← Raising Good Humans
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- [00:01]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
- [00:09]
Dr. William Stixrud
Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman and today's episode is with Dr. William Stixrud, who's a clinical neuropsychologist. He's on faculty at the Children's National Medical center and George Washington University Medical School. He is one of the world's leading experts on the adolescent brain and he has written some phenomenal books. You might have heard of them. One he co authored called the Self Driven Child. And now he has a workbook out that he's co written with Ned Johnson called the seven Principles for Raising a Self Driven Child Workbook. And this is such a great conversation. Not just for those of us who are feeling like, how do I help my child have internal motivation and figure out what makes them interested and curious, but also for those kids who are doing all the things, they're checking all the boxes, but you just sense they're doing it for the wrong reasons or they're doing it for you. And we're also talking about kids who are driven for all sorts of reasons and kids who are just struggling. They might have executive function challenges, they might not have any challenges, but they just don't seem to care about school. Lots of stuff in this conversation. And I love this workbook because it's so concrete and it's just like really reflective and helpful. So I highly recommend it. If you enjoy this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and just give it a little five star rating and review because that really helps boost the algorithm or whatever it does. It's great and helpful and super supportive. And of course, if you want and you haven't gotten it yet, I wrote a book, the five Principles of Parenting. Your Essential guide to Raising Good Humans. You could sign up for my free substack drelizapressman. Substack. Com. And of course there's also a paid subscriber option which has the same articles that you get as you do for free. So no matter what you're getting, those just adds a monthly live zoom chatting with me. Hope to see you there. And at the end of this episode, I address a question that is for maybe a smaller group of you, which is if you are hearing from college this week, how can you best support your kids if they heard bad news, disappointing news for them, and how can you best support your kids if they heard really exciting news for them? So that's the very end of the episode. I thought that Dr. Stixrud would be the perfect person to Ask this question to. And he has great advice and thinking of everyone.
- [03:04]
Sponsor
Have a great week.
- [03:06]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
We wrote this workbook to try to just make it easier for parents to feel that it's safe and that it's right to trust their kids more and worry about them less. And so we wanted to ground it in these seven principles. And we didn't know. We wrote this book that you. Your book, the five principles of Parenting, which is brilliant, and the five bars, it's really incredible. And I just love learning about that. We didn't know. But any case, we chose these seven from basically these from the principles five from our first book, two from our second book that the idea is that principles in your book that parents can ground themselves in to ground their relationships and their interaction with their kids in these principles that make sense. And the workbook idea was simply that it's. It's hard.
- [03:48]
Sponsor
Yeah.
- [03:48]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
If you're, you're giving kids more control of their lives means that you're controlling less. And the most stressful thing we'd experience is a low sense of control. Say you're sitting in your hands and zipping your lips, man, that's really stressful. So the workbook idea is trying to help parents kind of work through. Why is this hard? What's blocking me from doing something that seems so right, so important? It seems like I want my kid to be able to run his own life before he leaves home. I like that idea. I want to be able to solve his problems, make his own decisions, but it's hard. So the workbook idea was simply to try to make it easier for people to apply these principles. Give them a lot of examples of how you can do it and to your point, to reflect, Be able to reflect their own, their parenting. How are they parented? How would I like people to treat me? And the golden rule of parenting, you know, treat your. Treat your kids the way you'd like your parents to treat you kind of idea.
- [04:37]
Dr. William Stixrud
But are there some kids who just from based on their temperament, they come out, they're just like a little bit more self driven. And then some kids who need a little more support. And then part two of that is like, does it feel like for some parents I'm doing all those things, like I'm really being autonomy supportive. But what are the barriers that parents. You know what, let me say this again because this is like 500 questions in one. I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start with what are some of the barriers that you notice in parents who really have thought like I'm trying to give choices. I'm, I'm stepping back a bit because I think what's tricky is there are some parents who it's new news for, right. Like being autonomy supportive and kind of thinking about being less controlling. But there are some parents who are like, I've really been thinking about this and I'm still hitting a wall because I can't seem to figure out how to help my child be self driven so that I end up, you know, getting into a cycle of pushing.
- [05:43]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. And I think to your first question, I think that human traits distribute on a NORMA curve, you know, so there's. Yeah, some kids come out of the room. The first word. I literally, I tested a kid, a very oppositional 7 year old whose first words were no way. You know, and she was very self driven. And. But, but I think that some of the barriers that I hear are things like is the first one, it's stressful because it lowers your own sense of control and you know, just having to want to trust your kid to make a decision about something that even if you're giving your own best advice and you say to your kid, I want you to practice making your decisions, I trust your ability to make your decisions and learn from mistakes that it's hard. It's like, like the difference between driving the car and sitting in the passenger seat while your 16 year old is learning to drive. There's. Oh yeah, there's that. So a lot of parents, it's just not the way I was raised or, or that, you know, like parents of who's in charge here? The idea if you aren't, you are the boss, you are being the boss and family the kids manager who's in charge. And also a lot of grandparents say you're spoiling by not being more authoritarian. Many parents feel I'm supposed to be able to make him do stuff. And also a lot of it is that, well, he hasn't, his brain isn't fully mature. People know that the frontal lobe doesn't develop for a long time. But we'll use that as an explanation why I have to kind of micromanage things. Because his brain is mature. Right.
- [07:11]
Dr. William Stixrud
Okay. So actually along those lines, what if you're, you've got, you know, kids who are struggling with their executive function skills. You must see that all the time. So in those cases where there's feels like there's this extra need or want to micromanage because there's just like a little bit More room for error, maybe less room for error. How do you help support parents who are supporting kids who seem like when you give them more, more room, more Runway, they're, they're struggling even more.
- [07:48]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah. So one of the basic, the metaphors that we use in encouraging parents is, is to think about themselves. So kids get older more as consultants to their kids, whose role it is to help them figure out who they want to be, what kind of life they want and how to create it so, so that by the time that they leave home, they can run their own life. I raised a child who has ADHD and executive functioning difficulties, and I use these same principles and this idea of, we want parents to think about themselves as kids get older, as consultants to their kids whose mission is not to make sure that they turn out a certain way or that they always do well, whose mission is to help them figure out who they want to be, what kind of life they want, and how to create the life that they want and so that they can ultimately, so that they can run their own life before they leave home. That's the way I think about it. Because so many kids I see get into the most elite colleges and these, as soon as they get a B or as soon as they, they, they leave home, as soon as they realize everybody's here as smart as me, they freak out and they take a medical leave of absence and go home for therapy. And I want them to be able to run their own life. Now kids vary in terms of that self driven quality, their executive functioning skills, and I walk this walk with my own kids. So the idea is that if you think about yourself as a consultant, the three implications for us are, number one, you offer help and advice. I want kids to have all the help that they need. And so because of executive functioning, I want them to have the support, the coaching, the scaffolding, whatever they need, I just don't want to force it down their throat because I don't want them to spend all their energy fighting the attempts to help them. And I think with kids with have ADHD and executive functioning difficulties, we often hold them back by working harder than they do to try to get things together. I just don't believe that in the long run that helps. So we want to offer help and advice and as much as they need, you just don't want to force it. And certainly kids with executive functioning problems, if you have a conversation with them and you map out the pros and cons of a situation and you say to them, I want you to Practice making decisions yourself. I want you to trust your own judgment when you leave. Before you leave home, I want you to be able to trust your own judgment, not mine. This is your life. I've found that six and seven year old kids, if they have the right information, they can make as good decisions for themselves as I can make for them or a parent can make for them. So I think it's that, I think that it's not true that we can't support this in people who need these kind of executive supports. And for me, one of the little post it notes in our new book is that we think it's more important that a child develop an accurate understanding of who's responsible for what they always do. Well, so that's my ankle. And I think that we've applied this with just dozens and dozens of kids with adhd. Ned raised the kids with ADHD executive functioning difficulties using these principles. He tells this story. I think his son was in fifth grade and he forgot to turn an assignment and his mom said, why did you turn this in? Said, you forgot to remind me, you know, and so they did, you know, and, and so, and over time, you know, they started to back off and not kind of not back off like out of his life, but in a supportive way, but not taking response, not trying to micromanage him. They backed off a bit and then like six months later takes a test and he gets to 52 because he studied the wrong chapter. How can I help? Would you like this to be different? How can I help? And, and I, I just worked. I gave a workshop this morning and one of the executive function coaches on the workshop was asking about executive coaching. I said, I just don't believe, I don't recommend it unless kids want it, unless kids really think that this could really help me. Because so many kids I see they are in therapy or executive functioning coaching and they just resist it, they undermine it, they avoid it. And so I want to offer help, my advice, my wisdom. They just don't want to try to force you down the throat.
- [11:39]
Sponsor
Now for a quick break so I can tell you about my sponsors.
- [11:43]
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- [13:14]
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- [14:52]
Dr. William Stixrud
What I've observed is that we have a lot of hopes for what will be an intrinsically motivated desire on the part of our kids, but we're externally deciding what those motivators are. And so I'm just curious or what those interests are. So I'm curious if you could talk to everybody about maybe the reality of motivation.
- [15:16]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
So I mean, some kids can come out just as you said. This is some kids come out of the womb just super motivated, self driven, they develop their interest, they do what they want to do. Well, other kids, not so much. And I think that in our first book we talk about this research by a guy named Reed Larson who studied adolescent development and at one point was studying how do children turn into self motivated adolescents and adults. And he concluded that it wasn't through dutifully doing their homework, it was through what he called the passionate pursuit of pastimes. And so then you got a five year old kid who's building with Legos and he's completely into it, completely engaged in it, and he's in a brain state that's combining high energy, high attention, high focus, high determination, but low stress, which is a beautiful brain state and that's trained, it's sculpting the brain that's so familiar with that. There's something that's important to you that you care about. It could be sports, it could be music, it could be dance, it could be programming. Whatever it is that you're learning how to do that you're working hard. And I think that most kids will develop some kind of interest like that that's intrinsically motivated. And I see a lot of underachievers and I'm a neuropsychologist and I work with a lot of underachieving adolescents and I ask them, is there something besides video games, is there something you work hard to get better and better and better at that you care about? And if they say virtually anything, if anything has to do with sports, music, whatever I say, I'm not worried about you. I suspect that as you get older, school's going to be more important to you. But I'm not worried because I know that you're sculpting a brain. School becomes more important, you'll be able to turn on the jets. So I think that certainly we know about intrinsic motivation is really a beautiful kind of motivation. Kids don't have to be intrinsically motivated for everything, but having some things in their life that they're intrinsically motivated for, it's just incredibly beneficial.
- [17:14]
Dr. William Stixrud
I'm glad you mentioned video games. Don't you hear that a lot? Like my child isn't interested in intrinsically motivated to get good at anything? But video games or TikTok videos, what do we do when it is just video games? How do we uncover the truth?
- [17:30]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, so I think the video games that have a lot of, a lot of benefits, a lot of advantages and a small percentage of kids really do develop kind of an addictive relationship with them. 10, 12% maybe. But I, from a motivational point of view, the reason I separate the video games out from the motivational development is that if you're, you got a 15 year old who's working on his jump shot basketball player and just practicing that jump shot over and over again, it's not being programmed by some of the smartest psychologists in the world who are using behavioral principles to make it almost impossible to stop. So it requires that kind of, that self drive. I think when kids are just, that's all they care about. I think what we want to do is engage in the kind of collaborative problem solving and express empathy and appreciation for how much, so much of the energy that many kids get from video games. Just stop it. Get off, get off, get off, get off. But what my co author and I recommend is express starting with empathy, start saying, God, I play with them, you understand the games and you say, God, this is incredible. I see why you love this so much. When you play with your friends, it just makes you so happy to see how much enjoyment you get out of it. And at the same time I'm concerned that there aren't other things in your life to care about. And I want to work out some kind of limits with you so that you have at least some time to be bored or explore some other things. But for us, we don't want to be managing a kid's technology before they go up to college because otherwise they'll just, they'll run, they'll come home by November. And we want them to learn because it's hard for all of us to resist the lure of. And so I think that what we want to do is this collaborative problem solving idea where you start with empathy, you express appreciation for what the kid likes, not try to talk him out of it. And then you say, but I'm concerned about it and I don't want to feel like I'm the worst parent in the world. That was the only thing you ever did. I feel like a complete failure to appear. That's not going to work for me. So let's negotiate something. And so that's the kind of approach that I think makes sense to me in terms of ultimately developing somebody who really knows how to Drive their own life.
- [19:39]
Dr. William Stixrud
And what if, what if there's a real struggle there? Like, I just don't. Like, even when I'm bored, I'm not coming up with something to be interested in. Like those. I mean, I think it's very unusual, but I still want to explore that because I think that this workbook really helps with that. And I think our being able to help our kids learn how to reflect and figure out what do I care about? If our kids are struggling to find this passionate pursuit of pastimes, what are some ways that we can help? Including probably with our own passionate pursuit of pastimes?
- [20:16]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah. And I miss. Certainly we want to encourage kids to explore the various things in life. And I also tell a lot of kids, if you don't have a passion, it's okay. And sometimes it takes time to figure it out. And actually I work with this kid. I talked to this kid. Actually one of my colleagues tested the 17 year old boy who was just doing nothing in school. The parents wanted me to meet with him as well. So I talked to him and it turned out he said, I do nothing in school, I do as little as possible. But he was completely passionate about the local rescue squad and he just loved it. He did it all Thursday night and all Saturday. And I actually talked about him about dropping out of school because he seemed like a waste of his time. But he found out that he couldn't do the rescue squad. He was in school, but just letting him know that he hadn't screwed up his whole life because he could pluck all his high school classes. If he said that was a bad idea, he'd go to community college. For 30 credits, they can transfer to almost any state university or he can apply to almost any college in the country. And they don't want to see high school transcripts and I don't recommend that kids do that. But in this case, what I see as underachiever is they figure, I've already screwed up my whole life, what's the point? And so with this young person, I gave him the message that that's not true, you got a future. And so I hear from his mother about two months later that he's now got his grade point up from a 2.3 to 3.6. And his twin brother Kate wanted to see me because the twin brother was worried that unlike this kid, he doesn't have a passion. Oh. You know, and the twin brother was an outstanding student.
- [21:51]
Sponsor
Right.
- [21:52]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
What I kept telling the underachiever was, I'm not worried about you because you have this, you're, when you're doing that rescue squad, your brain is on fire. You know how to do that when you connect with something that's important to you. And there are kids who just don't have that. And it's okay that that's part of, that's part of their path. And I see people who become passionate about basketball when they're 30, who never played as kids, all kinds of things. And so they don't need to have a passion. What we want to do is continually love them as they are, enjoy them as much as we can, and so that they experience themselves as joy producing organisms and as opposed to frustration or anxiety or anger producing, Parkinson's, joy producing.
- [22:38]
Dr. William Stixrud
I love that too.
- [22:40]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
So many students just, just, I think what they do to their brains. The last chapter in our new book is about taking a sense of control to school, basically. And for most of the kids that we see, school is a major source of their suffering. And if you ask kids who are really highly stressed and anxious, what makes you so anxious? The top 12, the top 12 factors they cite all have to do with school. Academic pressure and achievement doesn't have to do with social media or environment or it has to do with academic pressure. It's just delusional in terms of how important it is. I just read recently that 0.8% of the college students attend a top 12 college. By my experience, there's a lot more than 1% of the population have successful, meaningful lives. And so I think that these kids who are, I think the most, most really high achieving schools are toxic for most of the kids there because they're required, if they're going to do well, they're required to sleep six and a half hours a night. And most teenagers need nine and a quarter average, which means half needs more than that. If you get six and a half, not so good for your brain.
- [23:53]
Sponsor
And now for a quick break so I can tell you about my sponsors. We've talked about social media and phones so much on Raising Good Humans podcast. So it makes sense that I should tell you about Gab Phone because one of the questions I get is how do I find a device that allows for the music and the tracking and the quick phone call if your child is finally getting the freedom to be out and about on their own without social media, without being able to search the web. So Gab is the solution. It's the leader in safe phones and watches for kids, teens and tweens. They have no social media apps, no Internet browser, but they do have GPS tracking. GAB devices are built specifically to keep kids and teens safely connected, but not in a position to be sucked in and not come out of a device. And there's also a watch that is.
- [24:46]
Dr. William Stixrud
Sort of like best of both worlds.
- [24:48]
Sponsor
Because there's a focus mode, which means that during the school hours they're not getting little interruptions, which you do get on smartwatches typically. And that is why I'm not a big fan of having the smartwatch as the replacement for the phone.
- [25:00]
Dr. William Stixrud
But the Gab watch is awesome.
- [25:02]
Sponsor
They even have messaging and video calling. So they really do cover the stuff that you do want your kids to be able to try out, socialize, connect, get in touch with you and music, but none of the nonsense. So I really highly recommend gab. Protecting your kids has never been easier. For the best deals, sign up to Gab today. No contract required@gab.com humans that's gabgabb.com humans gab.com humans Terms and conditions apply. And now I want to tell you about Wayfair. Okay, first of all, whatever you need. If you're just sitting around in your living room looking in a corner and you're thinking, why? Why do I have a pile of stuff right there? Let me recommend Wayfair. Because you can just get a cool wicker basket or rattan basket and all of a sudden your clutter becomes kind of chic. I'm not kidding. Just look around your house at all the spots you walk in the door and you put your keys down and you put your just stuff and the mail and all of these things. They have great containers that look good and keep you organized. And if you're not super organized, where you want to put every different item in a spot, you can dump it in one place but have like a really great container for it. That's how I fell in love with Wayfair. Because I just wanted like all the best ways to just stop having clutter everywhere. But Wayfair has everything. I mean, you could buy a couch on Wayfair.
- [26:34]
Dr. William Stixrud
It's got it all.
- [26:35]
Sponsor
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- [27:07]
Dr. William Stixrud
I so wonder. And I wanna, I just wanna address this. There are some kids for whom it feels easier and like a great fit and there are some kids who are going to get there in that tiny percentage but it's incredibly toxic it comes to that. It's like that is their passion versus the kids who are just grinding because they think that's where they're supposed to be. What are some of the cues?
- [27:33]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, well I, I think just how distressed are there? I mean I see a lot of kids who are very, very high achieving kids who love school. They're in bed by 11 o'clock every night. I also see, I think the majority of kids, those are kids who primarily who work pretty fast, who learn pretty fast, who are pretty efficient and if schools say well we require three hours of homework a night, well for half the kids that might mean five. I think for me it's a matter of kids have a life. Kids can have a reasonably balanced life and if they can't, they're spending five or six hours a night in the homework they're getting over from school at 7 and working till, till 12 or 1 o'clock that it's just terrible for their brain and it's terrible for their mental health. It's terrible for their motivation. Great, great high achievement. That's great. But we know that the optimal learning environment. Yeah. I think we want to get them treatment, get the therapy. Yeah. I think a lot of kids we can just, if we, if we don't try to talk them out of it, we let them know that you know another way of looking at this is, is turning into an excellent seeker where you want to do a really good job but you don't spend five hours trying to get, make a 98 and 99.
- [28:44]
Sponsor
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:45]
Dr. William Stixrud
Thinking about all of these things. What, what can we do without sort of adding more on our kids plates? Because I think that's, I think we are aligned there that like a lot of this is what are we doing?
- [28:57]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah.
- [28:58]
Dr. William Stixrud
Or doing less of what are we doing? In fact that's my big question because I think it's a gift for parents is like what would you say we can do less of to. Just because that will alleviate our stress while at the same time benefiting our kids. So it's a win win. What do you see there?
- [29:19]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I think parents can do less worrying about their kids. All our anxiety about our children is related to the future because if your kid was in a really tough place and I had A crystal ball. And I knew your kid's going to turn out fine. And I told you that you wouldn't worry. You say okay, this is just part of his path. It's rough now, but he'll be great. It's all about we get, we catastrophize. We think they're going to get stuck in this negative place and it's never going to get better. It's only going to get worse. So I think there's a lot of. We talk about in all our books this idea of moving in the direction of being a non anxious presence because calm is contagious and we all just do the best we can. But ideally, phone feels like a safe base. And of all our books, we try to give parents permission to worry less. We can manage less. We can support kids without having to micromanage them when they're in high school or in middle school. We can say, if you need help kind of tracking all the stuff on your school portal, I'm willing to help, but don't check it every day. Don't get Life360 and chronically know your kid is because then the message is the world is so dangerous, I need to know or I'm so anxious, I need to know where you are every second. It's just, it just communicates so much fear to kids. So we can worry less, we can monitor less, we can manage less.
- [30:42]
Dr. William Stixrud
I think those are pretty good ones because I think a lot of people feel guilty when they're worrying less, monitoring less, doing less. And I think that managing the micromanaging and, and I, I believe it's probably shifted a lot because there's a lot of online ongoing information about grades and homework and things that you just would have never had access to before unless you had a parent teacher conference.
- [31:09]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
No.
- [31:10]
Dr. William Stixrud
And, and so part of that is also permission to not like you said, you don't have to check it every day just because it's available information, but feel to people that they're being, you know, unless you could feel like, oh, am I, am I being neglectful because I haven't checked.
- [31:27]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah. And certainly, I mean it's hard and many parents, I understand this and many parents can't stop themselves. And again, there are a lot of kids with executive functioning problems. Kids have their, some of these portals are so complicated, the parents have trouble figuring it out. And I'm perfectly fine with helping. I want kids to have all the help that they need. It's just that I don't want parents working harder to track this kid's schoolwork than the kid does. Because what happens to the kid then? The parent will spend 80 units of energy making sure the kids keep up the work. The kid will spend 20. And I used to think early in my career, I used to think, well, that'll just change developmentally. I found it didn't change until the energy changed. And in our new book, we talk a lot about the idea of many situations where you just want to change the energy. When I used to work early in my career and I worked with underachievers and I said, if you didn't turn an assignment, who's most upset? And invariably they say, my mom. Though I use a family therapy technique, I'd say, who's next most upset? My dad. Who's next most? My teacher, then my tutorial than my therapist. The kid was never on the list.
- [32:33]
Dr. William Stixrud
Never. The kid.
- [32:34]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah. So. So the idea is, I think the monitoring less is simply, I have confidence that you can figure this out and I can't keep you safe. And I. I love you more than anything in the world. And the truth is I can't keep you safe. And, and which I think that telling and acknowledging that to kids makes them more responsible, makes them more kind of motivated, more. More aware of what they knew to keep themselves safe. So those off the top of my head did that worry less, monitor less, manage less, and lecture less.
- [33:06]
Dr. William Stixrud
I mean, I feel like that's a big one because we have a lot to say.
- [33:11]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah. And you know, we talk about the language of the parent consultant in our second book and bring it up again, the new workbook. I wonder what would happen if you tried it this way. What I say a lot in my own work, my interactions with people in general is for whatever it's worth, so. And I'll run something by them and. But, but if you say, can I give you my ankle in this? You could say, I'm not really interested. Let it go.
- [33:38]
Dr. William Stixrud
That's it. They're not. Because you're not going to convince them to be more interested.
- [33:42]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And very likely if you do that, they're going to come back to you later and say, what were you going to tell them? Because we just, we wanted. We want to make it clear to kids that I respect you and I don't want. If I just blather and blather and I keep lecturing, you'll see over and over again and you aren't getting it. It's just a waste of my breath and it really harmful. It's really toxic for a relationship to just to have that kind of stress and tension with the kids just fighting everything you say. So lecture, lesson. I want to share advice. We have so much wisdom to share with our kids, but they got to be open to it, right?
- [34:16]
Dr. William Stixrud
So what would you say if parents are thinking, oh, I am so I like really micromanage everything and I feel very worried that if I don't, it's all gonna go away. Even with younger kids, how can we start? Like if let's say somebody's like, okay, today I'm gonna take one step toward being a little bit more confident that my child's not going to break if I let go a little. What are some smaller manageable steps that we can take?
- [34:48]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Well, one of the exercises we suggest in our new book is to talk with your kids about stuff that basically they control and stuff that you're controlling. And it's just stuff in their life they'd like to take more responsibility for. That's one place to start. Because ideally we don't routinely do stuff for kids that they can do for themselves. And if we have an 11 year old and we're constantly on them to make sure they have everything they need before they go out to school, we certainly say, I feel like I'm this, we have a hassle every day and I love you too much to fight with you about this stuff every day. It's, I don't want to do it, so let's work out what do we need to do so I don't have to hassle so much. So that kind of idea. A lot of kids, they want to have more control, they want to have more responsibility. I think that starting there can help. And also I think that just practicing letting kids make decisions about stuff, I don't want them to make decisions about whether they have cancer treatment, that kind of thing, but letting them make decisions about whether they're going to want a tutor or not. The last thing you want to do is send kids to a tutor. The kid doesn't want to be there. It's just a complete waste of money. And it gives the kids the message, don't trust your own judgment, trust mine. And sometimes we have to override kids. But ultimately you don't want to be constantly saying, don't trust yourself. I know better for you than what's right for you. That doesn't go well in the long run. We want kids to trust themselves. So just start with some things that the kids can decide for themselves and say to them. I Have confidence in your ability to make decisions about your own life and if you make a mistake, to learn from it. And I want you to have a ton of practice doing that.
- [36:35]
Dr. William Stixrud
I love that. And I love that. The message is also, I want you to have a lot of practice doing that because it, it shows the confidence that like, you don't need to get it right or wrong. Like, it's just, it's just practice.
- [36:46]
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Dr. William Stixrud
Thanks to Irestore, I can imagine that there's, you know, you're trying to raise a self driven child, you're trying to give more autonomy. At what point can you say, by the way, this isn't your choice because it's like a family requirement, you have to be here for dinner or what? At what point is it helpful to say, you know what, there are some things that aren't your choice, aren't related to your health or well being. They're just like more helpful to our community or is that just like, okay, but you're never gonna forcing that. It's just never gonna end well. Cause with an, you know, maybe with a 5th grader but not with a 10th grader.
- [40:36]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
One of the things I've kind of made peace with, and I think this is true, is you can't make somebody do something against their will. So if you say you have to do this, well, they don't really have to because I find I have almost a superpower now. If I want kids to go along with me by saying, I know I couldn't make you do this, so you don't really have to. And then I talked about the reasons why they might want to do it and they almost always go along with me. Take force off the table. So I think that in terms of the family rules, I want kids, I want families to develop. You have a whole section on one of your R's is rules. I want how this family functions. How do we want to treat each other? What are the rules that we want to live by? I think that getting kids to buy in, getting to buy into the rules that we create as a family is probably the healthiest way to do that. And there are some things where you may not feel like doing it it, but you want to do it because you want to be part of your family. When I used to do therapy with kids and kids. Why don't I. I don't feel like doing it. Well, I'd say, well, when my daughter, my infant 42 years ago was an infant and I. My job was to. When she cried at night was to get her and bring her to mother to feed her. I never once felt like doing that. I never once felt like I wanted to be fed. And so I never felt like that. So I trained kids to say, tell yourself, I don't feel like doing my homework, but I want to do it because it's important. And same way there may be things that we have family expedition. I don't feel like doing the dishes, but I've committed to it because it's important. My family's important to me. And we agreed in these rules.
- [42:04]
Dr. William Stixrud
That's great because it's true. That's an, That's a muscle to exercise too. Right. Like doing things for a different, a higher purpose that just in the day to day, you know, because when we think about intrinsic motivation sometimes it's not fair because there are some things where you're like, I don't have intrinsic motivation to do this, but like I have to do it.
- [42:26]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's not like, I mean if kids have no intrinsic motivation, adults do. It's really highly associated with depression and all kinds of mental health problems. Yeah, but, but kids don't have to. It's not like life has to be 100% intrinsically motivated. It's just that kids need some. Sometimes they need autonomy about something. They need to be able to make decisions about something. They need some intrinsically motivated things to make the. My co author likes to say kids need something in school to look forward to. You know, I love. Course I can grind through these classes. I don't like that much because I know I have chorus. I'm passionate about chorus. So. Yeah. So it's not that being self driven doesn't mean I get to be the boss of everything that a five year old kid never has to do anything they don't want to do. It's hard to make them do it, but we, we can. There's ways of encouraging kids to do things, supporting kids to do things they don't feel like doing because they're important. And I think that as you, you know, you're. I think it's interesting that both, both your, your book and, and our new book, the first principle is about connection. It's about relationship because it really is. I mean I just read recently that close relationship with. With your family is more protective of kids emotionally than your family income or even the safety of your neighborhood.
- [43:46]
Dr. William Stixrud
Yeah, I think that's so heartening too, because we can control ourselves, which means we can control whether or not we're invested in that relationship where you can't control your neighborhood to sometimes, or family income sometimes, or all sorts of environmental stressors. So I hope that's heartening for people because it's like the thing that we can actually invest in.
- [44:10]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Well, it's true. So many people who've had a lot of adverse experiences early in life, it's just having a close relationship with a parent or a teacher or a coach, somebody who basically, I believe in you. You have potential. It's. It's so powerful and it's so protective. One of the principles is to just tell your kid, I love you too much to fight with you about your homework. You know, that kind of idea that I just, you know, the most precious thing to me, I don't want to just fight about the same thing over and over again. And so putting that relationship first and then practicing empathy and practicing validation is probably the most important things we can do. And we know that excessive pressure to excel now is the fourth leading cause of unwellness. And when kids feel that excessive pressure, it hugely contributes to this epidemic of perfectionism now. And if we practice that close relationship, practice loving, telling kids, I love you no matter. No matter what you do, no matter what you say or how hard you work, that unconditional peace, that it motivates kids to work hard when they know that they're accepted, even if they don't.
- [45:20]
Dr. William Stixrud
It's so heartbreaking because I know parents feel that way, but sometimes it just doesn't come across that way.
- [45:28]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, as you point out in your writing and your work, it doesn't have to be perfect. And I think that I'm old enough now that I don't remember specific instances. When I remember in my 40s, when I was lecturing my 40s, I could think of specific times my father had gotten mad at me and later came in to apologize. And I just remember how respected I felt. I could tell him what you cared about me. And, you know, none of us have perfect parents. We don't need perfect parents. But I think that if we. If we have the intention to communicate to our kids that I love you no matter what you do. My kids are little. I think, let's think of things you could do that make you. Make me love you less. Than 100%. And we kind of have fun kind of thinking all kinds of things. So that's not.
- [46:15]
Dr. William Stixrud
But is there a way to kind of find like do a check in. Do you have any exercises that people can do to do a check in to see if our, you know, if we're communicating what we actually are feeling inside or are we communicating inadvertently these pressures that aren't even what we feel?
- [46:34]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah. So one of the principles in our new book is to communicate healthy expectations. And there's the guy who's done the most research on parental. Parental expectations tend to be very powerful in terms of academic achievement. The guy who's done the most research in this area says the most powerful expectations are communicated through a very kind of. A very kind of soft communication that I have confidence that you can. I believe in you as opposed to get those grades up. You need to do this. Where that becomes conditional, it becomes. It's coercive. You need to do this. You need to do this. I expect you to achieve at this level. But it's coercive and it's toxic. It undermines a sense of control and it contributes to perfectionism. And so I did we have exercise in the book about that. About what do you perceive your. Ask your kids. You feel pressure from me. It turns out this. One of my friends went into three suburban high achieving high schools and sampled gave these kids measures of anxiety depression, not unsurprisingly, really high levels of anxiety depression. What makes you so anxious and stressed? As I said earlier, the top 12 were all academic stuff. Number one was pressure from self to achieve. Number four was pressure not to just disappoint parents more than perceived parents. That was ranked higher than pressure from parents. The pressure to not disappoint them was ranked higher than the pressure from parents. So we do have exercises in this new book about communicating with kids. What are you getting from me? Because so many parents say to me, you know, I don't care where he goes to college. I tell him, I tell them, but it's in the water. His kids get it. And I think communicating that if kids are really completely obsessed with getting good grades and we don't care where they go to college, we don't want to try to talk them out of it. What I say to kids is that I'm not going to try to take that away from you. That's the way you see it. I see it differently. If you'd like. If you'd like me to. I'd like to tell you how I see It. And oftentimes I think that we can help kids reframe things in that way because the more we try to take it away, as we said earlier, the more they hold onto it.
- [48:47]
Dr. William Stixrud
I wonder if there's one last message for parents, because this particular week, if they're opening up, this is just for a little subset of the listeners, probably very few. But for those who are opening letters, what are some things we can say to kids when they get accepted and when they get rejected? Because I feel like those are two potential landmines.
- [49:15]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah, yeah. So I'll just mention as part of my answer. In May of this year, I tested two high school seniors who had ADHD and anxiety disorders but were really high achievers. They got into very elite schools. And as part of my interview with them, I asked them, are there times when you feel happy? And they both said, I felt happy the day I got into college. It didn't last for a week, didn't last for a month the day I got into college. So I think that what we want to do, if kids are elated, we want to be happy with them, but we also want them to be talking in our new book about giving kids an accurate model of reality. The idea that if you actually look at the science of happiness, achievement is actually contributes fairly small amount, you know, and so many kids get admitted that Laurie Santos at Yale, lived with undergraduates at Yale and was just struck by how miserable they were. Even though they got themselves in the Yale, didn't do it. Getting to Yale, they thought that I'll be happy then, but that wasn't it. And so I think that we encourage parents from pretty early on to start talking with kids about what really makes. What makes people happy. Because it's the relationships and it's the meaningful thing. It's the connection with other people. It's the positive emotions part of it. Achievement's part of it, but it's only part of it. It's a relatively small part of it. So I think that immediately, if kids are really devastated they didn't get in, we want to be empathic. If they're open to it, once we kind of listen to them and say, for whatever it's worth, I'm not concerned at all about you.
- [51:15]
Dr. William Stixrud
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