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
Your Child Is Ready For College. Are You?
Hey folks, Ned here! In this episode, I sit down once again with my friend and co-author Dr. Bill Stixrud for a candid, real-world conversation not just about whether your kid is ready for college—but whether you are too. While we’ve talked before about student readiness, today we focus on the parent side of the equation.
We dive deep into the emotional rollercoaster of sending a kid off to college—especially that first semester. From managing your own stress and expectations to shifting your role from fixer to consultant, we cover the principles that help young adults step up while helping parents step back (without losing their minds). Whether your teen is packing their bags or you're still a few years out, this episode is packed with wisdom, laughs, and some very practical takeaways to support both you and your child through this major life transition.
Episode Highlights:
[1:27] - Framing the college transition and the emotional load it carries for both kids and parents
[3:24] - Why so many students flounder during the first semester of college
[4:50] - What it really means to be "college-ready": from laundry to self-regulation
[7:33] - Parents’ struggle to let go: DoorDash, bad Wi-Fi, and the illusion of control
[9:10] - The N.U.T.S. framework: understanding stress triggers in the college transition
[13:06] - How to show up as a “non-anxious presence” for your college-bound kid
[15:18] - Why being a consultant—not a commander—is more effective and brain-friendly
[18:45] - Teaching resilience through trust and shared problem-solving
[21:01] - Handling late-night panic calls and how not to take on your kid’s stress
[24:21] - Setting healthy communication boundaries without harming the relationship
[26:21] - Tuition, leverage, and waivers: what parents can control
[27:51] - How regular Sunday check-ins can be a win-win for parents and students
[33:10] - The messy, non-linear path to adulthood—and why that’s okay
[35:18] - Plan B thinking: preparing mentally and emotionally for alternate routes
[37:51] - Gap years, burnout, and why "not now" doesn't mean "never"
[41:20] - A personal story: why Ned didn’t call his son that first night of college
[43:12] - Final takeaways: consult, don't control—and maybe get a dog
Links & Resources:
· Who's Ready For College: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-self-driven-child/id1676859533?i=1000653304892
· Navigating Childhood Anxiety: A Conversation With Dr. Eli Lebowitz: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-self-driven-child/id1676859533?i=1000619235562
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 like to, in part, because we tend to refer 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 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:And what do you say? Say that I love you more than anything, and I want to help you in any way I can, but if I solve the problems for you that I'm going to weaken you, if I help you, kind of avoid dealing with stuff that that's hard for you is going to weaken you. I love you too much to do that.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William sticks 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, transitions are hard, and for all the promise and excitement of a new school year, maybe a new school too, there can be a lot of angst the first day of kindergarten. Do you remember it? Maybe your child was in tears and had to gently be peeled from your arms by a loving and lovely kindergarten teacher, or maybe you had to be peeled from theirs. Maybe it was the start of middle school when you watched and hear panic as you're no longer a kid, but not quite a teen, walk towards the front door among what appeared to be full grown adults. So much bigger, taller, did that kid have a beard? And when we worry, we tend to try to exert more control, which, as we know, is often at the expense of the sense of control that your kids feel. But perhaps After weathering that in high school and college admissions, now you have a kid headed to college or will in a few short years, who's ready for college? Are they more so are you? I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Well, hi, Bill. We spoke a couple of times now on the podcast about who's ready for college, and things that we as parents and caregivers would like to see in our young people, so that we can feel confident more so they can feel confident as they head off to college with suitcase full of hope streams and a whole bunch of our money. Do you want to take a quick moment and kind of run through some of the things that you recall, of things that parents should be looking at or trying to develop in young people, and then I'd love to talk a little bit about we as parents can be doing so that we are also prepared emotionally for the start of college, for our for our kiddos.
Bill Stixrud:Love it. You know, I started thinking about this probably 15 years ago, a little bit more when I because I saw so many, so many of my clients went to college and just were floundering in the first semester, would plead it with their parents to go back to second semester. And they were never, never got better than second semester. That often got better the next year, the year after that, but it never got better. Show me these kids, if you actually look at Yeah, brain maturation, and some of these kids, if you actually look at it, clearly, they were never ready. They were not able to run their own life. Their parents were still getting getting out of bed, reminding about their homework, checking off the internet at midnight. And I just realized that college isn't an entitlement. I think college is something that is so expensive now, because the kids should earn so I started looking at, what do kids need to be able to do? We're going to be quite sure that they're going to be able to nail college. And one is simply the goal is if they can run their own life, if they're making their own decisions, they're solving their own problems, they're making on their appointments, they're taking on medication. They can hold a part time job. They can get into bed and out of bed on their own. They can manage the technology. They're ready to go, as long as they got the academic skills they're ready
Ned Johnson:to go, right? Because college doesn't have the same structure that high school does. There's so much more free time and so much less supervision, certainly by parents, but also by other adults.
Bill Stixrud:Well, you know, I think that in the self driven child, we refer to college, college dormitories as the most dysregulated living environment outside of a woman's kind of a. College is a brain toxic environment because of the massive sleep deprivation, the huge levels of stress, the binge drinking, the drug use, all that stuff. And so kids really need to be ready. And so we want to know, okay, can they manage their own sleep? Can they manage their own diet? Can they can they do laundry. Can they drive? Can they make appointments and basically do the things they're going to need to do independently in college? And that's, you know, our angle is, our goal as parents is to help our kids learn to run their own life successfully before they leave home. So we talk in the subject of child about the various kind of several questions, can my kid do this? Can my kid take care of his own help? Can he make his schedule a point with a doctor? Does he take his medication? Does he manage his own academic life if he needs help? Can he reach out for help those kinds?
Ned Johnson:Yeah, we know that that so well. There are a couple of reasons why kids might struggle for that so, you know, certainly brain maturation, but also the experience to do those things poorly before they learn to do them well. And I can hear the voice of a lot of parents. Well, if I weren't on top of this, he'd never get it done. And to your point, well, then that's probably a kid who's not ready. But also we probably we want to let kids do these things in sub optimal ways while we're there to backstop them to help if they need it, rather than doing everything for them in high school before they get to college. But we also see we got an email from a friend whose kid is starting college, and at the bottom it were a bunch of questions from parents that least made what's left of our hair sort of stand on where, you know, it's like, how do I Door Dash things to the kid if he's living in a dorm, because I worry that he won't be getting food in the cafeteria enough. Or I understand the Wi Fi is really wildly there. Who do I need to reach out in it to make sure that they can boost the Wi Fi? And one of the paradigm questions that you put in my head so long ago, and certainly is in our book, is whose problem is it? And when you I remember when you first told me that, like, well, of course, this is my problem. It's, you know, if this is affecting my kid, I need to do something about this. And you know, as you so gently point out, well, it really, it can't be our problem, because we couldn't make our kid, you know, we could DoorDash food, but we can't make him eat it, right? He could just go left unbidden, right there, you know? And college is frankly structured so that parents are kept at arm's length. You know, Deans don't want parents calling up. I'm sure the IT department does not want some parent, you know, from Poughkeepsie reaching out to someone in Santa Barbara say, I hear the Wi Fi. Now, what are you gonna like? Wait, who are you and why are you bothering me? But, but it's, of course, hard for parents because they are deeply invested in their kids success, both emotionally and, of course, as you know before, financially and I love to just frame up a little bit why, what's, what's sort of singular about college that makes it harder for loving parents to step back a little bit, to give space for kids to step up a little bit. Maybe, maybe they may be running through the nuts framework. Might, might be way to do that. So you folks may remember, from self driven child, we love the research and the framework of Sonja Lupien, who says you can summarize what's stressful to the human nervous system with the acronym of nuts. So Anna's novelty, right? So if this is your first kid going through college, hard for you, certainly for them, probably their first time going for college, and for many of the first time living away from home. College is very different from when we were there as well. And so our experience of well, about how to navigate college is probably a little bit stale, and certainly for parents who didn't go to college themselves, this whole thing is wildly, wildly novel. What about unpredictability? Bill, what pops to mind for you? Use the unpredictability, folks and UTS,
Bill Stixrud:well, life is unpredictable. Think covid 19, yeah, you know point, yeah, yeah, you know there's just, there's so much you don't know. Is your kid gonna get a roommate? I just, I just talked to a kid who started college, and he said my roommate was so toxic. He just made, I didn't know we want to go into stuff that roommate did. He said, I couldn't, I couldn't function. Oh, my God, there's, there's so many things your kids gonna get, the worst professors you could get, mainly night classes and up all night studying. There's so many things that are unpredictable for parents and kids too, but certainly that's a big part of it. And certainly the S is the yeah is the kicker, but yeah,
Ned Johnson:yeah. And the you know, one of the things, of course, about that unpredictability. Is then we as parents, you know, who kind of have to live, as our kids do, in two head spaces where you're picturing this, you know, perfect experience to college and trying to live in that a little bit vicariously, but you also have a nightmare script with a toxic roommate from hell running through your head and trying to live in both of those and to your point. And so you know that, and T of course, is the threat for most of us. You know, we can certainly worry about the physical threats if kids go to parties or, you know, they're in parts of their experience there that are not safe, and it's covid, and who's looking over them if they get a cold. And is that really cold, or is it pneumonia? Blah, blah, blah, but most of all, particularly for students in high achieving schools. That's really threat to ego, and I imagine that most people listening to this can remember showing up at college and all of a sudden being with people who are just as smart as you were, and then getting your first grade that was less than what you'd done in high school and questioning, do I really belong here? You know, Am I smart enough to be here? And it's not hard, particularly if you're sleep deprived, for those negative thoughts to really take roost. And so if you you feel really threatened. You know, is this the place for me and for parents? If you, particularly, if you did a lot of work helping your kid get into the most highly selective college, and you see your kids struggle, you might feel threatened by that as well, because your identity may be wrapped up in your kid doing well there and then. As you know, Bill, I mean, it's the s, it's the low sense of control that is really the worst thing that we can experience. And of course, when kids are, you know, 100 or 1000 miles away from us, we can't just knock on their door and pop our head and say, Hey, how you doing? You know, any way that I can help, because you're trying to connect with them in ways that you don't have control over. You know, you call your kid, they cannot answer. You can text them they cannot answer. And so it can put you as a parent, all of us as parents, in situations where we're pretty stressed, because we may be mindful of a problem, but our control over that is lower than it would have been when our kids were in high school. With that in mind, we do have suggestions about what we believe and what we've experienced. Him and my I have a son who just graduated college this past year. My daughter is in her third year of college. Of the things that we can do that are really helpful to our young people in ways that can increase our perceived sense of control without undermining theirs. And I'm wondering, Bill, if we want to frame it up, what are the ways that sort of big picture things that parents can do that really are helpful to the young people who may be so far away? And the two things that jump to mind for me are, one, the idea of being a non anxious presence, and two, really taken seriously, the idea that we position ourselves to offer to sort of support, but not solve and ideally have our kids feel that they want to reach out to us for support, rather than we're nagging them to to hunt down what's going on. Yeah. So
Bill Stixrud:I think ideally, you know, we get kids ready, we do our the work on ourselves. Well, our kids are in high school or even beyond, so that it's not such a huge transition. What I mean by that is, as you know, Ned, some years ago, right after the sub driven child came out, I was giving a lecture in Westchester County, New York, and I was talking about the importance of kids solving their own problems and kind of as a consultant, offering our help and advice, and not trying to solve his problems for them. And this woman in the front row stood up and turned to the back to rest the audience and said, This idea has fundamentally changed my relationship with my 15 year old daughter. He's intense gradient at boarding school, we talked several times a week, and every time we talked for months, she'd bring up a problem, and I'd say, We should do this or this or this, and she'd fight me on it, and it just devolved into an argument. And she said, You know, last week she called told me some problem. I said, Is there a way that I could help? And then we brainstorm together and to completely change the energy. And I think that the same token, when a kid's in college and they bring they call you, they've got a problem. We want to we ask ourselves, whose problem is it? And ask, is there a way that I could I love that, as opposed to jumping into I think, I think it's really developing the skill and the discipline and what we talk about the kind of courage to trust your kid, to know that it's safe, to trust your kid more and worry about him less, you know. So I think part of it is that being able to encourage kids to solve their own problems, not rushing into to solve them. And also it's the decision making, and I think that that is we argued all our books, making their own decisions. We want kids to leave for college being good decision makers, being able to trust their own judgment, rather than ours. And I think if they are quite ready, that they aren't really trusting their own judgment, they may not be ready if they're in college, we want to do the same. Thing we want to remember that as a consultant, what we do is we offer our help as advice. We don't try to force it on their throats. We encourage them to make their own decisions, and we express confidence in their ability to make decisions and if they screw something up, to learn from it, and confidence that they'll figure it
Ned Johnson:out. I love that because one, one, it's one, it's effective. Two, it's rated rooted in brain science and our books for that matter. And three, it really does increase kids sense of control in that we as the people who have watched them for longer periods of life than anybody else, and therefore arguably know them better than anyone else in in staking out this consultative approach we're conveying to kids through our confidence in them, the sense that this is their education, it's not ours, you know, the sense that that they can handle because we believe that they can handle it even when it's wildly and they may be in tears, right? And this sense that they can bounce back from, you know, a fight with a roommate, a breakup with a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a bad grade, a getting cut from the team and not get in an internship. And we can empathize with that, but when we jump in and solve it, it may feel like that's a short term win, and maybe it is, but it's also conveying that it's a disaster if things aren't immediately corrected, that they're not strong enough to weather this, to handle this, and of course, that's not something that's going to increase their sense of control about their ability to handle future adversity. I remember at a student years ago who was this top ranked, let's see if I get this right, goalie in Lacrosse. And she came to me, this is the end of the spring, and she just looked like someone had, like, stolen her puppy. And I'm like, what's going on? And she said, I lost the championship. And I said, I'm sorry. What? And she said, Well, the championship game, and I lost. And I said, Well, tell me more. Well, she was the goal a So, of course, she was the last person standing between, you know, the ball and the goal. And I looked at her, I said, you know, respectfully, you know, I see that a little bit differently, because they had to go through a lot of other people before they got to you. And also this, my friend, is the unfortunate outcome of being as talented as you are, right? You are the starting goal and not the backup goal, and not the third string goal, and not on JV, but on varsity, on one of the two best teams in the state, and you came up just short. And this is what happens when you're really good. You're constantly competing at a higher and higher level, and sometimes you don't win, and that's hard. I said, from from my from my perspective, I never lost a game. It was never my fault, because you don't tend to lose games from left bench, you know. And it's hard, because when you know, our kids are going off to these highly, highly academic places with other kids who are talented and driven the way that they are, and particularly for kids who have been straight A's all the way through life, they may feel that it's just a disaster, and partly because they've never failed. And we know that taken to its extremes, that leads to very bad things, where people avoid taking on the higher challenges, and they keep themselves on JV of life rather than varsity of life. And so this consultant approach, because it's saying, Bill, I know you're really upset about this, but you know, I'm confident that this is going to turn out right. I don't know how, but I believe that you'll figure this out. And we use whatever words are appropriate for a kid, but that's a real boost of confidence that you don't have to go to peace about this, because I as your parent, I'm not going to pieces. This is so
Bill Stixrud:powerful when parents can be that kind of non anxious presence. It just expressed confidence. I started graduate school and was out of my league, you know, I got into the Top program in the country, and I just was not PhD in English at Berkeley material. I just wasn't as good as the other student, and when I left there, it was the best thing that could have possibly happened. So it's painful, but, you know, I'm thinking just also, just to kind of illustrate these examples that from this college that we mentioned were about the DoorDash. Yeah? So the Wi Fi, if the Wi Fi is not working, but we wonder, whose problem is that going to be? It's going to be his. Yeah. And so we can talk to kids about, is that something you're concerned about? If you're concerned about it, would it make sense to talk with somebody about it? I got a little advice for you. Can run it by, we use the language of the parent consultant we talk about and what do you say? You know? So we'd say things like, for whatever it's worth. You know, I was thinking, maybe you should do that, or I've got an idea about that. Do you think it makes sense? I wonder what happened if you tried like that, as opposed to saying, well, just, just call it. I'll call this guy, or you go to tell him what, tell him what to do. That. That's what was so aversive to this girl in west central County, was your mom would just tell her what to do. And. Commonly don't like unless they're asking you, what should I do? Kids generally don't like being told what to do.
Ned Johnson:Well, let's pivot into the kid who is calling up mom or dad or texting 27 times a day about everything that's bad, like, what am I what am I going to do? Mom, right? You know, what would that language look like for a kid who calls apparently, you know, 10 o'clock at night, they're in tears. The Wi Fi isn't working, right? They've got a paper that's overdue, and they're just they're having a meltdown. And of course, because stress is contagious, a stressed out kid is likely to amp up mom or dad before they don't want to be writing that paper. What might that language look like? I'm thinking about reflective listening and because, in a perfect world, what's the expression, you know, cast down your buckets where you are, you know, ideally, the source of the solution for that obviously upset and understandably upset kid is somewhere where she or he is not again, hundreds of miles away where mom and dad are. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:you know, and I just want to reiterate, the only way that young people develop confidence in their ability to handle situations is by handling situation. And so we want them. So first of all, my feeling is that we want to set limits in how much time, how much kids are calling us to tell us their problems or ask for advice like that that, but certainly when they call and they're really upset about something,
Ned Johnson:can you before you talk about that a little bit, because, you know, I know of folks whose kids are texting or reaching out, you know, a dozen times a day, and that there may be good and bad reasons for why That pattern has been developed. Let's talk a little bit about why that's something we want to shift away from,
Bill Stixrud:yeah, you know. And sometimes I think kids just like talking to their parents, and it's fun, fun, you know, and it's all supportive. But I think if it's calling for a lot of repeatedly for support or encouragement or what should I do? I think that tends to make kids more anxious, and oftentimes, if they're just become dependent on us, as opposed to figuring things out, especially if the kids are kind of counting on us to solve things when they're stressed, soon as they're stressed, that they call us before they're dealing with themselves, then we want to say, I don't think that this is helping. You know, we used to some of that, those techniques from the space program we talked about in in what do you say so that I love you more than anything, and I want to help you in any way I can, but if I solve the problems for you that I'm going to weaken you. If I help you, kind of avoid dealing with stuff that's hard for you is going to weaken you. I love you too much to do
Ned Johnson:that. Yeah, for folks who don't know Bill's referring to Ellie Liebowitz and the space program, which is supportive parenting of anxious childhood emotions. We talk quite about that in the in the book chapter and what he said, the language and silence had changed. And the basic idea there is that when children are anxious, it rarely stays a child problem. It very easily becomes a family systems problem, and we as loving parents get invoked to, you know, soothe their kid and soothe their kid and soothe their kid and soothe their kid. And the reason that that makes kids more anxious is you don't develop stress tolerance without having stress. And if it's immediately swept away by checking with mom and checking in with mom and checking with mom, it actually erodes their tolerance for tolerating those hard feelings. It's hard because our instincts are always as loving parents to want to help soothe our kids. And if you haven't checked out that book, his book is called breaking free of childhood anxiety and OCD, and I'll put this in the show notes, I had the chance to have him on the podcast a year or so ago when that book came out. And there's a whole protocol for how, if you as a parent have find yourself being on speed dial, you know as the blankie. You know you you may want to shift that, because, in addition to getting an education, the most important work of of college is moving towards adulthood and reminding ourselves that even in college, young people, they're still adolescents, and their brains are still developing, so we have real opportunities to help them move in the direction of being less anxious than they might currently be. Yeah, yeah. Other thoughts on setting limits. I think I interjected there.
Bill Stixrud:No, I just again. I People vary, certainly, people my generation is expensive to call long distance, yeah,
Ned Johnson:now we have plans, not minutes, so we don't have to worry.
Bill Stixrud:Yeah, so you call why? When I was in college, I spoke to my mother, especially when I went in different state, I called once a week, yeah, you know. And I talked to for a little bit and I remember them, yeah, yeah. Now, many parents say, you know, my daughter's my best friend, you know. And I think that as long as we can maintain that kind of parental authority, and it's got some clear that we really aren't best friends, but we have a very close relationship. We enjoy talking to each other. It's fun. To hear from I'm all for that. Well, I'm just saying that we want to set limits on because when kids are depending on us to make their decisions, to solve their problems, for they're upset, to kind of calm themselves down when they're doing it repeatedly, because we deprive them if we're solving the problems we're soothing them, deprives them to the experience of being able to do it, figure out ways to do it themselves.
Ned Johnson:And I would add that there are a lot of loving parents who themselves are a little bit more anxious, who may be doing the reaching out themselves and checking in, you know, multiple times a day, certainly multiple times a week. How's it going, how's it going, how's it going. And I worry about that a touch one for the reasons that you mentioned, but also it may be signaling unintentionally to kids that we're worried about them all the while, right? And I often thought about that with you know, do you get your homework done to get that in in time? Are we doing that to make sure that thing did get handed in and the homework did get done, or are we also doing that as parents, because we want to know that everything is right, so that we don't have to tolerate that stress?
Bill Stixrud:Yeah, so much. There's just so much wisdom in the Serenity Prayer. But the idea is being clear about what you control and what you can't and being able to kind of make peace with the stuff you can't control, and really and really being responsible.
Ned Johnson:Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thank you,
Bill Stixrud:you know. And I lovely when I started thinking about this idea, who's ready for college? So I started thinking, what do parents have control over where they have leverage. You know, initially, in terms of is the kid ready? You know, in terms of tuition, here's what I need to see before I feel that that I can spend as much money, because here's what I need to see. That's partly what our chapter is about in the self driven child. But also I think that it's perfectly within parents right to require your kids, especially if your kid has been is ADHD has been category you had to stay after him a lot, or your kids been drinking a lot, or the kids in Ned's word could maybe a little bit wobbly in your little unsure, have them sign a waiver so that you can see their grades at first semester. I've probably seen 2030, kids over the years who were on academic probation at the first semester in college. I've seen, certainly seen that many who were already home before the first semester was over. They weren't ready, but kids who were on probation the first semester and the parents didn't know, yeah, if they're getting all if they are going to class that they're on preparation, it's not going to turn around the next semester, in my experience. So I think that's one thing you have control over. Yeah, and also, I
Ned Johnson:would put that together with the communication piece were made mentioned just a moment ago, where for our family, we have a standing appointment. When our kids were both in college, had a standard appointment. Standard appointment every Sunday just, you know, hop on, zoom for an hour and just and check in with them. And then some. Sometimes we'd split that up, you know, an hour with one hour the other separately. And I like that idea for us. That was really good, because it decreased the unpredictability we knew we were touching base on Sunday. So if my daughter was, you know, upset about something, she knew she could get through Saturday and we'd be touching base on Sunday. For me as a dad, who, you know, I get worried from time to time too. I knew I'd be checking with in my kids, and we had this thing, and so I wouldn't be going weeks on end wondering, where are they? Where are they? So I didn't feel the need to nag them, you know, check in and text them all, all the time. You know, I had a family friend years ago who kid was a super recruited athlete, and mom is very on top of things, in ways that her son was less and he was, you know, casual about it, and she you just found herself, you know, did you text him back? Did you email the coach, you know, for trying to track the 27 coaches? It was a lot. And she said, I find myself every day, kind of every other day. What about Bill? What about Ned? Did Princeton, you know, Hopster, every college you can imagine? And she said, but that was all we were talking about. And I said, if I may, would it work to tend to the language? Would it work to set aside two days a week where you check in. So you could do this with kids, you know, particularly ADHD, well, they would it work to set aside, you know, check in for 20 minutes on on Tuesday night and see if you've got a plan for the week, and then on Sunday, just to kind of sweep and see if there's anything that that's got by you. And again, you offer this in non, non, the ways that I'm controlling. But would that be helpful for you, for me to backstop you, because I see a lot of kids, and I'm sure you do as well, Bill, where the kids do need support, but because, just because you're ADHD and need a ton more support and scaffolding, it does not decrease your need for a sense of control. And I see so. Often kids who need that support, but they're so annoyed by how they feel controlled that they tell their parents that everything is fine when it's decidedly not. And so the energy of it matters a lot. And I think in setting the framework, when would it be useful? How many times a week? What time would be good? How can I be supportive? You're so much more likely to have young people, particularly when they're wobbly, to be open about the ways that they're wobbly, as opposed to just hiding it. Yeah, I really like that. Then I'm smiling. I'm thinking about my son, who his first year of college. This is covid. So, you know, kids could do, you know, take more time in the paper. Take whatever you want, take the couch, you know, whatever, whatever it gets you through the week, kind of thing. And he had all these papers that kind of fell over due. He would always kind of put those off last minute for him, writing papers was not easy. And he had the Spanish professor who was very much on Spanish time, like, Yeah, whatever. And so we picked him up from college, and we're literally driving off campus and done for the year. And I say, Hey, I just got to ask, how were you able to get those papers done that were overdue? And this is long silence from the back seat of the car. And he says, Well, I have five papers that are due in 48 hours, and if I get them done, I think I'll be fine. And if I don't, I think I failed two of my four classes. Oh, my right. I admit to being like, wow. So big breath in what I consider a parenting and driving who did not drive the car into a tree or into a ditch and did exactly what you mentioned a minute ago, and just keeping in mind a long silence in the front seat of the car, and just said, is there a way that we can help? Because he wasn't happy about the situation he was in. But he's also very HD, so if so, everything's last minute, he knew he still had another 48 hours. So that's what he did. But had we gone to pieces about that, you know, one, it would not have helped his executive functions in that moment. And two, it certainly would have made it more likely for him to share things with us in the future. And, you know, doggone and he got it done in ways that were crazy making for me, but as I perhaps not supported so supportively, told my wife some years ago, when she said, it drives me crazy to watch him waste so much time, I said, don't watch and so I think that's not advice she's still a little sore about that. But you know, when I think about this, there's a lot of things that kids do in ways that are wildly inefficient and messy, and their work is messing the same, but that the rooms are messy, but they're trying to figure it out. And what we don't want to do is chase them or blame them or shame them, because when things are really a bigger pickle than a paper that's overdue or a grade that's suboptimal, I worry that the kids are less likely to bring to their loving parents the real big ticket items when they really do need our help, and we keep in mind that obviously there are still, there's still on our dime. Most kids are not paying for college, and so you're right about the leverage, but we are also trying to treat them as adults, so that they can feel like and ideally act like adults as well. Yeah,
Bill Stixrud:yeah. And the more is certainly, if it were effective,
Ned Johnson:if it were effective for us to kind of micromanage them in college, go for, you know, there's a big investment, you know, I want to make fun, but it just because a sense of control is the most important thing, that besides being deeply loved and feeling, yeah, sense control is most important you have. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't work in the long run. And so, and I think that you're pointed out in what do you say our second book, the first chapter is about connection. Yeah, because we emphasize so much about the sense of control, that sense of autonomy, control, which is huge, but the connection piece, the sense that they're deeply loved, that your point that when we have a good relationship with our kids, that they'll bring their problems to us as weddings. It's such a powerful point, and it's something this idea that we read when we reviewed a book, to write a blurb about it for the jacket, that by the time your kid leaves home, you'll have spent 90% of the time you're going to spend with them, on average. Yeah, yeah. And so is going to add really quick your relatedness, quick reminder that the model for intrinsic motivation for kids not doing it because they worry about not getting a grade or get a cookie if they do get the grade, that the model for intrinsic motivation is that autonomy we've talked about so much, that sense of control, but also competency and relatedness and so curiously, For kids who may look like they're not that motivated instead of nagging them, the more they feel deeply connected to us or to teachers or other people who matter, professors, I should say, or other people in their lives, the more they naturally want to work hard to do well on things that matter both to them and to us, that we know that the closer. Year, the connection is that a young person has with a parent or another caregiver, the more apt they are to adopt that parents values their priorities because they want to have that relationship. And by saying that the things are important to you, mom or dad, those are also important to me as a way to deepen, for me to deepen my connection with my
Bill Stixrud:parents. I don't know exactly, but I I'm estimating that in 40 years, I've seen maybe 100 kids who that I know about, I'm just just my own clients, who start, maybe more, who started college and it was really rocky, and then some who didn't make it past the first semester, some who didn't make it past October, who eventually did college, yeah, and I think that certainly we're huge fans, and I recommend a gap year for almost all all my clients who have ADHD because more
Ned Johnson:anxiety, so they have a chance to settle that nervous system for a year.
Bill Stixrud:And also, given the huge way that young women are performing men in school that if you're male, I'm saying, think about take a gap year to buy yourself another year of prefrontal maturation, because the girls you're competing in college have a much more mature prefrontal cortex than you do. And I'm just saying this because if kids start college, it turns out that they're really struggling. They aren't ready. It's not the end of the world. And I think they say before they go letting that their kids who start college and find out I'm not ready, and it's no big shame. It happens all the time, right? Yeah, just kind of setting that up so that, you know, we check in with them. Okay, I wasn't going anything I can help with, but knowing that if they get off to a rocky start, it's very common. I met with the family a few weeks ago. They came in this summer, and the kids started. He was at Purdue, and he had a very, very difficult time trying to manage everything, to keep up with all his work, the height stress, lot of all nighters, exhausted, very discouraged, and they told me this story, and I said, I've heard this story 300 times, and they couldn't believe it. They couldn't how common it is, yeah, for kids and so certainly we emphasize kids being ready, but also letting kids know when they go that if they find that they aren't ready, or that we can handle it, we'll have a plan B. We're huge fans of plan B thinking, and I think before it's just letting them know, we'll figure it. Something up, something out. Sometimes guys just need more life experience. They need more a lot of the burned out kids, kids who were burned out in high school, right, right? Which is a huge problem, the lot of burnout. A lot of them are just they can't the idea of they get to cause they got four more years of them, and it's partly why colleges report their graduation rates in six years, not four.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, so it's such a good point. And, and I mean, a couple thoughts come to mind. One, because I'm trying to think about this conversation around what parents can be doing, not just their children, that for us as parents, to rehearse that plan B thinking, to rehearse that, you know, the idea would be, you know, we're all celebrated in four years, but it may not be that, and to know that that is the alternate roots, right? We talk about in the self driven child, to know that that path may wind and wind, I mean, and to be honest, a lot of us had that experience ourselves. I mean, I took a year off of college to processing stuff from my childhood. My brother had a fire in his room and PTSD took seven years to graduate a four year college where you can only be there for four cement for eight semesters, right? I say, you know, what do you call someone who takes seven years to do four year college graduate? You know? And again, the grand scheme of things doesn't make that big a difference for in the moment, it can be really threatening to young person because they feel like they're falling off the path. And it can be terrifying to their parents think, oh my gosh, this kid will never get back on there. But even if you're listening to this right now, and you've got kids who are in sixth or eighth or 10th grade, if you can sort of mentally rehearse that plan, you know that they start school and they and they take time off, and they go off and do an internship, you never know where you'll find that spark to know that those are viable paths that may be even more rich and rewarding than the four year push straight through it. It makes it much easier for if your young person brings problems to you and said, I really think I need to withdraw that you can be that non anxious president, a consultative and think about, how do we make this work? And I'll say, you know, Bill you he said, you know, had kids who were there for, you know, a semester a month. I think the Johnson family can one up this. Our lovely daughter started college, and she was there for a day, and she said, I can't, I can't, I can't do this. And it turned out. Whole bunch of things we've talked before she got the diagnosis of autism. And two thoughts on this. One is, I recommend to everybody spend a few $100 and get and get because it's totally worth it, tuition insurance, so that if something happens, you're not sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world, and poof, there goes 10s of 1000s of dollars, because then we're like, all right? And she came home and there was no shame, and there was no trying to talk her into staying. And it was kind of an unplanned Gap Year, and exactly what she needed. And she launched College in a ways that, well, she got more as in one semester a year than I think I got in four years. I didn't know you could get GPAs like that. They sound like unicorns, like mythical beasts. And she with a nervous system that's a little more sensitive, because she's an artistic individual. She so benefited from that year of recovery and figuring herself out. And that's to your point, Bill, that's true for so many folks. And so when we can be non anxious and be open to that, it makes it much easier for kids to be mentally and emotionally flexible. They may even persist in college knowing that they have an out if they need to beautiful. All right, for all the others. Oh, I have one last thought about I don't know when people listen to this, when my wife and I dropped our son off at college, again, this was covid. So we couldn't go upstairs, we couldn't carry any bags, we couldn't see his room. We couldn't help him that couldn't do anything. We just just dumped him at the curb, gave him the world's longest hug and let him go. And it was not the movie that had been in my head, and and I remember that night, desperately wanting to call him and say, you know, check in. Hey, how you doing? Are you okay? And I just sat on that and sat on that. And I realized that in that moment that I really wanted to call him not to make sure that he was okay or help him feel better, but to make me feel better, and it occurred to me that his attention really was supposed to be with the young people that he was meeting his roommate and the people on the floor and exploring college, and I would be interrupting what was his experience, because it's his education and his life, and could be unintentionally conveying that I was worried about him, which I was, because I was just, you know, it's covid for goodness, college. But golly, that was not the message that I wanted to convey to him. And we had told him, and he knew that we were available at any given time if he needed us. And I didn't reach out, and he didn't reach out, which means that at least in that moment, he didn't need us, and that was exactly the way that we had hoped college would start for all young people. So what are some takeaways from this conversation about who's ready for college? Parent edition, first practice the three principles of a parent consultant. One, offer help, offer support, but don't force it. Two, support kids in making their own decisions and express confidence in their ability to do so.
Bill Stixrud:What I started doing some years ago with a lot of my clients who I'm not sure they're ready, but the parents are going to send them. I say, let's think through the plan B. What do we do if great is on probation in December? What do you do if he's home by November? He says, I'm overwhelmed not going to class because it's a lot easier to think of a plan B when you are highly stressed and you it's not an emergency. Let's think through a plan B. Love that.
Ned Johnson:And three, check the writing reflex. Don't jump in to solve or soothe without giving kids the opportunity, abundant opportunities. I should say that to do so themselves, because this is how they're not only solving problems, but wiring the adult brains. We want them to have two visualize Plan B, thinking. We have a dream of how things would go, but sometimes a nightmare as well, and when we can take that nightmare scenario and see how, in the end, it works out fine, it makes it so much more likely when our kids do stumble or get wobbly or run right into a buzz saw, that we can be more non anxious and help them make the best of that situation and figure out a way to make it successful. In the end, because we have rehearsed this in our heads ourselves, and we're so much better able to help our kids if those situations do materialize. And number three, if you find yourself overly involved in your young person's life, get a dog. If you've got a dog, get another dog. Everybody likes friends. Everybody likes dogs. I'm Ned Johnson with my friend and partner in scribe Bill stick shirt. And this is the self Tiffin child podcast. You. Hey, folks, 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 stixfruit 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, at prep matters.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.