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
Great Parenting Advice From Lenore Skenazy ("America's Worst Mom") Or, "Why I Let My 9 Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone"
Ever wonder if we’re raising our kids with too much fear and not enough freedom? In this episode, I’m joined by Lenore Skenazy—founder of Let Grow, author, and self-described “America’s Worst Mom”—to dig into what’s really holding our kids back. We talk about the shift from play-based to phone-based childhoods, and how we, as parents and educators, can reverse course by letting kids take back some independence—without feeling like we’re putting them in danger.
We explore how anxiety, both in kids and adults, is often fueled by overprotection, and how letting kids do more on their own actually builds emotional resilience, executive function, and confidence. Lenore shares powerful stories, smart strategies, and even a few laughs to help us rethink how we support our kids in becoming more capable and self-reliant. If you’ve ever worried about being too overprotective—or just want to help kids thrive—this conversation will inspire you to take that first step.
Episode Highlights:
[0:00] - Opening thoughts on parenting struggles and intro to my new workbook
[1:35] - Welcoming Lenore Skenazy and how she became known as “America’s Worst Mom”
[3:54] - The column that sparked a national conversation
[5:17] - The disconnect between our childhoods and how we raise our kids now
[7:53] - How school policies and culture reinforce parental anxiety
[8:50] - The myth of stranger danger and why statistics don’t ease fears
[11:52] - The Let Grow Experience and how it rewires parent and child behavior
[15:06] - Why emotional courage is essential for both kids and parents
[17:59] - The anxious generation of parents—and how overprotection feeds the cycle
[19:43] - What free play really teaches and how it rewires the brain
[24:11] - Why sandbags belong in play clubs and other fun discoveries
[27:29] - Real-world problem solving in play: Franklin and the leaf pile
[30:41] - Why squabbling is not a problem—it’s the learning process
[31:07] - The hero’s journey and how hardship builds emotional resilience
[33:34] - A flat tire becomes a triumph of independence
[34:04] - Phones out, yes—but we must also restore play
[35:15] - Let Grow’s mission to support independence and responsibility
[38:59] - Helping parents take courageous actions, even if they’re still worried
[41:36] - The goal isn’t to eliminate worry—it’s to act with courage anyway
Links & Resources:
Lenore's TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lenore_skenazy_why_you_should_spend_less_time_with_your_kids?subtitle=en
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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 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 would be grateful.
Lenore Skenazy:And it's called the let grow experience. And it's just a piece of paper that the teacher gives the kids every once a month that says, go home and do something new on your own, with your parents' permission, but without your parents. And then there's a giant list of ideas. You know, climb a tree, go to the store, walk to the park, play, you know, play in the driveway, make pancakes, visit grandma, just anything that get the kids away from the parents for at least half an hour.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stickstrud 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 the happy home. Do you ever have days where you feel like you're the world's worst parent. I know I have, but as a colleague once wryly observed, no one is completely useless, even anyone can serve as a bad example. And trust me, you cannot possibly be the worst parent in America, because my guest today, at least if you trust the internet, is, in fact, America's worst mom, and for what it's worth, she's someone who's thinking about parenting has very much influenced my own in a good way. Curious. Take a listen. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Will my guest today is the one, the only the worst mother in America. Lenore. Skinnesi, Lenore, welcome to the conversation. And on that note, so I had the opportunity, perhaps a bit belatedly, to finally catch your TED Talk, which we will put in the show notes, and everybody has to go watch. So let's go back to the origin story for people who don't know you. How, how exactly did you become the and a lot of parents are thinking, but I thought I was No, no, folks, honestly, you are listening to the worst mother in America. So what's the story there?
Lenore Skenazy:Actually, it's actually phrased America's worst mom, but yeah, so the way I got this name, however you want to phrase it, is that when our younger son was nine, he started asking me and my husband if we would take him someplace he'd never been before, here in New York City, where we live, and let him find his own way home by subway. That was his big desire. And obviously I let him, and then eventually I wrote a newspaper column about why I let him, and it was called Why I let my nine year old ride the subway alone. And two days later, I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR, and
Ned Johnson:you got the whole spectrum there. So everybody was everybody was upset with you, left, right, centrist. I
Lenore Skenazy:love, right, right? Yeah, it brought the country together, at last, an issue we can get behind, hating Lenore, but it was also obviously it hit a nerve, or it wouldn't have been that interesting. I mean, if everybody thought it was just bad, that's that. But some people thought it was good, but a lot of people had this sort of cognitive dissonance with like, well, that sounds crazy, but on the other hand, I remember my childhood so fondly. You know, I would get up in the morning, it's a Saturday, I'd hop on my bike, and my parents wouldn't know where I was until, you know, I came home because I heard the dinner bell, or dad was calling, or mom was whistling, or whatever it is, and and it sort of made everybody just take a pause and go. Why did it change so much? But the point is that they do remember a childhood that was so so completely different from the way they're raising their own kids, and this was a chance to go, yeah, what did happen? My favorite thing that I did as a kid going and getting the candy, or riding to my friend's house or going. Going to the creek or climbing a tree or getting a, you know, a newspaper route. But nonetheless, people could see there was this giant disconnect between their childhood and how much trust and time they were given and what they were giving their own kids. And it, that's what started the conversation, was their own recognition that, like, Wow, it's really different, come to think
Ned Johnson:of it. And I think it's so interesting to me is, is, you know, the downstream effect of this, of course, are our kids who are more anxious, and then parents who are more anxious, and the systems that are more anxious. And then there's a lot of, you know, yeah, get off my yard kind of thinking, you know, what's wrong with kids these days? And the thing that always makes me so kind of like shaking my fist at the sky, is as though children have raised themselves and they're somehow to blame for how they've all come to be so anxious in trophy craving or whatever, as opposed to the people who did the raising, the rearing of these kids. You know, right?
Lenore Skenazy:Well, I try to God, I sound like Richard, I try to give grace to the parents for the simple reason that, you know, they're in this right? They're in a culture that really doesn't expect the kids to, you know, walk to school or ride their bikes to the park every afternoon. I'm dealing now with a mom in Michigan who's fighting her school kid school because He's seven years old. He lives four houses from the bus stop, and the school will not let him get off the bus unless she's there or another adult is there to walk him the, you know, past these four large suburban homes to the fifth one, where he could enter and she is. She's there with a younger kid, a three year old children, only three old children, want to wake him up. Why can't the kid walk home and the school's like, No, we can't let your child get off. And she's like, why not? And it's like, it's too dangerous. She goes, I don't think it's too dangerous. Well, there's liability. It's like, I'll sign a waiver. No, you can't. And so when you have parents stuck in a culture like that, even the ones who want to let grow or free range or whatever you want to call it, they can't and and also it just becomes this sort of self perpetuating thing where we've sort of started believing that the person who can come up with a far fetched danger, you know, like, oh well, anything could happen in those four houses. It's like, I guess so, but the chances are so minute. But that's considered more caring, like, well, don't you care? And it's like, I care. Am I allowed to ignore a nearly non existent danger? No, because we care. So parents who want to say, you know, I trust my kid, and I think they can handle themselves in a, you know, a confusing situation, but I don't think there's going to be a confusing, weird situation, guys, it's four houses. You're you're almost fighting against the idea that you're a little bit immoral, and don't care. And so I, I feel for the parents, because everybody is in that milieu.
Ned Johnson:Now, it's a really good point. A couple questions come to mind. One, one is that there is the actual facts around childhood safety and what situations children are safe and not safe. And then there's also the question of our feelings, our perceptions about that safety, and how bad I'd feel if something happened to my kid. And blah, blah, blah, you know, we make the point in the self driven child that the children are being raised in arguably the safest time in the in the history of humankind. I mean, you know, people aren't there aren't Viking raiders, you know, there aren't wolves, right? You know, yeah, exactly, but, but it just, it doesn't feel that way. And you, in your TED talk, you you dropped a nugget that I didn't know about if I decided, just for giggles, because they make a really good story that I would like to have my child be abducted if I were to place my child out, how long would it take before I had source material for this book if you
Lenore Skenazy:wanted your kid to be abducted by a stranger, how long would it take for it to be statistically likely that they would be kidnapped in a Law and Order Type kidnapping? And the answer is 750,000 years, which I like to point out, you know, after the first 100,000 they're not even really a kid. Yeah, so as you and I both know, or at least as I know, and soon you'll know that statistic, as amazing as it is, doesn't move anyone because Joinder is constantly but what if it's mine, right? You know, I always say, it's like, it's like, how many you know, Powerball tickets would you have to buy? And then somebody says, well, somebody wins Powerball, right? And and so the only thing that I've seen that actually knits back a parent's calm that allows them to let go and enjoy their child being out and about being, you know, having sort of an old fashioned childhood is is doing it a couple times, and the terrible thing is that you don't want to do it because you were thinking in terms of like, but anything happened, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. So, so let grow, which is the nonprofit that I run now that grew out of free range kids. We have a couple of school programs. One in particular, they're all free, that helps parents sort of put the cart before the horse it it pushes them, it nudges them into letting go, maybe a little before they would have otherwise done it. And it's called the let grow experience. And it's just a piece of paper that the teacher gives the kids every once a month that says, go home and do something new on your own, with your parents permission, but without your parents. And then there's a giant list of ideas. And of course, there's a much more giant list that any parent and kid could come up with on their own. But it's like, you know, climb a tree, go to the store, walk to the park, play, you know, play in the driveway, make pancakes, visit grandma, just anything that gets the kid and possibly a friend doesn't have to be just the kid alone, but, but the kids away from the parents for at least a little time, at least half an hour. And in that time, the parent is like, ah, and then sometimes they forget to worry after a while, because it's just not a big deal. Or sometimes they're worried the whole time, but then the kid comes home, and the kid will come home, right? And when they do, and they brought the milk for dinner, or they had this great time with their friend, or they were scared by the dog, but then they were ran past it, no matter what, the parent is so proud that that's what allows the brain to start recalculating instead of, oh my god, I could never forgive myself to look at my kid. Look what he can do. And that lets them let go another time. And then the next month, the kid has to do something, do something with a friend, do something in your community, do something for your family. Each month, it's a little different. And by the end of the year, they got this kid who is used to being separated from their parent part of the time, and a parent who's used to doing it too, and you've, you've really re normalized the idea that sometimes the parent is in the parent world and the kid is in the kid world, and they don't always have to be on top of each other.
Ned Johnson:I love that. And to me, I'm hearing sort of three parts in that from a psychological perspective. One is that, you know, as a loving dad, I don't think I can trust my kid to do X, Y and Z, you know, walk next door by himself, you know, go on the subway, you know, make his way home from school, whatever it happens to be. And you know, to take your Powerball analogy. You know, I've spent 10 bucks on power ball tickets, understanding the math like I teach math. I get it. But for that, you know, for that day, you know, I can buy five, six and indulge in the fantasy of what I would do with a billion dollars, right? And so there may, you know, arguably, there's enough pleasure out of, you know, $10 of just indulge in that fantasy for an until, until then, okay, go back, go back to your job net. And so you can make that argument there, where, on the other hand, when you are, what, as a parent, if I'm worried about my kid, and I'm imagining every possible scenario where things could get be I mean, I remember my kids were little like, you know, you can, you can find the store. They've been abducted, right there. They've
Lenore Skenazy:been sold. I've felt that too, and we all have, right? Yeah, and
Ned Johnson:so we anticipate that, which makes sense, but a few things, one, when kids have experiences doing things in just the way that you described when your nine year old made it home capably safely on the subway, you now had evidence that he can do things that previously, you feared he couldn't do. So that helps enormously. Two, that confidence that he has, he's now wiring his brain to not then be competent, but have the brain state you know that supports that of you know, a greater sense of control, as we talk about in our research. And the third piece is really so much of what I think, I think we collectively think that parents will try to protect their children over and over and over, not just to keep them safe, which is, you know, part of being a parent, but also just the thought of, what if something blah, blah, blah, that is distressing to me. It's horrible. And so if I never allow my kid to be in a position where they might be abducted in 650,000 years, right? Whatever, I then don't have to handle that emotional distress. And as we know from cognitive behavioral therapy, it often is not the actual it's not, it's not the flying or the dog or the going on the metro that really is the problem. It's the it's the feelings around that. And in order to get over the fear of it, you don't, you get into it's a point you made before. You don't use statistics to convince me that flying is safe. I go on a plane multiple times, and I have the sense or the feeling that things are safe, and so I love your program because it's not only building these skills and these opportunities in this in the brain state for kids, but it isn't a sneaky way for kind of a massive policy of having pain. Parents, sort of having exposure therapy.
Lenore Skenazy:That's literally, I was going to use that word next to get comfortable
Ned Johnson:with that. Oh, by the way, I need to ask when he first said, we want to come home on the, you know, on the subway by myself. What were the can you remember? What were the first emotions that ran through your head?
Lenore Skenazy:I wish I could remember. He's 27 so the point is that he asked more than once, yeah, so it was really something that mattered to him, yeah. And our older son, who calls himself the controller, had not asked, and so we hadn't thought about it, yeah, yeah, that. And, you know, we really had to consider whether it made sense. And we thought about I, you know, I am kind of rational, and I'm a reporter. Back then, I was a newspaper reporter, and so I always on the subways and traveling to every possible neighborhood in New York City and seeing how normal the vast majority of them were, and I chose where to drop him off on the subway and where he'd be coming home to so it was just, it was a rationally made decision, but it wasn't one that I would have thought of Had he not started bugging us about that? But what was interesting about bugging us about it is that kids want to do things on their own. Why did I just hear, Oh, yeah. Have you been watching all these videos on Instagram where parents inspired a lot by the anxious generation, which was written by Jonathan Haidt, who co founded let grow with me. So parents are starting to put up little videos of like, okay, he's in there now. He's getting a Slurpee while I wait outside, and there he is. Oh, great. He's come out again. And the parent really does worry, even though the kid is, you know, 50 feet away and in a public place and and doing a transaction that's not going to take more than 10 minutes, but I get it because we've been told to worry all the time. We've been told that if you're looking at the price of the the tuna fish, you turn around, they're not going to be there. I mean, that's really the the cultural trouble that we've been accustomed to. So seeing all these they're all moms, as far as I can tell, doing
Ned Johnson:in part and part of the deciding to give, not nothing, to not give moms a hard time. Part of that is because two things. One, because moms are more often, you know, they take care of infants more than do dads. But you also have watched these little people who explore the world by basically finding everything they can and sticking it in their mouth right? So you have this, you have this conditioned hyper vigilance. And there are also changes in the brain that lead to greater hyper vigilance, which is deeply tied to more anxious ways of thinking. And so if you go back to our exposure therapy for just a moment ago, if that becomes your default setting, you know you and your kids, or your kids and you, I should say, really will benefit from actively doing things. Because, you know, my fears are irrational. They may be based on facts, but, but it's an it's you're not going to talk me out of those with reason that my fears get debunked by experience that my brain
Lenore Skenazy:goes they get replaced. I think, I think they get replaced by reality. Yeah, you know, the fear goes, Oh, it seems pretty safe for him to walk four houses down. But what if something bad happened? What if that's the day that there's a speeding car or a guy in a white
Ned Johnson:van and whatever, they always have white fans.
Lenore Skenazy:But the point being that I was just talking to a pediatrician in Denver who had found us, and I said, What do you think the biggest problem today is that you're seeing as a pediatrician? And she said, It's anxious parents, and I feel bad for parents for the reasons that we've just enumerated, which is that they're being told that anytime, any day, anything that they do that's not hyper vigilant means that something bad could happen to the kid. It's all their fault and they forgiven. So if it's, you know, I always think like the anxious generation, the title refers to the kids, but it's actually an anxious generation of parents as well, and it's possibly the parents anxiety that means that they can't open the door. That means that the only place left for kids to have fun is on phones, and so it all becomes this self perpetuating thing of we're inside, we're nervous, the kids aren't allowed into the real world and and we don't know how competent they could be out there, and what they could be learning and how they could be blossoming, because we can't open the door.
Ned Johnson:I love that point. I love to go a little bit deeper there. I would much rather have children be interacting with one another than be on, be interacting through phones. And so, of course, that's the beautiful thing about let grow is, well, what did you describe in your TED talk of a it's a nature sanctuary for children.
Lenore Skenazy:We realized that, you know, as we were just discussing, you know, facts and thought leadership, they're all great, but really, people need to experience things for it to really rewire them. And so one of the things that we wanted kids and parents to experience is separate. Creating and realizing that that's okay, that kids can have some unsupervised time. And not only are they okay, they thrive, they rise to the occasion. So that's great, and that's what all those videos are now of parents trying that on Instagram. But the other thing that we suggested, all our all our materials, are free, and the other program that we suggest for schools is called the let grow play club. It should be called something else, because it's it's good for K through 12, yeah, play and so anyways, the point being that keep the schools open for mixed age, all the kids together, no phones, free play after school, because you have all the kids there already, and if they go home, you know that they will either go to their bedroom and be on their phone, or they will be in a car taken to an adult led activity, which is fine and interesting, but it's not them saying, like, Let's play soccer. No, I'm soccer. Let's play football. Okay, let's make the teams. No, that team's not fair. And you know the ball was in or out, or let's draw, okay, I'll start drawing the body of an owl, and you draw the legs. And all the things that happen when kids are organizing their own fun turn out to be the most developmentally rich things that you could be doing as a child who's on their way to becoming a functioning adult. You are compromising, you are creating, you are communicating. You are dealing with frustration. You are getting buy in if you are a total jerk, nobody wants to play with you unless you're really good at something. And to get really good at something requires focus. So even if you're not focused on algebra or writing your five paragraph essay, you are focused on your free throw practices and so in play, kids become the adults that we want them to be. They're They're people who can deal with other people, deal with frustration and get stuff done. And I feel like the lack of free play, the fact that most kids are in organized activities, which is fine, but it's like more school. Somebody's telling them what to do. You're playing second base. Okay? The game is over when kids are organizing their own games versus somebody else organizing them. There's something called an internal locus of control. You feel like internally you can make things happen. An external locus of control is when you're micromanaged by other people and a lot of kids, lives get up, you know, get ready, get to school, do your homework, go to your class, you know, go to your activity, come home. More homework, reading log. You better read for 20 minutes. Okay, now you can stop that was reading. I'm sure that was very pleasurable, having you count, having me watch you while you read for 20 minutes. That's all so externally determined that kids end up having an external locus of control, and when you do what are you? You're depressed, you're anxious, somebody else is deciding you know what you're good at and what you should be doing and how you should feel and and because there seems to be this sort of evisceration of kids inner lives, we're sort of trying to repair it by rug time and social emotional lessons. And it's not that there's nothing to a class on kindness or a class on communication, but so much of that was developing naturally because it was part of play. You could play without doing something with other kids, and that sort of takes the rough edges off. So if you keep the school open for mixed age, no phones, loose parts, free play, which you'll see recommended up the wazoo in the anxious generation, then you get a lot of that social, emotional learning sort of just baked into the fun without it being a lesson. And and I helped write the chapters on schools and for parents in the anxious generation. And my favorite thing I learned when I was writing the school helping with the schools chapter, was that if you're going to have a play club, you should definitely get some of those big sandbags. Do you know why? No, I guess the big like, the sandbags, yeah? Like sandbags filled with sand. Why did the play expert in England tell me to put in this part, like, tell them to have sandbags? I was
Ned Johnson:like, my brain goes to building things, or jumping off things and
Lenore Skenazy:up building things. Yeah? Okay, yeah. So the point is, you want to build things. You cannot lift a sandbag by yourself.
Ned Johnson:Oh, oh, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. I want to jump in for a second and make a emphasize a point that you've you made just a moment ago, where what Peter Gray would put his finger on is just a quick reminder, because a lot of parents, I think, may believe that what their children are doing as an activity is play when it actually is not play. And here's the key thing, I think you can verify this for me, that Peter would say play by definition, is not adult. Not directed. As soon as adults get involved in it, it changes everything. I mean, you make this point your TED talk that you know, the parents, there's someone there, but they're not refereeing, they're not interceded. They're not making sure people at a
Lenore Skenazy:play club, at a lacrosse play club, yeah, we say there should be, you know, for legal reasons, mostly that there has to be an adult, like a lifeguard, right? For first aid, for lifeguard, yes, right? The lifeguard does not say, Hey guys, why didn't you play volleyball? Right? They just sit there looking like a bronze God with a with a whistle, right? And that's all they're there for. And what we've heard from schools doing play clubs is that when they start out, a lot of times the kids come up to the adult and say, like, it was my turn, and he took the ball, and it's not fair. And we've heard a lot of different responses that the adults give, but I'd say the simplest one is, Oh, that's interesting. Is that an adult problem or a kid problem? And it's like, well, of course it's kid problem. And so it's like, well, you're kids. I
Ned Johnson:love it, yeah. And I mean, that point about all those, you know, all those social emotional skills, executive function skills, right? That, if, I mean, I was, I was making almost this exact point in a really neat school I was lecturing to yesterday, yeah, and about, because these kids were all saying they're, they're so oversubscribed, right? And, you know, I, and I asked them for these were all these athletes, a lot more athletes. Who said, At what age did you start playing club, whatever, travel soccer, this first grade, second grade, right? And they're developing as athletes, but they're not developing as humans, because the point that you made of half of the work of getting together, game of soccer, football is agreeing on the terms and agreeing on the teams and talking this one case, look, I mean, if you put together a whole team with people who are your size, and then a team of people who are my size, I'm just going to say, well, keep your ball. I'm not playing. And you have to realize, even though I'm bigger and stronger, I can't Lord that over everyone, because I won't have anyone to play with, right? And these are incredibly valuable lessons. And all Dalton's saying you got to be nice, Jimmy, because that's not fair. Blah, blah, blah, they don't care if they realize, oh, there's no game, because everyone left now they care, and most people are not going to play club soccer when they're in their 30s, 40s and 50s, some of them will, but all of them need to, ideally, make nice and
Lenore Skenazy:right, you know, have a relationship, have friends, work at a job, you know, please a boss. Figure out how to manage somebody. My favorite example of a play club moment was there's a play club in run by a guy named Kevin Steinhardt down in South Carolina. I'd recommend him for a podcast guest, and he's been running it for like, six or seven years at this point. And by the way, over the years, as they were adding more and more play to their school day at this it's a title one school in South Carolina, their office referrals and bullying and bus incidents even were going down, right? Was getting better, and truancy was going down. So like, there's, it's only good, and it's sort of like, well, if you had starving kids and then you fed them, they'd probably be better behaved. And you do have kids who are starving for play, and now they're getting filled with play. So at his school, one of the after school play clubs, the kids had built this giant pile of leaves, and they were jumping in. And it was fun, whatever. And then he made a beautiful video in slow motion. It really looks cute. But then one kid jumped in the middle, and he sat there, I'm not moving. And the kids are like, get out of the way. Not your turn. You know, move. We got to take our turn. And he's like, I can't hear you. What? What? And so he was being a jerk, just being obnoxious. And the kids were screaming. And then eventually one kid said, well, let's just jump around him. And so then they continued the game, just not jumping exactly in the center. And then he got bored, and he walked away. And what I love about this example is that if, if the adult had stepped in and said, You know, it's always Jimmy, but let's make it another name, Franklin, you must leave your your No, this is it's not your turn anymore. You must go, well, then Franklin would have gotten the attention that he wanted, right? Everybody's looking at him. Nothing's going on. Everybody's waiting. And the kids would be completely passive. They'd be waiting for an adult to make things better so that they could keep playing and and instead, they were entrepreneurs. They were figuring things out. Let's let me try this, you know, screaming at him, that doesn't work. Well, how about jumping around them. Oh, that worked really well. And so they iterated, you know, all these things that we want to see. They learned a soft skill, which is, come up with a compromise, you know, ignore the jerk, you know, do it a new way, go around, go over the wall instead of around the wall. So, so everything that, Mother Nature, Mother Nature. Put the play drive into kids so that these parts of their brains would have to turn on, you know, and and we keep not letting them Ignite, because we keep stepping in saying, well, that's not very nice or children, I think it's time for us to go in now, because not everybody is playing correctly. It's just we think that we're necessary, but we're actually stopping the growth from happening. And so let grow. Let grow. It's in our name. Growth is trying to figure out, how do we get parents and adults to step back and and let kids flourish and let kids and part of it is failing, like they were yelling and it wasn't working. Oh, well, that's terrible. No, it's not.
Ned Johnson:That's part of the process. I can picture, I can hear any number of parents being really, you know, they see that. They see the injustice, they see the lack of fairness. They see the foolishness, blah, blah, blah. They spend half their time squabbling. Well, the squabbling, that's really the important stuff. And so again,
Lenore Skenazy:medium is the message, yeah, yeah. The squabbling is the growth, yeah. I
Ned Johnson:want to ask one slightly adjacent thing I love. In your TED talk, you talk about the hero's journey. And I'm, I love Joseph Campbell. I love the hero's journey. I love, you know, all the work of Steve Mayer and and you know that you only develop emotional resilience and the ability to bounce back to a former state when you get a little bent out of shape, right? And you know, I just have this. The school that I was attending, they talked about one of the real upsides of not having phones in school is if Ned takes a gets a quiz back or a test, and he gets a terrible grade, and I'm all upset he does. I can't immediately call your mom. I cannot immediately call my mom and have her be upset, but then have her soothe me. And I just had to sit with those feelings, and maybe when it was just sort of talk myself down, maybe go and talk to the teacher, maybe commiserate with my friends, but also maybe tell myself, well, that was kind of stinky, but, you know, I guess I'll be okay, and I'll be able to do this again. And all the kind of things that, you know, mom probably or dad would have said to me, I learned to say to myself, you know, my writing partner, Bill stick shirt is a clinical neuropsychologist, makes the point that one of the some of the most important work that adolescents do, that children do as they move into adulthood, is to learn to be able to soothe themselves. And it seems to me that that's part of the hero's journey that you know you don't you have to get singed a little bit by the dragon, right? You can't have mom go in there and slay the dragon for you. You're not, you're not the hero. You'll never be the
Lenore Skenazy:hero. Yeah, you've said it all. And so I haven't published this piece yet, but I was writing up the story, a very disturbing story, about a kid who got radicalized online, and it was horrible. And eventually he got sort of deprogrammed, and as he was on his journey back to mental health, and, you know, just not hating himself as much anymore, not doing all these weird behaviors. One day, he came home and he told his mom the best thing happened to him today, and this is a teenager, and she said, Oh, what? He goes, I got a flat tire. And she's like, on his bike, and she's like, that's great. And he said, Yeah, because I was gonna call you and I didn't, wow, yeah. So he went over, he found the bike shop. The Bike People fixed it, you know, gratis for him. I don't know what's involved in fixing a bike tire.
Ned Johnson:I've done it. It's really a pain in the neck, but it's a good thing to know how to do. I
Lenore Skenazy:don't even know if they taught him, or they just did it, or whatever. But the point is, his mom did not come driving over and say, Okay, put the bike in the back. I'll take you to the shop. I love it, the fact that he recognized it. And the mom, when she was looking back on like, what saved her kid? One was getting a flip phone instead of a smartphone. Two, was a lot of therapy, and and also hospitalization at one point it was pretty serious. And three was the bike time.
Ned Johnson:I love it. I love it. I want to go back to Jonathan's book the anxious generation. And just, I need to, I need to sort of give one a shout out to, you know, the work that's in the book, yours included. But also give a hard time to all the parents across the country who are patting themselves on the back for ripping phones away from teens, which is important, you know, and frankly, get him out of you know, my hands, adult hands too. So we spend more time, you know, doing more authentic things. But my my gripe is this, the book has two really significant points. One is that we've replaced a play based childhood with a phone based childhood, and shame on us for parents, for putting all this tech in the hands of kids and then in the and then we've over protected them in the real world and under protected them in the virtual world. My feeling is that the second half of that has been taken very seriously, and we're taking phones away, you know, out of space. Is where kids don't need to have phones. Great, but we're kind of letting ourselves off the hook and really not doing anything to restore the natural habitat of the wildlife sanctuary for children of a play based childhood.
Lenore Skenazy:Yeah, so in the book John presents four new norms, and actually there's just, there was just a retreat for people who worked on the anxious generation. And one of the realizations was it was it was having these, these succinct four things that you could look at that sort of galvanized movement, the anxious generation movement, and the first three of the norms have to do with phones. One is, get the phones out of the schools. Another is, don't give your kid a smartphone till 14 or so. Another one is no social media till 16, whether that's going to be up to parents or Congress or whatever that was. That was all phones, phones, phones, bad. And then number four was more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. And as we say it like, well, we're number four, number four. And you know, people go and and for all the reasons we discussed at the beginning that it is so hard to give your kids some independence, and not just free play, but independence and real world if the school won't let your kid get off at the bus stop, if there's no one outside to play with if you're considered neglectful because you're letting your kid walk to the store ride their bike. So really, let grows. Existence is dedicated to the fourth norm. We want to make it easy and normal as well as legal, to give your kids that kind of independence and easy. The easy part is we make you do it. If your school is doing the let grow experience. Your kid comes home with this homework assignment, they got to do something new, right? And that makes it easy, because you're not the only person who's doing it. You don't even have a choice, right? Everybody's doing it. Well, maybe my kid could go with your kid to the barber, red ice cream or whatever so and that's also normal. It's not a bad parent who's letting their kid walk to the bus stop. It's a normal parent. We're all in this together. Our school is going like, bro, what can we do? It's just sort of like the school took the phones away, and the school is having the kids do things on their own. And the wonderful thing about the doing things on their own is that it only becomes more normal every month, every time your kid walks to the bus stop, you know, you're nervous the first time, and then you're elated, and then you're happy the second time, and the third time, it's like, oh, did he go? I guess he's at the bus stop now. And the thing about the anxious parents is the only thing that gives us, I'd say, peace of mind, is not always being with them and watching them and hovering. The thing that gives you peace of mind is believing that they're okay even when they're not with you. And what I feel bad about is that my mom got that. Your mom got that too automatically, because once you left the house in the morning, you went around the corner and, you know, you cross the street, and there you were at school, and then she wouldn't see you until three in the afternoon, right, right, right. And the default was, well, he must be fine. And now the default is, if I'm not in touch all the time, God knows what's happening, I better, you know, ask for cameras in the classroom and phones in the classroom. And, you know, technology that goes ding if my kid gets on the bus or off the bus, and a ring camera that shows me that he came home and, you know, cameras in the house that assure me that he's, you know, hasn't slipped and fallen. So constantly needing reassurance is the opposite of calm, and it's the opposite of whatever the word is. It is anxiety, but until you force yourself through the discomfort of being uncertain for a little while, you'll never feel certain, and the certainty comes with faith. And we don't let our we don't let parents have any faith in their kids or their community anymore. We say, watch them all the time. Be with them all the time, track them all the time. And that's what's making parents so anxious, which then makes kids so anxious. Do
Ned Johnson:you know that? Do you happen to know the work of Elie Leibovitz and the space program? Yeah? Yeah. I mean, that's your thoughts. Your observations make me think about of him so much. And for people who don't know, it turned out it's an entire treatment protocol that only worked with parents to help them change their anxious kids, and they changed their steps. And is it is as effective in treating anxiety and children as if the children themselves have had an entire, you know, course of cognitive behavioral therapy. And the basic idea behind this is simply that, if I'm an anxious person and you know, I'm afraid of flying, right, I'll talk my whole family will always take road trips, right? I'm afraid of dogs, you know Lenore, and when we go on a morning walk, well, we'll never walk on a street with dogs. And the idea behind this was that if I'm not exposed to the things, if you protect me from the things that make me anxious, then I won't be anxious. And this, of course, is what John talked about with Greg in the in the con lean of the American. Mind when the trigger warnings, the idea that this is scary to me, we deprive me. But the challenge is, and I just I think about this all the time, in the constant efforts that we as parents make, or as adults generally, to keep kids safe and increase more safe and more safe and more safe, you got to be this isn't safe. This isn't safe. This isn't safe. There is no way to effectively, continuously convey messages of safety without conveying messages of here's another place where you should be afraid, to be more afraid than you are. And the antidote, and you've said it so well, the antidote to anxiety is not that you're never afraid, but you go out in situations where there's maybe even in your head, there's a potential that could be a little bit scary, but you handle it capably. You walk all the way home, you take the bus home as the subway home as a nine year old, and you say, this was this was a little scary for me. I was a little unsure about this, but now that I've done this now that I've slayed that dragon, you know, real or imagined. Now I've become brave. And it strikes me that, you know, virtue is not the absence of vice. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage only develops with fear. I think we collectively agree that part of our work is to help parents worry less, feel that it's safe and that it's right to trust their kids more and worry about them less, because that's incredible. Don't even
Lenore Skenazy:worry about that. Wait, wait, wait, stop the worrying about them less because they can't work. You know, like it's the action that matters. Yeah, right. What's going on in your head? You could be catastrophizing all you want, but if you let them walk to school Nonetheless, if you let them do their homework, nonetheless, that's different. Keep the worry, put courage into action. Yeah, okay, got it. I mean, it'd be nice if you get rid of worry. I mean, I can't get rid of worry. Yeah, I wish that I was an unwored person.
Ned Johnson:That's a wonderful place to end with with a really. I mean, I love that confession, because what you just pointed out is that you have, I mean, as parents, we worry about our kids, and you apparently have a normal human brain. And even though you worry and worried about your nine year old. You trusted him enough, and you made a plan for him to go out there and have his New York based subway experience, hero's journey from someplace back home, and he was a different person for
Lenore Skenazy:it. I'll just end with one fact, which is that Jonathan and I and his researcher commissioned a Harris Poll, and we asked kids, what do you want to do if you could get together with your friends three different ways. One way is just with your buddies, you know, playing outside, unsupervised, whatever, or in an organized activity, whatever you love, lacrosse, chess, you know, ice skating or online, whether you're playing a video game or Snapchat or texting or whatever, which would you like to do the most? And the winner was just get together with our friends. And then came organized activities, and at the bottom was phones. Wow.
Ned Johnson:There you have it. Folks, the kids have said what they want, and all the science supports that that's what they most benefit from and most need. All right, folks, go watch lenore's TED Talk three times different devices. Oh golly. I love the way you think Lenore. So good. Thank you for being my guest. I am Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. So what did i i hope we learned today from Lenora skin, easy America's worst mom. One, kids do their most important and powerful learning through play. And by definition, play is not play when it's adult directed two some of the most important work that adolescents and children do as they move into adulthood is to learn to be able to soothe themselves their own hard feelings, and to do so part of that equation is having hard feelings and being upset. It's not only okay for kids to be upset, but a necessary part of growing up, indeed, part of a hero's journey is for child to get a little singed by a dragon, to have things be challenging, and if a child is going to become a hero or a heroine in their own life, they can't have mom or dad go slay the dragons for them. And finally, three, the thing that gives you peace of mind as a parent is believing that your kids are okay, even especially when they are not with you. And how do we and they develop confidence that they are that they can be okay without us only when they have opportunities to be without us. I am Ned Johnson, and this is. The Self shift and child podcast. 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 stixroot 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