Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: This week, I'm focusing on an aspect of our post
Speaker 1: pandemic world that is increasingly being discussed among parents, but
Speaker 1: I haven't yet really heard discussed in the media, and
Speaker 1: it hits close to home for me. And that is
Speaker 1: what to do about the fact that most of us,
Speaker 1: as caring parents, try to limit our kids screen time
Speaker 1: before COVID and then utterly gave up on that once
Speaker 1: school life and pretty much everything else went virtual. Today's
Speaker 1: teenagers spend and estimated six and a half hours a
Speaker 1: day on their devices, and that I think is a
Speaker 1: number that is not counting the time they spend going
Speaker 1: to school on their licence. Here to help us think
Speaker 1: about how to approach this challenge, if it even is
Speaker 1: a challenge, is psychologist and New York Times best selling
Speaker 1: author Wendy Mogul. Wendy has written several famous books about parenting,
Speaker 1: including The Blessing of a Skinned Knee and Voice Lessons
Speaker 1: for Parents. She's the host of a podcast, Nurture Versus Nurture,
Speaker 1: and she's here with me to talk about parenting in
Speaker 1: a distinctively challenging time. Wendy, it's such a huge pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you on the podcast. I've admired your work
Speaker 1: tremendously and it's also affected my parenting. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you about a very concrete problem that I am
Speaker 1: confronting now, and I have the feeling I must be
Speaker 1: one of millions confronting it, like a lot of parents.
Speaker 1: I tried very hard fighting the trend to be responsible
Speaker 1: about my kids in their use of tech and particularly phones,
Speaker 1: and then came COVID and experts, psychologists like you, other
Speaker 1: experts in childhood development basically said, you know, parents, you
Speaker 1: can sort of give up on this now because your kids'
Speaker 1: lives are now completely online. They're stuck at home. First
Speaker 1: it was lockdown, then it was school remotely. They need
Speaker 1: to have social interaction, and so their way they're getting
Speaker 1: at right now is through their phones. So I gave up.
Speaker 1: Now as we begin to emerge into the post COVID world,
Speaker 1: knock on wood, it would be nice to try to
Speaker 1: return to something like a reasonable model with respect to tech,
Speaker 1: and yet I do not see the roadback. I don't
Speaker 1: see the roadback because the depth of let's call it,
Speaker 1: to use a polite term, connection to the devices is
Speaker 1: now so profound. Then, by the way, not only for
Speaker 1: the kids, I think this is true of a lot
Speaker 1: of adults as well. So I want to start by
Speaker 1: asking you, did we get it wrong in the first place?
Speaker 1: And what can we do now? What I see in
Speaker 1: so many of the parents that I've been working with
Speaker 1: through this very very unusual period of time is tremendous
Speaker 1: ambivalence and double standards. So we don't want the kids
Speaker 1: on their devices too much, and yet for us we
Speaker 1: can always say it's work. So for example, you and
Speaker 1: I are talking to each other right now, and we're
Speaker 1: on opposite side of the country. We are looking at
Speaker 1: each other. We're making a podcast. It's so easy to
Speaker 1: justify on lots of levels as a worthy enterprise. And yeah, right,
Speaker 1: we'll see, we hope. So exactly what I see parents
Speaker 1: doing a lot. Two things I see are one is
Speaker 1: not modeling what they are hoping to see in their children,
Speaker 1: and the other is a kind of disgruntled ambivalence. So
Speaker 1: the parents say they are scornful and disparaging and sometimes
Speaker 1: naively mocking of the children's And I have air quotes
Speaker 1: on for our listeners right now addiction and then they say, okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, they kind of give up with some disdain.
Speaker 1: And so my model for parents and almost everything right
Speaker 1: now is to treat your child as your spirit guide.
Speaker 1: Your teenagers fourteen and fifteen years old, they know fantastic
Speaker 1: things that go on on the web that you don't
Speaker 1: know anything about. That is for sure. So it's a
Speaker 1: combination of incredibly alarming because technology is changing so rapidly
Speaker 1: and it feels hard for parents to keep up. And
Speaker 1: so then we take this position that is a cross
Speaker 1: between ludite and addicted ourselves, and so the kids just
Speaker 1: write us off, and rightly, I would say yes. And
Speaker 1: so the first piece is to be enchanted with their enchantment.
Speaker 1: So have your children and I know the answer to
Speaker 1: this already, but I want to hear it. Have they
Speaker 1: introduced you to things you would never have known about
Speaker 1: that you were delighted to learn? For sure, There's no
Speaker 1: question about it. And also no question in my mind
Speaker 1: that for all of its downsides, social media broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: has a lot of upsides. It's created new forms of
Speaker 1: human connection and interaction, and those things are wonderful. Some
Speaker 1: of them are wonderful. I guess I think of it
Speaker 1: though a lot like other new technologies they say they
Speaker 1: printing press in its day, you know, the printing press
Speaker 1: brought a lot of extraordinary possibility of the sharing and
Speaker 1: spread of information, and it also brought the wars of
Speaker 1: religion and profound polarization, violence, hate, and it took centuries
Speaker 1: to work out the relationship between those two things. And
Speaker 1: we're in the first you know, Gutenberg is still alive
Speaker 1: and kicking. You know, we are in the very earliest
Speaker 1: stages of a transformational revolution in human consciousness, like the
Speaker 1: one associated with the printing press. So, going back to shabbat,
Speaker 1: the reason for that spiritual technology of Shabbad is to
Speaker 1: create a frame around time so that we have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to reflect and to do the things that the
Speaker 1: species need so badly for its physical and spiritual health,
Speaker 1: which is to connect with other people, to be in
Speaker 1: community in our increasingly isolated, lonely and alienated maybe alienated.
Speaker 1: One part is to connect with other people. Another part
Speaker 1: is to be in nature. We need to experience awe,
Speaker 1: which is super easy for me to say and is
Speaker 1: a challenge because what as you well know, what the
Speaker 1: algorithms do is whatever you look at it gets, it's
Speaker 1: darker and weirder and more extreme. To try to keep
Speaker 1: your eyeballs as long as possible for the purpose of
Speaker 1: the satisfying the advertisers. And our job as parents is
Speaker 1: one to model. So we moderate our use that young
Speaker 1: people see us celebrating the tiny and delightful and grand
Speaker 1: and glorious things in our lives, and then we have
Speaker 1: a ritual formula even for the day. This is one
Speaker 1: of the things that's happened in the pandemic. People talk
Speaker 1: about blurs day. They don't know what day of the week.
Speaker 1: It is that we don't have our old markers of time,
Speaker 1: and so the default way to soothe our emotions, to
Speaker 1: entertain us, and to have company is to pick up
Speaker 1: the device. Wendy, let me ask you a kind of
Speaker 1: philosophical question that kind of flows from what you're describing,
Speaker 1: and it's a reflection of my own on trying to
Speaker 1: find the right, as it were, Sabbath balance. And to me,
Speaker 1: all of the things that you described about a Sabbath
Speaker 1: day are wonderful, valuable, worth preserving and continuing, but at
Speaker 1: least in some strands of religious tradition, whether Jewish or otherwise,
Speaker 1: they come with a certain rigidity attached. So you know,
Speaker 1: in order to do the delineation, there are rules, and
Speaker 1: the phone in some sense reintroduces something like that set
Speaker 1: of rules. And of course all pedagogy involves rules. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say one has a rule, a pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward rule, no phones at the table, right, good, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good rule. Yeah, right, But it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a bright line. It's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be a no phone to the table unless you're in
Speaker 1: a lousy mood or unless you're expecting a call from
Speaker 1: your friends, or right, it's supposed to be a bright
Speaker 1: line rule. When you think about modeling for kids, what
Speaker 1: the right thing to do is, but also having rules,
Speaker 1: because you're a big believer that both that we should
Speaker 1: be reasonable and that we should have reasonable rules, how
Speaker 1: do you think about the rules part in association with
Speaker 1: tech that in our increasingly flexible yet rigid world, And
Speaker 1: this is one of the paradoxes of the way we're
Speaker 1: living now. For example, for a fourteen and a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old, there are a whole set of expectations that
Speaker 1: have been applied to them since they were very small,
Speaker 1: but they're growing as they move towards what we see
Speaker 1: as a scarcity zero some future where if they don't
Speaker 1: reach certain benchmarks of achievement, they're doomed. And part of
Speaker 1: that is adult's own existential anxiety about their future and
Speaker 1: the future of the planet. Lots of parents are older
Speaker 1: than their parents were when they had children, so we
Speaker 1: feel our own mortality a tiny little bit, and the
Speaker 1: children then become the the reassurance or the validation we
Speaker 1: have that we're doing a good job, and we look
Speaker 1: at them too closely but also not enough. So religion
Speaker 1: organized religion is really really effective for some families and
Speaker 1: works very well in other families. All the openness and
Speaker 1: diversity and flexibility and discovery of new ways of living
Speaker 1: do not fit the template that has existed in the past.
Speaker 1: But I guess what I'm really focusing on is identifying
Speaker 1: and effectuating the appropriate part of that, and I think
Speaker 1: that they are facing the same exact challenge that I'm
Speaker 1: facing with respect to the power of the technology that
Speaker 1: is not only a phone but is also a wallet,
Speaker 1: and is also a music maker and also also a
Speaker 1: mode of communication, and also as the thermometer to tell
Speaker 1: you the temperature, you know, and also the alarm clock
Speaker 1: and you know, etc, Etc. Etc. And I am trying
Speaker 1: to come up with a way to nudge them, let's say,
Speaker 1: towards the kind of use that I would think of
Speaker 1: as responsible that I am also trying to model. Right
Speaker 1: even there, I think there is a disparity between their
Speaker 1: use and mine. And I think it's just largely generational,
Speaker 1: you know. I think they've just grown up with it
Speaker 1: to an even greater degree. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: about a moment where I say to them, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't use phones at the table. And
Speaker 1: you can see in them the physiological resistance to that
Speaker 1: preposterous idea. They're willing to obey, but I can see
Speaker 1: in them that it is let's call it obedience by
Speaker 1: force and not obedience of thinking, the way we aspire
Speaker 1: for our children to think. That's a pretty reasonable rule.
Speaker 1: I realize that I I don't always follow it, but that
Speaker 1: rule is pretty reasonable. Here's a little bit of the heartbreak.
Speaker 1: And when I was thinking about talking to you on
Speaker 1: this podcast, I've thought about the kids as instead of
Speaker 1: having them as our avatar, we have them as are
Speaker 1: portal because most of these kids are inside kids now,
Speaker 1: and when even when you were growing up, I imagine
Speaker 1: that you could play outside when you were a little
Speaker 1: boy without your parents knowing where your work. Could you
Speaker 1: do that? Absolutely? And it is as it's not so
Speaker 1: much that my kids wouldn't be allowed, it's that they
Speaker 1: don't have the same instinct to go out and play
Speaker 1: in the street because there's nobody else in the street. No,
Speaker 1: I agree, that's part of the reason. What is the
Speaker 1: street so they need? There's a wonderful word in Tom
Speaker 1: Sawyer when Twain talks about Tom at the well and
Speaker 1: he Tom says the kids were skylarking, just hanging out
Speaker 1: at the well, teasing each other, all different ages, different races.
Speaker 1: He talks about and when do these kids get to
Speaker 1: skylark except online? Which is part of the paradox in
Speaker 1: some ways, they are very sophisticated but emotionally young, and
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of street smarts or street confidence.
Speaker 1: So yes, for sure, it is a much more enjoyable
Speaker 1: dinner if nobody is looking at or responding to their phone.
Speaker 1: But what I want, as much as that rule, is
Speaker 1: for the families to get outside and to have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to have their mirror neurons vibrate with I love
Speaker 1: this term consequential strangers. My biggest concern about this generation
Speaker 1: is not whether they're going to master coding or Mandarin,
Speaker 1: those two things they probably won't need shortly, but to
Speaker 1: be able to talk to people they don't already know,
Speaker 1: to have conversations with adults, to enjoy the company and
Speaker 1: fellowship and sisterhood of new people. Because their parents are distracted,
Speaker 1: the kids are distracted, and the allure. There's a wonderful
Speaker 1: new book I believe the author is Michael Moss, and
Speaker 1: it's called Hooked. It's about the addictiveness of fast food,
Speaker 1: and it's about so much how our brains operate and
Speaker 1: what appeals to what produces dopamine, and how it works.
Speaker 1: So we have these dopamine generators available at all times
Speaker 1: that are vital for school work, for communication, even for
Speaker 1: little kids communicating with their grandma and grandpa. And at
Speaker 1: the same time we are missing out on so much.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I'm less worried. Then your description
Speaker 1: is about the kid's ability to meet people, because I
Speaker 1: actually think partly because of social media, they have a
Speaker 1: much broader acquaintance ship than I did at their age.
Speaker 1: I mean, my friends were limited really to the kids
Speaker 1: I could see in person, either in school or in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. And they have friends who don't live in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and they don't go to school with And
Speaker 1: those online friendships can also blossom into real, real friendships
Speaker 1: and real you know, irl friendships and you know, in relationships.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually not so worried about about that aspect
Speaker 1: of it. I do agree there's been a fundamental social
Speaker 1: change with respect to the street and how the street functioned,
Speaker 1: you know, in my childhood, and I live only a
Speaker 1: mile from where I grew up, but I can see
Speaker 1: a total transformation and how the streets are were a
Speaker 1: place of running around impacts and just are not anymore.
Speaker 1: There's wonderful work by Ellen Sandsetter, who is who studies
Speaker 1: phobias in children. She wrote an article called the Antiphobic
Speaker 1: Effects of Thrilling Experience, and she says that unless kids
Speaker 1: are exposed to danger, they will be more fearful, and
Speaker 1: she names the kinds of danger she says they have
Speaker 1: to be. Take a zip line. Yes, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: much worse than a zip line, so great heights where
Speaker 1: they could fall near fire, dangerous tools, aggression, social and
Speaker 1: physical aggression, traveling at great speed, and wayfinding. One of
Speaker 1: the problems with technology is that's the main source of
Speaker 1: danger for our children. They don't get to learn how
Speaker 1: to titrate danger before they go off to college on
Speaker 1: their own that is not screen based danger. So I
Speaker 1: and and wayfinding. Wayfinding can seem obsolete in an era
Speaker 1: of Google Maps. No, that's really true, really true, And
Speaker 1: so these experiences need to be constructed, and it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of creativity on parents' parts. So what they
Speaker 1: do instead is say, okay, two hours of screen time
Speaker 1: after all your homework is done. And we are then
Speaker 1: a cross between security guards, concierge services and keeping track
Speaker 1: from moment to moment of what the children are doing
Speaker 1: when we really want them to be able to monitor
Speaker 1: and make good judgments about that. Yeah, I mean, what
Speaker 1: I hear you saying is that that kind of a
Speaker 1: rule is too rigid, and that this goes back to
Speaker 1: our conversation about rigidity, that it puts the parent in
Speaker 1: the position of enforcing a rigid rule, It puts the
Speaker 1: kid in the position not of being autonomous and making
Speaker 1: judgments and learning to make mistakes and fix them, but
Speaker 1: simply in the position of following yet another rule in
Speaker 1: a world that's already far too full of rules and restrictions, rules,
Speaker 1: rest grades and ranking. Yeah, so what I mean, tell
Speaker 1: me if I'm if I'm hearing you correctly, I mean,
Speaker 1: what I hear you saying is some version of Noah,
Speaker 1: just relax, you know, I mean, this is fine. Our
Speaker 1: society as a whole may have gone down a rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of technological addiction, and kids live in the society too,
Speaker 1: but will self correct at some point as a society,
Speaker 1: and they'll self correct when everybody else self corrects. And
Speaker 1: the kind of picture of erosion that films like The
Speaker 1: Social Dilemma do suggest is grossly exaggerated with respect to
Speaker 1: the great majority of people who can come to terms
Speaker 1: with new technologies. And if that's the message, I'm jumping
Speaker 1: up and down with joy, because it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of it suggests that we don't have to be
Speaker 1: in a panic, even in a situation like the post
Speaker 1: pandemic world where we've just as a society locked everything down,
Speaker 1: imposed rules, imposed rigidity, been very fear based, possibly rationally
Speaker 1: fear based, but nevertheless fear based. Now we're going to
Speaker 1: crawl out from under it. We have had to do
Speaker 1: this for over a year in order to save our lives.
Speaker 1: The decision fatigue we have about tiny nuanced angles of things.
Speaker 1: And originally we thought the virus could travel on surfaces,
Speaker 1: and then we discovered it was aerosol. And now we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be allowed to take off our masks. But
Speaker 1: should we being paranoid or getting it right or wrong?
Speaker 1: Which is what we feel so often as parents. We
Speaker 1: want to do it right, and then people like me
Speaker 1: right parenting, but tell you how to do it and
Speaker 1: react like experts, and then you read them and think, oh,
Speaker 1: should I do what she said? Not what she said?
Speaker 1: And there's so much thinking going on that what gets
Speaker 1: lost are the full range of feelings. And the other
Speaker 1: piece is laughter. And the part of what happens online
Speaker 1: is just a glory in snark and in dismissing other
Speaker 1: people and of feeling superior. But there is also wit
Speaker 1: and whimsy and good silliness to be found online and
Speaker 1: to be found in real life. So if you want
Speaker 1: to worry about your family, one thing you can say
Speaker 1: is not two hours of tag no more than that,
Speaker 1: and get outside and get some fresh air. And why
Speaker 1: are you eating that? And why aren't you exercising. We're
Speaker 1: so close to the kids that anything you're close to
Speaker 1: you see all the flaws, and it's hard to step
Speaker 1: back and to zoom out and have the wide view.
Speaker 1: So if you want to worry about things, it may
Speaker 1: be that you're not laughing en up with your children
Speaker 1: and laughing about them in private with your partner. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. It may be too soon
Speaker 1: still to have this conversation fully, but let me just
Speaker 1: ask you in a preliminary way, do you think that
Speaker 1: we went too far in the pathologizing direction in the
Speaker 1: course of the last year and change in trying to,
Speaker 1: as you said, keep ourselves alive. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: getting guidance, that guidance was shifting over time, but there
Speaker 1: was inevitably a pathologizing component there. I mean, after all,
Speaker 1: we were surrounded by a pathogen, or we imagined ourselves
Speaker 1: to be surrounded by a pathogen, and lots of people
Speaker 1: got it and got sick from it, and some died
Speaker 1: from it. When you look at that retrospectively, do you
Speaker 1: think we'll look back and say we got it right,
Speaker 1: or we got it roughly right, or we took it
Speaker 1: too far in terms of the psychological costs for us
Speaker 1: as human beings who are not really designed to live
Speaker 1: under consistent fear for that period of time. I am
Speaker 1: confident that we will look back and say we couldn't
Speaker 1: have done it differently because we didn't know. The part
Speaker 1: that concerns me right now is the fear that the
Speaker 1: children have had serious learning loss, they have lost their
Speaker 1: social skills, that we will not bounce back and recover
Speaker 1: from what was a tremendously interesting time that every single
Speaker 1: one of us. We have a big advantage now we
Speaker 1: live through this and we get to talk about this
Speaker 1: till we're boring people to death about this. I think
Speaker 1: we're getting there amazing time in history. But I'm talking
Speaker 1: about if the planet does continue and there are future
Speaker 1: generations of children, they will be so interested. So this
Speaker 1: is the pandemic as a giant skinned knee that will
Speaker 1: resiliently bounce back from Yeah, a skinned and you get
Speaker 1: a skinned by doing adventurous things that we don't do.
Speaker 1: Not wish this on anyone and all the extreme losses,
Speaker 1: but The other thing it did is it came in
Speaker 1: parallel with the reckoning about all kinds of issues about
Speaker 1: social justice, about the eco, to me, about how we've
Speaker 1: organized children's lives and our expectations for children, the national
Speaker 1: everybody went through this, not equally, but we went through this,
Speaker 1: and it is a life experience that we now can
Speaker 1: use to look back at the way we were living
Speaker 1: and evaluate how much we want to reinstate and how
Speaker 1: much we want to change. So, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've felt it personally in your family, some of these
Speaker 1: sparkling moments or insights you had about the pace of life,
Speaker 1: the expectations of what one does in a day, what
Speaker 1: brings comfort and delight, and what brings a necessary overthinking
Speaker 1: and anxiety. But it really has been an opportunity, yes,
Speaker 1: to quiver in terror, but at the same time to
Speaker 1: gain new insight and perspective on what children need and
Speaker 1: what parents are responsible for giving them and what we
Speaker 1: are not responsible for doing, but they are responsible for themselves. Wendy,
Speaker 1: in your practice, you're seeing lots of people who are
Speaker 1: all coming out of COVID right now, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if you have any big picture advice that might apply
Speaker 1: to lots of us as we try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to navigate the next stages. One thing that's been
Speaker 1: very helpful to parents is to see who their child is.
Speaker 1: So there's an impulse to be back to in person
Speaker 1: school where the kids have a choice, to be back
Speaker 1: to baseball and the practices and the games, but maybe
Speaker 1: not to parties or socializing. So we're sort of eager
Speaker 1: to have them back to all the transcript worthy activities
Speaker 1: or what feels wholesome and healthy to parents and is,
Speaker 1: but very fearful about what can feel maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more frivolous or even more risky. And that gets
Speaker 1: back to the moderation, celebration and sanctification that for each
Speaker 1: child it's going to be different. And some are just
Speaker 1: like when they go off to preschool. Some are slow,
Speaker 1: too warm, and others dive right in. They go into preschool.
Speaker 1: They don't even look back at mom or dad who's there.
Speaker 1: They just dash in. So every single family will have
Speaker 1: different standards and each child will have different standards dirts,
Speaker 1: and the piece of guidance that I give parents is
Speaker 1: don't listen too much to the barking chain or the
Speaker 1: loud mouths or the know it alls, and to really
Speaker 1: think about your child's pace of reentry, what feels safe
Speaker 1: to your family and appropriate, and that may be different
Speaker 1: than your extended family. And to have the courage and
Speaker 1: confidence to be able to say, and this is a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing to say to teenagers all the time. I
Speaker 1: know you don't see it the way I see it,
Speaker 1: but that's how I am, or that's where I stand,
Speaker 1: or that's this is the rule or the expectation that
Speaker 1: I have. And then the relative or the child can
Speaker 1: jump up and down in distress, and you can stand
Speaker 1: on your spot, and then you can always say I've
Speaker 1: thought about it some more. I see your point. But
Speaker 1: at first to listen to what they have to say
Speaker 1: about what they wish to do. And the other part
Speaker 1: is not too not to allow yourself to become too
Speaker 1: fearful or too aggressive because of the opinions of other
Speaker 1: parents who feel so strongly one way or the other. Wendy,
Speaker 1: in reading your work, I always walk away with this
Speaker 1: strong feeling of having heard something deeply sensible that also
Speaker 1: makes me feel better because I think she's right. And
Speaker 1: if I could just take a deep breath and admit
Speaker 1: that she's right, then everything would be a lot better.
Speaker 1: And I'm thrilled to see that actually talking to in
Speaker 1: person has the same effect. So thank you very much
Speaker 1: for your your wisdom, your rationality, at your thoughtful judgment,
Speaker 1: your pragmatism, and for your your insights here. I'm really grateful,
Speaker 1: thank you, Oh no, thank you Wendy to come on
Speaker 1: the podcast, because at a very personal level, I was
Speaker 1: really troubled by the question of whether we need to
Speaker 1: turn the clock back to the time before the pandemic
Speaker 1: in thinking about tech and our kids. But as I
Speaker 1: spoke to her, I also realized that the theme of
Speaker 1: power that we're focusing on on deep background this year
Speaker 1: was very much in evidence the power of the technology
Speaker 1: itself to draw us in our power as parents, and
Speaker 1: the limits on that power when it comes to telling
Speaker 1: kids what they should do. Kids power as human beings
Speaker 1: in interaction both with themselves and their worlds and with
Speaker 1: the adults around them. The truth is that getting these
Speaker 1: questions right, Wendy points out, is not just a matter
Speaker 1: of setting rules and imposing them. That is an old fashioned,
Speaker 1: simplistic conception of what adult power over children looks like. Instead,
Speaker 1: what Wendy is advocating for in our conversation, as indeed
Speaker 1: in all of her humane and thoughtful work, is balancing
Speaker 1: through empathy and thinking through how to make the right
Speaker 1: decisions in a collaborative fashion without pathologizing ourselves, without pathologizing
Speaker 1: our parenting, and above all, without pathologizing our kids. If
Speaker 1: we can pull that off, then we've learned Wendy's lessons,
Speaker 1: and I think all of our lives would be just
Speaker 1: a little bit better. At a minimum, we could stop
Speaker 1: worrying and start living again. Until the next time I
Speaker 1: speak to you, Be careful, be safe, don't worry about
Speaker 1: your phone, and be well. Deep background is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo laboord our
Speaker 1: engineer is Martin Gonzales, and our shore runner is Sophie
Speaker 1: Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by
Speaker 1: Luis Skara at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Lydia Jean Cott, Heather Faine, Carly Mgliori, mag Taylor, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weissberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 1: which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman.
Speaker 1: To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcasts, and if you liked what you
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