 1: I was critiquing their parents in my head. So when
Speaker 1: I realized, oh shit, I'm doing it with my kids,
Speaker 1: I was very motivated to pivot. Julie's written several books
Speaker 1: on anxious parenting, including How to Raise an Adult, Break
Speaker 1: Free of the Overparenting Trap, and Prepare Your Kid for Success.
Speaker 1: It begins with a look at the recent changes that
Speaker 1: have made parenting so much more anxiety provoking. It argues
Speaker 1: that our culture might not be helping us to raise
Speaker 1: our kids in the happiest ways. The book points the
Speaker 1: finger at a few specific societal changes from the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties that have profoundly changed how parents engage with kids,
Speaker 1: starting with some seemingly innocuous child safety laws wear a
Speaker 1: seat belt, wear a bike helmet, and use a car seat.
Speaker 1: Every single state over the course of a few years
Speaker 1: enacted those laws, which was amazing. Those laws made us
Speaker 1: safe in bicycles and in cars, and yet led to
Speaker 1: a mindset of we must control our environment. Led to
Speaker 1: bike helmets on toddlers in their own driveways, that sort
Speaker 1: of you never know, just in case, bubble wrap the kid,
Speaker 1: bubble wrap the house. So that mentality began in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties, as did the play date. Back when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, in the late seventies, many kids found
Speaker 1: their own friends and played all by themselves. But in
Speaker 1: the late eighties that changed. It became the norm for
Speaker 1: parents to not only arrange play dates, but also to
Speaker 1: watch over things during those meetups. Moms and dads hovered
Speaker 1: during playtime, and we're ready to step in if kids
Speaker 1: weren't playing right or getting along. You know, the adults
Speaker 1: were handling play, which previously was the realm of children.
Speaker 1: We also began the stranger danger obsession. Don't let your
Speaker 1: kid out of your sight. You never know they might
Speaker 1: get abducted. It's true, there are predators out there. In
Speaker 1: cases of child abduction are a huge tragedy, but the
Speaker 1: statistics suggests that the chances of actually having a tragedy
Speaker 1: like that take place in your family are less than
Speaker 1: one in a million. An American child is ten times
Speaker 1: more likely to die in a freak equestrian accident than
Speaker 1: they are to be abducted by someone they don't know.
Speaker 1: But the culture of the eighties didn't just demand that
Speaker 1: parents protect kids from the unlikely possibility of abduction. Parents
Speaker 1: also began to feel like they had to shield kids
Speaker 1: from other bad stuff, like negative feelings, the pain of failure,
Speaker 1: or coming in second place. The eighties were also the
Speaker 1: era of the so called self esteem movement, which was
Speaker 1: just show up and applaud them that every single turn
Speaker 1: they painted a painting, great job, they tied their shoes perfect.
Speaker 1: These childhoods were filled with the chirping sounds of parents
Speaker 1: praising every darn thing. Eighties parents also began caring about
Speaker 1: the academic praise that their kids got in school, what
Speaker 1: Julie calls achievement culture. She traces it back to a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three report by the US National Commission on
Speaker 1: Excellence in Education that showed that American kids were falling
Speaker 1: behind their peers in other countries. In response, the US
Speaker 1: education system stepped up. Parents started hearing phrases like no
Speaker 1: child left Behind and college readiness. Teachers began assigning more homework,
Speaker 1: and school systems began giving more and more standardized tests,
Speaker 1: and how kids did on those standardized tests began to
Speaker 1: matter a lot more to parents than it used to.
Speaker 1: The eighties were also a time of widening salary gaps
Speaker 1: and career inequality, which meant that parents began worrying about
Speaker 1: which side of the divide their kids might land on.
Speaker 1: Some scholars, like Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These Days,
Speaker 1: Human Capital, and the Making of Millennials, have argued that
Speaker 1: this pressure drove parents to think of their children's job
Speaker 1: prospects in the same way that anxious CEOs think about
Speaker 1: their firms. Parents needed to find ways for their children
Speaker 1: to accumulate as much capital as they could. They used
Speaker 1: grades and extracurriculars to hedge against the risk of bad
Speaker 1: future job prospects. It was also in the early eighties
Speaker 1: that the US News and World Report began it's now
Speaker 1: infamous college rankings. Julie says those rankings parents that there
Speaker 1: were now winners and losers in higher education. Getting into
Speaker 1: college wasn't good enough anymore. Parents had to shoot for
Speaker 1: selective schools for their kids. We haven't mind they should
Speaker 1: go to Yet we have a mind they should go
Speaker 1: to Stamford. We haven't mind, they should go to wherever
Speaker 1: we very much have it in mind. And especially for
Speaker 1: privileged parents, this quickly turned into the idea that loving
Speaker 1: your kid meant helping them succeed academically by any means necessary,
Speaker 1: meaning more tutors and private schools, more advanced ap classes,
Speaker 1: and extracurriculars. At every turn, it became the norm to
Speaker 1: spend time and money on any advantage that might help
Speaker 1: your child prevail in that college arms race. And the
Speaker 1: arms race didn't just start in high school or middle school.
Speaker 1: Parents of preschoolers began pushing their children to take off
Speaker 1: as many academic wins as possible. I called back the
Speaker 1: checklisted childhood. Check off all these boxes, kid, and we
Speaker 1: will be proud of you, and you will get where
Speaker 1: we need you to go. And what's worse, some parents
Speaker 1: started to base their own self esteem on their children's achievements.
Speaker 1: Look at my child, my masterpiece, Look at my child,
Speaker 1: my trophy. My child is the evidence that I am
Speaker 1: a worthy person. Julie argues that such changes meant that
Speaker 1: parents started to think of childhood in a very different way.
Speaker 1: Childhood was less about development, as it had been for
Speaker 1: most of human history. It was now about curation. Loving
Speaker 1: moms and dads were made to feel like they needed
Speaker 1: to watch over their children carefully, to make sure their
Speaker 1: kids weren't just safe, but constantly stimulated and praised. They
Speaker 1: started battling as early as possible to win the race
Speaker 1: for a perfect college admission. As Julie puts it in
Speaker 1: her book, we went from thinking of our kids as
Speaker 1: wildflowers to thinking of them as delicate bonds eyes. Not
Speaker 1: everything about pre eighties parenting was ideal. Of course, When
Speaker 1: I was growing up, social scientists worried about latchkey kids
Speaker 1: and absentee parents, a problem that persists today. And no
Speaker 1: one would deny that bike helmets and additional academic support
Speaker 1: are positive advances. But Julie thinks that some of these
Speaker 1: changes forced us too far in the opposite direction, with
Speaker 1: more hovering and guiding and vigilance and anxiety than ever before.
Speaker 1: The switch was profound enough for childering experts foster client
Speaker 1: and Jim Fay to develop their famous term helicopter parenting.
Speaker 1: And the worry now is that we've moved beyond helicopter
Speaker 1: parenting into what's been referred to as lawnmower parenting. Now
Speaker 1: you don't simply hover over your kids. You mow over
Speaker 1: any potential problem they face, cutting the path ahead long
Speaker 1: before your children even reach an obstacle. But the science
Speaker 1: shows the psychological toll that such overattentive parenting can take
Speaker 1: is profound. What starts off as well intentioned loving behavior
Speaker 1: can inadvertently harm parents happiness and that of the people
Speaker 1: they care about most, their children. The happiness lab will
Speaker 1: be right back. I had this fear of, like, what
Speaker 1: am I going to do with Rosie on the weekends.
Speaker 1: Michaelian Ducleff was already overparenting her daughter Rosie, packing the
Speaker 1: toddler's diary, and so I would create this incredibly complex
Speaker 1: like schedule four of three year old. In the morning,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to the zoo and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: meet her friend for lunch and have a play date.
Speaker 1: Michael Line thought she was doing right by Rosie, but
Speaker 1: the science suggests she was actually harming herself by buying
Speaker 1: into the idea that good parents are supposed to plan
Speaker 1: activities every waking moment. We think children need constant stimulation,
Speaker 1: We need to manage and set their schedule, and they
Speaker 1: need something to do at all times. Studies repeatedly show
Speaker 1: that feeling constantly pressed for time is a recipe for
Speaker 1: reduced well being, lower life satisfaction, and higher stress related illnesses.
Speaker 1: All those zoo trips and play dates we're leaving michael
Speaker 1: Lene time famished. She was engaging in what's been called
Speaker 1: concierge parenting, treating Rosie like a VIP whose needs trumped
Speaker 1: everyone else's. And I just felt like I was like
Speaker 1: her personal assistant, and she was like a CEO that
Speaker 1: you know, I was chauffeuring around, you know, and my
Speaker 1: whole world was like revolved around her schedule. Michael Lean's
Speaker 1: concerns about which college Rosie would attend began even before
Speaker 1: the toddler was born. Once out of the womb, she
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure her daughter was learning all the time,
Speaker 1: so she embarked on what she now refers to as
Speaker 1: a learna palooza, like quizzing her, you know, what do
Speaker 1: you smell? What? Do you see, like, you know, what's
Speaker 1: two plus two? Trying to make her learn as fast
Speaker 1: as possible and like, you know, go to the next
Speaker 1: step as fast as possible. It also included talking, lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of talking. There was really a
Speaker 1: quiet moment when they were together. I calculated once I'd
Speaker 1: said something like over one hundred and twenty things to
Speaker 1: Rosie per hour, sally like two things per minute, and
Speaker 1: very little of that conversation was calming or fun. Michaellean
Speaker 1: was constantly getting into arguments with Rosie and telling her
Speaker 1: what not to do, you know, don't climb on that tree,
Speaker 1: don't do that, you know, like I'm looking for ways
Speaker 1: to fix everything right in every moment and like guide her.
Speaker 1: If you think all this sounds like a recipe for
Speaker 1: constant overwhelm and anxiety, you'd be correct. It's exhausting, right,
Speaker 1: You're always on, You're always trying so hard, and studies
Speaker 1: suggest that all this pressure and stress have really taken
Speaker 1: a toll. Parents in the US today experienced depression at
Speaker 1: twice the rate observed in the general population, and one
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen study showed that the intensive parenting that Michaelean
Speaker 1: engaged in leads to even more stressed and reduced life satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Empirically speaking, engaging in a constant stream of worry and
Speaker 1: all those endless activities is a recipe for reduced well being.
Speaker 1: But yet I felt like I needed to do them,
Speaker 1: that that's what a good parent did. Now, you might
Speaker 1: argue that good parenting is supposed to involve sacrifice, that
Speaker 1: stress is what you sign on for when you make
Speaker 1: the decision to become a mom or dad. Sure, overparenting
Speaker 1: is a bit stressful, but it's worth it to protect
Speaker 1: your kids and make sure they're healthy, happy, and successful.
Speaker 1: But the irony of all these good intentions is that
Speaker 1: overparenting has been shown to have a negative effect on
Speaker 1: kids too. For example, what's one of the fastest ways
Speaker 1: to make a kid feel overwhelmed Stick them with overwhelmed parents.
Speaker 1: Scientists have long documented the effects of emotional contagion. We
Speaker 1: catch the feelings of the people around us. One survey
Speaker 1: of kids from ages eight to eighteen found that more
Speaker 1: than a third of them wound up worrying often or
Speaker 1: very often about their parents' level of stress. But parental
Speaker 1: worry isn't the only thing stressing kids out. Overparented kids
Speaker 1: like Rosie also have to deal with the business and
Speaker 1: time famine that comes with so many play dates and
Speaker 1: other allegedly fun activities, and children's time famine often gets
Speaker 1: worse as they get older. The constant shuffling between play
Speaker 1: dates and practice in school can negatively affect your teens
Speaker 1: while being and their health. One study found that time
Speaker 1: urgency and adolescence was a risk factor for developing early
Speaker 1: health problems like hypertension. Think about that for a second.
Speaker 1: Stress induced hypertension and a teenager and Michael Line noticed
Speaker 1: another way she was hurting Rosie by arranging so many activities.
Speaker 1: The problem with this is that I was teaching her
Speaker 1: that that was her purpose in life, right, that her
Speaker 1: purpose was to go to the zoo on Saturday, you know,
Speaker 1: for me to make her these meals, for her to
Speaker 1: go to art class. I was creating this very entitled,
Speaker 1: privileged individual, and even though Rosie was pretty privileged, she
Speaker 1: was ironically being denied one thing that's super important for
Speaker 1: her development. Childhood should be a time for exploration. When
Speaker 1: parents step in to help kids navigate a slide or
Speaker 1: force them to read a book, they make those children
Speaker 1: feel like a puppet on a string. It takes away
Speaker 1: kids autonomy, you know, it takes away they're feeling like
Speaker 1: they're in control of their choices of what they're doing
Speaker 1: from moment to moment, because you're kind of pushing them
Speaker 1: and forcing them into this mold. Michael Lean realized she
Speaker 1: was causing both herself and Rosie a lot of unnecessary stress,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't sure what to do about it. She
Speaker 1: assumed she was doing what any loving mom had to do,
Speaker 1: that overparenting was the only way to parent. But michael
Speaker 1: Lean's views on motherhood were about to undergo a massive change.
Speaker 1: She was about to learn that not everyone is a
Speaker 1: lawnmower a parent. And I had this glimmer of hope
Speaker 1: of like, oh maybe I could learn this approach myself.
Speaker 1: We'll hear all about it when the Happiness Lab returns
Speaker 1: in a moment. You know, I went there not thinking
Speaker 1: I was going to become a better parent or anything
Speaker 1: really about parenting. I was really trying to do a
Speaker 1: story about attention span. Science journalist and mother Michaelan ducleff
Speaker 1: was asked to report on a surprising new study. Researchers
Speaker 1: had observed that children who grew up in Mayan villages,
Speaker 1: scored twice as well on tests of attention than middle
Speaker 1: class kids raised in California. MPR wanted Michaeleen to investigate
Speaker 1: why am I in kids were doing so much better,
Speaker 1: so she headed off to the Yucatan to work with
Speaker 1: a Mayan mom named Maria. She has five kids and
Speaker 1: her parenting style was just so different, so the opposite
Speaker 1: of mine. Michael Lean's style of mothering involved being in
Speaker 1: crisis mode all the time, lots of talking, lots of energy,
Speaker 1: you screaming, and Maria's approach to parenting is this very calm, serene,
Speaker 1: no yelling, no arguing, no bickering. Michaellean wondered if there
Speaker 1: was actually a happier path to raising Rosie. With lessons
Speaker 1: to learn from around the world and throughout history, her
Speaker 1: research became a book, Hunt Gathered Parent What Ancient Cultures
Speaker 1: can teach us about the lost art of raising happy,
Speaker 1: helpful humans. The book argues that parents need to focus
Speaker 1: less on anxiously hovering over their kids and more on
Speaker 1: building cooperative relationships and trust with them. Michael Lean boiled
Speaker 1: the steps to do this down into a simple acronym
Speaker 1: she called team which stands for togetherness, encouragement, autonomy, and
Speaker 1: minimal intervention. So let's start with togetherness doing things together.
Speaker 1: It's not entertaining the child going to the zoo together,
Speaker 1: it's just doing family activities and including the child. And
Speaker 1: it's also just coexisting, like just letting everybody kind of
Speaker 1: do what they do, but we're just together. Historically, children
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time around their parents and older
Speaker 1: siblings who were just doing the stuff that older humans
Speaker 1: and their culture would normally do. But that's a very
Speaker 1: different practice than a childlike Rosie experienced with all her
Speaker 1: play dates and zoo outings. So we have this whole
Speaker 1: world we've created for children, and we kind of don't
Speaker 1: let children into the adult world. As a result, many
Speaker 1: American kids don't get the chance to witness all the
Speaker 1: work and cooperative activities that adults do on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Like when Rosie was little, I would wait until she
Speaker 1: sleeps or goes to daycare or some activity, and then
Speaker 1: I would do the cleaning and I would do the laundry,
Speaker 1: so Rosie was never seeing me do any of the work. Historically,
Speaker 1: kids were also more involved in household chores. They learned
Speaker 1: that they weren't privileged family VIPs, but part of the
Speaker 1: day to day running of a house. It's also just
Speaker 1: easier because I can go about my life and bring
Speaker 1: Rosie with me. But when Michaelan tried to get Rosie
Speaker 1: more involved, she quickly learned that you do need a
Speaker 1: way to convince kids to take part in all these
Speaker 1: shared activities, and that led to the second letter and
Speaker 1: Michaelene's team. Acronym E is for encouraging, which michael Line
Speaker 1: argues is not something modern moms and dads spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time doing. So we kind of want to
Speaker 1: force kids to do things, like we feel like if
Speaker 1: they don't listen to what we do, we've lost and
Speaker 1: so we we give allowances, we give punishments, bribes, yell
Speaker 1: get angry. But actually, if you look around the world,
Speaker 1: a lot of parents don't do that. Very rarely do
Speaker 1: they force kids. Instead, they encourage, and there's all these
Speaker 1: tools that we don't learn for encouraging children. One of
Speaker 1: these tools is what Michaelene calls triggering thought. Rather than
Speaker 1: telling your child what to do and what not to do,
Speaker 1: get them to think more about what they should be doing,
Speaker 1: asking them questions or telling them certain things so that
Speaker 1: they can figure it out. Rather than telling your child, hey,
Speaker 1: not messing with your brother, or be careful you're going
Speaker 1: to spill your milk, you could instead trigger thought with
Speaker 1: questions like hmm, do you think your brother likes it
Speaker 1: when you do that? Or huh, I wonder what will
Speaker 1: happen if you keep carrying your milk like that. By
Speaker 1: asking Rosie questions rather than demanding that she stopped doing something,
Speaker 1: Rosie got to be the one to figure out the
Speaker 1: best behavior in a situation. Triggering thought in this way
Speaker 1: is both empowering for kids and educational, because you're giving
Speaker 1: them a sense of choice right, and you're giving them
Speaker 1: the sense of autonomy. Another encouragement tool to try is modeling.
Speaker 1: Rather than ordering your kids around, you simply demonstrate the
Speaker 1: right behavior. So if you look, the primary way children
Speaker 1: learn throughout the world and throughout human history is by
Speaker 1: just watching. We think children learn through instruction. We think
Speaker 1: you have to tell them what to do, right. The
Speaker 1: problem is that, motivationally speaking, being told what to do
Speaker 1: often feels like the exact opposite of encouraging Telling them
Speaker 1: what to do. It's so stressful, it's so stressful for them.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes it. I don't like it, why would Rosie like?
Speaker 1: Combining these encouragement strategies with behaviors that promote to gatherness
Speaker 1: and cooperation can lead to huge changes in a child's behavior.
Speaker 1: My relationship with Rosie improved so much, and like my
Speaker 1: husband said a couple months after we started some of
Speaker 1: the approaches, like, we can never go back. But I
Speaker 1: think it works because it really is just about the
Speaker 1: parent interacting with the child the relationship. But Michaelean is
Speaker 1: also the first to admit the ditching overparenting habits is hard.
Speaker 1: Even the simple act of letting your child help with
Speaker 1: chores was tough for an ex lon More mom for
Speaker 1: a few reasons. One that it's going to take too
Speaker 1: much time, right, kids are going to slow you down.
Speaker 1: But the second thing is we want it done a
Speaker 1: particular way, like we want to optimize the child, we
Speaker 1: want to optimize the dinner. So one afternoon I was
Speaker 1: making kebabs and I said, Rosie, you know, giving her
Speaker 1: practices it, come into the kitchen and help me make
Speaker 1: these kebabs. She comes running over and she starts making
Speaker 1: this massive chicken kebab, like using up, like all the
Speaker 1: chicken on one kebab and I'm just like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, no, like, we can't make one huge chicken bob.
Speaker 1: I think I even grabbed the kebab from her, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's not the right way, And of course she
Speaker 1: just like screamed, ran away and started crying. Days later,
Speaker 1: when writing her books chapter on Togetherness, Michaeleen had a
Speaker 1: chance to reflect on what she did wrong. I'm not
Speaker 1: cooperating with her, right, Like, I'm not giving her a
Speaker 1: chance to contribute and do things a little bit her way, right,
Speaker 1: And I felt really bad about it, and I also
Speaker 1: realized I was being super bossy. So the next week
Speaker 1: and I kind of set it up again and I
Speaker 1: got all this stuff and I said, come on, Rosie,
Speaker 1: come help me make kebabs. And she didn't want to
Speaker 1: out she was like nope, but I convinced. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, you can make whatever kebab
Speaker 1: you want. Rosie reluctantly joined and started making yet another
Speaker 1: mega chicken kebab. I didn't say anything to her, and
Speaker 1: I just took the kebb and I put it on
Speaker 1: the plate with the other ones, and her eyes like
Speaker 1: lit up. I couldn't believe it. But then she started
Speaker 1: making them like I was making them. She started looking
Speaker 1: at me and we started really working together. And that's
Speaker 1: just like such a moment in my life because it
Speaker 1: was like I was starting to understand what it means
Speaker 1: to cooperate with somebody. Parenting changes like these ones that
Speaker 1: promote shared activities and better forms of encouragement have transformed
Speaker 1: Michaeleen's family life. She no longer dreads Rosie's tantrums or
Speaker 1: feels pressured to plant exhausting playdate schedules. My relationship as
Speaker 1: Rosie is so much better, And to be honest, my
Speaker 1: relationship with my husband is so much better because I
Speaker 1: was doing the same thing with him. He'd come in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and I would be like, that's not right.
Speaker 1: You don't chop the peppers that way, and I would
Speaker 1: like shoo him out, and then I would wonder why
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to cook. I spent my first twenty
Speaker 1: years of my adult life, you know, really focusing on
Speaker 1: my individual achievements, really fighting for what I want, and
Speaker 1: really been lonely, and I really want to spend like
Speaker 1: the next twenty like learning more how to cooperate, learning
Speaker 1: more how to work together on shared goals, and it's
Speaker 1: made me a much happier person. But you might be thinking,
Speaker 1: we've only so far heard of the first two steps
Speaker 1: and Michaeleen's teen acronym, what about the pans of autonomy
Speaker 1: and the idea of minimal intervention. Well, we still have
Speaker 1: a few more parenting tips to share, ones that the
Speaker 1: science shows are especially important for raising happier, healthier kids.
Speaker 1: We have completely lost control over how a human develops healthfully,
Speaker 1: and so unfortunately I need to leave you with a
Speaker 1: bit of a cliffhanger this week, and we are effectively
Speaker 1: long term harming the very, very most precious humans in
Speaker 1: our lives, our children. But I promise that the second
Speaker 1: of our two part special on Happier Parenting will provide
Speaker 1: some important tips on how to make modern parenting. Damn,
Speaker 1: you need to put this in the podcast because people
Speaker 1: need to hear this a bit less of a crisis. Now,
Speaker 1: this has been like therapy, So I hope you'll return
Speaker 1: for part two of Happier Parenting on the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: with me Doctor Laurie Santos. Veiness Lab is co written
Speaker 1: and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan and Courtney Guerino.
Speaker 1: Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Our original music was composed
Speaker 1: by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by
Speaker 1: Evan Viola. Special thanks to Milabelle Heather Fame, John Schnars,
Speaker 1: Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
Speaker 1: me Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your podcasts,