Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This
episode is.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Airing at the end of May of twenty twenty four.
Sarah is going to be interviewing Ellen Golinski, whose new
book is about All Things adolescents. So, Sarah, maybe you
can tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, this book is well. Actually, I'm going to mention
first that Ellen Golenski is amazing. She's had just such
a long career of writing about things that she has
found interesting, and a lot of times those things have
kind of mirrored different experiences in her life. She's written
about young children, she's written about working parenthood. I'm actually
surprised we haven't talked to her about that. Specifically, as
(01:17):
she is very much in favor of women having choices
about what they do and how that children can thrive
under different types of circumstances. But more recently she's focused
on the teen years and wrote a very comprehensive book
called The Breakthrough Years, putting together her own kind of
unique style of research and findings and a lot of
kind of primary source material from teens themselves. She went
(01:40):
right to the real source here, which I think is
refreshing and really really cool. So definitely a fun book
to check out. But Laura, you're a teen expert too
at this point, I feel like when you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Say yes, so yeah, I now have a seventeen year
old and a fourteen year old and a twelve year
old in addition to my younger kids. So we've been
in the teen years for several years now, have several
more years to go in it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
But I'm actually really really liking them. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I mean, you hear various horror stories about teenagerhood or whatever,
but it seems good. I mean, I guess you don't
quite have teens yet. You're getting there, No, I don't.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
But I love listening to you chat about the things
that you do with your teens, the different trips you take,
the one on one time you spend together, and at
least for my observation of your stories, I feel like
you've really enjoyed those times and enjoyed these years a lot.
So I'm more excited about it than I am scared
at this point.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know that I
have any particular advice or expertise because every kid is
so different, But I think one thing that's been very
helpful for me, because you know, so I'm just passing
this along as a tip, is just to you know,
if your kid annoys you about something they have done that's,
you know, within the realm of normal adolescent behavior, you
(03:02):
might just remind yourself of how much.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Worse it could be.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So if there are, for instance, I don't know, food
wrappers all over the car that the child borrowed, or
if there's dirty laundry in the hall, or I don't know,
I mean, those aren't particularly things that we've had problem with,
but I'm just saying those as hypotheticals.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Here. You could tell yourself, like I mean, your.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Kid could be addicted to drugs, your kid could be
in trouble with the law. I mean, there's so many
worse things that could happen. And if those things were
the case, and you were offered the choice of like, hey,
you could have that, or you could have dirty laundry
in the hall, what would you like?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
You'd be like, oh, dirty laundry. Give me the dirty laundry.
I'm thrilled about the dirty laundry. And so maybe it
just helps to have that as your mindset to begin with.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I love it. Do you feel like teens of today
And I don't know I'm going out on a limb
here with this one, but do you feel like teens
are more interested in hanging out with their parents compared
to when we were teens?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
I think they're There is some evidence that that is
the case.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
That people are not as it can be viewed positively
or negatively. I mean, there's something to be said about
adolescents and establishing your own independence, and people complain about
young people needing their parents to intervene in all sorts
of college decisions or even in job applications, which seems
crazy because those are of course markers of adulthood. But
(04:24):
on the other hand, like it's not a bad thing
that your young adult child wants to have a relationship
with you. That's actually pretty awesome. And so if that
is a development over time, I'm here for it. Like
if my kids want to hang out with me, I
am very excited about that and flattered that that might
be the case.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Well. I'm excited for everyone to listen to this interview
because I learned so much from Ellen, and I'm sure
you will too well. I am so excited to welcome
author and researcher extraordinaire Ellen Golinski to the podcast. She
recently released a book called The Breakthrough Years, which you
are going to talk about, but she's had an incredible
career even before that as well. So Ellen, welcome. Can
(05:05):
you introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I think of myself as a research adventurer because I've
spent my whole life following questions, questions that I don't
really know the answers to, and questions that I think matter.
And it's an extraordinary way to live a life. It
really is, because you can wander into all kinds of
places and talk to all kinds of people when you're
(05:30):
following your questions and finding things that then you try
to translate into action. So started when I was a teacher.
Actually I was a teacher of young children, and I
know what we thought we were teaching them, but I
didn't know what they were actually learning. So they were
preschool kids. So I made a model classroom and asked
(05:52):
them to pretend to be at school. And their visions
of school were so different than the actual experiences that
we thought we were giving them. It was shocking. You know.
They had the very cultural This was a school where
the kids chose activities, They had a lot of hands
on experience. The schools that they made these little children were,
(06:15):
you know, little rows of desks and raise your hand,
and the culture what a school is was so strongly
influencing them. Even then, I have found in throughout the
years that the answers are not what we would expect.
It's just a very exciting life. When I had a
(06:36):
first child, I wondered about how we as a culture
helped people transition into parenthood, and then wrote a book
about that. Sometimes I start with the idea of a book,
sometimes I don't, but that began a book that just
was in me, that was bursting out. I just had,
I had to write that one, and then I got
(06:58):
interested in how parents grow, and there wasn't very much literature,
so I had to actually do an exploratory study, and
that became a book, and I started to do series
of studies. After doing research on wrote a book about childcare.
In the United States, childcare was seen as very evil
(07:19):
at the time, stranger danger. You know, you wouldn't why
shouldn't you just stay at home and take care of
your children? But increasingly that wasn't the reality of most
people's lives, and so I wanted to find good childcare
around the country and look at what made it work,
and that became a book. And then in listening to
those the stories of parents and the stories of families.
(07:44):
When we were interviewing and doing the research for the
book on childcare, I began to see that there was
the secret thing that people had. It didn't even have
a name, but it was managing work in family life.
So we're talking a while ago. But it wasn't cold
work in family life. It wasn't cold work life. If
it wasn't called any of those sorts of things. Then
then I started an organization and did a series of
(08:06):
studies and in the course of doing those studies, I
wanted to interview not only the spouse of the employee,
because we were doing studies about the employees, I wanted
to also interview the kids. And I found that kids
it was like the image that I had was that
parents and children were looking through the same picture window,
(08:26):
but they were seeing different scenery, a whole different vista,
very different. And so that led me into what became
a book called Ask the Children, which is how kids
feel about their working parents and so on. You know,
some of the books are intentional, some of them aren't.
But often when I feel like I have enough to
say and people don't know it, and it's often about
(08:47):
bursting the miss you know, the assumptions that we make,
then it becomes a book.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, I'm actually shocked that we haven't had you on previously,
just because this podcast is so focus. I mean, our
tagline is making work and life fit together, and we
hope to empower women who are choosing. We respect anybody
who makes either decision, but we felt like there just
wasn't enough out there for women who do really enjoy
their careers and want to experience that and have a
(09:16):
wonderful family life as well. So I feel like we're
long overdue and we may have to have you on again.
I get back into those childcare issues and the issues
you just mentioned, because that is just so near and
dear to our hearts and the hearts of our audience.
So that is super cool and I love that. So
at the same time, you have had a little bit
(09:37):
of a recent pivot, not really, because actually there's clearly
a common thread, which is that A you like to
do your own research, and B you like to go
straight to the source, not necessarily the adult source. But
can you talk a little bit about how you have
kind of focused in on teens and adolescents over the
recent past with your new work.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
I've practiced a form of reach church called civic science.
And what civic science means is that you go to
the source. Your way of saying it is beautiful. I
don't make assumptions about people. I find out what's on
their minds. So for thirty years I did the largest
nationally representative study of the US workforce and the largest
(10:20):
nationally representative study of the US workplace. And my studies
were in the news all the time. And why it's
not that I'm so brilliant. It's that I know how
to listen, you know, I just I would ask employers
what keeps you up at night? What are you worrying about?
And then put it into the study. I would ask
employees the same question, put it into the study. And
(10:43):
so it's always breaking new grounds. Civic science is and
I'm thankful for you for doing a podcast on it,
because there wasn't enough discussion then and there still isn't
enough discussion now.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I love that. But what brought you to the current
focus on teens? Because I have been through your book,
not with a fine tooth cam yet, like I want
to go through it again in even more detail. But
I am fascinated at the level of individuality captured of
some of the voices in the book, as well as
with some of the takeaways, which are kind of a
(11:16):
mix of some of the things you'd expect and then
also some things that are a little bit different.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Yes, I think often getting upset, getting angry, getting annoyed,
getting thinking they don't get it, they don't get it,
leads me to the next project. And in this case,
I was really tired of people in the early childhood
years saying that if they just had one year of preschool,
all would be good for the rest of their lives.
(11:43):
You know. Some people didn't do that, but there was
the sense of it's the foundation and if you screw
it up, it's too late. And people felt that way
about my book Mind and the Making, and I was like, no, no, no, no, no,
we have to carry it through. Foundations are critical, you know,
they're the house of on a foundation, but you still
building the architecture upwards, and we need to pay attention
(12:05):
to the older years or we're not going to really
help kids grow and learn and thrive. And all of
my work has been around helping families learn and thrive.
I mean, there's the common theme in it. But I
started out civic science by going to young people themselves
and saying, what do you want to know about your
(12:27):
own development? What should I ask the researchers who study
people your age if you had one wish to improve
the lives of people your age, what would that wish be?
Or what questions do you have about yourself? And what
don't you understand about yourself? Just a lot of open
ended questions, which you can do when you're starting something,
and it took me in a completely different direction than
(12:50):
I thought I was going. If you just read the
research on adolescents, you would go in one direction, but
if you talk to them, you go in a completely
different direction. And they're what they say. Said to me
that we talked to thirty eight fourteen to eighteen year
olds from around the country, even from other parts of
the world, and they said, why don't people like teenagers?
(13:10):
That's simple, like, look at us, We're not the stereotypic teenagers.
Who is you know? That got me to look into
what is our societal conception of teenagers of adolescents? And
they wanted, you know, I asked the question in the
eventual nationally representative study that I did, I ask what
(13:33):
do you want to tell adults about people your age?
And they wanted it to be comprehensive. So it is
a comprehensive book. It is, you know, most books are
here's you know, here's my point, and you know, I'm
going to tell you what I'm going to tell you,
and now I'm telling you, and now I told you
kind of a thing. They wanted a comprehensive story. That's
(13:54):
why they're five messages from young people about what they
want us to know, and it actually aligned with the research,
the new research. I call it the breakthrough years because
these are breakthrough years for kids, but also researchers have
had so many breakthroughs in how they understand adolescens, so
breakthrough on both sides.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I love that we're going to take a quick break
and then get into some specifics. All right, we are
back and we are going to delve into the breakthrough
years a little bit. But one thing I loved, loved
(14:35):
right off the bat was that you opened I don't
know if you opened or closed, but I read it
in your book where you mentioned the just you wait
kind of prophecy. That's like Laura and I's least favorite phrase,
just in general, like just you wait, because often we
find that either it's not true and that it potentially
(14:55):
causes a lot of unnecessary angst. So I would love
you to delve in to kind of how you addressed
this particular sentiment I think, especially around teenagers, and how
it might actually do some damage.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Yes, I mean when young people said to me, why
don't people like teenagers? That took me right back to
the birth of my first child. So I opened the
book with that because he was premature. He was in
the hospital for a while. He didn't come home right away.
He was in the hospital for five weeks before he
was big enough to come home. He was perfectly healthy,
(15:32):
just small, and he had to gain enough weight for
them to let him out of the hospital. And I
brought him home, and you know, there he was my
perfect little person. You know. Now he was big. It
was all of almost five pounds. He had ten little
fingers and ten little toes. And I just was thrilled
to this little person now who was finally in my house.
(15:55):
And a neighbor came home over to see him, to
welcome him to the world, and she said, just wait
to lease a teenager. And it was like, what, you know,
I just am feeling so much joy and I've been
through such agony over you know, would he be healthy,
would he survive? You know, with foreign prematurely, that's scary.
And now I've got this jail like since hanging over
(16:16):
my head for the next ten years or something. Uh
So I asked that in the study, I ask how
many people have had heard just wait, And sixty one
percent of parents in a nationally representative group have heard
just wait until they're teenagers. Interestingly, to me, parents did
something else, which is I'd say I'd start the in
(16:37):
person interviews that I did in between the two national studies.
I'd start the in person interviews saying, like, if I
were someone from another country, tell me what it's like
to be the parent of a child your age, and
they would to a person, they would say, I'm lucky,
my kid's okay, my kid isn't this terrible person. So
(16:58):
it's just the consent options of what adolescents are supposed
to be, Like, they're so embedded in us that there
were the opening gambit to every conversation I had with parents.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Like, even though I'm the exception to the rule, i
still believe this trope because it's just been what people say.
And you said something interesting on another podcast was that
there's actually some data that like expecting badness may make
it more likely to happen. I found that fascinating. I
also wonder if it applies in other realms of life.
But can you share a little bit about that well?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
I wanted to understand when we ask the question and
what you want to tell the adults about people your age.
We found that twenty one percent of young people say
understand us, understand our development. And who hasn't had a
teenager say that to you? You know, you understand us,
you don't understand us, you know, And it can be
(17:51):
sort of something that we brush off. But in fact
I ask a question that got it that I ask
adults what they're conceptions of the team brain were. I
came out of sitting at a conference on neuroscience with
neuroscientists where they were debating what public thought about teenagers,
and I thought, well, I'll just ask, and so I did,
(18:13):
and we don't understand them. What I found is that
only fourteen percent of parents use positive words, twenty seven
percent use neutral words, fifty nine percent use negative words.
The most frequent negative word, by eleven percent, was immature,
and then another eight percent. So almost one in five
of us think of our adolescence as deficit adults, and
(18:39):
we don't understand that they're acting the way that they're
programmed to act. Their brain is priming them to be exploratory,
to have strong emotional reactions to things as they figure
out how to move out into the world and to
become whom they want to be or to be whom
they want to be. So it's it's normal, it's developmentally completely,
it's development necessary for them to be this way, and
(19:02):
yet we don't you know, a lot of us don't
understand that. So that I think was a very important
finding that we actually our adult perspectives. It's called the
curse of knowledge in cognitive science, where we now know something,
then we don't remember not knowing it. We can't see
the world without knowing it. I think that part of
(19:23):
that is true in how we think about teenagers.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Interesting, Yeah, you can't really strike anything from the record,
and then you're maybe handicapped by that. Very interesting. You
also talk about how it is very developmentally appropriate for
teens to have heightened emotions and how we react to
that as parents can either be helpful or perhaps very
(19:48):
hurtful if it's not done right. And it seems like
that was a common theme that came out. Can you
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yes, I just love I mean, young people are so articulate.
You know, young people wrote down the things that they
didn't like that adults said to them, like stop being
such a teenager. Well, they are a teenager, you know,
they're supposed to be a teenager. That's what they are,
and or you're you know, hormonal mess or oh my god,
(20:16):
puberty or you know all of the things like that.
And so we need to understand that they're supposed to
have these very heightened feelings. They're like emotional detectors. I
thought of it like a Geiger counter. If anyone remembers
what they are. You know, where you go around and
you can find metal in the soil. They're supposed to
be able to be sensitive to emotions. How else will
(20:38):
they know who are the people that they want to
be with, Who are the people who make them feel
safe as they move further from the home. I don't
believe that there's sort of something called independence that they
separate and are never connected to us. Again, you know
that we're always interdependent. In my book The Six Stages
of Parenthood, I called it the stage of interdependence. But
(20:58):
they're moving out far, they're into the world, and they
need that ability to be an emotional detector.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, and how about our response to those emotions? What
are they looking for? It sounds like a big theme
was to be listened to and not have their feelings
be discounted. But can you go into more depth? As
how we can be supportive as parents even in the moment.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, that's where I found civic science so helpful, because
they can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't work.
They want to be talked with, not at one child
I call them. Joshua, who is twelve years old from California, said,
listen with when I was a child's mind, not just
now I'm an adult mind. So try to take their
(21:43):
perspectives and understand how it feels to be a teenager
or how it felt once. But don't say, oh, I
was your agent and I got over it. You know
you'll get over it. Explain that they're supposed to have
those feelings. If they I mean, they really want to
understand it, they will say, oh, I didn't know that
was normal. I didn't know we were supposed to feel
this way. So listen, listen more than you talk, they said,
(22:07):
Listen with an understanding of their development. And then I
think also help them learn to solve problems. I ask
young people for three you know, the most important parenting
or teaching skills, and they said, listen more than you talk.
Listen with when I was a child's mind as well
as now I'm an adult mind, So take their perspective
and then if we're the problem, then we need to
(22:29):
be part of the solution. Using young people's words here,
but they need to develop the ability to solve problems
for themselves. So using autonomy supportive practices or I call
them skill building practices, is a way to help them
learn the skills to manage the world rather than fixing
things for them.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Well, speaking of skills to manage the world, you go off.
I don't know if it's a tangent or sort of
a subtopic, but executive function comes up a lot in
this book, I guess because that's one area that's really
developing and just impacts a lot of how kids and
teens experience daily life. So how what does that mean?
And how can we support our kids, even those who
(23:11):
might be struggling to develop that executive function as I
know many adults still struggle with that as well.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yes, absolutely, it's actually a culmination. It's the fifth message
because it's to me ties so much together. If we
help young people and ourselves develop executive function skills, we're
going to learn better, We're going to thrive better. It
kind of pulls it all together, I think it's the
biggest secret. You know, there's always a gap between research
(23:40):
getting to practice. The research on executive function skills is
maybe twenty or so years old by that name anyway,
And yet if you walk into a classroom a group
of I'm working with the ASAY, which is the school
Superintendent organization, and they're always saying, if you walk into
a group of superintendents and you asked them to hold
(24:02):
up their hand if they've heard executive function, not many
people will raise their hand. And if they do, they'll
think it has to do with problems with executive function,
which is ADHD or other learning problems, or it has
to do with organizing, or it has to do you know,
making tabs in your notebooks, or it has to do
with being able to sit still and be compliant and
(24:23):
listen to the teacher, and those are all parts of it,
but it is these are the skills of learning. These
are how we learn. They are the most important skills.
And so I think that we need to you ask
what we should do. And I think it's helping children
become aware of how they learn, not just what they learn.
We focus a lot on what they learn, but how
(24:45):
they learn. So when did you figure out You know,
you struggled with getting your homework done, but this time
you did it and it wasn't such a struggle. What
was different? How did you manage that? What did you
learn from that? Or you're doing some project on the river,
let's say, or you know science that looks at how
(25:07):
rivers develop, in the function of rivers in society, making
it up, but not just what did you learn about rivers?
But how did you learn best? What helped you learn something?
How does your memory work? So executive function is an
umbrella concept. It's not us thing. It's a set of
sub skills. There are four sub skills that I think
(25:28):
are important. They are working memory, which means using what
you know. It's not enough to memorize something, you have
to be able to use it put it to action.
It is being able to think flexibly. Because the world
changes and we need to change with it. We need
to understand other people's point of view. That's just one
example of thinking flexibly. That everybody doesn't think the way
(25:51):
we do, and understanding different perspectives is really critically important
to surviving in society. It's reflecting that isn't often seen
as an executive function skill. These are attention regulation skills.
The attention when we reflect is internal intention attention, not
just external attention. We're paying attention to ourselves, we're pausing,
(26:13):
we're stepping back. It does take place in a different
part of the brain than default mode network, but it
is highly linked to executive function skills, so I put
it in there. And then finally self control, which is
doing what you need to do, not going on automatic,
but doing what you need to do to achieve a goal.
So these are the core skills, and they're the building
blocks of things that we know are important, like setting
(26:36):
goals or perspective taking or communicating or collaborating or problem
solving or taking on challenges. Those are the five skills
that I outline that are very important, and each of
them has sub skills that go along with it.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Awesome, We're going to take another quick break and then
I want to ask you a little bit about your
I don't know how you might have applied this to
your younger self. We'll be right back. So it seems
(27:13):
like we've gotten some things right about the teen years,
but maybe historically we got a lot of things a
little off base. So was there anything you discovered while
you were doing this research that you might have done
differently yourself, or you kind of like have seen being
done that you wish could turn around.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yes, this research helped me understand some things that I
did that worked, and it helped me figure out what
I did do that didn't work as well. My mother
was wonderful at listening to us, and particularly if we
thought that she was doing something that she could do
better as a parent. She really took our if you
(27:53):
want to call it criticism or advice, very seriously. I
didn't realize how absolutely exceptional that was until I started
spending the night with other kids and saw that there
you know, that would have been seen as back talk.
We had to be very polite if we told mother
that we didn't agree with the decision she made, but
we could say it, and very often she would listen.
(28:14):
Not always she was the boss, but that was something
that I just did with my children. And when I
asked my children the question that you just asked me,
because I figured that someone was going to ask me
that what should I do differently? They said I made
a lot of mistakes, but the thing that I always
did was listen to them and do something, you know,
(28:36):
really listen very hard and try to change if something
wasn't working very well. So I did that. And they
also said my son said that I didn't prejudge his friends,
that they could be from really different backgrounds. They were
always welcome. I wasn't prejudiced against some people. He really
(28:58):
valued that because he saw a lot a lot of
parents who had preseid ideas, you don't hang out with
these kids. You do hang out with these kids. And
my son also said that I really valued his pursuing
his interests. He is a musician. He played the drum.
Other parents could find that annoying, I assume, but I
(29:18):
found it wonderful that he brought music into our lives.
And you know now as his doctorate in music and
just got selected today as the you know in New
York State is the artist's the best artistic contribution as
an entrepreneur in the state. I mean, that's like, wow,
that's pretty amazing. He would say that it's because if
(29:39):
that's what he always wanted to do, and he always
wanted to do music, that I was like helping him
resident saying, you know, why don't you be a lawyer
or something. I think the thing that I would do
differently is to pause more, not to react as quickly,
the importance of reflection, of stepping back and not just reacting,
so that learn from looking at the research. For sure.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Oh that's awesome, and I can imagine that's something that
requires practice, But I myself will try to keep that
in mind as a fairly impatient kind of person who
probably needs to work on that.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
So that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
I love hearing it. I guess one more question because
it keeps coming up in other venues in discussions on teens,
and I'm sure you get it a lot, but there's
a lot in the cultural zeitgeist about how we've ruined
the entire generation.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Because of phones. How can we, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Address that since they are certainly part of our current
landscape and reality, and we're not going to be able to,
as Laura and I say, make it nineteen ninety five again.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Phones are the kid currency up today, and we're not
going back to nineteen ninety five or a world without pundes.
We're just not. And so we have to figure out
how to use them the best way and how to
change what's not working about them. I think that We
always look for a bad guy in the culture, and
(31:05):
phones have been our recent bad guy, you know, the
easiest thing to blame. We see mental health going up,
problems with mental health rising, and phone use parallels that.
So people say, oh, it's causal. The latest science shows
that it's not causal. Phones can be harmful for some
kids if they're used too much, or if the kids
(31:25):
are already struggling with certain issues. They were not designed
for children. They need to be designed for adolescents and
for younger children. The endless scroll, the likes, the figures
that are perfect when you feel so imperfect. All of
those things aren't particularly healthy. We need ways of making
(31:46):
phones better, but we also need to appreciate that they
open up the world of possibilities to young people. I've
been on a task force in consulting with a federal
government that is looking at the whole issue of kids
online health and safety, and we're very careful to state
the benefits as well as the potential harms. The potential benefits.
(32:06):
The best review of the literature out there for people
who really want to look at the literature besides my chapter,
which I'm still pretty proud of, is there's a whole
section in the book on the Digital World is The
National Academy of Sciences released a report in December that
summarizes the research on what we know now and what
(32:29):
we need to know about phones, and the American Psychological
Association just a few days ago came out with another advisory.
So the world is trying to catch up with the
latest bad guy. We've had bad guys before. I've seen
them come and go, so we have to put it
in perspective. I think two other thoughts about phones. One
(32:52):
is that it's a really great place for us to
help kids learn self control. They are meant their designed
to be addictive. They want you to do that endless scroll.
They're rewarding, you know, if you get likes, you want
to see how you stay in. Of course, the imaginary
audience for teenagers becomes a real audience. You can see
(33:13):
how people react to what you post, and so we
need to help them learn how to manage this. And
if we can help them learn that, just think of
all of the things that feel addictive in life can
be well managed if we give them that foundational skill.
And then I think we need to worry about what
(33:35):
phones are displacing. If they're displacing being outside and running,
that's a time for creativity. It's a time to feel
more centered, it's a time to be physically active. We
need that. If they're replacing sleep, I'd love the research
in the book that Rick hugen Ar that I report
on from Rick Hugenar at the John Hopkins where he's
(33:57):
discovered that memories getsolidated during sleep, so they're essential to learning.
They're not just being rested and rest in recovery. They
are really essential to learning. So we need to manage
phone use but not freak out about it. And it hasn't.
Has the kids told me and know in certain terms
the internet is not going to be the death of
the whole generation.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Well, that is reassuring. I think we both agree and
I love that perspective. Well, let's end on our love
of the week. I did give you a warning, so
I will let you go first. What is your love
of the week this week?
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Well, this week was my birthday yesterday, Happy birthday. And
my grandson who usually he's eleven, doesn't usually do things
on school nights because his mom is really careful about
making sure he gets enough sleep. We live about fifteen
minutes away, and he decided to come and he worked
really hard at finding a present for me for my birthday.
(34:55):
So what he brought me and I know you can't
see it on the podcast, but I'm home it now,
so imagine it is. It's called living Animal. It's a labradoodle.
He knows how much I love my two dogs, and
he wanted to give me another dog, but instead he
gave me a stuffed animal that is big, white and
(35:16):
fluffy labradoodle and it is just adorable and I'm very
much in love with him and with this labradoodle that
I now have.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Oh my gosh, that is so sweet and it sounds
like he absolutely nailed it, so that is awesome. Mine
is going to be a tech tip which is super basic,
but if you ever are interviewing someone, or perhaps just
want a deep dive on someone's work, you can actually
search for their name and Apple podcasts and then be
presented with a million places that they have done interviews previously.
(35:47):
So not sharing my trade secrets here, but I did
it for Ellen, and I've done it for many guests
in the past, but I've also done it for other
random people that I've become interested in, because then you
might expose you to some new podcas, new perspectives, et cetera.
And I don't think I realized you could do that
until recently. But yeah, you can search for the subject
of the podcast, not just the title. So thank you
(36:09):
so much for coming on. This was amazing and as
I said, can't wait to Delvin even deeper with a
fine tooth calm. Just remind our listeners the full name
of your book and of course where they can find you.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
It's called the Breakthrough Years because I really would like
us as a society to make these the breakthrough years
for adolescence. Help us see them as a time of possibility,
and there are so many resources in the book that
can help us turn what is often seen as the
time of storm and stress or a just wait time
(36:41):
into a time where we can build on adolescence possibilities,
a time of very sensitive brain development. The subtitle is
a new scientific framework for raising thriving teens, and it
really is a framework. It's comprehensive. Adolescents wanted us to
fully understand them, so the book takes the five messages
(37:01):
that were most important to them and fully explores them.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Awesome well Thank you so much again for coming on
my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
All Right, we are back.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
That was so much fun to chat with Ellen Galinsky.
Definitely check her book out. And now we have our
Q and A segment. This one came in for Laura specifically.
You'll see why in a second, and she writes, you
all have talked about whether or not to have more kids,
and this is usually it seems like going from two
to three kids. But Laura, you have five kids. Maybe
(37:32):
this episode exists, but I'd be interested in hearing more
about deciding to have kids number four and five. I
have three kids and I'm probably done, but maybe not.
And I'm also interested in the logistics. Did you store
all the baby stuff or give it away and buy
more later?
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, I think the logistics of the baby stuff is
the least fraught part of that, So it's sort of
funny that that was in this question. I mean, you
know there's so many people selling used baby items or
you can easily buy things. I mean, we've certainly we
had a great guest many years ago who was a
foster parent, and basically you can learn like overnight that
(38:08):
you're going to have a baby in your house the
next day and she went out to Target and got
everything she needed and it was fine.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
So I think you.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Don't need to worry about any of that. Feel free
to give your stuff away to friends if you'd like,
because they'll probably give it back to you if you
get pregnant again, or you know you can purchase it,
or if you want to store it, go for it
if that makes thinking about the transition a little bit
easier than you know. If you have the room in
your house, then not a problem to put things in
a closet for a few years while you make a decision.
(38:39):
But yeah, we don't really get the question of should
I have a fourth kid or should I have a
fifth kid.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
We always get the question of should I have a
third kid. I guess that's just the more common question.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
But I think if you're feeling maybe not done Sarah
and I have certainly discussed this with people in the
past and certainly seen this with each other, that if
you're feeling maybe not done, that may be a sign
that you do want more, And if your partner is
open to it or maybe even actively hopeful about the idea,
(39:11):
then you can maybe just sit with the idea for
a month or two and see if you both feel
excited about it, because you can always try for four
without trying for five, Like you don't have to make
that as a joint decision for you know how many
more you're going for. You can simply say, well, maybe
we're open to a fourth and have a fourth. And
(39:32):
if you have a fourth and decide it's the most
awesome thing in the world, and you want to have
even more kids and you don't feel done, then you
can go for a fifth. But maybe you will have
that feeling after four like, Okay, that's plenty, my family
is complete. I can tell everyone that I feel very
complete after five, which was not necessarily how I had felt,
(39:54):
for sure after number three or four. So I mean,
partly it's that I'm old, like I don't think we're
having more kids at this point anyway, But I certainly
have that feeling of my family feeling complete in a
way that I didn't one hundred percent earlier.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
So I think that's something worth listening to.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
And I will say, just because you feel complete at
one moment, you might change your mind in a year,
or maybe the other way around, like sometimes when people
struggle to have kids, the gap gets longer, and then
you become at peace with like not moving.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Back to the baby stage.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
So it's hard to sort of like plan ahead and
assume that you'll be stuck with a given goal or
mindset around having more kids, because also you can't count
on what's going to happen. But I will say what Laura.
I agree with what Laura says, which is that like,
if you're not sure if you're done, to me, that sort.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Of suggests that maybe you're not, because you had that
feeling right after too that you were not sure you
were done.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, I mean not instantaneously, but I was not like
totally sure, and then after three I was like and seeing,
we are good.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
That's it, feeling like this is the family, this is good.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
So yeah, all right, well this has been best of
both worlds. Sarah has been interviewing Ellen Golinski about her
book The Breakthrough Years and All Things Adolescents. We will
be back next week with more on making work and
life fit together.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you can.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.