Parental (Over) Involvement & The Start of College - A Conversation with Jess Lahey

In this episode of the Self Driven Child podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite voices in parenting, Jess Lahey. Jess is a New York Times bestselling author, an educator, and someone who's been on the front lines of both teaching and parenting. We discuss the emotional rollercoaster that is the transition from high school to college—not just for our kids, but for us as parents too. 

We talk about the balance between supporting our children and giving them the space to grow into their own people. Jess shares personal anecdotes about her own children's experiences, shedding light on the challenges and triumphs that come with this major life change. Jess gives insights on how to approach the first day of college, handle the inevitable bumps along the way, and most importantly, how to step back and let our kids take the reins.

Episode Highlights:

[00:42] - Introduction to the episode and guest Jess Lahey.

[3:25] - Jess shares her experience with her children's transition to college.

[7:09] - The importance of letting kids create their own identity in college.

[14:24] - How to support your child without taking over, and the power of apology.

[22:19] - Preparing kids for the unexpected challenges in college.

[26:19] - The importance of helping kids build competence and a sense of control.

[39:17] - Understanding why kids push away during major transitions and how to handle it.

Links & Resources:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/16/health/college-student-independence-wellness/index.html 

https://www.jessicalahey.com/comingofageinthemiddle/2015/6/21/season-of-the-malcontents 

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

Transcript

Jess Lahey: 0:49

This is the start of like the clock is ticking for them. This is the first day of the rest of their lives, you know. And by the way, something that your kid has been told repeatedly by culture and by people around them, these are going to be the four most important years. This is formative time. This is where you make your lifelong friends, blah, blah, blah. It's looms large in their head. So it may loom large in your head because of the past, but for the kid, it looms large in their head because of the future, and they want that future to start quickly. My favorite question to ask kids is, what is your perfect first year of school look like? What is your perfect first day of school look like? And don't worry about hurting my feelings.

Ned Johnson: 1:32

Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stick 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, the start of a new school year, ah, a time of such potential, such promise, but also, like all transitions, a time of a certain measure of angst, and not just for young people, but also for their loving parents. Because for every year that your son or daughter is growing and progressing, they're becoming kind of new people getting closer to adulthood, which also means that our role as parents has to appropriately change, and perhaps no change is bigger than the jump from high school to college, when kids are not just exploring new learning environments, but brand new living environments far away, often from mom and dad and what they've been used to. And this is hard also for us as parents, because we want to help, we want to support, and sometimes we can get a little not just involved, but overly involved, which was the topic of a recent CNN article that Jess Leahy, my guest today, and I were able to contribute to, and we delved into what happens when parents are overly involved. Why is that a problem? What can we do differently about that? So we thought we'd take some time in this podcast today to talk about that, specifically the start of school, that first hour days week, maybe of when kids are making this adjustment of living at home with us to living somewhere else without us. It's a pretty good listen. I hope you enjoy it. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. My guest today in this conversation is Jess Leahy, known to many of you, but for those who don't know her, let me introduce her really quickly, a New York Times bestselling author, parenting expert, and one of the people I most trust and value in this space and frankly, the world. Jess Leahy, in addition to a host of athletes for her research, writing, speaking, she's taught every grade from six through 12 in both public and private schools, and spent five years teaching at a drug and alcohol rehab center for adolescents in Vermont. She's written about education, parenting and child welfare for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and in her bi weekly column, the parent teacher conference for three years in the New York Times. Oh, and she has two wonderful kids, one a recent ish college grad and now fully adulting, as the young people say, is that we young people say, I'm pretty sure that's what they say. And the other, a college student in her sophomore year. So yeah, Jess has, has walked this walk. Let's just jump in. Kind of that first day of school, the first day of college. What should we as parents, what should be thinking about?

Jess Lahey: 4:14

You know, this is such a hard thing because, like, it's so emotional for us. There's so much of parenting that gets this emotional. It's just suffused with so much, and you want to it's also one of those moments, right? It's like taking a picture on the first day of kindergarten. And I can't speak for all kids, because I only have two of them, but at a certain point, we have to start switching that emotionally massive day for us over to possibly this emotionally massive day for them and start thinking about what they need in order to have the best first day possible. I wrote an article a long time ago about taking kids off to camp, and I knew that there was a very good chance that I was going to need more from that day than my kid was, and so I made some jokes early on, like, not on the day of way before I made some jokes like, Don't worry, I'll help you unpack, and I'll make your bed and I'll get it all cozy for you so that it's just right. Because that joke allowed my kid to push back and say, hahaha, that's so funny. And then I was able to say, Okay, well, while we're on the topic, what exactly would you like for me on that day? And to my dismay, my emotional dismay, but to my abstract understanding, objective brain, my great pride, my kid was pretty much like I would just love it. If you would drop off my stuff, maybe we could do a hug, and I could say goodbye. You could maybe meet my counselor, and then I would love it if you could just go, yeah, that was so hard for me to hear, because that sounded like such a rejection of me, but it was such a statement of confidence and autonomy and individuation and in retrospect, huge pride for me, and it's totally cool. If your kid is not that way, maybe your kid is not that way, maybe they want more from you. Be open to hearing what it is they want from this incredibly important day for them. Don't forget for my kid, anyway, all my kid that's out of college. Now, all of his most important to him, friends were made in college, and were made pretty quickly in college. So, you know, he'd gotten that message from, you know, culture, that you're going to make some of your best friends here, and he was focused in that direction already. And that's good. That's really good. I

Ned Johnson: 6:48

was thinking, My son attended camp. And the first year he went, son just red haired and very fair, and we sort of dropped him off and said, you know, please, please, whatever you do, just wear lots of suntan lotion, right?

Jess Lahey: 7:02

You didn't try to, like, totally zinc 'em up right there, right in front of everybody attempting,

Ned Johnson: 7:06

right? And so my wife and I dropped off this remarkably pale Matthew Johnson, and three and a half weeks later, picked up this, by his standards, completely bronzed Matt Johnson. He gave he had gathered, you know, a gaggle of friends and, you know, and some pretty bad sunburns, and lost a few letters in his name.

Jess Lahey: 7:29

That's funny. It's really, yeah, it

Ned Johnson: 7:31

was really, I mean, you know, so I love that you brought in camp, because these are these experiences where we're trusting kids to other places and to other adults who also have their best interest at heart, and they have this massive amount of sort of burgeoning and autonomy within those spaces. And they really are to your point, they are transformative, not just in making friends, but in helping them feel that, hey, I'm ready to run things.

Jess Lahey: 7:59

I love that you brought up the name thing because two things, number one, I grew up as a Jesse, and I don't like that name. I've never liked that name. That was just my name growing up. It was my great grandmother's name. I love my great grandmother, but it wasn't me. And I knew going off to college I wanted to be either Jess or Jessica. I did not want Jesse to exist anymore. And the joke in my life has always been that I can tell if I knew you from before college or after college based on what you call me. Yeah. And so it was this small thing, but the more they called me Jesse, the more other people around me were going to hear that and start calling me that. In fact, there are people in my life, in my adult life, who have been spent time around my parents who and have used that nickname. So for me, that was a little symbolic thing. And then, you know, and I have a kid who's trans, and so when she went off to college. This was her first foray, because she didn't come out and took high school graduation publicly anyway. So this was her first foray into a whole new world with a new name. And what's fascinating is Ned, this is not unusual, not necessarily trans thing, but my daughter has informed me that lots and lots of people have a name they picked up and used for themselves just for college. And don't think of this just as a nickname. This is an identity, like, I'm not a Jesse, I'm a Jess or a Jessica, and I was using college to break away from that old identity, because you can go off to college and you can be anything, at least in the first, you know, five minutes that you meet people. And so stepping on that in any way, I cringed a little bit every time my parents, I love my parents, but I did want the mood to go away, because every time they called me Jesse, that was just another person that was starting to identify me by my childhood self. And same thing for my daughter, you know, she was like, okay, these people that sometimes still mess up my pronouns inadvertently. I do not want one person hearing that, because this is all part of my new existence,

Ned Johnson: 9:59

huh? So, so our son, Matthew, started college in fall of 2020, which is, you know, that wasn't a, wasn't a good year for anything, right? But, but one of the things was interesting was, we couldn't help him. They wouldn't let us in the dorm, right? Just take stuff and put on the car. We couldn't do anything, right? So we really had no choice. No one was making his bed except for him. So I presume he eventually did. I don't know for sure. It is so often the case that we think we need to teach everything to our kids, that we have to be the source information, particularly before they go off to college. And it's like a checklist of everything. Checklist of everything we have to tell them. With my daughter, I don't know how many times you know, and can you please put your dishes in the dishwasher? Endlessly, endlessly. Yeah. She spent a short period of travel abroad this spring, where there are a handful of, you know, handful of kids all live in an apartment. And several kids did nothing. And so Katie was constantly roommate problem, constantly coming home to a sink full of dishes, and it outraged. And she said, the very last day she was sitting there spending hours cleaning up all these dishes. And she said, since then, I, she said, she said I was so annoyed. I will never do that to another person, yeah. And now she puts, you know, and so all of my gentler, mining, cajoling and sort of you know nothing, one experience changed that.

Jess Lahey: 11:19

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, my older kid, the first roommate, he moved in with someone who had already been there for a semester. So he was, it was tough because he was moving into someone else's turf, but it was a really quick way to sort of get used to that idea of, you know, having to share your and there. Keep in mind, there are so many kids who are this sharing space in college is going to be their first time sharing space with anyone, and it's so good for them. It's so good for them.

Ned Johnson: 11:46

Oh, what a good point. What a good point. And I'll tie that into when. So when Vanessa and I dropped Matthew off, and, you know, all the group hugs, and then send him on his way, and we're driving off campus, and we're both, you know, tearing down our faces. Yeah, and I looked at her, and I said, what's going through? Hannah said, Why are you upset? And she just looked at me. She said, this marks the end of his childhood, and I'm like, and now the water works really how I didn't drive the car into a car into a tree, and it is, I mean, you know, they will forever be our children. But in some ways, it really is an important kind of liminal stage at the end of childhood. And this back to our topic of parental involvement, or over involvement, of, how can I support you? What would be helpful, versus assuming that we're the only people that we need to do that for them, or that there are, you know, even if it's something our kid can't do for him or herself, that there isn't some other adult there who can, who can step in, we don't have to be, you know, flying in from 1000 miles.

Jess Lahey: 12:49

Well, I think also, there's this incredible sort of like, there are certain things that you've had a vision of, like, since you were pregnant, since before you started envisioning having children. There are certain things you're like, Oh, if I have a girl, here's what the wedding is going to be. You know, all these sort of moments that you sort of envisioned in your head, and the things that you've looked forward to, and especially, and I want to point this out, because this has been a case, the case for a couple of my friends now, especially if you went to the college where your kid is going to go, which is the case with one of my friends. And actually they did a super smart thing. They went over the summer. Luckily it was in within driving distance, so the parents could do the parent reminiscing thing. You know, the oh, this is where I lived, and that's where I did this and that, because that, I mean, yay you and and lots of great memories. But your kid is, this is the start of, like the clock is ticking for them. This is the first day of the rest of their lives, you know. And by the way, something that your kid has been told repeatedly by culture and by people around them, these are going to be the four most important years. This is formative time. This is where you make your lifelong friends, blah, blah, blah. It looms large in their head. So it may loom large in your head because of the past, but for the kid, it looms large in their head because of the future, and they want that future to start quickly. Most kids now, there are other kids for whom that's not necessarily the case. And you know, for kids who are a little have a little trepidation and are scared and that sort of stuff, they may have a very different answer to what does the my favorite question to ask kids is, what does your perfect version of this look like? Either? What is your perfect version of a night at home doing homework look like? How would you do it? Where would you do it? This is sort of in preparation for getting them to have the autonomy they need in order to be in charge of that thing. But you can also say, what is your perfect first year of school look like? What is your perfect first day of school look like? And I talk about this in the Gift of Failure, which is, okay, well, you say you're really excited to make, you know, find mentors, okay, well, and talk over the summer about, like, the short term, achievable goals for how to do that, and some of that's going to be around the first day as well. What does your perfect first day look like? And don't worry about hurting my feelings. Don't worry about how it makes me feel. This first day of college is your day. This is like, you know, your wedding day or your whatever. And

Ned Johnson: 15:14

I love taking that guilt off the table and the assumed force off the table, and particularly if, for most parents have probably had times when they have leaned in on too much and made their agenda the kids agenda. So I love that idea of how to take that off the table, because if it frees kids up to not have to be worried about which is what his dad want out of this. Yeah,

Jess Lahey: 15:34

and there. And, you know, do not underestimate the power of a little apology. I realized recently, because my daughter told me that I was not listening very well. And it was true, I have real difficulty listening sometimes because my I'm pretty hyper and my brain goes elsewhere. And I found this poem that I really, really loved in this new collection, and one of them was about not paying attention to someone you love, and how you want to go back three seconds so that their conversation can wash over you. And I'll send you the poem so that, oh, actually, the book's not out yet, but it's really a lovely poem. And so I took a print out of that poem. I was interviewing the author for the podcast, so I had the a copy of it, and I just wrote at the bottom, you know, I know that I sometimes don't listen the way I want to, but I'm really Oh, the way you would like me to and the way to be the kind of listener I would like to be in I'm really sorry, and I'm going to try harder in the future. And it's just this little mea culpa apology, which not only teaches your child how to be better at apologizing, teaches your child how to take responsibility for their actions, but it also shows that you're listening. You know, the fact that I listened to that is an indicator of the fact that I'm trying to be a better listener, and I we didn't say anything about it. I put it on her pillow so she would find it that night when she went to bed. And neither of us have mentioned it since, but it was just a way of saying, I hear you, and I'm just trying to be the best parent I can be in and and I'm sorry that I haven't been listening to you. And here it is, I'm trying so, you know, saying things like in the past, you know, there have been days where I kind of took over, and it's just because I get excited and because I love you so much, and so I want to make sure I don't do this on this really important day for you. So what is it you need from me on what? How would you like me to behave on this day? And don't worry about my feelings.

Ned Johnson: 17:23

You also talked in the CNN article, talked about the power of apology for kind of a reset for parents who have, upon reflection, done things for their kids that you know, with a kind of a default assumption that kids couldn't do it themselves, have been overly directive, overly controlling, and because, I mean, there are all sorts of reasons why, but, but may have done that, but an apology, sometimes Somewhere along the way, because in some ways, if kids are moving to this more adult space, we want to make amends a little bit for what we might have done in their childhood, if for no other reason, to reset with a more adult relationship going forward, because that's what we kind of should do as adults, right? Well, and I think it's

Jess Lahey: 18:06

unexpected too. I mean, we do a fair amount of it here, because I'm a big fan of, you know, honesty and treating kids like they're mature. It's like thinking human beings, but it has an incredible power, and it's not going to make you weak and it's not going to make you your kids think you're less than perfect. It's an extraordinary way to say, I respect you as a human being, and therefore I will make amends to you. You know, we're so worried about, you know, them thinking of us as these, all seeing, all all knowing, kind of creatures. But I think the way to gain their respect is actually by treating them the way we would like to be treated ourselves, and apologizing when we don't do that.

Ned Johnson: 18:48

I love it. Malcolm Gladwell had a had a great take on this. And I think in outliers, they talked about the power of authority, right, or legitimacy of authority, something like that, whereby we, of course, as parents, have natural authority because we're older and often taller, and we have credit cards and then and all that kind of thing. But we of course make mistakes. And to your point about when you apologize and say, hey, you know, I'm, I'm really sorry I was on top of you so much about that thing. You know, I was, I was so worried and but it's kind of acting like you couldn't handle this yourself. And I and I'm wrong, of course, of course, you can handle and I just, I my nerves got anxiety got the better of me, and I just, I just want to say that I'm sorry for doing that, because I know that how capable you are in handling these things, and that

Jess Lahey: 19:34

can start so young too, yes, from a very young age, yeah.

Ned Johnson: 19:38

And that respectful thing, I mean, it just in when it when, one of the things that point that Gladwell makes is when you then come say, you know, I'm sorry, kiddo, this is, you know, I've thought about this, and this is just what we're going to do. And you may not like it, but this is what we're going to do, because it's humble and from from having apologized, and it's not, I'm always right. I think that really increases, you know, your kids are going to go along with you more when, when you kind of need them to,

Jess Lahey: 20:04

yeah, the main story that starts off sort of the mea culpa version, the I've been there done that section of the Gift of Failure is, you know, from my very high horse as a teacher, looking at all of the parents of my students who were doing too much for their kids, and I was all like, how could you people be so, you know, in your kids stuff, you know, then realizing that I was doing the same thing to my own kids. And it started with shoe tying and the fact that I had this nine year old kid who couldn't tie her own shoes because I had stepped in and done it for her, when she went boneless and got frustrated and said she was too stupid to ever tie shoes. All that I'm never going to do it, ever, ever. And so by my stepping in and continuing to step in, I was saying, you know, I don't think you're capable of doing this yourself, and when you think about it as they get. Older, and it's things like making their own dentist appointments or making their appointments for XYZ, you know, all those little things are, you know, I don't think you could do this yourself, and even when you move past that. So my 25 year old came home for two whole weeks in between one lease ending and another lease beginning before a graduate program, and one of the things he talked about was wanting to wash this one rug because it was disgusting. And what I didn't understand is he wanted to learn how to use the carpet cleaner. I just heard, oh, I could wash this rug for my kid, and he wouldn't have to do it. And wouldn't that be so nice of me? And he would know how much I love him. And so I did it, and I show and he heard me doing it out on the front porch, and he ran out, and he's like, no, no, I want it. Because I want it. It was, it was so gross. It was like, I wanted to see how disgusting the water was that came out of the machine. But also, he said, I didn't mean for you to do it for me. I sort of wanted to know how to use because you can rent those carpet cleaners and they, he figured he might do one in the future. So how did they work? And this would be great opportunity for him to find out how they work. And I took that from him, because I was trying to be so nice, but I misunderstood that he specifically wanted the learning opportunity in that task, and I didn't know that. And I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about me.

Ned Johnson: 22:08

I love that, you know, in the self driven child, we highlight the great research of Sonia lupian, or the acronym of nuts, right? People probably already know this, but you know that things that stress this out, so novelty, unpredictability, you know, threat, mostly threat to ego, and then a low sense control being the worst. And college, in some ways, has started college or any new place, you know, has that novelty, has the unpredictability is my roommate going to be good or bad? I have no idea. Right? Anything. Right? You know that, that imposter syndrome that, you know, Am I cool enough? Am I smart enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I strong, whatever, all those things that when you're trying to assess where you stack up, and this group of new folks, and then, of course, a low sense of control being the worst. And something that you've talked about quite a bit is we want kids to have confidence, but more so we want them to have competence, because that is where they feel that sense of control, and we know that we can even handle, you know, new situations, even threatening ones, so long as we feel I've got tools, I've got skills to handle that. Can you talk about that a

Jess Lahey: 23:08

little? So let's use your example, okay, will my roommate like me? Okay? There is a good chance that, well, there's a chance that your kids like my both of my kids had roommates that did not become long term friends, not that they didn't like them one way or the other. It's just they didn't become long term friends. But things can go awry with roommates. So it's not that uncommon. It is something you could kind of predict. And even if it's not about roommates, something's going to come up your kid's going to have to deal with. So why not go through that and say, just as you would say, what is your perfect first year? Look like? You could say, Okay, well, over in the summer, you know, before college, when you're constantly thinking about all the things that could go wrong and how you won't be there to fix it, you know, say things like, you know, if something comes up and your roommate doesn't work out great, who do you think you could reach out to in order to change that for the next semester? Or how do you think you're going to handle it if? Or what happens if you know you don't get this class you want? Or do you know how to handle add drop period because it hadn't, you know, went this way, but I went to college pre computer stuff. So how do you think add, drop happens? What happens if you need to switch a class, or if you don't like a professor going through the exercise of, how would you handle this is great because that's they may not have actually done that thing, but it gives them a certain level of competence and control, that feeling of having done something toward the problem that gives you competence, that gives you a feeling of control over the details and any and this goes for all kids from a very young age. Anxiety comes not all the time, but anxiety often comes from not feeling like you have any control over the details. Right? For example, during covid, we felt like we had no control over our kids schooling and, you know, their mental health and all these other things that were going on. And so a lot of parents exerted a lot more control in their household, because that's all we could do at the time. So a lot of kids reported to me that as bad as their lack of autonomy and independence was before covid. It really got bad during covid Because we were grasping at the straws that we could control. Sorry, to mix metaphors and that same thing, can help your kid have less anxiety. Can help your kid feel more in control of the situation if you have gone through the exercise of So what happens if you get an F what happens if you need a mentor? What happens if your roommate is is a disaster? And having that conversation can give your kid just enough ammunition to make it feel like they can do it. And, you know, a great example of this is my daughter had a lot of anxiety around talking to adults like just a lot of it. It, and I took her on the trip with me to California where I was speaking, and she had to spend some time in the hotel room by herself. She was old enough to do this, but still knew she was going to have to eat during that period, and I gave her permission to order room service. So we ran through it before I left, like, here's what you do. You pick up the phone and you dial this. Okay, now you show me what you would do, and I'll keep my finger on the dial, so the on the hang up thing, so that's not really going through. And when I came back, I found sitting on the desk a script that she had made herself that helped her be more like, literally, a step by step, pick up phone, hit this button, say my name is blah blah blah in blah, blah, blah room, and I would like to order room service. And then she wrote down what she wanted for room service, wow. And wrote down that she needed to say thank you. And wrote down that mom has left, you know, this money to tip, and she did it, and she was so proud of herself, and the fact that she needed a script was totally cool. And that's a moment when you can see that going through it ahead of time can give them enough control of the details, or enough feeling of competence over the details that they can feel like they can do it themselves, and that can extend all the way through to here's how to rent a car. Here's how to make a hotel reservation. Here's how to get through an airport, all that kind of stuff. Here's

Ned Johnson: 27:09

how to glean a filthy rug. I know, you know, and I love that, because you and I both in talk about the research of Steve Meyer. And when people have the experience of dealing with something that's stressful, kind of an adverse experience, not ideally traumatic, where they feel a sense of control, there's something they can do to cope with it. It wires the brain to be tolerant, to generalize it, right? It's trans situational. And then to your point, you know, to rent a car to go off in other places, and particularly like your point about even just mentally rehearsing it is valuable. And this is why, in case, people don't know the amygdala, which is the threat detecting part of our brain, it's not rational, right? And so it can have the same reactions to things that are hypothetical, as to things that are, you know, IRL, right, in real life. And this is why this is really at the core of anxiety, as you anticipate your kid, you know, wrapped around a tree, and oh my gosh, and oh my golly. And you can just, you can completely panic ourselves. But the flip side of that is true that we can anticipate something that's pretty intense, something that's unknown, something that's pretty scary. And so long as we feel, Oh, in the event of that, I could do A, B or C, you feel the sense of control, you know, in which is just, I mean, and the Son, Sonia Lupi, and she of the nuts again, said the single most helpful cognitive tool for lowering stress is Plan B. Thinking, okay, so you get an F, okay, what's your plan B? How do we do we make up a summer course. Do you, you know, turn it to pass, fail. Do you know, whatever?

Jess Lahey: 28:48

Yeah, I learned a really important lesson. Back to the camp thing. So my kids went to a camp where, you know, no electronics, blah, blah, blah. So if I want to get in touch with my kid, I have to write a letter, good old letters, right? So I get a letter from my daughter who is not into camp from the first from the get go, like my son, so into camp. Loves it, went on to become a counselor, all that stuff. Daughter hates it, knew she she just went into it. It was not a great fit. So daughter sends me a letter saying that she got lost, she couldn't find her first class. It was humiliating, it was horrifying. It was anxiety provoking. She had a panic attack. Okay, by the time I've gotten this letter, it's been a couple of days since this happened. I panic as if it's in real time, because I'm used to texting and I send a letter to her brother, saying, Could you check on your sister? She added this panicky thing that happened to her blah, blah, by the time he gets letter, it's been, like a week since this thing happened, and she's fine. Ben's like, I don't know what you're talking about. She's fine. Everything's fine. She figured it out, and it was all good, and I was not able. I mean, what was I gonna do, get in the car and go down there, and even then, it's too late, so in a way like that buffer of time. So one of the best things that I've learned as a parent is sometimes to take a breather. Ask, especially when you are in real time. Ask, is this something that you would like me to help you solve? Or would you like to just vent about this? Or, you know, just dump about this. And this is something I even say to my sister all the time, and 99% of the time, my kids, my sister, just want to vent. You know, I talked to my mom yesterday, and she has dementia, and I can't fix everything for her. I can't fix dementia, but I sure can listen when she needs to vent about what that's like. And our kids sometimes really just need us to just listen and not fix and the nice thing about that separation is we can take a breath, give them the chance to try to do it themselves, and not necessarily. Race to their side and help them and by the way, I just want to mention really quickly, because this is so this has been so useful for me, both with students and with my kids. You mentioned generalizing competence, right? One of the things that we can do that's really, really helpful for kids is to make their failures super specific. Frame their failures as very specific things, like, kid comes home from school and says, my teacher hates me. And you're like, Okay, well, let's have a conversation about that, and let's talk about what you actually mean when you say your teacher hates you. And the story is actually that your kid talked out of turn, or was loud in class today, and teacher got a little miffed with them for that specific thing, right? No, your teacher doesn't hate you. Your teacher got irritated because you did something very specifically that messed with the etiquette in the classroom. So make failures as specific as possible, because that's about a very specific situation, and what can you do to change that specific situation? Oh, I can maybe, you know, be a little bit more mindful about when I speak, but generalize successes as much as possible. Because if you can say, if your kid comes home and says, Oh, today, Mr. So and So doesn't hate me today. Mr. So and so was really proud of me, you say, Okay, well, what was it that Mr. You know, Mr. So and so is really proud of you. And the kid says, well, because I very specifically didn't talk over him, and I my response to that would be, your teacher is really proud of you, not because of that specific situation, but because you proved to your teacher today that you can learn from your mistakes. And if you can do that, if you can say, I'm sorry, and generally, learn from your mistakes, lots of people are going to be really proud of you. Me, your teacher, the people around you and lots of people are going to appreciate you. So make failures as specific as possible and find as many handholds for control your kids control about that specific situation and generalize successes as much as possible so that your kid can characterize those successes as skills, as things that they can do, as ways they can act in the future, to mitigate mistakes or problems in the future, and that's one of the best things we can do for them. Boy, that's

Ned Johnson: 33:00

a lovely frame, and that's great advice. I wanted to add one quick thought to your point about do you want to venture? Do you really want my help with this? It's worth noting that all of us as loving parents, as mammals, from for heaven's sakes, have have a right teen reflex. When people tell us about an issue, a concern, we naturally, our brains, your point, you know, go into overdrive. And so what about this? What about this? What about this? And we naturally want to do it. And I think that's probably part of again in this article. You know, parental over involvement. I don't know if you can generalize this, but my hunch is that parents who feel the most emotionally close to their kids may be even more likely to be overly involved because they feel it so intensely, right? And they're trying to deprive their kids of of any upset or, you know, difficult or challenge, and they just gotta, and they have so much of their headspace taken up with but what if you did this? Jess, what if you did that? Ned, but the problem is, as you, as you noted, when we jump in and do that one, a lot of times, that's not what they don't want to hear it. They just, I just, I just want to rant. It's no one's first reaction to when you tell me some terrible problem, to just say, Man, that stinks. Yeah. Is there a way that I can help? Because my brain's already come up. I think I've got the answers to everything. I already have 47 ideas in my head. But when we jump to those whining, can feel invalid, like, well, Jess, if only you'd done one of these three things that immediately popped in my head, you wouldn't be in this position. You dope. Or it's not that big a deal. I mean, nobody's best friends with a friend from seventh grade forever. It's just wildly invalidating. And back to your point about the competency. What we know is that if you validate me, and I feel like you're really trying to hard to understand my perspective, like you were doing with your with your daughter, that calms her head down. My head down. It makes it much more likely that we come up with the solutions ourselves, yeah, which is exactly what we want for all young people, yeah.

Jess Lahey: 34:57

So given that we've been talking for a while, I want to make sure that anyone listening to this doesn't just have you know the studies or the you know whatever I want, or the abstract information. I want your audience to have some takeaways. And one of the best takeaways, especially well for kids going the whole way through, is, you know, you have to think about this parenting thing as more of a long haul job. This is not something that you quote, win, or you do well at in the emergencies. Yes, there are times during emergencies where you are tested, but at the same time, when it comes to kids and being competent and feeling like they're, you know, able to individuate as adults and all that sort of stuff, that's all long haul stuff, and you are not going to see your parenting win right away. What we need to be thinking. About even when our kids are really little, is okay. Do I want to fix this emergency right now? Do I want my kid to do it perfectly right now, or do I want them to be able to do it themselves next time? Or where do I want and for me, my constant mantra, especially with my daughter, is, not only do I want her to be able to handle this next time on her own, but where do I want her to be in 30 days. Where do I want her to be in six months? Where do I want her to be in a year? And from a parent who has been through a college drop off with a kid who was scared out of her mind and not as confident as her brother was going into it, we dropped her off and parent day visit day was 30 days later. You know that first Parents Weekend, yeah, we dropped off a kid who was scared, who was, you know, just unsure of how all this was going to go. You know, just didn't know anything to a kid who her head was held high and her shoulders were back, and she had navigated making friends, and she had navigated conflicts with professors, and just seeing this person so changed by that was worth everything in the world to me. And I don't think if I had been on constant updates, constant texting, constant, let me fix that for you, kind of mode I would have had the ability, after those 30 days, to have heard about all the things that she solved on her own, because I would have already known about them, because I would have had my little sticky fingers in there trying to fix things. So think more long term. Think about where we want our kids to be one month, six months, a year, five years. And that's something as a teacher, I have to do all the time, like, I don't necessarily need for them to get it right in the second, but I'm going to need for them to get it in the next month. And then also remember that, you know, these kids are very much becoming their own people. So we have to love these kids that we have, and not necessarily our slightly different version of them that we've been maintaining in our head. We have to love the kids we have, not the kids we wish we had, or thought we had or we wanted them to be. We have to love this kid, and we can't just love them based on their performance. And when I say performance, I'm not just talking about grades. I'm not just talking about making honor roll that first semester. I'm talking about we can't just love them based on, you know, those mistakes that they make, or the successes that they have, showing how competent they are, because they're going to screw up a lot, especially as they're separating from us. And finally, there's a parent I lived across from when I had my first baby, when Ben was first born. So it's been 25 years ago, almost 26 years ago, and she had eight boys, and she, yeah, she had eight boys, and when she said that, what she had learned is that the kids who were more connected to her emotionally more attached those kids sometimes had, and Her youngest was a great example of this the most traumatic for her pulling away, because the closer they are, the harder they've got to pull away, and sometimes the further they have to go in order to prove that they can exist away from us. She said being mentally prepared for that helped, but it didn't make it hurt less, but it did help when she knew that part of this her kid, and it's like, you know your kid being mean to you right before they have to go off to college or as a teacher, my eighth grade students being mean to me right before they're headed off to high school, remembering that that's coming because they trust me enough to push back and to be there for them, not just when it's easy and when it's good, but when they're scared, and they're pushing back against me because they trust me to be able to take it, understanding that can go a really long way, because these last few days before going off to college can be particularly tough because they're pushing away against us, because we know we can take it, because they know we love them, and because they're scared. So have those conversations about what they want their perfect first day to look like, and then really try to remember and take to heart why they're telling you what they're telling you, which is often because I really, really need for you to give me the space to have that first day to become who I want to become.

Ned Johnson: 40:08

I love that. When we dropped Matthew off again. We couldn't do anything to help, and we're sitting there at the in our car, at the curb, and there's this long hallway. And he walks down the hallway, and then he turns left to go wherever he's going in his dorm. And just as he goes down, it's like in a movie. And just as he turns left, he looks back down the hallway and looks right in my eyes, and then disappears into darkness. Yeah, and I'm just a mess. And I spent that whole day and that whole evening wanting to call him, wanting to text him, Hey, how you doing. Hey, how you doing. And I had to keep telling myself and asking myself, am I doing this for him? Am I doing this for me? You know, in the same way that have you gotten your homework done oftentimes that's just for me. Didn't feel that I can relax. And so, you know, we, I mean, like you have the best kids in the world. And I just, I just love this kid to pieces. And I was, it was, it took so much self control to know that this was this was his day, this was his space. These are his friends. These were incredibly valuable moments, whatever. And I never did find out exactly what he was doing with it, because it's not my life. It's not my life well,

Jess Lahey: 41:23

and even you know, if you're the kind of parent that has, you know, life 365 turned on, and many parents do for their college students, and thank goodness I didn't, because my temptation would have been I wonder where he is on campus right now, and that is none of my business. It is none of my business. This is his world now, and yes, I'm paying for it, but this is the place where he becomes an adult, and I have to give them the space to do that.

Ned Johnson: 41:54

For the record, I think you and I are probably on the same page. Don't track my kids. Never looked at their grades. I would get the thing your kids grades are online. Great. Not my grades, right?

Jess Lahey: 42:05

Well, and also, this may be, you know, this may make some people nuts, but not only have I never looked at my kids grades like I've never gone on the portal as a parent to look at the grades I've used as a teacher, and I get that this is going to give people the heebie jeebies, and I'm a very in extreme version of this. But I've also never read my kids texts or emails, and because as a writer, as someone who kept a diary when I was little, as someone for whom that diary had to be my private place or I couldn't write what I needed to write. That's what those things are. And as someone who would have been horrified if my parents had picked up the extension in the guest room the phone, you know, for those of us who pick up the extension in the in the guest room and listen to my conversations with my kids, that's what texting and emails are now. So yes, I get that watching your kids online, for some people, is an incredibly important thing, and there's a certain about amount of helping them be safe. But think about it that way, would you have wanted your little sister to pick up the second line and listen to your conversation, or your parents to listen up that listen to that extra line? Would you want your parents to have read your mail? Would you want your parents to have been able to track you when you were a teenager? And just start thinking more about that. Just because we have the technology doesn't mean we should be using it, yeah.

Ned Johnson: 43:20

Well, it's been fun to talk with you. Jess, thanks so much for having this conversation. We know it's you've walked this walk with your kids and helped a lot of folks do this. And so really appreciate you sharing all your wisdom

Jess Lahey: 43:30

well, and the thing you're so welcome and keep in mind also, as someone who taught for 20 years and who I've kept a relationship with a lot of my students as they've gone on to new parts of their life, you know, it's also interesting to listen to people who are not your children and see what they wanted, because you realize that sometimes they'll they'll be a little more blunt with you about what they really, really wanted from their parents. And this is not, you know, the stuff I hear about just needing their parents to back off and let them individuate. This is coming from lots of people who are not just my own children. Yeah,

Ned Johnson: 44:03

that's great point. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey, folks, Ned here, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age 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 rude 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, you.