The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
Hunt, Gather, Parent with Michaeleen Doucleff
In this episode, I chat with NPR reporter Michaeleen Doucleff about her New York Times bestseller, Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans.
We discuss what Michaeleen learned by taking her three-year-old daughter to learn parenting strategies from three indigenous communities: the Maya in Yucatán, the Inuit above the Arctic Circle, and the Hadzabe in Tanzania. She talks about finding parenting relationships based on cooperation rather than control, trust instead of fear, and personalized guidance rather than standardized expectations.
Episode Highlights:
[00:37] Introduction of Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff and her book, "Hunter Gatherer Parent."
[01:53] Michaeleen's journey as a global health correspondent for NPR.
[06:34] Exploration of parenting practices in various cultures.
[10:11] Insights into the Maya community's approach to raising helpful children.
[19:29] Michaeleen's personal experiences implementing these parenting techniques with her daughter.
[30:39] Discussion on motivation and collaboration in parenting.
[44:13] The impact of emotional regulation strategies from different cultures.
[57:18] Addressing criticisms and the universality of these parenting methods.
Links & Resources:
•Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff
•The Self-Driven Child by Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson
•What Do You Say? by Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson
If this episode has struck a chord with you, remember to rate, follow, and share the Self-Driven Child Podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and create more content that makes a difference. Here's to growing, learning, and thriving as adults in this wild world. Until next time!
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
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
kids wanting to help is the norm around the world. Like, again, this is something really weird that happens in Western culture where kids lose the desire and motivation to help. So if you look at little toddlers, you know, all around the world, even here in San Francisco where I am, they are they want to be helpful. Everyone knows this right? And something happens over the next five or six years that they lose that motivation in Western culture. So it's something actually that we're doing to that's a roading that motivation. So I just want to point that out. It's not just the mind and the mind are actually more normal than we then we are.
Ned Johnson: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. My guest today is Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff, the author of hunter gatherer parent, what ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful little humans. Dr. Doucleff is a global health correspondent for NPR science desk and the author of The New York Times bestseller hunter gatherer parent. The book describes a way of raising kind and competent children, which moms and dads all over the world have turned to for millennium. Dr. Doucleff has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a bachelor's degree in Biology from Caltech. For the past decade, Dr. Doucleff has reported on disease outbreaks and children's health for NPR. Before then, she was the editor at the journal sound where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. She lives in San Francisco with her Husband, Daughter and German Shepherd Savannah. Welcome, thank you for joining us.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Oh, thank you so much for having me is quite a pleasure. So
Ned Johnson:good. So before we jump into talking about this just just terrific book, I'd love for you to share a little bit. Just talk a little bit more about your, your work as a as a science correspondent and some of the things that work you've done before this book, because the book is such a beautiful account of these of these communities where you spent so much time and so much care. But I'd love to hear a little bit about the science behind things because,
Michaeleen Doucleff:yeah, I mean, so I've been at NPR now almost 10 years. And every most of the time I spend at my desk reporting on very sciency very sciency things very, very hardcore chemistry, which I love. But every now and then NPR would like send me out somewhere, oftentimes for disease outbreak or to like, you know, investigate some exotic disease that was happening somewhere in the world. I went to West Africa, Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, they sent me up to the Arctic to investigate viruses thawing in the permafrost up to a little Inuit village called Casa boo, which I think is really probably one of the beginning points of this book. While I was up there, it's the first time I really saw or I really opened my eyes to parenting and in, in other cultures and non western cultures. It kind of started to get rid of some of the bias like like saying, like, oh, maybe there's something better out there. I think that was the first time it really kind of hit me. They also sent me in 2017 to August 2016, to Malaysia, where a researcher with ego held lions, actually we were standing in a Batcave told me in the producer that there was going to be there could be a massive Coronavirus pandemic, which would like, you know, have this devastating economic impact. Yeah, yeah. And actually, when he said like, how much the economic impact could be both me and the producer like roll their eyes, we were just like, right, sure. But he was dead.
Ned Johnson:Oh, my gosh, Have You Ever Have you have you send an email that person saying I am so sorry that you were so right.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yes, we have. We have talked since then. So I think what happened though, after after going up to the Arctic is, is like I said, when I went on these trips again, I really started to pay attention to the parents and the children. And slowly over time, it took it took a couple years, I really started to realize that there was kind of this goldmine of knowledge out there that I think really hadn't been discussed much in the parenting literature. And I finally started to read more about it. And, you know, of course, I've read some of David Lindsay's work, you know, the anthropologist and and after reading his book, I started the story that I really wanted to do and where this began was was attention and there had been some studies on my kids having much better attention in certain situations than European and American kids. And I wanted to know why at the time Rosie was two, and I really didn't think like, Oh, I'm gonna figure out a better way to parent, I'm gonna figure out a better way for me to parent I was just more interested in the science of it and like, yeah, we're doing or what was the life circumstances that we're leading to this better development of attention. And so NPR sent me down to this little tiny, my village with on the in the Yucatan. And we spent four or five days there, and me and a producer, you know, really long hours in in the family's homes, interviewing them, you know, it takes time, especially with language barriers, and it takes time to develop relationships with people, and we spent hours and hours. And I started to really realize, Wow, there is this other way to parent that, that not only seemed a lot easier, like the parents seemed, both the moms and the dads, you know, seem much more relaxed. Not so frazzled, not stressed, but also very effective. The kids were, you know, are kind and calm and respectful. I mean, not perfect by any stretch, but there definitely seem to be just so much less resistance from the parents, and then back, you know, from the children, and, and I left there really wondering what was what's going on. But it took again, more time, in another trip for me to really be convinced like, okay, there's something that needs that could be like a book, or that could be this. There's something bigger out there? No,
Ned Johnson:no, you make the point that not only a different model for the the different model for parenting, and what we knew about parenting and kind of the western model. But you then in the, in the book, talk about how, in many ways, it's not just parenting, and parenting that has a Western bias, it's really all of psychology, kind of has this western bias. He just talked for a minute about how weird to use that wonderful term, how weird we in the States, and folks like us are compared to the rest of the world.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yeah, this is such an important part of it. If you look at like Western psychology, and this is from about 10 years ago, but I think that it hasn't improved a lot. You look at studies and about 96% of the studies are performed on a, on a very specific group of people. So mostly European American, but also middle middle class, middle upper class, and oftentimes very college kids, right. So European Americans make up about 12% of the population. So we're seeing a very small slice of, of humanity within psychological studies, which is fine, you know, if you're, if you're studying Western people, the problem is, is that it's often written as, as representative of humans, right? This is, you know, European, American college kids, our, our, our, our, you know, representing all of the world, all the people. And the biggest problem with it is, is that if you look, actually, European American people behave really strangely, in a lot of psychological experiments. And so it's not only that we have the psychology research has a bias in the sense that we are often only looking at a very small slice of humanity, that slice and view, humanity is very strange. And the indigenous populations tend to be kind of cluster closer together and tend to behave a little bit more similar. Similarly, David Lee, kind of, at the same time, was doing similar research when it comes to parenting. And he found like 50 things that we do as parents that are really strange, and you don't find anywhere else in the world and you and you don't find really probably through through most of human history.
Ned Johnson:So let's pivot then. So introduce us a little bit, then to the three communities that you look at. We you know, we won't go into every detail of it, because, of course, that's what the book is about. But, you know, give us an overview of tell us about, you know, the Mayans and the Inuit tonight.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yeah. So, um, I, there's three main communities in the book. And the idea is to look at them kind of specifically, and then see where the generalities are, right? We're, you know, through the research, see the literature like, can you see how these populations do things that you can find really in many, many places, including pockets of the US right now? And many, many places in the US not that long ago. So I chose the three groups because they really shine in aspects of parenting that Western culture has struggled with right now. So the Maya communities and this has been really well documented by work of Susan Gaskins. Lucia alkali and Barbara Rogoff are the main kind of researchers. The Maya are incredibly good at raising money. helpful kids, so kids that voluntarily want to do the dishes voluntarily want to help with their, their siblings, you know, you know, no chore chart, no allowance. No, no, no people
Ned Johnson:are already stopping saying this is science fiction. I'm done with these folks. But
Michaeleen Doucleff:I have seen it. And actually, that was one of the key things that I saw when we went down down there. The kids, one of the families, Maria Torres, she has five kids, three, three young daughters, and they were on spring break. And one morning, I was in her kitchen, interviewing her and her 12 year old woke up around 10, they had been watching a shark movie the night before, woke up, walked across the kitchen, looked at me, you know, some strange white woman in our pitches, and started washing the dishes from breakfast, like completely voluntarily, like, I of course was like, what, like, this child. And Maria was just like, you know, she's 12. And she should know by now what to do. And you know, it's interesting, she wasn't surprised. But she also said, which I often think about was, it's not every day. So it's this idea of like, you know, it's, it's not every day, but she's starting to really know what to do and do it. So incredibly good at intrinsically motivating children. It's really actually amazing how good the psychology of the how good what the Maya families do aligns with psychological research with a lot about what you you've talked about your book. And then the Inuit, and this has been documented really well by the late anthropologist Jean Griggs are have this incredibly sophisticated approach and strategy to teaching children how to control their emotions. So in particular, anger, anger control. And finally, the HUDs Ave and Tanzania, are really world experts. Everything confident kids, so all that like childhood anxiety, and depression is just really unheard of in in this community, kids are super, super self sufficient, self reliant, and incredibly confident. So the book examines really what what the parents are doing there. And there's been several books that have document the parents know exactly what they're doing. And it's very obvious to them what other groups are not doing. So? I get into that a little bit in the book. Yeah,
Ned Johnson:well, so Well, let's jump into self determination theory for in just a second. But one of the things you know, from that you raise two points that I think are really are really important. And I'll take a half step back and say that you make a point somewhere in the book that that in the West, we think that either we're in control, or the child has control, and if we give up control, you know, if they take more we have, we have less, and it really this kind of this oppositional approach and what you describe there in, in these communities is something quite quite different from that. And I think from the, from the, as I understand it, the psychological literature that we'll talk about, from a motivational perspective, kids need to feel that they have some control, not that they have to be in control of everything, because they're, you know, little people after all. And also then from a stress or, from a stress or anxiety or depression perspective, feeling like you have no control is just so, so debilitating. So I just, I love the way you frame, frame that up. Walk us through that if you can a little bit that this idea of kit of what helps kids be intrinsically motivated, because I'm sure again, parents are still you know, rolling their eyes like read the kid gets, wants to do wants to do this, just give me you know, what, you didn't go to a different country went to different planets, right.
Michaeleen Doucleff:But I have to say, you know, after coming back from the my village and meeting like a lot of David Lance's life research is, and he just wrote a book like two years ago that I cite, where he shows that actually, kids wanting to help is the norm around the world. Like, again, this is something really weird that happens in Western culture where kids lose the desire and motivation to help. So if you look at little toddlers, you know, all around the world, even here in San Francisco, where I am, they are, they want to be helpful. Everyone knows this, right? And something happens over the next five or six years that they lose that motivation in Western culture. So it's something actually that we're doing to that's eroding that motivation, right. So I just want to point that out. It's not just the mind and the mind are actually more normal than when we are in that sense. I mean,
Ned Johnson:so you make the point that kids are wired to want to help. But we typically extinguished that because the ways that they want to help they're they're not competent to be truly helpful yet, but they want to help. And so in the minute you talk about subtasks, you break it down, Break it down, Break it down, so the kids are always doing something that's actually legitimately helpful even if in the smallest of possible ways. And that was such a, there's a success coach, I'm a fan of who, who makes the point that he says anything worth doing well, is worth doing poorly first. But we somehow expect our children to be like, parthenogenetic, right, they're just gonna, all of a sudden, you know, do things perfectly, it's like, usually things are messy first.
Michaeleen Doucleff:I mean, it's like a bit like, like, we we expected to take time to learn to read and to learn to write, you know, we, we expect this to take time and you know, that we have to teach them slowly step by step. And we don't get angry, if you know, a two year old doesn't know two plus two is four parents around the world see, had the same attitude when it comes to helping around the house and contributing in a home, that this is a very slow process. And so you know, anytime a kid, a lot of kids in the US want to read, you know, they take a book out and they like, want to read, the parent jumps at it, right? It's like, let me read this to you. I'm excited to read this to you. And again, parents around the world, the my parents and your parents take the same approach to helping a child what jumps in, you know, you're at the, at the stove cooking, a child comes rushes over and grabs the spoon from you. Many parents around the world say this is the child interested in helping and learning to cook, and therefore I'm going to welcome them, I'm going to figure out a way that they can do it that safe and that they can contribute. And this is how I teach them over time. There's actually a study that just came out from Lucia UCLA, where they interview the parents in a very similar situation. So they it's not in the book because it just came out. But they, they asked moms, they say, Okay, you're doing the laundry, and a two year old runs over and starts throwing the clothes around, like, what do you do? And they ask European American moms, and, and they say, You know what a lot of us would say, like, Oh, I get angry, they're making a mess, I shooed them away, I tell them to go play, you know, I gotta get this done. And then they also asked my mom's and then my mom say, ya know, I'm a little angry, because they're making a mess. I don't want to I don't want more work, either. But I'm excited because the child is interested in the task. And this. So it kind of gets to what you were talking about before the the European American viewpoint is very adversarial, right? It's this seeing the child's motivation is kind of nefarious, but but not good. Right? Like, at social like they they want to make a mess there. Yes, exactly. Like not could like they're not trying to help, right. But the my view of it is, is very cooperative and pro social, right? So it's, it's the child wants to help but doesn't know how. And it's my job as the parent to show them how just like reading or doing math, because when the child is learning, and Here's also a really big part of the book when the child is learning to do the laundry with you. It's not just learning, she's she or he is not just learning to do the laundry, she's learning to cooperate with you, work with you, as a team, you know, to be kind to contribute, right? There's all these other things that go with it. And the, the, my mom sees that and so the My mom says, Okay, here's what we do, you put you put the laundry in the basket and shows the child how to then do like you say, a very small piece of the task that you know, calibrated for their skill level. And they can do like Suzanne Gaskins anthropologist says they can do easily and quickly because a child is much more likely to do a task actually an adult to if you can do some thing kind of easily and quickly, right. So this breaking down the tasks into these very small amounts is so key. And I did not realize it until Rosie and I went to Tanzania when I saw how easy the moms made it like they would be like walking down to the river to get water and they would just hand Rosie a bottle to carry their small bottle carry this, you know, or like we get firewood and like they would just pick up a small stick carry this, you know, and that was it. Or they put a baby on my back. It'd be like, carry this. And yeah, it was just no questions. It was no like fuss or mess. Like, Oh, can you please and all this like buildup, it was just like, this is your task. And it's and it works. When I got home and I started doing this it's worth it. It's like put this book away. You know, throw this away, go get my shoes, like just very like it just started flowing so much easier. She started being more helpful, less resistant, and I don't know. Yeah.
Ned Johnson:I love it. And because you have that you have I mean, I love in the book, how candid you are about your own struggles and frustrations and you know your own, you know, tantrums are long you know go along with with Rosie's and that that talking about you know, kid wanted to come and help dinner even it's going to go not well to start with. And that when you sort of you know when you start when you push that away and didn't embrace that enthusiasm didn't encourage them doozy as and even though the skills aren't there so that you're not intentionally but but very clearly giving the message to Rosie, I think I get this right, that her job was to do Legos watch educational, you like learning videos and wait for me to feed her. Right? And, you know, and then I'm the picture, you know, when she's a teenager, you know, sitting there, you know, gaming and say mom was dinner. Right? So can we wonder where they started?
Michaeleen Doucleff:Right, exactly right. Like and actually, David, this is David Lindsay's big theory, right? Is that that erosion of the emotive, like, say, the little toddler like lots of psychological experiments. So toddlers are incredibly helpful, right? They do these very sophisticated things like move a chair or an object away. So a person can walk the voluntarily pick up something that person drops, like super couple of things that a lot of adults don't do, right. And over time that goes away in Western culture by about six or seven, middle childhood. And one of the key things he thinks that the reason for that is, is this shooing away, right that like, you know, every time the child, try, the young kid tries to help and you push them away and say, go play, eventually, they get the message, this task isn't for me, right? I'm my, my purpose in this family is not to help with the laundry, it's not to do the dishes. And by about six or seven, they're kind of convinced about it. Lucia alkali has actually shown kind of this effect in the lab. Very interesting study with siblings, where the older child kind of behaves like the parents, shooing the child away, pushing the child's arm away from it.
Ned Johnson:That was a hard story to listen to. Yeah,
Michaeleen Doucleff:I mean, it's what I do, too, right? Especially if you think about cooking, right? Like she, Rosie would come over and grab something, and I would push her arm away. Right? And, and so over time, you're exactly right. The child says, Well, what is my role on this family? Well, it's to do schoolwork, which is great, you know, all the kids in the book, go to school. But it's, you know, also, like you say, to play to do my own individual tasks and achievement. So there's a big focus on individual achievements, right. And the book, which I and then other cultures were trying to say, well, you know, maybe there should also be some focus on on group group work, achievement. And because here's the thing, this is what I think a lot of us don't realize is like, children, homosapien children, there's a lot of good data to support that homeless, deviant children have evolved to to work with their family, right. And that that's one of the reasons why homosapiens are here is because we are so cooperative. And I think when kids work with you, and learn to work with you and cooperate with you, it not only connects you to the child, which again, is very motivating. But I think it gives this child this incredible sense of like purpose and identity, right and confidence. And I see it with Rosie, like when we really collaborate, and she's really helping me, our relationship is so wonderful, and there's just such a peaceful ness to it. And it's what I saw in those mind homes, this lack of resistance, right, because the kids have been taught to work together with the family, and it's not this nagging or this bickering or, you know, it's this very fluid thing that the child has learned slowly over time. But I have to say, the parent also knows how to collaborate. And that was something that was hard for me to really realize was like, I wasn't collaborating with her. Right, I wasn't, I wasn't watching what she was doing, and seeing the contributions she was making, and then building off of them. I thought all the information came from me all like I knew everything, right? Like when we're cooking, I am the source of information, when in fact, collaborating means both parties are the source of information, and both parties have something valuable to give. And so to really learn to collaborate with her and teach her to collaborate, I've had to value what she was doing and her ideas, not always take them or accept them, but at least value them and listen to them and acknowledge them.
Ned Johnson:I love that. I will want to have you seen sort of take that and kind of segue into talking about this model of motivation. Because when this collaborative, this, this working together is really that connection piece that is just you know when to throughout these, these cultures, right, but they're but they're there, they're to other parts to this model. So you want to talk us through that.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yeah, so the first is connection, like you say, like the child needs to feel like they're bonded or somehow, you know, working together with with the person, they will work much harder, right? If this comes from stay from your book, they will work much harder for a person that they feel like they're connected to. And I think personally, for me, that means like I just said, valuing them as a source of information. So a lot of my parents will tell you that the child has something to teach them. And I remember one of the moms. Teresa told me, this was deep in my tape that that I found right before the book came out where she says her little girl, Juanita, she says, you know, one knee unit comes home and does her homework right away. She's six, when he comes home and does her homework right away. She's the smallest kid. And she says the whole family looks to her for that, you know, like, the whole family looks to her to that. Like, that's the way we do it. And we look to Juanita, so when NATO is contributing to the whole family, by this one little tiny thing, right? It's so powerful, right? Like, so what are you looking to your, like, six year old for? For inspiration or knowledge, right? Like, it makes you wonder they're doing something that they can teach you. And so I think connection really is about that, like valuing their contributions. Okay, so number two is competency, right? So this feeling that you know, what you're doing that you're pretty good at what you do, it's not too hard. It's not too easy. And in the, in the West, we like to, I think we like to, to, to make children feel competent by praising them, which, which does work. Sometimes I don't think it works quite as much as we think it does. But in many, many cultures, parents do not praise their child or very, very small amount, like little bit of an eye IRA's or you know, a little bit of a smile, a little head nod. Maybe a little bit of you know, that's helpful.
Ned Johnson:Because you talked about acknowledgment rather than praise, right? I see this right, I see that you're contributing that, you know, and it doesn't have to be like, what would you say, Good job trying or whatever?
Michaeleen Doucleff:Or this very performative thing, right? It's not just about the words, it is also about accepting the work, which this really changed Rosie and I's relationship. So I tell the story about the kabobs. In the book, were like, I'm making kebabs when Sunday and I say, come on over and help me Rosie, you know, come help me. That's a very common phrase around the world. Come help me, come help me, my child. And she comes over, she stands on the stool, and she starts making the kabobs. And she starts making like this giant Chicken Kebab that like, all of the chickens, like, from the entire chicken wasn't my plan was not my plan. And I kind of did you know, what I usually do is like, that's not right, you know, very adversarial, like, what are you doing? We're gonna run out of chicken. Exactly. I know what's right, and you're wrong. And you know, Chris, you start screaming and crying and runs off and is completely unmotivated. And I started writing this part of the book, and I started this is when I started realizing I'm not collaborating with her, like, I think I know the way and it's my way or the
Ned Johnson:highway, right? Like, she doesn't my way we're collaborating, right? And so
Michaeleen Doucleff:I was I was like, writing this up and, and I was like, You know what, I'm not contributing with her because I'm not valuing her her side of things. And so I set up the whole experiment again, kabobs everything. And as they come, Rosie, come help me and she didn't want to help me. She was like, I don't want to help. And I tried to convince her and she finally comes over, and she starts to make her fall Chicken Kebab, but this time, it has a little bit of vegetables in it. And so I'm like, okay, okay, that's okay. And I accepted her version of the kebab. Um, she kind of even like, she's sitting here looking at me, she kind of even like, started smiling. She was like, I took the kebab. And I put it on the plate with the other kebab. So I've I accepted her contribution. And we Lucia Alcala, the researcher read this part of the book, she she's commented it, she circled it, and she said, she could finally see her work, she could see her contribution to the family. And, let's see, I think that that is really what motivates kids is seeing what they do, and how it helps the family and that this is the like, way more powerful than praise. And she kind of smiled and just kind of smiled and kind of had some confidence. And then by goodness, she started making the kabobs the way I was telling her to make up, like, I was incredible. It was like she needed to like do it her way. And then like, she kind of decided, Okay, I'm gonna join the family. And we started making kebabs, like, you know, as, as Lucia says, as one organism, with multiple hands working together in this very nonverbal way. And it was really beautiful. And it lasted about two minutes.
Ned Johnson:If I circle back to your point about how about, you know, anxiety and depression in our part of the world compared to other parts of the world, that that for her to know? And she can, with her own eyes, see that? I've helped I did it I've contributed right. As opposed to good job, Rosie. You know, we know that in psychology, the idea of an internal versus an external locus of control within within my head within my bones. I know. I'm helping mom. You know, I gave mom now she has two more, two more kabobs Go me as opposed to waiting for that verb phrase. I mean, it's really it's so interesting because it's it's so profound psychologically. And Such a in such a small shift for us, you know, taller people to make? Yeah.
Michaeleen Doucleff:I have to say it's, it is a small shift, it is a big mind shift, right? Because it, it means just like you said very earlier, I'm not 100% in control, right? I have to, like, let go of some of that like, right to really call it with somebody, I she, she has to be someone, right? There's gotta be there's kind of give or take a little bit. And some. We're not going to do everything she says, but but I'm also not gonna not listen to it. Right. So it's easy. It sounds very easy, but I do think it is hard.
Ned Johnson:Yes. It's simple. It's not easy, right? It's not easy. Yeah.
Michaeleen Doucleff:It's a little bit like jumping off a cliff. Because it's like, what's gonna happen? Oh, yeah. But it's not it's not it, I think. I think the kids become competent, much calmer, more competent, very quickly. If you give them a little bit of space to kind of explore and step back a little bit, like I say, in the book and let them try and do their thing. And then you can fix it, you can guide him, but just don't throw it out. Don't ignore it, or just completely redo it, because then you're completely rejecting their contribution. Right? Oh,
Ned Johnson:and I love that I hadn't, or give them fake work to do, like, give them given them, you know, give them work that actually isn't isn't that like, like they're too, you know, simple or foolish tend to know the difference?
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yeah, they know, they know, right? They know if you like I think some of the examples that researchers have found is like a mom or dad was sweep the floor and then hand the child the broom or wipe the table and then right like, right, or give them fake foods to like, cut and stuff. Yeah, like whereas all around the world parents will give children like real things to play with, like a lot of the my mom's would give Rosie masa to practice like on the side or cloth or, you know, real it might not be they're not doing the real task, because it's too hard. But they have real pieces of equipment.
Ned Johnson:So we've covered connection and competency. And the big one. This one yeah, this
Michaeleen Doucleff:is I know, I know. I've been thinking about it all night. Autonomy, right autonomy, this idea that there's lots of debate about exactly what autonomy means. But this idea that you feel like you have some control over your choice, or you're in control over that choice, like, I'm doing this task, not because I'm being forced to do this task, right? Nobody. It's funny because nobody likes to be told what to do. Adults don't like.
Ned Johnson:Yet we find it so easy to tell other people what to do. It's so interesting.
Unknown:Thanks for listening to pep talks. Today's episode is sponsored by the book. What do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home? The author is Dr. William Stix, rude, and Ned Johnson have 60 years combined experience talking to kids one on one. And in their latest book, they share new ways to handle specific and thorny topics, things like delivering constructive feedback to kids discussing boundaries around technology, anxiety from current events, and more. What do you say is a manual and a map that provides specific science based guidance for communicating effectively with children, teens and young adults about the topics that matter most?
Ned Johnson:The thing that I think is so interestingly, about the self determination theory of human connectedness, competency and autonomy is that these you know, according to 1500 Plus, you know, studies is, you know, these are foundational psychological needs. It's not Michael lean, it's not that it's not it's not rosy, it's not that it's it's, it's this is This is humanity, right. Yeah.
Michaeleen Doucleff:This one weird people cry, right? No, I mean, the autonomy. One is, um, I was thinking about this a lot last night, preparing for this podcast. I think I didn't really understand how much autonomy children and adults have in other cultures. What we kind of think of as autonomy here is nowhere even close to what I saw elsewhere. And it really hit home when we were in Tanzania with the HUD Xabi, like just what autonomy meant there to the children, and what it looked like, I thought I was giving Rosie autonomy. You know, I'd visited the Inuit, the Inuit, I'd visit them I'd visit and I was like, Oh, well, I'm doing this autonomy thing. And then when we got to the hijabi, I was like, Whoa, I am not doing this autonomy thing at all.
Ned Johnson:What what part were you missing? What did you what what shifted? You have to make
Michaeleen Doucleff:the level of involvement involvement and that I was in And Rosie's kind of every movement. And so I talked about in the book, there's a study in in the condo with a different hunter gatherer group that just came out in January, but I interviewed the author for it for the book of where she and her research partner actually follow a bunch of kids around for like nine hours, and write down everything that caretakers say to them. And, and first of all, the smaller ones get more commands. And almost, I think like 75%, of what the caretaker stated in is request for help. So so this is this idea of teaching children very early, like as toddlers to cooperate and work together. So, you know, go grab the machete was actually one of them, right? Or, like, you know, hold the water bottle hold this cup, like these very simple tasks that we are talking about. So almost all of the commands are this very little praise, very little feedback very, or very low criticism, just mostly like requests for help, which teaches the child over time to do these tasks and work together. But the other thing was, is that younger children got more of them than older kids, this idea being that when she's 12, she knows what she should do. You don't need to tell her, you get an eye roll from a teenager. But on average, children got told something three times per hour, three times. That's it, the parent never said anything else to the child. And your
Ned Johnson:guesses are like three times a minute in San Francisco, what's your guess? So
Michaeleen Doucleff:I have done the experiment on myself. And I took Rosie to this woodworking class right before the pandemic and I would do it with the parents there. And when dad was clocking in it, like, yeah, like two or three a minute with this kid, and it was hard to watch, but then I would do it all myself. And I wasn't, I thought I was better. But like, I wasn't much better, because I was still like little comments, you know, little directives, little like pop up book, book, book, book book book, you know, and it was just, I really, I actually recorded myself a bunch of times, I wanted them and, and, like I say, in the book, I was just like a nagging Mini and super bossy compared to like, the Hudson's Bay parents and, and then what I found out was that anytime there was conflict between me and Rosie, I would just move to this three Cummins an hour mode. And, you know, I could still use nonverbal, you know, like, facial expressions, taking action, touching her, you know, physicality. But, but I would just, you know, start my watch, and be like, You got three, my clean, pick them, well, you got three, and you know, I usually use them up in like, 10 minutes, and then you know, then then I would relax and I would shut up, and Rosie would relax, and our relationship would become so much more pleasant. And this really changed me and Rosie, because I just did not realize how much I was bossing her around. I really thought I wasn't, but I really was
Ned Johnson:passing me because you have a line in the book, you say something like, particularly for little children that that words feel like lectures?
Michaeleen Doucleff:Yes. Stimulating, right? Like super, like high energy, no matter really? What. Yeah,
Ned Johnson:yeah. And and particularly, you talk about that I was fascinating reading about the Inuit and, and how well, they manage their emotions, right. And you make the point, this, I think it's important, it's not about suppressing. It's not about suppressing anger, like, because we know that's not healthy psychologically. But in many ways, you know, how to, in some ways not to experience emotion, right? And so, this is a core executive function, right? The ability to reframe the Able, the ability to look at it, you know, to look at the look differently at what we're experiencing, or and just to re enter into reframing right? To have that emotional flexibility. Can you just talk a little bit generally about executive functions, because you know, I'm sure in San Francisco in Washington, DC, in every, every parent of every every kid as they think about its executive functions, because you need that to do well on standardized tests, or, or whatever. But we probably also need them to navigate life and to work well with other. We don't work well with other folks in that. And I just loved that. That was something you brought up in the book. You just talked a little bit about that. Yeah,
Michaeleen Doucleff:I mean, anyway, kids in this little town, Cougar rock that we were in, we're had an incredible executive function that nine year olds had more executive function than me. I mean, this has been well documented that Westerners aren't so high on the executive function scale, even the adults compared to many other cultures. But this idea of being able to kind of pause instead of reacting and kind of pause and think before you react, you I could see with the even the little one Of course, not the toddlers, but the 567 year olds. It what the moms moms and dads, they're both the moms and the dads, they're really kind of have taught me in multiple places up in the Arctic, I've been in three different parts across kind of all North America is this idea that of looking at children in their their actions, their motivations, which we've kind of already touched on a little bit in a way that's pro social and positive, versus kind of nefarious and anti social. So, for instance, we have so that whole idea, I think, is you know, is to have less anger towards children. So a child misbehaves and does something, you're not get angry and suppress it. But you start off with less anger to begin with. And I'm telling you, this works because I was a very angry person. And now I have something here, but way less. Yeah. And the idea here is like, we have this these kind of, I call them myths, or folktales. Because they really are about young children, like little ones, toddlers up to like, five, six, that they're pushing buttons that they're pushing, testing boundaries that they're manipulating us, even my sister told me, like when Rosie was a baby, that she was manipulating me as a baby, baby, manipulating me. And there's no data that tells us these things are true, they are really folk, folk tales in our culture. And a lot of other cultures have different folktales that, that help the parents have less anger towards the child, and in respond to a child in a way which has more compassion, more empathy, and a lot less anger. And what that does is it teaches the child that response, right, so if I call that Rosie, so it Rosie is doing something like she hits me or, you know, the way she was acting here, if you if I say oh my gosh, she's manipulating me she's testing boundaries, then my response to her is gonna probably be pretty adversarial and probably cause a conflict, or at least elevate the resistance that's already there. But if I say to myself, we're saying wants to help Rosie wants to be involved in the podcast, Rosie wants to be close to me. I mean, most of the time, little kids just want to be close, right? They just want to be near their parent physically. Then I come at her with a lot more softness, and empathy and compassion. And you know, okay, these are the rules, you can stay. But these are the rules, right? Because it's not just about letting them go haywire and do whatever they want. The goal really is to integrate them into our lives, right and integrate them into the work. And so that involves me teaching her right. So it's like, you can stay. And so this kind of shift in perspective of a child's motivation, from antisocial to pro social, I think really helped me have respond to Rosie in a way that that was kinder softer. And then instead of elevating the situation and causing more conflict, causing more resistance, I bring the situation down, right? She comes down with me, so I'll never forget there. Were in the Arctic, you know, she had terrible tantrums as two to three year old. And she had several in the Arctic, and one of the moms Elizabeth, in the UK, who did all the interpretation for the book. She showed me how I was supposed to, I should respond to Rosie. Yeah, I was responding with lots of words like, Okay, what's wrong, you know, please stop. And then you mentioned, I'd be yelling at her. And that was just, you know, the motion got higher and higher. And we both got more and more angry. And Elizabeth would just bring everything down. Like, they're like, like,
Ned Johnson:you read the line, like, you know, the energy point of like, Fred Rogers, stoned?
Michaeleen Doucleff:Exactly. In your culture, people are very calm to begin with, like, calmer than we really, really kind of imagined in some ways, but but even when Rosie would go high and get really upset, Elizabeth would go even lower. And like, it was just incredible to watch. Rosie's response to that, because she would just kind of immediately go there with her and just join her in this calm state. And I was just like, wow, I've been doing this completely wrong.
Ned Johnson:It's so you know, this. I mean, this is one of my favorite points in you know, swing psychology generally. And certainly one that you shine such a light on the stories in the Tina Payne Bryson is point that emotions are contagious, right. So in our, in our book, the self driven child, we have a chapter in there about being a non anxious presence. And so I'm just I'm just lapping it up when I'm reading about these innerwear Inuit folks, and just thinking, Oh, my goodness, because you know, why even the Navy SEALs say, right, their mantra is calm is contagious. Yeah, calm is contagious. And so I just love that idea of these of these people being the, you know, the equivalent of stress sponges when little people are more stressed and to get a circle back to a point you made about the minds then it's Then, of course, children are incompetent, right? You know, they, they, they don't know yet how to make this. So they have, they're going to do it poorly before they're going to make the chicken kabobs all wrong before they make them the right way. I'm doing our time, of course. But with anyone talk about that in terms of emotional regulation, that of course, they're acting childish their children. And I thought it was such a important reminder that we have a tendency, you know, we alleged grownups to think that little children should have those skills, when, of course, emotional regulation and the ability to put things in perspective, these are developable skills, and they just take time. That's
Michaeleen Doucleff:exactly right. And if if, you know, even, I think Lisa Feldman Barrett said to me, you know, suppressing your anger, when you're already upset is really hard, like, really, really hard. And we expect two year olds to do it. Right.
Unknown:We just calm down.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Right? We yell at them to calm down, like that. And your parents told me like this is it just takes time and one of the moms said, you know, like, if she's not listening, she's not ready. You know, and I love
Ned Johnson:that. I
Michaeleen Doucleff:know, good, good, it's yet so hard, so hard. You know, um, but it's just like with math, right? If she doesn't know, you know, division, she's not ready, she needs more practice. And I think they see these tantrums these moments, these hot button moments as these opportunities really for the child to watch you be calm, and to learn. Like I really, that's kind of the difference I saw the tantrums is like, Oh my God, this horrible moment that I needed to stop as quickly as possible. And like, you know, whereas they see it as like, Oh, she's upset, I'm going to show her how to be calm. I'm going to show her how to calm down. And this is going to teach her this is this is really like a learning opportunity. And I tell you, it works. It totally works well. And
Ned Johnson:that was a, you know, a theme, I'd love to just take a moment. And so for for you know, folks, your listeners may have little folks that may have kids, my kids are 17 and 19. And, you know, some of this work may be already behind us. But we still have children who you know, we can also act child childish. And you talk about, you know, rather than using praise, rather than controlling rather using logic, which just doesn't come hard emotions, about this model of practice, model, and acknowledge. And at first, I'm sort of like, okay, and it took me a while. I mean, it was helpful to have this being repeated and different. Can you just sort of walk us through what this is, why it works, and maybe maybe your favorite story with Rosie,
Michaeleen Doucleff:thank you so much for asking me this. You are the first person I know, I think this is like a deep. This is something that I came to realize very late in the game. And I actually threaded it throughout the book. I think this is how, like, this is inculturation like this idea of like how we teach children, you know, the elements of our culture, what our culture values, the right behavior. This is how every culture teaches their children this. So it's model children learn by watching you. There's no doubt it's not what you say. It's really not it is what you do. I'm down to the way you the way my husband wipes the sink after he does the dishes like Rosie does this, like we never taught her that like she doesn't
Ned Johnson:want to jump in for a second. There's a there's a there's a group in DC called the parent encouragement program. It's a parenting education group. Kaki Lewis, Katherine Lewis, you may know, Katherine, Katherine Reynolds anyway, part of this group. And they do great, great work. And there's an educator there named Patty. Chancellor, who's, you know, probably 20 years older than I, and we were interviewing her getting their help for our first book. And she asked me, she's what's the most important parenting tool? And I sat there, like, you know, like a seventh grader being called on in class. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know how you're gonna feel this test. She just looks at me smiles. And she says, I believe that it's modeling. So yep.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Is it I think it is. And that's the thing, like if they're having a tantrum, and you're yelling, yeah, what are you modeling? Right? If you say no, if you if you do nothing, it's better just do nothing. And then the second thing, which I think is less talked about, directly in parenting books these days is this idea of practice, practice. So giving child an opportunity to practice this skill. And so this idea of giving children little small tasks that you're practicing helping, you're practicing working together, you're calming the child down when they're upset, helping the child calm down. That's practice, right? If I sit there and argue with Rosie, like, you know, negotiate and argue what she's practicing arguing, right, like, like everything that we do with a child like you're giving them an opportunity to practice something, such as Choose wisely, basically.
Ned Johnson:And for folks who listen to this, I mean, you may who may feel like they their kids negotiate everything with them. There is is a place for kids to you because of practicing that skill with us. So they can do that in the world. But if you feel like everybody thinks in negotiation, read the book, there's a path out of that, out of that, out of that, you know, the hole that you found, you've dug yourself into, yes.
Michaeleen Doucleff:And I in some of it becomes this like endless loop where you're not really negotiating, you're just arguing. And then the last thing is this, when I say it's like a cup of modeling, a cup of cup of modeling a cup of practice, and like a tablespoon of of acknowledging, so this idea that you're pointing the child in the right direction, either verbally or through some other tools, but like, that's helpful, that's not helpful. That's kind that's not kind. So like, really kind of pointing out. When the behavior the behavior you want occurs, or when the behavior you don't want occurs. This kind of this is this, you find this everywhere in every culture, right? It's not over the top praise. But acknowledging either through accepting or not accepting, walking away, ignoring I mean, oh, my gosh, the Inuit moms and dads were incredible and ignoring those diseases behaviors to the point where Rosie knew immediately that she was being ignored and immediately stopped. When
Ned Johnson:I did you know, I think I kept hearing that as you know, in my head, I think of if you already have a storm, don't put more energy into it. Right? Exactly. You don't you don't calm the storm with that, right.
Unknown:And you're acknowledging it when you when you even if it's negative, even if you're being like, Stop, don't do that. You're still really, really emphasizing that behavior. Ignoring is this like, the opposite, right? It's like really saying, like I don't and in such a, like, non confrontational way. Yeah, it's, it's another big powerful and
Ned Johnson:take a couple minutes. And just an ask about you, you got some pushback, right? You got some blowback? You know, you know, you're romanticizing these cultures. And you know, it's not it well, what are we supposed to do? I don't know that they're kind of, you know, that kind of pushback. And it was interesting to me, because your book, again, is these beautiful towns of kind of the what and the how, because of the view, things that I think I know, you know, I kept seeing and imagining all the science that undergirds all of this, you know, all vertebrates brain science, right, but you weren't writing, you know, a book on on brain science, you know, those, that'd be a different audience, right.
Michaeleen Doucleff:And I want to say, like, the experts in the book, I really want it to be the parents. And right, like, I wanted to science to kind of support their ideas, but they are the experts. I think that this is, I think this idea made some people uncomfortable, and I think that's why I got pushed back. But I'm basically saying that these people are world experts on parenting, because they really are, they're incredible parents, because you
Ned Johnson:make the point, they're not they're not froze, they're not, you know, you're the kids are sitting there, get up and do the dishes, you know, at age 12 On the first day of spring break, but also has the iPhone out of her, you know, hanging her by backpack and watching shark movie. Right. Right.
Michaeleen Doucleff:Right. Right. No, I mean, they're all incredibly modern societies for whatever, you know, to term that means. Absolutely, absolutely. Have
Ned Johnson:come away, how much did you come away thinking? How much of these these models, these more successful approaches? How much of this is, you know, the culture that that, you know, has been has been maintained? How much of might even the epigenetics right, you know, I took note, you know, you're talking about I was I was always a fear of, I was always afraid of my father's anger, right. And so in some ways that you can have cultures that are the Inuit who are very self controlled. And they don't they don't get irked because it's just it's yeah, very Pacific. Thank you. That was the word of the perfect word. You know, but you also have folks who I was thinking, if you've read JD Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, and he talks about, you know, kind of all the folks who are Appalachia and were his family's from, and he said, everybody in my entire family can go from zero to effing homicidal in less than a second, right. And so it's, you know, it's a stress, it's a stress response. And so, I was wondering how much because some of what goes on in, you know, for what you grew up with, or your family or, you know, certainly cultures or even popping into pockets of this city or that country that are under chronic stress. They're going to they're going to behave very differently. I kept I kept thinking about that. Did you Did that go through your head while you're writing this or go back afterwards? I
Michaeleen Doucleff:could write a whole book on this. I think that that I think to be very blunt and honest, I think that our Western culture, European American culture has a lot of intergenerational trauma based around this. Yeah, you know, that we, you know, just to be honest, we have a lot of con flicked some in our, in our culture, you know, a lot of violence. You know, I think and I read in the New Yorker a few years ago, you know, one of the historians call this a warrior tribe, right, like a lot of our culture is based on on violence. And and I think that does get carried down from a generation to the next and I I'm I am hopeful that the reckoning that we've kind of seen and we're all going through right now in the country will shine a light on this, right. It's it's not just other races and ethnic groups that have suffered from white violence, right. It's our own culture that has suffered from white violence. And Barbara Rogoff, the first one of the first interviews I ever did, she's, she's an anthro, psychologist in UC Santa Cruz and studies my communities, she said, there is something incredibly adversarial and conflictual about Western culture. And she said, Just look how this country was developed and created, right? Yeah. And those words just rang in my ear, like, the whole time I was reading the book, because it's like, is there a way and I'm not talking about, you know, physical violence with kids or anything, I'm just talking about kind of like this adversarial illness that we bring to our relationships. And, and it's like, I think in many other cultures, people try to interact in ways that doesn't create conflict, it doesn't create anger. And they're still getting the same points across. So one of the Inuit moms who I actually just saw yesterday, she's in San Francisco, she told me, she read the book. And at the end, she said, Well, the book is she loved the book. But she said, you know, you really don't need this, Mike Lee, she said, she said, all you need to do is when you're when you're thinking when you're interacting with somebody, think to yourself, the way I interact right now is gonna help the relationship or is it going to hurt the relationship? And this has just been so powerful for me? You know, is there a way I can get my same point across the same idea, but in a way that it's going to help and connect us versus create conflict and, and push each other away? And to me, that has been like a game? It's very hard sometimes. But it's that executive function. Let me pause. Let me wait. And let me figure out a way to do this. That's not conflictual, not adversarial.
Unknown:I love that. I love that. Which
Michaeleen Doucleff:is basically your new book. Yeah. Well,
Ned Johnson:you're very, very kind. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it was when I was preparing for this I hadn't back in I had two things were going through my mind. One was all the work of Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone, if you know this kind of how, you know, the idea that Yeah, huge per pop up. proportion of the American population used to use the bowl. It's just it was kind of a social thing. And there was more there was more church going this and that, and that when people are much more connected. We're kind of that Allah parent thing that you talked about where you said, as John Gillis, who says, you know, mothers have noticed mothers have never been so overburdened, or have never been so burdened as they are now. Because, you know, as you described, you had to do this all alone. Yeah. And I know that, you know, Hillary Clinton cut all this golfers and it takes a village. Well, it really does go better, right? I can't remember who the education writer is who, who said that any, any society that claims to care about its children should care about its parents. Right? And so, you know, so I think about how to, you know, how do you how how do you help other parents with the work that you're doing? How do we help each other? Am I into your point? Am I helping this relationship? Because if I can help my Killeen it's going to help Rosie and right, you know, and, and all and all the way through as opposed to, as opposed to some of the some of what's going on right now could be could be better, could be better.
Michaeleen Doucleff:I think I have a lot of optimism, I think bringing in more diverse voices, whether you know, it can only improve things in this in this direction. And as to your point about romanticizing. Thank you respond to it. You know, there have been many books written about Danish parenting, German, parenting, parenting, and I know that there's some romanticism in those books, I have a very good example of that, that in terms of the French parenting, in the like I say in the book, the point of this book is not to criticize and raise problems, you know, it's like think of it like a cookbook, you don't write the bad recipes. You write about them great recipes are our media and our society has criticized these many of these cultures enough sufficiently and you can find that elsewhere. And really, my point was to look at the the wonderful things that they do the really the, like one of moms said, the parenting gyms, you know, every culture has them. And I have to tell you that everyone in the book has read the portions that they are in and proved and yeah, like Sally, just even Help me it's like I'm almost done. I love me. So like, I don't know.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, well, no. And I don't you know, I don't I can't pretend to speak for for for those folks. But I, because some of the advice and even some of the wisdom is so not what's currently being done and then can feel counterintuitive. It I think people can feel like it feels though, that's an implicit criticism, what what I've, what I've been doing all these years and what I mean. And so that might be that might be part of it as well. But um, I mean, certainly the thing that the takeaway in all of this, for me is just is just, you're so you're so open and honest and brave about your story and your and your, your, your lesson moments with Rosie. But just that just the opportunity to pick out a new set of tools in your toolbox, and to have a relationship that with your child, that is one more effective as you start the book, and two more loving as you end it with. I mean, who doesn't want that? No,
Michaeleen Doucleff:no. And actually, Suzanne Thompson gas has told me this when the first interviews too, she said, you know, it really at the end of the day, it's about expanding the toolbox. Yeah, right. We have this very thin toolbox. That's the right way to parent and it doesn't work for all kids works for some great but for Rosie, it didn't it didn't work. What does is kind of what works and try it. I mean, a lot of the parents would tell me like, What depends on the kid. It depends on the kid, you know, and you just got to try things. And there's not one size fits all for sure. But I will say almost all children want to be with their parents, work with their parents and be involved in their world if that's one thing you can take from the book is like, welcome your child into your world for a few hours each week. And I swear your relationship that is how they are made.
Ned Johnson:I love it. I love it. Well, I can't say better than that. So we will leave. Leave it there. Michael interclub What a pleasure to spend this time talking with you. And the book, hunter gatherer parents with ancient cultures can teach us about the lost art of raising happy, helpful, little humans. 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 roaches 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 301-951-0350. That's 301-951-0350 Thanks