How To Stop Being an Emotional ATM

Summary

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Podcast Summary: How To! — How To Stop Being an Emotional ATM

Host: Amanda Ripley (Peach Fish Projects)
Expert Guest: Arthur Brooks (Professor at Harvard University, columnist at The Atlantic)
Listener Guest: Karen
Date: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the struggles many parents of adult children face: feeling like an "emotional ATM" for their grown kids. The discussion, led by host Amanda Ripley and expert Arthur Brooks, centers on how parents can reset family dynamics, encourage real independence in their kids, and find a more balanced, less draining relationship. Listener Karen brings a relatable dilemma—how to stay supportive without shouldering all her children's troubles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Emotional ATM Metaphor

• Arthur Brooks describes the parent who always steps in as an "emotional ATM," constantly dispensing comfort, solutions, and support—while rarely making any "withdrawals" for themselves.
• Parents can fall into patterns where they react instantly to every child emergency, doing whatever it takes to resolve the problem, often without pausing to reflect on healthier alternatives.

2. Pausing: Breaking the Cycle

• Arthur's Las Vegas Story (03:12–05:14, 09:04–10:56): Arthur shares a hilarious and instructive story about his adult son stranded in Las Vegas without pants or ID, calling for help—possibly from a Russian cell phone.
  • Initial parental instinct: Rescue immediately, send cash, fix everything.
  • Actual response: Pause, discuss with his wife and older son, and involve the son in his own problem-solving.
  • Arthur Brooks: "What you have to do is you have to pause. Pause the mental process...so that you can start using your prefrontal cortex instead of just the limbic system of your brain." (10:17)
• TIP: Take a moment before reacting. Consult your co-parent or another family member. Don’t revert to your automatic rescue playbook out of stress.

3. Partner & Family Alignment

• It's crucial for both parents to be on the same page; this helps resist knee-jerk rescue missions and fosters thoughtful responses.
• Arthur Brooks: "Always bring in a 24 year old because they're very savvy in ways that we're not." (11:26)

4. Joint Problem Solving & Rebalancing Dynamics

• Invite children (or siblings) into the problem-solving process. Don't always step in to fix everything yourself.
• Arthur Brooks: "If you don't like being an ATM machine, turn off the ATM machine and become a joint problem solving machine." (12:01)
• Encourage children to give advice or solve issues—it helps them mature and changes the dynamic from unilateral caregiving to mutual support.

5. Asking Adult Kids for Advice

• Start asking your grown kids for advice or help with your own problems. It shifts roles and empowers them.
• Arthur Brooks: "At least half the time, Karen, I'd be calling your kids and asking for their advice. Ask them for more advice. ... Once they start to think of themselves as problem solvers, they're going to grow up fast." (13:13)
• Karen shares her experience: Calling her daughter for emotional support helped both of them see each other differently. (14:19–15:17)

6. Rebalancing Beyond Parent-Child Relationships

• These strategies can help with any lopsided relationship—friends, co-workers, and relatives.

7. Respecting Adult Children

• Many parents struggle to respect their children fully as adults, especially when they've played the fixer for so long.
• Arthur Brooks: "A lot of people our age, they don't have enough respect for their kids to ask them for advice and...create a bilateral relationship...You want a bilateral situation because it's healthier and better for everybody." (20:19–21:30)

8. Small Practical Changes

• Invite adult children to contribute in everyday ways: bring wine to dinner, host family meals, help solve real issues (car repairs, career decisions).
• Karen: "It's just little things, like, I should say to her, can you bring a bottle of wine?...showing her that I expect her to participate in a way that isn't just like, she's the kid and I'm the mom." (22:11–23:31)
• Arthur Brooks: "You absolutely got it. ...The real problem is not that she's exhausting you. The real problem is that you're the giver and she's the taker." (23:31–23:47)

9. Making Yourself Vulnerable & Taking Risks

• It can feel uncomfortable to ask your child for help or allow them to take the lead, but it's crucial for growth.
• Amanda Ripley: "If you want to interrupt the usual parent kid dynamics, you're gonna have to make yourself a little uncomfortable in the beginning and take some risk...And of course, if it doesn't work out perfectly...you gotta let it go." (26:33–26:55)

10. Letting Kids Convince You

• Let your adult kids “win” an argument or persuade you on something (even politics!)—validates their adulthood and maturity.
• Arthur Brooks: "When the parents on something like ideology say, huh, Never thought about it that way. I think you might have convinced me. I mean, it'll rock their world." (27:13–27:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Arthur Brooks (on problem-solving):
  "If you don't like being an ATM machine, turn off the ATM machine and become a joint problem solving machine." (12:01)
• Arthur Brooks (on pausing):
  "Pause the mental process, you have to stop. You have to punctuate the equilibrium so that you can start using your prefrontal cortex instead of just the limbic system of your brain." (10:17)
• Amanda Ripley (on discomfort):
  "If you want to interrupt the usual parent kid dynamics, you're gonna have to make yourself a little uncomfortable in the beginning and take some risk." (26:33)
• Arthur Brooks (on changing the relationship):
  "The real problem is not that she's exhausting you. The real problem is that you're the giver and she's the taker." (23:47)
• Arthur Brooks (on right questions vs solutions):
  "The secret in life to solving problems, is starting with the right question as opposed to giving a solution to the wrong problem." (28:26–28:59)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:12] Arthur’s Las Vegas son story—why not to solve everything for your adult kids
• [09:04] The power of pausing before reacting as a parent
• [10:17] Using your prefrontal cortex vs. stress autopilot
• [12:01] Joint problem solving—enlist your other children or the child in question
• [13:13] The case for asking your kids for advice
• [14:19] Karen’s experience getting advice from her daughter
• [20:19] The importance of respecting your child’s adulthood
• [22:11] Small ways to rebalance daily life—“can you bring wine?”
• [23:31] Recap of the core problem: giving/taking dynamics
• [26:33] Embracing discomfort and letting kids host or take charge
• [27:13] Letting your kids persuade you—building respect and trust

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Actionable Insights for Listeners

• Pause and consult. Don’t respond to crises immediately—discuss with a partner or other family member first.
• Make the relationship bilateral. Regularly ask your grown children for advice or help; allow them real responsibility.
• Rebalance roles with small changes. Have adult children contribute to meals, solve practical problems, or host family gatherings.
• Show respect for their adulthood. Treat their input as valuable, and let them persuade you at times.
• Accept imperfection and discomfort. Shifting dynamics can feel awkward—but growth happens outside your comfort zone.
• Ask the right questions. Examine your assumptions about the relationship instead of jumping to fixes.

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a roadmap for exasperated parents managing adult children’s crises, emphasizing mutual support, respect, and agency. By pausing, involving your kids in solutions, and letting go of the need to rescue, you make space for healthier, happier family dynamics—all while giving yourself some much-needed relief.

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Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

is Mike Pesca and this is how to and our show this week is a replay of one from 2022, a best of. Truly a best of because it is with Arthur Brooks, who in the past couple of weeks I've gotten to know personally and the guy is the real deal. He could have been how to do any Number of things. This is how to Not Be an Emotional ATM Some great advice for resetting parent child relationships so your kids don't treat you like an emotional atmosphere. On this episode, he will teach the listener, Karen, how to balance the books, if you will, by taking some withdrawals of her own. We're not going to torture the metaphor too much, but you get it. If you're an emotional ATM and you're not charging enough of a fee or putting on the brakes or saying you have exceeded your daily withdrawal, Arthur Brooks has some surprising tips for how to restrain yourself from willingly becoming the atm. Swooping in boundaries. The man is a social scientist. He knows from whence he speaks. He's also one of the best French horn players you will ever hear. Not playing the French horn because he went into this instead of French horn playing. I have to say it's very incidental to the episode, but it just proves how much I have gotten to know and like Arthur Brooks. We start with a hilarious story of the time Arthur's adult son called him Pantsless from Las Vegas.

[Amanda Ripley]

Well, let me ask you Arthur. So do you remember ever Causing your parents any heartache around this time in your life?

[Arthur Brooks]

Well, I got kicked out of college when I was.

[Amanda Ripley]

There you go.

[Arthur Brooks]

Yeah, for sure. And I went on the road as a professional musician through all my 20s, which my parents called my gap decade. So, yeah.

[Amanda Ripley]

Welcome to how to. I'm Amanda Ripley. Today we're gonna continue our conversation about how. How to help your adult kids grow up.

[Arthur Brooks]

My name is Arthur Brooks. I'm a professor at Harvard University, where I teach classes on happiness, on the science of happiness, and that's what I write about for the Atlantic as well, a column called how to Build a Life.

[Amanda Ripley]

So when we left you last week, our expert, Arthur was telling us all about his middle son's misadventure in Las

[Arthur Brooks]

Vegas one month ago. My son, who's a. He's a special ops guy in the U.S. marine Corps. My middle son, he's 22. And he said, dad, I'm going to Las Vegas with my friends for the weekend. I thought, uh, oh, uh, oh, red flag, red flag.

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Yeah, I know.

[Arthur Brooks]

But when I don't hear from my son, it means all is well. And so I didn't hear until 9pm on Sunday night. And the phone rings and it's a call coming to my cell from a Russian cell phone number. And I'm thinking, that's, that's. And I. He answers. His name's Carlos. And Carlos says, hi, dad, this isn't my phone. In a statement of the obvious. And then it went on to this tale of just Dickensian, you know, intricacy about someone stole my pants. That's how it starts, right?

[Shelby Power Nitro Plus Announcer]

Yeah.

[Arthur Brooks]

And I'm on the Las Vegas strip without a phone. I'm borrowing a cell phone, evidently from a Russian. I don't have any id, and I have to be in California eight hours from now because I'm the color guard in the Memorial Day parade. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Listener Karen]

So.

[Arthur Brooks]

And then came the ask, dad, do you know a senator in Nevada who can help me take care of this?

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[Amanda Ripley]

wait, let me just. Can I pause? So many questions. But I just want to ask, how would finding a senator have helped?

[Arthur Brooks]

Well, that's not entirely clear. That was his concept. Instead, I got his 24 year old brother to figure out how to solve the problem by connecting him to his friends on social media. And meanwhile, the local constabulary had found the miscreant who had made off with his pants and all wound up being well. But the point is, I didn't do the thing he wanted me to do. I figured out a way for him to basically solve the problem, which was a lot more work. It was a lot more work. It would have been a lot easier for me, quite frankly, and cost effective and emotionally effective for me to just figure out how to bail him out right then and there.

[Amanda Ripley]

So today on our show, how to not bail out your kid. Our Listener Karen has two adult children, a daughter who's 23 and a son who's 21. And though she hasn't had to deal with a pantless kid in Las Vegas just yet, she has been called in to manage chaos many, many times. Here's what she wrote to us when she initially reached out to the how to Hotline.

[Listener Karen]

My husband and I are able to play tag team when something bad happens, like a failed test or a fender bender or a blow up at school or a job that someone decides they can't take and walk out on. But it always ends up being so much emotional drain for both of us. It's gotten to the point where my stomach sinks sometimes when I see a text or phone call from one of our kids. Are they okay? Are they happy? I don't want it to be like this. We want to be able to enjoy the empty nest. So how do we get our kids to tackle their own problems when the stakes are so high? Or how do we at least divorce ourselves a little bit from the extreme emotional investment? Or is it just always going to be like this? Is this part of being a parent? Like I'll be 80 and still worried sick about them? We need help.

[Amanda Ripley]

Last week, Arthur gave us some great advice for resetting the relationship so your kids don't treat you like an emotional ATM machine. Today he's going to help Karen figure out how to balance the books, so to speak, by taking some withdrawals of her own. Don't go anywhere.

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[Amanda Ripley]

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Well, not if you lose your pants and call your dad for help. Cause then your dad might go on a podcast like this one and tell the story. So how would you react in that situation? Arthur said he started with a little self talk.

[Arthur Brooks]

So I started off by saying, yeah, well, I'm gonna figure out how to get him a boatload of cash, right? And then we'll figure out from there how without ID he can actually get back to California and onto his base. But we'll take it step by step. And with money, you can do almost anything. And I've got money and he's clever, so we'll be able to solve this thing together.

[Amanda Ripley]

Problem solved, right?

[Arthur Brooks]

Yeah, right. Well, problem solved, but not really because then it's just the next problem and the next problem and the next problem. And so I talk, you know, I hung up briefly and I talked about it with my wife.

[Amanda Ripley]

So you were like, let me call you back, let me call you back.

[Arthur Brooks]

Well, I couldn't call him back because the Russian, you know.

[Listener Karen]

Oh, right, right.

[Arthur Brooks]

So I said, call me back. And, and, and, and we talked about that.

[Amanda Ripley]

But you paused. You paused and discussed it. Ooh, this is a good tip.

[Arthur Brooks]

It's always the thing to Do. It's always the thing to do. Because when you're in what we call a hot hedonic state, you always go back to your baseline solutions. That's always what you do.

[Listener Karen]

Absolutely.

[Arthur Brooks]

You have a playbook. Karen and Arthur and Amanda, we all have playbooks that are in our heads. And when you're in a hot hedonic state, you will go to that playbook immediately. You don't want to do that if you're in a position where you're in a situation that you don't like, which Karen doesn't like. And I wouldn't like it if I went to my natural, I'm going to send him five grand, or whatever it takes. I am going to get that thing done right now. So what you have to do is you have to pause. Pause the mental process, you have to stop. You have to punctuate the equilibrium so that you can start using your prefrontal cortex instead of just the limbic system of your brain. And that's what we did.

[Amanda Ripley]

This is where a tip from last week comes to mind. It's critical to be on the same page as your partner when situations like this arise. You can then help each other pause, take a deep breath, remind each other that the best way to help your kid is may be to do less than you want to. So if you want to make this shift, double check your partner is on board in advance or at least get them to listen to this podcast. And you talked about it. How did that conversation go?

[Arthur Brooks]

We brought his older brother into it. His older brother lives with us because his older brother is 24 and now a week away from getting married. So he's in a different, really different place in his life. And we brought him into the conversation. We said, what do you think we should do? We had a family pow wow about what's the best thing to do here to help solve the problem while making sure that we're not doing the wrong thing for Carlos. And he said, well, I think the right thing to do is to connect him to his friends. And I think I know how to do it. You know, always bring in a 24 year old because they're very savvy in ways that we're not.

[Amanda Ripley]

And this actually think of options we wouldn't even think of.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Arthur Brooks]

And this is actually one of the things that I strongly recommend to aging parents of adult children is always turn the tables. Always actually get help from them. Don't solve the problems yourself. If you don't like being an ATM machine, turn off the ATM machine and become a joint problem solving machine. So go to the other child and say, what should we do? For example? Or go to the child herself and say, I have a problem. What do you think I should do? Such that we start having joint metacognition. Even with the people that have been the recipients, the takers all this time. The relationship fundamentally alters under these circumstances and they don't see you in the same way. Plus you come up with the kinds of results that you like better and they're more satisfying and more enduring and everybody learns.

[Amanda Ripley]

So you're trying to kind of rebalance the dynamics so we help each other. We're not just. It's not a one way street, which makes a ton of sense. And in this case, you kind of did this huddle with his brother and your wife and he said, I have an idea. And you knew that this would help, but was like short of bailing him out. So that felt right.

[Arthur Brooks]

It felt right and it felt enduring that he would learn from it. And it's a much better solution. It actually was going to lead to a solution because sending a bunch of cash isn't that great to begin with. And the other thing that's related to this that I recommend to everybody, and it's based on most of the good social, psychological literature, but also common sense, is that at least half the time, Karen, I'd be calling your kids and asking for their advice. Ask them for more advice. It'll freak them out at first. They'll be laying awake nights going, what is going on? You know, are mom and dad getting a divorce? What's happening here? Does mom have cancer? I mean, who knows what they're going to be thinking. But once they start to think of themselves as problem solvers, they're going to grow up fast.

[Amanda Ripley]

Here's our next tip. Assuming your kids are grown or almost grown, it's time to turn the tables. Next time you're struggling with something in your own life, maybe a flat tire, maybe a rough day at work, try leaning on them for help instead of the other way around. I love this idea. Karen, do you ever do that?

[Listener Karen]

I do too. And actually I've done a little bit of this only because I came at it from a slightly different angle. I was mostly just trying to convince my kids or remind them that I'm not a superhero, that I'm just a person too. And so actually it was one of those days where I had had just a bad day. I'd written this book proposal and my agent just had all this feedback that made my stomach hurt and kind of made me want to cry and I felt defeated. And, you know, I knew my daughter wasn't working that day and so I called her and, you know, just said, I just need somebody to talk to because I'm not having a great day. I do think it caught her a little off guard.

[Amanda Ripley]

How did she react?

[Listener Karen]

She listened to me and she, you know, did a lot of the things that I would have done.

[Amanda Ripley]

I'm curious, what did she say?

[Listener Karen]

She was mostly just like, you know, gave me a pep talk. You know, mom, you're awesome and you just need to take a couple days off and then, you know, start over and it'll be fine. And all the things that I would have said to her, I guess.

[Amanda Ripley]

Yeah, yeah.

[Arthur Brooks]

She learns how to give advice from you, for sure. But it's also worth getting your kids into a space where they have more practice at that by bringing real life goals to them. For example, you say, dad and I are thinking of moving to a place where we're going to want to be when we're retired and we don't know where to go. How would you not. Where should we go? How would you think about this problem to your kids and have them think through the problem with you? When I was thinking of it, I retired as a CEO several years ago before I went on to this current part of my career in academia. And I talked to my kids about it. Should I do this? Why do you think I should do this? What's the upside of doing this? What's the downside of doing this and really making them think through that with me? Because. And I'm not, you know, I didn't, I wasn't faking it. You get all kinds of good advice from your kids. You get a fresh perspective from your kids. But if you never ask this, then it's going to be a one way valve. Now, by the way, there are a lot of people who have really emotionally needy parents and there it's an ATM machine going in the other direction.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Arthur Brooks]

You find, for example, families that have broken up and the kids have grown up only with mom. And mom has been kind of the emotional taker for her kids. And so you have to run this thing in the opposite direction. There are also lots of cases that I have with my students where they say, I want to stop being. Treating mom like an emotional ATM machine. But that's all she wants to be, that's all she ever wants to do, is to give me advice. And so I have to Give these people other techniques and start taking interest in asking them questions about their lives and start probing and getting involved in the things that are their hobbies, for example, and then asking them about those particular hobbies. And so there are ways to do this, but the bottom line is you need a bilateral relationship. You're in a unilateral situation, and you want a bilateral situation because it's healthier and better for everybody.

[Amanda Ripley]

This whole idea of rebalancing your relationship doesn't need to be limited to parent child relationships either. When you think about it, you could use this in any unbalanced relationship with friends or co workers. Who knows? Okay, so we're gonna take another quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna start to teach parents how to not just act like they care what their kids think, but actually care and respect their kids as adults.

[Mike Pesca]

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[Arthur Brooks]

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[Amanda Ripley]

We're back with our listener, Karen and our expert, Arthur Brooks. So just over half of mothers say they have mixed feelings or some sort of ambivalence. About their relationship with their adult children, as Arthur has written in the Atlantic. And that kind of ambivalence can slowly eat away at a relationship without the adult child even knowing about it. You mentioned earlier, Arthur, that a lot of times kids have no idea about their mother's ambivalence.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Amanda Ripley]

Is it helpful to tell them in some way, or is that just a little much?

[Arthur Brooks]

Well, it's usually not helpful in sort of any relationship to say, you know, I don't. I don't. I gotta tell you, you're not. You're not. I know you think I'm crazy.

[Amanda Ripley]

I just want you to know I have mixed feelings about this relationship.

[Arthur Brooks]

I have very mixed feelings about you. You know, I know I have to love you. But let's be honest, you know,

[Amanda Ripley]

you're

[Arthur Brooks]

not gonna take it.

[Amanda Ripley]

It's hard to know where to go.

[Arthur Brooks]

Yeah, it's hard to know where to go with that. And, you know, the truth is, they're gonna learn soon enough because presumably your kids are gonna have kids. And at some point, you know, when you're dead, they'll be saying, oh, mom, sorry. And that's your revenge, by the way. But in the meantime, and work for this give and take, and the way to do it is to not just give, but also asking them to give, too. But this is the most generous thing you can possibly do. Now, one of the reasons that this is a really hard thing to do is because of old ingrained patterns. The second is this other really weird phenomenon you find between parents and kids, which is that a lot of parents have trouble respecting their children as adults. And I see this a lot because I work with family businesses, and a lot of people, like, shirt sleeves to prosperity, like the founders. And they see their kids as kind of wastrels, as just not as tough as they were. I used to walk to school in the snow 20 miles. And so the result of that is that I see this a lot today, is that people, a lot of people our age, they don't have enough respect for their kids to ask them for advice and to ask them for help and to create a bilateral relationship they don't like. They resent the unilateral relationship. But the problem, the pitch, is in the respect that they need to give their own kids to establish a bilateral relationship that's worth thinking about and talking about with your husband.

[Listener Karen]

Okay. Okay. You know, it's funny. I'm thinking right now just about, like, little things that I can do because I feel like it's not just about you Know the days when we're having a problem, it's about every day, right? I mean, especially if I'm gonna slowly train myself to handle this differently and train them to handle things better. And the idea of creating a bilateral relationship, it's things like. So our daughter just moved back. She was living an hour away from us. Now she's about 20 minutes away. And so we see her a lot more, you know, and we'll invite her, you know, do you want to go get dinner? Do you want to come over? Do you want to, you know, go get a drink, whatever? But, you know, it's funny, like, when I invite her over, I always, of course, cook everything. And, you know, it's just little things, like, I should say to her, can you bring a bottle of wine? Things like that, where I guess I feel like it's the little messages, and maybe that's just getting my brain the. The act of practicing, you know, trying to put us on a more level playing field and showing her that I expect her to participate in a way that isn't just like, she's the kid and I'm the mom.

[Arthur Brooks]

You got it. You got it. I mean, this is the big breakthrough, Karen. I mean, this is. You absolutely got it. And I think we've gotten to the bottom of. The real problem is not that she's exhausting you. The real problem is that you're the giver and she's the taker.

[Listener Karen]

Right?

[Amanda Ripley]

It reminds me, Arthur, haven't you written in the past about suggesting that parents ask the kid to host, you know, a holiday dinner? Flip the script. Right?

[Arthur Brooks]

Totally.

[Listener Karen]

That's.

[Arthur Brooks]

That's all it's. What we're talking about is. This is exactly the same thing, you know? I mean, you should be calling her when you have a flat tire.

[Amanda Ripley]

You should get a flat tire. Like, put a nail out on your driveway.

[Listener Karen]

It's true.

[Arthur Brooks]

I mean, it's like. It's like. It's interesting. You know, when my son. My son's coming back, he's the best man in his brother's wedding. My son, the Marine, he's coming back next week. I've got, like, three pieces of gym equipment sitting in boxes I need him to set up. Why? Because he's much better at that than I am. He's much better at that. He has good manual knowledge. He can rotate objects in space inside his mind. He's fantastic, right? So I'm just not going to do the stuff that he's better at. And I say, carlos, I need you to do this. Stuff for me. He's like, okay, cool, this is great. Yeah, for sure.

[Amanda Ripley]

You just make sure you have some extra pairs of pants for that wedding. Because we don't know. We don't. And it reminds me of how, like, I really don't like to cook. I'm kind of an anxious cook. I do it all the time, but I don't enjoy it. Guess what? My 15 year old kid loves to cook. And he's good at it and he's relaxed and increasingly I'm just like, you know what, I'll go get the food, you cook it and just let them. You know, part of me used to feel bad, like I'm the mom, I'm supposed to cook. But like, who was that serving? Like he can feel the tension in the air, you know, when I'm cooking. Why not just let him do it? To your point, Arthur, I love that idea. I wonder, Karen, is there any holiday or family gathering or birthday coming up that you could imagine asking your daughter if she feels like hosting?

[Listener Karen]

Well, so it's funny. So we're all heavily into Formula one in our household, so we usually have Formula one brunch on Sundays when there is a race. Awesome. We have actually a brunch this Sunday, so. And I was wondering to myself this afternoon, what, what were we going to have to eat? So maybe I just need to ask her to be in charge.

[Amanda Ripley]

Love it.

[Arthur Brooks]

Do you ever ask her opinions?

[Listener Karen]

So now that my daughter has her cosmetology license, you know, like, I did ask her, like, am I using the wrong shampoo? Am I doing this wrong? What should I be? You know, and she cuts my hair now and she, oh, that's cool. All that kind of stuff. Which actually, it's pretty amazing when the first time I was sitting in the chair and she was doing it, I was. It was.

[Shelby Power Nitro Plus Announcer]

Yeah.

[Amanda Ripley]

How'd that feel?

[Listener Karen]

Yeah, because actually, especially for a woman, letting someone cut your hair is a big deal.

[Amanda Ripley]

Right? And you can't fire her.

[Listener Karen]

Like, no, I cannot fire her. So I was.

[Amanda Ripley]

That's a high stakes move, Karen. I'm impressed.

[State Farm Announcer]

I know. It was.

[Amanda Ripley]

So here's our next insight. If you want to interrupt the usual parent kid dynamics, you're gonna have to make yourself a little uncomfortable in the beginning and take some risk. Maybe with your hair or maybe your Thanksgiving dinner. And of course, if it doesn't work out perfectly, like say they don't cook it the way you would, you gotta let it go.

[Arthur Brooks]

Let them persuade you on something. I have very different political views than my Kids. A lot of people do. A lot of people do, you know, because they. They rebel, you know, so they're. You know, my. All three of my kids are more conservative politically than I am. And. And. And so we all throw out a topic, and I'm like, fight me. And.

[Lowe's Announcer]

And.

[Arthur Brooks]

And. And if they're right, they're right. Because sometimes they're right. You know, a lot of. You know, it's. I. I know a lot, but I know. I mean, my oldest son, he really knows a lot. I mean, he knows a lot. And so the result is that sometimes he. When he has a good point, I'm like, wow, good point. That'll blow their minds. That'll blow their minds. I mean, that's like. When the parents on something like ideology say, huh, Never thought about it that way. I think you might have convinced me. I mean, it'll rock their world.

[Listener Karen]

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've definitely. I've learned a lot from my kids, you know, and I think that that is important not only just for your own survival as an adult, because otherwise you're navigating the world not with the most current information, but for the relationship, too.

[Amanda Ripley]

Yeah, right. It balances it, rebalances it. Like, you're always resetting as a. In a relationship. Right. As you evolve, and especially with kids.

[Listener Karen]

No, I mean, Arthur, you've given me a lot to think about. A lot of things that are actionable, which I appreciate, and things that I think will come pretty naturally for me, and hopefully I can get into the habit of doing those things and trying to even things out a little bit.

[Arthur Brooks]

Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, it's like. It seems to me that the key issue like this is always the case in happiness problems and in problems of human dynamics and relationships, generally speaking, when it's hard to find a solution is because something's wrong with the assumptions, and we're therefore defining the wrong problem. So it's not that we don't have an answer to the problem. We have the wrong question. I mean, this is. The secret in life to solving problems, is starting with the right question as opposed to giving a solution to the wrong problem.

[Amanda Ripley]

And I just want to say I think it is very vulnerable to. Like you said earlier, you always wonder, where did I go wrong? When our kids are struggling, and I think if more of us asked each other for help like this, we would go wrong less often. Because my worst moments as a parent are when I feel embarrassed that I've gone wrong. And I do. I make bad decisions in that mindset when I'm embarrassed about my own parenting. And instead you're reaching out and we're all, we can all relate. So I just want to appreciate that. And meanwhile, Arthur, you're on the cusp of resetting one of your own relationships. How exciting. How do you feel going into this wedding?

[Arthur Brooks]

I can't wait to get a new kid. Yeah. I mean, if I had created a daughter in law in the laboratory, it would have been her. I mean, she's fantastic and she completes my son and they're in love with each other and I don't ask for much besides 11 grandkids. So.

[Amanda Ripley]

Thank you again to Karen for opening up about this and to Arthur Brooks for all of his advice. You can catch more of his happiness research in his column in the Atlantic.

[Mike Pesca]

And that's it for today's episode. Soon you will hear Amanda tell you everyone who helped with the episode at that time. But I will tell you that Jeff Craig produces How To. Cory Wara is right there rooting him on beside him. And Michelle Pesca puts the how to in how to the Charles Duhigg thing. He already gets the shout out in Amanda's we're not gonna do the gag. But we will when we're back next week with more episodes of How To. But who put together this episode?

[Amanda Ripley]

How To's executive producer is Derek John. Rosemary Bellson produces the show with help from Katie Shepard. Our theme music is by Hannis Brown, remixed by Merritt Jacob. Our technical director, Charles Duhigg created the show. I'm Amanda Ripley. Thanks for listening.