Speaker 1: Pushkin. I am one hundred percent rooting for young people
Speaker 1: to live a life unfettered by overhelp. This is college
Speaker 1: educator and mother Julie lith got Himes. We are depriving
Speaker 1: them of the varying experiences, however mundane, they need to
Speaker 1: have in order to build a life, to build an existence.
Speaker 1: Julie is the author of How to Reason Adult, Break
Speaker 1: Free of the overparenting trap, and Prepare your kid for Success.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to part one of this two part
Speaker 1: parenting episode, which you really should, you'll know that Julie
Speaker 1: is pretty evangelical about the harms of overparenting, but she
Speaker 1: also gets just how easy it is to do. Laurie,
Speaker 1: I get it a little bit too well. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: this former dean at Stanford seeing a generation of overparented kids.
Speaker 1: Air quotes young adults in college who realized, to my
Speaker 1: great shame, and I don't use that word lightly that
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm doing it to my own kids too.
Speaker 1: Julie had observed the same disturbing patterns and her students
Speaker 1: at Stanford as I did in my own community at Yale.
Speaker 1: She saw an entire generation that was suffering from imprecedented
Speaker 1: levels of depression and anxiety, twenty some things who struggled
Speaker 1: in the face of seemingly simple setbacks like a single
Speaker 1: bad test grade. These were young people who seemed more
Speaker 1: dependent on their parents than any previous generation she'd worked with.
Speaker 1: Julie worried a lot about the parenting styles that had
Speaker 1: caused this profound decrease in student resilience. She even gave
Speaker 1: an address to the parents of the new Stanford students
Speaker 1: when welcoming their incoming freshman class, explaining the adventure their
Speaker 1: children were embarking on and reminding them that it was
Speaker 1: probably a good idea to back off and just let
Speaker 1: their kids be. Julie was a warrior against overparenting. Well
Speaker 1: maybe then I come home, after seven years of railing
Speaker 1: against overparenting, rooting for my students, I sit down at
Speaker 1: dinner one night. We're having chicken. I'm seated next to Sawyer.
Speaker 1: I lean over his plate and begin cutting his chicken.
Speaker 1: And that was when I was like, oh shit, I'm
Speaker 1: doing it. I'm one of those parents. I'm currently laughing
Speaker 1: at the college level. I'm doing the same equivalent thing
Speaker 1: with my ten year old, and this overparenting wasn't confined
Speaker 1: to the dinner table. Julie's two kids also never did
Speaker 1: any chores or took on their share of household responsibilities.
Speaker 1: They rarely traveled alone and were carefully chauffeured to all
Speaker 1: their activities. They even received constant praise and attention. So
Speaker 1: I've been trying to undo this patterning with my own
Speaker 1: kids since I discovered I was complicit in the problem.
Speaker 1: In our first episode on this subject, we explored where
Speaker 1: some of these problematic parenting strategies came from, all the
Speaker 1: cultural and structural forces this seemed to have profoundly affected
Speaker 1: child wearing over the last few decades. We discovered that
Speaker 1: it is possible to learn new techniques for raising happier
Speaker 1: and more resilient kids, ones that can make moms and
Speaker 1: dads less anxious too. We talk to science writer Michaelan
Speaker 1: Duclef about a set of healthier parenting strategies summed up
Speaker 1: by her acronym TEAM, which stands for Togetherness, Encouragement, autonomy
Speaker 1: and Minimal Intervention. We covered the first two letters, T
Speaker 1: and E, learning how parents can do more things together
Speaker 1: with their kids and how they can use more evidence
Speaker 1: based forms of encouragement So in this episode we'll tackle
Speaker 1: the A and M autonomy and minimal intervention, and we'll
Speaker 1: see that what kids really need from their parents is
Speaker 1: a lot more autonomy and a lot less intervention, the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of what many anxious moms and dads think
Speaker 1: is the root to raising happy, successful children. Our minds
Speaker 1: are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. Life teaches humans how to
Speaker 1: live unless a parent is effectively living your life for you.
Speaker 1: All parents want their children to live a good life,
Speaker 1: but Julie worries that, rather than guiding kids down life's road,
Speaker 1: many parents forcibly take the wheel for far too long.
Speaker 1: They wind up influencing their sons and daughters' choices and
Speaker 1: denying them autonomy, the superimportant psychological sense that one has
Speaker 1: agency over what one does in the world. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: it makes sense not to give your kids all that
Speaker 1: much autonomy early in life. I mean, infants and toddlers
Speaker 1: simply can't make choices or express preferences, so parents do
Speaker 1: need to be calling all the shots when children are really,
Speaker 1: really little. But Julie has observed that some parents never
Speaker 1: put their kids in the driver's seat. It's sort of like,
Speaker 1: even though they've chronologically grown, they're still in the car seat,
Speaker 1: being driven through their life by you. Many parents also
Speaker 1: hinder their children it's autonomy by listing the activities they
Speaker 1: think their children should and shouldn't be spending their time on.
Speaker 1: Growing structural inequality means moms and dads worry about their
Speaker 1: children's future prospects. They feel incredible pressure to ensure their
Speaker 1: children make the right choices and have every advantage they
Speaker 1: can the best grades, the right enrichment activities, and as
Speaker 1: many accolades as possible. After all, a caring mom or
Speaker 1: dad might say, that's the only path to getting my
Speaker 1: child into the kind of college that will ensure a
Speaker 1: decent salary and good opportunities later in life. But the
Speaker 1: anxiety and worry parents feel often means forcing students into
Speaker 1: incredibly busy schedules that kids themselves wouldn't choose. And advance
Speaker 1: my activities that they might not even enjoy. I call
Speaker 1: these cages of enrichment. There is no longer a downtime
Speaker 1: in childhood. They are stacked to the hilt with activities,
Speaker 1: all designed to enrich them, all designed to demonstrate to
Speaker 1: a college admission dean I am worthy. Many parents also
Speaker 1: have strong opinions about the specific activities that are and
Speaker 1: are not worthy uses of their children's time. But what
Speaker 1: counts is worthy is all too often determined not by
Speaker 1: what a child enjoys, but by what mom or dad
Speaker 1: believes will help them win that race against their peers.
Speaker 1: It's a tendency that Julie fell prey to herself when
Speaker 1: her daughter Avery was in preschool. I'm picking her up
Speaker 1: one day and the teacher's trying to point out that
Speaker 1: my daughter has made some stunning watercolors. Avery had a
Speaker 1: real artistic side, said the teacher. She was a fantastic
Speaker 1: budding painter. We rarely see this degree of artistic maturity
Speaker 1: in a four year old. And I'm like trying to
Speaker 1: act like I care, But Lorie, I didn't care because
Speaker 1: it was art. So I'm smiling and nodding and performing
Speaker 1: the part of the proud parent, But inside I was thinking,
Speaker 1: it's just art. It's not relevant, it's not going to
Speaker 1: get her in to Stanford. But it's not just that
Speaker 1: parents are tempted to decide which activities their children should pursue.
Speaker 1: Moms and dads can also be a bit too willing
Speaker 1: to step in and intervene in the things they do
Speaker 1: deem worthy, sometimes in ways that impede kids learning. Rather
Speaker 1: than engaging in minimal intervention, they instead opt for what
Speaker 1: we might call maximal intervention, tying their shoes too alarm
Speaker 1: like me, cutting their meat too long, bathing them too long,
Speaker 1: holding their hands literally too long. You might think this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that's confined to kindergarten or
Speaker 1: elementary school, but it's not. In my role as ahead
Speaker 1: of college at Yale, eyewitness parents coming to campus to
Speaker 1: do their adult child's laundry, stepping in during a mild
Speaker 1: roommate dispute, dictating what students major in, heavily editing essays
Speaker 1: and problem sets, and even calling their phones each morning
Speaker 1: just to make absolutely sure their adult offspring woke up
Speaker 1: in time for class. Why because they never set the
Speaker 1: expectation in elementary school that the child would wake up
Speaker 1: to an alarm. The parent was always effectively the kid's
Speaker 1: alarm clock, So they can't stop now that they aren't Yale.
Speaker 1: Some ancious parents even take on the role of high
Speaker 1: end concierge's, continue only stepping in to smooth out any
Speaker 1: sticky situation. Oh they forgot their backpack, I better bring it.
Speaker 1: Oh they forgot their sporting equipment, I better bring it.
Speaker 1: We deprive them of the learning because we're they're rescuing.
Speaker 1: The urge to intervene means that we sometimes forget that
Speaker 1: we need to allow children to learn from their own mistakes.
Speaker 1: Of course, you want to bring that backpack, But what
Speaker 1: is it you really want? You want your child to
Speaker 1: be successful? Well, how are they going to be successful
Speaker 1: by overtime learning from having experienced the consequence of forgetting,
Speaker 1: They're more likely to remember it the next day, whereas
Speaker 1: if you bring it today, they're more likely to forget
Speaker 1: it again because now there's a system of you always
Speaker 1: bring it. So why do so many parents deprive their
Speaker 1: children of these important learning opportunities, from cutting their meat
Speaker 1: to remembering their forgotten lunchbox to serving as their child's
Speaker 1: college alarm clock. Well, let's establish it's a habit that
Speaker 1: seems to work. When you tie your child's shoes every morning,
Speaker 1: it gets done correctly and fast enough for everyone to
Speaker 1: get out the door on time, and with parents feeling
Speaker 1: more time pressed than ever, that is indeed a real benefit,
Speaker 1: at least in the show term. When you cut your
Speaker 1: child's meat, it's cut neatly, it's in the right sized chunks.
Speaker 1: They don't harm their little hands. When you overhelp with
Speaker 1: their homework, and let's not mince words, parents are overhelping,
Speaker 1: rewriting essays, doing the math outright, doing the science projects.
Speaker 1: Do you get the right grade? You're rewarded for this overparenting.
Speaker 1: Maximal intervention has also begun to seem like the child
Speaker 1: rearing norm, and when everyone else is doing it, it
Speaker 1: can feel like, well, I'm neglecting my child because I
Speaker 1: expect them to go to the corner store without me
Speaker 1: at twelve. But Julie's research has shown that limiting your
Speaker 1: child's autonomy through maximal intervention has a number of pretty
Speaker 1: major downsides. The first is a reduction in parental well being.
Speaker 1: It is incredibly stressful to be micromanaging someone else's life.
Speaker 1: You're effectively leading the life of your child on top
Speaker 1: of your own life, and if you have more than
Speaker 1: one child, you are paying attention to the situations, trajectories,
Speaker 1: and outcomes of so many people. It is wearing you thin. Happiness.
Speaker 1: Researchers talk about what's known as the parenting paradox. Most
Speaker 1: parents report that their children are hands down the most
Speaker 1: meaningful part of their lives, but when researchers look at
Speaker 1: moment to moment happiness, it often tanks as soon as
Speaker 1: a person has their first child. Some studies have even
Speaker 1: found the American parents are depressed at twice the rate
Speaker 1: of the general population, twice the rate. When the worries
Speaker 1: that come from all this meat cutting and shoe tying
Speaker 1: and chauffeuring are added to the normal anxieties of life,
Speaker 1: it's a recipe for overwhelming stress. No wonder we're all withering,
Speaker 1: and it's not just moms and dads who suffer when
Speaker 1: parental stress goes through the roof. We're also setting a
Speaker 1: bad example for our kids. We're supposed to model that
Speaker 1: adults have amazing lives. We have hobbies and the interests,
Speaker 1: we gather with other adults. We laugh, we do things
Speaker 1: that children don't do. I long to be an adult
Speaker 1: because it looked like fun. Nowadays adulthood looks like misery,
Speaker 1: and misery has a way of trickling down through a
Speaker 1: family because the research shows that kids pick up on
Speaker 1: parental angst. They see the worry in our faces about
Speaker 1: what's happening with them. This is helping to fuel this
Speaker 1: anxiety crisis. Now I get that all this sounds pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: Out of genuine love and concern. Parents may be inadvertently
Speaker 1: stymying their children, hindering their ability to grow into happy,
Speaker 1: successful and independent adults. But science does offer hope for
Speaker 1: another way, one that can make parents themselves happier, and
Speaker 1: one will explore when the happiness lad returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen sixties, psychologist Marty Seligman ran an
Speaker 1: experiment that changed the way scientists think about optimism and resilience.
Speaker 1: Like many researchers back in the days of so called behaviorism,
Speaker 1: Seligman was interested in whether animals could learn new behaviors
Speaker 1: to avoid a painful stimulus. In a famous study, one
Speaker 1: that might now be considered kind of mean, he tested
Speaker 1: how three groups of dogs would react to mild electric shocks.
Speaker 1: Seligman's first set of dogs could easily turn off the
Speaker 1: electricity simply by pushing a button. These dogs quickly figured
Speaker 1: out how to use the button to shut off the punishment.
Speaker 1: The second group of dogs got the same shocks, but
Speaker 1: had no way to stop them. They had a button
Speaker 1: to press, but it didn't work. They just had to
Speaker 1: stand there and take the pain. The final group of
Speaker 1: dogs was the luckiest. They got no shocks at all.
Speaker 1: Seligman was interested in whether a dog's past experience controlling
Speaker 1: shocks affected how quickly it learned to avoid punishment in
Speaker 1: a new situation, so he placed all the dogs inside
Speaker 1: a metal crate. The floor on the left side of
Speaker 1: this crate was electrified and yet again delivered mild shocks,
Speaker 1: but the right part of the crate was totally safe.
Speaker 1: It didn't deliver shocks at all. Seligman placed each dog
Speaker 1: on the electrified floor to see how long it took
Speaker 1: them to move away from the shocks, and what did
Speaker 1: he find. Well, the dogs who'd use the button to
Speaker 1: churn off the shocks figured out the new solution pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: They were used to taking action to avoid pain. The
Speaker 1: dogs who'd never had any experience with shocks also escaped
Speaker 1: straight away, But the dogs who hadn't been allowed to
Speaker 1: escape the shocks showed a very different pattern of performance.
Speaker 1: They did nothing. They never figured out there was a
Speaker 1: super easy way to escape. Their lack of autonomy in
Speaker 1: the original task seems to have taught them that there
Speaker 1: was probably nothing they could do, so why bother trying.
Speaker 1: Seligman later ran a version of this study with people
Speaker 1: and found pretty much the same pattern. When we don't
Speaker 1: have control over a bad situation, we start assuming that
Speaker 1: we never will. We develop what Seligman famously christened learned helplessness.
Speaker 1: When we get evidence that our actions don't matter, we
Speaker 1: become passive and depressed. Seligman argued for the importance of
Speaker 1: what he called contingency. Our mental health relies on seeing
Speaker 1: evidence that our actions do something and that we can
Speaker 1: control the important outcomes around us. But we don't just
Speaker 1: care about contingency when it comes to bad things like
Speaker 1: electric shocks. One of Seligman's recent books, Authentic Happiness, asked
Speaker 1: what might happen when people get praise or rewards without
Speaker 1: putting in any work or effort. His answer was that
Speaker 1: it might also lead to a sense of depression, passivity,
Speaker 1: and hopelessness made a minute. I am not the actor
Speaker 1: in my life. Things happen, results come even if I
Speaker 1: do nothing. Educator Julie lifth got Hims, who overparented her
Speaker 1: own kids back in the day, now thinks that so
Speaker 1: much intervention might be breaking the link between effort and
Speaker 1: reward in the minds of our kids. And somehow the
Speaker 1: psyche seems to know that's not satisfying. I don't want
Speaker 1: to just be helped and handled. I don't want the
Speaker 1: little pelletive love to come my way if I didn't
Speaker 1: work for it. We get this sense of well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter what I do, because stuff's going to
Speaker 1: happen to me regardless, and it might even be good stuff.
Speaker 1: But I didn't do it. I know this is a
Speaker 1: tough message for many parents to hear, since they're literally
Speaker 1: exhausting themselves to make their children's lives as good as possible,
Speaker 1: making huge sacrifices. We think, Oh, I've handled it, I've
Speaker 1: made it happen. I got my kid into this, I
Speaker 1: reminded of this, I brought them this III. While your
Speaker 1: kid becomes an inanimate actor in their own lives, you
Speaker 1: have deprived them of living a life and that will
Speaker 1: catch up to them in the form of a profound unwellness.
Speaker 1: But with Sellingman right, does maximal intervention really result in
Speaker 1: children who feel more passive and try less hard. I
Speaker 1: think I had this idea that I was going to
Speaker 1: be an Olympic gold medalist, which is totally not something
Speaker 1: we should be planning in kid's heads. This is my
Speaker 1: friend in colleague, Julia Leonard. Julia is now a professor
Speaker 1: of psychology at Yale, but as a kid, she'd hope
Speaker 1: to become an elite athlete, a champion Olympian in her
Speaker 1: chosen sport of ice skating. That is, until grown ups
Speaker 1: around her warned her that she'd never reach that pinnacle.
Speaker 1: So I was told basically that I didn't have the
Speaker 1: right body, I was too tall, and I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to make it. If Olympic medals were out of the question,
Speaker 1: did it make sense They asked to continue in the
Speaker 1: sport at all. And as a kid it turned out
Speaker 1: like I actually was having fun, but I thought I
Speaker 1: should be getting medals, and so when I was told like, no,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to work out, I decided to change course.
Speaker 1: And do something where I could be successful at it.
Speaker 1: Julia looks back on her decision to quit with regret.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've really enjoyed doing as
Speaker 1: an adult is trying things where I have no prior
Speaker 1: expectations of how I'll do, because I find that I'm
Speaker 1: much more persistent if I'm like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm going to be good or bad, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter. It's just for the enjoyment of it. These days,
Speaker 1: Julia is really excited about one new sport, in particular,
Speaker 1: rock climbing. I just immediately caught onto the community aspect
Speaker 1: of it, the problem solving aspect of it. We climbing
Speaker 1: requires the constant challenge of deciding whether or not to
Speaker 1: give up. It requires what psychologists call persistence. There's always
Speaker 1: some point in a climb where you're not totally sure
Speaker 1: you can make it to the next grip, and you're
Speaker 1: attempted to tell your belayer to get you off the
Speaker 1: wall right now. But then you can kind of have
Speaker 1: a conversation with yourself. It's like, but maybe I can
Speaker 1: do it, and might as well just try, Like, are
Speaker 1: you going to keep going or are you gonna be like,
Speaker 1: take me down, I'm done with this climb, and so
Speaker 1: I find that to be pretty exciting and very meta.
Speaker 1: With my research, Julia studies persistence and what causes children
Speaker 1: to keep going when the going gets tough. Her experiments
Speaker 1: involved giving little kids puzzle boxes that they don't realize
Speaker 1: or impossible to open. She then measures how long those
Speaker 1: toddlers spend pushing to find a solution. And one of
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges I ran into when I was doing
Speaker 1: these studies is I was giving kids impossible tasks in
Speaker 1: front of their parents, and I was excluding a lot
Speaker 1: of participants because the parents jumped in. Parents are just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, my kid can't figure it out, and
Speaker 1: so they interfere and they try to figure it out
Speaker 1: for their kid. Losing lots of data because anxious parents
Speaker 1: kept stepping in was annoying, but it did of Julia
Speaker 1: an idea for a new research question, why are parents
Speaker 1: doing this and what is the effect. Julia brought families
Speaker 1: into the lab and ask parents to fill out a
Speaker 1: survey on how their child typically tackles a challenging question.
Speaker 1: Does your son or daughter keep going until they've been successful?
Speaker 1: Do they give up quickly? When they run into difficulty
Speaker 1: and so on. Julia then gave the kids a challenging
Speaker 1: woodblock puzzle, and the instructions for the parents was just
Speaker 1: see how many of these puzzles your kids can do.
Speaker 1: The family was left alone for five minutes while Julia
Speaker 1: observed their actions on video. Her results were pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: The parents who said their children didn't show great persistence
Speaker 1: on the survey were the same parents who interfered most
Speaker 1: in the puzzle task, either by placing the pieces themselves
Speaker 1: or telling their child to quit. But obviously that's a correlation.
Speaker 1: We wanted to know if there was actually a causal
Speaker 1: a fact of this, and so Julia devised an experiment.
Speaker 1: One group of children did the same block puzzles, but
Speaker 1: had an adult repeatedly take over. The second group of
Speaker 1: kids was allowed to work without intervention. Both sets of
Speaker 1: children were then given a new puzzle game, one that
Speaker 1: involved a small box with lots of levers that looked
Speaker 1: easy to open but was in reality impossible. And then
Speaker 1: all we want to see is how long they persist
Speaker 1: And the real question was if an adult had just
Speaker 1: stepped in and did something for you two times in
Speaker 1: a row on a puzzle. What are you thinking about
Speaker 1: this task? If you were a child who had not
Speaker 1: been allowed to complete a puzzle alone, you might be
Speaker 1: doubting your abilities to solve the new one, or you
Speaker 1: might conclude that someone's probably going to step in to
Speaker 1: help you. And this is exactly what Julia found. The
Speaker 1: kids who experienced maximal intervention gave up far more quickly
Speaker 1: than the ones who got to try to figure out
Speaker 1: the puzzle on their own, Just as Marty Seligmann had expected,
Speaker 1: parental intervention maybe changing children's beliefs about their capabilities, maximal
Speaker 1: intervention maybe having a bigger psychological and motivational cost than
Speaker 1: we realize. We think that that solves the problem and
Speaker 1: we're actually doing something that's really helpful, but in reality
Speaker 1: we're potentially hurting their motivation. Now both Julia and I
Speaker 1: realize that there are some times in which parents have
Speaker 1: no choice but to intervene, like when the school bus
Speaker 1: is turning the corner on your street and you just
Speaker 1: got to get out the door. So sometimes you really
Speaker 1: are in a rush, and those shoes need to be tied,
Speaker 1: so you really need to take over there. We also
Speaker 1: get how tempting it is to step in even when
Speaker 1: the clock's not ticking. Julia recently had a chance to
Speaker 1: head back out onto the ice to tutor a colleague's daughter, Clara,
Speaker 1: who never skated before, and I was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna move your skates like this, I'm gonna teach you
Speaker 1: how to do it. I'm gonna hold you the whole time.
Speaker 1: Seeing Clara's struggling, Julia just couldn't help herself because you
Speaker 1: just go into this like primal state of like this
Speaker 1: is what the kid needs to succeed. Julia had inadvertently
Speaker 1: entered maximal intervention mode. I was like, oh, I'm doing
Speaker 1: the thing that we found is bad. So Julia backed off,
Speaker 1: letting Clara try things on her own. The girl fell
Speaker 1: a few times, but she also had the autonomy in
Speaker 1: space needed to figure it out on her own. And
Speaker 1: what really made Clara the happiest was when we step back,
Speaker 1: she figured out her own complete different way to skate.
Speaker 1: It was not actually like correct skating, but she was
Speaker 1: able to do by herself, and she lit up and
Speaker 1: she was so excited. So what are the everyday practical
Speaker 1: strategies parents can use to strike a healthier balance between
Speaker 1: nudging our kids towards success and allowing them their autonomy.
Speaker 1: We'll run through these tips when the Happiness Lab returns
Speaker 1: from the break. Look nobody wants to fail. I failed great.
Speaker 1: Nobody says that it's not that you want to be
Speaker 1: like I want to constantly fail. You want to be
Speaker 1: like I am good with things going wrong, because then
Speaker 1: I will learn from them and get stronger. Author and
Speaker 1: educator Julie lithgot Him says that if parents really want
Speaker 1: to raise happier and more resilient kids, than they need
Speaker 1: to play the long game. We need to know they're capable.
Speaker 1: Not that you did everything for them, but that you
Speaker 1: raised someone who got increasingly capable at doing for themselves.
Speaker 1: And the first step in long term parenting is something
Speaker 1: that should be a relief for moms and dads. As
Speaker 1: the saying goes, parents need to put their own oxygen
Speaker 1: masks on first before worrying about their kids. Our mental
Speaker 1: health is suffering. Parents are experiencing way more pressure and
Speaker 1: anxiety and guilt than ever, often because they're worried about
Speaker 1: not being the best mom or dad they can be.
Speaker 1: But studies show that we parent less effectively and intervene
Speaker 1: more often when we are feeling threatened or overwhelmed. So
Speaker 1: if you want to try to make better parenting decisions,
Speaker 1: then start taking care of your own mental health. Trying
Speaker 1: to engage a little self compassion is a good foundation.
Speaker 1: Remind yourself that parenting is hard, that even the expert struggle,
Speaker 1: and that beating yourself up doesn't really help. You can
Speaker 1: also put that oxygen mask on by reducing your own anxiety.
Speaker 1: Start by telling yourself that it's normal to worry that
Speaker 1: your child might struggle or fail. Sometimes all parents fear this,
Speaker 1: but you'll also feel better and parent better if you
Speaker 1: can work to regulate those worries. Some simple tips were
Speaker 1: doing that include taking a deep breath, which can literally
Speaker 1: switch off your body's fight or flight response to fear.
Speaker 1: Or you could try engaging in a practice known as
Speaker 1: radical acceptance and which you remind yourself that worry is
Speaker 1: a part of life and that you're committed to noticing
Speaker 1: and accepting it rather than acting on it. So if
Speaker 1: you can remember this sort of parent for the long
Speaker 1: haul thing in the moment, maybe that'll help you regulate
Speaker 1: your own emotion. Julie also recommends concentrating on preparation and
Speaker 1: practice rather than performance. It's what clinical psychologists Robin Kosluidz
Speaker 1: has called valuing the process rather than the product. Instead
Speaker 1: of worrying about whether your child wins a particular trophy
Speaker 1: or gets a great test grade, you should instead make
Speaker 1: sure they're using a process that actually prompts learning. We're
Speaker 1: supposed to be instilling skills in these young so that
Speaker 1: they can be strong and guess what survived when we're
Speaker 1: dead and gone. You need to know they can exercise
Speaker 1: good judgment when you aren't there, and that means making
Speaker 1: sure kids learn more daily life skills. So tag your
Speaker 1: kids in for more duties around the house, helping with cooking,
Speaker 1: taking out the garbage, caring for pets, or younger siblings
Speaker 1: doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, and so on. Once
Speaker 1: are they found that parents today give kids twenty five
Speaker 1: percent less housework than they did back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: then we wonder why they can't do anything. And after
Speaker 1: they've raked some leaves or folded some bedsheets, there's something
Speaker 1: else very important they should experience. Julie thinks that today's
Speaker 1: kids are deprived not of nutrition or love or academic opportunities,
Speaker 1: but if something just as relevant for their future success failure.
Speaker 1: The way we get to excellence, to achievement is through
Speaker 1: some trial and error, or trying and failing or falling, fumbling, floundering, flewing,
Speaker 1: effing up. I call them life's beautiful efforts. They are
Speaker 1: our greatest teachers. But letting these effort teachers do their
Speaker 1: work requires that parents do something that's admittedly really, really hard.
Speaker 1: We need to let bad things happen to our kids.
Speaker 1: Parenting experts Michael Anderson and Tim Johansson drew up a
Speaker 1: helpful list of things that all kids need to experience.
Speaker 1: It includes things like brace yourself not being invited to
Speaker 1: a birthday party, finding out that your friends did something
Speaker 1: fun without you, working really hard on a paper or
Speaker 1: test and still getting a crappy grade, being picked last
Speaker 1: in a sporting event, and even being made fun of
Speaker 1: by another kid. Letting your kids suffer through painful events
Speaker 1: like these might make you wins, but Julie argues that
Speaker 1: they're valuable learning experiences. We get better at coping by
Speaker 1: having coped. If your son or daughter hasn't explicitly asked
Speaker 1: for your help, let them be the ones to navigate
Speaker 1: conflict during playtime. Or discuss a bad grade with a teacher,
Speaker 1: and resist the urge to step in to fix all
Speaker 1: of their mistakes. Don't drive out of your way to
Speaker 1: deliver a forgotten pair of sports shoes or a lunchbox.
Speaker 1: Rescuing them might feel good in the short term, but
Speaker 1: it will rob them of a precious opportunity for learning.
Speaker 1: Let life teach them the lesson, because that's how they'll
Speaker 1: remember it. Yale psychologist Julia Leonard, who was told that
Speaker 1: she should drop the sport she loved since she wasn't
Speaker 1: Olympic material, argues we need a new approach to helping
Speaker 1: the children we care about. She thinks parents need to
Speaker 1: become what she calls a warm demander. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like setting high expectations and letting your kid try
Speaker 1: a lot of difficult, challenging things and setting that expectation
Speaker 1: that you believe that they can do those things and
Speaker 1: that's something that you value, but also being there when
Speaker 1: they need help. A warm demander creates space and time
Speaker 1: for kids to figure out their own solutions without putting
Speaker 1: them under intense pressure. So basically like creating more times
Speaker 1: where they can fail and the stakes are lower. I
Speaker 1: think is probably best for both the kid and honestly
Speaker 1: the parent, so that they don't feel s pressure to
Speaker 1: take over. And if you still struggle to resist that
Speaker 1: powerful urge to intervene, then counter twenty slowly in your head,
Speaker 1: giving your child time to figure things out on their
Speaker 1: own before you step in, or just do something to
Speaker 1: distract yourself. I don't know, put some dishes away, clean up,
Speaker 1: and wait for them to ask for help if they
Speaker 1: need help. Otherwise, just let them kind of go for
Speaker 1: it and try to figure it out. If it's taking
Speaker 1: a really long time, maybe you might want to ask
Speaker 1: if they need to hint and offer a strategy. Phrase
Speaker 1: is like I wonder what would happen if can preserve
Speaker 1: a child's autonomy while also edging them closer to a solution.
Speaker 1: Educator Julie Liffe got Himes suggests an even more profound
Speaker 1: shift and how we think about parenting. We need to
Speaker 1: set aside the aspirations we have for our children and
Speaker 1: in brace how they want to live their own lives.
Speaker 1: It's a strategy, she calls parenting the kid You've got.
Speaker 1: Let us take this interest in who our kids are
Speaker 1: instead of who we wished they would be. When we
Speaker 1: dreamed we might have a child one day. As a
Speaker 1: dean at Stanford, Julie saw the pain that parents can
Speaker 1: inadvertently cause when they fail to see their children's real preferences.
Speaker 1: If you've made them be a doctor when they don't
Speaker 1: want to be, they will feel however successful air quotes
Speaker 1: they are as a doctor, they will feel like a
Speaker 1: drone in their own life, right, like someone else is
Speaker 1: directing where they go and what they do. And it
Speaker 1: may look amazing, but that inside person is going like
Speaker 1: I didn't want this. And then they're in therapy getting
Speaker 1: over why you basically force them down a path that
Speaker 1: they never wanted. Julie remembers advising one of her Stanford undergraduates,
Speaker 1: in particular, a twenty year old, highly accomplished four point
Speaker 1: oh student. The woman had come to Julie's office in
Speaker 1: distress because her parents were forcing her to become a
Speaker 1: premit when she wanted to work with rescue animals. And
Speaker 1: she is trying not to cry as she tells me
Speaker 1: the story of how they have planned her entire life.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to unpack. But who are you really?
Speaker 1: What would you do if it was just up to you?
Speaker 1: And that was when I got it. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a grown up version of Avery, Julie's young daughter, Avery
Speaker 1: a budding painter, something Julie didn't think was a useful
Speaker 1: skill on a college application. As she sat across from
Speaker 1: that dejected Stanford student being pushed into premet against her will,
Speaker 1: Julie couldn't help but think of Avery and God. I
Speaker 1: knew that my child would say, well, I was good
Speaker 1: at art, but my parents wouldn't take it serious. And
Speaker 1: that day I began to be a better parent to Avery,
Speaker 1: who is now twenty and majoring in cultural anthropology and dance.
Speaker 1: I pivoted and I saw my child for who she was,
Speaker 1: and I started saying, you know what, She's an artist.
Speaker 1: She draws and paints, and this is who she Isn't
Speaker 1: how dare I dan paper my child down to look
Speaker 1: the way I want her to. It was like I
Speaker 1: was given a gift by the universe to see the
Speaker 1: child you've got and love them for who they are
Speaker 1: and help them become better at being that person instead
Speaker 1: of going to some profession I have deemed is the one.
Speaker 1: My God, if anyone listening to this resonates and you
Speaker 1: know you are failing to see your child here. My
Speaker 1: tears These many years later, I only regret that I
Speaker 1: didn't pivot sooner, or that I ever was that way.
Speaker 1: The good news, as Julia has seen, is that with
Speaker 1: the right strategies, every parent listening right now can pivot.
Speaker 1: We can commit to taking care of our own mental
Speaker 1: health first, which the science shows will naturally lead to
Speaker 1: fewer interventions and more autonomy for our children. We can
Speaker 1: regulate our anxiety and expectations so that our kids can
Speaker 1: pave their own paths, and in doing so, we can
Speaker 1: achieve all the benefits that science shows come with being
Speaker 1: a warm demander. We can start to feel less anxious
Speaker 1: and stressed and overwhelmed, and we can ensure that the
Speaker 1: young people we love so much develop resilience and much
Speaker 1: more happiness. They are not pets or bondside trees. They
Speaker 1: are wild flowers. We've got to give them light and
Speaker 1: water and love and let them be who they will become.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley,
Speaker 1: Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Joseph Fridman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Milabelle
Speaker 1: Heather Fame, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent,
Speaker 1: Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and Nate Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcasts,