The Self-Driven Child

What Do You Say? Why we LOVE Book #2!

• Ned Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 34

Share episode

In this episode, I sit down with my co-author, Dr. William R. Stixrud, to do an origin story into the key concepts from our latest book, "What Do You Say?: How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home". We discuss the crucial importance of connection between parents and children, exploring how empathy and validation can transform relationships and foster mental well-being. Bill shares insights from our research and experiences, highlighting the profound impact of close relationships on kids' stress levels and overall happiness. Tune in as we unpack practical strategies for effective communication and building stronger bonds with your children.

 

Episode Highlights:

[01:37] - Bill discusses the motivation behind writing our second book, "What Do You Say?".
[03:13] - The challenges of balancing control and fostering independence in children.
[06:57] - The unexpected mental health risks in high-achieving children.
[08:19] - The power of empathy and validation in strengthening parent-child connections.
[10:25] - How reflective listening can enhance communication and trust.
[12:25] - The importance of understanding before judging in parent-child interactions.
[18:27] - Real-life stories illustrating the impact of empathetic responses.

 

Links & Resources:

If this episode has helped 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. 

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

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

We asked, what is it about that person that makes you feel close? And so many kids said something on the order of they listened to me without judging me, and they don't tell me what to do. That just kind of validated. I think what we were kind of thinking about doing with this first chapter, that they listened to me without judging me, and they don't tell me what to do all the time, and that fostered that feeling of closeness that we know is hugely related to positive mental health and even kids who who have parents or drug addicts, if they have a close relationship with a teacher or an aunt and uncle or a coach, it has a hugely protective effect as well.

Ned Johnson:

Welcome to the self driven child podcast, I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stixchert 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? Bill and I had so much fun writing the self driven child and talking about the self driven child and trying to live the self driven child, we, of course, had no choice but to write a second book. What do you say? And in our last podcast episode, we talked about the origin story of the self driven child. And today about what do you say? I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast, and my partner inscribe, my partner in crime, of course, the fabulous Dr William R sticks through it. Howdy bill, welcome back.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Hey, my friend. Thanks. Nice to be back.

Ned Johnson:

It's so fun to talk to you about this stuff. So talk to us about how do we get talked into writing a second book?

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Well, my understanding is because a self driven child did very well. Our agent, who makes money on it, and

Ned Johnson:

said, We love Howard people for what it's worth, it's fantastic.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Yeah, he just, he said, he saw, you know, there's a lot of powerful ideas, he said, and we're just so motivated to do stuff that helps people. And we had told him that we almost never get pushed back about the ideas about you really, you really can't make somebody do something against their will, that having a sense of control over your own life and not feeling helpless and hopeless and overwhelmed is a good thing, but it's hard. It's hard because the more control we see to our kid, the less control we have, right? And a low sense of control is most stressful thing in the universe. So he said, It's hard make it easier. Make it easier in part, by helping people learn to talk to their kids, to communicate with their kids in ways that build that sense of control, that self driven quality. And so that's my understanding. Is that we're open to writing a second book, yeah, we like the focus on communication. This little different, because we focus so much on that set to control, right? That we hadn't. We hadn't focused on as much on on the connection that that deep connection. We thought, let's start there, and then talk about, actually give people the language. There's a lot of language also in self driven child. But what do you say? That's really what it's about. So when we talk about a non anxious presence, or do we talk about a parent as consultant, we say, here's some interesting language, helpful language. So that's my understanding, yeah,

Ned Johnson:

and I love that. And what I would add to that is there may be few things that are more stressful for us as parents than in trying to help and have it blow up in her face, and trying to connect with our kid, to offer advice, to just help him, whatever you know, whatever's an issue, and to be ineffective, like you don't know what you're talking about, you don't understand, and slamming doors and lots of tears, and it's incredibly stressful to have your kid be in a hard place and you feel like you can't help them and talk about a low sense of control. And so part of it, for me, and I think for us, is that any tools that can help us to be more effective in communicating advice, communicating love, communicating connection, if it's more effective, by definition, we're going to feel a higher sense of control, and to appoint that connection. I'd love to have you riff a little bit about this, because the first chapter of what he say we talk about, and this, really, I think we want to talk about in this episode today, is about the importance of connection. Can you just start with, I mean, obviously people know that that's important. But can you really talk about, from a, really a physiological, a human mammal. You know, mental health perspective, apart from connection, is nice. Why does it matter so much?

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Yeah, wait a part of the reason I really wanted to do this book, what do you say was that we got to look at things from a different angle. And it just struck me that the most important thing in terms of communication is having that that close connection, a trust and connection. And I've been reading for years, research suggests that the thing that is most protective of kids, in terms of from mental health point of view, is having a close relationship with their parents. I think, as we mentioned in our third book, it's more protective has a stronger protective. Effect than financial stability and a bunch of other stuff, you think may be more protective. It's also we liken it to a silver bullet. It's the closest thing to a silver bullet, and protecting kids from stress and being able to grow from it is supposed to really suffer from it. I think also, certainly, the more close we feel to kids, I think the more trust and more respect that we convey to them. So I think, think there's a lot of things physiologically. It probably has a lot to do with oxytocin, you know, the bonding hormone, but also it helps kids feel safe. Yeah, it helps kids feel safe. And that feeling of safety allows your brain to work well when that's

Ned Johnson:

the interesting thing. I mean, I have, we see you and I both see and all the see, you know, see, kids are struggling, and then we'll say, well, but at least they're getting AIDS, or at least we've got, you know, this financial protection is obviously easier to be doing well in school and to have financial means than not. But those are not silver bullets that protect kids. I mean, you know, we're, of course, huge fans of the work of Sonia Luther was studying a population of at risk kids, and had decided she needed a control group to see, you know, and chose a group of high affluence kids, and found that the children of these those high affluent families, were at greater risks of stress, anxiety and mental health and substance use disorders than were kids who are disadvantaged kids. Do you want to sort of explain a little bit why that is? And it's a little bit like little bit like, are you what really,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

I know, I know this. She was surprised, too, yeah, which I think the first study is about, was about 20 years ago, and she was just stunned. She couldn't believe the data. You know that these kids from affluent schools or in high achieving schools, they seem to have everything that they're more anxious, less happy, and more inclined to use drugs or alcohol and develop dependence on them than kids living in poverty.

Ned Johnson:

And her and her findings were that it was really because children felt a greater pressure to achieve, and they just didn't feel as close to their parents. Yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

is the excessive pressure to excel and kids on average, not everybody, but certainly on average, affluent, high achieving, often very busy parents, they don't feel as close to, yeah, you said, Who do you feel closest to? They say, Well, my babysitter, that then my my driver, you

Ned Johnson:

know? Yeah, yeah, that was a lot, yeah, yeah.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

So and I, we were so struck by when we did these interviews with dozens of of teenagers as we were writing, what do you say that? We asked kids, who do you feel closest to in this planet? Some of them said to my mom or my dad, but but I think more said my uncle or my cousin or my older brother, my grandma? Yeah. We asked, what is it about that person that makes you feel close? And so many kids said something on the order of they listened to me without judging me, and they don't tell me what to do. That just kind of validated, I think, yeah, what we were kind of thinking about doing with this first chapter that they listened to me without judging me, and they don't tell me what to do all the time, and that fostered that feeling of closeness that we know is hugely related to positive mental health. And even kids who who have parents or drug addicts, if they have a close relationship with a teacher or an aunt and uncle or a coach, it has a hugely protective effect as well.

Ned Johnson:

And I'd love to unpack a little bit this first chapter about empathy and validation, and we'll talk about it kind of sort of the how to of it, some of the things that we have seen or read and felt to be helpful to expand a little bit more on really the importance of connection, to reiterate the point that you first made, that a close connection when you Look at the protective factors. That the single strongest protective factor against the effects, the negative effects of stress on developing young brains, is a close connection child has with a parent or another caregiver. Ideally, caregivers, ideally have a lot of places to support. Some of the other insights, though, were that when we're faced with when our children bring us a problem, we kind of fall into a tendency of judging them or telling them what to do, because oftentimes, if they're sharing hard feelings, they're sharing hard things. And we have a natural tendency, right this writing, reflex to want to fix hard things, right to, you know, to to offer advice to find the solution. And the challenge is that solutions to problems, though, well intended. Those aren't the things that calm those hard feelings. Logic doesn't come hard feelings. It really is feeling like someone is working hard to understand your perspective, you know. So if a kid comes home and is super upset that they you know, they blew up to something with their friends, or they didn't make the soccer team, or they did badly on a test. We start, our brain started, you know, thinking about, Well, what did you say to them? Why did they do that? We kind of, what could you have done differently? Or, you know, did you study for this? Or and we start, kind of thinking of all these things to kind of get out of that situation. Or we have a natural tendency, if kid is really upset, to try to. Help them shift their thinking from things that are super negative to thinking about it differently, which also makes sense. But I'll come back to this moment. Let's be honest. I mean, you know, Jimmy was kind of a jerk to you, too, and so you know, or you'll get over this, and you know he'll roll with this. Or, you know you're thinking about not being friends with anyway, or five years from now, these won't, you'll have a whole new set of friends. And that's all probably quite true. And it's also that as adults, as parents, we have a much longer horizon. So we have a tendency to know that these there will be solutions, that these things tend to work themselves out. Okay. The hard part is, though, if we start trying to write the situation of offering advice, if you did this, if you did that, or if you thought about differently, it's pretty invalidating, because it's in some way, it's saying, well, kiddo, if you'd only do one, two or three of these things that just immediately came to my mind, you wouldn't be in this pickle, or you're upset about this. But really you're not thinking about this the right way. You really shouldn't be as upset about this as you are, because I know that five years down the line, and the challenge is, because that's invalidating, it tends to add fuel to the emotional flame, and kids get more charged up with the empathy and validation would simply look like is, oh my gosh, you're pretty bummed out about that, huh? Yeah, it must be. It must be pretty frustrating to unintentionally make make your best friend so mad when you obviously without voice, and what you're trying to do, huh? And even if those facts aren't true, the feelings are right, and we can validate that a kid or a spouse, for that matter, has a reason to feel the way that they do. And when we do that, it calms down the kind of stress part of the brain and puts them, and frankly, US positioned in a much better place to be able to help. And partly because the source of finding those solutions, ideally, as we talked about the self driven child in the last episode, we would dearly like for children to be able to solve those problems for themselves. And when we can calm their heart feelings and the prefrontal cortex comes back on. So do all those decision making, mental flexibility, thinking things, putting things in perspective, part of the brain come back online. But also, if we use this empathy and validation, and kids feel like we're working hard to understand where they're coming from, and they keep sharing with us more when they're unloading their emotional burden, but they're also giving us more of the accurate facts, so we're then better positioned to actually offer the best advice for when our kid is ready to hear that. Yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

yeah. I'll add that one of the one of the things that happens a lot in families I work with is a kid will screw something up, or the thing you're supposed to do, or the parents will find pot in their room, and the first impulse is to come down on them. Yeah.

Ned Johnson:

How could you do this? What were you thinking, which is really, it's an accusation with a question mark at the

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

end, yeah, yeah. And we're to kind of get into start lecturing or threatening your ground of no phone for you, that kind of stuff. And I think that one of the things been most helpful, I think, in my work, and I think on our work with parents over the last many years, is this idea of seeking first to understand, to understand, try to understand, before we judge

Ned Johnson:

trademark. Stephen Covey, we know, we know. We know, yeah, well, yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

he didn't make it up either. No, no. It's just like. St Francis, oh, well, thank

Ned Johnson:

you. Okay, I feel better. I'm taking back the trademark. Yeah, yeah. We'll keep the lawyers at bay. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

So there's nothing original, but

Ned Johnson:

there's nothing new under the sun.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

And I just think that if we first try to understand, yeah, what's going on, what happened, you know, and we and as you said to really, it's a practice, but when we describe is empathy, one of the best ways acute empathy is what you're modeling, which is what's called reflective listening, which I was just doing the math the other day. Carl Rogers was a famous psychologist in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, and he introduced this process of reflective listening, of kind of paraphrasing what people are saying, in a way that's not parroting them. But you say, Am I understanding this? Right? Here's what I'm getting for what you're saying, that kind of thing. And then kind of freeze back, just to make sure I'm trying to understand you. That's been used in psychotherapy, an important part of psychotherapy, for 90 years. Wow. But it's not intuitive. Nobody's kind of born that way. Rogers kind of figured it out how helpful it is and that it's been used in all kinds of different therapies, including Imago family therapy, motivational interviewing, all kinds of stuff, because it's so powerful when it's done well, it's a practice, and what we do in this first chapter of what you say is a lot is model, a lot of situations and dialogs where we can, we can use this kind of language of reflecting back what we're hearing, giving the message I want to understand you. Am I getting this right? Yeah. And the validation piece we think about, you know, every time a kid says I'm hungry, we say, How could you be hungry? We just ate joy. And we invalidate that I'm not cold, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know why I don't why you're so mad about that, you know, that kind of thing, yeah, and it's just instinctive for us to do it, but that experience of being invalid, that my feelings don't make sense, my feelings are wrong, yeah, isn't helpful. So I think in the last probably 15 years the importance of validation, and I think most people would feel like that, right? If that happened to me, the way you're describing it, I'd feel that way too, that kind of thing where, okay, it's normal. You feel like that, even though it may not be the best way to react, or maybe not why you want to feel but it's not pathological to feel like that.

Ned Johnson:

Yeah. And if I can add to that, one of the things that I see, no, I was just, I was just having lunch with a dear friend of mine who was talking about a friend of hers who's got a child really struggling, you know, self injury, suicide, ideation, you know, struggling in school, trying desperately to be, you know, Perfect, and struggling, struggling and struggling to be perfect. And you know, we'll talk about this at another point, but we have a chapter later in the book about perfectionism. And one of the things that I'm always mindful of is there are so many kids who are struggling, who are anxious, who are perfectionistic, or any mix of that you want to choose who they do everything they can not let people know that they're anxious, that they're struggling, right? And this is hard for a bunch of reasons. Because, I mean, you know, you know, what's you know, Joey, shared is doubled and a challenge shared is halved, right? And so when I can tell you my hard stuff immediately, I mean, we put people on it, you know, measure their heart rate just articulating the things that I'm upset about. You can see my stress response starts to calm down a little bit. And so I worry enormously about children, whatever's going on, and they feel like they can't tell their parents about this, because the way that they they the way they perceive their parents responding is that they're kind of only okay in their parents eyes, when, when, when things are shiny happy, and that's not anyone's attention. But of course, we light up when things are going well, and of course we naturally, you know, you know, have furrowed brows and get concerned or launch into, how could you do this kind of thing when things aren't going well, but unintentionally done too much or done too often, we can basically be telling kids that you're only Okay, in my book, when you're okay, and when people tell the you know, whatever hard thing it is, and you and to your point, Bill, if we use reflective Listen, repeat it back and say, well, make sense that you feel that way. It might be. It may be a really sub optimal choice, but it makes sense we're also conveying in a really powerful way, I can handle your hard feelings. Yeah, yeah, I can handle I can handle you, and I still love you, and I'm hanging right here with you when you're at your absolute worst. And if we're honest with ourselves, even as adults, what we really, really crave is that the for the people who love us to continue to love us when we're at our absolute worst, when we need them the most. And it's not obvious that people would necessarily draw the connection between you know, when kids tell us messy things that we start trying to solve, it, to leading kids to feel that they're only okay when they're perfect. Yeah, but it's not hard to draw to to connect those dots.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Yeah. Since we really started focusing on this and talking about it in our lectures and stuff, we just hear so many stories, you know, I'm just thinking, thinking about how powerful this is, not only with children, but with our relationship with our spouses, and this and that editor at Viking, Laura Tisdale, says that what do you say should be given to every married couple, in part because it's so effective. I was just talking with a woman recently whose husband had a stroke. It's been very devastating, and he's still in the hospital. And a week ago, she talked to a neurologist, and neurologist, I'm going to call you tonight, and my friend could see on her on her phone that the neurologist who called like, seven or eight times, and somehow the call didn't go through. And she tried calling the neurologist, and her calls didn't go through. There was something about the connection was haywire. And so the next morning, she drives to the hospital, and the doctors there, and the doctors met the doctor. Doctor said, I tried calling you seven times, you know, I'm busy kind of thing, you know. And rather than defending yourself and explaining what happened, my friend said that must have been so frustrating for you. And the woman melted, the doctor melted, yeah. And then how can I help kind of thing. And, wow, you know, has this story that happened when we were in Palo Alto, we gave a lecture talking about this stuff, and the woman who organized the lecture has it does a wonderful peer education program in the Bay Area. The woman I would tell you about email, the gal who brought us there and said, I heard these guys lecture. Last night, and when I went home, my seventh grade son was in tears. They said, Mom, I'm the weakest kid in seventh grade. He said, my first impulse was to say, Honey, that couldn't be true. I mean, or you're good in so many things, or we're all eight boomers in our families, or I'll get you a trainer. They just said, I didn't I just said, God, that sucks. You know, if I wanted to be strong, and I thought his weakest kid, that'd be really hard for me too. Is there way that I can help? And the kid says, I don't know. Mom says, let's sleep on it and talk about in the morning. And in the morning, as you know, Ned, this kid comes with a written plan. I love

Ned Johnson:

that, not just that it was planned, but that was written, right? How it's

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

gonna get stronger, yeah, and Mom, we take me up to where we wanted to go to the chinning bar or something, yeah, but we just see this again and again. But my daughter, when she's probably 40, she was mad at me about something. She's mad enough that I drove over to her house and she came out to the driveway to talk to me, rather have you come to the house. And she was mad because she thought that my wife and I had kept something from her, when actually we just, we just found out about it. But rather than explaining that right away, I just said, God, you know, if I thought my parents were holding something really important for me, I'd be mad too. Wow. And I said, my understanding is a little different. Can I run it by you? Then I explained to her that we just found out the night the night before, something like that, and within two minutes, maybe less than that, we were laughing, and the kids came out, and it just diffused that situation so much by being understanding as opposed to being defensive or judging.

Ned Johnson:

I love it. You are good at this, Bill.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

Well, you know, I learned a lot from you, my friend.

Ned Johnson:

The last point I want to make is when we talk about this empathy and validation, and folks know this, but it's just, it's worth noting that when we use these tools effectively, and none of us is perfect, okay, so not everyone's going to be. Dr Williams pictured in every facet of his life, but we're carrying on. But when we can do this, and we make it safe, and we're just a little bit better at allowing people to share hard feelings, if we remind ourselves that it's really, it's really when we share hard we share hard feelings with people we're close with, and we become close with people we share hard feelings with. And one easy kind of thought experiment, if you think about probably some of your closest friends are people from high school or from college, when you know, breaking up with boyfriends, girlfriends, you know, bad exams, fighting with your parents, whatever, when you probably dished to your 20 year old friend or your teenage friend. And oftentimes teenagers are great at this, like, Dude that sucks, which is pretty much a spot on, you know, distillation of validation, because it does suck. Facts, be darned, whatever you experience sucks, and that closeness is, I mean, that's, of course, what we want with our kids. And if I go all the way back to the start of this episode, the point that Bill shared that, if there's a silver bullet against the effect of stress on developing young brains, it's the close connection that a kid has with mom, dad, some other parent, you know, grandparent, teacher, whatever. And this close connection comes from sharing heart feelings. So if you haven't yet, this is not plugging the book necessarily, but it is a good one. It's our second favorite book. Well, it's our second book. It might be your favorite. Anyway, the second book, what do you say? How to talk with kids, to build motivation, stress, tolerance and a happy home. And Chapter One is all about empathy and validation. And as Bill points out, rightly, because he knows stuff, it's actually, would you remember that lecture? And this woman stood up and she turned around and faced the audience, he said, You know what? This stuff works great too, with spouses,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

yeah, yeah. So, yeah,

Ned Johnson:

there you are. Yeah.

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

I'm thinking to how often when we lecture, somebody stands up and says, like we're 10 minutes in, you know, to a 60 minute lecture, is it? What if I were already screwed up my kid? You know, there's so much we can do to repair and to rebuild. So it's true, and would it make sense for people who want to be kind of apprised of what we're going to be talking about and or the guests are we're going to have upcoming episodes to send us an email.

Ned Johnson:

Oh, yeah, and, well, I'll remind people so yes, to send us email. So we are Bill and I are a little we just remade our website so it's better now. So people who are new to us, you can follow, you can put your email in there and get download, among other things, the top 10 tips from what do you say, and from the self driven child, and get on our email list. And we're, we're, we're a little slow on our homework, people, we're going to start sending out occasional things to let you know about where are, but about what we're doing with podcasts and presentations. But also, if you got questions. If you're like, wow, what do I do? What do I say? Shoot us an email. We'll make a podcast episode. I would just for you to address what that question is. And so it's Bill at self drivenchild.com or unsurprisingly, Ned at self drivenchild.com so yeah, you know, check it out. Look, we love talking about this stuff endlessly, as you can tell. Them. And we love helping because the only thing that's more fun than helping kids is helping people with helping kids. And that is, of course, all of you. So, yeah, great idea, Bill. You're so good at this stuff, you know, send us an email let us know how we can help. Yeah,

Dr. William R. Stixrud:

it is Ned, and Bill's Excellent Adventure. Yeah,

Ned Johnson:

I'll have to get my daughter to drop something with that. That'd be fantastic. Well, this is Bill and Ned on the self driven child podcast. Thanks, as always, for listening. Don't be a stranger. Reach out. Let us know how we can help and give your kids a hug a squeeze. Hey folks, Ned here, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school aged students who care deeply about their kids' education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed, it can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend, Bill sticks reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us. Visit our website@prepmatters.com, or while your kids may only text, you might want to actually talk with a person, if so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350