The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
Our New Book! The Seven Principles For Raising a Self-Driven Child: A Workbook
In this very special episode, I sit down with my friend and co-author Dr. Bill Stixrud to celebrate the arrival of our third “baby” — our brand new book, The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child: A Workbook. If you’ve ever read our earlier books (The Self-Driven Child and What Do You Say?), and found yourself thinking, “I love these ideas, but how do I actually apply them?”—this episode (and this book!) is for you. We created this workbook to help you go beyond the theory and actually make the Self-Driven Child way your way.
Bill and I unpack the inspiration behind the workbook and walk through the seven core principles that anchor it. We talk about everything from building calm, connected homes to the delicate art of motivating kids without trying to change them. Along the way, we share powerful stories from families we’ve worked with, lessons from years of practice, and candid reflections from our own parenting journeys. This episode has actionable insights to support you—and your kids—in building a happier, healthier, and more autonomous life.
Episode Highlights:
[0:00] - Kicking things off with the big news: our new book has officially launched!
[3:00] - Why we wrote a workbook and how it supports parents in putting ideas into practice.
[6:24] - How old myths about parenting can derail connection, and why reflecting is essential.
[8:39] - Real-life stories of transformation when parents shift their approach.
[11:15] - It takes practice to make new parenting habits stick—why this book is about just that.
[13:25] - Diving into the first principle: “Put connection first” and why it matters most.
[15:00] - Principle #2: Be a consultant, not the boss—fostering autonomy through trust.
[16:19] - Communicating healthy vs. toxic expectations—and the power of belief in your kid.
[17:33] - Why kids need an accurate model of reality (and success isn't a straight line).
[21:03] - Motivating kids without trying to change them—how to be more effective and empathetic.
[24:22] - The critical role of being a non-anxious presence and how it strengthens the whole family.
[25:14] - Principle #6: Practicing radical digital downtime for mental clarity and brain health.
[26:26] - Bonus chapter! What education could look like if we built it around brains, not just grades.
[33:51] - Our favorite exercises from the workbook—and how they’ll help you build connection and effectiveness.
Links & Resources:
To order The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child: A Workbook: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780143138259
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
Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know, to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you'd like to, in part because we tender virtual old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself, with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so that you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be if you get a chance order a copy bill, and I and your kids would be grateful,
Bill Stixrud:yeah, and I think that ideally we've always felt we want home to be a safe base. You can decompress. And so often times that parents are highly worried about their kids, or the kids are really emotionally reactive and make the appearance really stressed. And so this idea of just moving in the direction, setting the goal of becoming a non anxious presence in your family. When you're less anxious, you communicate calm as opposed to fear, communicate courage as opposed to fear, and makes it much easier to support their autonomy. And so there's a lot of ways to do it, but I think this noble goal, you know, the great meditation teacher once said it a peaceful green forest requires green trees, and a peaceful world requires peaceful people, and so they have a peaceful family requires peaceful people. So it's just that setting that goal of moving the direction of being a non, anxious presence in your family.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stickstroot 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. You so as people, we all have goals for ourselves and often for our kids, for Bill and for me, our goals are so often around helping people help their kids, and we sometimes feel like our books for helping kids are really our kids. So you can imagine our excitement to share the arrival of our third baby. Take a listen. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey, happy pub
Bill Stixrud:day bill. Right back to you, my friend. So
Ned Johnson:it is March 25 and our book, our third book, The Seven Principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook has dropped. It can be in your hands in minutes. If you walked your local bookstore in hours, if you go to that Bezos guy on Amazon. But we like our local bookstore, so I'm so excited.
Bill Stixrud:Yeah, yeah. It's a nice project. It is
Ned Johnson:a nice project, you know. And I think that fair to say, where we are all is as parents and as kids, we're all also works in projects. Works in projects, projects and work what's
Bill Stixrud:works in progress? Maybe whatever. Thanks. That's what I'm
Ned Johnson:trying to say, works in progress. I'm trying to make a connection there that apparently was too, too far divide for me to bridge. But so So Bill, we've had a great time talking to a lot of a lot of great podcasts, just some really fun folks, old friends and new and one of the questions that has come up, of course, is why a workbook? Because so much of the things that you guys know works for kids are already in books that you've written. So, so why a workbook? Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:well, you know, I think that for me, it's knowing that people all over the world who've read the self driven child help us, help our kids feel more control of their own lives. They feel overwhelmed, they feel anxious, that they feel unmotivated. How do we help them develop that internal at self driven quality? And I think the basic dynamic is it's not easy for a lot of reasons. And in the book, we talk about this woman who who I tested her kids some years before, but when we were lecturing about the self driven child. She probably came to four or five of our lectures, our local lectures group, yeah, one boy said, Why do you keep coming? And she said, every time I hear you talk, I feel so much more calm, so much more okay. My kids is going to be okay. And then then he screwed something up, or I talked to a parent whose kid is doing. Better than my kid. I get all anxious again, so come to hear you. We're like a calm button. My sense, Ned is after you were the self driven child. We really didn't understand, but we wrote this up in trial, this dynamic of how stressful it is to seed control to your kids. Yeah, because you have to trust them, you have to zip your lips and sit in your hands, and there's nothing more stressful, because it increases your sense of control. And so I my sense about the workbook was that we wanted to help parents ground their relationship with their kids, or interaction with their kids in some simple principles. Just just seven. You can memorize seven things pretty easily and just and also that part of the reason it's hard is it lowers your sense of control by trusting your kid. The part of it's hard is that many parents say it's hard for me because this wasn't the way I was raised. Or my parents say, Who's in charge here, or you're spoiling them, or the parents think I'm supposed to be able to get him to do whatever and to achieve at a certain level, or to behave in a certain way. And I think that this Workbook format allows parents to reflect and to think about in a scenario, what would I do it would be the right thing for me to do? What would be the best thing for my kid? How would I like to have been treated when I was a kid in this kind of situation? So for me, it's all a matter of trying to make it easier for parents to trust their kids more and to worry about them less.
Ned Johnson:I love it. I love that line, you know, and you're that we have in the middle of the book. The book chapter on expectations about toxic, healthy versus toxic expectations, myths about parenting, right? That the, you know, a good parent will have a kid who and then fill in the blank, you know, always does their work, you know, is kind to other people, right, keeps their things in order, and all these things that are really children's responsibility, because it's their lives, their rooms, their homework, their relationships. But then we act as though it's a good parent will make sure that these things happen when you can. You can't make your kid like other people. You can't make them do the homework on and on it goes. I'm reflecting on them. Lunch I had with a mutual friend of ours client worked with both of us who had two children who were enormously complicated and born with some conditions, just made it just they had hard lives, you know, doomed beautifully in life, but just a lot of obstacles. And the upshot of this was just, you know, huge amount of anxiety they can was really pretty debilitating for both of these young women for quite a while and so, but their lives were very messy. And I remember going out to lunch with her and saying something about when your kids are struggling so much that, you know, people must look at you and have been years of struggle, they must look at you like, what kind of a, you know, train wreck of a parent are you? And she just took a big breath and she said, You have no idea. And you know what the pop the thought that popped through my head and was shared with her, and something you shared with me is Thank goodness she's the parent that she is. Thank goodness she knows and seeks wisdom and input for the things that matter because her kids had such high needs. And my goodness, if they with all the struggles that they had, if they didn't have the kind of mom that she was like, Where would she be? And so we are all works in progress. And it is not to your point. Is not easy, because she was grounded in what she, you know, great instincts and a lot of wisdom. And then people would, you know, give her the hairy eyeball, like, why Jerry, you know, it's like, oh golly, yeah, just yeah. Just want to stay in bed today.
Bill Stixrud:You know, I just had, I met with some parents this morning, and I consulted with them in June about their eight year old, who was very, very resistant, difficult. A lot of anger at home, a lot of temper tantrums, some hitting very hard kid. And I had a consultation with them and started to share some of these ideas that we talk about in all our books, we summarize and we really kind of actuate. I think in this new book, yeah, she could just, she kind of bought it, but it took, it took two more conversations for her to get the idea that what I'm doing now, it's not really working. You know, my I don't feel close to my Michael said, my kid doesn't trust me, doesn't feel close to me, or I'm on him all the time and changing the energy, just as she said this morning. She said that she was fighting about this one thing over and over again, trying to get him to do the one thing. And he just showed then she said, she said, Honey, I know that this is hard for you. Is there a way that I can help? And then, then they started working together on she said it was just amazing how the energy changed. You know, some parents had just the workbook. Idea is that our first two books that had like, like, there are over 300 pages. They're like, 300 scientific citations, and this book doesn't have hardly any new science. Short, it's pretty straightforward. He has these principles that you can ground yourself in, and these exercises and these scenarios to handle. What would I do? What would be the right thing for me to do? What did my parents do? Right? That kind of thing, right? You know? And some parents, some parents, think of the period that we worked with all four of their kids, and she's pretty micromanaging of all her kids. And she's a lovely mother, wonderful person, yeah, yeah. What drove her to take this approach was desperation. Her youngest was just drug like it, just, just Yeah. And so she just tried it and and really, when the energy changed, she stopped trying to manage everything. By this light,
Ned Johnson:I just on the triumph of hope over experience. I mean, two things, the triumph of hope over experience, you keep thinking, Well, surely this should work. I mean, granted, it has in the last 784, times. But clearly, I mean, this is great. This should this should work. And, you know, we all read. We get great ideas from friends or from parents or from our kids tick tock. You know, podcasts, we listen to books, we read, but we're all mostly homeostatic, and we fall back into, you know, we default to our defaults. And so my thinking around a workbook is, it takes practice to make things a practice. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:I just, I did a podcast on Friday with Eliza Pressman, or the raising good humans, which you're going to do great work she does, you're going to do as well. And in her book, The Five Principles of parenting, one of them is to reflect, you know. And I think what this kind of format, what we hope for, is allows people to really reflect, in part, on my values, what's really important to me. Because many of the parents we work with, when we just kind of just ask them, they become aware that I'm giving my kids messages that are not consistent with my values. I tell my cat you need to get that B up to an A if you just work a little harder. And really, that's not my primary value. My private value is letting is living my kid unconditionally. You know, it's my
Ned Johnson:primary fear. But not Yeah, very Yeah. Hey,
Unknown:what do you want to do?
Ned Johnson:You want to run through all seven principles, like, like, Cliff Notes, what is Spark Notes version now and just, you know, a word or two on a sentence, Johnny on each of them, sure. All right, you want to go first. You want me to go first, you can, all right, so we start with put connection first. And the simple idea is, well, one, you know you love these folks. It's so messy, though they may sometimes be, but we want to put connection first and for kind of three big reasons. One, when we focus on them and not the problems, it lets them know that we are strong enough and safe enough to handle them when they're messy, and they can bring messy problems to us. Two, we can help kids solve messy problems that we don't know about, and if they don't feel it's safe to bring hard problems to us, they won't. And three, for all the ways that we live in, live life and spaces that have more stress all the while that those young brains are developing, we know that kids will develop stress tolerance or aka resilience with hard things, and they can bounce back from them. And one of the biggest ways whole bunch of science from the self driven child about how kids bounce back from hard stuff is having safe places to land, and the single strongest protective factor against the effects of stress on developing young brains is a close connection that a kid has with a parent or another caregiver. So, uh, yeah, put connection first. Yeah. It's
Bill Stixrud:just the title of the second chapter in the self driven child is I love you too much to fight through about your homework. So that basic idea, like my connection with you, my relationship, my love for you, is more important than your grades or how hard you work,
Ned Johnson:whatever. Yeah. And because power doesn't work, this is how you use influence. Yeah. So
Bill Stixrud:the second principle is to be a consultant to your kid rather than the boss or the manager or the homework police. It's the same idea that, or the general idea is this, that ideally we want kids to be able to run their own lives before they leave home, we see so many kids who the parents, understandably, they're still waking the kids up. Kids are really tired to get them out of bed or shutting down the internet or kind of life 360 to make sure they are all the time. And I'm not faulting parents. We want to keep our kids safe. I want them to do well, but those kids, if they don't have experience getting their butt out of bed and managing the use of technology and handling stressful things themselves, then it's setting their own priorities. That they're going to go to college and be home by November or December. They won't, they won't have told you, but that they'd flunk all their classes. They dropped out, right? Right. So I think the idea, that's a general idea, is that we want kids to learn to run their own lives, to make their own decisions, to trust their own judgment, to solve their own problems, and to be open to advice and other suggestions, as opposed to just nah, nah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just resisting other people. Is a test to help. Chapter
Ned Johnson:Three is communicate healthy expectations. And we all have expectations for our kids, but what we can communicate sometimes they're healthy and sometimes they teeter over into toxic and healthy expectations are just they're really rooted in our confidence that our kids can do well if and when they want to that, I'm confident, if this is something that really matters to you, that you can make this work, that you can do well, in this where toxic ones are really I insist that you achieve at a certain level. I insist that you put in this amount of effort, and without that, my approval of you is in jeopardy, right? That my love for you is conditioned on your achieving, or at least striving at a level that I deem, and that's that would be wildly inconsistent with putting connection first. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:you know, but I love about this chapter now just this idea is how simple it is, how simple that changes from you need to do this to have confidence that you can and I work with so many kids where just when I just tell because I test kids for a living, and I say, I'm pretty sure if you work hard at this, you can do well. And I don't say you need to get those grades up. Let's express confidence in them, and it just motivates them to work hard. So think about,
Ned Johnson:there's a story from the first book where, you know, kid will say, I can't do this, and the mom or dad will say, Sure, you can. You just got to work harder. And it it creates a certain you have to, because I know that you can, versus I think that you can, and I hope you do.
Bill Stixrud:Yeah. And I often ask is, would you like to work harder at this, just to try to get buy in. So, yeah, that's a really good one. And the fourth principle is teaching kids an accurate model of reality. And we talked about this really in our first two books. In the first book, self driven child, in the chapter on, partly on alternate routes, the various ways that people find their way to contribute in this world. And the second book, the chapter on happiness, and the idea is that all the kids that we work with in every place that we go to lecture and work with people across the country and really around the world that we're talking about young people think that the most important outcome of their whole child and adolescence is where they go to college. And the successful people never screwed up, never failed anything, never were, never mixed up. The success, the path of success, is just a straight upward climb and and it's just so
Ned Johnson:narrow, and you never fall off. Yeah, you do. You're at the bottom of the ravine. Good luck with
Bill Stixrud:That's right, you know? Yeah, it's and it's just, I mean, it's delusional, is it's just so out of touch with the reality.
Ned Johnson:Haven't they heard about the pivot? Come on, people, the pivot. We all pivot.
Bill Stixrud:But one of my friends, because, literally, he's graduating from Harvard this June, who graduated from high school with the 1.67 grade point average. He took a circuitous route, you know? Yeah, and, it, but because I started working on a book on alternative roots in 1990 and I just know dozens and dozens, probably hundreds and hundreds of people who were I knew. I tested a kid once who's whose dad was homeless for 20 years when I met him, was a successful businessman, had a family, great guy, but he really had a tough time. Who would have predicted them? So I just think that giving kids, I want you to work hard. I want you to work hard to develop yourself, but I don't want you to worry that if you haven't gotten together by the time you're 17, your whole life, is that you're not
Ned Johnson:and one part of an accurate an accurate model of reality, an accurate model of brains, something you shared with me years ago was that the most helpful thing you'd ever learned about brains was how slow to develop. Is the prefrontal cortex, along with it, all those executive functions of problem solving and organizing, but also putting things into perspective and cognitive and emotional flexibility, and so knowing that if your brain is currently under construction and will be for years, it kind of makes sense that your life might be under construction and will be for
Bill Stixrud:years. And I learned that in 1993 and as working with a woman whose kid was in a program for seriously emotionally disturbed kids, and I was able to tell he was he was 16. I said, looking three years, your kid's gonna have a completely different brain, you know? And the kid turned out to be really successful, because it's done really well as an adult. But yeah, that have accurate model of reality, really, it's hard because kids get the input. So it said that you are your grades from the time to pretty little. But if we work together and we're really clear that we can't take delusional ideas away from kids, if that they I have my grades, but we would have to buy into them if we see it differently like that. And
Ned Johnson:as a parent, you are your kids grades, which leads us to often violating principle number five of motivate your kids without trying to change them. Yeah. And. This, of course, is was a big part of in what do you say? Our second book, kind of one of the insights that we made something that hadn't occurred to us when we wrote the self driven child, that a lot of times when parents are saying, well, how do I get my kid to be more organized, be more responsible, take school more seriously, be nicer. You know, whatever, whatever, what they're really saying is, not, how do I motivate my kid, but how do I change them? And the reality is, of course, is we can't change people against their will. We can help them if it's something that they care about. So it's a really fun reflections in there. But what does it feel like when someone has tried to change you? How did that make you feel, flow, audit in there of when you see yourself or when you see your kid deeply engaged in something that really matters to them, the motivational interviewing we have in what do you say, and then some of the exercises in this chapter about motivating without trying to change kids, I find so cool. It almost went done well. I always feel like I've learned a Jedi mind trick. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:it's very powerful. I work with I test a 15 year old yesterday who's in an intensive outpatient psychotherapy program. Very depressed, tons of anxiety, lot of school refusal, suicidal, idiot, the whole thing. He's one of the smartest kids I've ever tested in the last 40 years. He's just, he's brilliant. He's very uneven, but he's brilliant. And I asked him at the end of my interview, tell me about your strengths, seriously, be things you're good at, or just nice things about you as a person. He says, honestly, I don't feel, I feel I don't have any Wow. And I said, I said, Would you like to feel I didn't leap to talk him out of
Ned Johnson:it, to tell him all the things, yeah, yeah. You know, he's growing in right? Because when
Bill Stixrud:you the harder you try to take away that kind of idea, the more kids hang on to it. So I just said, Would you like to feel like you had some strengths? He said, Well, I would but, but then I'd be worried, if I appreciated what my strengths? I'd be kind of arrogant. So I said, actually, the beautiful emotion that's associated with appreciating your strengths is gratitude. It's not arrogance. That doesn't mean you're better than other people. It doesn't mean you're inferior. You aren't inferior either. Doesn't mean you're better. The beautiful emotion is think I'm grateful that I'm be given these gifts. And so I just offered another way of thinking about it. I didn't try to say that you need to think about it like this, but I just offered another way of looking at it, and we'll see. We'll see how it takes
Ned Johnson:that makes me I remember years ago playing a lot of pickup basketball, and I ended up, a high school kid was challenging me to play one on one, and he was, he was six inches taller than I was, so I was letting him take outside shots and tried to box him out, and he's sitting there, too small, too small. I'm like, Dude, you're you're arrogant about the fact that you're tall. I wish I could find Vanessa. You're allowed to be grateful, but arrogant. That's not a good luck on you, my friend.
Bill Stixrud:Yeah. So the sixth principle is to be a non anxious presence in your family. And this is an idea that we've talked about in both our books. And for me, when you see how many anxious young people there are, including young adults, where over a third meet the criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, you see how much there is, you understand that young people are getting the message that they need to be very afraid, that the world is very threatening, and I think that ideally, we've always felt we want home to be a safe base. You can decompress. And so often times that parents are highly worried about their kids, or the kids are really emotionally reactive and big, the parents really stressed. And so this idea of just moving in the direction, setting the goal of becoming a non anxious presence in your family, where when you're when you're less anxious, you're you communicate calm as opposed to fear, communicate courage as opposed to fear, and you support it. Makes it much easier to support their autonomy. And so that there's a lot of ways to do it, but I think this noble goal, the idea is a great meditation teacher once said it a peaceful green forest requires green trees, and a peaceful world requires peaceful people. So that have a peaceful family requires peaceful people. So it's just that setting that goal of moving the direction of being a non anxious presence of your family.
Ned Johnson:And what I love about is sort of thinking back and connecting that to perma of what happiness audit as it were, and that the study that came out of the UK some years ago where the highest priority, the thing that young people most wanted from their parents, or for their parents was for their parents to be happier, because when they're happier, unquestionably they were less anxious and easier to be with, and the less and the less anxious parents are, the more calm parents are, the easier it is for children to be calm and therefore more happy
Bill Stixrud:the part of that. Now is kids don't have to worry about you, because if you're unhappy, your kids worry about you. And it's not to me that you're supposed to be happy tomorrow, but it just means that that goal, that it's right and it's safe to be happy, to be calm, like
Ned Johnson:that man the principle six is practicing radical digital downtime. And of course, there's a lot of thoughts about these and a lot of books. Jonathan heights the anxious generation. And I think we all take seriously the mind scattering, mind numbing effects of too much technology. And technology isn't going away. We're not likely to live lives without smartphones or computers or any other thing. But really, to combat that, we it's not enough just to not be on the screen for a while. We really need to actively do things that'll allow our brains to access the deepest, most reflective calm is centered part of our brains, where we get during during mind wandering and daydream and meditation and sleep, most of all on how to make those priorities not necessarily more important than everything else that matters in our lives, but having having downtime really have a seat at the table. So when we're figuring out how to allocate that 168 hours in the week that all of us have, how do we do in a way that we make space for the really the brain, supporting happiness, increasing benefits of radical downtime.
Bill Stixrud:As somebody who's practiced meditation for 51 years now, and almost all the kids I see now have anxiety disorders, yep, and not a single one. It's very trendy bill. Not a single one knows that at the deepest level of their own mind, it's completely quiet, it's completely calm, it's completely peaceful. And it pains me to think that you know it's like you're in the dark to turn the light, they're just so I think that young people need more tools, and adults that need more tools as well to experience that deeper level of calm, that the deep level of downtime that what used to be able to get from gardening or playing bridge or bowl bowling or whatever kind of hobbies. So yeah, and then there's also bonus chapter, a related principle on education. Why education? Well, you know, we think that we gave a lecture not too long ago called brainless education, because it occurred this. If you look at most schools, certainly from kids 10 and older, you'd never know that anybody who's in charge of school knew anything about the brain that when we eliminate recess and start kindergarten kids learning to read, as opposed to just letting them play. If we ask teenagers, basically if they could be high achieving to sleep six and a half hours a night where they need nine to 10 that this couldn't be. It's not rodent in the brain and so and we realized that for so many young people, school is a major source of their suffering, and we're thinking in significant part because every year you're in school, your sense of control and your internal motivation gets lower. And we've been thinking lately, we've been lectured lately about this idea that a sense of control is a basic biological drive that you see in infancy, you see dramatically in adolescence, is they're striving to become independent and autonomous. And you see in the elderly, where you got a parent in a nursing home or a grandparent, and you give them choice about one thing, you want to have dinner at six or six more like 430, or five, but, but they live longer. It's such a powerful, powerful thing, and schools just the opposite. Gets lower and lower every year. The chapter is focused on encouraging parents and educators to work together to give kids a stronger sense of autonomy or control in school, and also to take care of their brain in a way that allows that supports that strong sense of control,
Ned Johnson:and I'd add to that and a shout out to our friends from the learning inspired group, the great conference about bringing self directed learning and student agency and autonomy to learning places. And Jeff Brown, the superintendent of a really great school out in Ohio, made the point of the benefit of shifting our thinking around school from places of instruction to places of human development, which I think is a really elegant way to think about that. And we're not likely to have healthy, good, constructive human development without taking seriously brains. And his point one, that we certainly share that anything that supports student autonomy is going to be good for their mental health,
Bill Stixrud:yeah, yeah. And their learning, their motivation, yeah, unquestionably. And, and in the chapter, you know, we talk about teachers who are just getting started, where they're asking kids give me feedback on. Simon, I want to know if it helps you. You know and that this, this superintendent in Ohio also has adopted our motto, homework motto, which is inspired, don't require, encourage kids to learn at home, but make homework, most homework, at least
Ned Johnson:I almost I would have done a card well if I knew how to do it. Yeah. So
Bill Stixrud:I was young enough to, over the last several years, we raised it with schools often kind of eye rolling like, oh yeah, that's a good idea. This school district is bought into it, even the kids. The kids are so into it that they're working at home if they need to, if they don't, they're doing something else. So in any case, we talk about educators who're just getting started, and also educators who say things like, we need to design schools for kids, rather than making kids do school a Jerry puts a great wine, you know? And so we're hoping this chapter will get the hands of enough parents, enough educators, that we can start to move the needle for schools, to make them really a healthier place for kids. Yeah.
Ned Johnson:So if you're an educator out there, a school leader out there, or you're a parent who happens to have a kid that attends a school with educators
Unknown:or school leaders, which
Ned Johnson:circle there a little bit, we, we care deeply about your kids and so and so, therefore we, we have to and do, care deeply about the places of learning, where they're engaged, and we are happy at any point to talk with folks, to help, share with them some of the tools that we know help. Because you know, if you're a teacher, you want to do right by kids, and if you're a parent, you want to do right by kids. And all of us use the most effective tools we think we have in our toolbox, but if the ones we're using aren't working well or well enough, maybe a solid idea to add a few more tools to the toolbox. Rub it around and see what's at the bottom there. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:talk about a couple of the exercises. Or,
Ned Johnson:yeah, let's, let's do a favorite exercise. I'll go. Okay, so I have my favorite one, because, again, I'm so into how do you motivate kids without trying to change them. And the this whole idea, it's based on motivational interviewing, and it's simply the idea that, if I as a parent, you know, I want to lose weight, or I want to organize my life better, or keep my car clean or whatever, I have reasons to want to do those things, but I also have reasons. Oh, it's such a pain I got to deal with this, you know, whatever. But the same thing for kids in school and life, and we just want to, we want to acknowledge that there's ambivalence. And so it's an ambivalence exercise where you take something where you've been sort of on your kid about trying to get them to see and get them to see and get them to see, and then you really got to sit there and spend just as much time trying to literally write down all the reasons why someone might not want to do this thing. And it's pretty eye open if you can really try to put yourself in the space of in someone else's head of why are they you know, what are the reasons to not do the thing that you think they should do? And when you recognize that there are a lot of good reasons, pro and con. It's a way to be more empathetic. It's a way to improve your connection. It's a way to realize I don't necessarily know better. It's a way to fall into being more that consultant mode and helping kids, not trying to motivate kids, but trying to help them find and articulate their own reasons to change. Again, I had so much fun applying this in my own life with students and people in my family, and I hope people pick it up, because it's hard as a parent when you I've told them a million times and you haven't done a million times because you're trying to make your kid crazy, but that's a side benefit, but you care so deeply about moving them, and if the million first is not likely to make A difference, and this puts forward a much more effective path to help kids, you know, move them in a direction that's probably in their own best interest, and deepening the connection that you have with them, yeah,
Bill Stixrud:yeah. And just to get when you hammer on on one side of the ambivalence they tell themselves, the other side, and just changing the energy in that way, is so powerful, I would say that one of my favorite exercises in the book net is related to one of the, probably one of the 50 most important things that people that anybody's ever said to me in my life, which is, don't work harder to help a kid, help a kid solve a problem than the kid does. And so there's, there's kind of the energy equation in terms of something you want a kid to see a kid's problem and who's putting the most energy to try to solve. And because, you well know, and some readers may know that years ago, I used to, I still do. I ask underachievers, if you don't turn in an assignment, who's most upset, and invariably, they say, my mom. I say who's next most upset, my dad, then my teacher, then my tutor, then my therapist, they're never on the list. And I just realized that energy didn't change until the adults stopped working harder than the kid did, and then kids started to feel that this is my life. I need to I need to step up to the plate here. And I found, almost invariably, when the energy changed in that way, the kids, the kids started taking. My responsibility. So I like
Ned Johnson:that. I have to, I love the bill, and I have to tell you that I don't know it was four or 568, years ago when you first dropped that, you know, wisdom bomb on me. Of whose problem is it? My default reaction, I didn't say anything at the time was in the back of my head. I'm thinking, of course, it's my responsibility. Of course, this is my kid. This is her life. And it really took me a while to come around to No, it's It's not my responsibility. It's my responsibility to offer her help. It's my responsibility to be there in ways that she wants or needs, but it's not my responsibility to grab control, you know, grab a hold of the steering wheel and steer things for her. And yeah, if you start off this conversation, it takes, it takes practice. It takes courage, you know, to to trust our kids more and worry about them less. It's, you
Bill Stixrud:know, and I think that within the first two books, we wanted to provide all the science we could to make this seem sound, right? This is, this is based in years of research, decades of research, and it just, it makes sense. And then we get people, okay, this makes sense to me, but then emotionally, it's hard to do. This is what this workbook is about. It's about to make it easier to do. Yeah,
Ned Johnson:I love it. Well. Pub day, Bill, congratulations on helping us collectively. I think I'm I feel good about this wrestling. Another one to the ground. Yeah. I hope folks will pick it up. As Bill pointed out, it's quite pithy, by stick shoot and Johnson standards. It's very interactive. You'll, you'll zip right through it. They're exercises for you, for you with your spouse or partner, for you with your kids, some things for your kids alone. It's fantastic. I mean, I think it's a group project. It'll take you practically no time at all to get through it. And again, if you, if you want bill or me, or both of us to help you or your school, your organization. We never, ever get tired of talking about this stuff, because like you, we care about the success and happiness. I'll say happiness and success. We'll do in that order of your children. Thanks, Ned. Thanks, Bill. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey folks, Ned here. Like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you'd like to in part because we can revert to old ways. We hear a great suggestion or learn a new approach, but to easily fall back into the same darn things that didn't work before, it isn't easy, which is why I'm really excited to share with you that Bill and I have a new book out this spring, the seven principles for raising a self driven child, a workbook. Our goal is to make it easier to put into practice more of the advice from our first two books, the self driven child and what do you say? Full of reflections and exercises to do yourself with your partner and with your children, we want to help make the self driven child way your way, so you can, more often than not, be as effective as you want to be with your kids in ways that we know you want to be. If you get a chance, order a copy Bill and I and your kids
Unknown:would be grateful. You.