November 18, 2025 • 20 mins
If your tween or teen feels stuck, scared of failure, or glued to their screen, this episode will change everything. Education innovator Chris Balme reveals why adolescence is the second great brain-growth window — and why kids today desperately need more real-world challenges, not more protection.
A powerful, hopeful conversation about autonomy, resilience, and helping young people feel big, brave, and capable again.
KEY POINTS
- Why ages 11–16 are a critical “second toddlerhood” of brain growth
- How autonomy builds confidence (and why modern kids get too little)
- The danger of overprotection and structured everything
- What a good challenge looks like vs. a stress-inducing one
- How to help risk-averse teens stretch themselves — without forcing
- Why peers, not parents, are the secret to motivation
- Real examples of challenges that transformed kids
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“When we don’t trust our adolescents, they stop trusting us.” — Chris Balme
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Challenge Accepted by Chris Balme
- Argonaut: Online advisory program for middle schoolers
- Millennium School + Hakuba International School
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Fuel autonomy: Let your tween choose a meaningful challenge this week.
- Enlist peers: Hook them in through a friend, not parental pressure.
- Normalise failure: Remind them adolescence is the best time to mess up safely.
- Reduce overprotection: Give back small freedoms — walking, biking, exploring.
- Model vulnerability: Share your own unfinished, imperfect self.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is The Happy Family's podcast today. My name is
doctor Justin Coulson. Really excited to have this conversation today
on the pod. A couple of weeks ago, Lanor Scanazzi,
the World's Worst Mum, we had her on the podcast
talking about her most recent ted talk about why we
should spend less time with the kids. But when we
were talking, Lena told me that I absolutely had to
(00:28):
talk to this guest, and she was right. Chris Bam
has cracked the code on what tweens and teens actually
need to thrive, and he's got a brand new book
that puts adventure back into adolescents and pre adolescents. It's
called Challenge Accepted. It's all about giving kids real challenges
that build confidence and creativity. If you know Lenoscanazzi and
(00:48):
Free Range Kids, you'll know why she was so excited
about Chris and his book. And if you've got a
child who is in what they would call middle school
everywhere in the world except Australia, that is, we're talking
about our tweens and early teen kids, kids that sort
of seem, I don't know, glue to their screens, stuck
in their comfort zone, and you're wondering how to help
them discover what they're truly capable of, especially with the
social media minNum age legislation coming in the next couple
(01:09):
of weeks. You need to hear this conversation. Stay with us.
This is the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting Solutions, every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name stops
to Justin Coilson, and today I'm joined by Chris Barham.
Chris is an education innovator. He has founded two schools
(01:30):
dedicated to helping young people to discover therefore potentially currently
serves as co Prin's bullet at Hercuber. I don't speak Japanese, Chris,
If I got that right, Harkuber International School in Japan.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
How do you say it? How? Hakuba?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So sorry, and is also the founder and director of Argonnault,
an online advisory program for middle schoolers worldwide. Chris, before
I bring you in a little bit more about you,
because I think people should know just how accomplished you
are and why this conversation matters. Chris co founded Millennium School.
It's a pioneering lab school in San from just Go
and has been recognized as a Shoker Fellow, did I
say a choker correctly?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Again?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Beautiful for his change making work in education. First book
was Fighting the Magic in Middle School. That was Best
Sller a couple of years ago. Latest book, Challenge Accepted,
written directly for your kids.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And I know some people say, oh, my kids are
going to read a book.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
This one is designed in such way that kids can
actually read it because the chapters are short. Hello, short
form content packed with adventures that are going to help
middle schoolers unlock their creativity and confidence during what I
think is some vital, foundational, important years. Chris Long intro.
Pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks for staying
up until all hours in California to have this discussion
(02:42):
with me today.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Welcome, great to be with you justin Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So a softball question straight up, but let's talk about
the book Challenge Accepted. Describe why you've written a book
for kids, because the reality is data, unfortunately is telling
us that kids aren't reading books nearly to the degree
that they once did. And yet this is a children's
activity book four tweens and kids in their early teens.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, well, thank you for the question. Big picture, I
mean there are two times in the human life span
where our brains are growing the fastest, early childhood and
early adolescence. This is where it's at zero to five
and eleven to sixteen. But the big difference and the
reason both of these books came about is the zero
to five years. We have all of these resources. As
(03:27):
new parents. We get maps, we figure out the developmental stages,
and that way we don't take it personally. When our
two year olds starts saying no to everything, you know,
we see it coming. But fast forward to the eleven
to sixteen year range, the next big phase, when brains
are growing fast and you've got to work hard to
keep up with your kid, we don't get those maps,
and parents, instead of knowing, oh, I can see exactly
(03:48):
what's coming, we get caught off guard. We take it personally.
We think something's wrong with us or wrong with our kid.
So I wrote the first book to guide the parents
and teachers to understand developmentally what's happening in the eleven
to sixteen year range. And then the second book is
so kids can just go and do it and take
things into their own hands, feel like they're authors of
their own story. The catches as you said, if a
(04:11):
parent hands you this book and says you got to
do this, that is not a good beginning. So what
I always recommend to parents is, just like you mate
with a health or sexuality book, you kind of leave
it available. Make it something that your kid can find
to get some good resources when they need it, not
as a demand from you the parents.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, oh, what's this book that's been sitting on the
kitchen bench for the last three weeks?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Baby?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
You want to exactly right. I want to spend a
second talking about these challenges because these are the kinds
of things that once upon a time, and I'm talking
about your generation, my generation, we just did this stuff.
Like I remember so challenge number for challenge accepted. That's
the title of the book, Challenge number nine Open a
bank account. I remember sneaking down to the shops when
(04:55):
I was like, I don't know, thirteen or fourteen years old.
I'd just gotten one of my first ever. I was
probably a bit too young to be getting the job,
but they gave it to me anyway. I was pushing
trolley's as we call them in Australia shopping cars in
the United States around a car park and I wanted
to have my own money. I didn't want my parents
to know about my money, and I felt so independent
(05:16):
to walk into the bank doesn't exist anymore. But I
went to the Advance bank and I set up my
bank account and I got my own little card that
went with it. It wasn't a credit card because I didn't
give those kids.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I remember just feeling so big, like Tom Hanks big.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I felt like I was a grown up because I
had my own bank account that I had opened on
my own with my own money, and the paycheck was
going to go in there, and my parents wouldn't know
about it, which meant that I could buy whatever I wanted.
And it felt so It just felt so big. It
was so enlarging for me. Talk more about the challenges
and what else is in there and why that's it? Well.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I had very similar experience. First job at thirteen, worked
in a retail sharp terrified of my boss. Thought this
was the most powerful being it ever in Calgary. And
I will never forget the day, probably six months in
where she allowed me to run the shop while she
went to run an Errand's, and I swear I was
a foot taller at the end of that day. Just
that kind of validation from an objective adult who was
(06:13):
actually paying me that I could handle something like that
meant more to me than every grade I got in
school that whole year. And I think that is the
psychology that adolescents have, that they they know that their
parents and teachers are subjective, and they want to get
out there into the real world where there's objectivity, where
they can earn something literally maybe money in other ways
(06:35):
as well, that shows what they're worth. That helps them
internalize a sense of value. So that's what the book
is all about. Whether it's you know, starting a business.
I was thinking of some students of mine who started
a student cafe at a school, invested in you know,
industrial toasters and things like that, and at the time
of their life figuring out how to make money, or
(06:55):
all kinds of other things. Kids who do their first
camping trip, who you know, recently, my own daughter is
taking on the challenge to create a time capsule with
their friend and they're finding all their kind of favorite
items that represent this era and they're burying them in
the backyard in a box. I think the idea is,
you know, this generation of kids, for whatever reason, we
can guess about it has had less autonomy, and for
(07:19):
various reasons, they've been in more structured activities. We need
to get them out into the world. There's even research
and Lenora and others are on top of this showing
that without autonomy, we have higher rates of anxiety and
depression in our teenage years. So they've got to get
out there. And this is a book that gives hopefully
fifty good ideas, one of which we'll catch them to
get them out there.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So one of the challenges in the book, and this
is the last one that we'll talking about before we
step into some other content, but number twenty one become
a babysitter. Become a babysitter. As you're talking about that,
it just it reminds me that just recently somebody asked
if we needed to get a babysitter for one of
our kids because we were going to go and do something.
And I thought to myself, it's so funny because this
(08:03):
child at the age of fifteen. Once upon a time,
it was the fourteen and fifteen year olds who are
doing the babysitting. But now people are expecting that because
I'm leaving my fifteen year old behind.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
She needs to be babysat. Like this shift is in
the name.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
That's right, baby sitting, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So the book is very much about helping kids to
grow up right, that's it, and to realize that they
can be the author of their own stories. So I
think whenever you see an adolescent who's kind of rolling
their eyes and being too cool for school, I think
that's not natural. That's a kid who feels thwarted. They
can't go out there and work on themselves and do
the things that they're driven to do, like to contribute,
(08:47):
to connect, to figure out who they really are. So
they're just rolling their eyes because they're waiting until we
get out of their way. In many ways, So the
idea of this is, these are ways where you feel
more in control of your own story. You can become
a babysitter, you can figure out how to go camping,
start a business, etc.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Chris Barmer is the author of Challenge Accepted after the
Break as a high school principle. I'm going to ask
Chris what he's seeing parents doing right and wrong when
it comes to helping kids to discover their strengths and
build their confidence and resilience. Plus the difference between a
good challenge and one that just stresses kids out.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
This is the Happy Families Podcast. Chris Barm, the author
of Challenge Accepted, is with me on the pod today. Chris,
you're the principle of a high school, You've founded a
couple of high schools, You've been in education all your life.
When you think about what parents are doing in the
way that they're engaging with children, We've talked a lot
about autonomy. What are the things what are the biggest
mistakes that parents are making when it comes to kids
(09:55):
and resilience, and what are the things that we are
actually getting right? Because I don't want this to be
a big be up on parents. It's a challenging world
at challenging time to rise kids.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh it is, for sure. I mean, I'll start with
the positive. I think something that parents are getting more
and more right is understanding that we have different brains,
that there is not one kind of brain that should
fit perfectly like a glove into school. You know. Neurodiversity
is something that used to be barely understood and it's
it's still there's a long way to go, but I
think modern parents have a lot more nuanced understanding and
(10:26):
if your kid has ADHD or is on the spectrum,
you know that's possible. We can work with that. It's
something that parents aren't as afraid of, I think as
maybe a past generation. On the flip side, I think
that I think parents struggle with you know, I'm a
parent of three. I think that we hold a lot
of fear and we're frequently overwhelmed. Our to do list
is ridiculously long. We don't have time to reflect, and
(10:50):
in that fearful, reactive place, we don't give our kids
enough trust and autonomy. We think that the world is scary.
We're taking care of them by putting in them and
structured activities or being baby sad at fifteen, as you said,
And that comes from love without a doubt, but it
has some unfortunate side effects that if kids don't get
(11:10):
out there, they don't discover a sense of value, they
don't get to mess up when they're young enough that
those mess ups aren't that big of a deal in
the big picture. That's the point where they can develop
confidence in the sense that they can keep tinkering towards
something good. So there's some work to be done in
that sense.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I have been quite provocative this year and have said
this more times than I can count, that our children
should be allowed to do at least one activity every
week that could, if it went wrong, land them in hospital.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Most people, when I say that are aghast.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
They're like, oh, what are you saying?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
How can you say that?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And yet and I've got a couple of kids who
have ended up in hospital this year because of the
activities that they've participated in. Incidentally, do you think that
those kids have said, well, I'll never do that again,
Like they just don't go back at it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
They're back at it.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
They're like, Okay, opportunity for progress, mastery.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I love the activity. That's why I was doing in
the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And I'm looking at your challenge accepted. I'm thinking about
the conversations I'm having with you and Leonora and people
like that, and just thinking we can actually trust our
children's intrinsic growth tendencies. Right, Like, children are born resilient,
and if they stop being resilient, it's often because we.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Knock it out of them.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Something that I've been playing around with lately in my
own mind is that resilience often doesn't feel resilient, and
I wonder I wonder if, as you consider the challenges
that are in your book and the experiences that you've
had with students and families that you've spoken to and
people who have done these challenges, can you share an
(12:45):
example of somebody who took on a challenge and really
struggled with it, maybe it didn't even work out, and
yet the activity ended up being worthwhile the challenge being
accepted was exactly what needed to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely just for us to what you said before. I
love what you said about trust. I think when we
don't trust our young children, they don't trust themselves, and
when we don't trust our adolescent children, they don't trust
us that they then feel resentful that they're not being
taken seriously brilliant. Yeah, sure there's something there, but yeah,
(13:18):
oh so many stories of these challenges going in all
kinds of directions. When there's a student who was determined
to take on the challenge to stick out in a group.
This is one that I think is especially risky for
early adolescents, where sticking out just feels like the worst
possible thing that could happen, everything wrong, Like you've got
to be exactly. You've got to fit in right, indicate
(13:40):
you're belonging with anything, anything's worth it. And he was
kind of searching around looking for what he could do,
and he told me, I have no idea. You know.
The one activity that I have or like maybe I
could do something is swimming. I don't know, try something.
And so he realized that right after his time in
the pool was a senior swim hour. So he was like,
all right, I'll just hang out until the seniors get there.
(14:03):
We'll see what happens. And he told me this incredible
story that he spent an hour with the seniors. They
were so happy to have him there in the pool
and made all of these friends who are sixty years
older than him. And now every time he shows up there,
he's got like his cheer squad of you know, in
the seventy to eighty year old generation. I just I
love that he found a way to make that challenge work.
(14:23):
Wasn't exactly with his peers, but he stepped out of
the kind of narrow road that we often put kids in.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That's the hope of the listening to you share that
story and seeing the delight on your face, the smile
that it elicits. This is the whole idea, right, Like
when you take on a challenge, you never quite know
what the outcome will be, but there's always some level
of enlargement even when it doesn't quite go the way
that you thought.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Chris, let's do a quick.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Lightning round, just a halfl of questions that I'd love.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
A super quick, super short.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Response too, and then I'm going to hit you with
my last big important question. So lightning around question number one.
What's one thing that parents worry about that they.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Really shouldn't their kids moving around in the world. I
think we restrict their physical movements so much out of
fear of, you know, things like kidnappings that are actually
unbelievably rare. Let them go find their way to school,
find their way to friends' houses, if at all possible.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Fill in the blank. Every middle school. That is, every
child between the age of let's say nine to ten
through to fourteen or fifteen. Every middle schooler should try
blank at least once.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Wow, that's a good one. Should try joining a completely
new social group. Oh that is good. I like that
a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
What's the worst advice that you hear parents giving their
tweens work harder on academics.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
That's a controversial one.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
No, you and I we've just become brothers.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
If you could only.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Give parents one piece of advice about raising adolescents.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
What would it be, become more vulnerable. They can see
through you anyways, So it's time to reveal more about
the unfinished parts of yourself. Name one small risk every
twelve year old should be taking, exploring a city by
themselves or with friends. I love that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Okay, here's my last lightning round question. What's your go
to response when a parent says, but what if they fail?
This is a great time in life to fail. It
stakes a low exactly feel high because they always feel high,
but they're really not that high when you're twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, great stuff, Chris.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
My last question for you, this is not a lightning
round question. This is a much more serious one that
really ties in with what the book is all about
and what your work is all about.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
What is the difference from.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Your perspective between a good challenge and a challenge that
just stresses kids out and causes anxiety and worry and
fear and apprehension and.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
All the bad things. Well, I've said.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Bad things like they're bad, But are they bad anyway?
What's the difference between a good challenge and a challenge
that just kids out.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
The difference is whether you chose it and whether you
have friends with you. You know, if you chose it,
you're invested. And kids often don't get enough choice, And
adolescents are intelligent enough to make lots of choices that
we're still making for them. And if friends are with you,
then even something hard becomes part of your lore. You know.
Those are the stories you're going to laugh about, you know,
(17:21):
as soon as tomorrow or the next day, that bring
you closer. So they need choice and they need good company. Right, Okay,
so follow up question.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I just know that there are going to be some
parents who are saying, yeah, but my child just won't
choose anything challenging. My child just wants to sit at home,
sir at TikTok, playful, whatnot. And every time I say
come and do something that's going to stretch you a
little bit, they just say and they won't move.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I think every adolescent, even across different neurological types, really
wants to understand their peers. And that is one of
the most fundamental ways that puberty, tunes, our brains, they
want to be around them, know how to connect, join, leave,
all of those things. So if you're going to hook
them into something, it's going to be through a peer.
It's not you pushing them out the door. It's a
(18:06):
peer invading them into something. So our engineering is to,
you know, through our parent friends or through their friends,
to pull them out the door, so that they're going
because their friend is there, not because you told them.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So we're supposed to wrap it up here, but I'm
going to mention really quickly. I'm not sure to what
degree you're familiar with self determination theory. So that's the
foundation of everything that I've been doing for the last
twenty years, and everything that you're tapping into here is
aligned with that. So for the Happy Families podcast audience
who's listening right now, what you've really said is we
want our kids to take on challenges because it builds
(18:39):
their capacity, their competence, their capability. We want them to
do it with other people and to be involved with
others because that supports that relatdn's need and to the
degree that we possibly can, we want them to have
a say in the challenges that they're taking on because
when they buy the why, when they're inventing the why themselves,
when they're stepping into that rationale and saying this makes
sense to me, I want to do this, they're much
more likely to stick with it. What you've essentially done
(19:01):
in this book is created a whole lot of challenges
for kids to become more motivated, more effective, more functional
humans because they all sit within the most well researched,
most empirically backed psychological theory on the planet.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That's it. We're singing the same song. I'm with you.
I think they are naturally highly motivated people, so these
challenges are just about giving them the conditions to act
on that motivation, and they will drive themselves toward the
best learning that we can imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So I'm sitting here with goosebumps all up my arms
and legs and thinking, what a great conversation. I hope
that everyone who's listened has gleaned so much. The book
is called Challenge Accepted. We'll link to that in the
show notes. It's available wherever you buy your books. Chris Bam,
thank you for staying up late in California to have
a chat with me on the Happy Families.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Podcasts such a fun chat. Thanks Justin.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland for
Bridge Media. Mim Hammond's provides research, admin and other support,
and if you would like more info of what we've
talked about, check the show notes for Chris's book and
visit Happy Families dot com dot au for even more
resources
This is The Happy Family's podcast today. My name is
doctor Justin Coulson. Really excited to have this conversation today
on the pod. A couple of weeks ago, Lanor Scanazzi,
the World's Worst Mum, we had her on the podcast
talking about her most recent ted talk about why we
should spend less time with the kids. But when we
were talking, Lena told me that I absolutely had to
(00:28):
talk to this guest, and she was right. Chris Bam
has cracked the code on what tweens and teens actually
need to thrive, and he's got a brand new book
that puts adventure back into adolescents and pre adolescents. It's
called Challenge Accepted. It's all about giving kids real challenges
that build confidence and creativity. If you know Lenoscanazzi and
(00:48):
Free Range Kids, you'll know why she was so excited
about Chris and his book. And if you've got a
child who is in what they would call middle school
everywhere in the world except Australia, that is, we're talking
about our tweens and early teen kids, kids that sort
of seem, I don't know, glue to their screens, stuck
in their comfort zone, and you're wondering how to help
them discover what they're truly capable of, especially with the
social media minNum age legislation coming in the next couple
(01:09):
of weeks. You need to hear this conversation. Stay with us.
This is the Happy Families Podcast, Real Parenting Solutions, every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name stops
to Justin Coilson, and today I'm joined by Chris Barham.
Chris is an education innovator. He has founded two schools
(01:30):
dedicated to helping young people to discover therefore potentially currently
serves as co Prin's bullet at Hercuber. I don't speak Japanese, Chris,
If I got that right, Harkuber International School in Japan.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
How do you say it? How? Hakuba?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So sorry, and is also the founder and director of Argonnault,
an online advisory program for middle schoolers worldwide. Chris, before
I bring you in a little bit more about you,
because I think people should know just how accomplished you
are and why this conversation matters. Chris co founded Millennium School.
It's a pioneering lab school in San from just Go
and has been recognized as a Shoker Fellow, did I
say a choker correctly?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Again?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Beautiful for his change making work in education. First book
was Fighting the Magic in Middle School. That was Best
Sller a couple of years ago. Latest book, Challenge Accepted,
written directly for your kids.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And I know some people say, oh, my kids are
going to read a book.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
This one is designed in such way that kids can
actually read it because the chapters are short. Hello, short
form content packed with adventures that are going to help
middle schoolers unlock their creativity and confidence during what I
think is some vital, foundational, important years. Chris Long intro.
Pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks for staying
up until all hours in California to have this discussion
(02:42):
with me today.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Welcome, great to be with you justin Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
So a softball question straight up, but let's talk about
the book Challenge Accepted. Describe why you've written a book
for kids, because the reality is data, unfortunately is telling
us that kids aren't reading books nearly to the degree
that they once did. And yet this is a children's
activity book four tweens and kids in their early teens.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, well, thank you for the question. Big picture, I
mean there are two times in the human life span
where our brains are growing the fastest, early childhood and
early adolescence. This is where it's at zero to five
and eleven to sixteen. But the big difference and the
reason both of these books came about is the zero
to five years. We have all of these resources. As
(03:27):
new parents. We get maps, we figure out the developmental stages,
and that way we don't take it personally. When our
two year olds starts saying no to everything, you know,
we see it coming. But fast forward to the eleven
to sixteen year range, the next big phase, when brains
are growing fast and you've got to work hard to
keep up with your kid, we don't get those maps,
and parents, instead of knowing, oh, I can see exactly
(03:48):
what's coming, we get caught off guard. We take it personally.
We think something's wrong with us or wrong with our kid.
So I wrote the first book to guide the parents
and teachers to understand developmentally what's happening in the eleven
to sixteen year range. And then the second book is
so kids can just go and do it and take
things into their own hands, feel like they're authors of
their own story. The catches as you said, if a
(04:11):
parent hands you this book and says you got to
do this, that is not a good beginning. So what
I always recommend to parents is, just like you mate
with a health or sexuality book, you kind of leave
it available. Make it something that your kid can find
to get some good resources when they need it, not
as a demand from you the parents.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, oh, what's this book that's been sitting on the
kitchen bench for the last three weeks?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Baby?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
You want to exactly right. I want to spend a
second talking about these challenges because these are the kinds
of things that once upon a time, and I'm talking
about your generation, my generation, we just did this stuff.
Like I remember so challenge number for challenge accepted. That's
the title of the book, Challenge number nine Open a
bank account. I remember sneaking down to the shops when
(04:55):
I was like, I don't know, thirteen or fourteen years old.
I'd just gotten one of my first ever. I was
probably a bit too young to be getting the job,
but they gave it to me anyway. I was pushing
trolley's as we call them in Australia shopping cars in
the United States around a car park and I wanted
to have my own money. I didn't want my parents
to know about my money, and I felt so independent
(05:16):
to walk into the bank doesn't exist anymore. But I
went to the Advance bank and I set up my
bank account and I got my own little card that
went with it. It wasn't a credit card because I didn't
give those kids.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I remember just feeling so big, like Tom Hanks big.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I felt like I was a grown up because I
had my own bank account that I had opened on
my own with my own money, and the paycheck was
going to go in there, and my parents wouldn't know
about it, which meant that I could buy whatever I wanted.
And it felt so It just felt so big. It
was so enlarging for me. Talk more about the challenges
and what else is in there and why that's it? Well.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I had very similar experience. First job at thirteen, worked
in a retail sharp terrified of my boss. Thought this
was the most powerful being it ever in Calgary. And
I will never forget the day, probably six months in
where she allowed me to run the shop while she
went to run an Errand's, and I swear I was
a foot taller at the end of that day. Just
that kind of validation from an objective adult who was
(06:13):
actually paying me that I could handle something like that
meant more to me than every grade I got in
school that whole year. And I think that is the
psychology that adolescents have, that they they know that their
parents and teachers are subjective, and they want to get
out there into the real world where there's objectivity, where
they can earn something literally maybe money in other ways
(06:35):
as well, that shows what they're worth. That helps them
internalize a sense of value. So that's what the book
is all about. Whether it's you know, starting a business.
I was thinking of some students of mine who started
a student cafe at a school, invested in you know,
industrial toasters and things like that, and at the time
of their life figuring out how to make money, or
(06:55):
all kinds of other things. Kids who do their first
camping trip, who you know, recently, my own daughter is
taking on the challenge to create a time capsule with
their friend and they're finding all their kind of favorite
items that represent this era and they're burying them in
the backyard in a box. I think the idea is,
you know, this generation of kids, for whatever reason, we
can guess about it has had less autonomy, and for
(07:19):
various reasons, they've been in more structured activities. We need
to get them out into the world. There's even research
and Lenora and others are on top of this showing
that without autonomy, we have higher rates of anxiety and
depression in our teenage years. So they've got to get
out there. And this is a book that gives hopefully
fifty good ideas, one of which we'll catch them to
get them out there.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So one of the challenges in the book, and this
is the last one that we'll talking about before we
step into some other content, but number twenty one become
a babysitter. Become a babysitter. As you're talking about that,
it just it reminds me that just recently somebody asked
if we needed to get a babysitter for one of
our kids because we were going to go and do something.
And I thought to myself, it's so funny because this
(08:03):
child at the age of fifteen. Once upon a time,
it was the fourteen and fifteen year olds who are
doing the babysitting. But now people are expecting that because
I'm leaving my fifteen year old behind.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
She needs to be babysat. Like this shift is in
the name.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
That's right, baby sitting, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So the book is very much about helping kids to
grow up right, that's it, and to realize that they
can be the author of their own stories. So I
think whenever you see an adolescent who's kind of rolling
their eyes and being too cool for school, I think
that's not natural. That's a kid who feels thwarted. They
can't go out there and work on themselves and do
the things that they're driven to do, like to contribute,
(08:47):
to connect, to figure out who they really are. So
they're just rolling their eyes because they're waiting until we
get out of their way. In many ways, So the
idea of this is, these are ways where you feel
more in control of your own story. You can become
a babysitter, you can figure out how to go camping,
start a business, etc.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Chris Barmer is the author of Challenge Accepted after the
Break as a high school principle. I'm going to ask
Chris what he's seeing parents doing right and wrong when
it comes to helping kids to discover their strengths and
build their confidence and resilience. Plus the difference between a
good challenge and one that just stresses kids out.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Stay with us.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
This is the Happy Families Podcast. Chris Barm, the author
of Challenge Accepted, is with me on the pod today. Chris,
you're the principle of a high school, You've founded a
couple of high schools, You've been in education all your life.
When you think about what parents are doing in the
way that they're engaging with children, We've talked a lot
about autonomy. What are the things what are the biggest
mistakes that parents are making when it comes to kids
(09:55):
and resilience, and what are the things that we are
actually getting right? Because I don't want this to be
a big be up on parents. It's a challenging world
at challenging time to rise kids.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh it is, for sure. I mean, I'll start with
the positive. I think something that parents are getting more
and more right is understanding that we have different brains,
that there is not one kind of brain that should
fit perfectly like a glove into school. You know. Neurodiversity
is something that used to be barely understood and it's
it's still there's a long way to go, but I
think modern parents have a lot more nuanced understanding and
(10:26):
if your kid has ADHD or is on the spectrum,
you know that's possible. We can work with that. It's
something that parents aren't as afraid of, I think as
maybe a past generation. On the flip side, I think
that I think parents struggle with you know, I'm a
parent of three. I think that we hold a lot
of fear and we're frequently overwhelmed. Our to do list
is ridiculously long. We don't have time to reflect, and
(10:50):
in that fearful, reactive place, we don't give our kids
enough trust and autonomy. We think that the world is scary.
We're taking care of them by putting in them and
structured activities or being baby sad at fifteen, as you said,
And that comes from love without a doubt, but it
has some unfortunate side effects that if kids don't get
(11:10):
out there, they don't discover a sense of value, they
don't get to mess up when they're young enough that
those mess ups aren't that big of a deal in
the big picture. That's the point where they can develop
confidence in the sense that they can keep tinkering towards
something good. So there's some work to be done in
that sense.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I have been quite provocative this year and have said
this more times than I can count, that our children
should be allowed to do at least one activity every
week that could, if it went wrong, land them in hospital.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Most people, when I say that are aghast.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
They're like, oh, what are you saying?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
How can you say that?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And yet and I've got a couple of kids who
have ended up in hospital this year because of the
activities that they've participated in. Incidentally, do you think that
those kids have said, well, I'll never do that again,
Like they just don't go back at it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
They're back at it.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
They're like, Okay, opportunity for progress, mastery.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I love the activity. That's why I was doing in
the first place.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And I'm looking at your challenge accepted. I'm thinking about
the conversations I'm having with you and Leonora and people
like that, and just thinking we can actually trust our
children's intrinsic growth tendencies. Right, Like, children are born resilient,
and if they stop being resilient, it's often because we.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Knock it out of them.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Something that I've been playing around with lately in my
own mind is that resilience often doesn't feel resilient, and
I wonder I wonder if, as you consider the challenges
that are in your book and the experiences that you've
had with students and families that you've spoken to and
people who have done these challenges, can you share an
(12:45):
example of somebody who took on a challenge and really
struggled with it, maybe it didn't even work out, and
yet the activity ended up being worthwhile the challenge being
accepted was exactly what needed to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Absolutely just for us to what you said before. I
love what you said about trust. I think when we
don't trust our young children, they don't trust themselves, and
when we don't trust our adolescent children, they don't trust
us that they then feel resentful that they're not being
taken seriously brilliant. Yeah, sure there's something there, but yeah,
(13:18):
oh so many stories of these challenges going in all
kinds of directions. When there's a student who was determined
to take on the challenge to stick out in a group.
This is one that I think is especially risky for
early adolescents, where sticking out just feels like the worst
possible thing that could happen, everything wrong, Like you've got
to be exactly. You've got to fit in right, indicate
(13:40):
you're belonging with anything, anything's worth it. And he was
kind of searching around looking for what he could do,
and he told me, I have no idea. You know.
The one activity that I have or like maybe I
could do something is swimming. I don't know, try something.
And so he realized that right after his time in
the pool was a senior swim hour. So he was like,
all right, I'll just hang out until the seniors get there.
(14:03):
We'll see what happens. And he told me this incredible
story that he spent an hour with the seniors. They
were so happy to have him there in the pool
and made all of these friends who are sixty years
older than him. And now every time he shows up there,
he's got like his cheer squad of you know, in
the seventy to eighty year old generation. I just I
love that he found a way to make that challenge work.
(14:23):
Wasn't exactly with his peers, but he stepped out of
the kind of narrow road that we often put kids in.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That's the hope of the listening to you share that
story and seeing the delight on your face, the smile
that it elicits. This is the whole idea, right, Like
when you take on a challenge, you never quite know
what the outcome will be, but there's always some level
of enlargement even when it doesn't quite go the way
that you thought.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Chris, let's do a quick.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Lightning round, just a halfl of questions that I'd love.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
A super quick, super short.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Response too, and then I'm going to hit you with
my last big important question. So lightning around question number one.
What's one thing that parents worry about that they.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Really shouldn't their kids moving around in the world. I
think we restrict their physical movements so much out of
fear of, you know, things like kidnappings that are actually
unbelievably rare. Let them go find their way to school,
find their way to friends' houses, if at all possible.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Fill in the blank. Every middle school. That is, every
child between the age of let's say nine to ten
through to fourteen or fifteen. Every middle schooler should try
blank at least once.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Wow, that's a good one. Should try joining a completely
new social group. Oh that is good. I like that
a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
What's the worst advice that you hear parents giving their
tweens work harder on academics.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
That's a controversial one.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
No, you and I we've just become brothers.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
If you could only.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Give parents one piece of advice about raising adolescents.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
What would it be, become more vulnerable. They can see
through you anyways, So it's time to reveal more about
the unfinished parts of yourself. Name one small risk every
twelve year old should be taking, exploring a city by
themselves or with friends. I love that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Okay, here's my last lightning round question. What's your go
to response when a parent says, but what if they fail?
This is a great time in life to fail. It
stakes a low exactly feel high because they always feel high,
but they're really not that high when you're twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, great stuff, Chris.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
My last question for you, this is not a lightning
round question. This is a much more serious one that
really ties in with what the book is all about
and what your work is all about.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
What is the difference from.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Your perspective between a good challenge and a challenge that
just stresses kids out and causes anxiety and worry and
fear and apprehension and.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
All the bad things. Well, I've said.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Bad things like they're bad, But are they bad anyway?
What's the difference between a good challenge and a challenge
that just kids out.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
The difference is whether you chose it and whether you
have friends with you. You know, if you chose it,
you're invested. And kids often don't get enough choice, And
adolescents are intelligent enough to make lots of choices that
we're still making for them. And if friends are with you,
then even something hard becomes part of your lore. You know.
Those are the stories you're going to laugh about, you know,
(17:21):
as soon as tomorrow or the next day, that bring
you closer. So they need choice and they need good company. Right, Okay,
so follow up question.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I just know that there are going to be some
parents who are saying, yeah, but my child just won't
choose anything challenging. My child just wants to sit at home,
sir at TikTok, playful, whatnot. And every time I say
come and do something that's going to stretch you a
little bit, they just say and they won't move.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I think every adolescent, even across different neurological types, really
wants to understand their peers. And that is one of
the most fundamental ways that puberty, tunes, our brains, they
want to be around them, know how to connect, join, leave,
all of those things. So if you're going to hook
them into something, it's going to be through a peer.
It's not you pushing them out the door. It's a
(18:06):
peer invading them into something. So our engineering is to,
you know, through our parent friends or through their friends,
to pull them out the door, so that they're going
because their friend is there, not because you told them.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So we're supposed to wrap it up here, but I'm
going to mention really quickly. I'm not sure to what
degree you're familiar with self determination theory. So that's the
foundation of everything that I've been doing for the last
twenty years, and everything that you're tapping into here is
aligned with that. So for the Happy Families podcast audience
who's listening right now, what you've really said is we
want our kids to take on challenges because it builds
(18:39):
their capacity, their competence, their capability. We want them to
do it with other people and to be involved with
others because that supports that relatdn's need and to the
degree that we possibly can, we want them to have
a say in the challenges that they're taking on because
when they buy the why, when they're inventing the why themselves,
when they're stepping into that rationale and saying this makes
sense to me, I want to do this, they're much
more likely to stick with it. What you've essentially done
(19:01):
in this book is created a whole lot of challenges
for kids to become more motivated, more effective, more functional
humans because they all sit within the most well researched,
most empirically backed psychological theory on the planet.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
That's it. We're singing the same song. I'm with you.
I think they are naturally highly motivated people, so these
challenges are just about giving them the conditions to act
on that motivation, and they will drive themselves toward the
best learning that we can imagine.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So I'm sitting here with goosebumps all up my arms
and legs and thinking, what a great conversation. I hope
that everyone who's listened has gleaned so much. The book
is called Challenge Accepted. We'll link to that in the
show notes. It's available wherever you buy your books. Chris Bam,
thank you for staying up late in California to have
a chat with me on the Happy Families.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Podcasts such a fun chat. Thanks Justin.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland for
Bridge Media. Mim Hammond's provides research, admin and other support,
and if you would like more info of what we've
talked about, check the show notes for Chris's book and
visit Happy Families dot com dot au for even more
resources
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