The Addiction Inoculation: Protecting Our Kids in a Culture of Dependence

In this episode, I speak with Jess Lahey about her latest book, The Addiction Inoculation, and what she learned from her work as a teacher at a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents. Jess talks candidly about the effects of alcohol and drug use on developing brains and provides parents with tips for having age appropriate discussions about the topic with their children and teenagers. Jess also shares how genetics, parenting styles, and education can all play a role in both risk and protective measures against child substance abuse. Join us for valuable insights into navigating how to raise healthy kids and prevent substance use disorder in children.

Timestamps:
[02:11] Introducing Jess Lahey.
[03:27] What does an alcoholic look like?
[05:39] Defining “substance use disorder”.
[09:56] What should we know about substance abuse and developing brains?
[16:28] The role of genetics and epigenetics on substance abuse.
[21:33] Looking at the brain in early childhood and mindfulness.
[29:53] Substance abuse and arrested development.
[32:02] How to frame and encourage positive risk in adolescents.
[34:56] Jess Lahey compares different schools of thought in addiction science and substance abuse.
[38:49] What are the impacts of different parenting styles?
[42:56] The importance of self-efficacy.
[47:17] How to make education feel more relevant and connected for children and teens.
[52:47] Jess Lahey discusses the importance of family connection with examples.
[01:00:13] Jess Lahey talks about navigating her son’s friendship with a peer struggling with substance abuse.
[01:04:37] Final question and piece of advice.

After listening to our conversation, I hope you and your child are able to approach the topic of addiction and substance abuse with clarity and compassion.

Resources:
The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey: https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Failure-Parents-Children-Succeed/dp/0062299255
The Addiction Inoculation by Jessica Lahey: https://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Inoculation-Raising-Healthy-Dependence/dp/006288378X
Jessica’s website: https://www.jessicalahey.com/

If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Transcript

Jess Lahey  00:00
We're not talking about, oh, we must be teetotallers for our entire life. And there's no drugs or alcohol ever. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about delay, delay, delay, because it's important not just for the brain, but for the chances that your kid will have a problem later, you know, 90% of people who have drug and alcohol issues later on in life, say they started using before 18. Again, correlation causation issues. And then we also know that with each passing year, the risk of having substance use disorder during your lifetime goes down dramatically, actually. So if you look at like eighth grade versus 12th grade, you know, you cut your risk way, way down with each passing year. So if we can just delay, you know, that age of first use, then we are just doing a huge amount not only for their brain development, but to lower the risk that they'll have a problem later in life.

Ned Johnson  00:52
Welcome to the self driven Job Podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson, and co author with Dr. Williams pictured of the books, the self driven child the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say, how to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home? Jessica Lee is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gift of Failure. But if there's one place where we don't want to fail, it's an addiction. You don't want your kids to be addicted. I don't either. They don't either. And yet, far too many kids and teens and young adults fall prey to addiction in ways that derail their lives and set them up for all kinds of future problems that we'd frankly like to avoid. A lot of things make kids vulnerable to addiction, but there are also many significant protective factors. In her latest book, The addiction inoculation just shares with us what are the vulnerabilities? What are the genetic loadings that make kids susceptible to addiction? But also what are the protective factors. This is a wonderfully candid, really part memoir, part parenting book, part how to guide to help inoculate our kids against addiction. I'm Nick Johnson, and this is the self tip and child podcast. Physically, he, the addiction, inoculation, raising healthy kids and a culture of dependence. Jessica Lee, he is a teacher, writer and mom, over 20 years, she's taught every grade from six to 12, and both public and private schools. She writes about education, parenting and child welfare for The Atlantic, Vermont Public Radio, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Jessica is also the author of the best selling book, The Gift of Failure, how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed, published in 2015, and she co host the podcast, hashtag m writing. She earned a BA in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts and a JD from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Jessica lives in Vermont with her husband and two sons. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Jess Lahey  02:58
Thank you so much for having me again,

Ned Johnson  03:00
I am so looking forward to this conversation. And I so appreciated this book. You know, for folks who, who who know and love and have followed your work for years. I have the sense of this book, maybe a little bit of surprise, because they know us being so capable and so competent. And you described yourself in this book, as you know, self decried overachieving perfectionist.

Jess Lahey  03:27
So the last five years of my teaching career, I was working in a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents, I was their teacher, the writing teacher, but really, I taught a little of everything. And I always you know, we have a sort of a constantly changing cast of characters in our classroom because kids stay for all different periods of time. And they're coming and going all the time. So I have to reintroduce myself each class and every time I'd introduce myself, I would always introduce myself myself by telling them that I'm an alcoholic, and I have a My sober date is June 7 2013. And

Ned Johnson  04:01
I imagined that was really purposeful because I have the sense it also helps people broaden their sense of what an alcoholic might look like. Yeah,

Jess Lahey  04:09
they always, almost always know like, you don't look like an alcoholic. And I think that's just because we have a fairly limited imagination. And that's what the media that you know, the media shows us something different and but as Stephen King says, In on writing, we all look about the same when were puking in the gutter. So, you know, Stephen King was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and I'm an alcoholic. And I think, you know, we come in lots of shapes and sizes, and we definitely come in lots of backgrounds. But having gone to a 12 step recovery program meetings for a long time, there are a lot of people that look like me and a lot of people with a similar story to me, lots of perfectionist lots of people with anxiety, which is one of the main reasons I think I started drinking. So yeah, it's not an uncommon story. I'm not, you know, I think it's gonna be really important. As we start learning about preventing substance abuse, that we figure out that there aren't a lot of ways to predict based on demographics or socio economics, that kind of thing, who's gonna have a problem and who's not.

Ned Johnson  05:14
One of the points in the book that you raise is how important and how valuable it is to normalize conversations about substance use and substance use disorder. I wonder if you could if you could take a moment. And just just to frame things for us, you know, how is substance use disorder defined? And how do people come to know that they have that I'm thinking about you taking your test and think but I'm grading on a curve here.

Jess Lahey  05:39
I'm also glad using the word substance use disorder. I think despite the fact that the word addiction isn't the title of my book, it should be probably out there, from the beginning that everyone from you know, all the style guides changed in the last couple years, we're not supposed to say, you know, someone who you are not supposed to talk about addicts, we're not supposed to talk about junkies, we're supposed to use person first language like, just as you wouldn't say he is an autistic, you would say he is a person with autism, I am a woman with a substance use disorder. However, you try writing the title of a book that uses the term stress disorder, just Yeah, it's tough. Not so much. I know. So I'm really happy that you're with me on the language stuff. And that language, I think, is important, mainly because, you know, it's what the attempt is, is to take the stigma off, you know, that person oriented language, so that we can sort of understand that. This is something that, you know, around 10% of us have an issue with because of our wiring, because of our brain chemistry, whatever that thing is. And so, you know, from that perspective, I think it's important to talk about the fact that it is a scary conversation to have with kids, but it doesn't start with a conversation about you know, like injecting heroin, it starts really, really young. And you know, the big spoiler alert here is that really good substance abuse prevention programs in schools and with parents look a lot like no coincidence, really good social emotional learning programs, and really good health programs. And really good health programs don't start with a conversation about injecting heroin, and they start with a conversation about brushing our teeth, and why we don't swallow the toothpaste, why we spit it out? And why we wash our hands and why and you know, conversations about like, when kids are first learning their letters and talking about what whose name is written on that label for that medication? And why do you think mommy's name is on that label and not daddy's name? Or why, you know, why would Can I Can you take something that's prescribed for mommy, and why not? I think those are the conversations we start with. And that makes it a lot less scary, because we're sort of, you know, doing developmentally appropriate things and stuff like that. And then just as the sex conversation is not one conversation, the Substance Abuse conversation is not one conversation, either, because, sorry, the dog is deciding to chew on my Jane Austen figuring?

Ned Johnson  08:10
Well, we know that dogs are one of the solutions that you have in the back of the book, so was so totally.

Jess Lahey  08:17
And so I think, you know, having conversations, it gets easier and easier. And I can tell you right now that the first time I had to talk to my kids about my substance use, I got sick and threw up, it was so scary to me. And so but every single time you have those conversations, it gets easier and easier. Just like you know, as we normalize conversations about sex and consent and stuff like that, you know, go off and read Peggy Orenstein book girl and sex and boys and sex, read those for that. But it's a similar sort of situation, I promise, the more you talk about it, the easier it gets.

Ned Johnson  08:50
And Brene Brown and me too. And, you know, it's, it's interesting, just somebody the points that you make in the book, just strike me. You know, it's just good parenting, you know, just good parents across the board. You know, so there's advice there that will help all parents really with all kids whether or not substance abuse ever, you know, darkens your door, which I thought was so great. And I also really appreciated how progressive it is, I mean, the the age appropriate conversations your point about toothpaste and brushing your teeth that you can have with little guys, and kind of what this sequence might look, you know, year after year, mile after milestone, which is just, it's just so good. There are pages and pages and pages about really wonderful insights about different drugs and what they do to brains. And so I won't drag us through all that because we could talk for hours about it, but in a big picture way. Could you talk a little bit about what we should know about substance and substance abuse and developing brains and just kind of a high level way.

Jess Lahey  09:55
There are some really interesting conversations going on right now about drugs. In adults, Carl, Dr. Carl Hart has a new book called, you know, he has he has one book called high price, but he has a new one called drug use for grownups. Michael Pollan has written beautifully about psychedelics. And I think those conversations have been really interesting to me lately, because a lot of people want to talk about the fact that, you know, they like those books that are talking about adult use like to talk about the fact that risk is overblown. And, you know, you can responsibly use drugs and alcohol. And I think that's absolutely correct. There's some really cool stuff going on with psychedelics and end of life and PTSD and stuff like that. And Carl Hart makes some really good arguments in his book about, you know, safe drug use for adults. What I want to make it clear is that's not what we're talking about. Here, we are talking about adult children and adolescents, children, adolescents are going through the second have to have the most, where their brains are what we call the most plastic, plastic, meaning that yes, they're changing and evolving, but they're also acutely sensitive to the environment for good and for bad. So the good stuff we do for them, the good things we give them, the supports we give them that will positively impact their brains, all the sleep and the good nutrition and all that sort of stuff will have a great positive impact on the brain. And the stuff that they put in their bodies or that that affects them adverse childhood experiences, stuff like that will negatively affect them in a way that it might not later on as adults or even as children who are older than two and not haven't yet hit puberty, so much change is going on in the brain, the neurons are getting covered with the myelin and the synapses are just going crazy synaptogenesis we're getting like new synapses all the time, they're the frontal lobe is going online. Now, it's not just that construction is happening, although that's really, really important things are in the adolescent brain, the big struggle is to keep some sort of equilibrium, right? And that we have Dr. Lauren Steinberg writes beautifully about sort of the two different phases of growth in the brain. And the fact that during adolescence, this sort of lower brain, emotion, limbic system stuff is in overdrive and the organized higher level stuff that they're getting in that they're hooking up to in their frontal lobe isn't quite hooked up yet, but that's coming. And so they have drives toward novelty and risk and doing things that are dangerous that their frontal lobe isn't quite ready to be fully in charge of the conductor is not quite on duty yet. I sometimes referred to it as like the bus driver and all the loud kids in the back of the bus, all the loud kids in the back of the bus punching each other. That's the lower brain sort of limbic system and the bus driver who can keep track of all those kids and you know, stoplights. That's the frontal lobe, that bus driver is just not quite fully there yet. And some of the stuff that drugs and alcohol do to the brain either because the receptors for that particular drug, like for example, marijuana, the parts of the brain, that sort of the marijuana chemicals latch on to are in the hippocampus, and the hippocampus is so important for learning and memory and processing emotional memories. And when we mess with that stuff during adolescence, not only does development sort of get off track, there's no back seats on this either, like once they hit their mid 20s, that period of plasticity is pretty much over and it's not like you can go back and get makeups on you know, the stuff that you missed, because you were doing drugs when you were 16. And you affected how your hippocampus works. There's, and there's all kinds of questions about correlation and causation. But you know, the limbic, the hippocampus is smaller in, in kids who are chronic users of marijuana, for example. Whereas in adults, I'm not going to say that there's no bad effects for marijuana and the adult brain, but there are a lot fewer negative effects in the adult brain than if a kid whose brain is still developing, you know, start using drugs like that. And little other, there are lots of other little things, and I try not to bore people with them in the book, I tried to make it as you know, digestible as possible for someone who isn't as big of a dork as me and doesn't want to know all the tiny little details. But yeah, it does a lot more damage in an adolescent brain, some of it permanent, some of it temporary, some of it permanent. And it's important to know that because we're not talking about, oh, we must be teetotallers for our entire life, and there's no drugs or alcohol ever for our entire lives. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about delay, delay, delay, because it's important not just for the drug for the brain, but for the chances that your kid will have a problem later, you know, 90% of dragging out people who have drug and alcohol issues later on in life, say they started using before 18. Again, correlation causation issues. And then we also know that With each passing year, the risk of having substance use disorder during your lifetime goes down dramatically, actually. So if you look at like eighth grade versus 12th grade, you know, you cut your risk way, way down with each passing year. So if we can just delay, you know, that age of first use, then we are just doing a huge amount not only for their brain development, but to lower the risk that they'll have a problem later in life.

Ned Johnson  15:25
I'd love to talk about two things, one, sort of the feedback loop of struggling academic struggle, and you talk about so well, but before we do, I'd love to, you know, if you can just give us an overlay you talk about genetics, and epigenetics, which a lot of people might like, have explained to them. And you alluded to a scores, which I think are worth talking about. All in all, in the sense that the phrase that always pops to my mind when I think about these things, is that as a society, particularly a vaguely puritanical one, we want to ascribe character to all of these issues, when ultimately a lot of it is chemical. And, you know, you just talk so much about shame that we have we heap scorn and shame on other people Boyle, so keep it on ourselves. And for us to understand that there are genetic and epigenetic and vulnerabilities and also the ones that we grow up with, that we're not responsible for, but we can do something about so could you just talk about kind of how much of what causes, you know, puts us this in this position.

Jess Lahey  16:28
So before we even start, let's talk about risk and protection from substance abuse, like an old timey scales of justice scale, right. So the heavier your risk side, the heavier your protection side is going to need to be. So let's starting with genetics, genetics are not destiny, I happen to have lots of relatives with drug and alcohol problems. I grew up in a household where one of my parents is the recovering alcoholic now. And that's great, I'm so happy. My sister doesn't have a problem. My husband grew up in a family where he has drug abusers and alcoholics in his family. But he is everyday normal, moderate user, and he managed to escape that. So genetics, it looks like it's about 50 to 60% of the picture. And this is I hate this analogy. It is incredibly apt. So I'm going to use it but I'm not a fan, I gotta come up with something better. Picture genetics as the bullet that you put in a gun and trauma is a trigger. So lots and lots of people can have that genetics bullet loaded. But it's the trauma that pulls the trigger. And that's where things bleed over into this thing called epigenetics, which just means above the genes, essentially, what it means is that I could have the genetics for something. But the environment that I grew up in, and the stresses that I encounter, especially toxic stress, can really cause my genes to express in different ways. So I can I'm not actually changing my genetics, but I'm changing the way the genes work, essentially. And that epigenetics is a huge field that's just exploding right now. And it's fascinating. It's so interesting. So epigenetics and genetics, that's like 60% of the picture. 50 to 60% of the picture is genetics. And then we get to the trauma, the aces that you talked about and what aces means is adverse childhood experiences. The CDC is in CDC and Kaiser Permanente did this massive study, looking at things that happened to people in their childhood and what kind of health care outcomes they have later. And it turns out that adverse childhood experiences affect so many things from our mental health to whether or not we have a stroke at a young age to whether or not we have a heart attack later on all kinds of stuff, including substance abuse, and if you want a better picture of that, you don't have to read the CDC and Kaiser Permanente stuff, you can go read Nadine Burke Harris has beautiful book. The deepest well as she talks about how aces affect her patients, she was the she is pediatrician. And what she sees as and she adds on to the CBCS list at CDC has in fact, if you want to find out your own ACE score, Google ace quiz, and CDC and you'll get a quiz and you'll get your score one out of 10. And at any given time in my rehab classroom, most of the kids scored somewhere between like a six and a 10. So those kids have lots of adverse childhood experiences, which include things like violence in the home substance abuse in the home loss of a parent, separation, divorce, those kinds of things. Now, I always get nervous mentioning separation and divorce because 50% of marriages end in divorce. So the last thing I want to do is make parents feel like oh, great. Now I've really screwed up. I did the best I could do getting out of that marriage. It was really toxic for everyone. What I'm talking about when I talk about risks is not things you should feel bad for. What What I'm talking about when I talked about risks are things that are information that is powerful, right? Because some of the other risk factors are things like early academic, well, academic failure, and generally, but especially early academic failure, social ostracism, early aggression, if your child is aggressive towards other kids, that is a big warning sign that your kid may be at risk for substance abuse later on in life. And but you can also imagine how these things get all tangled up, right. So like, if a kid is aggressive, then they may also be socially ostracized. And they social ostracism and academic failure also intertwined. So early, early, early intervention for these things is super important. And I don't want parents to feel like I'm not doing enough, oh, my gosh, one more thing I have to do. All I'm saying is like, when I look at my own kids, I say, well, great, I've not only got given them, the genetics, but I've screwed up on a whole bunch of other fronts as well, trying to do the best we can do for our family like moving during a really delicate transition time. And transitions are another big risky time for kids. But I'm not feeling bad about that. What I'm saying is, I now have power, I have some control based on the fact that I know these risk factors exists. So now that I know that, what can I do on the protection side to outweigh that. So I think I want to empower parents, I don't want parents to feel shame, I don't want them to feel bad, I don't want them to feel like there's all these other things they have to do. I want parents to feel empowered with this knowledge. And that's, I mean, that's my goal with this.

Ned Johnson  21:33
One, I think you do a great job of that, in part, pointing out a lot of these things that are stressors, not just independent stressors, but you know, sort of no chicken and egg and, you know, compounding effects, that a lot of things, you know, that parents might not necessarily think about you that aggression, can, you know, in tempers are oftentimes nothing more than a than a nervous excuse me that a sensitive stress response, that is the fight, you know, the please feel free to fight or fighting, because you talked about anxiety around, we so often think that, you know, we have a certain model of what anxious kids look like. And it doesn't occur to a lot of people, that particularly little boys who get into, you know, tangles more more readily, that they just may be much more sensitive to the world and that they live in.

Jess Lahey  22:21
That's why I love it. When I go into our schools and go into I was in a school in Dallas, and I went into the kindergarten and in all of the elementary school classrooms, they had, you know, pictures of brains and explanation of the lower brain and the and the higher brain functions and teachers would talk to the kids in terms of and kids understood like I'm, you know, the reason I want to punch her for saying something mean to me is because I'm acting from my lower brain. And if I want to be a big kid, I have to try to think about it before I do it. And I do that with my upper brain. That kind of language is empowering to kids. And so the earlier we start talking about brain development with kids in obviously developmentally appropriate language, the better we can help kids understand that they can be in control and they can have it also helps with integration of their brain functions. You know, Dan Siegel's work in the book aware in particular, he talks a lot about you know, helping kids get more integrated and one of the things that he also talks about in terms of Dan Siegel talks about in terms of drug and alcohol abuse is that a lot of people who have issues that drug and alcohol abuse aren't just have a lack of integration in their brain functions their lower brain and their upper brain are just not you know, working together and so that's one of the reasons I decided to try some of his guidance meditation stuff in the book with my kid just to see you know, what if that would help at all but but yeah, there's I think that's one of the things we can do for kids and as his Dan Siegel's writing partner Tina brain pain Bryson talks about also you got to name it to tame it and kids need to be able to name their emotions and name what is frustrating them and how they feel about stuff. I don't know if you've seen it lately, but on like tick tock and YouTube there have been these kindergarten teachers that come on and talk about politicians who are behaving badly and how a kindergarten teacher really, sweetie, I know. And there was actually one about Piers Morgan that I saw this morning. Okay, sweetie, I know you're angry. I know it makes you very angry when people say they validate the emotion and help them name it. Just storm off the set and quit your job. Because someone had an argument against something you said that was mean to Megan Markel, you know, it's just it was very funny.

Ned Johnson  24:35
Oh, love it. Yeah. You know, in pulling together the you're the both Dan Siegel's talk about about mindfulness meditation and also Tina Payne Bryson with the name entertainment that both of those get a really great point that you make about that it creates some distance from the feeling some distance from the situation, so that we can We don't respond as intensively right, that we can look at these things from some distance and have conversations and so much of the, the book is so helpful in helping parents all of us to you know how to have conversation with kids about that.

Jess Lahey  25:14
Yeah, that the mindfulness thing I was talking about the Dan Siegel, one, his wheel of awareness sort of guided, you can just Google wheel of awareness, Dan Siegel, and it's right there on his website. But it's interesting because it takes you in various steps, it takes you sort of out of yourself a little and helps you distance yourself from those scary big emotions in not not ignore them, but help you get outside of them to look back at them. And both two of his books actually Mindsight and, and aware, he talks about an adolescent that he was treating, and that that adolescent had a lot of problems had behavior, conduct disorders, because he had a lot of trouble, maybe it was anxiety, but he had a lot of trouble getting outside those big feelings and being able to look at them from outside. And that's, you know, he, the work that he did with this kid was essentially integrating that. But the kid in that book actually would be a prime candidate for substance use disorder. Because when those feelings are so big and so scary, especially for kids that have had violence in their lives and abuse in their lives, you know, you don't, it's not every kid that gets you know, let me help you practice this mindfulness stuff. And instead, it's like, oh, man, I just want to stuff that down, I want to numb out I'm, you know, I want to take an opiate and not feel it anymore. And that works great in the short term. And in fact, there are some people that say, and, you know, this is controversial, but a lot of people have been through super heavy duty, like 10 out of 10, you know, sort of trauma stuff. I knew this one woman who had been just through horrific violence in her childhood, and she said that drugs are what kept her alive and able to cope until she could get to a point where she could get help for herself. And while I certainly don't advocate for that solution, it was really interesting way of putting it that no one else was helping her with her. Any all these big feelings she was having and her trauma and all that other stuff. So she had to deal with it the way she could. And she ended up having to use drugs, and it almost killed her. But on the other hand, she got sober as an adult. And she says, you know, looking back, I don't know that I would have stayed alive if I hadn't been able to numb that feeling out somewhere. So for me, the big idea is, you know, how do we help kids from the beginning so that they don't get to the point where they need to numb out have a beer so that they feel so they get that liquid courage, so they can feel enough. So they can, you know, the drink I miss the most always is the one before going to the party so that I don't feel like an imposter walking in. So I don't feel I don't feel as socially awkward walking into a party. And now I have to just say, Well, what the heck's your problem, that you get nervous walking into a party of people that you know, are your friends, you know, helping kids sort of get at the root cause rather than having to mask it by having a beer and getting some liquid courage should be our goal, I think at all times.

Ned Johnson  28:05
Yeah, that that discussion of one drink, Jess was pretty, you know, wondering,

Jess Lahey  28:11
Jess is fantastic. The problem is, is I can't have a drink. I mean, yeah, you know, and that's the other thing I want parents to understand is that, you know, different 90% of the yell out there, God bless you, you can have the drinks and the drugs that you want, if they're not hurting anyone else. Because if you don't have a problem with it, then you know, this book is still for you and there, but there but I'm not, you know, 90% of kids get lots of kids are going to try drugs and alcohol and never have problem with it. And there's, you know, if you look at the studies of for even the Vietnam study, the the Vietnam, a whole bunch of Vietnam veterans had were exposed to heroin when they were in Vietnam. And so they took a lot of heroin when they were in Vietnam, and they came home and then a whole bunch of them, a remarkable number of percentage of them got better and never went back never relapsed. without doing any treatment at all, it was a situational Sis, you know, thing for them. You know, a lot of kids are going to be able to try a lot of stuff and be fine. What I'm trying to do is help prevent substance abuse, for to read, while substance use for two reasons. One, because it harms the brain. And it makes it so that they don't have to deal with the stuff that they should be dealing with at the time. And to to prevent the 10% of them later on who might have issues with substance use disorder. I mean, I'd like to work through both of those perspectives.

Ned Johnson  29:35
And I love that second point is a really interesting one, because you mentioned a while ago that there's all this plasticity in the brain during adolescence. And if you miss that opportunity, if you garbled the whole thing up, you can't kind of do a 24 what you're supposed to do at age 14 or 15.

Jess Lahey  29:53
But there's also there's also, there's also a thing where when kids start really abusing drugs and alcohol, there's sort of an arrest development thing that happens and it's, you know, a lot of people talk about the fact that when you go into recovery, you're really picking up where you left off when you got when you really started eating heavily because you didn't learn coping skills and mature in the way that you should have. So it's not just from a chemical and wiring perspective, but also from an emotional perspective. It sort of arrests you where you were.

Ned Johnson  30:23
Well, that's it. Yeah, I think that's exactly I think it's very well said, and certainly from your book, The Gift of Failure, of talking about how important the experiences are for kids to struggle with things with support, you know, parents and teachers, but to struggle with hard things, because that's how they grow and develop, you know, both as people and neurologically and if you if you had the student years ago, who was a lovely kid, but were the you know, doing to every test prep their junior year and, and he and he couldn't he wasn't motivated for anything, you know, in certain barely, he certainly was. And I was kind of like, Man, I don't get this. And I kind of said it casually something to one of his friends, which maybe I shouldn't have. And he's like, Oh, him, Mr. waken. Bake? And I thought, and I had no, I had no idea because I'm so I'm so square. I didn't know what I was seeing. And I thought, you know, these are, because you talked about this with THC. Not only that, it impairs our ability to recall things, but we literally don't create memories, because there's, you know, what the hippocampus doesn't think you just wash out for years of that really important work of developing? Yeah, who the who you are and who the brain you're going to have as an adult like,

Jess Lahey  31:35
yeah, that's also what alcoholic blackouts are what makes them so scary. And what made them so scary for me was, it wasn't, you know, if I sat there and thought about it long enough that I could retrieve the memory, the memory was never made. So it's that scary. It's like it seven. I think it's another Stephen King thing where he talks about it's this, the film gets spliced and it's just gone. It's just gone. It's a scary thing.

Ned Johnson  31:58
Yeah, I know that I had no idea. Yeah, so interesting.

Jess Lahey  32:02
What's also interesting about what you said about taking risks and and making mistakes and stuff like that is so much of what I was so risk oriented in my brain that Dan Siegel said this other really interesting thing, when I talked with him on the phone, that I was scared to death about the fact that we moved, right during a really was after eighth grade before going into a new high school. He'd had lifelong friends. Since elementary school, he went to a small K through eight school, and, and I trusted the parents, I knew the parents really well. And we were sort of really parenting as a village. And we moved to this place where he knew no one I knew no parents of kids here. And there's, you know, I essentially created a big risk factor. I mean, it was the best thing for our family. But for him, it was not good. And yet, Dan Siegel, of course, turned it around and said well, but kids are wired, adolescents are wired for novelty and risk and there is so much novelty and risk in moving. So this is about framing, how do you frame just for yourself and for him, that making new friends trying out for something new going into checking out a club, you know, meeting new people, all of that is positive risk. And one of the ways we help kids satisfy that need for Positive Risk is by or for risk in general is by introducing some positive risk and just for the parents listening, you know, when your kid you have to understand that adolescents have baseline lower levels of dopamine than adults and younger children. So when you're a kid, when your teenager is, like, just so bored, it's not that they're lacking imagination, they really are bored because dopamine is motivation. Dopamine is like engaging with life and drive and all that sort of stuff. And so if their baseline levels are lower than you know, at any other time during life, of course, they're going to seek out adrenaline and risk and things that sort of give them a little squirt of dopamine so that they can feel something. So just keeping all of that in the background I think can be helpful for for helping kids find ways to take risks that are productive and helpful for them. They're usually not sometimes not quite as fun as like jumping off of a garage into a pool or two we can help guide them in

Ned Johnson  34:24
Yeah, not as good on Tiktok but I get that Yeah, yeah. You know, I It's such an interesting point that you go to and because we're going back to these these chemicals of you know, dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin are these are had they have are neurotransmitters that meet specific needs. And, you know, to that to that story about the woman who said drugs got me through that if we don't have healthy ways to meet those needs, we're going to use unhealthy ways to meet those needs. Yeah,

Jess Lahey  34:56
absolutely. And, you know, one of her other outlets was self harm. And then I don't recommend that either. But you know, when we don't give people outlets for their pain, then they're either going to try to numb or try to release it in some other way. And, you know, either we're there with interventions and therapy and name attainment and integration and all the other, you know, things that we can try or, you know, self medicating happens. And, you know, there's also all kinds of schools of thought in in addiction science and substance abuse all the different camps, you know, there's the, there's the it's a brain disease camp, which has valid points, and there's the it's the developmental disorder camp, which definitely has valid points, and there's the it's trauma related and Gabor mutase, out there writing about that in a very convincing way. Or, here's a crazy thought it could be a little bit of all these don't, we don't have all have our chips. I know. But I think I don't know, I think people's lack of imagination around multifaceted, you know, people want to say, you know, 12 step recovery is the only way to get better. I don't believe that either worked for me definitely didn't work for other people I know, I think and it you know, this in education, we're all about it's all black and white, you're either you know, you're this or that. And if you're for this, you can't be for that. And that just drives me nuts. And so that's why I think a lot of the, for example, the peers chapter that features a kid named Brian, you know, the, the sort of the theory is that peer group is a huge risk. You know, if your friends of your kids use drugs and alcohol, then that is a huge risk factor for substance abuse. And I Yes, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. And that's what's interesting to me is what does the research say? But what does the research not say about the confounders in there and why this may be a correlation thing and not a causation thing? And so, I like looking in the gray areas. I'm a fan of the gray areas.

Ned Johnson  37:04
Yeah, well, they're, they're, they're certainly more interested. And I think the truth lies, and they're Messier, right? They're harder.

Jess Lahey  37:11
Yeah. And it's also frustrating for me as someone who purports to be helpful, because, you know, some of this day I want to be able to fix things, I want to be able to wave a magic wand, you know, okay, your kid doesn't like math, I can now wave my magic wand, because I read a lot of research, and I can make your kid interested in math. And that's just not how it works, or, you know, wave this magic wand over here, and your kid guaranteed will never have a problem with substances. And I can't do that either. All I can do is say, here's all the risks. Here's all the protections, the more protections you have, the more it can mitigate the risks. And you know, let me just give you all the information so that you can figure out what will work best for your family and your kid. Yeah, I love I love that rather just have the magic wand. And it's missing from my wall. I'm gonna go I have to put up my kids have their Harry Potter ones. I was gonna say, and I should put those on, I have a feather but I should be Harry Potter ones,

Ned Johnson  38:06
like a little Omnipotence to get you through the day? Like, I mean, I do I do. I do. So love that, that Justice scale of, you know, perceiving more risks, you know, how do we how to protect kids more? You know, that to your point about that messiness, that makes me think a little bit about about parenting styles. Right? You know, that high level and high discipline are kind of kind of where we want to be. And it but it's so much easier to kind of go to kind of go all in on, on who was a jay Nelson talks about being kind and or being firm, but also kind and and it's, it's easier to be one or the other? Can you kind of walk parents through a little bit more we know about parenting styles and kind of in a perfect world, the direction we move in?

Jess Lahey  38:49
Yeah, so it turns out that, you know, most of the time when I talk about gift to failure, people automatically think, oh, lay, he's talking about permissive parenting that you just kind of walk away, put your hands up and say go for a kid, you're on your own. And that's absolutely not what I'm saying at all. In fact, I think I've been a much more strict parent, since handing some autonomy over to my kids. So the idea is that if you are the kind of parent who just says, These are the rules, do it because I said, so. You know, controlling a lot of what your kid does being highly directive, that sort of parenting actually will foster dishonesty in the relationship. We know that kids who are more highly controlled, lied to their parents more. But if you're the kind of parent that has really that has high expectations, but is supportive of the kids when they fall short of those expectations and helps them become better. I'm all about progress over and product I'm all about, you know, getting kids to believe me when I say what I really care about is the learning because you know what are you going to do to make it better next time. That kind of parenting is the kind of parenting that really hits the sweet spot of you know, supportive and I love you I love you Do I love you, you're so wonderful, but not that like, and then the world will come, you know, the world will rain down around you if you know you break one rule that's sort of I think that's a really hard spot to, to hang on to mainly because we tend to parent from emergencies, we tend to parent from like, what's going wrong today and what I need to get done today and what needs to be perfect today. And I tend to, you know, there have been times when I've said to my parents, they should just respect us more like, I just, this is infuriating, this is disrespectful, and they should just respect us more. And I think my husband was raised by two parents who he was an only child, and he was raised by two parents who really, like, felt that respect was something to be earned and talked with their kid, like he was a smart, intelligent, you know, human being to be respected. And he was like, Yeah, but in this situation, we have to look at how we're handling this, that and the other thing, whereas I tend to think I was used to think more like, no, they just have to obey, because we're the parents. And we're saying this, and that's gonna get you into trouble, I think. And, like I said, for lots of things that are not only because it can undermine your relationship. But also, as we've talked about before, kids are adolescents in particular individuating. And they need more autonomy with each passing year more control over details of their life with each passing year. And if we don't give it to them, they're going to find it, they're gonna grab it, and sometimes they'll grab it by deceit and during this pandemic. That's been a disaster, right? Because we as parents, I mean, if we feel helpless as parents, as adults, think how helpless they feel. And then the problem is, is that we feel helpless. So we're taking more control in the only place we have control, which is in our homes with our families. Now all of a sudden, kids have even less autonomy and control than they had before. And taking away autonomy and control creates learned helplessness and creates low levels of self efficacy. And we end up in a horrible cycle where we're creating helpless kids, can I repeat a lie to if I

Ned Johnson  42:12
can repeat that back for one for women, because I think it's a such an important point that we know how stressful is a low sense of control. And that stress for so many kids is one of the reasons that they take up substances or use them more frequently, to sort of self soothe or self medicate. But it's hard for us as parents, to give up, it's a bit a little bit of a zero sum game, right for my kid to have more autonomy, more control, I have to let go. And that, of course, is a little bit stressful for me, right. And so I think about Eli Lilly boots and space, and you know, stuff about parents meditating, you know, if parents are more calm their kids can be they can support that autonomy and take stress out of the kind of family dynamic, regardless of what their kids do.

Jess Lahey  42:56
Think about self efficacy. I mean, if a kid and I had kids like this in my rehab classroom all the time where no matter what decisions they made at home, it wasn't going to change anything, they were still going to get beat, at the end of the day, they were still going to have to take care of their little sister because their parents were drunk. So since they know that no action they take will change anything, you know, they could report their parents to Child Protective Services, and nothing's going to happen or mom had a restraining order against dad, and that didn't do anything, I still, she still got hit. So those kids say, well, it doesn't matter what I do, so why bother? And instead, I'll just self soothe, I'll self medicate on them out. But giving kids a sense of efficacy is one of the most important things we do to towards, you know, giving them that empowerment to feel like, okay, well, this makes me feel uncomfortable, but I can change it. And that's the other problem. And why we tend to see drugs, drug and alcohol use, you know, in people who don't have a lot of power in their world because they are disenfranchised because they're marginalized, because they're, you know, seen as less than you would assume that it would be really difficult to feel that sense of empowerment, if everyone around you is telling you, you have no power and you have no agency. So giving kids as much as possible, I think is one of the more important things we can do for kids for against you know, I say for around Gift of Failure, I say one of the most important things we do is give kids the ability to self advocate and give them feelings of not just self esteem, but self efficacy. And I you know, that's not just a substance abuse prevention thing that's a rah, rah kids are amazing. And they need to grow into being productive adults. And if you know, if we're looking at, you know, what, ideally, we want to raise kids, you can go out there and be innovative and change the world and think outside the box and think of things that haven't been invented yet and go and invent them. Those are kids who feel self efficacy because why would you go out and try to invent something if you didn't think that you would have any impact on the world no matter what you did? Hmm. Good point, the which is so important, which is why can we back to education, which is why relevance in the classroom is so important because if I'm a teacher, sure, I can have a great relationship with a kid. And I can make, I can get them engaged sometimes if I tap into some emotional resources, because we know that learning is emotional. But think about how much more power I have as a teacher to help them learn if what I'm teaching, let's say what I'm teaching is geometry. And I help them understand how an understanding of geometry can help them go out into the world and build bridges that won't fall down during an earthquake. I mean, that's, that's taking what we're learning the abstract stuff that we're learning in the classroom and giving it an application and not just an application to other people out there. But an application to that kid, and to that kid's sense of power and possibility and hope within the world. That's why it's so hard to teach kids the quadratic formula, because it's hard to give them an example of when, in the course of everyday life, they will use that thing, you don't tend to run up against that. But you can, but certainly with fractions, there are ways with kids to you know, we've talked about this before, you know, whether it's making pancakes in the morning, or helping them understand seam allowances. There are very practical ways to do that. Which is why what some of what you do is so hard, because so much of the stuff that for examples on the LSAT doesn't get in there because there, it's like, well, when am I going to ever use this? Just for testing? Am I learning this for anything practical. So the more we can hook into that relevance and practicality and ability, personally, to use that information, not just to make my life better, but to make the world better. That's when we have kids who really feel a sense of self efficacy and competence in the world. And that's protective.

Ned Johnson  46:52
collegeboard my Podesta otherwise, I'm sure but adding to that you make an excellent point that I can't I can't get the words, right. But something to the fact that the more relevant kids feel in school, the more predicts basically every out every outcome for them as adults, that you know, how connected kids feel in school is this, you know, can you can predict, you know, how they're going to do with kind of everything much like with the ACE scores?

Jess Lahey  47:17
Yeah, I mean that it goes back to that saying of kindergarten teacher saying that the most important skills that kids learn are executive function skills and social emotional learning skills, because that has to do with our connection to other human beings. But yes, let's relevance that secret sauce of teaching is all about connecting the kid to the material and the material to the world in some way, or at least something the kid is interested in. So you know, which brings us back around to you know, we've talked a lot about this in terms of Gift of Failure, and pandemic, parenting, and what makes it so hard. One of the opportunities has been, well, if your kid is home more, and you know what your kid cares about, and we have this thing called, you know, YouTube, you can go and find, you know, videos that make, you know, the study of geometry or chemistry, whatever, relevant, whether it's in terms of a big, you know, exploding pile of foam in someone's backyard, or whether it's in terms of, Oh, that's interesting, you know, on Mythbusters, they showed that, you know, could I can't remember who it was, it was like in Sparta, they had the big, I'm gonna get this wrong, but they were trying to show that there was some myth about the idea that the Greeks or the someone used mirrors to blind the sailors on ships. And they had these big reflecting, I can't believe I'm now citing something I don't know the words to I've gotten pretty good at not doing that. But they had to use geometry and they had us you know, I talked about Michael Stevens all the time, he has these great videos. He has a channel called Vsauce and another series called mindfield on YouTube, where he'll do something like, you know, what would happen? What would it be like if the moon was a disco ball? And it has to end? So you know, it's a really cool question, but it requires a lot of application of stuff that you wouldn't normally have an application for, or what would happen if everyone on the earth jumped at the same time. And the reason I love those questions is suddenly you're talking about plate tectonics and population density and gravity and all these other things. But he is such a gifted educator. Again, his name is Michael Stevens or Vsauce because he makes this stuff that can feel awfully abstract he makes it relevant for kids. And it's that's why my kid many times over has said oh my gosh, I've learned more from Michael Stevens than I ever did you know from a whole year of science class because that's why I miss busters I think was so so popular that and kids learned so much from it that in the explosions

Ned Johnson  49:45
This one's new to me I can look for I look, I I know how I'm going to spend the rest of my afternoon so this must be funny.

Jess Lahey  49:50
Sauce is great. There's actually Vsauce one Vsauce two and Vsauce three Vsauce the main channel is Michael Stevens and then his mind fields show is about psychology. So he He does mints and like so like, in his first season he did like isolation in and he was in an isolation room for three days. He's done all sorts of he looks at sort of the classic psychology experiments and looks at things like empathy. And he's it's really interesting. It's he's just a, he's really cool. He did a tour with Adam Savage called brains. No, not Brain Scoop. Brain something anyway, brain candy, brain candy, and it was a great mix of Adam Savage from Mythbusters. And Michael Stevens from Vsauce, you know, just doing science experiments on the stage, it was really cool. Hopefully, that'll come back someday.

Ned Johnson  50:42
Yes, you have them. If you have a wonderful line, I'm gonna I'm gonna ramp things up. So don't keep it all day, because I know you have really,

Jess Lahey  50:50
really gone

Ned Johnson  50:52
off. It's so much fun. Yeah, if I may, I'm just gonna, this is page 194. In your wonderful books, you write the secret sauce of parenting and educating for substance abuse prevention is to help our kids maintain positive healthy relationships, harness the positive social pressure in their peer groups, and equip all kids with the skills they need to stay safe and healthy no matter who they hang out with. And here are the practical ways to do just that. It's so it's so I mean, that's kind of like it in a book, right? And then then the and the how to have it, which I love so much, I have

Jess Lahey  51:27
to credit, just just from the perspective of my talking a lot about my students with about things that I've done wrong. So I had to learn, my editor taught me how to write like that, like, it's not my natural thing to be that organized. It was my dad taught me how to write like that. So I owe her so much. Yeah, that was something that evolved through learning how to write a book, it wasn't like something I could just do naturally. So when I talk to my students about writing, and they're like, Well, I know how to write an essay, I'm done now, right? And I say, Well, I'm not really that's not how writing goes.

Ned Johnson  52:03
Hashtag I'm writing. If I just will take a couple minutes and talk about that, that the the importance of healthy relationships, and of course, starting with parents, you know, who are the who are going to be the people reading this book, I would love for you just to run through a few of the ideas that you have about how we as parents can really foster that connection, maybe talk about the Scovilles sauce, you know, because that's hilarious. But you tell you tell the story in the book about one of your students. And when he graduated this boy, Jeremy. And, you know, he sort of had this connection with you and his classmates. And then his parents talked, can you tell if you tell that story and about his dad, because that was that was something?

Jess Lahey  52:47
Yeah, it was, you know, graduation from rehab is scary, because your kids been in a safe place. And now they've got to go back. And if you think about adolescent substance abuse, in particular, adults, it can be much easier for adults to get sober and stay sober than for kids relapse is very much a part of kids story, we would get the same kids coming back over and over and over again, simply because if you think about it, they don't have a lot of control in their lives. And we, you know, treat them and then send them back into the same peer groups and the same school with the same problems and the same teachers and they're back into their homes where they were either, you know, where there was abuse, or they were taking care of a sibling or whatever that thing was. So you know, parents at graduations, you know, it's, it's with great hope that we welcome our child back into our lives. And, you know, the parents love to talk about, you know, they see such great promise, and they always see such great promise in their children. Because when our kids are little, we dream about all of the things that our kids may become. And it can make us so angry at them at the world when they get derailed when they when drugs and alcohol come into the picture. And so to take that kid away, but when it comes down to it, what our kids really need to know is that we love them. That is for this kid in particular that they picked him I mean, he had been adopted and adoption is a topic in subbed in the substance abuse world, those feelings of you know, whether it's those feelings of abandonment or whatever can can really do mess you up a little bit. And Kandi Finnegan talks about that beautifully, quite a bit. She's an expert in substance abuse. And, you know, they really got at what was most important about him is the fact that he was theirs, and that they loved him and they chose him and that they're going to be there for him. You know, they've gotten angry at him over the years because of some of the things he's done, but that has never changed the way that they feel about him. And, you know, I think having that place to come back to that's the reason why, you know, family dinner yours are so important. And it's not even about family dinner, family dinner is emblematic of a thing, which is really about a regular return to connection with our family. As a family, with our kids looking in each other's eyes, it's harder to hide things when we have to look in each other's eyes and talk to each other. I will say, however, there's some conversations like substance abuse conversations that work really well in places like when you're next to each other, and not looking at each other, like in the car, or on a ski lift, as we have a ski lift was where many of our kids sex conversations happened, my husband had a lot of those conversations on ski lift,

Ned Johnson  55:37
because it's less intense,

Jess Lahey  55:38
because there's less, you don't have to look each other in the eye. Yeah, you can sort of stare off into the middle distance. And for a moment, you're not quite there. But the thing that you were talking about in terms of the family dinner thing is, you know, as your kids get older, and they're with adolescents, and they don't really want to hang with you as much, it's just devastating for me, but my kids don't want to hang out with me. So there's a certain amount of event inventiveness that you have to go to, to sort of get your kids to want to hang. And for me, there's a story in the book about the fact that one of our favorite shows as a family is called hot ones. And it's on a YouTube channel called First we feast. And Shawn Evans is a talented, talented interviewer. And one of the reasons he's so good, not just because he's a great writer, he's a great researcher. One of the reasons he's so good is that the person he's interviewing he and the person, he's interviewing each 10 wings in ascending level of spiciness, the Scoville scale you talked about is a measure of spiciness. And we love that show. We watch it all the time. And so I decided, I went to my husband, I said, I have an idea. I'm going to recreate that. And we're going to have a dinner, a totally unhealthy dinner that's either wings or vegan wings, depending on the person in our family. And I'll recreate will come up with 10 questions, one for each kid. Some of the questions were the same, some were different depending on the kid. And with each wing, the kids have to answer a question. And it wasn't just, it was so much fun, not just because it worked. And the kids talk to us, but because they totally got how hard I was working to come to them from a place of their level. It was sort of fun at its essence. And with each question. We also talked about each other's answers like, Oh, that's interesting. Like one of the questions was, how much? Which of your parents? Do you think you resemble more in terms of personality traits? And, you know, if if Ben answered it one way, and Finn was like, oh, man, I didn't think you'd say that. I thought it would be this other thing. We just found out a ton about each other. Not only from the kids answers, but from our responses to those answers. And it was, it was fun. We were laughing We ended up drinking ice cream at the end because the by the time you get by the time you get up to the last sauce, it's called the last dab and it's a like a million Scoville units. It's inedible. But we all did it. And it was super fun. It was really, really fun.

Ned Johnson  58:02
I read this and I was so inspired except whatever gene or whatever it is that allows people to process hot things. I apparently have zero. And my wife somewhat jokingly is somewhat, you know, putting me in my place will will observe to anyone Yeah, Ned? Yeah, he starts to sweat with ketchup. It's like, you know what, you just stop? Well, I

Jess Lahey  58:24
don't know, the important thing about those questions also is like I, we didn't want to embarrass our kids. Like, I wasn't going to ask, you know, stuff that I shouldn't have been poking around. And these are questions about that just allowed me to get our kids to know our kids better. But one thing that might work for you that worked for us, New Year's Eve, we were all pretty bummed about the fact that we couldn't be with friends and stuff like that we have a tradition we do with a couple of friends. And so I went to a craft store that was having a sale and bought a bunch of canvases and paint and paint brushes, just you know, cheap stuff. And I told everyone to meet at the dining room table at six o'clock with two photographs that they had picked that they liked from their phone. And then we painted and they are horrifyingly bad at Finn turns out quite talented. Bad shows the hardest thing ever. He chose a picture of him with all of his friends. And that's really hard to paint. I chose our house and my husband a barn and my husband chose our house and they're horrible, but they're now hanging over our fireplace because they it's ugly, but they represent a really cool evening where we all paint we were there for hours just painting. It was so much fun.

Ned Johnson  59:32
It's so funny. I love that. You know the secret the secret sauce and that connection. Well, you to end with you talking about those family dinners about having folks share the high, the low and the fun. And I think your book does such a wonderful job of getting all three of those. And it just seems to me that that for for all the stories of people where things went well and when and things didn't go well. That connection, you know, really how they how they got through difficult situations was seemed to be almost, you know, in direct correlation to how connected they felt. Yeah, around them

Jess Lahey  1:00:13
in that piers chapter in particular when I was we were talking a lot with my son Ben about his relationship with Bryan. And by the way, huge shout out to both Brian and Giorgio, those are their real names, they very specifically wanted their names used. Brian is now working, you know, wants to work with kids, you know, and wants to make his own rehab. Giorgio is getting master's degree now. But these are kids who stood stood to lose like everything GA nearly die. But Ben, you know, Ben's relationship with with Brian was so scary for me, because I knew Ben, Brian got kicked out of school more than once for his drug use. And I know that, you know, the research says that peer cohort is a huge predictor. But Ben's having these conversations was so important. Because if I had just said you can't be friends with Brian anymore, it's too dangerous, that would have gone bad so quickly. But instead, we talked about it. And what came out of that was Ben's understanding that Ben and a couple of his friends were the stability that Brian needed. And they believed in Brian and they very they weren't, you know, they really, it was important to them that he knew that they were going to be there for him, because they might just be the thing that makes him think twice before relapsing. And in the end, that ended up being 100%. True. And I think Brian talks about that so eloquently, especially when he talks about the very last run, they went on on the day, that he his last day at school, he got kicked out permanently at one point, and they had one last day together. And that really for Brian was the turning point because he realized, you know, I'm losing all of this. And if I had just read the research from a place of black and white, my temptation would have been, you can't be friends with this kid, I'm going to make sure that you're not friends with this kid, I'm going to make sure you're not in the same dorm with this kid. You know, that kind of thing? Yeah, it's not about communication. And that's not about trust. That's about, you know, that sort of what we were talking about before the parenting style is just about, you're going to do it this way. Because I said so because I know best because I'm the adult. Because in that sense, I didn't know best. And I learned about a lot about my son and his ability to phrase compassion and his empathy and his loyalty as a friend. Those are really important parts of him that I didn't have a full vision of before. We talked a lot about that. We talked about it regularly. I checked in with him, probably more than he was comfortable with. But he also understood he understood why I explained that I'm checking in with him on that regularly because there is a lot of risk to him by being around someone who's involved in drugs and alcohol as much as Brian was.

Ned Johnson  1:02:53
I just love that, that that sense of of the respect that you conveyed to him and the trust? Because it can I can well imagine it will be so easy to not do those. And desert into drag Ben away from from Brian out of fear that that Ben will get dragged down yeah, when in fact, it sounds like you'd have been put on his cape and saved his friend.

Jess Lahey  1:03:17
I think it helped that Ben was anchored on the other side by a group of friends. And he was you know, involved in a sport that was is sports is a mixed bag. I mean, the more it turns out that the more contact sport, sporty, it is more contacts there is, the higher the rates of substance abuse, Ben was a cross country runner levels are really low there. And he was very active in his team and the teammates were the people I'm talking about. So he did have that anchor if he hadn't had that anchor. And he was really adrift if he was like, if he didn't have a lot of friends. And Brian was his only friend, that would have been a very different level of worry for me, which is why again, we can't think about these things in black and white. And the more I know about them, the more I can gauge how concerned I'm supposed to be about this, given this particular situation.

Ned Johnson  1:04:06
I did a podcast with a guy who was a physical trainer and a bit and a hardcore runner. And it was explaining to me that we talked about running releasing endorphins, you submit also releases endocannabinoids. Same. But apparently, apparently only if you run a certain number of miles. So you don't get that in the 100 yard dash. You get that in cross country. So maybe they're onto something.

Jess Lahey  1:04:30
That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, there's a sports can have a positive risk effect and a negative risk effect. And I go into that in the book as well.

Ned Johnson  1:04:37
Yeah. Well, with two quick things. If you were to go back and think about yourself as a person, young person and your parents, if you were to give one piece of advice to your mom and dad, and one piece of advice to your I don't know, teenager, 20 year old self, but what might it be?

Jess Lahey  1:04:53
For me? Really, you know, my role in the family was as the Peacekeeper and the appeaser and the Perfect one that could fix everything. And I think it's that's always been difficult for me to remember that I can't fix everyone. And when my parent went into recovery, I had to realize that I couldn't be in charge of that person's recovery that whether or not my parents stayed sober was not under my control. And no matter what I did, I couldn't make that happen. And that was, you know, that's a little serenity prayer kind of thing. Yeah, you know, know, what you what you control and what you can't kind of thing. But that was really important to me. And I think I wish I had learned that earlier that, you know, I can control I can't control other people's actions, but I can control my reaction to those actions. And that's been one of the most important things I've learned. And yeah, that was, that's definitely the advice I would give.

Ned Johnson  1:05:48
Well, I am one, I'm grateful for your time and to so grateful for your, your honesty, your openness, your vulnerability, the incredible research that you put into this book. It is. It's rare. I mean, I wish I'd had this earlier. But I haven't now, as does the rest of the world,

Jess Lahey  1:06:04
with my writing books that I need and can't find is I have to get to the point where I need the book, and then I have to go write it. I mean, that was the story with Gift of Failure to start with this book. So yeah, I wish I'd had this a lot earlier. And actually, I have to say, it's been tough for my younger kid, because he's Finn says, you know, this is so unfair, like when you had when Ben was my age, you believed that whole moderation myth, and you believed in the whole, like, if we just raised kids, like Europeans and let them have sips, they'll learn moderation. And now that you know that, that's all a big myth. And it's not true. It's like now there's a total abstinence until 21 approach and that's not fair. A bad guy. So, you know, but on the other hand, I'm modeling for him what I most want to see in him which is hmm, I wasn't doing that right. And I've learned something and I'm going to change and try to be better and do better next time and sorry, he happens to be the the

Ned Johnson  1:06:56
hopefully I just picture whispering to him by love your brain work and your brother's brain. That's bad parenting people don't.

Jess Lahey  1:07:11
But, you know, modeling what I want to see from him and myself, and I just got to stick with that and hope I'm doing the right thing.

Ned Johnson  1:07:17
Well, you really do walk the walk. So walk the talk boxes, wherever you get

Jess Lahey  1:07:23
to talk and walk the walk. I hope. So. Yeah.

Ned Johnson  1:07:27
It's good stuff. Jessica Lee. The book is the addiction inoculation. out what April 6. I don't know if this podcast is dropping.

Jess Lahey  1:07:37
Now, just for your listeners is another killer book coming out that day. By Julia Wescott Hames, called Your turn, how to raise and how to be an adult. And it's going to be for those of you out there who have kids who are going to be leaving the nest soon, this could be a fantastic graduation gift for them. So April 6, is a big deal. Because Julie and I both have books coming out that day. So little props for

Ned Johnson  1:08:00
both Amazon you can we can we can save the economy as well as save the environment as well by having them delivered in the same box from Amazon, or your local bookstore.

Jess Lahey  1:08:08
Actually, can I say that if you are, if you go to my website, Jessica lahey.com, there is a link directly to my local bookstore where I will be traveling to sign personally do those like personalized signatures on the title page, and they ship for free. So if you go to my website, Jessica lahey.com, click on the link that goes to Phoenix books in Burlington, Vermont. And I can sign it for you there. I can put whatever you want in there. With some limitations, I assume. They'll ship it for free and you can have a signed copy shipped for free. Perfect,

Ned Johnson  1:08:43
we're on it on it. Thanks so much.

Jess Lahey  1:08:46
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Ned Johnson  1:08:51
Hey, folks, Ned here. Over the past 25 years I've talked with 1000s of parents of high school students, parents who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. But these parents need to work with a team they trust well just pile on more pressure to achieve better grades and scores. This is why I started prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation, tutoring in college admissions planning. This podcast and my books reflect our company's philosophy and approach to helping students if you have a high school student and we'd like to talk about putting in place a plan, please get in touch with us. Visit our website at prep matters.com or call 301951035.  that's 301-951-0350 Thanks