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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 451: Trust Your Kids More and Worry About Them Less | Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, The Self-Driven Child
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- [00:00]
Andrew Hawk
Do you want your teenager to go on the adventure of a lifetime, all the while learning the ability to know God's truth, discern wisely and take godly action in the world? My name is Andrew Hawk and I'm the Camp Director at the Excel Summer Leadership Camp. Every summer we take teenagers on two week adventures to help them grow in their leadership, discernment and Christlike character. Between camping, rock climbing, hiking and whitewater rafting, campers build lifelong friendships while also training in Excel College's game changing critical thinking method. They'll learn to filter through the cultural messages of the day with Godly wisdom and to learn how to apply those in the method in real life context through wilderness first aid and CPR training. A few months ago I received a message from Melissa, one of our past campers. When her mom and her were overseas. Her mother got injured and she used her training to make a huge difference, according to doctors, to be able to get help when it was needed. We love to hear stories like this. Not only do campers lead with practical skills, but also with a deeper faith in Jesus and lifelong community. I want to personally invite your teenager to join us this summer by going to theexcelcamp.org to learn more. That's theexcelcamp.org welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.
- [01:07]
Jenny Urich
My name is Jenny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have just read a fantastic book. It's a workbook too with all of these questions that are built in. It is going to answer a lot of your modern day parenting problems. It is called the seven Principles for raising a self Driven Child and the authors, Dr. William Stixrud and Ned Ned Johnson are here with us today. They have written other books. The Self Driven Child and what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, Stress Tolerance and a Happy Home. What an honor to have you both here. Thank you for being here.
- [01:41]
Dr. William Stixrud
Our pleasure.
- [01:43]
Ned Johnson
Thanks.
- [01:44]
Jenny Urich
So Bill, you've been giving neuropsychological tests to children, teens and young adults for almost 40 years. Never gotten tired of it. You have been working with families. You are on a faculty at the Children's National Medical Center. Assistant professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. Your work has been featured all over the place. So just incredible. Professional and personal life psychologist, five grandchildren. Ned.
- [02:09]
Ned Johnson
I'm Ned.
- [02:13]
Jenny Urich
More than 50,000 one on one hours helping students conquer standardized tests. So both of you are extremely experienced at working with kids and have this long standing experience of working with kids and Teenagers, can you talk about some of the changes that you've seen over the past decades in terms of the mental health and well being of our kids and our teens?
- [02:34]
Dr. William Stixrud
So speaking for me, I've been a neuropsychologist for a little over 40 years now and I don't see it so much in my daily practice because I, I, I don't see kids unless they're struggling. The kids who are thriving, they don't come to see me. But I will say that certainly just, just look at, at our culture when Ned and I started working together about 15 years ago, that the rates of anxiety and depression in children and teenagers were alarmingly high. Now they're higher and the rates in young adults are even higher. I rarely see an adolescent now who doesn't have an anxiety disorder and, or depression. And also I would say that 40 years ago high school kids didn't on average sleep six and a half hours of sleep. I think those are two major changes that I've seen in the last 40 years is the dramatic decrease in sleep. And no surprise, this also this dramatic increase in ment health problem.
- [03:28]
Ned Johnson
Same thing here. And part of, in the space that I live in, I am more working with kind of the highly achieving, perhaps overachieving, perhaps perfectionistically driven side of things. And on the surface it looks great, these kids who are achieving in every way that we can possibly imagine young person achieving. But it isn't often done in a way that's healthy. Right. That you know, high achieving and anxious is still anxious. Right. Too often motivational styles that simply aren't sustainable. I only have two and a half more years of this grind and then I'll get into college where, where mental health challenges and dysregulated living are even worse. And, and the whole while trying to remind ourselves that the most important outcome of high school and adolescence cannot, should not need not be the university that you go to if you're planning to go to university, but rather the brain that you're developing and carrying into college or work or life. And so we feel that our, the priorities are, they're just, they're a tad out of whack and no one person is to blame. The kids are growing up in the systems that they've grown up in. Parents are all part of the system and they're trying to do the best by their kids. And I think that Bill and I can credibly say from one our own experience and two, a lot of neuroscience that this doesn't have to be a choice. We don't have to choose between healthy brains and good mental health and high achievement. Curiously, paradoxically, perhaps if we work on good mental health and sustainable motivational systems, we get the same very outcomes we want for our kids. So it's not, it shouldn't be a trade off. If we keep happiness and health at the forefront, then all the good things come to kids and we don't have to sacrifice them.
- [05:14]
Dr. William Stixrud
I love what you said, Ned. I'll just add that we want kids to be as successful as they want to be, but we want them to have brains that can enjoy the success. And we're concerned if you're chronically tired and chronically stressed. It affects the brain in a way that makes it hard to enjoy whatever success you get. And we think we know a lot of very successful people who, as Ned would say, are lacking in everything you'd want except for peace and happiness.
- [05:40]
Ned Johnson
Have everything you want except for peace and happiness. Thank you.
- [05:44]
Jenny Urich
Yeah, I love that the title of the book is about the self driven child because one of the things that we talk about. So our whole premise here is exactly what the title is. We are trying to set aside parts of childhood for the child. So a Thousand hours outside in a year is research backed but we're not so focused on the number. It's more about let's be intentional that kids get to be kids, that they have some of their own time and part of what happens when they have that is like these things you're talking about in this book that they become autonomous and we're passing the baton from the parent to the child to let them to steer some of their own time in ways that help them in their long term development. But I think it's critically important, important now because the world is changing really fast and people are constantly like this job is now obsolete and now I have to pivot or this isn't working. And so to have this basis of a self drive is important. Even more so I think in this day and age than it ever has been with AI shifting jobs. And you're going to have to be on your toes a little bit more. So you talk about how between the two of you, you have the 65 years of combined experience and one of the biggest things that you talk about is that kids are lacking a sense of control. And so this is something we talk a lot about on this show is that so much of childhood has become adult directed. So it's adult directed. The school day has gotten longer, recess has gotten shorter and extracurricular activities have expounded as well as homework and studying for standardized tests and things like that. Can you talk about how that becomes a disadvantage to a child when they don't have the opportunity to control some of the parts of their lives?
- [07:21]
Dr. William Stixrud
What got Ned and I to focus so strongly on a sense of control is two things. Number one, it turns out that a low sense of control is the most stressful thing you experience. And all the mental health problems that young people have and that adults have as well, they're all stress related problems. We figured that if low sense of control is the most stressful thing you experience, and if all mental health disorders are stress related, this must be a really big deal. And also every place we look to try to understand how did kids become self motivated? How did they develop that internal drive? Every arrow pointed in the direction of a sense of control or autonomy. For kids to be self motivated, they have to have the sense that this is their life. And we've been lecturing lately about the idea that the brain craves a sense of control because this is basic biological drive that you see from infancy through elderly people. And so when we deprive kids of this basic drive for independence, for autonomy, for saying that I can handle things, I can accomplish things on my own, that we do them at great disservice.
- [08:26]
Ned Johnson
And I'll add to that, people probably know, but I'll make the point about extrinsic motivation as opposed to intrinsic motivation. So you know, grades, bribes, you know, carrots, you know, and I'll take away your cell phone on the stick side side of things. Why is taking away a cell phone the natural punishment for everything anyway? We have that as opposed to that inner drive, that healthy intrinsic motivation that Bill talked about. And here's the cool thing to know, that dysregulated or disordered intrinsic motivation or low levels of intrinsic motivation is a trans diagnostic facet of psychiatric symptomology. Meaning that if you have, if you don't have good intrinsic motivation, it's going to show up in anxiety, in depression, in schizophren, in substance use disorders, in eating disorders. And so not just good for their inner drive, but good for their mental health. So we really want it because some people say, well, I don't care. I don't care what he thinks. He has to get the work done. Well, okay, it comes at a really high cost.
- [09:28]
Dr. William Stixrud
And Ginny, we're with you. I mean, in terms of the thousand hours, we recently heard, you know, Peter Gray, the. We recently heard Peter give a lecture and, you know, the theme is kids need more play and less school.
- [09:44]
Ned Johnson
Full stop.
- [09:45]
Dr. William Stixrud
Yeah. Kindergarten is now like the worst first grades used to be in terms of mainly academics, even though kids have this. The way young mammals, including humans, learn to become adults is through playing. And so I think that if kids can sleep more and play more, I think the whole. The landscape would change dramatically, because both those things dramatically increase your sense of control.
- [10:08]
Jenny Urich
Yes. I want to read what you wrote. Increasing a sense of control is one of the most powerful ways of treating mental health problems in children, teens and adults. Now you have this thing, Bill and Ned, that really explains why we don't do it too much. So you have this question, why don't parents operate in ways that encourage their child's autonomy? And he wrote, the reason is because the more we sit on our hands and zip our lips and support a child's autonomy, the less control we have. And so we start to experience some stress. And there's this quote I love by a man named John Holt, and he said, living is learning. And when kids are living fully and happily and energetically, they are learning a lot, even if we don't always know what it is. And so that's a situation where you're like, okay, are we okay to have happy, energetic kids that are learning a lot, but also not know what they're learning? I mean, that is the trade off. So someone is losing control. It's either the child or the parent. And so how do we become more comfortable with passing that baton off to our kids?
- [11:16]
Dr. William Stixrud
You know, my first response is part of it. I happened to mention in a lecture I gave a few years ago, probably the most elite high school in Washington, D.C. you know, the D.C. area. And after the lecture, this woman came up to me and said, I'm a psychotherapist here at the Meninger Foundations in Houston, this really good mental health facility. She said, we know this school really well because so many of the graduates get into the top colleges in the country. But as soon as they get a B, as soon as they realize that everybody else here is as smart as me, they start to crumble. Very insecure. They reach out to a girl. The girl ghosts them. They take a medical. Medical leap of absence. They come here for therapy. And she said, they don't have enough experience running their own lives, making their decisions, setting their own priorities, learning from their mistakes, solving their own problems. And we think we want kids to be able to run their own life before they leave home. And I think for some parents who get the idea that always doing well isn't the goal. The goal is helping them learn who's responsible for what. They're responsible for their own life and supporting them in developing the person they want to become.
- [12:19]
Ned Johnson
And part of it is that, you know, your audience is full of loving moms. I mean, probably other dads too, but mostly loving moms. And it's really wired into parents, really all mammals, to want to protect their children and to soothe them and to see them thrive. But the challenge is we have a tendency to want to protect them from any discomfort because when they're discomfited, it's hard for us. And so we're trying to, we think we make this all better. But the challenge is it's a short term win, but it could be long term detriment. I was just doing a podcast earlier today and thinking about, can you think about any, any sports movie or any, you know, animated Disney Pixar movie where the heroine or hero doesn't face some kind of big failure, big disappointment, big setback, big scare, big loss, before they go on to become the person that they are? And it's true. Not just in movies, but it's in true in neuroscience. One of the people we lean on most is a guy named Steve May, who did all this work on what's known as learned helplessness. And after 50 years of research, came out with a paper called Learned helplessness at 50. Kind of what we got right and what we got wrong. And he said what we got wrong was it was not that these animals learned to be helpless, but rather that they failed to ever learn a sense of control. And the way that you learned a sense of control is have some kind of adverse experience where you have a sense of control, you cope with it. There's something that you get to do, some feel some agency that makes a bad situation a little bit less bad. Doesn't mean it's perfect, doesn't mean it's sterling. You're still a little dusty and bruised and bloody maybe, but we said, oh my gosh, I did something there. The problem is that as parents, when we see our kids, we naturally want to rush in and solve things for them and protect them, which, look, I'm a dad, I get, we're both dads, we get this. But when a kid is a problem maker and we're the problem solver, we deprive them of the experience of having something hard and make it be good enough. Good enough. Not great, but good enough. And that's the thing that wires brains to Know that I can be a problem solver in my own life. And before it, I still want mom and dad, but I don't need mom and dad because a kid who feels like things are only okay, or I can only solve things with my mom jumping in every time again and again to save things, is really a child who, as Bill said before, really isn't prepared to run their own life. And our job as parents is not for them to never be unhappy or to never experience distress, but for us to help them be ready to run their own life, including being able to bounce back from mistakes and tolerate their own distress.
- [15:02]
Jenny Urich
Yeah, this is huge. And you wrote that this is a cultural issue. In the culture we live in, parents are expected to control their kids. And you feel this like, if, you know, you go to the grocery store and your kid is having a meltdown, like, people expect that you can control them. And the problem with the expectation.
- [15:19]
Ned Johnson
Right.
- [15:19]
Jenny Urich
Is you can't make people to do things out of their will. And also that fear, there's a lot of fear. Like, things are changing so, so quickly and we don't know what to do. And so we're bombarded by these messages that stoke fear. And the best way that most of us know how to combat fear is to seize control. And we're also afraid of how we're going to be perceived as parents. So there's a lot of cultural things swimming around here, which is why a book like this and the workbook portion is really cool, because it makes you think, like, the questions will be like, well, how do you feel? Like, when, you know, how do you feel when you're controlled? Or, you know, how have you related to these different adults in your life? It really makes you think about being empathetic to the plight of a child whose day is completely adult directed or all of these different situations.
- [16:04]
Ned Johnson
If I can jump in really quickly, I really appreciate that point. And part of the reflections in the exercises is we really wanted to, as best we could in a workbook, feel like we're talking with parents, talking with moms about this. Because reflections will think of a time when you, you know, fill in the blank, when you felt like someone was telling you what to do. How did that feel for you? When someone voiced confidence in your ability to handle something, how did that make you feel? Because in the same way that we want parents to be empathetic with their kids, we are really empathetic towards parents because we know being a parent is not easy. And to your point about culture, yeah, they're all of these, you know, a good mom, you know, always makes sure her kid is dressed appropriate, always make sure he gets his homework done, always make sure that he's kind to other people. Always make sure, you know, that his room is tidy. Always make sure and all these things. And if you don't, if these, if these things are not who your kid currently is, that you're some kind of a bad parent. Holy cow. Of course you then want to make sure that on paper it looks like. And we fall back into that, those because of those scripts that are in our heads and often in kind of almost self shaming ways, we get very anxious. One, we don't want that. And we still remain worried about our kids and we feel this drive to again, being controlling. Because if I'm not controlling my kid, I'm a bad mom. Oh man, that's a hard place to be.
- [17:21]
Jenny Urich
Yeah.
- [17:22]
Dr. William Stixrud
Especially when, if you can't make somebody do something against their will, you really aren't supposed to be able to do. Couldn't theoretically be your responsibility as a parent to always control your kid because you really can't make them do anything. If you've got a three year old who's refusing to get in the car to go see grandma, you can pick him up and put him in the car. But they aren't doing it.
- [17:42]
Ned Johnson
You're doing it.
- [17:44]
Dr. William Stixrud
I learned this when I was doing my internship at the Children's Hospital in Boston and Barry Brazelton to that time was the top pediatrician in the world. And even Barry Brazelton couldn't get these newborn infants with failure to thrive. You couldn't make them eat. United from the time that they're very little, you can't make them eat, you can't make them sleep. And when you give up the idea, part of what we encourage parents to do is kind of give up the idea that you're supposed to be able to control, you're supposed to be able to kind of manage their life at all times. Not only is it something that's impossible, you're asking of yourself the impossible, but it's also something, as we were saying earlier, that you deprive your kid of being able to stimulate the brain in a way that develops the confidence that I can handle my life. Because the way you develop that confidence is by handling your life with support is necessary. You know, it's not like kids are supposed to handle everything, but when a kid has a problem with another kid and he works it out, what happens when you're solving a Problem is your prefrontal cortex and your brain activates. And whenever the prefrontal cortex activates, it dampens down the stress response and you go into what we call coping mode as opposed to freaking out or avoiding. You cope with stuff. And this idea of focusing on developing kids sense of control, it's so beautiful. From a motivational development work on developing themselves is what's important to them, but also from just this mental health piece and also for parents, once you kind of get the hang of this, it's so much easier.
- [19:11]
Ned Johnson
Yes, it is.
- [19:12]
Dr. William Stixrud
Our motto is we encourage parents to trust your kid more and worry about them less and it's doable. But we wrote this workbook because it's not easy.
- [19:25]
Jenny Urich
And that's what we found, you know, with getting our kids outside, you're entrusting to them a large portion of their time. And what you see over time is that they grow. They grow. You didn't direct it, you didn't tell them what to do, but they have grown. And I love this concept, needing reminders that it's safe to trust our kids. It's good to trust our kids. And this is what you wrote. We need practice doing it. And of course that makes sense. So what a good reminder. You're going to be in a world of hurt if the first time you practice trusting your kids is when they leave for college. That's not going to go well for anybody. So you have to have this childhood filled with these small moments that add up into a situation where you can trust your children.
- [20:06]
Annie F. Downs
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- [21:45]
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- [22:57]
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- [23:07]
Dr. William Stixrud
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- [23:12]
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- [23:26]
Jenny Urich
So this workbook the seven Principles for Raising a Self driven child comes with a cutout. I love the cutout. You can take the principles, put it right up on your fridge because we need these reminders. We're in a culture of fear and in a culture of pressure where you're supposed to control. So you've got to have those reminders right out in front of you. And I thought we could talk about just a couple of the principles and then people can pick up the workbook. It's fantastic. Would be a great thing to do with your family. I was really drawn to principle number three. And Ned, you've talked about it a little bit already, but about communicating healthy expectations. You wrote many kids suffer from what they perceive to be the pressure caused by extremely high parental expectations. Excessive pressure to excel is now believed to be the fourth leading cause of adolescent wellness behind only poverty, trauma and discrimination. So can we talk about that change? Like this expectation to always have to do your best and you got to get into this good college and how that's just kind of off?
- [24:28]
Ned Johnson
Yeah, I mean, so in this chapter we talk about healthy expectations versus toxic expectations. And healthy expectations are simply beliefs and language that are rooted in Ginny. I have every confidence that if this is something you decide matters to you, that you can really do well in this. You know, I've seen the kind of drive you have. I know you got a clever mind, you're good at solving problems. And if you determine this is something you want to do well, I'm 100% confident that you can do well in this where toxic ones are. I know that you have the brain for math, and I expect that you get this, that your level of performance is not acceptable. You are squandering your potential and you should be at. And so it's really this demand that I'm withholding my approval of you unless you achieve at a level that I think you can achieve at. And it's so injurious because of course you feel a low sense of control. Is that my best? I'll let you know when you've done your best. I mean, give me a break, right? I mean, among other things, we know that the first chapter in this book is about connection. These things all kind of interweave. And that the single strongest protective factor against the effects of stress on developing brains is a close connection that a kid has with a parent and caregiver, another trusted adult. And when we have these toxic, this sort of relentless pressure to meet your potential, to always do your best, it really, it weakens the relationship and we Know that more than wealth or education of parents or even the neighborhood that you live in, that close connection is the thing. You're better off living in a war zone with a highly nurturing, connected parent than you are living in a frigging mansion with parents who are this relentless pressure to excel. There's also, you know, what's called the Rosenthal effect, where in this school they took randomly selected teachers, randomly selected students, but told the teachers, hey, Bill and Ginny, next year you're going to teach the honors math class. We've looked at all the data. You may be surprised to know this, but it turns out you are the most effective teachers in moving kids academic performance. Just, you know, in case you know this. So what we want to do is give you the kids who show the most academic promise. We've looked at all their stuff. They may not have the best grades yet, but these are among the best learners in the whole darn school. And so it wasn't you need to go get A's. It's just I have confidence that you're an excellent educator. And I want you to know these are kids who have excellent potential. And everybody's performance rose. They rose to the expectation. And only at the end of the year did they say, I gotta tell you, Jenny, we pulled your name out of a hat, right? And so these positive expectations are a really big deal. It's just that they can't be toxic. Where my approval of you, my love for you, is conditioned on your trying hard enough or you're working hard enough.
- [27:27]
Dr. William Stixrud
I was so struck when we were working on this chapter in our second book, what do you say on expectations? But I was reading the guy who's done the most research on parental expectations, which are really powerful in the relationship to academic achievement. But he said the most powerful ones are the ones that are communicated through this kind of quiet sense of confidence. Kind of I believe in you versus that you must, you must. You saying that, insist that you must do this. As Ned said, not only it's coercive, so it undermines the sense of control, but also it gives the kid the idea, I know better than you do what's right for you. And certainly with a two year old, that's usually right. But as kids get older, we want to be really careful about saying, I always know best what's right for you. Because I don't want a kid leaving home who's still trusting my judgment. I want to leave home trusting their own judgment in a sense of what's right for them. Because Ultimately, we think that kids maximize their potential not by living up to other people's expectations all the time, but by creating a life that they're happy with, the life that they want.
- [28:31]
Ned Johnson
One quick hack. I'll add to that. Sometimes parents have fallen into. I mean, I have a student I was just working with, and the first time meeting, and this kid, he's got some learning disabilities. He's got some adhd. He's really not doing great in school, in school, but school's hard for him. And his mom said, you know, sitting right here, I know if he really put his mind to this, I know he could get A's in this class. I know he could do it. And she's trying to voice confidence, but he was receiving this in a way that was really different. And I walked them out. I said respectfully, gently, you know, he may be hearing this as, the only reason you're not getting A's is you don't have the work ethic, you don't have the character. You're not putting the time in. And so I said. I said, we may want to shift that language a little bit with him. So I took him to the waiting room, sat down with him, and I said, so, you know, I said, I see it a little bit differently than your mom and dad, but I think I knew where they're coming from. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience at school? And he said, in ninth grade, I lock myself in my room for three and a half hours every single night. I have never worked harder in my life, and I got straight Cs. So he really doesn't have the expectation that working harder is going to get to a better place. And so you can imagine how painful that is. And they've gotten into this dance where they say, you can, and he thinks I can't. One trick or one hack that I like is kind of the top of the stairs phenomenon, where your kids at the top of the stairs. I always do this whenever I talked on the phone to anybody and my kids were in the house. I was very thoughtful about the language that I use. And I could say things like, katie, yeah, things are a little bumpy for Katie right now. But she is working hard. And I am totally convinced. I'm totally convinced that she's on a path and she's gonna. She's gonna figure this stuff out because she's really smart, and I'm not worried about her. And just that, because I never knew when she was gonna listen, as opposed to, we so often Try to say things like that to kids, and they bat it away and think, yeah, but you're just saying that because you're mom, my dad. If you say that when it's on the phone and they don't think that, you know, that they're listening, it has a different credibility.
- [30:44]
Jenny Urich
You know, I love these parts in this one about communicating healthy expectations because, you know, you talked about, like, sort of like these fears that parents have. I almost feel like they come from their own regrets, which is like, oh, they're going to lose their potential. And you think about your own life, and you're like, oh, if only I would have stuck with my tuba lessons. You know, whatever the situation is, I.
- [31:05]
Ned Johnson
Can be the most annoying neighbor ever.
- [31:07]
Jenny Urich
Yeah, right. Of our own regrets. But then you're like, well, we live in this competitive world, you know, so we're coming from our own fears and our own regrets. But you throw this one out here that I've thought about a lot where you say, you know, we're expecting our kids to do their best, but you're like, well, how often do we do our best? I hardly ever do my best. I just do enough.
- [31:27]
Ned Johnson
You're doing great right now. For what it's worth, you know, I'm.
- [31:30]
Jenny Urich
Like, I wish I would have had six hours to take notes, and I had 90 minutes. And so that's not my best. It's what I had, and it's enough. And so I think that we have to be honest where you write in all things, do you always do your best, or do you pick and choose based off of all the constraints in life? And you're constantly adjusting, it's constantly in flux as to what you can give to a certain thing so that you can live your life. And I felt that all of these questions, like, in all of these statements, like, it's, well, it's important to me that my kids do their best. Really, like, it's important to me that my kids know how to adjust because life has constraints.
- [32:09]
Ned Johnson
I love the way you said that.
- [32:11]
Dr. William Stixrud
I do, too. Just the. Just the message, too, that I approve of you, I love you, as long as you do your best. That's all you. I don't care about your grades. Just do your best. Well, it's still saying, I, I don't approve of you. I mean, I can't be proud of you unless you're always doing your best. It just seems to be that it's. It's not a way to really encourage kids to do their best in a healthy way.
- [32:33]
Ned Johnson
And I love you're emphasizing the point about picking and choosing because I mean, decisions are really complicated, right. If you really think about this, right. Do I want to study? Do I not want to study? If I study more on this, I have less time on that. If I study more and it doesn't go well, will I just be disappointed? I could study more, but I really would like more sleep. But Ginny reached out to me early and I really want to spend some time because I know she's really upset about, you know, that's something that friend of her, right. There are 168 hours in the week for all of us, right? And you're constantly trying to assess, should I spend that time exercise, Should I spend that talking to my dad? Should I walk the dog? Should I, you know, endless. And to Bill's point, we really don't want to give young kids or any person a message that I'm more of an expert on your life than you are. I mean, holy cow. In part because when kids make choices, any of us make decisions, we want them to own it. We want them to own it. And if things don't go well, we want them to own that too, because again, that's how they go that shoot, darn it. And if they feel like it's a decision they own, they're committed to working twice as hard to make the thing work because they don't want to hear from anybody. Well, I told you so. It's a bad idea. We really, again, do that at our peril. To your point, if they have no experience making these choices before they head off to university with hope streams and suitcase full of our money, let's let them blow things up at a much younger age with much, with much lower price tags involved.
- [34:03]
Jenny Urich
And this one goes in line with, I want to talk about two others of the principles. This one really weaves together with the next one, which is about an accurate model of reality. So we're talking about expectations. It really ties in with what does that really look like, the expectations. And I want to read this. I thought this was so good. Most of the kids we've spoken to in recent years, and many of their parents seem to believe that the most important outcome of their entire childhood in adolescence is where they go to college. Most also believe that the road to success is extremely narrow, that there are a very limited number of career options, that kids who aren't top students have no chance at success, that very few second chances are available, and that prestige and money inevitably lead to happiness. This is an inaccurate model of reality and the expectations are tied in with this because we're just trying to go this one narrow path and this is causing a lot of unhappiness.
- [34:59]
Dr. William Stixrud
Yeah, well, I, I was so I, I grew up in Seattle, Washington and I'm older than, I'm a grandparent and I don't have little kids. I have grandkids living with us for the next couple months. It was just really fun. But I moved from the west coast to the east Coast. It did Washington, D.C. in 1984. And I had a parent say to me, I'll only pay for college if it's Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Brown. And I didn't know anybody in the west coast that thought like that. I thought, this is delusional. Most successful people don't go to those colleges. And it turns out that the percentage of college students that are at the top 12 colleges in the country is 0.8. You know, it's an infinitesimal percentage of people who actually get a college degree create successful lives. So many of the kids we see now, they're building their college narrative, but by the time that they're seven or eight years old, they feel the pressure. Ned, tell them about the students you talked to at BCC who basically said everything we do.
- [35:54]
Ned Johnson
Oh yeah, so there's a really great public high school right where we are. And we were actually, I was talking with them all about Jonathan Haidt's book. We like his work, we respected. I would gently say I'm even more work, even more than worrying about a play based childhood being replaced by a phone based childhood that decades before that we replaced a play based childhood with a performance based childhood. And then that gets everybody involved in the pressure, right? You know, parents and grandparents and cousins and on and on, teachers, everybody. And so when I was talking to these kids about it, one of the girl raised her hand and she said, all of our waking thoughts are filtered through the lens of how am I spending my time? And what would a college admissions person think about how I'm spending my time? And I thought, talk about an externalized locus of control. Is this my best, Is this a smart call? Should I be doing this? I mean, holy cow. Talking about, you know, Monday morning quarterback in her backseat driving about every waking moment of how she spends her time. We don't want young developing brains to be constantly bathed, stewing in toxic stress hormones. It's terrible for developing brains. You know, my favorite, favorite T shirts says the 90s. All of those experiences, no photographic evidence, right? And that's what we want children to have, the experience. You go outside and you play and nobody's taking us. I mean, it's because you're getting dirty, you're making messes, you're a mess. The things a mess were fantastic. And you go back and you do it the next day. But I mean, yeah.
- [37:37]
Jenny Urich
Tom Stafford has a quote that says because a child grows up, we think the purpose of a childhood is to grow up. But he says, but the purpose of being a child is to be a child. I mean, I said that wrong. I butchered it. But it's something like that, right? The purpose is not just for college admission. And I think this is a huge part. Bill, what were you going to say about it?
- [38:00]
Dr. William Stixrud
I will say that I tested a girl a few years ago and I asked her as part of my interview, are there things you worry about? She said, I worry about my grades because I know it's going to affect my college. And I think, oh my gosh, she's in second grade. It got better because she said that I want to go to a good college like American University because they have an Elevation Burger and I love their fries. So. But we are seeing so many even older elementary, a lot of middle school kids who think I am my grades.
- [38:30]
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- [39:55]
Jenny Urich
Edu.
- [39:57]
Dr. William Stixrud
I tested two high school boys this past May who'd gotten into very elite colleges. I asked them, are there times when you feel happy, really happy? And both boys said, I felt happy the day I got into college. That lasted one day. And I work with so many underachievers. And the first thing I tell them is, you can flunk every single one of your high school classes. And if you decide that was a bad idea, I want to get an education. You can go to community college for 30 credits, and then you can apply to almost all the colleges in this country. They don't want to see your high school transcript. You haven't screwed up your whole life. And what it does, it motivates them. Every time I say that to a kid, sometimes parents say, don't, don't tell my kid that. But when I tell them that, I always do, it motivates. Because then I say, I want you to work hard. I want you to develop yourself. Because I think at some point school is going to become more important. And I tell them, with the exception of video games, if you work hard to get better and better at anything that's important to you, I'm not worried about you because I know that you're sculpting a brain that knows that brain state of high focus, high energy, high motivation, high determination, and low stress. And that's the brain state we want to be in most of the time. And you're sculpting that in your own brain. And I'm pretty sure that once school becomes more important to you, you're going to be able to turn on those same brain systems and go pedal to the metal.
- [41:14]
Ned Johnson
And the thing about. And bringing it back to the play, and especially outdoor play, Jenny, is that what we think of as play is kids at young age doing exactly those things, working, really? I mean, I can't tell you how many forts my twin brother and I built built out of logs out in the woods. I mean, endless, you know, and. And then eventually, you know, the nature would take them out and we'd start all over again, and we'd spend hours and hours and hours doing it. And so it's. It's good for everything. And, you know, the Tom Stoppard quote reminds me of, do you know Jonathan Kozel, the great educator, wrote Savage Inequalities a bunch. And this is probably my favorite quote and most heartbreaking one. And I've just pulled this up. So childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies, but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself. Yeah, and when we sit there and watch children just being joyful playing, I mean, is there anything better and more enjoyable than watching children play?
- [42:20]
Dr. William Stixrud
My grandchildren who are living with us in the next couple of months here, they're 11, 9 and 6 and they didn't have any exposure to electronics really until at least five. They'd watch a movie or something. All they do is play. There's nothing in the backyard. They got in the backyard. They're out there for three hours just making up games and stuff. This is what young mammals do. They come home, the dentist, they play Dennis. That was a way to work it through. And interestingly, when we were writing this Self Driven Child, one of the last articles I read was by Peter, where I first learned about Peter Gray, one of the country's experts on play, the evolutionary value of play. He said there's the reason that we see this spike in mental health problems and that this continual lowering of control, that more external locus of control, that lowering sense of control is that play is how you develop a sense of control when it's child led and you're figuring stuff out and you're making your own decisions, you're setting your own priorities, you're solving your own problems, problems. That's what helps develop that sense of control. We put kids in kindergarten and we make them do read. Think that reading and writing at that age is more important than playing. We're wrong headed. Bless your heart Ginny, for doing what you're doing.
- [43:34]
Jenny Urich
The purpose of a child is to be a child. Dr. Peter Gray says kids are biologically designed to self educate. So this is the self drive, this is what you're talking about. When your kids go out in the yard and they, your grandkids, your kids, they go out in the yard and they play with nothing but what's there. They are self motivated, they are driving themselves and it's so important for their long term life. I want to read a couple more things from this section about teaching an accurate model of reality. Parents are often inclined to see the path to a good life as a narrow road with steep drop offs on either side. Starting with the right elementary school, then the right high school, the right college. You have to be in travel, soccer, but you write prestigious colleges. Prestigious, prestigious, whatever, potato, potato. They don't guarantee happiness. And a poor report card does not lead to a subpar life. And I loved how you brought up the second chances the community college. There's not just one chance. A high status education does not guarantee happiness, even for people in high status professions. If parents say, as most do, that what they want most for their kids is for them to be happy, then parents have to understand where does the happiness come from. And they have to teach that to their kids and they have to model it. Oh, this is such a good book.
- [44:48]
Ned Johnson
Thank you for that, Bill. Do you want to tell the Marvel origin story? It's probably not marvel. It's kind of dark how we got to that. The kids in Houston, a lot of stuff going on. Dallas, Houston, Dallas. We're not picking on Texas, I swear to heck.
- [45:02]
Dr. William Stixrud
I gave a lecture to parents in the evening and met with school faculty in the morning and at lunchtime. This is an independent school in Houston, K through 12. I had lunch with the high school student leaders, the student government kids, and I asked them, how many of you want to be happy as adults? And they all kind of sheepishly raise their head, Duh, you know, they raise their hand. I said, what do you understand it takes to be happy as an adult? And this one kid said, I think I speak for the rest of us, that if we get into a good enough college, everything is set. And I literally not, not hard, but I banged my head against the water. How could they be so wrong? Did they not know about the mental health crisis on college campuses? They don't know that Lori Santos started her program teaching the course on happiness and well being at Yale because she's so struck by how miserable the undergraduates at Yale are, even though they got into Yale. So that's why we looked at what are the models, because we have positive psychology analysis for the last 25 years that studies happy people, people who find meaning in their life. People have high level of well being. What do we know about those people? And that's where we introduced Martin Seligman, who founded the whole field of psych positive psychology. His model of perma, the positive emotion, the deep engagement, the relationships, the meaning and the accomplishment. The perma and the accomplishment is part of it, but it's like 10, 20%. It's not the whole, it's not the majority, it's not even close to the majority. The most important thing Long term happiness is your relationships. And certainly you're born with a certain amount of positive emotion. There's some genetic constraints, but also there's a ton of things you can do. I mean, Ned and I are both, we exercise, we try to get enough sleep, we both meditate regularly. That really has a positive effect on our emotions. And we engage in very meaningful work. And I think certainly much more than accomplishment is these other things. And kids don't know that. We see parents saying, well, I don't know why you're spending so much time with me. With your friends. They are going to get you into college.
- [47:04]
Jenny Urich
You know, you know, that's backwards. It's backwards.
- [47:09]
Dr. William Stixrud
It is, yeah.
- [47:10]
Jenny Urich
Where do you learn how to negotiate and to. And to be a friend and to not be bossy? I mean, we've, I talked about that with my husband the other day. No one likes someone who's bossy, you know, as a kid, but as an adult, people don't want to be bossed around. Well, where do you learn that kind of stuff? You learn it when you're seven years old and you're playing with your nine year old neighbor and you tell them what to do and they quit playing. I mean, that's where you learn it.
- [47:32]
Dr. William Stixrud
Yeah.
- [47:33]
Ned Johnson
Take your ball. We're out of here. Yeah. And I mean, what was the Pew foundation that came out that 30% of 18 to 25 year olds had no friends? And we know that loneliness is as bad for health as smoking 14 cigarettes a day. And the biological drive of adolescents is to connect with people outside of your family and to develop independence. Yet we take school and say, ginny, stop talking to Bill. Focus on the learning. Right. So we've wiped out the connection. And I understand the teachers have, Jenna, they got to get through. But we crowd out space for connection and we thwart their autonomy. And then we wonder why we have so many mental health challenges in young people.
- [48:15]
Jenny Urich
Yes. And why they're not happy.
- [48:17]
Ned Johnson
Right. And knowing that the typical kid, at least in public schools, will forget within two months 90% of what they've been taught, how could that learning be more important if you're going to forget it anyway? More important than developing connection and connection skills and drive for independence.
- [48:32]
Jenny Urich
You know I'm right there with you.
- [48:33]
Ned Johnson
Yep.
- [48:34]
Jenny Urich
I was at a school board meeting just at the end of last, last year because they had. The kids were getting 20 minutes, one 20 minute recess in the afternoon starting at age 4, and they're like, well, what, what is that? What is that? The research is so Clear. And so many people are talking about that in jail.
- [48:51]
Ned Johnson
We call that yard time.
- [48:53]
Jenny Urich
Oh, gosh. Okay. All right, let's hit one more because we're going to run out of time. This book is fantastic and I really do love the fact that it's in workbook form because it's interactive and it causes you to think critically about the decisions that you're making. So seven principles. We'll have talked about a couple of them here. There's more that you can learn from this workbook and there's other books as well. But Principle 7 is, and I love the phraseology, encourage radical downtime. Radical downtime. Talk to us about that.
- [49:24]
Dr. William Stixrud
I read a book when I was in graduate school. It was called the causes of Increased nervousness in Americans. It was written in 1881 by physician in 1881. And the hypothesized causes were the railroad, Western Union, the pocket watch, things that increased the pace of life and made us more aware of the small increments of time. And you think about that on steroids now and how fast life goes, how little because we have so many time saving devices makes things easier, we just do more of it. And so because everybody is so pressured, so busy, we need more radical downtime than gardening. Where the brain is, is not do observably not doing anything. But actually the three things that we include in this, this category of radical downtime are sleep, which is the most radical of all and just unbelievably important for a kid's brain, and meditation and just having time to be in your own head. Because we know that mind wandering is hugely associated with creativity, with problem solving. And young people need to spend enough time in their own heads reflecting on their experience and thinking who they want to be in order to develop a sense of empathy and a sense of who they are as people. So we're trying to build in make sleep the highest priority for kids working with schools. Just how do we make sleep the highest priority?
- [50:51]
Ned Johnson
And the brain science on this reflection is what's called the default mode networks, as Bill mentioned, where you develop empathy and a coherent sense of identity. Kind of automatically autobiographic planning where you think about your past, you project yourself in the future. And one of the other places this pops up and this is in the self driven child. And you will love this, Jenny, is that time outside Shinrin Yoku forest bathing. Just seeing pictures of trees allows the brain to go off to this default mode network to engage. And we reflect and it's just unbelievably good for brains. I was just making a note, thinking of all these smaller and smaller units of Pay attention, Pay attention, Pay attention, Pay attention. And all those things that are constantly trying to get us to pay attention are really robbing our attention. And if we're going to develop healthy nervous systems and healthy children, we need time to reflect on ourselves in an unrushed, unstressed, natural way. And one of the places that we get that is when we spend time un unrushed in natural spaces. So I mean the brain science behind where your headspace is and your listeners is, I mean it's 100%. If they haven't read that the chapter of radical Digital Downtime in the self driven child goes deep on the kind of nerdy science of this. But even if they don't look up the science on this, where your instincts lead, you are 100% right.
- [52:13]
Jenny Urich
I love the phrase like may it be a year of radical downtime. You wrote it's not easy for a family to be less scheduled. Parents are so worried about spending time counterproductively that they proactively fill it all up. But we don't know how to be anymore without stimulation. And we should have enough mental downtime to offset mind racing, mind scattering and mind numbing effects that technology has on the brain. This is a wonderful, wonderful workbook. The seven principles for raising a self driven child. You can start there by Dr. William Sticks Rudd and Ned Johnson. Then you can go off into the self driven child. What do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance and a happy home. What an honor to spend this time with the both of you. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [53:07]
Ned Johnson
Oh, I just. It's hard for me to nail down to one. My grandparents had lived in rural New York and had had 26 acres and a pond that they had dredged. And my brother and I spent years, I mean I don't know how many hours every summer up to our knees or our waists, you know, catching turtles, catching frogs, fishing, pulling the leeches off of our toes. I mean endless, endless. And, and my, my grandparents to their everlasting lasting credit. Or maybe they were just too busy doing other things would allow us to go off there. Probably starting age 5 now they did have a Newfoundland. If you don't. Newfoundland is this huge black dog. They were bred initially to save people who fell off of ships because no one could swim back, whatever. And they're very powerful swimmers. But they're also very attentive to people. And so Panda and would fall sword wherever we went. And if we got lost, we just follow her back. And so we spent, you know, we spent, you know, last child in the woods, right. You know, we spent all of our time just screwing around, doing God knows what, catching frogs, building forts, you know, and that was, that was summer and radical.
- [54:21]
Jenny Urich
It was pretty good radical downtime with Panda, you know, like, like what a different time of parenting. Dr. Peter Gray talks about how by the time he was four, he was walking to the store to get cigarettes for his grandma because it was more appropriate for a four year old to walk and get cigarettes than it was for a woman to walk and get cigarettes. So by the time he was four, like, things were different. They were like, look, you know, if you got the dog, you're fine. What a thing. Radical downtime. That's incredible.
- [54:48]
Ned Johnson
And the thing about that, the fear based thinking, you know, there's a, someone who we follow, whose work we follow a lot said you cannot have a green forest without green trees. And we cannot have a peaceful world or a courageous world without peaceful people or without courageous people. And so if we want to have a more peaceful, just verdant, you know, but also courageous world, we cannot deprive children of the opportunity to feel brave. And you don't feel a little bit brave without feeling a little bit afraid from time to time. So yeah, let kids go off and you know, send Panda out there. We're going to have a whole summer camp based on this and your child. That'll be great on a brochure.
- [55:29]
Jenny Urich
The counselors are dogs, right? How about you, Bill?
- [55:33]
Dr. William Stixrud
I'll just say that I just have these wonderful memories. I'm going back 70 years now, you know, almost where playing in summer nights of playing until just it was dark. It's dark. And our parents would make us come in and we just make up various games and. And as I got older it turned into the playing wiffle ball or doing some kind of sporting things. But until it got so dark that we couldn't play anymore. And as our parents we didn't. Parents didn't know where we were, whose house we were at, what we were doing. We generally came home on time. But I just remember that the complete freedom that the complete joy of being with other kids doing stuff that we just wanted to do without any adults until it was too dark to do.
- [56:23]
Jenny Urich
My book is called until the Streetlights Come on.
- [56:25]
Dr. William Stixrud
Yeah, beautiful.
- [56:26]
Jenny Urich
And it's about that, it's about how there was, you know, this play that allowed for autonomy and freedom and resiliency and grit and relationship building and the passing of the baton of control from parent to child. This has been such an honor. I so appreciate your time. Thank you for this wonderful workbook. It will be out by the time this podcast goes live. People can pick it up, do it as a family, do it with friends. Thank you, Bill and Ned, for being here.
- [56:49]
Dr. William Stixrud
Can I tell you one thing, Jenny?
- [56:50]
Jenny Urich
Yeah.
- [56:50]
Dr. William Stixrud
We've done dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of podcasts, if not hundred, and I think you're probably the youngest interviewer that we've ever had. I think this is one of the best podcasts we've ever done. You prepare. You're so thoughtful. You've got such a great sense of humor.
- [57:06]
Ned Johnson
Here, here.
- [57:06]
Dr. William Stixrud
You're fantastic.
- [57:08]
Jenny Urich
Well, thank you. That makes me teary. I really, really appreciate you saying that. I enjoy it immensely and it is such an honor to get a chance to talk with experts in their field. And I really can hardly even believe that I get to do it. So thank you for that and thank you so much for being here.
- [57:24]
Ned Johnson
Thanks a bunch.
- [57:25]
Dr. William Stixrud
Bye.
- [57:28]
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- [58:30]
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Christy Wright
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