Bonus Rewind: Transforming Parenting Roles for a Resilient Future

Transcript

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Hey everyone, this is our last episode rewind while we've been taking a break, and it's a great one.

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In fact, our editor, connie Gorant-Fisher, when she edited this, called me and said boof.

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I really like this episode.

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Julie's the author of how to Raise an Adult and your Turn.

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She's also a former dean at Stanford University, but she really dives deep into the challenging world of raising children into responsible adults.

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She discusses the societal pressures that implore parents to hover, the pitfalls of over-parenting, and so much more.

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I think you'll really like this episode Again.

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Even if you've listened once, listen again.

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So let's get started.

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Listen again.

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So let's get starting.

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It's not you can be anything you want.

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It's if you work really hard, you have a good chance of being what you want.

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You know it's that the condition precedent is hard work and get yourself back up when you fall.

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Hard work, work, ethic plus plus resilience will get you far.

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Like we believe in you.

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We believe in your dreams, but you have to work your tail off to achieve them.

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I think that's what was missing for a lot of millennials.

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I hear them talking about it.

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It was like they said we could be anything.

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It turns out it's much harder than that.

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Yeah, it is much harder than that.

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Welcome to another episode of Bite your Tongue, the podcast.

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Before we introduce today's guest, I'm so happy to announce I have a guest co-host with me.

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Welcome to Erica Gardner-Gray.

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She's been an avid listener of the podcast since we launched and reached out to me with some thoughts and suggestions about the episodes.

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I love so many of her ideas.

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So, on a whim, I asked her would you like a turn at being the co-host?

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She was a little bit reluctant, but she agreed.

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I'll let her tell you more.

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Welcome, Erica.

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Can you let listeners know a little bit more about you before we begin.

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Thanks, denise, you're right, I was reluctant and I'm still a little reluctant, but it's a thrill to be here with you today as your co-host.

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I've always been somewhat of a self-help junkie and I was so delighted when my friend Debbie told me about Bite your Tongue.

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It's perfect for my current stage of life and I found it both provocative and entertaining and enlightening.

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Larry, my husband of 39 years, and I have two sons, both in their 30s.

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One of them is married and has a five-year-old and a four-year-old, and the other one is still single.

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So you can see how many of the topics on this podcast are relatable for me.

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After my prior career in medical corporate America and more recently as owner of my own interior design firm, this opportunity is a welcome change.

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But enough about me.

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Would you like to introduce our guest Absolutely.

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Thank you so much, eric.

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I'm thrilled to have you.

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You know, I didn't realize.

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You've been married 39 years.

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I've been married 39 years too, so we've got something in common and also two young adults about the same age, although mine's one's a girl and one's a boy, so no wonder we like each other.

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Anyway, I want the listeners to know at the end of the episode, eric and I are going to share some of our favorite podcasts that we think you all might like.

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But let's get started.

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Today we are so pleased to welcome Julie Lithcott Hames.

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What an honor this is for us.

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If you look at Julie's website, it says I root for humans.

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She believes in humans and is deeply interested in what gets in our way.

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Her work encompasses writing, speaking, teaching, mentoring and activism.

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She is the New York Times bestselling author of how to Raise an Adult, which gave rise to the popular TED Talk, and I'll link that in our episode notes.

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Today we're going to talk to her about her new book called your Turn how to Be an Adult.

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It's been called, groundbreakingly, frank.

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Julie holds degrees from Stanford, harvard Law and California College of the Arts.

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She lives in Palo Alto, california, with her partner of over 30 years, their itinerant young adults and her mother.

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Welcome Julie.

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Is there anything else you'd like to share about yourself before we get started?

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Oh, my goodness, I guess just that I'm a parent of a 24 and a 22-year-old and I'm still figuring that out, even though I'm a so-called expert in some ways on parenting.

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I want folks to know I am in it with you, I am undoing and repatterning and figuring stuff out.

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So everything you hear me say, don't take it as critique.

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I'm on my journey and I'm trying to share with you some of the lessons I've learned the hard way.

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Oh, Julie, I love that.

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I think you know this whole issue of parenting young adults is something that's kind of growing.

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You know, someone said to me it's the longest relationship we have with our children.

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I mean 18, they're up and gone.

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We need to nurture that so that the next 40, 50 years, God willing, we have a good relationship with them.

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So I appreciate that.

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So, Erica, I'm going to start.

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Is that okay?

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Yeah, Okay.

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So, Julie, you love humans, you root for humans.

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What does this mean and what do you want our listeners to understand about that mantra?

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So we know a little bit more about who you are.

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No one has ever pressed me on this, so thank you for the opportunity.

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I actually, in my heart, in my spirit, I care about humans.

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Many of us do.

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I'm not unique in that, but I really mean it.

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So I take an interest in the struggles of people around me.

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I'm not trying to solve everybody's problems, but I am trying to show up with compassion, letting people know that I believe in them, letting them know I respect them, trying to treat them with dignity, trying to be of some use if I can.

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I'm one of those people that doesn't see this human journey as a race that some of us win.

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I actually think we don't win unless we all get there.

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So I'm trying to do my part.

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That's terrific.

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It really drew my attention when I was reading about you and I thought maybe all of us need to be a little bit more like that nowadays.

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Nice.

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You've written many books, but the two we're going to talk about today are titled how to Raise an Adult and your Church.

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One is a message to parents about how to raise a responsible adult, and the other is a message to all of us who grow up to be an adult.

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Tell us how you came to write both of these and what they mean to you, both as a parent and as an adult, maruth.

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These two books are really the flip side of the same coin.

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When I was a dean at Stanford University, I had the privilege of working with 18 to 22-year-olds to be someone who rooted for them, tried to shine a light on their path and help them figure themselves out.

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In that work I saw that many were still quite handheld by parents, as if they were 5 or 11 instead of 18 or 22.

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And I could see the damage it seemed to have on their sense of agency, their skills and their mental health.

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So I decided to write that parenting book how to Raise an Adult really based on what I'd seen, as well as interviews with a whole lot of other people about what they were seeing around the country, not only at colleges and universities but in the workplace, k-12.

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So that parenting manual exists and is my first book, but it was based on me really trying to advocate for young adults to be able to thrive in this one life of theirs.

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So your Turn, which is the more recent book, is the flip side.

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It's the book for kids, rooting for them to thrive.

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It doesn't have parenting advice in it.

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It has advice for young people on the choices, how to make the choices and how to cope with stuff and what to prioritize and so on, but both books emanate from the same center point, which is me rooting for young people.

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So you know I'm sorry, go ahead, erica Do you think that parents are more involved with their kids at the request of their kids, or do you think that the parents have their own needs to be more involved with their children?

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Well, I think there's a third piece missing, which is is society pressuring parents to be more involved?

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This is such a commonplace manner of parenting.

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It's not new any longer.

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There was a time when it was new and odd, but really millennials and now Gen Z have been raised with this over parenting approach so it has become the norm in many communities, which makes it hard to stand up to or even for parents to realize that it may be too much.

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It just seems to be the way everyone's doing it, so why would they not?

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I think some kids are asking for more involvement, but kids don't know what childhood is supposed to be right If they look around and see well, everyone else's parents are, you know, at every soccer practice, or everyone else's parents are kind of helping with the homework, doing the homework.

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You know, why aren't you helping me?

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Like I can't figure this out and you do my homework?

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Well, it's on the parent to say actually, this homework is yours.

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It's a compact between you and the teacher.

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I can answer a question here or there, I can give you feedback, I can try to give you advice, but I'm not going to do your homework, no matter how many other parents are sort of lightening the load by finishing it for you.

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That's wrong.

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It won't help you grow to be a better student or a better grown-up one day.

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So it's not on kids to know that that parental involvement is too much.

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It's on us as parents to really, I think, summon a memory from the 80s or the 70s or the 60s or the 50s, when we were being raised and say like wait a minute, my parents weren't doing my homework.

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What am I doing?

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My parents didn't even know I went to take the SAT.

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Right.

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And now they're taking 15 classes before they take the SAT.

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This also goes to what you talk about.

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Sometimes a kid is the pet project of the parent and they're raising them to be X, y or Z.

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And you also talk about this whole issue of perfectionism and parents seeking perfectionism, and that puts a lot of pressure on the kid.

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How does a parent that maybe was involved?

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So here we're talking to parents of adult kids they could be anywhere from 18 to 35, because honestly I'll get to that later how long adolescence is taking these days?

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Right, what do we say to parents of adult kids that can't let go and still see their child as their pet project or this yearning for perfectionism?

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What are the steps they can take?

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Well, I'm going to answer this question with what I should have said also in response to the last question, which is one of the reasons we do this, and I say we because I have done it.

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We over-parent our adult children out of our own ego's need to be useful, to matter, or out of deep anxieties that we have about ourselves.

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So we've got to treat that kid like the project or the dog in the dog race or the thoroughbred going in the Kentucky Derby, like I will feel better about myself when I can say to my peers my child has achieved this, is a graduate of, that is in this career right, our need.

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Something is unwell or incomplete or not enough within ourselves, such that our child becomes the evidence of our worth, which is incredibly unhealthy.

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For ourselves and the kid.

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Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.

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So I'm here to say we can change.

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I, my partner Dan, and I have been hard at work doing what I call repatterning with our 24 year old, our eldest, with whom we were way overprotective.

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I tried to make life easier because he was really a wonderful kid but also very sensitive.

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We just tried to smooth the path, take the tough things away.

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Well, he became a young adult who can't handle the tough things and we realized no, the loving thing is to empathize with whatever the struggle is and then empower by evincing confidence that one day it won't be this hard.

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So now the family mantra is you know what?

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This looks hard, but you do hard things.

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Smile, walk away.

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And my little heart is pounding as I walk away because I want to, you know, make it easier for that kid.

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But the more I practice it, the more confident I get and the more I see him light up with oh my mother believes in me instead of oh my mother doesn't believe in me.

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Thank goodness she's there to do it for me.

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I think finding that middle ground is really really hard for a lot of us.

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Yeah, we just interviewed Lauren Steinberg who wrote this new book.

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I'm sure you've heard of you and your Adult Child how to Grow Together in Challenging Times and he really talks about how adolescence is lasting until 26, 27, 28.

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And he says it's parents.

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He says similarly to what you say about parents being over-involved, going to all the soccer games, blah, blah, blah.

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But also he brought up a lot of very empathetic for the world these kids are growing up in today, meaning that one of the things he said was real estate's growing four times more than salaries.

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It's very hard to get a foothold, so how long do you support?

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How much do you support?

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What's that happy medium?

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Like Erica said that we have to meet.

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How do we get there?

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Yeah.

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I mean Steinberg is raising a really good point about the widening income inequities that salary and wages haven't kept up with the cost of living, and it's certainly true where I live here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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And yet if we hold our kids' hands forever and then one day we're dead and gone or infirm, then they're really going to be lost because they've been taught that I'm okay when my parents are holding my hand.

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Well, that's not a promise we can keep forever.

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So I would advise every parent keep your eye on the long-term purpose of parenting, which is raise that offspring to be able to fend for themselves without you.

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We hope to not be taken from them too early, but along the way we're supposed to be transferring our knowledge to them and teaching them and letting them have the life experiences that teach them.

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So the line is I have this four-step method for teaching any kid any skill.

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First you do it for them and we're really good at that and you do it with them, like they're there but you're doing, you're doing the work, but you're supposed to be kind of teaching the work, narrating out loud.

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Now we do this.

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Now we're going to do this.

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Now we're going to do this.

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Step three you watch them do it.

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They're in the driver's seat, you're.

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You're in the passenger seat, you can grab the wheel in an emergency.

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Step four they can do it.

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You're out of the car and you've confidence.

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You both have confidence that they've practiced through steps two and three enough they know how to do it.

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So, in other words, you don't leave them, you know.

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You don't drop them cold turkey.

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You don't do everything for a person and then abandon them.

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Right, you teach them.

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You have a goal of I want my kid to be capable of doing this.

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So when it comes to rent, you decide like is my kid a hard worker?

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Do they have a job?

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Right, put those expectations in place.

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And if that job doesn't earn enough wage or salary to comport to what basic minimum rent is in your town, then you may have to figure out all right, are we going to subsidize in some way that recognizes you're a hard worker, but rents are out of control?

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Maybe you can afford to do that, maybe you can't.

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Maybe it's that tough conversation where you say I'm so sad our area has become unaffordable for young people.

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Thankfully, there are many other places in this country where it's not out of balance.

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We might see Gen Z moving to the heartland, where there are cities with great jobs and reasonable cost of living.

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I mean, maybe that's how regions get repopulated, because young people can't afford to live here in the Bay Area or on the coasts anymore.

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I don't know.

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But there are solutions available and they all entail ultimately empowering the young adult to get farther out there in life, do more and more for themselves, rather than bring them home into their childhood bedroom, pat them on the head and say don't worry, it'll always be okay, because it won't will be gone, and then they will be lost.

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How important do you think it is to put timeframes for helping them?

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Yeah, for example, when you were saying, help the kids with the rent, if it's too much, do you say I'll help you for some finite amount of time, and then there's an expectation that they figure it out right forward.

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I think these are conversations that have to be had.

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So, yes, and every kid is different.

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Some kids have mental health challenges and they're not going to be as equipped to kind of support themselves as soon as others might.

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They might be in a field that doesn't pay very well.

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My kid, for example, is an aide for kids with special needs in the public schools.

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Well, I love that.

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I think it's God's work and angels work, but sure doesn't pay, for he's represented by a union.

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But that salary isn't going to cover a studio apartment anywhere near where we live.

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So do I want to tell him he can't do that for a living?

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Do I want to tell him he should do it in a different part of the country?

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Or do I want to partially subsidize his situation?

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And that's the route my partner and I have taken partially subsidizing.

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But we won't do it forever.

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We haven't yet figured out for how long, but that hard conversation is coming.

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He's 24 now.

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But don't you think?

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I mean for me, as long as they're working and working hard, no one's going to do that job, because no one can afford to live on that, and we need good people in those jobs.

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And that's the same thing with teaching.

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Yeah, jessica Gross at the New York Times just wrote a call on the.

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No one wants to be a teacher, and yet it's the teachers that are shaping the future Right, and so it's really hard.

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But I want to say one more thing.

00:17:06.898 --> 00:17:15.567
You talk about moving to the heartland, and I get that, but the political climate of our country right now is becoming really difficult.

00:17:16.055 --> 00:17:16.214
Yeah.

00:17:16.214 --> 00:17:18.039
So I would say a couple of things.

00:17:18.721 --> 00:17:30.393
not to presume everyone on the listening, I know I know the same politics, but I certainly get and agree with you If a person is from a blue state looking to move to a more affordable red state, so to speak.

00:17:30.393 --> 00:17:34.650
Typically the urban environment wherever you go is quite liberal and progressive.

00:17:34.650 --> 00:17:40.007
So even if the entire state tends to swing red, the cities tend to be blue.

00:17:40.007 --> 00:17:42.112
That's true almost everywhere.

00:17:42.112 --> 00:17:52.604
So be heartened by that and when I say the heartland I'm also talking about places in Ohio and places in Wisconsin and places in Illinois that there's plenty of progressive people there.

00:17:52.604 --> 00:17:59.226
So I would Google if I'm a young person listening right now or a parent of 22 to 35,.

00:17:59.375 --> 00:18:01.864
I would Google best cities for young adults.

00:18:01.864 --> 00:18:10.144
They're gonna tell you about cost of living, cost to rent or buy a place, quality of life, nightlife, social activities and so on.

00:18:10.144 --> 00:18:11.667
Right, those places exist.

00:18:11.667 --> 00:18:15.785
In fact, some of them have grants like we'll pay you to come to our city.

00:18:16.125 --> 00:18:18.199
Well, I think this abortion issue is a big one.

00:18:18.199 --> 00:18:23.946
I've heard a lot of young people say I'm not moving to a state that will not allow a woman the right to choose.

00:18:24.469 --> 00:18:25.755
Everybody has to make choices.

00:18:25.755 --> 00:18:28.981
You're looking at a Black person, black and biracial.

00:18:28.981 --> 00:18:30.424
I also identify as queer.

00:18:30.424 --> 00:18:33.920
I very much believe we have to find our people.

00:18:33.920 --> 00:18:44.241
We have to find our communities, both in work and in relationship, where we can be our true selves without persecution, prosecution or, just you know, massive difficulties.

00:18:44.241 --> 00:18:47.256
So let's get really outside the box.

00:18:47.557 --> 00:18:54.619
It may be that our adult children don't want to leave Silicon Valley or New York or these other expensive places.

00:18:54.619 --> 00:18:56.346
Fine, they're going to live with us.

00:18:56.346 --> 00:18:57.771
What are the parameters?

00:18:57.771 --> 00:19:05.208
How could they live with us and behave as adults, instead of us feeling like we still have our teenager, who's now 35, at home?

00:19:05.208 --> 00:19:06.516
It's about agreements.

00:19:06.516 --> 00:19:19.885
It's about boundaries, respecting that they ought to be able to come and go as they please, just like we do, but also respecting that they will contribute to the family household far more than the chores they did as a child.

00:19:19.885 --> 00:19:30.278
They should now be doing some of the grocery shopping and they should be looking out for grandma and they should be thinking about, like augment, whatever they were responsible for as a kid ratcheted up.

00:19:30.278 --> 00:19:33.068
It comes with more responsibility, but also more freedom.

00:19:33.068 --> 00:19:42.740
You know, it is possible to live, to coexist as adults in the same house, as long as everybody is treated as and assumes the responsibility of an adult.

00:19:43.181 --> 00:19:47.941
There's something really beautiful about multi-generational living and many countries do it.

00:19:47.941 --> 00:19:52.141
The problem is it goes back to the thing we said at the beginning your ego gets in the way.

00:19:52.141 --> 00:19:53.740
Johnny's living at home.

00:19:54.182 --> 00:19:54.342
Right.

00:19:54.342 --> 00:19:58.044
So what we have to say is it's really unaffordable here.

00:19:58.044 --> 00:20:00.500
So Johnny's living at home, but we're really proud of him.

00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:03.102
We give him his space, he contributes beautifully.

00:20:03.102 --> 00:20:06.400
So of him, we give him his space, he contributes beautifully.

00:20:06.400 --> 00:20:07.886
So you know, he's an adult, we all just still happen to live together, right?

00:20:07.886 --> 00:20:09.653
And then Johnny's got to respect your adult life.

00:20:09.653 --> 00:20:12.602
I mean, I, I've got a Johnny, I've got a 24 year old.

00:20:13.083 --> 00:20:15.407
For us he's the aide for kids with special needs.

00:20:15.407 --> 00:20:21.988
We charge him rent that is one third of his gross income, because that's what the formula is.

00:20:21.988 --> 00:20:33.842
But we're saving that money for him so that when he's ready to go get an apartment, he's got some saved for a security deposit and first and last month's rent, right, it's all in furtherance of that one day.

00:20:33.842 --> 00:20:40.917
But we also had to say to him you know, could you and your friends maybe play D&D at someone else's house, because we kind of need some alone time?

00:20:40.917 --> 00:20:45.893
And he was like, oh really, I mean, we were, we lost our empty nest.

00:20:45.893 --> 00:20:49.723
We missed that and it's important to be able to have this conversation instead of.

00:20:49.723 --> 00:20:58.219
Well, I guess our life is deferred until our son gets his situation worked out Like no, everybody matters, be able to speak as frankly as you can.

00:20:58.219 --> 00:21:02.126
Agreements, boundaries, commitments, gratitude.

00:21:02.126 --> 00:21:05.784
Thanks so much, son, for taking care of the dishes when it was my turn.

00:21:05.784 --> 00:21:08.741
I really appreciate you, just like you would say to any adult.

00:21:09.202 --> 00:21:13.160
That leads you to that good question, erica, that we talked about, yeah.

00:21:13.300 --> 00:21:26.895
In your book you quote Madeline Levine's message that we should support our kids in being who they are by giving them the opportunity to fit the kid, as opposed to trying to make our kid fit our notion of who they should be.

00:21:26.895 --> 00:21:33.415
With many adults today, that trial and error of our kids seems to be going on a long time.

00:21:33.415 --> 00:21:47.067
How long do we support it and when do we have, or do we have, some responsibility to point out the obvious financial ramifications of continuing to try things hard?

00:21:48.739 --> 00:21:50.084
Yeah, it's case by case.

00:21:50.084 --> 00:21:55.025
Foundationally, fundamentally, I mean, humans want to be successful.

00:21:55.025 --> 00:21:56.087
They want to create things.

00:21:56.087 --> 00:21:58.984
They want to do things with their hands or their body or their brains.

00:21:58.984 --> 00:22:04.727
We feel great satisfaction from work if it's work that we're good at and we love.

00:22:04.727 --> 00:22:06.277
So we want to be pushing our kids.

00:22:06.317 --> 00:22:10.477
We want to set that expectation that it is not a thing for you to want to live here forever.

00:22:10.477 --> 00:22:21.621
It is not a thing for you to just like we make dinner for you night after night and you sit on the couch like you know you you've got to get out there, and a kid who doesn't want to get out there might be dealing with some depression or some anxiety.

00:22:21.621 --> 00:22:24.946
Get that treated, get that worked on depression or some anxiety.

00:22:24.946 --> 00:22:27.711
Get that treated, get that work done, because they ought to be yearning.

00:22:27.711 --> 00:22:34.402
They ought to be yearning for independence and freedom and responsibility and all that.

00:22:34.402 --> 00:22:36.125
They ought to be yearning to live with peers instead of with us.

00:22:36.125 --> 00:22:39.182
So we've got to signal that those things matter and are important.

00:22:39.182 --> 00:22:44.601
We've got to say like in a year I don't think you'll still be living here, you know, certainly not in two years, right?

00:22:45.122 --> 00:22:54.597
I one time heard someone say and this was when my kids were like in high school, maybe going to college you want a loving environment at home, but not too comfortable, right, you know meaning.

00:22:54.597 --> 00:22:59.048
They can't go out to a bar and bring home a guy or a girl to spend the night.

00:22:59.048 --> 00:23:05.059
And you're open to that because sometimes the main reason they want to leave is to have sex, because sometimes the main reason they want to leave is to have sex.

00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:12.967
I know that sounds terrible to say, but they don't want their mom and dad or mom or whoever it is their guardians knowing what they're doing all the time.

00:23:12.967 --> 00:23:18.310
So if you allow too much and make it too comfortable, it might be even harder for them to leave.

00:23:18.310 --> 00:23:18.632
I don't know.

00:23:18.632 --> 00:23:19.531
What do you think about that?

00:23:20.654 --> 00:23:29.698
Well, that's a really good point and I think modern parenting is there's an upside, there's a downside to the closeness too much handholding, too much hovering.

00:23:29.698 --> 00:23:31.782
But the upside is we know them, they know us, we really like each other.

00:23:31.782 --> 00:23:34.608
We're more likely to know the names of their friends, their teachers and so on.

00:23:34.608 --> 00:23:38.618
So then it's harder to say like you can't be who you are in this home.

00:23:38.618 --> 00:23:40.601
I don't care if you're in a relationship, not in my house.

00:23:40.601 --> 00:23:41.201
We're just we.

00:23:41.201 --> 00:23:43.044
We aren't the my way or the highway.

00:23:43.044 --> 00:23:45.826
Children are to be seen, but not her generation.

00:23:45.826 --> 00:23:47.848
You know we're much more permissive.

00:23:47.848 --> 00:23:52.965
So you're absolutely right, we can't make homes so cushy that they would never want to leave.

00:23:52.965 --> 00:23:58.364
They're supposed to want to leave and get their own life because they're sick and tired of living under our house and our rules.

00:23:58.364 --> 00:24:01.660
You know that's a real heavy lift for this generation of parents.

00:24:01.660 --> 00:24:06.608
I respect the challenge of it, but I also really appreciate the wisdom of it.

00:24:07.194 --> 00:24:09.364
I liked your term self-efficacy.

00:24:09.364 --> 00:24:11.442
I call it the little engine.

00:24:11.442 --> 00:24:26.282
That could Maybe the most important book we ever read our kids, and we have done a great job maybe too great a job teaching them that they can do anything they want to do, and now that they're adults, they're learning they have limitations.

00:24:26.282 --> 00:24:32.607
So what's the in-between message that parents of adult children should be talking about with them?

00:24:33.035 --> 00:24:33.999
Yeah, it's not.

00:24:33.999 --> 00:24:35.083
You can be anything you want.

00:24:35.083 --> 00:24:40.067
If you work really hard, you have a good chance of being what you want.

00:24:40.067 --> 00:24:41.056
You know it's that.

00:24:41.056 --> 00:24:47.028
The condition precedent is hard work and get yourself back up when you fall.

00:24:47.028 --> 00:24:50.244
Hard work, work ethic plus resilience will get you far.

00:24:50.244 --> 00:24:52.278
Like we believe in you.

00:24:52.278 --> 00:24:56.248
We believe in your dreams, but you have to work your tail off to achieve them.

00:24:56.248 --> 00:24:59.805
I think that's what was missing for a lot of millennials.

00:24:59.805 --> 00:25:01.421
I hear them talking about it.

00:25:01.421 --> 00:25:02.861
It was like they said we could be anything.

00:25:02.861 --> 00:25:04.340
It turns out it's much harder than that.

00:25:04.340 --> 00:25:05.780
Yeah, it is much harder than that.

00:25:06.494 --> 00:25:13.945
You have such an amazing background in all your studies and I just wonder historically we went from the way we were raised.

00:25:13.945 --> 00:25:16.201
You know they rang the dinner bell to come home.

00:25:16.201 --> 00:25:17.420
They didn't know where we were.

00:25:17.420 --> 00:25:19.462
And I know the world has changed.

00:25:19.462 --> 00:25:29.839
Ok, but I want to go into why you think our generation of parents have ended up in this state.

00:25:29.839 --> 00:25:30.821
Does that make sense?

00:25:30.821 --> 00:25:35.759
Sure, sort of having kids that aren't ready to launch, or even 25 percent of adult kids are estranged from their parents.

00:25:35.759 --> 00:25:37.442
You know what is this about.

00:25:37.442 --> 00:25:42.200
What is it historically and just in our world that has caused this kind of change?

00:25:42.701 --> 00:25:49.900
So that statistic on 25% are estranged is new to me so I haven't read about it, I haven't studied it.

00:25:49.900 --> 00:26:04.476
My hypothesis there is when somebody has been micromanaged, they at some point say to heck with this, I'm out of here, you do not have the right to know my whereabouts, you do not have the right to know about every minute detail of my life.

00:26:04.476 --> 00:26:05.176
It is too much.

00:26:05.176 --> 00:26:12.920
It feels like surveillance, it feels like an encroachment into privacy and anybody raised that way at some point.

00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:18.460
I'm rooting for them to leave and say stop, and if you can't stop, I'm out of here.

00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:23.818
And so I'm guessing that there is some element of that 25% that has had it.

00:26:23.818 --> 00:26:28.182
I am not your dog on a leash and if you don't realize that, then I'm going off leash.

00:26:28.182 --> 00:26:34.942
I hope they're still open to their parents learning and growing and being willing to kind of forge that healthy relationship one day.

00:26:34.942 --> 00:26:35.885
But who knows?

00:26:35.885 --> 00:26:43.365
Look here's how it started Overparenting, or what we call helicopter parenting, micromanaging parenting actually began in the 80s.

00:26:44.015 --> 00:26:57.190
The term was coined by 1990 based on what had changed in the 80s, and it was these things we started bubble wrapping their entire lives in the 80s little guards and protectors on everything.

00:26:57.190 --> 00:27:00.940
Prepare the road for the child, instead of preparing the child for the road.

00:27:00.940 --> 00:27:04.865
It was like we are so worried we're always going to have a helmet on you or have a bubble wrap on the edge of the sharp thing or the road.

00:27:04.865 --> 00:27:09.926
It was like we are so worried we're always going to have a helmet on you or have a bubble wrap on the edge of the sharp thing or the corner.

00:27:09.926 --> 00:27:17.875
So we got very overly concerned about safety Instead of letting the physical environment teach the kids how to use their bodies.

00:27:17.875 --> 00:27:20.663
It was like no, no, no, let's just bubble wrap everything.

00:27:20.663 --> 00:27:29.907
We became very sort of show up at not just games but practices for soccer and you know, you're amazing and you're great and oh, congrats.

00:27:29.907 --> 00:27:30.751
You swung a bat.

00:27:30.751 --> 00:27:38.359
Like we became these over praising people and made you know kids like my parents always here, my parent thinks I'm great and my parents always going to handle everything.

00:27:38.359 --> 00:27:42.720
We created the play date instead of kids going out and finding kids to play with.

00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:45.426
It was that's not safe, don't do that.

00:27:45.674 --> 00:27:48.632
I think it was, frankly, a commentary on women in the workplace in the 70s.

00:27:48.632 --> 00:27:49.154
Like no, no, no.

00:27:49.154 --> 00:27:55.259
Now we have to have every hour after school arranged by parents, structured by parents or some third party Stranger.

00:27:55.259 --> 00:27:56.019
Danger was born.

00:27:56.019 --> 00:27:58.282
Don't talk to strangers, you never know what can happen.

00:27:58.343 --> 00:28:01.906
So we've got this overbroad rule that has led to rudeness in kids.

00:28:01.906 --> 00:28:05.332
Like they won't you say hi on a sidewalk, they look at you like you're a creep.

00:28:05.332 --> 00:28:10.044
Well, they're not learning how to interact in their environment and they're learning to be afraid of their environment.

00:28:10.044 --> 00:28:32.703
So all of this, these kids, who had the first play date in 1984, were the first kids to come to college in the late 90s with parents who could not let go, still wanted to be involved in interpersonal, still wanted to talk to authorities on their behalf, still wanted to hold their hand and handle the problem solving and all of that.

00:28:32.703 --> 00:28:35.491
So we do it because now it's the norm, but we also do it because of this ego need to feel useful and validated.

00:28:35.491 --> 00:28:46.066
It's sort of become the hallmark of modern parenting is look what I achieved for my kid today, instead of this pride and like I'm teaching my kid to do for themselves today.

00:28:46.595 --> 00:28:48.343
I understand what you're saying about that.

00:28:48.343 --> 00:28:59.777
That makes a lot of sense to me, and certainly the flip side of it, though I'm wondering, as you're talking, is the sense of responsibility to not shirk our duties.

00:28:59.777 --> 00:29:18.071
On one hand, yes, you can say it, so their parents have their ego gratification, but sometimes for me, if I don't say something or I don't do something, I feel like I am letting them go too much and shirking my responsibility and being a bad parent.

00:29:25.474 --> 00:29:31.699
So it's so hard to to say that kids who are raised by working class families often have to do more chores around the house look after young children, maybe have a part-time job, start dinner.

00:29:32.098 --> 00:29:48.701
They have to do more work because their parents' job situation is nuts and they emerge to young adulthood far more self-reliant, far more accountable and responsible than their more affluent counterparts who don't seem to know how to do anything because they've never been asked to do anything.

00:29:48.701 --> 00:29:52.982
You know, yes, there is, at some point, neglect, like you were never there for your kid.

00:29:52.982 --> 00:30:02.922
You don't know where they are, you didn't show up, you didn't care, right, we don't want to be at that end of the spectrum, nor do we want to be acting like this is my pet dog and I'm going to carry them with me at all times.

00:30:02.922 --> 00:30:11.281
You know to be able to say to your kid if you're busy, like pick the activity that's really important to you and I will be there, Can't be there, all you know and every single one.

00:30:11.281 --> 00:30:14.403
I work full time, I've got other kids, I've got other things right.

00:30:14.403 --> 00:30:21.981
You share, you show with your body language and with your actual language that you care, you praise them for the things they're doing.

00:30:21.981 --> 00:30:45.434
Well no-transcript.

00:30:49.875 --> 00:30:52.461
You know, I used to hear the phrase benign neglect and sometimes some of the best kids raised with benign neglect.

00:30:52.461 --> 00:30:52.902
They felt loved.

00:30:52.902 --> 00:30:54.266
It just wasn't overpowering.

00:30:54.266 --> 00:30:59.707
I used to say my kids are older now but I wish I would have raised my kids the way I raised my dog.

00:30:59.707 --> 00:31:02.722
Go to your crate, you know.

00:31:02.722 --> 00:31:08.082
Instead, I was always worried about how I was treating them emotionally and was like and I hurt their self-esteem.

00:31:08.082 --> 00:31:12.064
And what I really want to ask is this isn't changing.

00:31:12.064 --> 00:31:13.448
Julie, you've written these books.

00:31:13.448 --> 00:31:23.422
People are talking about it left and right, but every time I bring this up or talk about it to even young friends and teachers don't come into the schools.

00:31:23.422 --> 00:31:25.061
Now it's worse than it's ever been.

00:31:25.061 --> 00:31:26.085
Is that true?

00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:58.742
I think COVID has certainly wreaked havoc on everything, of course, and I'm hearing from teachers that kids seem younger than ever.

00:31:58.742 --> 00:32:08.567
A there seems to be a lessening or a lesser maturity attached to the ages where we'd think you should be mature by now, but that's been in progress for quite some time.

00:32:08.567 --> 00:32:08.866
I think.

00:32:08.866 --> 00:32:13.449
You know, nobody would say to an 18-year-old today well, you know, up or out, you're 18.

00:32:13.449 --> 00:32:20.721
Like, we're still calling them children when they're 35, right, but in my generation I'm Gen X, born in 1967.

00:32:21.009 --> 00:32:24.361
A lot of us were told you can live here until you're 18, but that's it.

00:32:24.361 --> 00:32:27.720
We went to the military, we went to college or we went to the workplace.

00:32:27.720 --> 00:32:37.901
I'm waiting for someone to say no one in their right mind should be allowed to join the military at 18 because they're still children.

00:32:37.901 --> 00:32:40.470
Some people believe that and to look at Steinberg's work on adolescents, are they really old enough to make that decision?

00:32:40.470 --> 00:32:46.583
Has that much changed in them in terms of their cognitive and psychosocial, emotional development?

00:32:46.583 --> 00:33:00.586
I don't know, but I do think, bigger picture, we have to be interested in our youth learning the skills, the practical skills, the skills around human interaction, how to solve their problems, how to cope when things go wrong how to get back up.

00:33:00.586 --> 00:33:05.201
I mean, what's to become of us if the next generation can't do those things?

00:33:05.970 --> 00:33:06.290
You're right.

00:33:06.290 --> 00:33:12.570
You're absolutely right, absolutely right.

00:33:12.570 --> 00:33:19.753
There was something you talked about how can parents and mentors sort of support this transition from adolescence to adulthood without enabling or imposing expectations?

00:33:19.753 --> 00:33:22.585
What steps can parents take to help the kid?

00:33:22.585 --> 00:33:24.755
I mean, they may have already done everything you've said.

00:33:24.755 --> 00:33:30.115
They've been to every soccer game, they wrote the college admission thing and the kid got into a great college.

00:33:30.115 --> 00:33:34.680

Bonus Rewind: Transforming Parenting Roles for a Resilient Future

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