Curious Neuron Podcast
Do you have frequent emotional outbursts, often feel triggered by your child's behaviour and struggle to teach your child how to cope with their emotions? Neuroscientst, Dr. Cindy Hovington can help you understand your triggers, recognize and break your emotional patterns and model healthy emotional coping skills for your child.
Curious Neuron is an internationally recognized emotional well-being resource for parents with their evidence-based educational content being consumed in over 70 countries! Dr. Hovington is a leading thought expert in emotion regulation and parental well-being as well as an international speaker on well-being and emotional development in children.
As a mom of 3 with a doctorate degree in neuroscience (specializing in mental health and emotional well-being), Dr. Hovington understands the struggles of parenting and how this can often make parents to feel overwhelmed and stressed. The goal of this podcast is to help parents gain awareness of their emotional triggers, understand how their past influences behavioural patterns they can stuck in and help them learn how to model healthy emotional coping skills for their children. Cindy is also the Director of The Reflective Parent Club, a community of parents that implement the knowledge they learn from Curious Neuron to build emotional resilience and reflective skills to help reduce their stress and build a stronger relationship with their family.
Join us every Monday for conversations with leading researchers and best selling authors in parental well-being, childhood adversity, attachment, emotional development, stress management and emotion regulation skills. Past guests include Dr. Bruce Perry, Dr. Marc Brackett and best-selling authors Dr. Ramani Durvasula and Stephanie Harrison.
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Curious Neuron Podcast
How to build resilience in children by allowing them to fail with Jessica Lahey
We discuss the essential balance of parenting, focusing on how allowing children to fail fosters resilience and independence. Jessica Leahy shares insights from her book, The Gift of Failure, highlighting the dangers of over-parenting and the need to embrace failure as a part of learning.
• The significance of letting children experience failure
• Over-parenting and its effects on children's autonomy
• Emphasizing the process of learning rather than the end result
• Strategies for fostering independence in children
• The role of parental expectations and societal pressures
• Practical tips for promoting resilience and problem-solving skills
• Real-life examples demonstrating the advantages of allowing mistakes
• Resources for parents to further explore these concepts
Research on overparenting:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43076-024-00407-x?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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Watch this on YouTube:
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Follow Jessica on Instagram:
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Hello, my dear friend, welcome to another episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I'm your host. Today we have a very special guest New York Times bestselling author, jessica Leahy. If you have not heard of the book the Gift of Failure and you enjoy reading, I really encourage you to get this book. So it says the Gift of Failure how the best parents learn to Let Go so their Child Can Succeed. So this was an interesting kind of way that I got to know about this book and how I got to know about Jessica's work.
Speaker 1:But before we get into it, I do want to take a moment to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute as well as the McConnell Foundation. Both of these organizations believe in supporting our podcast. Without them, this podcast would not be possible, and so thank you. They believe in supporting our podcast. Without them, this podcast would not be possible, and so thank you. They believe in the podcast because we share science with you.
Speaker 1:My goal through cares neuron has always been to make sure that you get access to science that makes sense for parents, although there's been a lot of pivots throughout the years. First, just I would talk about your child and their development. Then we focused on parental well-being, and that's what we do now, and we do it in a way that you can understand your triggers, your emotions and what helps nurture your child's emotional well-being, and this book is one of those things the ability to fail and come back from. That builds resilience, and that is very important for a child's mental health, and that is why I wanted to talk about that today. If you have not done so yet, please take a moment to rate the podcast or leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and then send me an email. Connect with me. I'd love to hear who's listening to the podcast and where you're from. Send me an email at info at curiousneuroncom and the link is in the show notes, and I will send you a free PDF called Meltdown Mountain. And this is my way of saying thank you, because the more people that subscribe to the podcast, the more ratings and reviews we have, the more that we can keep the funding or the more important this podcast looks like. It's making a difference, because they see that there are downloads and subscriptions and shares and so on, and so that is what brings us the funding.
Speaker 1:The funding we get for the podcast is not to pay me. It's to pay the team that it takes to build a podcast. This is hard work and a lot of work, and so I'm grateful for people like Sadie, who's helping me produce and edit the podcast, and without that kind of work, this podcast would not be possible. So let's take a moment to click out and rate the podcast and review it, and I truly appreciate it when you take the time to do that.
Speaker 1:If you are new here at Curious Neuron, my goal really is to share the science with you in order to help you cope with emotions and triggers that you might have as a parent. So we do talk a lot about various aspects. It's not just about learning how to cope with emotions. There's so much that comes into that, and so I try to touch on every single topic that impacts how we cope with emotions, how we cope with stress and, more importantly, the more we can understand our child's emotional development and how we can support that, the more we can protect their future mental health and emotional wellbeing, and so that is the whole point of Curious Neuron. If you'd like to join us on Instagram, you can do so at Curious underscore Neuron. You can also visit CuriousNeuroncom we have. Now. We are redoing the website again, but we've added an added factor where you can subscribe on the website for free. Just create your login, but you can start saving articles, and so I know there are clinicians that listen to Curious Neuron and you can do this, and that way it's easier. You have your little folder on our website and it's easier for you to find your content.
Speaker 1:Speaking of clinicians, curious Neuron is launching a pilot project in March and we are taking a selected few clinics both in Canada and the United States, and I could extend this to another country If you reach out to me. The United States and I could extend this to another country If you reach out to me, we can talk about it. But what we are doing is we highly believe in the importance of supporting parents and their wellbeing and giving them high quality education, which is what we've been doing here at Curious Neuron and now with the few companies or not companies, but the clinics that we've partnered with Curious Neuron will be available in their clinic, there will be access to content that is only available to our clinic partners mini courses for new parents, mini courses about tantrums and emotional development and parenting, and these parents that are part of these clinics will get access to the Reflective Parent, which is our program three-month program that allows you to learn how to regulate emotions, getting support by me every single week and accessing our evidence-based program that we built, um. You will get $20 off, and so if you want to bring Kirsten on into your clinic, send me an email at info at kirstencom. I only want to take a few clinics in March to launch this pilot project and if it works, then we are going to go hard into all the clinics and build relationships, because there isn't enough support for parents, and if we are supporting a child and saying, hey, we are, we believe that you know your health and your mental health is important for us, then we have to think about the larger picture, which is the parent and the caregiver that is around that child and creating the environment around them, because if that parent is not well, then that child is not well, and so that is what we do here at Curious Neuron, and if you are interested in the reflective parent, you can send me an email info at curiousneuroncom or click the link below it's my calendar link and schedule a meeting with me. It's 10-15 minutes so that we can chat to see if it's actually a good fit. I've closed the doors now to the reflective parent so that I can take a moment to speak with people, because I noticed some people were coming in not joining the weekly calls, not accessing the content, and I wanted to make sure that you get a tour first and that we have a conversation to see if you have, if your challenges meet, what we have inside the Reflective Parent Program. So if you want to chat with me, click the link in the show notes for my calendar.
Speaker 1:All right, let's move on to our guest today. Jessica Leahy is the author not only of the Gift of Failure, which is a New York Times bestseller, but also of the Addiction Inoculation, which I will definitely be bringing her back in for this. She is an amazing, amazing author, and what I loved about her? Well, actually, let me start with the story. So I gave a talk in Abu Dhabi. Last was it October, at the end of October, that's it In October 2024, I was invited to give a talk in Abu Dhabi. They have the early childhood authority, so they're doing really amazing work over there, and so I was invited to talk about child development, emotional development specifically, and I was looking at the list of speakers and I saw Jessica Leahy and I looked up her work and I said, oh wow, this seems really interesting. This seems like it aligns very well with Kirsten Ron, and so I purchased her book on my Kindle, gone into the plane, read half her book and I loved it so much.
Speaker 1:And then by the time I got there, I had an opportunity not just to meet her, but I sat close to her at a big dinner gala that they had and I got to know her a little bit more. And she hadn't even given her talk yet. But I just loved the energy that she was giving. She's so brilliant and so down to earth. And then I was definitely sold on being a big fan of hers after I heard her talk.
Speaker 1:So she gave a talk after they had an event for kids, and so think of an auditorium. There must've been anywhere between 800 to a thousand seats in that auditorium and it was pretty full. And she was up next and she started giving her talk, which was about the gift of failure, right, about letting children make mistakes and fail and learn from those mistakes to build resilience. And as she got up she kind of scanned the room or the auditorium and saw that there were many, many kids, young kids. So instead of addressing the adults that were in the room because that's the talk she had prepared she addressed the kids and it was like a talk that I personally will never forget. That shows just the caliber and the quality of a speaker that she is and how quick she can think on her feet, because instead of just speaking to us, all the professionals that were in the audience I mean this speaking engagement there were policymakers in the audience, there were doctors, there were lawmakers, you know, there were important people from Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Speaker 1:She addressed the kids. Being Dubai, she addressed the kids and to me. That's what sold me on her and so when I saw her, not only had she brought up her book for me, she chatted with me and I mean she's just truly amazing. She shares so much in this book that I highly recommend for all parents. That's enough talking. That's my introduction to her. She's just amazing and I know you're going to enjoy and love this interview. I know these moments because when I send it to the editor and producer of the podcast, sadie, when she writes back to me and says thank you so much for letting me edit these episodes. I know that it's a good episode to share with you guys, so she was excited after she edited the episode, and so let's get moving.
Speaker 1:And here is my conversation with Jessica Leahy, author of the Gift of Failure. Her book will be in the show notes so that you can purchase it. I'll see you on the other side. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Curious Drown podcast. My name is Cindy and I am your host. I am so happy that we have Jessica Leahy here today. Author of the Gift of Failure. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting her a couple of months ago in Abu Dhabi, very far away, even though we live not too far away. We met on the other side and I was first blown away by your talk, jessica, and then, truly after reading your book, you shifted the way that I'm seeing so many things in my home, and so I'm really excited to dig into this. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. That's like all I could ever ask for, you know, and especially when we're talking about gift to failure stuff, which is that we do the best we can with the information that we have and then, if we find out how to do better or do differently, we say you know what? I apologize, I'm going to move forward now with better information, and that's like what we try to model for our kids, so it's great.
Speaker 1:And that was one thing I really appreciated. We got a bit of an understanding of how you kind of came together with your husband and said, like we need to talk about this, right? Yeah, I'd love for our listeners to understand a little bit more about how did the idea for the book come from? You are a teacher and you speak about the classroom, and then how did you kind of bring this into your home?
Speaker 2:So I have taught every grade from sixth grade to 12th grade. I happen to love middle school just that's where my heart lies and have two kids myself they're five years apart and when I was teaching middle school and starting to get irritated with the parents of my students for doing too much for their kids and making it so that like there were no consequences for things that the kids did wrong, or learning moments were getting sort of stolen right out from under them because the parents would rescue them, and I was getting irritated with those parents, which is a nightmare. I mean, teachers know that the research is pretty clear that when the homeschool relationship is good, that more learning happens. So my being peeved at the parents of my students, that's a bad place to be. Then, just about the point where I was like really getting upset, I found out that my nine-year-old daughter could not tie her own shoes and that was a moment where I was like, oh wait, a second, I'm implicated in this too, and all sorts of things started to pop up for me and I have a lot of questions.
Speaker 2:Some research there's been lots of research done on human motivation and there's been some research done on sort of how, extrinsic motivators and versus intrinsic motivators work in schools, but I hadn't seen it sort of all in one place and I was really worried that, like over parenting and using too many carrot and sticks extrinsic motivators for kids was not just messing with their motivation but it was actually messing with their learning. So I got to spend a couple of years researching this and I was just so grateful to have the opportunity to like go deep into the research and then produce a book that really looks at all angles of that problem.
Speaker 1:It really does. I mean you talk about from young kids and teenagers, and I think that it really is a beautiful guide for a parent to keep coming back to Something as simple as rethinking when we're at the park and you talk about this and kind of stepping in. I've done it. I've been in that situation where it's, like you know, and it's okay, like you said at the beginning, we're going to catch yourself in these moments and I think what you're doing is just bringing awareness to how we're interacting and parenting with your child. And sort of the question that I've been asking myself now in my home is am I taking away a learning opportunity or am I taking away a moment that they can do something on their own? So I just keep asking myself that and it's really, like I said, giving me a different lens for what I'm doing with my kids. It comes from a good place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I do a couple things now that I didn't used to do. Number one is the question I'm constantly asking and keep in mind my kids were 9 and 14 when I wrote this book. They're now 21 and 26. And one's in college, one's in graduate school. And I still have to stop and say wait, wait, wait, wait. Do I want my kid to do it perfectly now? Or and by perfectly I have to full disclosure. Sometimes I just mean, like, the way I want it done, or do I want them to be able to do it themselves next time? And that the answer to that question is, of course I want them to. You know, especially since I don't have time left to be, you know, hoping and praying that I'm getting them ready for adulthood because they're adults.
Speaker 2:But um, and then the other thing is that, you know, when we are constantly conveying the message that it's not okay for them to screw things up what we're then they don't believe us when we tell them that, oh, you know, sweetie, it's okay if you make a mistake or you fail at this thing, because what I care about is that you learn from this experience, because right now they do not believe us and I spend most of my time in schools. I just came back yesterday from talking to a bunch of middle schoolers. They do not believe us when we say that what we care about is that you learn from this mistake, and they do not believe us when we say that you know, the point is the learning. They know that what we really mean is yeah, but I really need for you to get A's and there are some other things going on as well but that's really where the crux of the problem lies at the moment.
Speaker 1:With the grades and also with the sports. So I posted about one of your quotes in your book. It was a title for a section and I think it really resonated with people, because I've just been hearing so much about parents talking about how intense sports are becoming and the question you had raised in your book is are you doing this for? Well? I forgot how you worded it, but it's not for you, it's. You're doing it for yourself. Maybe it's because you know you didn't get to a level that you wanted and you're pushing your child. But whether it's sports or grades, I really do think that we're saying mistakes are good, but we're not really showing them that and they feel it. They see the difference.
Speaker 2:I actually have the best book recommendation for that and I sort of wish this book had.
Speaker 2:The book that I'm going to recommend is called Raising Empowered Athletes and it's by a woman named Kirsten Jones and she came to one of my early events for the gift of failure and said she's an NCAA hall of fame athlete herself and parent and a parent of athletes.
Speaker 2:And she's like I really want to write this book, except for parents of athletes. And I was said, oh my gosh, yes, please write that book, because we need it so badly, because we need kids who are empowered, who can speak up for themselves, who can make decisions about whether or not this is something that they want to do long-term or if this is something they're just trying out. You know I have friends right now whose kids are deciding whether or not their college choices are going to include trying to play in college or not, and you know these are really hard questions and our wants and needs and desires and hopes and dreams tend to get really wrapped up with our kids, as do our assessments of how we're doing as parents, and I think that's the biggest trap that we tend to fall into is looking to our kids for some sort of any kind of feedback or validation on how we're doing as parents and I certainly fall into that trap all the time.
Speaker 1:And I certainly fall into that trap all the time no-transcript independent and look at their room and they're not. They're, they're not packing their school bags on their own. I posted about this today just to kind of warm up to our conversation, and I think it was at 46% of parents said that they pack their kids school bags.
Speaker 2:Well, and they have all kinds of great reasons. I'll pack more healthy food. You know there's all kinds. We can pull all kinds of reasons out. But the other problem is not just that we're not giving them the ability to build the skills that we need them to build, we're also inadvertently telling them that we don't think they're competent enough for them to do it. We're not letting them do it, that we don't think they're competent enough for them to do it. We're not letting them do it because we don't think they can handle it, even if we're not saying it that way.
Speaker 2:The other big problem and to weave in sort of a whole separate discussion is this idea of competence, of giving kids skills allowing them to achieve mastery over things, allowing them to achieve what we call in the biz a sense of self-efficacy. That's one of the biggest, most protective elements against substance use disorder. And my second book is about preventing substance use in kids. I'm in recovery myself. I'm an alcoholic and I have two kids who are genetically predisposed for substance use disorder. So this middle part, this like making sure that kids have actual skills and competence moving into adulthood, is like. That is one of it's one of the things I spend most of my time trying to convince people to do, to let their kids develop skills and not just feel optimistic about the idea that they might be able to do something Right, that optimism is great, but that they have actual skills that can't be taken away from them.
Speaker 1:And that's what I've had so many of these conversations with parents. So my specialty is emotion regulation skills, and I tell parents they are skills, and so when parents are really frustrated with their child because they're having really big emotions and they don't know how to cope with anger, or they don't know how to cope with frustration and they get mad, right, they get disciplined for doing whatever they did or saying whatever they said. I tell them but this is a skill they need to develop and they need to practice it, just like any other skill. And so you want to see those moments when they lose control, because that's when, as a parent, you step in and say well, the next time this happens, you could you know, I could see that you were frustrated, and so on. Right, so it's the same thing with what you're saying.
Speaker 1:I think that we get really easily frustrated as parents, but we forget to step back and say, okay, what is it that my child is trying to do? They're trying to learn how to pack their school bag. Maybe they don't have the executive function skills and you allude to that as well. You talk about the cognitive skills. The executive functions are so important for many of these things, and whenever I tell, tell parents like did you train, help them with executive function skills, they're like no, what is that? So I think there's still a lot for us to learn about as parents in terms of what we can give our children as skills or help them.
Speaker 2:That thing that surprised. One of the things that surprised me the most was Wendy Grolnick's research. She's at Clark University and she did this really cool research that sort of underpins the sort of the ideas you were just discussing, and part of that has to do with her. She did this research around. You know. She gave kids a somewhat challenging task a mother child pairs, a somewhat challenging task for the kids and then coded the behavior to see. You know how the parents handled it. And some of the parents were what we call autonomy supportive parents, where they allowed the kid to do the task the way they wanted to do it and you know in what order and how. You know all that sort of stuff. And then some of the parents were highly controlling or directive around the task. And the key takeaway is that when she re-ran this, when she had the parents come back to the lab, she separated the kids from the parents because, knowing what type of parent they were, she wanted to see how capable kids were of being able to complete challenging tasks, tasks that were intended to frustrate them a little bit, because she wanted to see how the kids would manage that feeling of frustration. And what was fascinating is that the kids who had the autonomy supportive parents, almost all of them completed the task successfully, whereas the kids who had the really directive or controlling parents, they didn't complete, they were not able to complete the task.
Speaker 2:And I say over and over and over again as a teacher, this scares me to death because some of the most powerful teaching tools I have. One of them is called desirable difficulties, and desirable difficulties are tasks that are somewhat difficult to parse in the short term, like on the front end, and yet if a kid can stick with it, if the kid can stick with the task, they will learn more deeply in the short term and more durably over the long term. So let's think about this who can benefit from this incredibly powerful teaching tool? It's not kids who are going to give up because they don't know how to feel that frustration and be OK with it. And you know, in my classroom it looks like you know the kid who I hand something out and they're like hand shoots up in the air and they're like Mrs.
Speaker 1:Lay.
Speaker 2:Mrs Lay. Mrs Lay, help, help, help, help help. Before they've even read the instructions or thought about it or you know, given themselves a moment to sort of say, okay, no, I can, I can do this. And when you talked about our natural desire to do for our kids and make them happy, part of what we're doing, to be honest, is just wanting to alleviate that frustration. We hate seeing our kids going I can't, I can't do it, it's too hard, I'm so stupid. I don't want to see that in my kids or in my students, so I just want to fix it. I just want to fix it, and so I do it for them and thereby remove the learning opportunity and underline this sort of and that's okay. I don't think you're capable of doing it yourself. So it's a whole bunch of stuff that gets all tangled up and, in the end, just messes with learning.
Speaker 1:Speaking of wanting to keep our child kind of happy, I posted also, I asked in my stories how many parents like if a child had forgotten about a project or they're doing it at the last minute and it's the night before, two hours past their bedtime, would the parent just do it for them and let them go to bed?
Speaker 1:Would the parent help them so that it's done more quickly? Would they just let them not do it or complete it and the consequences degrade there and you know, you, the consequences, the grade. There were some that said that I forget the percentage, but again it was over 40% that said they would do it with the child to make sure that it gets done, and about 10 or 15% said they would do it for them, tell them to go to bed and then do it for them so that it's complete and they get their grades. And I was thinking about your example in the book that it was just a wonderful example when your child forgot their assignment at home or their. And I really put myself in your shoes and I was like what is she going to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the context is so important there because people hear about this and think that my point of view is that you should never, ever take your kid anything that they've ever forgotten or left at home. And that's it's not quite complete. So my daughter was specifically having problems remembering to put her homework in her backpack and take it to school. At first we thought she wasn't doing her homework, but we had a conversation and found out no, no, no, she was doing her homework, she just wasn't turning it in. So I have a kid that I know has a specific problem with putting her homework in her backpack and taking it to school. And then I find out that she's left it on the table and the bus. She's outside of the bus stop and the bus is coming and the school is like right down the street from my house and I had to go there anyway later in the day and I knew I couldn't take it to her because I mean, yes, it would have saved her, yes, the teacher wouldn't have gotten mad at her. She was starting to get teased for being like, oh, that kid that forgets everything, like I want to fix all of that and I didn't take it. And you know, someone challenged me online about it, I put something about Facebook on it and I talk about that in the book. But in the end, the way that that ended up playing out, which isn't fully in the book because it took lots of time.
Speaker 2:Sometimes these aren't things that you can find an answer to really, really quickly. Sometimes you see the results way down the road. So that day the teacher kept her in and I have thanked the teacher for this many times for finally saying you know, like look, this is a problem. You've got to come up with a solution. You've got to come up with a solution today. What's your solution going to be?
Speaker 2:And that day my daughter, as if she had invented the concept of the checklist, was like a checklist, this is it. It's magic. I've invented this. Clearly, it's my thing. And what was fascinating about it is she continues to this day Actually, I can't say it's to this day because I don't know what she's doing in her dorm room but until two years ago continued to make checklists From fourth grade all the way through the end of high school, used a checklist every single morning and it started like the very first ones were like get dressed.
Speaker 2:You know little things like that. But they always finish with brush teeth and, you know, go out to bus or car or whatever. And I watched her brush her teeth while looking at the checklist that was on our refrigerator every day. And if, if I had taken the homework, if the teacher hadn't taken her to task that day, if the teacher hadn't done some problem solving with her, that problem would have gone on for much longer until you know, those neurons started talking to each other in the upper part of her brain and her executive function skills, you know. But in the meantime it's our job to help them come up with strategies to support them until those, that part of the brain, comes online. It's just it wasn't online for her yet, but that doesn't mean she's excused from it. It just means she's got to come up with better strategies.
Speaker 1:I still. I just think it's such a good example for us to kind of again, like you said, it's not every time and it's not like right, I guess just that one story people can take it out of context. But I think it's a good reminder of thinking about every moment. Is this a good teaching moment? Is this a moment that will support my child and get them get the point across? You know, yesterday I was giving a workshop to some teachers and I was.
Speaker 1:I was speaking with them and they said that the biggest problem they have with these high school students is that they come in after lunch it's a thing apparently I don't know after lunch with no books, no pencil, nothing in their hands, knowing that they have a class, and then they start asking oh, I need to go get my pencil, I need to go get my book. Oh, I didn't bring this, I didn't bring that. And teachers were telling me how frustrated they were, and so I told the teachers to read your book. Because I just said can we let them fail? Like, how do you strategically say like, well, today you don't learn?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know Well, actually, what school administrator, the principal or superintendent will say okay, how do we support parents going forward If, if we're saying to them that we care about you know, we care about more than just your kid's grades. We care that your kid, you know, can problem solve and come up with strategies, and we'll be here to help them do that, I say great, that sounds fantastic. What you do is you send out an email to that, to your school community, saying that we care more about your kids' grades, we care that they learn how to problem solve and become competent and manage their life and their resources and all these things. So, to that end, starting tomorrow, there will be no more delivering items, forgotten items, to school after first bell. And what's nice about that is that it's not like the parent saying no, I won't bring it to you, and it's not you know.
Speaker 2:So the kid can't get mad at the parent, but it also and then the school, usually the like the secretary usually has to deal with, like these tables full of stuff accumulating in the front lobby. But also, let's think about it from an equity perspective who can deliver stuff to school, like in the middle of the morning? It's certainly not someone who uses public transportation or does shift work. So if you're thinking about your whole community and what's equitable for your whole community and showing the kids and the parents that you really do care about the kids and will be there to help problem solve with them and you'll help them work through the issues no, you can't bring forgotten things to school anymore and we'll help them. If it's their lunch, if it's a homework, whatever, we will help them problem solve around that. But but this is a whole community thing now Of course, but the students are not even.
Speaker 1:It's not even about a parent bringing it in. It's that they're leaving everything in their lockers. So I think even more of an opportunity.
Speaker 2:Right, but same sort of message. I mean, if that's the message of the school community, then the teacher can say you know that thing we said. And by the way, the other nice thing is as an advisor it was sort of my job to help kids, you know, problem solve, how to use their plan book to figure out which things to take, Like, oh okay, if you go to your locker at this point in the day, you need to get your things for your next three classes so that you don't have to go back. All that sort of stuff. That's what teachers and administrators like, that's what we do. We're not just there to teach the Krebs cycle, we're there to like, help them with all of that other stuff too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to get back to that because I want to ask you at some point about how a parent can go about scaffolding this, because it's not just that it's magically going to happen. But before we get there, I'm curious to know during your research for your book this over-parenting thing that is happening so much right now that we hear about all the time did you see like a growth of it, an appearance of it, at some point through your research? What do you think is the difference between I mean, I'm thinking about how I was raised and there wasn't that much over parenting, and where you kind of left a little bit on your own. There were strict rules, not the same as today. What happened?
Speaker 2:So there's a whole I love doing the history part. So, like in the addiction inoculation, I got to do a great like history of, you know, addictive substances and the you know that kind of stuff. Um, in this book, you know, really came down to like we're having fewer children, we're having them later, after having been in the workforce longer, having gotten more education, we're using the tools that we acquired for work or whatever. And if that's a spreadsheet or whatever that thing is, we're also used to getting report cards or short-term you know reports on our performance. And you know I joke in the book that for a while I wasn't working.
Speaker 2:When I had my, when I had my first kid, I was lucky enough to get some time off. I was in graduate school at the time and I wanted grades. I wanted someone to give me feedback on how my parenting was doing, because it was like a big vacuum of information. And I get these little growth charts and I'm like, woohoo, the head is at whatever percent. You know all that stuff. But after that, you know we just don't get a lot of feedback and we tend to default to our kids and their performance as our feedback. And you know I and I did it a lot when my kids were really little but by the time you know, I'd done the research for this book and I'd done some personal growth by the time they went off to look at colleges.
Speaker 2:I told my oldest kid I wanted some small symbolic act that would convey a lot of information, a lot of meaning around that. And I said you know the one thing I will not do I will not put a sticker indicating where you're going to college. It's a common thing in the US for people to put stickers of where their kids are in college, like parent of a whatever student, or just the college logo. I said you know, this decision that you make about where you're going to become an adult is too important for me to get to brag about it in a park in the high school parking lot. This is about you and where you're going to become an adult. So it was just a dumb little symbolic act for me to say that you know this isn't about me, this is about you and I don't get to, like you know, take my feedback on my parenting based on your SAT scores and where you got into a college, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I love that you did that, because I do think that again, I, the parents, I'm around friends and family. It's like the better the grades are, that's what people are talking about my child's the best at this and we forget about just the regular conversation. We don't have to talk about achievements, you know like it's okay and it puts pressure on the child too.
Speaker 2:Well, and they hear it Of course.
Speaker 2:And they're hearing it and what they get from that is, unfortunately, what students tell me all the time is that they are fairly sure that their parents love them more when they get high grades and less when they get low grades. Because what they're seeing us do is heap the praise on only when they're getting it right the first time, and not when they work through a challenge and maybe get it right the third time. That's not. We don't tend to really focus on the process. We tend to really focus on the end product, and that's unfortunate because then again they don't believe us when we say you know that's OK if you screw this up. What I care about is that you're learning from the experience.
Speaker 1:Right, I really appreciate that part of your research kind of brought that to light, because I do think that I think I would add, with the parents that I've been working with, we have a scale inside CureSneuron where we have them do the parental competence scale and it's really interesting because 40% of parents usually score low and so perhaps there's also a link to that in terms of but it's a feeling of competence I don't think I have the skills to parent my child.
Speaker 1:There's a big emphasis on emotions right now and many parents are not raised learning how to regulate emotions. So part of my theory is, you know that perhaps they don't know how to show up with warmth and sensitivity, knowing that that's important, but they never received that and so it's difficult. But it makes a lot of sense that the achievements are somewhere or a space when they can say I'm succeeding at parenting. I don't know how to show up with warmth and sensitivity, but my kids doing well in school. So it would kind of make sense, right, because we, it's again that confidence piece and that's not easy. So I it makes sense. Well, I think also sometimes we're doing praise.
Speaker 2:That is sort of a double edged thing where we're like giving them praise but it's for the things that we want from them and not necessarily for the things they want for themselves or things that are based on bigger goals.
Speaker 2:Or you know, they're watching what we do too, that's.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, you know, and then if we're not showing them that we we make mistakes and we screw up, and oh my God, like I talk about this a lot that the dinner table is such a great place to talk about where we screwed up during our day and how we plan to rectify the situation, or you know, an apology we have to make to someone, or discussing what it means to have a good friend. Like you know, all of these things, that we just sort of expect them to get life skills stuff, that we just expect them to pick up somewhere. That doesn't just magically happen. You know having to when I was talking to my kid recently about a difficult conversation I had with a friend of mine and I wasn't being a great friend, in response to the fact that I felt like she hadn't been a good friend, and that's really important part of learning how to manage relationships and it just doesn't occur to us to have conversations about these reward, because I do think it's something that parents struggle with.
Speaker 1:You know how to praise, how to give you know, should I give rewards? I was talking to a teacher and she said that in their classroom and their school there's lots of charts and so you do something great, you get a sticker or you get a reward. Those don't work.
Speaker 2:They don't work. Extrinsic motivators do not work over the long term to boost motivation to do the things that we want kids to do, Not just kids anybody. And actually I have to say while I, while we're talking about them, there is one exception it appears to the sticker chart not working thing, and that's with diaper training, because we think that potty training, because we think that there's something about like getting out of diapers, being a big girl, big boy, underpants, is like its own sort of internal motivation. But sticker charts, money for grades, the grades themselves, points, scores, honors, and then like coercions, like monitoring them on their phones, checking the school portal constantly.
Speaker 2:I am never in a million years saying we can't use these things, but we have to think about them as what they are, which is extrinsic motivators, and they do not work to boost motivation over the long term. They undermine motivation over the long term. And I say this in the book if you want your kids to not want to learn math, pay them for their math grades. It's really clear. This is not me. This is 60 years of really good research and if you want to know more about it, read Edward DC's why we Do what we Do.
Speaker 1:Ah, thank you. So then, what's the option? Because I know somebody who's listening to this now is saying okay, maybe they're a teacher we have lots of teachers that listen, Maybe they're a parent and they're like well then, Jessica, what should I do in my home or my classroom? Because nobody listens to me and nobody does what they have to do. What do I do?
Speaker 2:You see, the problem is with extrinsic motivators, with things like sticker charts or things like we even have here in the US I don't know if they use them in Canada, but there's these rewards for behavior programs and I won't name them by, I'd love to not get sued, but they, they, it's essentially like trinkets or stars and whatever in in return for behavior, and those don't work either. Like, essentially, not only do they not work, but what we're doing is we're teaching kids to do the right thing only when someone's watching. Like, essentially, if you look at, like, for example, schools of character that are really working hard on their character education programs, the the ultimate goal is for kids to know the right, do the right, and then do the right. When do the right thing? When no one is watching? And for a lot of kids they'd be like well, why would I do the right thing when no one's watching? I don't get stars for that, I don't get a reward for that, so that bugs me.
Speaker 2:So yeah, essentially what we need to do and again, this is not my research, this is Edward Deasy's research that if we want to boost intrinsic motivation, like motivation to actually do things for the sake of the thing itself, whether it's learning, practicing piano, behavioral stuff, whatever. We've got to do three things, which is give them more autonomy and which is choice and control. Number two help them feel more competent and not just confident. I love myself a confident kid. It's part of the formula, for you know, we talk about the seas of resilience and confidence is one, but competence is really important, having actual skills and mastery so that you have this feeling of self-efficacy and that kind of stuff and connection. And you know when, if I'm having this conversation with teachers, it looked it sounds one way. If I'm having this conversation with parents, it's really just about are you feeling seen, heard, known, loved for who you are and regardless of your performance, right, and those, the autonomy, the competence and the connection.
Speaker 2:I would have to have a really specific example of like how do I get a kid to do this thing? Because you need to know what motivates the kid, what their goals are, what's the, what are the pressure points for that kid, what are what leverage? Can I use what else if it's about getting them to do their math homework, like, are they interested in space? And can you talk to them about the fact that, in order to be an astronaut. Astronauts have to do a lot of math, and someday we'll watch this movie, like you know, apollo 13, where they had to. When they didn't have any instruments, they had to do all this math to figure out just how much to turn this vehicle so that they could adjust their trajectory to not skip off the atmosphere. All of these kinds of things are all about knowing who your kid is, what their interests are, what their goals are, what really motivates them, giving them more choice, helping them feel competent and then making sure they know that you support them, no matter what their performance level is.
Speaker 1:So you described the self-determination theory which I talk a lot about, the three Trying so hard not to use jargon. Come on.
Speaker 2:But it's a good one. Our audience knows it. It's fine we're science-based, Okay good.
Speaker 1:Excellent Good. But, yeah, I think that we can do this within our home. I think it might be harder in the classroom. So you know, when I was talking to this teacher, she said what else can we possibly do when we have so many kids in the classroom?
Speaker 2:Well, and think about it this way when I'm teaching, I have to use points, I have to use scores. They're going to get grades. There's going to be an honor roll, maybe there's going to be, maybe even a class rank. They're going to have to take tests in order to go to college. Extrinsic motors, motivators, are everywhere, right, yeah, so the way we do this, the way we sort of at least try to shift a little bit over, is to focus more on the process than on the end product. Right. So if a kid comes to you and they're like freaking out over the difference between an A minus and a B plus, if you can drag that conversation back over to yes, but what? What did you understand and what did you not understand? What are you going to ask for extra help around? Did you get a good night's sleep the night before that test? Or did you stay up an extra hour to review, because the sleep is more effective for memory consolidation? How about, you know? Did you have a good breakfast, you know? Oh, you say your friend got an A and you got an F. Well, what did your friend do that you didn't do? What did you do that your friend didn't do? What are you going to? What exactly happened here, what worked that we're going to bring forward with us and what didn't work that we're going to leave behind?
Speaker 2:That focus on process is not only important for, like getting them to believe us when we say, yeah, what I really care about is you learn from this. It also reduces anxiety, because what you're doing is bringing the locus of control back to the kid. When we talk about praise, this is a really important aspect of that, which is we try to make our praise as general as possible and our criticisms as specific as possible. So when a kid comes home and they're like my teacher hates me, and you can say, well, okay, well, let's get a little, let's talk about this a little bit. Like why is your teacher, why do you think your teacher hates you?
Speaker 2:And it usually comes down to like your kid did this thing that the teacher didn't like, and so you make it as specific as possible, because now you're kidding and you can say what, what is it that you could maybe do in the future? That around this thing that you did that made your teacher upset with you, that maybe would prevent that in the future. Now you're bringing the locus of control back to the kid. But if they do something, if they come home and they're like my teacher really loves me today, and you say, well, what is it specifically that your teacher was really loving today?
Speaker 2:And your kid is like, well, I was quiet and didn't speak out of turn and raised my hand and you say you see that when you are listening, you're using your listening years and you're all that sort of stuff and make it as general as possible so that they can see, oh, I was able to control this thing and it's applicable to all these different other areas of my world. So anytime we can give some locus of control back to the kids, it's going to lower their anxiety and it's going to help them feel like they have that self-efficacy to use those skills moving forward and in other contexts.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense and I think it's very attainable for a teacher. Right now You're not looking at, like, the needs and the interests in each child, but the environment that you're building, and that's the environment that's not focusing on that one little thing, I'm sure it's. So this would probably be a conversation for another time. But you know the changes that would need to be done in the system itself, right? Because no matter how much that teacher is working to say it's not the grade. I really do want you, I'm seeing progress, I'm seeing that you're improving and I'm happy with that. And the child says but I'm still at a B minus and that's not good enough. How you know, it must be so hard to kind of get them to disconnect from the grade.
Speaker 2:Interesting. You say that because when I, you know, when I speak at schools and give kids my email address so that they can tell me what it is they want their parents to know, the biggest one I get. Number one is I'm not my brother, I'm not my sister, I'm not my parents when they were my age, I'm not their do-over, that kind of thing. But another big one I get is I really am doing my best and my parents don't believe me. And what is a kid supposed to do with that? Number one they're not feeling trusted. Number two if a kid really and truly believes that they're doing their best, then what they're missing is skills. Right, so teaching them skills. And again, that brings locus of control back, which is great. But one of the things that's been really fascinating in talking to kids about this stuff and in getting their actual thoughts on how we need to change these things, a lot of them, you know, don't see us modeling the behavior that they're expecting. So, whether it's you know, I don't understand why I can't have my phone and yet all the adults around me are using their phones constantly. Or I don't understand why it's so important for me to, you know, do X when the, when the and and taking emotional risks, taking risks around intellectual risks. I had a parent once asked me to come up with a list of really difficult books to read for her kid because her kids weren't reading for pleasure. And I was like, well, that's kind of a magic list, but I will try to help you with that. But in the meantime, do your children see you read for pleasure? And she had to admit that. You know, I work really long hours and sometimes I read on my iPad and I had to say, well, from your kid's perspective that doesn't really count because they can't tell what you're doing on your iPad. And also, there's no magic wand. In fact I have magic wands on my board behind me because I say this so often. There's no magic wand I can wave. That will make your kid interested in reading.
Speaker 2:If they don't see that it's a priority for you, you know they will watch what we do and do that. They're not just going to do what we say. So we have to be thinking about our modeling all the time. If you know, parents come to me and say my kid just will not take any, she won't take the challenge problems, she won't admit when she doesn't know something she won't stay after to get extra help. I just don't know what to do and she's so afraid that she's going to fail at something she won't even try.
Speaker 2:I it's hard, but I have to say so. So what kind of patterns is she seeing from you, like, does she see you try things that are hard for you, for you know? Does she see you? So one of the things that I do with my kids and continue to do with my kids is, every quarter or so, we make three goals for ourselves our goals they can't be my goals imposed on them our goals, and one of them has to be a little scary. And then, three months later, we check in and we sort of ask how things went and talk about what went well and what didn't, because that's a safe place. To screw up is within your own goals and they have to see us. You know taking some intellectual and emotional risks as well.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's such a good um thing to start implementing in our homes too, and simple right, showing our kids that we have goals, and also the disappointment of maybe I didn't reach the goal and that's okay. How do you model that? I think that's a good segue into kind of having the conversation of where to start, because maybe a parent is listening and they have a three-year-old and they say, well, it's not the right time, whereas after reading your book, I think there's always a right time. You said you're never too young, right? And so when you said you started when your kids were a little bit older, but what did those initial steps look like in your home and how can parents start, I would say that I would think the first step is noticing when you're stepping in. But so what would that look like for a parent?
Speaker 2:For really little kids. I mean never, ever, rip the rug out from kids and like, just stop doing stuff for them. I mean that's confusing and disturbing and yeah. So the nice thing about older kids is you can say you know what I? I? I realized I've been really looking at what I've been doing and I've been nagging a lot. I've been doing a lot for you. I've been undermining your competence, undermining your ability to develop new skills, and that stops now.
Speaker 2:And let's start not with everything all at one time. You know you don't want to again rip the rug out from underneath them but say like, for example, around homework, I'm constantly nagging you around homework and that needs to stop you. Homework, I'm constantly nagging you around homework and that needs to stop. You're in high school now, like I won't even be there in a couple of years when you need to remember all your stuff. So here are expectations, are really clear expectations, and here are very clear logical consequences. Not like you don't do your homework and you lose your digital device or whatever it's. Some sort of logical consequence has to do with the homework. For us it was you have to have a conference with the teacher and with the parent where you lead it, we help you come up with strategies. But for littler kids it's great because you can just say something as simple as you know what mommy does a lot for you and I think you can do a lot of stuff that I didn't even realize.
Speaker 2:You do no-transcript there actually taking a little video for me. And the kid had figured out what he would do is he would sort of jump up and reach in and get the laundry and he would hand it to his little toddler sister and if he slipped and felt and couldn't get out, it was her job to grab his feet and pull on his feet. And I watched this toddler and this like five-year-old essentially get the laundry from the washer into the dryer and the five-year-old even pretended that he slipped in so that the little sister could sort of pull on his feet to pull him down. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen. I have another video of you know of a toddler loading some plastic dishes in the dishwasher and the mom was like yeah, I had no idea this was something she was capable of.
Speaker 2:So let them at least try to surprise you, try to show you, because you know little things start small. Take a look, if you want to Google Montessori kid kitchens and watch some videos of what the theory behind Montessori kitchens and you know kitchen skills are. Watch those kids prepare. You know, sometimes at first pretend food and you know later on they're real snacks in these little you know. Let kids try. Let them at least try and don't take over. You know, give them support and guidance and redirection, but don't take over for them. I want to support and guidance and redirection, but don't take over for them.
Speaker 1:I want to if you weren't going to say it. I was going to say it Don't take over, because I know that it's hard. Maybe the dish won't be loaded in the way that you're used to doing it. Maybe if you ask them to make their bed, and they make it and everything is crooked, let it go. We have to let it go because I've seen it with my kids as well. The more we let it go and the more proud they feel, the more they'll do it on their own, because that's the intrinsic motivation coming in. But we have to let them do it in their way and really have the conversation in our mind to like step back what's?
Speaker 2:fascinating is the response I get often which is like, oh, I'm just not comfortable with things being out of order. I'm not comfortable with like that. And in fact, the most popular blog post I have ever put up still remains something I wrote for fun, just for me. My youngest sort of all out of the blue, just sort of kind of started pretending like she didn't know how to do laundry, even though I knew full well she knew how to do laundry. So it turns out that if you have a washing machine, that if you have laundry machines that are enameled like especially if they're white you can use dry erase marker and put instructions like all over the machine with arrows and instructions on things. So I did it really in a fun way, like stop, before you put those jeans in there, check to see if the socks are still wadded up up with the underwear, you know, and that kind of stuff, and it's a. It's a if you Google Jessica Leahy or just Leahy and special care instructions. It was so much fun.
Speaker 2:Actually an appliance manufacturer wanted to use it for a campaign because it was just. It's just as really fun way of saying to your kids I know you can do this and if you forget something, here's the support you need to make sure that you can do it. But you got this. Here's everything, all the tools you need to be able to do it and I have confidence in you. You can make it. It doesn't have to be a nagging mean thing all the time.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was going to say, right, like I think that a parent that starts this tomorrow, there's going to be a learning process for the parent. There's going to be a learning process for the child. It's not going to naturally just happen because you're like, hey, you want to load the dishwasher, and they're like, no, you know, I've never done it before, they might, but they might not, and so I think there's going to be a buildup to that. What if a parent is really struggling?
Speaker 2:There's also a honeymoon period where things will go well for a short period of time. Then they won't. There's a book called how to Be a Happier Parent where KJ Del Antonio talks very specifically about the fact that habit formation for this kind of stuff really works best if it's for an entire season. So like rotating chore charts are less effective in creating new habits in kids because it really does take a full season, like three months, to develop habits. So instead of rotating, have you know, for an entire season, certain jobs be their jobs, because it just we. The more we understand about habit formation, the more we get that. It's sort of a longer term process than we're used to, but sorry.
Speaker 1:That's a good reminder? No, not at all. I think that's a really good reminder that it's going to take time and some work as a family and a unit. So I may be a parent. Now is questioning the charts or the checklist. Does that fall within, like something you're okay, that's okay Not that you're okay with, but that that works and supports them. Or is it like a reward of some sort right, like maybe they're questioning that?
Speaker 2:You know the chart thing. What I'm talking about specifically is like kids getting a star, kids getting money, kids getting a penny kids, whatever in exchange for a thing that they need to do. First of all, speaking of chores, since we were on that, it's really important that we're not paying kids to do stuff around the house. Ron Lieber also talks about this in his book the Opposite of Spoiled, a book I love because you know we do stuff around the house, we do household duties because we're part of a family. There's research that shows, actually, that when kids have a hand in keeping the household running, that when bad stuff happens if someone gets sick or if there's a death in the family or whatever that those kids actually suffer fewer or less sort of emotional distress because they feel like again we're back to locus of control, because they feel like they have a part in keeping things going. So we don't pay kids to do chores or household duties around the house. That's part of being a family. Kids get money or allowance to learn how to deal with money, but there's no problem with having lists of things like here's a reminder, here's who's on duty for dishwasher duty, all that kind of stuff. But when it comes down to it. Here's the problem with extrinsic motivators is they work great in the short term. They really work great in the short term I'm speaking of honeymoon phase but over the long term they don't work. That's just like I said.
Speaker 2:The research is really clear 60 years of really good research studies that have been studied. We have metadata, we have all this stuff. We know that extrinsic motivators do not work over the long-term to boost motivation and they undermine motivation. They undermine creativity. That's a nightmare situation, especially for a teacher. You know education should be a long-term creative endeavor and it's a shame that grades and points and scores and grades and all that sort of stuff are working at odds. Think about what it's like for art and music teachers who have to assess and give a grade for creative output, when we know that grades in exchange for creative output undermine creative output and make things less creative and result in kids spending less time and less personal investment in the creative endeavor. It's a catch-22. I get that.
Speaker 1:So if I'm a parent and I listen to this and then I come back to this podcast episode and I say, well, it's been two weeks and my 10-year-old I had this talk, my husband and I sat at the table and we said you know what? We're going to give you some more responsibility. And now two weeks have passed and they come back to the podcast to make sure they got everything right, because it's been two weeks and that child is not. Let's say, the responsibility we decided was going to be washing the dishes and dishes aren't getting done, they're piling up. And here I am nagging and getting frustrated every day. What happens? What do I do next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you've got to, for you've got to get a little bit creative about and a little bit have more discussions about. You know why you're doing some of this stuff and you know putting down the blanket statement okay, your job is now dishes and that's just how it's going to go from here on out. You set some really clear expectations. You explained that this is what we do to help each other out, like if they don't do the dishes, then someone else is going to have to do the dishes, and if it means I have to do the dishes, then I can't. I won't have time to bake those cupcakes that you need for that school thing tomorrow, and so it's all a. You know there's a push and a pull in a family and we love each other and we support each other and that's why we do this persistence and follow through. I know it's just, it sounds so hard and it is hard over in the front end, but then over the longterm it really does pay off. And if a kid really and truly is not doing something that you need for them to do, the problem is and actually it was funny I just saw Mel Robbins has this new book out called let them. And she I just saw her on a podcast like yesterday, and she was talking about the fact that the minute you try to control someone else this is not her research. This is a lot of people's research that went into this that the minute someone does something like nag or try to control that, our immediate response is not oh yeah, I'm sorry, let me do that thing. It's no, no, is not. Oh yeah, I'm sorry, let me do that thing. It's no, no, it's like. The reason I don't belong to a book club is that if a book gets assigned to me, it's immediately the last book I want to read, like there are 20 other books I want to read now because you've just told me I have to read that book.
Speaker 2:So the more we can sort of support them in ways of thinking that it's their idea, giving them more autonomy around when they do it, like when they do their homework, or helping them give them any kind of locus of control around it. I think of it like you know, if it's cold outside and your toddler needs to wear a hat, you don't say, hey, toddler, do you want to wear a hat. You say, do you want to wear the red hat or the blue hat, because it gets you get some buy-in If the kids aren't doing it. Sit all the kids down together and say you know, here's the problem in this family, and some people are doing their jobs and some people are not doing their jobs. So how do you think we could help each other? Don't ever underestimate the power of peer peer pressure and sibling pressure to help sort of keep things moving.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and constantly remember, this is, parenting is a long-term thing. It's not a linear slope. It doesn't get a little bit better every single day, especially when you're talking about things like executive function skills. It's up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and that this is all about process and less about end product. Like, is this really about doing the dishes right this very second, or is this about taking on responsibility, pitching in as a family, making it clear that we all have work to do in order to support each other, and it makes it a little less frustrating. And then my very last piece of advice is this the more you know about adolescent brain development and I'm going to go with adolescents here because of that explosive period of growth the more you know about how the adolescent brain works, the easier it is to take a breath and look right between their eyes and remember that this is the part of the brain that's not hooked up yet. Right, all that stuff we want them to be able to do, like remember to do their homework and manage their time and their resources and keep a schedule. That's adulting stuff and that stuff isn't fully hooked up until the early to mid-20s. And so this whole time we have with kids is all about process. Very little of what we do as parents is about end product. Almost everything we do is process oriented.
Speaker 2:So, you know, is it frustrating? Yeah, yeah, am I did? I just have a conversation with my 21 year old earlier today about dishes in the sink? Yeah, but has she come? And and to answer your earlier question about, you know, not being able to rely on extrinsic motivators and praise, let's look at progress. Let's look at incremental progress. As a writing teacher, you know writing doesn't get better Like all at once. It happens over a very long period of time. So that's why I keep writing samples for my students so that I can say, yeah, I know it's frustrating, but let's look at where you were a year ago. Let's look at where you were six months ago. If, for fun, let's look at where you were in second grade. Now that you're in sixth grade, um, showing them process, saying things like you know what, sweetie, I'm really proud of you with sticking with that math homework because, like six months ago, you would have only lasted two or three minutes and you've been going at it for 10 minutes now.
Speaker 2:And I'm really proud of you for that Pointing out incremental progress to them, because they don't even with us. We don't have a great sense of, we just get used to things as they are. We don't think a lot about how far we've come, which is why it's really great to look back at stuff you've done in the past and realize, oh, I have gotten better at that, I am better at that. Look at where my kid is now. It's really frustrating and I just want to whack them. But let's look at where they were six months ago or a year ago. Could they have done the things they're doing today? Six months ago? No? So yay us, we're doing a great job.
Speaker 1:We forget that we just were so focused on getting the better grade and getting better at whatever we're doing, that we forget that they've come a long way and I love that you're saying that we need to kind of not celebrate it but mention it and bring it up and keep reminding them that there is progress and the failure too, right. So I think about that child that you said like sometimes my kids would be like I don't want to wear a hat. Okay, then don't wear one. And then guess what? Ten minutes later they'd come in and be like it's cold, give me my hat. And I'm like okay, and sometimes it's really hard as a parent. It's like just put your hat on, or you need to wear boots, don't put your running shoes on. And you argue with them and argue and they're like I want to wear my shoes. You know what? Go outside with your shoes and then they get the snow inside and then they cry and then it's cold and guess what?
Speaker 2:they don't during yeah, during the period, during the period that we decided it was time to stop packing for our kids, we went on a weekend trip to Montreal and it was below zero and our youngest did not have a coat, and that sucked yeah, it was awful she was cold, she was really cold and it limited some of the things that we could do. But have we talked about that 3000 times since then and did that change her ability to plan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, most of the conversations I've had with people always come back to the parent doing the work on themselves first.
Speaker 1:Would you see it that way as well? Because I'm thinking about the conversation I had with teachers yesterday and they said that you know, when I told them, like, how do you let them, how can you let them fail, given that locker problem? And they said, even if there were 60 teachers in front of me, they said, even if we would do that, we would probably hear from the parents in front of me. And they said, even if we would do that, we would probably hear from the parents, we would probably get in trouble somehow or they'd be disappointed that we let their child not be able to take notes during the class because they didn't bring their pencil for the 400th time that they didn't bring a pencil in class. So I feel like we do have to kind of end this conversation with the reflections we need to think of as parents and in terms of how we think of failure, because I've met so many parents that themselves whether it's work, parenting, just looking like everything is perfect in their home they don't want to fail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also an issue of mutual respect.
Speaker 2:I used to have this conversation even in middle school with my students where I say you're, you know, I get very little time with you during the day and I have a lesson plan and there's a certain amount of learning that we all get to do together and when you have to go away, you're taking away from that time. I come to our class prepared, I'm ready to start the minute everyone walks in the door, and so it's a matter of mutual respect. If you're not prepared when you walk in the door, then you're telling me that you don't respect my time. Telling me that you don't respect my time If I were to not show up to class on time, or if I were to not be ready when you guys walk in, then what I'm saying is I don't respect you enough to be prepared. So having these kind of you know back we're back to pro-social skills and social emotional learning and all that kind of stuff Having the ability to like, flip the perspective can often be really helpful when we're talking to kids about things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that there's a lot of work for us to do, but again, I appreciated your book so much. I just loved the idea of kind of looking at it from a different perspective in terms of what am I doing with my kids and am I taking a little moment of an opportunity of learning away from them without even realizing? And now they make a mess, they have to clean it up themselves, and even if they spread the milk all over the wooden floor, then it's. I have to step back and just tell them well, do you think it's sticky? What else can we do? My kids are young, they're five, seven and nine. But the five-year-old now cleans his own mess, and it's. I mean, I read your book right before the holidays and it's just been a few weeks and he cleans. He doesn't say like oops, drop my milk and then just waits there, He'll clean it up, and so it's made a big difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there have been a few moments, it's. We don't, like I said before, we don't often get the rewards for the efforts that we're making right in that moment. But I remember I was. I took my eldest to get his driver's license and we got there and he was sitting down and filling out all the forms and next to us was a mother and her daughter and the daughter was on her phone and the mother was filling out the forms, asking the daughter some details that she needed to fill out the forms, and my kid looked at me like what is going on there and you end up in a situation where a kid doesn't even know how to fill forms, doesn't know basic information about themselves.
Speaker 2:I run across kids all the time who don't know their zip code or don't know where they live or don't know the name of their doctor and that kind of stuff, and we can't wait until they. I think a lot of parents think they'll magically just sort of get it at 18. And that's just not how that works and sometimes we have to plan for it. A very favorite one that I've ever done I realized I take my kids on workshops with me a lot just because it's great opportunities to do stuff with them and I realized at a certain point that I was dragging them through airports and that not explaining sort of why we're doing all these weird things. Like you need ID here but not there, and then you need your boarding pass but not.
Speaker 2:So what you can do is you can fudge the time you need to get at the airport and get there just a whole hour early, just plan for like a whole hour early, and walk in through the doors and say, okay, what do we do? And give your kid the opportunity, like you're going to, you're there to help them. You haven't run away, you haven't abandoned them, but like do you want their first time figuring out how to get through an airport by themselves, when they're actually by themselves, or would you prefer that they figure it out while they have you there to support them and not like give them the answers but say, well, let's think it through. What things might you need at each stop of the way going through this? And man, I'm glad I did that because I have kids who you know now obviously travel by themselves and I don't know when I assumed they were going to learn that, if not in an actual opportunity to learn that I'm going to confess as an adult.
Speaker 1:I just learned it like three, four years ago. I never traveled and when I walked in the first time I was like wait a second. I've always followed my husband because I like being the person that just I didn't have to think, and so I confess I was one of those people. All of us want our kids to be resilient and we all want our kids to be autonomous, but if we continue on this path of doing it all for them, they will not be autonomous.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're already hearing that from like. I hear from college professors, I hear from bosses, I hear from people who employ younger people constantly how unbelievably horrified they are with the lack of communication skills, the lack of, you know, just general life competence. And, yeah, I'm really worried for those kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we need to reevaluate how we're doing that in our home and I think that this conversation is going to help a lot of parents kind of take some notes and see where they can, where there's room for improvement in their house.
Speaker 2:Can I, can I give you resources? If they want more specifics, yes, please. So, um, I was told. So gift of failure talks people tend to come to. It's like, yeah, it was a bestselling book, all that sort of stuff, but it was hard for me to get people to come to my substance use prevention talks Cause that's, it's a scary topic. So a friend of mine recommended well, since you don't mind making videos, why don't you make bite-sized chunks of go through both books? So there are 400 videos on my website. If you go to JessicaLaheycom, under videos, there's like 200 addiction, over 200 addiction inoculation videos. They're 90 seconds long, they're Instagram real length. And then for gift of failure, there's about there's about 200 or so, a little under 200. And it gets really granular in all of these topics. So if you have more questions about any of these topics, there's a bajillion videos over there that you can go to.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And where else can people learn from you? I know you have an Instagram account. Is that your personal one or business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have Jessica Leahycom Everything is always there and my newsletter is jesslaheysubstackcom and that's where I write about sort of the stuff I'm currently researching speaking events where I'll be, that kind of stuff. And for the writers in your audience, I also happen to host a podcast called the Hasht writing podcast with three other authors, all bestselling authors. So if you're interested in writing and interested in you know the publishing industry and stuff like that, you can go. And that's at Substack as well. It's actually anywhere you get podcasts. Hashtag am writing.
Speaker 1:I will put the links to all of those in the show notes, because I want everybody to learn more from you and to connect with you and, if you're okay with it, your next book is my next book to read, and so maybe we can have you back later this season or this year.
Speaker 2:I would love that. I would absolutely love that I was just debaking some videos, for I was at a school this past week and kids asked me questions. It was a substance use prevention talk and kids asked me the best questions. They asked me amazing questions, and so I'm currently today actually making a bunch of videos to answer their questions as well.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love that. Thank you for everything that you do and for the research that you put into your books. The quality is outstanding. Such a good read and an important resource. So thanks again, Jessica.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Please take a moment to share this podcast interview. You can even use the link on YouTube. The full episode is up on YouTube as well. Share it with friends, with family, with coworkers. If you are a teacher, if you are a clinician, this book is amazing and Jessica Leahy's work is just outstanding. And take a moment to rate the podcast, leave a review and follow us on Instagram at Curious underscore Neuron. I will see you next Monday. I hope you all have a beautiful and wonderful week. Bye.