#129 – Raising the Self-Driven Child: A Conversation with Authors Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud - College Parent Central Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Announcer (00:10):
Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast.
Whether your child is justbeginning the college admission
process or is already in college, this podcast is for you.
You'll find food for thoughtand information about college
and about navigating thatdelicate balance of guidance,
involvement and knowing when toget out of the way.

(00:31):
Join your hosts as they sharesupport and a celebration of the
amazing experience of having achild in college.

Elizabeth Hamblet (00:51):
Welcome to the College Parents Central
podcast.
I am your co-host, I guess,Elizabeth Hamlet.
I am the author of Seven Stepsto College Success A Pathway for
Students with Disabilities, andI am so excited about this
interview.
I have been a big fan of NedJohnson and Bill Stixrude's for
a long time.
I've had the pleasure oftalking to Ned myself.
I probably reference theirbooks, I don't know once a week

(01:12):
minimum, and so it's just suchan honor to get to talk to them
today about their new book.
I'm going to hold up for thosewatching on Facebook.
The Seven Principles forRaising a Self-Driven Child, a
new workbook they just keepgiving us so many generous gifts
, so we are just delighted tohave you here, and let me just

(01:33):
turn the mic over for a momentto my co-host, vicki Nelson.

Vicki Nelson (01:37):
Well, I am Vicki Nelson and I am one of the
co-hosts of the College ParentCentral podcast.
We talk about everything thathas to do with being a college
parent, being the parent ofsomeone headed to college, and
sometimes we touch on afterwardtoo, and the college preparation
seems to start earlier andearlier all the time, and I join

(02:01):
Elizabeth in being so excitedabout the guests that we have
with us today, because they haveso much that they can share
with us about that preparationand when you have a child in
college.
So I think we're going to jumpright in and ask them to
introduce themselves and then wewill pepper them with questions

(02:22):
.
So, ned, do you want to start?

Ned Johnson (02:25):
Sure, my name is Ned Johnson.
Apart from beingpartner-inscribed with Bill
Stickshut, I run a companycalled Prep Matters which helps
kids in high school and collegeacademics in school and then
college examinations of SAT, act, and then all the well, we talk
about the self-driven child,the SAT, act and other
four-letter words.
So I spend my time one-on-onewith kids, helping them through

(02:48):
this small but seeminglyimportant part of their college
application journey.

Thanks, and.

Bill Stixrud (02:57):
Bill.
So I'm a clinicalneuropsychologist.
For the last 40 years I've madea living testing children and
teenagers and young adults whoare struggling in some way
whether it's with learning orattention or social or emotional
and trying to figure out what'sright and what's wrong and try
to help them, and I never gettired of doing it.
I still love doing it and Ienjoyed writing these three

(03:20):
books with my buddy, ned.
I practiced meditation for 51years.
I play in a rock and roll band.

Is that all?

Yes, I have two adult children, one of whom with
her family just moved in withme today, so there's a lot going
on.

Life will be interesting.

We're just moving a new refrigerator right now as
we speak.

Life goes on as we're doing all this stuff.
It's all good, yes.

Well, I often when I'm working with parents who
are about to send their studentsoff to college and they're
feeling all of that nostalgiaand they're sad that they're
sending their student away, andwe always say to them just wait
four years, they'll be back.
And sometimes they come backwith family, or one of mine came
back with a husband and a dog.
So you never know.

And in fact, you and Lynn have an episode on
just that thing, don't you?

Vicki, yes, our lives are on a lot of those
episodes, but I want to askabout this book.
So Lynn has or Lynn Elizabethhas already mentioned that your
new book, the Seven Principlesfor Raising a Self-Driven Child,
is a workbook, and I'm curiousabout what brought about the

(04:35):
idea to produce a workbook andwhat that does for parents
rather than just another book.
I'll let either one of you jumpin with that.

Yeah, do you want to start?
Do you want me to, or?

Oh, you can go first.
And for people who are onFacebook, we have a little bill
for people on the podcast.
You cannot tell this, but wehave a bill sticker stick.
Should sock puppet that hasjoined me when I've recorded the
audio books for a for a coupleof what we've done.

So and Bill's camera is not working, which is
why the puppet needs to stand in.

It doesn't matter for the podcast, so we'll listen
carefully.
We gave a talk together onFriday and, unbeknownst to me,
ned brought the sock puppet asdressed exactly like the sock
puppet.

That's great, so in any case.

I think that hardly anybody argues with the
idea that kids need to havecontrol over their own life
before they leave home.
They need to be able to runtheir own life before they leave
home, and so they like thepremise of our books.
They like a lot of thestrategies.
But it's hard, because if yougive your kids control over
something you've beencontrolling for them, what

(05:48):
happens is and you have to sit,sit in your hands and zip your
lips.
It's the most stressful thingyou can experience.
It's like it's like what youknow why watching your kid drive
the car over the cliff.
And so the workbook format waswas designed to be shorter.
There's not a lot of newscience.
We already laid out the sciencein the other books.
Is to be shorter, based on'snot a lot of new science.
We already laid out the sciencein the other books.
It's to be shorter, based onseven pretty easy to understand

(06:08):
principles that you can groundyourself in.
Make sure that this feels safeand right, and then exercises to
work through.
How do I apply these principles?
What keeps me from doing it?
What keeps me from just goingback to the way I've always done
it?
What keeps me from telling mykids a million times, instead of

(06:30):
finding another way to connectwith them.
What keeps me from trying tochange my kid as opposed to
focus on what I'm doing in a waythat I can help my kid find his
own reasons for change?

And how did you decide on the seven principles
that you were going to includein this?

Magic eight ball and we just dropped one.
Okay, that often works.
You know, I think a lot of itcame out of when we were writing
in our second book.
What Do you Say with the firstchapter?
And there's about theimportance of connection and for
a whole bunch of differentreasons, most of which people
already know, around apsychological perspective, but

(07:06):
principally, a close connectionis the closest thing you get to
a silver bullet in protectingyoung brains against the effects
of stress as those brainsdevelop.
But also as parents or aseducators or grandparents or
friends or whatever.
You can't help people unlessyou are close enough to them for
them to share with you theirproblems.

(07:28):
And so we started, we thoughtabout you know that we have a
chapter in the first book calledI Love you Too Much to Fight
With, about your Homework, aboutbeing a consultant rather than
a manager, and as we're doingthis, we kind of have a whole
list of points that we think areimportant, but really tried to
work on ones that were more kindof foundational thoughts or
philosophies rather than just,you know, rather than just

(07:49):
something really tactical, andalso how these things interplay
with one another.
You know, it's hard to be aconsultant if you're anxious,
because if you're anxious, youwant to have more control and if
you're controlling, you'remanaging rather than consulting.
Right, if you're going to beeffective consulting you need to
put connection first to elicit,you know, the right feedback

(08:11):
from folks.
You know, when we talk.
There's our favorite chapterfrom what he say about how do
you motivate kids without tryingto change them, because so
often parents say how do I getmy kid to?
What they're really saying ishow do I, how do I get them to
change?
And so these are things thatthese seven principles we think
really they stand each on theirstand on their own, stand on

(08:35):
their own really well, but theyalso are reinforcing.
So every chapter will end withyou know or cause to also visit
chapter three and also visitchapter six, and we also wanted
to keep it at seven.
You know or cause to also visitchapter three and also visit
chapter six, and we also wantedto keep it at seven, not 17,.
Because you know working memory,you can only hold so many
thoughts, so many thoughts inyour head, but when we get
anxious and we start doingthings that we know haven't

(08:57):
worked in the past, maybe thistime it'll work to be able to go
back to core principles as away to ground ourselves in what
we know, what works, but alsoground ourselves in eternal
truths and also values that wehold closely, is a way to help
us make the right words, havethe right action in this or that

(09:21):
moment, because it can be hard.
You know, what exactly should Isay?
What exactly should I do?
Well, if you focus on thisprinciple, what does this
principle lead you to do?
Or lead you to say, or lead youto not say?

These are good questions and it's hard.
It's hard not to say the thingsyou really want to say.
You too.
Oh, I thought I was going tosay yeah, no, I was a perfect
parent.
You can ask my young adultchildren.
I'm sure they'd have a lot tosay yeah.
as we always observe whenever wegive talks to school groups and

(09:58):
parents groups, all the perfectparents that we know are people
who you know don't havechildren yet but for the rest of
us, you know Well, I mean, thisis a book that I, you know, all
of these books I wish I hadfound sooner in my children's
life, and perhaps so did they.
So you know, the theme thatgoes through and it really does

(10:19):
strike me as a conundrum is thatyou know, and I love this quote
studies show us that a healthysense of control is crucial for
developing self-motivation thatwe want in nurturing kids, and
yet the more we sit on our handsor zip our lips and support the
autonomy.
the less control, the morestress we experience.
We are a college-focusedpodcast and obviously you know

(10:45):
things have gotten reallystressful about the college
experience.
It always was a stressfulexperience and it just seems to
be on steroids now, and soadmission rates at particular
colleges are falling andstudents' mental health is
declining.
And students' mental health isdeclining and there's all sorts
of factors here, but it's nothard to draw a line to me

(11:08):
between this scarcity mentalityand smarter people than I have
done this, obviously aroundcollege admissions and this
drive for students to achievemore.
Jenny Wallace's Never Enough isa good example of this.
So this is all my long way ofgetting around to this point.
All of your books discuss nuts,um, and so I think this is a

(11:31):
really important concept and itfeels really relevant to the
college experience, and so couldyou explain nuts for probably
the thousandth time in aninterview, but you know, for
people for whom it's new, so I?

I said I was at a conference on stress and stress
in the brain in 2008 and therewas a neuroscientist by the name
of sonia lupin who said toldthe audience I defy you to think
of anything that makes lifestressful that you can't
summarize with the acronym nutsitTS, it's novelty,
unpredictability, perceivedthreat and a low sense of

(12:08):
control.
And she and other stress.
Scientists say it's that lowsense of control, this most
stressful thing you'veexperienced, because you can be
in a new situation or even anunpredictable, even a
threatening situation.
But if you feel I can handlethis, I got this.
It's not stressful.
It's stressful when something'schallenging to you or to your
family or to your kid and nobodyknows what to do.

(12:29):
You don't know what to do.
You feel kind of helpless oroverwhelmed.
That's the most stressful thingyou can experience.
And I think in terms of thecollege search kids, certainly
the whole college search process, talk about a low sense of
control.
Jesus, and we're talking tokids.
I mean I tested this girl whenshe was in second grade a few
years ago and I asked her ifthere's anything she worries

(12:50):
about.
She said I worry about mygrades because I know that
they're important for college.
Now it wasn't as bad as Ithought because she said I want
to go to a good college, likeAmerican University, because
they have an Elevation Burgerand I love their fries.

Announcer (13:04):
Like American University because they have an
elevation burger and I lovetheir fries, but truly.

Ned worked with somebody recently who said my
mother's been planning mycollege narrative since I was
five years old and this idea.
Somebody just recently told Nedthat basically everything I do,
this is a high school kid.
Everything I do I'm thinkingabout how is this going to read
to a college admissions person?

No that was a whole high school class and all 35 of
them were nodding their headsEverything we think about.
Will this help or hurt mychance of admission at rejected
U?

Yeah, these colleges, the most selective
colleges.
Of course it's a completecrapshoot where you have no
control over it.
And so they said these colleges, the most selective colleges.
Of course it's completecrapshoot where you have no
control over it.
And it feels very threateningbecause the narrative that if I
don't get into elite college,I'm going to end up working at
McDonald's.
It's completely unpredictableand the experience is something
that most kids, by definition,they've never gone through
before we got through before.

So yeah, and so if I jump into that, I mean one
point parents will often seetheir kids, you know, really
torturing themselves, thinking Ihave to get in this college,
but I'll never get in right.
And then parents naturally say,well, it's not true, you don't
have to go and you know there'sso many other places, which is
true.
Sure, you don't have to go, andyou know there's so many other
places, which is true.
And then kids will fight us onthem and they'll cling to it
more.
And so two quick thoughts onthat.

(14:32):
One is that most mental healthis changing, thinking from I
have to to I want to.
And so I tell kids of course,of course you want to go to
Princeton.
You look great in orange, fouryears of orange, fantastic,
right, who wouldn't want to gothere?
But you know, if you want, ifyou're asking me to believe that
in order to have a successfullife that you have to go there,
well, I just see, I see itdifferently and I'm not going to

(14:54):
try to talk you out of it, butI see it.
I see it really differently andif you're interested, I'll
share with you some why I feelthat way and some of the
statistics that I know, but wedon't try to talk kids out of it
because then they cling to itmore, more desperately.
But just from my perspective,being non-anxious about this and
saying, of course you want togo there, but I just, you know,

(15:17):
my experience is that you don'tneed to go there to build the
kind of and live the kind oflife that you want, and I just,
and it's and you know, we talkabout this in our second book
what he's Saying, and these areprinciples rooted in nonviolent
resistance, where it's simplysaying I see it differently and
if you want me to share thatwith you, I'm happy to share
that with you.
But it is hard because we havethat the word scarcity is

(15:40):
exactly the right one.
The word scarcity is exactlythe right one.
And if you've read that bookMelanthian and anyway I can't
remember dig up full names onthem about you know how, what
happens when we perceive thereto be scarcity and you just get
really, really bad short-termthinking out of it and it's

(16:01):
fear-based thinking.
And you know, I wish that.
I mean we interviewed JeffSalingo and asked him.
You know he's got a new bookcoming out in the fall called
Dream School, which is reallylovely, and I'd interviewed him
and asked him when you look atthe rates of mental health, you
know, and college campusparticularly highly?
I don't like highly selective,I like highly rejective as a

(16:23):
term.
Universities and then collegesare probably spending more money
on trying to treat mentalhealth than they are in almost
anything else.
You know, they can't lovehaving these kids who are
stressed out of their minds,because it's hard for everyone,
both the students and theadministrators.
I said but do they realize ifwe changed our process, if we
didn't try to solicit, you know,another 100,000 people so we

(16:46):
could say no to them, that theycould, they could bend the arc
on this.
And he said colleges, theyabsolve themselves of all
responsibility.
They absolve themselves of allresponsibility.
And so it remains the fact that, I don't know, there may be 100
colleges in the country thatselect less than 30% of their
college.
I mean, they're just, there,aren't that many?
But of course, that's wherethat's where our attention goes

(17:07):
and I probably can't talk a kidor a parent, you know, or any of
us out of wanting to go tothose places.
Right, but I can, but we allcan say you know that it just it
can't be the case.
I'll pick on Jess Leahy.
Right, who is, who is just?
I mean she's.
I mean she is one of the wisest, most brilliant people I know

(17:29):
and, if I understand correctly,she went to UMass, amherst.
Does anyone credibly think thatshe would be better if she went
to Amherst College with a 12%acceptance rate rather than
Amherst with a with a 30%acceptance rate?
Give me a break.
Give me a break, andparticularly if you were Herbert
Marsh in the Big Fish, smallPond.
I have no idea what Jess didwhen she was in college and what

(17:50):
opportunities she had at UMassthat she might not have had in
Amherst.
Right, when you have to elboweveryone out of the way, it's
impossible to know.
But so much of the work that wedo is trying to make parents
and children simply feel thatit's safe not to worry all the
time.
It just doesn't help and it'snot rooted in truth, other than

(18:11):
that, carry on.
That's so helpful.

And I'd like to follow that up a little bit,
because you know, yes toeverything you're talking about
in terms of admissions in thecollege search.
I'm seeing students on theother side of that college
search.
So now they've come to collegeand they're still stressed and

(18:37):
talking about their anxiety.
And now they're in, they'resupposed to be able to relax a
little bit about that, and sothey're carrying it somehow with
them and I'm wondering whether,on that side of the admissions
process, there's anything that,as parents or as educators, or

(18:58):
as just people who are aroundkids, that we can do to help
them.
Is it?
Well, I guess my question is isit?
related to lack of control, andwhat can we do to help them feel
more in control at that point?

Yeah, I'll let Bill jump in first.
There's a lot here.

It's a really good question, oh and we will
have video, so do hold up.

Okay keep talking bill, yeah, yeah.
So, uh, after we wrote thefirst book, we, we, we lectured
about the first book all overthe country, all over the world
really for a couple years and itjust occurred to us that really
we can think about this senseof control in two dimensions.

(19:39):
One is that subjective sense ofautonomy or agency you know
that I can my life, I'm nothelpless, I can handle things
but the second is the brainstate that supports it, because
you can have all the agency orautonomy in the world but if

(20:02):
you're exhausted or you'rehighly stressed, facilitate that
brain state that supports asense of control, which is
really where the prefrontalcortex is activated, is
connected really well connectedto and is downregulating the
stress response.
So really, when you're in yourright mind, your kids are in

(20:23):
their right mind.
The college students are intheir right mind, meaning that
they're focused, they're alert,they're engaged, they're in the
present, they aren't undulyworried or stressed or exhausted
.
The prefrontal cortex isregulating the rest of the brain
.
There's this most recentlyevolved part of the brain that's

(20:45):
regulating these more basicsystems, especially the stress
response systems, including theamygdala, and what happens is
that college students startbrains, start college being
profoundly sleep-confined, oftenwith a lot of chemical use and
years of high stress weakeningthe connections between the free
frontal cortex and the amygdala.
The part of the reason that I'msuch a big fan of gap years is
giving kids a friggin break fromthis high school lifestyles

(21:08):
that require them.
If they're going to go to elitecollege, you require them to be
chronically tired and chronicstress, which is terrible for
developing brain.
So with college students, themost important thing they can
simply simply do is arrangetheir schedule so that they get
enough sleep.
Certainly they.
They can do the things thatkeep the brain, because so many

(21:30):
parents say to us well, it mustget better in college when kids
have more control over their ownlives.
Well, it could, but not ifthey're chronically exhausted
and chronically stressedexhausted and chronically
stressed and I think that whenLaurie Santos at Yale was living

(21:51):
in the dormitories withundergraduates, was struck by
the fact that these kids gotthemselves into arguably the
most prestigious college in theworld.
And they're miserable.
They're so stressed and soexhausted that they don't enjoy
anything about being at Yale.
That's really sad, yeah, Itested two kids this May who had
just gotten into college areexhausted.

Announcer (22:05):
They don't enjoy anything about being at yale,
that's really sad.

Yeah, I tested two kids this may who, um, who had
just gotten into very, veryelite colleges, and as part of
my interview I said are theretimes when you feel really happy
?
And they both said I felt happythe day I got into college.
It didn't last, it didn't.
It didn't last a week, itwasn't, it wasn't.
I felt really relieved andhappy.
Now that I've gotten in,everything's fine.
It lasted one day.

(22:28):
This is the brain they'retaking into college and to heal.
You can't heal anything ifyou're chronically tired and
stressed.
So what we advise collegestudents to do is to make sleep
your top priority and tominimize the extent to which
using drugs and alcohol, whichis, will screw up your sleep and
screw up your stress response.
Learn to meditate and exercise.

Yeah, and if I could add to that, I mean in
that same vein of happiness,bill, when and this is in our
second book when Bill waslecturing Dallas, he asked these
bunch of you know 10th gradestudent, government leaders, of
you know, kind of, how many ofyou want to be happy as adults?
And they all sort of raisedtheir hands like trick question
here.
And he asked so what do youunderstand is necessary to be

(23:16):
happy as an adult?
And this kid says well, I thinkI speak for all of us when we
believe we understand that ifyou get into a good enough
college that everything elsewill fall into place and both of
them get.
Oh my God, I mean, don't theyknow?
You know, at Yale, the classthat Laura Santos taught on
happiness was the most overlysubscribed class in the history
of the university, and these arechildren who've achieved

(23:39):
everything at the highest levelyou can possibly imagine and
they're miserably unhappy.
So we do a deep dive on this inour work.
About what do we know thatactually supports happiness?
And achievement is part of it,but it's only 20% of it.
And kids are on this reallyhedonic treadmill, thinking well
, the next achievement will last, the next achievement will last
, the next achievement will last, and kids then get into college

(24:02):
and they fall into the sameoftentimes not always, but the
same kind of scarcity mindsetabout well, I've got to get the
right internship, I've got toget the right job, I've got to
get the right leadership andsacrificing things sleep and
relationships that we knowmatter more.
So there's an exercise in our,in our, in seven principles,
where we ask parents to gothrough a list of values and say

(24:26):
what do they matter?
What do you really value foryour child?
Right, prestige, power, wealth.
You know relationships, youknow contributions to the world,
you know all the and thenthings that are much more about
how do I show up in the world,how do I contribute?
And you know being, being kind,being, being, being being
thoughtful and, of course, asyou can imagine, parents click

(24:49):
all these things about.
I want my kid to be honest, Iwant her to be in get.
You know all those things.
And then you ask, and then theexercise is to ask your child
what messages do they feel thatthey're getting from us as
parents about what we believematters for them?
And seeing how much thosethings overlap, right and
oftentimes, as you can imagine,they don't right that.

(25:10):
We think we just we want ourkids to be happy and to be good
citizens and contribute to theworld.
And kids have got this messageand they may be attributing to
us they may have got it fromschool that it's about power and
academic success and blah, blah, blah.
And so then, when there's adisconnect, well, tell me more.
How does it make you feel, ifyou feel, that I really care
more about your achievement thanthese other things?

(25:32):
Where do you think that camefrom?
How can we and you know, wehope that people are doing this
work more in high school as ananimating force of how do I
spend my time as I develop, youknow, in high school and in
college, but even if it's whenyour kids are 27, it's not too
late to have those conversations.

(25:54):
I mean, bill, in one of ourlectures, was saying that you
know he spent the first 14 yearsof his life, of his
professional career, rather alsodoing therapy in addition to
evaluations, and you talk withpeople who are 40 and saying,
well, how can I help?
And so I spent the last 25years of my life trying to meet
other people's expectations forme.
Now, now I'm trying to figureout what I really want out of

(26:15):
life.
And we have these kids, allthese young people who think I
have to achieve, achieve,achieve and nothing wrong with
achievement, but, goodness, ifit's devoid of what my actual
values are, that's a prettyterrible way.
I mean, bill and I.
I mean, and both of you, in thework that you do.
I mean I'm wildly overpaid as atest prep geek.
I that you do.

(26:37):
I mean I'm wildly overpaid as atest prep geek.
I get it right, but I reallyget to spend my time, as does
Bill, working with young people,trying to understand them and
trying to help them understandthemselves and figure out what
matters to them and say whatkind of help or support do you
need to go after that, holysmokes.
I mean, if I won the lotterytomorrow, I'd still be doing
this work because I love talkingwith teens.
Right, and not that everyonewill get to perfectly align

(26:59):
every part of their value withwhat pays the rent.
I get it, but goodness knows wecould have some overlap right.
And talking about value seemslike a really effective way for
any parent and for any youngperson to reflect on how do I
use my time and energy in thisfour years or, depending on the
kids, six years of college.

Right.
So I want to follow up a littlemore on that promise.
Elizabeth, I'll give you achance, but I'm going to roll
here.
Go for it, thank you you workedtogether and you're touching on
this and talking, I think, aboutvalues and I wanted to take

(27:59):
there's a question in your bookthat you ask and it has
specifically to do operate inways that encourage their
child's autonomy.
I mean, most of us know thatthere are certain things we
should do that are helpful andthere are certain things that
are less helpful.
We know that it would be goodfor our kids.
Why don't we do what we know weshould do?
And I think it relates maybe ifyou could talk a little bit
about what you talk about in thebook about the myth of the good

(28:22):
parent why don't we do it?

Well, starting from the time that they're three
years old, it's quicker if youdress them, you tie their shoes,
it's easier, it's moreefficient.
So we kind of start out thatway where it's just easier to do
it ourselves than to teach themto do it.
And yet, from the time kids arelittle, once they learn
something I do it myself theydon't want you to do it for them

(28:48):
, and so that's part of it.
And as they get older, one ofthe things that we think that
often parents often confuse is,at least in our view, is that
the priority is help them.
They need to do well versusthey need to learn who's
responsible for what.
Because I work withunderachievers for my whole

(29:10):
career.
Very early on I was struck byunderachievers.
They didn't seem to be bothered.
Everybody else was.
I asked them if you don't turnin an assignment, who's most
upset?
Invariably they'd say my mom,then my dad, then my teacher,
then my tutor, then my therapist.
They were never on the list,because all the focus is

(29:32):
constantly trying to get them todo the work, as opposed to
respecting them and saying I'llsupport you.
I'd be happy to be yourhomework consultant, but I'm not
going to act like somehow Icould make you do it, or it's so
much my responsibility.
So part of it, vicki, is thisconfusing thinking that the most
important thing is they alwaysdo well.
As they get old, they get tohigh school.

(29:54):
Often what we hear from parentsis well, this is too important,
I couldn't let him make thesedecisions.
These are too important.
They involve college and it'sall life and so and Ned often
says when they say this, butwhen's it going to be less
important, which is just awonderful question.
And I was giving a lecture inHouston about the self-driven

(30:17):
child a few years ago before thepandemic, and I happened to
mention the most elite highschool in Washington DC, and I
don't know why, but afterwards awoman came up to me and said
I'm a psychotherapist at theMenagerie Clinic here in Houston
, a really good mental healthfacility in Houston.
So we know this independentschool in DC really well because
so many of the graduates getinto the top colleges in the

(30:38):
country.
But as soon as they get a B, assoon as they realize that
everybody's here as smart as Iam, or they don't really stand
out the way they did in highschool, or they reach out to go
out with a girl and she ghoststhem, they crumble emotionally
and they take a medical leave ofabsence and they come here for
therapy.
And she said two of one.

(31:00):
They don't have enoughexperience running their own
life, solving their own problems, making their own decisions,
setting their own priorities.
So I think there's a lot ofreasons why parents don't,
starting from the fact that it'seasier if we do it.
Also, it's much less stressfulif we're trying to manage it.
And this confusion of placingthe value on they're doing well

(31:21):
versus that they're learning tobe autonomous and take
responsibility for themselves.

And you add to that .
I mean it's hard to watch yourkids be disappointed, it's hard
to watch them struggle, it'shard to watch them suffer.
I mean I went through this withmy son, who just graduated
college and he applied to earlydecision to the college my wife
and I both went to, got deferred, eventually got denied, you

(31:47):
know, and did everything betweenthose two things to really turn
things up in all the ways thathe thought would make a
difference.
He's like what else?
And he was just in tears, likewhat else am I supposed to do?
And I'm like I don't know,kiddo, I don't know.
And I could shake my fist atthe sky and Nash and make up a

(32:08):
bunch of things.
It's like sometimes we justdon't know.
And it's really hard, reallyhard.
I mean all the parents listen.
You really hard, really hardBecause you I mean all the
parents listening you love yourkids as much as I love my kids.
And it's hard when theystruggle.
But, as a friend of mine said,short-term or long-term problems
, right, you know.
To that, to Bill's point of youknow, do I want to solve things

(32:29):
for them now or do I want tolet them have the opportunity of
solving things for themselves,even if it's just learning to
tolerate an outcome that youdon't like.
You know, and my son, to hiseverlasting credit, is like the
most glass half full kid.
And then they got a brain tumorand he and he said I'm so
grateful that I got this braintumor, I wouldn't be on the path
that I'm on, and I'm like you.

(32:50):
You, you could have done thisin a way that's a little less
dramatic, right?
But you know, and obviously Idon't want to make light of this
because my son had a very goodenough outcome, and there's
certainly children who don't.
You know where things reallyand I'm not talking about things
that are life shatteringprotecting kids, you know,

(33:13):
letting kids to suffer that butthere's so many things that we
think are going to be lifeshattering.
And how do we know?
How do we really know?
You know my I was talking witha friend about this who's in the
middle of going through somekind of hard life changes and I
told her the you know, theparable of the Chinese farmer,
right, you know, we don't reallyknow when is a good thing, when

(33:34):
it's a bad thing.
You know, and I've shared thiswith you, elizabeth, I spent at
a complicated family and a bunchof stuff going on, and father
would probably drink or drankhimself to death.
My mother was in institutionsand I spent three months of
seventh grade in a pediatricpsychiatric hospital and you
know, I don't think that at thetime people would have laid a
marker on me as a guy who islikely to have a really

(33:55):
successful life.
I am quite happy with the lifethat I have and I think I've
done some really.
I've had the opportunity to dosome really cool things and a
wife who just is the best personI've ever met, and kids who are
wonderful in all theircomplicated ways.
And I sit there and think wouldI be where I am now if I hadn't
had that misadventure for yearsof my life, right Starting with

(34:18):
the fact that I took time offfrom school because I was
struggling and because I tooktime off, it wasn't completely
inappropriate for me to hit onthis adorable freshman who, had
I been older, would have beenlike no, really dude, that's a
little you know, and I wouldn'tbe married to Vanessa.
So I don't know, you know.
And so so Bill has asked thisquestion of when.

(34:39):
When do we measure whether itwas a good thing or bad thing.
You know, a day later, a weeklater, a month later, a year
later, a decade later, it's hardto know.
I mean, my major I was mostpeople major went into world of
finance, right, and I didn'tknow that and I was not from a
sophisticated family and Ididn't know how to interview.
So I went to an interview andlike, tell me why I want this
job.

(34:59):
I'm like, well, what's this jobabout?
Really sophisticated right.
So obviously I didn't land ajob at Goldman or whatever.
And so maybe I would havegotten those jobs and I'd have,
you know, millions more dollarsin my bank account, maybe.
But then I also tell myself,maybe I would have gotten those
multimillion dollar jobs and Iwould have been one of those
towers that got hit on 9-11.

(35:22):
Who can say?
Who can say?
And so I go back to the collegething of, of course, as parents
, you want your kids to have thesun and the moon and the world
to be the oyster, of course,because you know how wonderfully
capable and talented they are.
But I just I really doeverything I can with the kids,
with the students with whom Iwork, to not buy into this idea

(35:42):
that you have to go to a placelike that.
You have to go to a place witha 3% acceptance rate to have a
successful life.
There's no, there's no evidencefor that, and part of our work,
again, is helping young peopleand their loving parents feel
that it's safe not to worry allthe time, because we usually
don't make the best decisionswhen they're born out of fear.
That's been my experience,anyway.

Well, as usual, all of the ideas from
your books kind of swirl aroundin my head.

Mine too.

Oh, and Bill is back.
So you know, know, there's somuch in this book that I love
and this story really struck me,so I apologize for people who
haven't read it.
You know, I promise not to tellyou everything that's a preview
spoiler alert spoiler alert butyou told this story, hey, and
we get to see bill and hopefullythis video comes out.

I got dropped off the meeting anyone watching this
.

Pretty good, right, pretty good, okay, very
accurate yes, pretty good puppetsee the bill puppet.

So, um, you were at this meeting with high
school counselors and you, um,they agreed that if students
weren't running their owncollege search, then they
weren't ready for college.
And, ned, you and I had aconversation a few years ago
with my friend Ellen Broughton,Bright Kids who Couldn't Care
Less about.
You know all this energy aroundthe college search and

(37:10):
applications and this ties inwith consultants versus managers
, and I love, on page 45, 46, 45and 46, this energy equation,
so it really kind of puts it invery concrete terms like what is
the problem?
Who's putting more energy intoit, and it's kind of eye opening

(37:33):
, that's kind of eye-opening.

I can let Bill answer this, but I want to frame
it up by there's a lecture thatBill gave for years.
As a neuropsychologist he'soften invited to particularly
schools where kids have learningdifferences or learning
disabilities, and he had alecture that he gave for years
called who's Ready for College,and this is one of the last
chapters of the Self-DrivenChild.
But because it was our magnumopus, it's 340 pages, a lot of
the self-driven child.
But because it was our magnumopus, it's it's 340 pages.

(37:58):
A lot of people times peopledon't get to this, um, but so,
so bill really gets credit forfor thinking around these things
in this, in this energyequation.
Do you want to take a take onthe energy equation bill?

yeah, well, I mean , I think that, um, there are a
couple really wise things that Ilearned years ago.
One of my friends was apsychotherapist.
He got trained in certain kindsof psychotherapy and was taught
don't work harder to help yourclients solve their problems
than they do, because you'regoing to weaken them.
They're going to think thatsomehow the solutions to their
problems are within you, notwithin them.

(38:29):
Also, I did this work with aparent educator 20 years ago
with parents.
What she says is, when kids havea problem, ask yourself, whose
problem is it?
Because we're so wired to solvetheir problems and I think that
so often what I see is kids whoare especially kids, who have

(38:50):
ADHD or learning disabilities.
They do a lot of avoidance andstuff due to anxiety is we work
harder than they do to try tomake life right and I think,
unless they're suicidal, unlessthey have an eating disorder, we
just have to do a power play.
We want to take this respectful, consulting how can I help?
Kind of role.
I want to support you any way Ican, but I don't want to weaken

(39:13):
you by putting more energy inthis than you do and also, I
don't know what's right for you.
I don't know what kind of lifeyou're going to want.
I don't know who you want to be.
Also, I don't know if you makesome decision that doesn't seem
great, maybe it leads tosomething really good.
I want you to figure this outand that's why I felt my whole
career that I think the bestmessage you can give a teenager
and young adult is I haveconfidence in your ability to

(39:36):
make decisions about your ownlife and to learn from your
mistakes and what I tell, and Iwant you to have a ton of
experience doing that before youleave home and certainly before
you leave college you know, andI think that Ned and I had a
piece in the New York times in2019 based on college kids who

(39:58):
are home by Thanksgiving,because by November 1st, when we
wrote the piece, we knew sevenkids between the two of us who
had started college and werealready home.
They were already overwhelmed.
And to the one, if you look,they didn't show any of the
signs of being ready to go tocollege to be able to manage
their own academic life, theirown personal life, their own
self-care, their ownself-management independently.

(40:20):
And that's why we place such ahuge premium not only on
supporting that sense ofautonomy and control, helping
kids learn to run on their ownlife, but also encouraging
parents to tell your kid I can'tin good conscience send you to
college if I don't think you'reready.
Tell your kid I can't in goodconscience send you to college
if I don't think you're ready.
And we offer some guidelines inthe Self-Driven Child about how

(40:42):
can you tell.

What kind of stuff does the kid have to be able to
do to know that you're ready?
And to answer that and to fillin the last part of this energy
equation, that typically whenparents are spending
particularly the kid who's 80 orwhat have you spending 80 units
of energy, kid tends to spend20.
And when they get more stressedand I go to 90 to try to amp up

(41:07):
because we need more the kidgoes to 10.
And it doesn't change until theenergy changes and it starts
with us and you have to saylisten, this is your
responsibility, this is yourproblem.
Not, this is your problem,buddy, but respectfully, this is
yours.
And if I spend more energy onthis than you do, you're going
to think that someone other thanyou is responsible for your own
success and you're responsiblefor this.

(41:28):
And I can't do that to you,right?
And when we make peace with thefact that we can't make our
kids do anything, we can make itso unpleasant that they finally
give in.
But then they're ultimatelychoosing to do it themselves.
And so I'll pick on mydelightful daughter, katie if
you're listening to this in hersecond year of college.

(41:49):
I mean, she is an incrediblehuman, has at least 20 IQ points
on her dad, but also has allthis anxiety, turns out age 19,
diagnosed with autism.
We didn't know that, nobodyknew, including her, and then
other neuropsychologists.
Oh well, but you know, I couldtell by the time she was four
that I was never going to win anargument with this kid, never,
never.
I mean one, she's brighter,even age four.

(42:09):
And two, she was rigid enough,wasn't going to give in.
So I, so I just I'm like I'mnot going to have a fight, I
can't win.
And so she struggled a long way.
Middle school was a disaster.
She was full school refusal.
High school she kind of didnothing through school, bright
enough that she got grades thatwere something.
And this friend of ours, who'snow a pastor, who's a
psychologist, said it will beamazing to see what happens when

(42:32):
Katie Johnson figures out whatshe wants to do with that
remarkable brain of hers.
And what happens when KatieJohnson figures out what she
wants to do with that remarkablebrain of hers?
And I just and it was such agreat thing for me to hear
because I just sat and just,okay, I'm not going to push her
more.
I'll give her all the help inthe world that she wants, but
I'm not going to push her.
And so I watched her spend waymore time doing things that
seemed unconstructive thanthings that seemed constructive.
But I think in her own way shewas figuring herself out of what

(42:55):
she wanted to do.
She finished her first semesterof college with the highest
possible grades you can get andshe said, I know, and she had
merit money.
I said I know my tuition onlypays for this many credits, but
I want to also take this class.
Would you guys be willing topay for me to take another class
?
And when I pulled myself offthe floor I'm like what you know

(43:16):
and she applied for fivedifferent jobs.
She kept getting denied butapplied and applied, applied.
She was so avoidant, so avoidantfor five, six years of her life
.
But my wife and I never pushedher on this and when she finally
realized this I mean, she's incollege and she recognized this
is my life and I'm going to getout of it what I put into it not
what my mom and dad put into it, but what I put into it I mean

(43:39):
it's the change between howlittle she tried to put and how
much energy she puts into herbuilding her own life in college
.
Now it's just, it's stunningand parents may be thinking but
how do I know that that'llhappen?
And I say I don't know thatthat'll happen, happen.
And I say I don't know thatthat'll happen.

(43:59):
But what we do know is, so longas I am crowding the channel,
you know, and I'm giving the 90to 9% of energy, there's no
space for it to be hers and Ihave to step back.
And we did.
We gave her all the space inthe world and left this, this
vacuum there and she steppedwhen she was ready and she
became ready when she was readythere.
And she stepped when she wasready and she became ready when
she was ready.

(44:20):
She stepped and filled it with,you know, 98% of her energy and
and I want people to feelconfident that this happens,
because your kids have brains intheir heads and they want their
lives to work out.
And so long as we follow up onBill's point of help them
understand that they're thatthis is their life and they're
responsible for it, kids tend tostep up because they want their
life to be successful.

Well, and in this example that you give when
we were talking about, you know,when the parents are pushing
the kids to meet those deadlines, et cetera, that's really yeah.
So it feels like what I hearyou saying, if I may phrase this
, that when you're seeing that,that's your signal.
So what is the worst thing?
That happens?

(45:02):
Right, your student doesn'tmeet the deadlines.
You know what happens, butparents are afraid of that.

It's funny somebody my age who I don't
think hardly any of my friends,my parents didn't go to college.
Hardly any of my parents dideither didn't go to college.
Hardly any of my friends'parents did either.
Somehow we figured it out.
Somehow I figured out how toget a PhD and I think that we
really, in many ways and out ofour best intentions it's not

(45:28):
malicious, but out of our bestintentions in many ways treat
kids kind of like they don'thave a brain in their head, they
couldn't figure this out ontheir own.
And I still see kids who havelovely parents but they're
making appointments for theirgraduate school when you're
testing.
The kids are not doing itthemselves and still doing a lot
of managing and I think it'sprobably wrongheaded excited.

Um, yeah, so I mean, one of the things that
you cite in here is that roughly30 percent of freshmen don't
return to college for sophomoreyear.
Um, and you talk about how muchself-management they have to do
and you bring in the brainscience.
You know, with the prefrontal,prefrontal cortex, which you
guys have already, you know, butit's such a long time before we
get them to college, and so youknow, as you said, it's easier

(46:24):
when you do things for studentsand it feels more comfortable
and parents feel like they'rebeing good and supportive
parents.
So you know what'sdevelopmentally appropriate.
You know, if we back it up forthem to start working on, so
that by the time you know, if weback it up for them to start
working on, so that, by the timeyou know, senior year of high
school rolls around, these arekids who are ready to make their
own decisions.

You know we don't want to do things for kids that
they can, that they can do forthemselves, even if it's
suboptimal.

Announcer (46:48):
Yeah.

Because brains develop in the ways that they're
used anything from makingdecisions to to to doing
homework, to college search,search to making messes and
figuring out how to solve thosemesses right.
And I think I can credibly saythis as a guy for 30 years who's
helped kids prepare for acollege admissions test that the
most important outcome of highschool and adolescence cannot,

(47:11):
is not, must not be where kidsgo to college and again, it's my
job.
I help kids get better scores,better choices, blah, blah, blah
.
The most important outcome hasto be developing the brains that
they're going to carry intoadulthood and college.
Because you can, you can, youcan transfer colleges, you can
take time off, you can go, butyou don't get to redo your
college, your brain developmentyou know this is, this is the

(47:33):
brain that you got, and, yeah,and you make.
There's things you can do, evenat later years in life.
But, my goodness, what could Imean?
To go to a school that's numberseven on the list rather than
17 on the list?
That that's going to make abigger difference as opposed to.
Are you motivated in intrinsicways?
Are you less anxious ratherthan more anxious?
Right, do you avoid an eatingdisorder?

(47:53):
Do you avoid a substance usedisorder?
Do you?

avoid an eating disorder?
Do you avoid a substance usedisorder?
One thing we point out and Iwant to have a couple thoughts
about this developmental piecethat you're asking about is that
one thing we mention in ourbook is that male physicians are
40% more likely to commitsuicide than the general
population, and femalephysicians are 130% more likely

(48:16):
to commit suicide.

Announcer (48:17):
Oh my gosh.

And the point is that these are really highly
educated people.
But if you look at most highschools around the country and
most colleges, you'd never knowthat anybody in charge of these
institutions know anything aboutthe brain, that anybody who
knows anything about the brainand anybody anybody who knows
anything about the brain andcares about the brain, the

(48:39):
developing brain that's notmature until fully mature, until
the early mid-30s right wewould, would not have had placed
so much stress and pressure andand sleep deprivation on kids,
we wouldn't do it.
We, we we said I'd much rathereducate, teach a kid for for
four hours who slept for eightthan teach them for eight hours
who slept for four.

(48:59):
And I think that the concern isthat what happens.
I think we think that whathappens, the reason kids start
medical school so many of themsuicide is that what they do is
their brains try to get in.
And so I think back to yourquestion.
I talked to a guy recently.
He came up to me after alecture and said I just finished

(49:19):
my doctoral dissertation onpromoting autonomy in
two-year-olds.
Well, from the time your kidsare very little, do you want to
do it this way or this way?
Just treat them respectfully,recognizing that we don't know
when they're hungry, we don'tknow when they're full, and
letting them know that they'rekind of the expert on them and
certainly that we've got to bedevelopmentally sensitive.

(49:42):
But the basic principles of aparent consultant apply
virtually any age, which isnumber one offer help, but don't
try to force it, because youcan't really make a kid do
anything and you have a muchbetter chance of getting buy-in
if we offer them.
And second is that we encouragekids to make their own

(50:03):
decisions as much as theyprobably do.
Do you want to do it this way?
What do you think would be best, with our help and our guidance
as possible?
But from the time I started thismay sound crazy, but early in
my career it was much morecommon for kids in public
schools to repeat a grade,particularly kindergarten, first
grade, than it is now.
The school district would say,well, give them the benefit of

(50:25):
time.
And I'd see these kids who are19, and I'd say where are you in
school now?
I'm a senior in high school.
I should be a freshman incollege, but my parents made me
repeat the first grade.
They're still pissed about it12 years later.
It seemed crazy, and so Istarted asking six and
seven-year-old kids.
Tell the kid this is going tobe your call, nobody's going to

(50:47):
make you repeat a grade, buttalk to people about it.
We'll talk to various people,we'll make some pros and cons.
I saw six and seven year oldkids make decisions about their
lives that are as good as Icould have made for them, and so
I think we can start young, andcertainly by the time that
they're teenagers.
The main thing, the message is,I want you to.
The goal here, between now andthe time you leave home, is for

(51:08):
you to learn to run your lifeand make your own decisions,
solve your own problems.
We want you to sculpt a brainthat, when something stressful
happens, you don't freak out,you cope with it, and that
happens by solving your problems.
You're training your brain todo it.

Announcer (51:22):
So we can start pretty young.

I'm just trying to process all of this.
I want to go back with a coupleof questions.
We could keep going and goingand going.
At a certain point I suppose weneed to stop.
But a couple of specificquestions about your new
workbook, and one of the thingsyou have in there that really

(51:49):
intrigued me is post-it notes,the idea of you know, here's
something to write on a post-itnote and, um, you know, put up
on the mirror or have somewherethat you're going to look at it.
And one of my favorites you'vealready talked about, um which
was it's more important for achild to develop a clear sense
of who's responsible for whatthan for them to always do well.

(52:13):
So you've talked about that,but can you just talk about a
little bit about, maybe, themechanics of how you decided to
put the idea of put this on aPost-it note up and how you
picked what was going to go onthe Post-it notes?

I think, vicki, since the self-driven child came
out and people say that we lovethis, it's just hard
Emotionally, it's hard to do.
We've been trying to make itfeel easier, feel safer, feel
that it's right, and when we'rewriting this book, we're trying
to make this simple.
It's a much shorter book.
It's not packed with a lot ofscience.

(52:50):
We got our way through Tryingto make it simple.
We talk about a principle or anidea.
This is try to make it simpleand we'd say we'd talk about a
principle or an idea.
Is that, you know, this isreally foundational.
This would be a post-it noteand it's kind of stuff is we're
working on it together, thestuff that felt, yeah, this is
stuff that's something you couldremember the rest of your life,
or this, something that couldreally make a profound impact.
Um, it's just a way of kind ofhighlighting some of the points

(53:11):
that we feel that if you cankeep in your head that, it's
going to be able to really helpyou manage stressful situations
with your kids, because whattends to happen once we're
stressed, we can't thinkstraight.
But if we practice, if we havethe post-it note, we keep

(53:31):
reminding ourselves daily.
This is right, my crazythinking is crazy.
It's much easier to stay inyour right mind when something
stressful happens.

Or you can do what that lady that you started
talking about at the beginningof the book does and just keep
showing up to every single oneof your talks that's a different
way of doing it.

That was interesting you're saying, you
know, and the thing that I mean,I think, if we reflect on it,
all of us tend to have, you know, sort of aphorisms.
You know something ourgrandmother said to us, our dad
said to us we picked up on abook we heard on Oprah or
whatever.
I think that's such an elegantway of saying that and for me,

(54:12):
you know, I had been Bill and Iwere palling around for a while
before we got to writing theSelf-Driven Child and I spent
hour after hour after hour withteens and I'd hear something
that Bill would share.
I'm like, oh, that's reallygood.
And then I kind of like anygood comedian, right, I try to
workshop it right and figure outhow to deliver the line.
And there were at least twoyears or three years or I don

(54:34):
know it's 14 years now, billwhere I've said my friend bill
says you know, my friend, youknow my friend bill says and,
and those kind of things andthey just, they just they
percolate in my brain and Ithink it's true for all of us,
because we all we watch a tedtalk, we watch youtube, we read
a whole book, right, and youknow, I mean we don't remember.
I mean, what was the was theWoody Allen thing, you know.

(54:55):
But I took a speed readingcourse one summer.
I read Warren Peace in 40minutes.
It was about Russia, right?
You know, we think there's youknow, I love seeing people when
they'll take like theSubterranean Child and have like
14,000 post-it notes on there,right.
But as brilliant as any bookmight be, we don't remember
everything that's in there.

(55:15):
But there are points that if wecan make them really, these
kind of aphorisms, these maxims,and you post it around, then
those thoughts, if they'reuseful to readers, those
thoughts become their thoughts,right, and those thoughts become
their words.
And then those thoughts oftenbecome their words to become
their children's thoughts, right.
And look, some of this stuff weinvented and some of the stuff

(55:37):
we just borrowed, right.
When we talk about a non-anxiouspresence, well, we stumbled on
this idea that all emotions arecontagious.
Well, there was a Navy SEAL whofrom his training, had learned
and shared this idea that calmis contagious.
Well, that's a heck of a goodline.
That's a heck of a good line.
That's a heck of a good line.
And when you realize in themoment, when you're stressed out

(55:59):
and your kid's freaking out, ifyou sit there and go, well,
this is a lot.
I'm not quite sure what theplan is here, but I'm confident
we're going to figure somethingout.
Just watching someone else who,in the moment of something
intense, is saying I think we'regoing to figure this out.
It's signaling your amygdalalike I don't have to be freaked
out because this person's notfreaked out, and just to know

(56:20):
that, as an organizing principleis a pretty good one, right?
You know, don't just dosomething, sit there.

Well, and you know, I have my mental post-it
notes from you guys, as Istarted this interview by saying
probably once a week at least,I talk to a parent.
You know and, and, and talkabout being a consultant and
also the nothing's moreimportant than your relationship
with your, with your student.
So those, those are things Ishare all the time.

I want to ask one last question, and then I don't
know I, and then I don't know ifElizabeth has a last question
40 at least yeah, I know.
We have a whole bunch, butprinciple number seven I found
really intriguing, which wasencourage radical downtime.
Can you talk about that concept, because it sounds to me like

(57:14):
something we all need to thinkabout.

You know, when I was in graduate school, the
first time before I flunked out,I was in the PhD program in
English literature at Berkeleyand I went 20 straight weeks
without turning in assignmentsbecause I was so anxious and
insecure that when I work withunderachievers I say I went 20
weeks and I turned into nothingTop that.

(57:45):
But while I was at Berkeley Iread this book on the causes of
increased nervousness inAmericans.
It was written by a physicianin 1881.
And the hypothesized causeswere things like the railroad,
western Union, the pocket watch,technological interventions,
innovations that made life gofaster and made us more
attentive to smaller commitmentsof time, and so when we were

(58:08):
working on the self-driven child, I was thinking that now, with
the digital technology andthere's an ad for Verizon or
something like that a few yearsago where the punchline was oh,
that's so 40 seconds ago radicaldowntime than just gardening or
knitting or playing uh, playing, uh, uh.
It's a solitaire on thecomputer.
We didn't in.
Radical downtime means, for forus it means periods where it

(58:28):
seems like we're doing nothing,but what we're really doing is

(58:49):
restoring our brain and ourwell-being.
So it's it's periods of justmetal idling or daydreaming,
where you're activating thebrain's default mode network and
having time to daydream.
Just be in your own head, nothave your earbuds in.

Monotasking.

Yeah or non-tasking Right or non-tasking
.
You're just thinking is highlyrelated to creativity, it's
highly related to problemsolving and for people who are
still developing, it's usuallyrelated to the development of
empathy and identity.
So it's that period of justhaving some unplugged time
during the day, just to be inyour own head for a little bit.

(59:31):
And then it's meditation.
Both Ned and I have beenpracticing meditation for many,
many years and it's sleep.
And we call sleep the mostradical downtime because you're
completely out.
And yet you know Laurie Santos,the psychologist at Yale who
taught that happiness course.
I was listening to a lecture ofhers not too long ago.

(59:52):
She said I consult the averagestudents at Yale they sleep five
to six hours a night.
When I consult in the elitehigh schools around the country
it's the same thing.
She said we can solve at least90% of the mental health
problems if we just let kidssleep enough not to be tired.
I think that we need that.

(01:00:14):
We start out in a self-driven,that we start out in A
Self-Driven Child.
We start out with this notionin the Radical Dau Time chapter,
with this kind of notion fromthe Vedic tradition in India
that rest is the basis ofactivity, that you do better
when you're well-rested.
Life goes better when yourbrain works better.

(01:00:36):
It puts things in perspectivebetter.
You solve problems better.
You relate to people betterwhen you're well-rested.
So that's the idea.
Does that make sense?

Vicki Nelson (01:00:49):
Well, I think that's perfect.
You know, I want to keep going,going, going, but I think we
have to wrap it up and I thinkwe need to allow people some
radical downtime.

Elizabeth Hamblet (01:01:02):
Nice callback .

And I also had this vision, as you were talking
of.
When students glaze over in myclass and I say are you with me?

Ned Johnson (01:01:12):
And somebody is going to come back and say I'm
engaging in radical downtime, Iwill tell you, years ago I was
invited to a local, reallyreally good independent school
here in the area to give a talkabout sleep deprivation and I
had my whole presentation and itwas entire high school and all
the faculty and students andmaybe 15 minutes into it, high

(01:01:38):
school and all the faculty andstudents and maybe 15 minutes
into it there's in this kind ofa front, you know, a section of
front row of a section.
They're like three kids likelike in their heads back um, and
this was sort of beforeeveryone had um cell phones with
cameras, but it would have beenlike the best selfie ever, like
they're putting yourself rightbetween two kids are catching
flies like catching a picture,you know.

Their mouths wide open.
They're putting yourself rightbetween two kids are catching
flies.
Like catching a picture, youknow, but their mouth is wide
open, they're wide open.

I'm not gonna.
I'm not gonna interrupt thatyou know.
And what I'll add to everythingthe bill said I think is so
wise is that you know, the waythat I think about this is that
the inflows of stress into anervous system or a family
system or a school system or anation are not balanced by
healthy outflows of stress.

(01:02:21):
Everything in the world you canthink of is going to happen you
saw this during COVID ofsubstance use and domestic
violence and fights and truancyand murders, and on and on
political discord and on and onit goes.
Because at a neurochemicallevel, sleep deprivation causes
the same stress hormones thatthe things that are stressful do
.
And we don't think very wellwhen we're stressed, we don't

(01:02:42):
take tests very well.
When we're stressed, we're notcognitively flexible or
emotionally flexible, we usebills, so we don't put things
into perspective, we don't solveproblems with any kind of
creativity.
And so if we have a worldthat's more stressful and the
challenge with things, withtechnology, it's stimulating,
but it can't be stimulatedwithout also introducing a
certain measure of stress.
And so it's not that we're evergoing to peel cell phones out

(01:03:05):
of our hands or our children'shands, but we simply need to
balance that with time, withradical downtime, and since I
shared before about my time in apediatric psychiatric hospital
when I was there this was I'm amillion years old, you can't
tell by radio, by podcast, but Iwas there as a young, as a

(01:03:26):
12-year-old, 13 or whatever, andbreak dancing was a thing and
there's a kid there who taughtme to break dance.
So I wasn't quite ventilized,but it was anyway.
But that popping thing, well,that for me became a tick and so
, like people crack theirknuckles, I would crack my wrist
and I would do this like 10,000times a day and I wasn't, I
wasn't constantly doing, justbecame a tick.

(01:03:46):
And I'm not sure what age I wasI had children at this point
and I learned to meditate thanksto Bill and a friend of his he
connected me with and at somepoint I looked down at my wrist
and I was like when did I stopthat tick?
When did that?
Because I didn't consciously doit.
So when I stopped doing I hadno, what was it yesterday?

(01:04:09):
Was it last week?
Was the last year?
I have no idea.
But I can say that at least forme, being well rested and
exercise regularly, that I alsopractice meditation twice a day
and I had years of my life withtoo much stress going into my
nervous system and it led tosome hard things right.

(01:04:29):
And if we don't all have healthytools to balance the inputs of
stress with the outflows ofstress, how do kids ever get
better tools to balance theinputs of stress with the
outflows of stress?
How do kids ever get better?
How do adults ever get better?
And so you know, not everyonein the world is going to
practice TM.
I think they should, but that'sokay.
But you, golly, you got to havesomething.
You have to have some kind ofradical downtime and start with

(01:04:50):
sleep.
And exactly as Laurie Santossaid and Bill reported, we've
done a bunch of lectures andpeople say if there's one thing
that you could do, what wouldyou give?
One piece of advice, what wouldwe give?
And Bill said get enough sleep.
And they said what about you?
I said what he said get enoughsleep, everything works better.

And we have an interview with Lisa Lewis
about-.

Oh, I love wonderful book Sleep Deprived
Teen.
We'll put a link to that in theshow notes.

We have a reading list for you folks.
You better get cracking, so aswe finish up and we have to
finish up.

Would you just tell us again about your book
and when it's coming out andyour podcast and how people can
find you.

So the book is the seven principles for raising a
self-driven child colon, aworkbook, and we have a podcast.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, vanna White.
We have a podcast with a wildlyinventive title of the
Self-Driven Child podcast, wherewe've also had Lisa Lewis and a

(01:06:00):
whole bunch of other wonderfulfolks as guests on that, and you
can find us at the self-drivenchild dot com or self-driven
child dot com Anything close tothat.

Bill Stixrud (01:06:11):
And we just learned on Friday that you can
find a reference to theself-driven child in the new
Bridget Jones movie.

Oh, I'd forgotten that.
This is adorable.
There's Bridget Jones and she'sa mom now a mom as they call it
across the pond and this orthat advice is she hires a nanny
because she's going back towork and the nanny says oh no,
no, no, no, we mustn't pressurechildren like that.
We shouldn't pigeonholechildren like that.
We don't want to give them thatmuch pressure.

(01:06:39):
Haven't you read how to Raise aSelf-Driven Child?
I'll send you the screenshot ofit.

We've got to track down the folks.

We're like my gosh, we're in the zeitgeist.

How fun is that?
It's amazing, and the podcastis wonderful, so I'll put a link
to that in the show notes andall the kinds of things that we
talked about.

If you can get people like Elizabeth to show up
, you look like you know whatyou're doing.

Well, we are really grateful to both of you
for giving us so much time andso much to think about, and
hopefully everybody is going togo out and get the seven
principles uh and uh, oh yes,out of march 25th out of march
25th you can pre.

You can pre-order it now if you were, if you, if
you were, inclined um to we are.
We're always grateful forpre-orders, because that's what
every author is trying to do isis to get as many right up front
as we can.
It's many fewer words.
It's it's, it's.
It's not that expensive.
At very very least it makes awonderful coaster.
It's colorful, it's pretty.

And it will whet the appetite to read the actual
book.

I agree.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Announcer (01:07:55):
Thank you Thanks for having me.

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#129 – Raising the Self-Driven Child: A Conversation with Authors Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#129 – Raising the Self-Driven Child: A Conversation with Authors Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud