The Disengaged Teen Part 1

Are you worried about how engaged your child is in school and their learning? You’re not alone. In this episode of The Self-Driven Child Podcast, I sit down with two powerhouse guests—Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson—authors of the book The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better. Together, we dive into the alarming trends of disengagement among kids as they transition from tots to teens and why so many high schoolers feel disconnected from their education.

Rebecca and Jenny share their personal experiences, surprising research findings, and practical strategies that empower kids to take charge of their learning. We discuss the crucial role of agency in fostering curiosity and resilience, why high achievement doesn’t have to come at the expense of mental health, and how even "problem kids" can thrive when they find their spark. This is Part 1 of our conversation, and you won’t want to miss it.

Episode Highlights:
[0:50] - Introduction: Why teen disengagement should concern us all.
[2:00] - Meet Rebecca and Jenny: Their unique journeys into education and child development.
[10:13] - The shocking statistics on student engagement: Why it plummets after third grade.
[18:24] - Agency and engagement: The secret sauce for learning success.
[21:23] - Four modes of student engagement: Passenger, achiever, resistor, and explorer.
[28:11] - The neuroscience of nagging: Why it shuts down problem-solving in teens.
[32:31] - The primal need for respect: How it shapes teen development and parent relationships.

Links & Resources:

Rebecca and Jenny's book: The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better

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

Rebecca Winthrop: 0:49

We are very concerned about how disengaged kids are in school and in their learning. And the highlight message from all our research is that it starts out okay. They're happy in kindergarten. Kindergarteners first graders are happy by third grade, 75% say they love school, and it just takes a nosedive from there on out, and by the time they get to 10th grade, it's flipped. Only 25% say they love school, 75% say they don't. You may say, Well, kids don't have to love school. It's true, but we did find that how much they enjoy their experience is pretty related to how engaged they are, how much effort they put in, how they feel about it. How are they connecting their learning deeply and thinking? Are they proactively going after things that interest them to all characterize engagement?

Ned Johnson: 1:40

Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stick shoot 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, one of the things that we as parents understand and want our kids to learn as well is that we tend to get out of life what we put into it, and when it comes to how kids spend their time and attention. We should want all kids to engage deeply, authentically, agentically with their lives and their learning, both in school and out. But far, far too many kids feel anything, but especially as kids move from tots to teens, their level of engagement drops and drops and drops, which would concern us all. I'm really excited to bring to this conversation in two parts with authors of an incredible new book, The disengaged teen helping kids learn better, feel better and live better. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Well, welcome Jenny, welcome Rebecca, thanks for having us,

Rebecca Winthrop: 2:49

letting us be here. Oh,

Ned Johnson: 2:50

I'm so excited to talk about your book. It is such a good book. Before I go full nerd on this, though, I love for you guys to talk just a little bit, tell listeners a little bit about your wildly extensive backgrounds in education. You can make that as brief or as intense as you want. And what brought you to writing this really, really good book. I

Rebecca Winthrop: 3:09

will start and then pass it to Jenny. It's Rebecca. So I have worked in education my whole life, and I've worked globally across about 30 different countries, including the US, from the South Bronx, which at the time where I worked, there was the poorest congressional district in the country, to migrant labor camps, all sorts of different contexts. And for me, one of the things that just drew me to education was how incredibly powerful it is for changing people's life circumstances. It was powerful for me, and I grew up in rural Oregon, somehow made it out to the east coast on a full scholarship for college, and that completely changed, as one does my life and world. You know, I was a, definitely a token Oregonian. I think I was one of two Oregonians at my school. So anyways, I got an opportunity to change my life so that that has been, for me, one of the main motivating factors around education. And have worked from soup to nuts with schools, with parent organizations, with student organizations, teacher organizations, all the way up to lots of decision makers, including the UN Secretary General's Office and the White House, etc, really trying to help people do right by kids and make sure that they get rich learning environments, so that they're not only Mastering academic skills, but developing the types of critical thinking, interpersonal skills, creativity skills that they every kid needs, no matter if you're from a rich or poor family, every kid needs to thrive so that that's my background and in COVID, I was very surprised as an ED expert, to realize that I did not have a good read of my own kids education while they were engaged in school. I have two boys, one was in third grade, one was in sixth grade at the time of COVID, and I was not at all worried about my older kid, because he always brought home straight A's. Was very happy in school. School seemed natural to him. He didn't struggle too much. And I thought, oh, he'll be fine. I'm not going to have to worry about him, but I really am going to have to worry about my younger kid, who had been recently diagnosed with dyslexia, was two years behind on reading and had internalized this idea that he was not capable, that he was stupid, and had basically given up altogether. He wouldn't even try in class. And I thought, oh, gosh, you know, homeschooling online, this is who I'm going to have to pay attention to. And it turned out to be the opposite. My older child. The minute they went online and school went pass, fail, he lost all motivation, and he told me, if it's not counted, and. Mom, it doesn't matter. And I realized he which, of course, adds me in the heart, you know, entertainment, conversations, the importance of learning and education. You know, process. It's what goes you know, the skills you develop. No, no, if it's fast, fail, who cares? So he had been really just collecting gold stars and not interested in learning itself. And my younger one blossomed, caught up to grade levels. He was freed from having to keep up with his peers. He actually was really engaged and motivated. And I I knew how important how you learn is in addition to what you learn, and that in motivation, engagement is incredibly important. And if it was hard for me to see this in my own kid. How could I help other parents see it more accurately, and teachers and educators? And so I knew Jenny had loved, absolutely loved her writing my favorite education journalist, and called her up and said, Please, please, please, on bended knee, would you partner with me? And she eventually said, yes. It took a while, but she eventually said, Yes. She's

Ned Johnson: 6:54

not only brilliant researcher, but very persuasive. Rebecca, persistent,

Rebecca Winthrop: 6:59

I would say.

Jenny Anderson: 6:59

I would say persistent over persuasive.

Ned Johnson: 7:03

Wore you down. Jenny.

Rebecca Winthrop: 7:05

Jenny, over to you

Jenny Anderson: 7:07

as a reporter. I would say, precise. I tell my kids this all the time, persistence pays, and this is evidence of that. So yeah. I mean, I do not have the long story history and education that Rebecca does, which makes this partnership, in my opinion, great. I've learned so much from her. But I was actually a finance reporter for almost 20 years. I worked places like the New York Times. Covered the financial crisis. I was covering Lehman Brothers for the financial crisis, which was a big story at the time, and I really loved it. I loved sort of the passport to learn and to question and to hold people to account. I always think of reporting as being like the ultimate explorer career, because you literally have the ability to be at the center of the world's biggest ideas as they're happening, and ask anybody anything, which is amazing and exhausting as well, but also amazing and and then I had my own kids, and I was really, it really is as if, overnight, I was interested in a whole new set of issues, like, how do kids learn? How does child development work? How does, how does learning work? And I was really surprised at how little information there was out there about this, I think the way major media, which is where I lived and kind of where I consumed, a lot of my news, was very much focused on the politics of education and not so much on the process or experience of education. And I found that frustrating, and I quit the New York Times to join a digital media startup called courts, which allowed me to start to explore that. So I sort of organized my reporting around the science of learning and around the future of schools and the art of parenting and the neuroscience of infancy. And so I created topics to me which sort of made sense, and it was a huge experiment, and it really people wanted to read this stuff. People are very curious about who they are, how they came to be, who they are, and this process of learning. So it was a bit of a test concept. And then Rebecca came along and said, let's write a book about it. And I thought, I don't think I want to do an entire book about it. And then it actually, as she persisted, as we noted she persisted, I would say two things. I had a book that really left a stamp on me. Was Jonathan Kozol savage inequalities, just in terms of realizing, again, how pivotal education is. It was for me, but I was incredibly privileged in many ways in my own education, and realized how much that had formed my love of learning and the opportunities I had had. But I then I kind of remembered this book and just what an impact it had on me. And I thought, well, doing a book like really committing to understanding and translating for parents, something that could be helpful, right? Helping parents get unstuck in this incredibly challenging thing that we do, you know, and I do think parents want to support their kids, and they often don't know what to do. I know I don't a lot, and so again, it goes back to that passport. This was a passport for me to figure out how to help my kids, as well as as well as, hopefully, some some others I

Ned Johnson: 9:59

adore. What probably my favorite educational quote is from Jonathan Kozol, in which he says, childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood, it should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies, but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself. So I kind of full, Oh, yeah. I kind of love that you went from a career in finance to career in children and learning and the neuroscience of brains and all those kind of things. Because I think we could all credibly say that the ROI on on. Well, to your point, Rebecca, it's incredibly important how kids learn. So I think that those investments, so I presume that's what brought you to engagement as the core of this. So I gather. I mean, you were seeing these issues, not just engagement or disengagement in your own household, but but certainly you, Rebecca, with the research you've done that this is a phenomenon across the country and across the across the world. Do you want to talk about some of the statistics that you guys have dug into? Sure,

Rebecca Winthrop: 11:03

we are very concerned about how disengaged kids are in school and in their learning. And the highlight message from all our research is that it starts out okay. They're happy in kindergarten. We have a question on some on a large survey we did with our partner transcend, that says, How much do you love school? And kindergarteners, first graders are happy. My third grade, 75% say they love school, and it just takes a nosedive from there on out, and by the time they get to 10th grade, it's flipped 10th only 25% say they love school. 75% say they don't. You may say, Well, kids don't have to love school. It's true, but we did find that how much they enjoy their experience is pretty related to how engaged they are, how much effort they put in, how they feel about it. How are they connecting their learning deeply and thinking? Are they proactively going after things that interest them to all characterize engagement?

Ned Johnson: 12:01

You know, the thing that occurs to me, there is one. There's the the ROI on the tax dollars that we all pay. But to back to your point, Jenny, about neuroscience, that from our perspective, the most important outcome of high school and adolescence is not the college or university you attend, but the brain that you develop and as you know it. And anyone who studies brains, does the brains develop in the ways that you're used. So we would rather have people who are not, well, I won't steal your thunder, who aren't in modes that are low engagement, but rather in high engagement. So

Jenny Anderson: 12:34

Ned, we love that line of yours, and we quoted it. Brains develop as they are used, and when you really sort of sit with that and think about it, and then think about sometimes what we ask of our kids, and how often we lose the plot on what it's all about, you know, with love and good intention, but there is some real power to that statement.

Ned Johnson: 12:56

Thank you. I want to add you have in your intro. This is, I love this line you write, there's a weird combination of competitive pressures and insufficient stimulation, and they develop a frustration that fuels a pervasive lack of meaning in their daily existence. This is a disaster for kids mental health. It is bad for countries that need educated citizens. It's also bad for families trying to raise children who can thrive in the 21st century, we could pretty much stop there, except what we're

Rebecca Winthrop: 13:25

gonna ideally people, it's important not only for how well your kids do, but for their lives and for our communities? Yeah, that's the message,

Ned Johnson: 13:34

right? And I just want to, you know, because I'm jumping around as I tend to be a tad desultory, but you know the subtitle of your book? You know the disengaged teen, helping kids learn better, feel better and live better. And I think that a lot of parents and a lot of educators, frankly, think that it's a trade off between high academic, I'll call it performance, rather than engagement and mental health, that all the suffering that kids go through to achieve at a high level, or suffering they go through as we try to get them to achieve that somehow it's worth it. And of course, the science and the neuroscience and psychology, and of course, your book so capably says that's a false it's a false trade off that how kids engage is it says everything about both, again, the impact of the efforts from educators and their own efforts, but also the mental health Why is that such a big deal? From a mental health perspective,

Jenny Anderson: 14:28

I think we're having a very narrow conversation right now about an important discussion about mental health and the challenges so many kids are facing, but the causes, I think we're settling on smartphones and saying that that is the primary cause. And I'm not going to steal anybody's thunder. I have two teenage girls. The phones are a real problem, but I think we're very clear that if you take the phones away tomorrow that doesn't give kids the skills to thrive in the world. It doesn't give them the learning to learn skills. It doesn't that just not having a phone isn't going to fuel curiosity. So this idea of sort of engagement is the thing that is going to help them learn better, versus just not being on their phone. Now, clearly, you know, technology is a major disengagement enabler, is what we say in the book, right? You know, that's really fun to be on. It was really fun to be on Tiktok, and a way more fun than algebra. But I do think that we need to broaden the car. I'm glad we're having the conversation about phones. I'm really happy to get phones out of classrooms. You know, I'm really happy to regulate big tech. I mean, you know, geez, they could have done this all along, and funny that they decide to do it now, but thank goodness they're finally doing it now. You know, these are all good things, but that is still not enough of the conversation to how do we help our kids have good learning experiences? So we are using their brains in the way we want them to be developed. To go back to your line,

Ned Johnson: 15:47

I have a friend who observes that Virtu. Is not the absence of vice, right? And engagement is not the absence of disengagement enablers, yeah, if I got that right, yeah.

Rebecca Winthrop: 15:59

The one thing I would add there Ned, because you bring up something that time and time again we found, and we call it the achiever conundrum, which is, of course, parents, teachers, we all want our kids to achieve. And we, Jenny and I deeply believe and in striving for excellence, for our kids, for ourselves, but not striving for perfection. Nobody can be perfect. And this conundrum is, how do we support high achievement, which is important, without breaking kids and the one thing that we were both, I think, really surprised at the depth of the of the evidence on this. It is a false dichotomy. It is a false dichotomy. It does not hold true. The kids who are the most motivated and engaged, who get to pursue their interests in classrooms, they get to follow their curiosities. They have a little more space in their day. They're not run ragged by extracurricular. They get the best grades. They get the best grades out of all of all the kids. So it is a false dichotomy, and when you think about it, the more excited and interested you are in pursuing your own interest, the more you're going to invest, the more you're going to feel good, the better you feel there's all this evidence to shows that teachers see how excited you are, and they give you harder work, more challenge, more space, more autonomy in this fabulous virtual upward cycle. So it is a false dichotomy, and we do have to wrap our heads around that as a community, a community of parents, a community of educators working together

Ned Johnson: 17:31

I get to rather than I've got to, I suppose,

Jenny Anderson: 17:35

yeah. And also, I just would add one last thing, which is that the system is insatiable, like we know that, right? So it is, it is, you know, there is no kind of at this point. And so it is on us. Unfortunately, if you have one of those really high achieving kids, and I do to be the one putting the brakes on, teaching them balance, teaching them radical downtime, teaching them reflection, modeling for them, creating this space for them. You know, these are often kids who really will do want to strive, and we want to support that striving, but we do have to always say, at what cost, at what cost, and show them how to slow down a little bit and balance a bit,

Ned Johnson: 18:10

really, well said. So Rebecca, though you understand as a researcher that what you're seeing, this wasn't just in your household, right? This is all over the place. Can you? Can you talk to us about what the research shows in terms of, I guess, under engagement for students, absolutely.

Rebecca Winthrop: 18:25

Well, the sad story is that as kids get older, they start to disengage. So when kids are in third grade, we found that 75% of them say they love school, and by the time they hit 10th grade, only 25% of them say they love school. And that tracks national census data on levels of engagement, which is basically about a third of kids by the end of high school are engaged, and the rest are not. So we are really losing not just the love of learning, but the attention and the effort of a lot of kids as they get older.

Ned Johnson: 19:01

Wow, and your research shows that agency is really the secret sauce walk us through. Why this is so profound, because I think a lot of parents and even educators may not get this

Rebecca Winthrop: 19:13

Yes, we were even surprised ourselves at the power of the research. And I want to shout out to one particular body of compelling evidence that comes out of the academic John Marshall Reeve and his colleagues, which basically found that you can be engaged behaviorally, which is, you show up and do your homework, pay attention and don't disrupt class. That's bare minimum participation. It's not actually engagement. You can even be engaged emotionally, where you're interested in what you're doing and cognitively, which is where you're really focused and learning deeply, and you're connecting what you're learning in one class to real life, or what you're learning in another class, and you're really mastering the material. However, all of that, you can be engaged in a way that you are just following. You are following what the teacher is asking you. You are following what the proper rubric is. It's which is not a bad thing. We want kids to follow our instructions sometime. However, when kids get the opportunity to lead and have a little bit of agency over their learning, and that includes making a few decisions. So three different homework options, and you get to choose, is one small example of how this plays out in a classroom. But you can do it at home too. Those kids who have that opportunity, and they start having some agency over their own learning what Reeve calls agentic engagement, those kids, and we call it explore mode. We'll talk about it later. Later, those kids, they get the best grades in the school. This was in class comparisons. Some classrooms gave these kids opportunities. Other classrooms didn't. They get the best grades. So this is not sacrificing achievement, and they're much happier because they're they have some say over their life, and they get to, they get to follow their interests a bit so it's more interesting, and the teachers see how excited they are and give them more freedom. And it's this virtuous upward cycle. And then the third thing is they are developing these resilient learning skills that will help them navigate a world of AI they are going to be way more prepared when they leave our homes and our schools. So that is the trifecta of why agency is so important. For engagement, you get better grades, happier kids and more prepared for a world of AI, wow.

Ned Johnson: 21:40

And I can only imagine, as a teacher, don't you want to teach happy, engaged students? It

Rebecca Winthrop: 21:47

makes their life so much easier and so much more fun. I

Ned Johnson: 21:51

love it. I love it. Can you talk a little bit about, in your book, you talk about the age of achievement versus the age of agency, and then talk a little bit about, you have this beautiful, because I want to get into the modes of this. You have this beautiful graph for those who haven't done math and why, on the y axis, agency, and on the x axis across the bottom, achievement. Unless I flipped those, I think I have that right.

Rebecca Winthrop: 22:13

Sure. Why don't I do the modes very briefly, and then we'll talk about why they're important and what they represent as education is shifting in terms of the needs of society are shifting that all parents have to have their eyes on. So basically, we did tons of research, and we discovered that kids operate in about four different modes, and this is how they learn, how they engage. One is passenger mode. Kids are coasting, doing the bare minimum. This is a lot of kids who say that their schooling experiences inspire passenger mode. Over 50% of kids in middle school and high school, you've got kids in achiever mode. These are the go getters. They are striving for excellence. We just talked about it. There's often an achiever conundrum, however, which means that they can burn out, and they are often fragile learners, because their focus, like my oldest son, was on the grade and the outcome, not the journey. They often hold back from pursuing special interests of theirs that would make them more engaged, but they're worried they might not get the grade and or because they're used to getting top marks. Anytime they don't get top marks, they sort of melt down and aren't able to sort of pick themselves up again. So that's achiever mode. Then we have resistor mode. This is what every parent worries about and every teacher. These are the obvious kids, the quote, unquote, problem children. They are class clowns. They stop doing homework. They disrupt class. They maybe withdrawal together. We have a, you know, an epidemic of school refusal and chronic absenteeism in the US. About a quarter of kids miss 10% of school. It's terrible. And then ultimately, kids may leave school. And we really found that actually these kids, there's nothing wrong with these kids. They are reacting to an environment that doesn't work for them, and they do have agency, because they're trying to use their voice to tell everybody in the environment, parents, teachers, school leaders, you you work with kids all the time. This isn't working for me. I'm unhappy. This isn't working for me. And often they do it, perhaps not appropriately, and they're pointing away from their own learning. But when you can harness that agency, and kids can point it towards their learning in school, they really get into explorer mode, which is what we talked about before. This is where kids are. Have the opportunity to be proactive, to bend their learning to their interests. Like, oh, I'm going to can I'm going to ask to do my essay on this. I'm going to ask to do work with a study buddy. I'm going to take a YouTube dive on, you know, octopuses, because I think they're amazing. You know, whatever it is, they're really cool. Getting excited, and in that mode, kids report that less than 10% of kids third through 12th grade report that they regularly get a chance to do those types of explore mode things in school. But when they do, they get the trifecta. They get better grades, they are happier, and they're developing these resilient learning skills that prepare them for a world of AI that they're coming of age in which gets to our age of achievement, to age of agency. And I'll pass to Jenny, do you

Jenny Anderson: 25:21

want me to talk you through the graph? I feel like this is my opportunity, yeah, which I never had before. This is great, although I am, of course, worrying that I'm getting the x and y axis axes mixed up, but you'll correct me, but I'm pretty sure that engagement is the x axis along the bottom, nailed it, and an agency is the y axis. And if you So, imagine it's so you know, a four by four. And basically the point. Think that we want to be what Rebecca was just talking about is the top right corner is the Explorer. And those kids have agency, and they're engaged. And if you step down one you've got achievers. They're engaged, highly engaged. They're doing a lot of things, but they have very little agency. They are engaged because they are satisfying the demands of the system, which we noted, are insatiable, which is what puts them at risk of mental health challenges. Then you move over to the left on the x axis, and you've got low engagement and low agency. And that's the passenger those are the ones who are coasting. You know, our research found that 50% about 50% of kids, are sitting in this spot, and it's hard, because you really do have to find something to get that they're in neutral, right? They're just coasting, and you need to get something to get them into Drive. We argue that that's interest, but that's, you know, low engagement, low agency. And then, of course, as Rebecca just said, you've got low engagement, but high agency. These are the resistors, the problem kids, dubbed the problem kids, kids with problems. But when the Breakfast Club crew Exactly, exactly the reason we love that movie. But when you get those kids pointed in the right direction, when you can get to what is making them resist, withdraw, act out, then there that agency can be tapped, and they can kind of catapult to explore mode. In some ways, the achievers and the passengers have a trickier road in front of them, because they have less agency. And that's something we argue is incredibly important. One

Ned Johnson: 27:17

thing I really liked in talking about the passengers is that it can be because kids are over taxed or under taxed, or, to use the language the zone of proximal development I was writing down under zip team. I think it's a really important point, because when kids, well, tell us, I have a student who's just started his first year of college. Older sister, wildly academic, went off to an Ivy League, blah, blah, blah, this kid comes along. He has ADHD, has learning disabilities. He's also developed anxiety and depression to go along with all that super loving mom, but super on top of him. And so he did just as little as he could all the way through school. And he just started his first year of college, and his dad popped his head in and said, you know, James says he's, you know, it's going to be, he's doing well. And did it on, and he said, I'd said to him, honestly, I'm not that confident about you in college, because you really didn't do anything in high school. And he turned to his dad, he said, Dad, there's a difference in high school. I had to be there in college. I want to be there. And Dad said, well, like, that's true. I said, respectfully. I said, Your son has absolutely put his finger on the secret sauce of whether he's going to get anything out of college a way that he did not of high school. That's a really powerful story. Oh, he's a great kid. He's a great kid. But so I imagine it could be easy for educators, for parents, to look at kids who are stuck in neutral as you as you say, Jenny, and not know what they're looking at. And they can lean on kids more when they you know, there's a question whether they need, they need higher demand or lower demand, right?

Jenny Anderson: 29:01

So I have to talk about my favorite study from the book. I mean, by far my favorite study. This is in chapter six. It's the opening to chapter six, and it's some research done by Ron Dahl, who's at UC Berkeley, and Jennifer silk, who's at the University of Pittsburgh. And it was a study that looked at the actual brains, examined the brains of teenagers while their mothers, their mothers were nagging them or criticizing them. So the researchers recorded the mothers issuing neutral statements, positive statements, and then something that bothers me about you. And I mean, honestly, what parent wouldn't be able to record that you never pick up your shoes. Your room is always a mess. You never come down to dinner when I ask you to like, what would you treat my house like a dorm room, all this stuff? And so they did this, and they watched what happened to kids brains when they heard that critical voice, that nagging voice, and the problem solving part of the brain shuts down, and so we nag these kids often in passenger mode. Parents often think they're lazy. They decide that the only way they're going to get anything done is to nag them, and yet, like we can literally see inside their brains that when we nag them, it's as if we've shut their brain off, they are unable to solve the problem. And I totally get this, it is super counterintuitive to step back and to give those kids a little autonomy, a little space to make those decisions for themselves, which they will, quite frankly, probably make poorly for a little bit of time, and that will help them build the data and internal sort of signaling to, oh, that was a bad decision. My teacher's really mad at me. I didn't get a very good grade. You know, all of those things that happen that may well then motivate them to do better, versus my mother yelling at me, it's such

Ned Johnson: 30:38

an excellent point. And of course, that perceived criticism is stressful, and when the stress response goes off, the prefrontal cortex and executive functions and all those tools. That are involved in all goal directive, problem solving, decision making, problems all go sideways, and yet we, as parents and educators, we end up falling back into that, because when we're watching a kid who's having a hard time, we get anxious, and a low sense of control is so stressful to us. So we exert more control over children, but then have them have less control, and then we're surprised we don't get a better outcome. It is, as you said, it's not easy being a parent, but boy, nothing like a little brain science to go I might be wrong about this.

Jenny Anderson: 31:23

My first book was about marriage, and we actually found some and this was over a decade ago. But what's fascinating is like, oh, lo and behold, also in marriage. Nagging doesn't work, and yet it is the default for many of us for many things. So I I am 100% guilty of knowing the research and not necessarily implementing it well.

Ned Johnson: 31:41

We're all homeostatic. And if I'd love to try to connect two things that one of the I forgot, I'm not sure what part of your book you make the point that in the same way that mothers crave certain foods during pregnancy. Teenagers crave respect, right? And I know from the work of John and Julie Gottman, I don't know if that was central core of your book, that the kiss of death, I gather from their research of relationships is contempt, right? We can fight like cats and dogs. Rebecca and I can tell you, know, right? I can't believe but, but as long, as long as it's not contemptuous, but as soon as that respect is gone, the relationship falls apart, and I and it has to be. It has to be so with children, it needs, as it is with spouses,

Jenny Anderson: 32:23

even more so, right? Because if you think about the sort of neuro developmental task of an adolescent, it's right to sort of separate from your caregiver, find your tribe, find your mate. You know, you're scanning the Savannah. You're trying to find how you're going to be respected. You're literally looking for respect in a way that's almost way more carnal than we all want respect, but like it is so primal in that moment. And they don't get a lot right, they don't have a lot of autonomy. We're telling them what to do a lot of the time. And so this idea of sort of genuine, authentic respect, even when, as a parent, you're really not feeling, you know, it's hard, it is hard to do, but it's like, nice to step back and think, wow, they're really trying to be respected so they can go out in the world and be respected. And I have to be ground zero of that. I have to be the first place. So instead of like, are you joking? Did you just actually do the same thing that you've done 30 more times? Like, hey, I noticed you left your shoes in the hallway. Like, could we try another

Ned Johnson: 33:21

shoes left all over the house? Again, a frustration most of us can relate to Jenny, at the risk of causing further frustration, I'm gonna leave our conversation here and pick up on the next episode with a deeper dive into what helps the passengers, the 50 plus percent of students who are either over or under challenged in school. Also why Jenny and Rebecca's kids hate this book, or the making of it a common big mistake the parents often make in trying to get their kids to engage more with their learning. And lastly, the magic of pottery, curiosity and connection, all science backed 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 root 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.