8 Setbacks to Make A Child a Success: With Michelle Icard

If you’ve ever watched your child struggle and felt that almost unbearable pull to step in, fix it, smooth it over, or make it disappear, this episode is for you. In this conversation, I sit down with author and parent coach Michelle Icard to explore why setbacks—real, uncomfortable, sometimes humiliating ones—are not detours from development but the very path toward adulthood.

Michelle joins me to talk about her latest book, Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success, and to unpack why adolescence is meant to include missteps, awkward experiments, and moments of regret. We explore rites of passage, identity formation, impression management, and the fine line between support and overprotection. Most importantly, we discuss how parents can respond when things go sideways in ways that build resilience rather than shame.

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] – Why we revert to old parenting habits, even when we know better
[2:06] – Why watching kids struggle is painful—and why that discomfort is necessary
[5:00] – Rites of passage: separating, stumbling, and reintegrating wiser
[9:46] – “Am I doing this for them, or for me?” A powerful parenting pause
[10:28] – Impression management: how teens hide, deflect, and protect their identity
[15:00] – Modeling mistakes out loud so kids can learn how adults process setbacks
[18:25] – Friend shifts, value testing, and why adolescence requires trial and error
[21:21] – Why insisting on values can backfire—and how to invite real conversation instead
[26:33] – Curiosity over correction when teens embrace rigid or controversial ideas
[30:52] – Why natural consequences are often enough—and why piling on rarely helps
[38:11] – Failure vs. setback: when disconnection becomes the real danger
[40:00] – Contain, Resolve, Evolve: a three-step model for responding to setbacks
[43:45] – Letting the bruise heal: why parents must eventually stop poking
[46:23] – The turkey story: a rite of passage, public shame, and lasting growth
[51:00] – The question parents answered almost unanimously: would you erase the hard years?

Links & Resources:

8 Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success by Michelle Icard

Homesick and Happy by Michael Thompson

14 Talks by Age 14 by Michelle Icard

MichelleIcard.com

Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 

Scott Galloway: Notes on Being a Man 

Sarah Rosensweet: Reimagine Peaceful Parenting 

Dr. Devorah Heitner: Mentoring Kids in a Connected World 

Dr. Lisa Damour: Untangling 10-20

If this episode has helped you, remember to rate, follow, and share the Self-Driven Child Podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and create more content that makes a difference.

If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Transcript

Ned Johnson: 0:00

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.

Michelle Icard: 1:08

Am I doing this to make me feel better, or am I doing this for them? And I think that's a real tough one for parents to be, to get to go deep on, you know, like we can trick ourselves to serve our own needs, right? And say this is bad. This would be better for him just to know, just to know that I'm here, but like he knows you're there. Welcome to the self driven child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stick shirt, 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.

Ned Johnson: 1:51

Sometimes life feels like not just two steps forward and one step back, but two steps back after one step forward, and when it's your kid seemingly backtracking or falling way off track, it's not easy. So welcome Michelle.

Michelle Icard: 2:47

Hello, Ned, good to see you.

Ned Johnson: 2:49

It's always great to talk with you. So I finally had the chance to read properly your wonderful book, eight setbacks that can make a child a success, which everybody probably prefers the latter, not the former, but you know, it's a process, right? So we've all heard Marvel. A lot of the kids need to fail to grow. Obviously, it's harder for us as parents. Why is it hard for us and why so necessary for kids? Well, I think why it's hard for us is is really simple. It's painful. It's painful to watch our children experience pain and discomfort, and when we don't have a good understanding of how that pain and discomfort serves them, if we just see it as a bad thing, like a skinned knee, for example, or a,

Michelle Icard: 3:38

you know, a toothache, if we can't see what's beneficial about that, then we can we just say, oh, that's unnecessary pain. I don't want my child to experience that. Let me quickly fix this so that they feel better. So the instinct, I think, is normal and pretty neutral. What I hope that parents have a better understanding of after hearing this podcast or reading the book, is that they do both, yeah, or both? Is that the experience is not only helpful, it is entirely necessary to becoming a good adult. So that's the hard part that we don't instinctively know.

Ned Johnson: 4:18

And why is it? Why is it necessary for kids to have these failures? We're going to talk about that word in a little while.

Michelle Icard: 4:26

Yeah, it's an uncomfortable word. It makes parents itch, and it's a very subjective word. Why is it necessary?

Ned Johnson: 4:33

Yeah, why is this a necessary process for kids? I mean, we all kind of know that, but, like, Do we really

Michelle Icard: 4:39

have to believe that? Right? I mean, I think, I think I think parents are reluctant to believe it. I think they think, oh, you know what, if my kid just got great grades and had great friends and went to a great college, that would be cool, yeah. Why are you telling me that they have to go through these emotional periods of discomfort, or that they have to fail a class or whatever it might be, and the reason. This. So there's this concept called a rite of passage that I think we've all heard of, and that many of us misunderstand. We kind of think of it as a celebration or or a time a specific party, like, okay, let's have a let's have a bat mitzvah, or let's have a sweet 16, or let's give you the keys to the car. Or you're in eighth grade, and we waited so now you get a cell phone, or, you know, whatever it might be that we sort of chart this chronologically, and we say, Okay, now you're 16, you can have a party. Now you're 18, you can have a later curfew, you know, whatever it may be. And we we think of these things erroneously as rites of passage, when, in fact, a rite of passage is a process that you have to go through in order to become an adult. And it's looked a little bit different across periods of time and different cultures, but essentially it hasn't changed. It is a kid has to individuate. They have to separate from their parents, the people who raised them, or from their community, or from their group of friends in middle school, whatever it is, they have to separate. They have to approach the world independently, and when they do that, they have to make some decisions. And because it's their first time doing it alone, they make some bad decisions. And then wisdom comes

Ned Johnson: 6:20

from experience, and experience and experience comes from bad decisions, right?

Michelle Icard: 6:25

Yeah, and ideally, then if we don't jump in to fix it real quick and to soothe them too much, then they have a moment to reflect, and they say out that hurt, here's what I learned from that. And then when they know what they learned from that, they reintegrate with their community, with their friends, with their family, with new friends at school, and they are a better version of themselves because they've gone through a trial and they've learned and they've grown. And it's good for the community, because we get people who have had experience and who've gained some wisdom, and it's good for the young person, and that's really how you cross the threshold from childhood to adulthood. But when we deny kids the opportunity to sit with their discomfort and to learn from their mistakes, we don't get those better adults and we need them.

Ned Johnson: 7:15

It really sounds like the hero's journey, right?

Michelle Icard: 7:18

Oh, it's that. It's 100% it's the hero's journey blended with the kind of rite of passage that we've seen for 400 years in in sociology, your book, you're talking

Ned Johnson: 7:31

about for children to enter adulthood, they have to become independent, but a little voice on everyone's shoulder. But does that mean they have to be independent from me.

Michelle Icard: 7:43

I want them to be independent and stand up to bullies. I want them to be independent and get a job, and I still want them to be my best friend and to obey. Yeah, that's the tough part.

Ned Johnson: 7:55

Rarely does the hero or heroine enter the cage to slay the dragon with mom right or dad or the tutor or therapist or anyone right?

Michelle Icard: 8:06

And that reminds me of that reminds me of Michael Thompson's work. He did, you know, a bunch of books that we're familiar with, but in home sick and happy, where he's a big proponent of kids going away to summer camp. He writes about asking kids when you were young, tell me one of your proudest moments when you were in an early teen. And you know, people like people thought about it, what they did something that they were really proud of, and then they then, he said, Were your parents there? And like, 90% of them said no, because you can't develop that sense of pride and accomplishment if you're really being looked after during it, and you're not going to take the same risks if you're being looked after such a good point.

Ned Johnson: 8:49

I remember the day that I my wife and I dropped our son off at college, and he started in fall of 2020, so this is full covid, right? So we can't even see his term. We can't help him just basically at the curb, and we just watch him slip things back and forth. And I remember that night, oh my gosh. I remember his walking down the hallway the last time and then turn the corner before he went off and we drove away. And as he's walking down the corner, he pauses just a hitch in a step and looks right back at me, and then goes into the darkness. And I'm just like my wife and I are driving away, and so that night, like I don't know that every parent would want to do this, but certainly how I was wired, I wanted to call and check in and how is it going? And but when you talk about a rite of passage, I had to ask myself, Am I doing this for him, or am I doing this for me? And my kid is, I mean, he's quick on his feet, he's very social data. And I thought, My goodness, if he needs help, he has a cell phone, I'm doing this to make me feel better.

Michelle Icard: 10:00

It's so true that is that is a brilliant pause. Am I doing this to make me feel better, or am I doing this for them? And I think that's a real tough one for parents to be, to get to go deep on, you know, like we can trick ourselves to serve our own needs and say, This is bad. This would be better for him just to know, just to know that I'm here, but like he was here.

Ned Johnson: 10:28

Yes, he does. That's fun. Let me ask you this you you had a really neat insight at the beginning the book, when you're talking about failure and some of the ways that people avoid or hide failure, and I hadn't thought about it in these terms. You talked about avoidance and masking and then deflection. And I certainly knew that the major manifestation of anxiety is avoidance. So that makes sense. Talk a little bit about the masking and the deflection. I thought this was so cool. Oh, thank you.

Michelle Icard: 10:58

So this kind of falls under this umbrella concept of impression management, which is not my concept, but Irving goffman's concept. And I really, I really like this, to think about this in the in our understanding of tweens and teens, but also ourselves and adults. And so the idea of impression management is that we are, we are always learning about ourselves through the lens of our audience. So we are working on the impression that we make, and managing that impression, and we may change it based on our audience. And teens have to do this all the time. This kind of code switching between this is how I behave in front of teachers, and this is how I behave when I'm at other people's houses, and this is how I behave when I'm at my house and in front of my boss and all of that. And we all do that, right? I'm very different presenting at a school than I am having wine with my girlfriends, right? I mean, I'm the same person, but I'm I'm managing my impression differently, right? That's very normal. What what we may not understand about impression management is that it's not just how we take care of how other people see us, it's how we learn who we are. So if I get feedback from my audience, if I go to a party and I tell a joke and people cringe, I have learned something. I have learned that I need to manage that impression that that kind of joke isn't good to tell, right? Or if I am complimentary of my husband for helping me set up my tech for this podcast, and he is, he says something back to me that you know is like, I really appreciate that. Thank you for taking the time to notice that I feel like I'm a good partner, right? So we can learn positive things and we can learn negative things. And part of what we do as our impression management plan is we are so uncomfortable with the feelings of regret or embarrassment or shame even that come with a failure that we hide them, and we sometimes we deflect. So we may say, I see this on social media all the time. People post self deprecating things on social media as a way I think of saying like, hahaha, everyone. Look at this over here, this silly mistake that I made. But don't look over here, where I'm really quite nervous. Sleight of hand, right? It is a sleight of hand. That's exactly it. Yes. So you may recognize this sort of personality out there, and I have a lot of sympathy for it, which is like, Oh, I you know, you're calling people's attention to your little mistakes all the time, as a way of Yeah, as a way of saying, Please don't look at my bigger insecurities. Let's talk about this cupcake I made that was a total flop. It's never been. Yeah, so, so I think that happens a lot, and I think where we sort of Cross that over with how we talk to our kids about failure is you want to be cautious about deflecting so much that you aren't able to honestly be a good model for how you deal with your feelings around setbacks and crises and failures, whatever it might be, so that you're able to talk really honestly about, oh, that's painful, but I'm going to come up with, you know, I'm going to lick my wounds for a little bit, and then in two days, I'm going to refocus here and figure out how to do another pitch, right? How to try to get the job? Yeah. And that sort of

Ned Johnson: 14:25

goes, I suppose, kind of modeling, modeling that, that process that you described, of of I screwed them, making this up now, you know, gosh, I really botched this presentation. You know, I kind of didn't read the audience correctly. They were sort of like, lukewarm about my my presentation, and I get why. You know, in hindsight, I could have, should have done this differently, but I look forward to the next one.

Michelle Icard: 14:48

Ryan, yes, yes, that's exactly it. Just having processing outside a little bit of your own brain is so helpful for kids there, they may not have a big response. Is, I think what they would like is to be asked what you could do differently. Love that for them to offer you some suggestions or feedback, and really they're going to then absorb that for themselves a little bit better. So like, if you said, Oh, I gave this talk and I just it didn't feel like it hit the way it usually hits. And here's why, my kids are happy to offer their feedback on what I could try differently and not in a mean way, in a

Ned Johnson: 15:24

collaborative Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. I think there are a lot of parents who are, I guess you can say, unconsciously competent, right? They develop master in ways that it can be hard to put your head back in the sort of seventh grade you, or fifth grade you, or even 11th grade you, of when you were not fully the master I, for a while, was given my wife a little bit of a hard time, because she is like, supremely competent. And I said the challenge is, you know, you know what you are like as an awkward, you know, trying to figure things out, middle school kid. But for children, you're parthenogenic, you pop, you know, Athena fully formed from Zeus brow, and never saw that developmental process, right? And so in addition to asking for advice and sort of humbling yourself, I love when adults can take on things like even video games, where they will decidedly not be the master in the room, and a chance for, you know, for parents to for kids to watch their parents be anything less than perfect as well. Seems to me, it's worthwhile.

Michelle Icard: 16:31

It's so good. And I've, I have done that and taken an interest in things that I'm not interested in, just because I'm like this. This will be a good way for my son or daughter to be the expert here, and that is so cool. And I'll tell you what, in a in a handful of cases, I was like, I was wrong about this. I like it now that we're now that I'm in it together, and I'm not an outsider on this. I'm into weightlifting. It's fun. I'm into, you know, I got into heated rivalry. I resisted, but it's a really good show, so it's fun. It's really fun to get into something you didn't you were like, This is not for me. And then you your kid teaches you about it, and you're

Ned Johnson: 17:11

like, Oh, I love this. I love that. That's so fun. So I'm going to go back for just a moment to this idea of identity formation and how we're doing that work, not just sort of holed up in our own rooms, thinking deeply about things and watching social media, but also by getting feedback from, you know, adults around us, from teens around us. What is it? What is going on with young people that they are, particularly during middle school years, starting to pay less attention to the values of their parents and more to the values of their peers. That can feel painful for families, but But it's developmentally appropriate. And why is that?

Michelle Icard: 17:53

Yeah, well, part of what you do when you enter adolescence is you pull apart from your parents, because one of the main jobs that you have as an adolescent is to figure out who you are separate from the people who raised you. The drive towards becoming independents really starts with some acknowledgement that you are not an appendage of the adults who took care of you when you were younger, and it feels like you're an appendage, because your parents have made most of the decisions around your identity that we as adults take for granted, that we make for ourselves. Who do I want to hang out with? Play dates? Yeah, who? How do I want to present myself? What clothes do I want to wear? What's my style? What hobbies do I want to have? So we pick these out for our kids. The clothes are in your closet. You're having a play date with Kate, because I like her mom, and you know, I hope you like pottery, because that's what we had time for on Sunday. So there you go. There's your identity. And when kids hit early adolescence, at around early middle school, they're like, hey, I want to decide these parts of myself that are really markers of my own identity, and and they're gonna make a bunch of weird, bad decisions. They're gonna say, maybe I like these kinds of people over here. I'll go hang out with them. And then they realize these are not my people, and then they dump those people, and then they go hang out over here. And so there's friend hopping, and there's wardrobe changing and trying a new club and quitting it really quickly, or a sport and quitting it, I call this bellying up to the buffet. They're gonna taste a lot of things and decide it is not for them. And as parents, we have to get over that and say this is a time of life when it's okay to try something and quit pretty quickly, because we want them to figure out who they are, and that takes trial and error. So in terms of their kind of identity development, they're pulling away from parents and where values come into play. Parents get really upset at some of these things. Hey, we didn't teach you to quit things. Hey, we didn't teach you to be mean to a friend or to not stop talking to. A friend who you had for several years where I think this gets muddy is parents have values vaguely in their own mind, and they don't really articulate for themselves or their kids what they are. I will say, articulating them doesn't guarantee that your kids will share them, but it does give you a better opportunity to talk about them. So just to say we didn't raise you that way, or come on, that's not who you really are. That's pretty meaningful to a tween or teen there they don't really know who they really are. They're doing the really important work of figuring that out. So if you can say to them, here's what I value, and I'm gonna tell you why I value curiosity and I value, you know, for some parents, it will be faith. For some parents, it will be intellectual, active, you know, sort of pursuit of knowledge. It'll be whatever it is, but if you can't explain what it is and why, your kid's not, gonna just automatically embody those right

Ned Johnson: 21:02

that clarity is a great point. There was one of your kind of Q and at the end of the chapter, I guess, about the Daredevil taking care of the bodies. And say, you know, we're a family who values health and nutrition. How do we make sure that our kid does too? And you're like, you don't, which I Yeah. Shortage, I love the honesty of that. You know, the thing that's interesting to me, when you look at the research on self determination theory and intrinsic motivation, the closer a kid is to another, typically adult, but any person, the more likely he or she is to internalize their values, right? So, so I love this idea of articulating values and saying why these matter to me, rather than I insist that you because that's coercive, right? And so oftentimes we see kids who resist falling in their parents path, you know, even things like, you know, core values, that they're probably good reason to hold those core values, but they do it simply as a way to exert their own identity. Like, I'm, I'm going to drive. I'm not staying the little road. I'm driving the car right into the ditch, just to show you that I can,

Michelle Icard: 22:14

yes, that is such a good point. If you're programmed to figure out ways to separate and all teens are don't make it easy for them by by digging your heels into something that you want them to do. Be fluid and flexible about that. Have interesting conversations, explore why they feel differently about certain things, and then, to your point, they're probably more likely to accept it. But if that's an easy piece of low hanging fruit. Oh, my parents insist we go to church every Sunday. So guess what? I'm sleeping in. That's, that's, that makes it too, yeah, right.

Ned Johnson: 22:50

It's funny. I had a family. I was talking with them years ago. Their daughter was a sophomore and complicated kid, and dad, at one point, said, and she questions everything that we say, and I've reflexively, I said, fantastic. And he looked at me like what I said, Well, do you really want a young woman going out into the world who just reflexively absorbs, agrees with anything that anyone in position of authority tells her in a perfect world, she says, Well, is this true? Is this true? Is this true? And she beats it up six ways to Sunday and really contemplates it. And if she comes back around and says, You have a point, dad, you know, then she's made those values. Hers, right? She's not just just, you know, swallowing them whole, without, without any

Michelle Icard: 23:35

thought to them. I love that. And I think the other thing to consider for parents listening to this, it's clunky at first, her that daughter, you know, questioning everything that dad says is going to feel a little obnoxious, maybe because she's thinking out loud and she's overdoing it a bit. Or maybe, you know, she's working through the process. And when you're new to something, it doesn't just happen cerebrally. You're like, you know, stomping a little and really just sort of getting your feelings around it, and she'll outgrow that piece of it and then learn how to think critically without going, you know, A to Z through all of the defiance. But it is practice early on, and practice is always

Ned Johnson: 24:19

when you talked about in your book. How you know, teens tend to experience everything more intensely, so when they hold when they take hold of a new value, they often can be a little dogmatic about it, a little black and white. And of course, the real world tends to be a little bit more gray. And you made the great point that that really trying to talk through with kids, not talk them out of a talk through, which is really probably their articulating their values. Well, how would that work? When, when they have that opportunity and they're not being coerced, they're much more likely to engage with not staying. The periphery of black or white, but really with the gray, and that's where they're developing those critical thinking skills that heaven knows we want all people

Michelle Icard: 25:09

have usually gone, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't even need to read it between the lines there. We need critical thinkers. We need people who can help us right now. And, you know, I remember thinking about this when and people are still talking about this is not a past tense kind of thing, but like the subject of young boys who are going online and getting excited by people like Andrew Tate, or even, you know, Joe Rogan, or some of the other kind of manosphere voices out there about what it means to be a man and and the sort of misogyny and oftentimes racism and things like that.

Ned Johnson: 25:44

Shout out, by the way, the Scott Galloway's new book about I'm being a man. So, Oh, nice.

Michelle Icard: 25:48

Okay, thank you. But the solution to that as a parent or a teacher or an adult who cares about a kid who is expressing an interest in that is not to prove them wrong. If you are like, no, no, let me get some data out. When has data ever convinced anyone? Right? Never. Data never convinces people. The only thing that can open a person's mind is real curiosity and real genuine conversation. Talk to me about why. When did this become important to you and why and how and how. What are your feelings around it? And once you disarm someone enough to talk to them in a way that they truly perceive as non threatening and non judgmental, then you can have a good conversation and it then you can get to places where you can say, explain that better to me, because I think what I'm hearing is this, and tell me why you think it's that and, and ultimately, you're far more likely than to get a young man to say, Oh yeah, I'm starting to, I'm starting to see the other side of this and, you know, or at least to retain a relationship.

Ned Johnson: 26:55

And for what it's worth, in my experience that opening up and that transition from, I'll call it sort of rigid thinking, to to a little bit more nuanced or more expansive. I've never, well, I've rare. I've never been a part of a conversation where that happened in one conversation that tends to be iterative, particularly, as you note in the book, when there's a power imbalance,

Michelle Icard: 27:17

if your child is going to be particularly around setbacks and failures and things that are embarrassing or cause regret, they are going to be in a heightened emotional state, and so if you want to engage with them on this subject, you have got to be far less emotional. They got a lot they're working with, and it's so important that you are emotionally neutral on these topics. So one metaphor I use is like you are a you are a manager in a company, and this is one of your employees, or you are an adult in a neighborhood, and this is one of your neighbor's kids. You know, think you have to create a little bit of distance, otherwise your child will feel that you your emotional, happiness, stability, regularity depends on how they're doing. That's too much for a kid. They need to just figure out their own right, right, right stuff. They cannot be responsible for your happiness or discontent, or pride, or whatever it is that's that's adding to and such a

Ned Johnson: 28:20

good point because, and if they feel that they will, they'll upset you, or you'll bring a whole bunch more energy into the equation that is already overflowing, then they won't bring problems to you.

Michelle Icard: 28:34

Right? That is so right. It reminds me of the when you said earlier about the Q and A about, how do I convince my kid to be healthy? And, you know, like, like wellness. And I said, you don't. I can almost envision a parent saying, but if I don't hammer home this point to my kid, they messed up. And if I don't make clear that that was a real failure, or that, you know, they whatever, there's going to be a problem. It's the same to me as parents who say, online in groups, if I don't tell my daughter she's overweight, she will continue to be and I see this, you know, she will continue to not take it seriously. And almost always, the comments are like, you don't think your daughter knows the body she's walking around in the world in like, what are you doing? Yeah, but,

Ned Johnson: 29:19

and if you know Sarah Rosen sweet. She's a sort of peaceful parenting podcast, or whatever, out of out of Toronto, and she has this great, I just have this wonderful, wonderfully clarifying. And she said, when your children make mistakes, even if it's their fault, right, emotionally, take their side. Let the natural consequences be the thing you know you're not. You don't have the, you know, shaped or the physic, you know, the physical health that you want right now you bond a test, you know, if you start rubbing their nose in it, you know, that was funny. I was talking with this film. We give a talk at local school. That's all, almost all the kids. There are neurodivergent and struggles with learning in some way. And this mom reached out to me and was right before her kids midterm exams and how he wasn't studying and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she sent me an email. She said, Well, how do I punish him if he doesn't do well on his exams? And I said respectfully, not doing well on exams. That is the punishment. He's already gone grades. He doesn't feel good about you know, he may not feel like he's that smart. He may have the teachers give him a hurry up, but he's got plenty of reasons enough to not feel great about that performance. This sounds like a kid who needs more help to motivate, to engage, to organize, to him. This is a complicated kid, and if you want to be part of the solution, you cannot be on Team blame.

Michelle Icard: 30:52

I love it. I love it, yes, and that goes for even, even stuff that is like kind of taboo, like if your kids send a nude to someone, you cannot approach that with hellfire. No. Well, I love

Ned Johnson: 31:08

the point about curiosity. I mean, Devorah Heitner talks about this, you know, with her great books about So, I mean, is this something that folks are doing what what you know? And it may be, it's certainly easier to have curiosity about, you know, sexting, or a kid's kids drug use when it's not your own child. I get that, yeah, but if you want to be part of the conversation, you probably need to be that more a little bit the guise of a neutral third party. I would also say, just to let all this off the hook. If having those conversations for us as parents is really hard, trust that there's probably some other adults in your kid's life who may be having that conversation. What was it? Lisa de Marc says, you know, kids need someone to spend their time with, share their problems with, share their secrets with, you know, and so to feel that you have to be all of those things to your child, that's a lot. Yeah, I'm

Michelle Icard: 32:00

on board with Adam in, I think it's in the book 14 talks. I say if, if you're not going to be the one to have all of these talks, oh yeah, you're just not. And so deputize your village and let your kid know. Like I've talked with you know, my sister, I've talked with your older cousin, and they are totally open to chatting with you about these things. So if you just know that I'm not going to go to them and ask them what you talked about, you have a lot of people who really want to talk to you whenever you want to talk about these things in a very cool, non judgmental way. So it's me, whenever you want it to be want it to be me, and if you don't want it to be me, that's not a problem. There are other people you can talk to.

Ned Johnson: 32:41

I love it. I was given, I was given a lecture. This is odd to me, to the Arizona, Arizona association of school resource officers, you know, and around the idea of, you know, help, you know, sort of brains and how stress is contagious, and how, if you're a very large man with a big gun, you know, how you may want to speak softly to be able to connect with kids. And during the Q and A this, one of these very large men with large guns, you know, asked me he was a person who a lot of the young people to school came to confide in, which is fantastic, right? And he said, I have a parent came to me and said, Don't you be giving my kid advice about his life? That's my job. And I thought, Oh, that's so much. That's so limiting, sadly, to that child, such pressure on the parent to be the guru on everything. But also this message a complete antithesis to what you just shared that there are very few people in the world that you can trust to have your best interests at heart, where what you just shared is conveying to kids, Sweetheart, I'm happy to help you, but and so is aunt Joe and Uncle Jim, and I know your coach really likes you, and was telling me how much he's interested in the way you think you know, and on, and your pastor, I mean, on and on. It goes to know, just to, I mean, we all talk about the village, but to voice to kids, you can look outside of me,

Michelle Icard: 34:11

yeah, and I will say, though that like that, that that is also our privilege. That is true. Have a safe community of people who we know will love our kids, and for many parents, I this year worked with a group of parents who lived in like an assisted housing community, and they had a social worker on site at the assisted housing and they were mostly immigrant Families and working second and third shifts, and it's an incredible housing community like that provides this provides a social worker, the whole thing. And and they really were not on board with my idea, and I understand why they were like, no, no. If something goes wrong, I'm going to discipline. I am not going to have a time. Walk, and I I had to say to them, like, I get that. And I'm not saying no consequences, and I'm not saying that there aren't, you know, reasonable ways to put limits on things your kid is doing. I'm not saying if your kid's sneaking out at night, that you just go, Hey honey, how about you? Don't, right? You may need, you may need to be a little bit more strict and serious, but my what I tried to do was say your kid is far more likely to not just pass the time on that punishment, to just sit there quietly with folded arms and just let it go by, but to actually learn if you have a conversation that goes in conjunction with the grounding, or with the whatever it is that you think is necessary to do for that kid. So for some, for some people, they don't have the luxury of having a maybe a bigger village, or, you know, they just socially, have had different experiences and have a different level of trust. I understand that. My My hope is that they that we can still find ways to encourage, at least for that parent, to create some soft communication.

Ned Johnson: 36:11

So one of the things you talk about in the book is, is failures versus setbacks, right? And we see these as failures. But you know this, my writing part would say, when do we measure is a failure? You know, well, do you want to talk about how you see failures versus setbacks, and how we as parents can

Michelle Icard: 36:26

think of Sure, I'm a little bit using all of these words in a jumble in the book, and that's because I know that we have different levels of comfort with them, that parents as readers really don't like the word failure. I wanted to put failure all over the cover of this book. And my publisher was like, nope, so it's in quotes at the tippy top. And we went with setbacks because that's more comfortable for people. But I do need to define where I think, whether you're having a setback or a face plant or whatever it is that you want to think of as these kind of developmental I don't know what they are, mistakes. Pick a word from the thesaurus, yeah, where I think it crosses to the point of like this really feels like a failure. And for me, that is when a kid feels like they are disconnected, like really disconnected, from either their peers or their family and and that happens naturally, that that separation, as we've discussed, is important, but if it's to the point that it makes you feel unacceptable or unmoored in any kind of way and makes you doubting your self worth, then we're into real failure territory. Otherwise, failing a class, unless it creates those feelings in a child isn't really like a failure, it's a setback, or it might be a little crisis, or it might be, you know, a challenge. But I am most worried about when we see that sort of, I'm questioning my worth. I am untethered to anyone that that's worrisome.

Ned Johnson: 37:57

In the book, you have sort of eight main setbacks, you know, kind of, you know, kind of, you know, paradigm, paradigmatic. That's where it experiences that that young people are likely to face, you know, on their on their path to adulthood. And I'd like to, you know, walk through one or two of those, but we know that these, this is so often work that children need to do for themselves with adult support. But the book, of course, is talking about what parents can do, because we can't, obviously make kids do things that they don't they refuse to do. But you have a model of what parents can do when they see this failure, when they see the setback, when it's in crisis mode, and it's really elegant kind of three steps. Can you walk us through that? Sure.

Michelle Icard: 38:40

So whatever it is that a child is experiencing that comes on your radar, then you say, Ooh, this feels like a real setback or a failure or whatever. So whatever that is that could look like a bunch of different things. That could be a daredevil kid who is physically hurting their body, maybe, maybe they're a sixth grader and they refuse to wear a helmet when they skateboard. Maybe they're an 11th grader and they are binge drinking, whatever it is they're doing something to hurt their body, or it could go all the way to, you know, a sort of calmer like this kid has a real, seems to have a real lack of belief in themselves. You know, they used to like going to the swimming pool. Now they have all this body, you know, uncomfortability, and they don't want to go be seen anymore at the pool. So a wide variety, it is the same three steps, no matter what. And the steps are, first, your job as the adult, when you see this happening, is to contain the problem. And that could be either a real physical containment, like kid who's skateboarding down the hill without wearing a helmet, you're not going to be able to use your skateboard until you wear this so it could be physical. It could be kid who's sneaking out to binge drink isn't allowed to go out for a little while until you figure out what's happening. Or it could be containment in a more metaphorical way, where you say, Hey, I've noticed this. I've noticed that you seem uncomfortable. Going to the pool. Now, you've, you've made some self deprecating jokes about the bathing suit, and I just, I just want to notice it and see if this is something that we need to talk about. So containing is like putting a pin in it and saying, let's, let's focus on this for a little bit. So contain is the parents job. This is a, I want you to think of this like a tennis match so the ball's in your court, you're going to contain the issue verbally or physically, however you do it. And then the next step is resolve. And this is where the ball bounces to the kids side of the court, and they need to do something. They personally need to take some action so that they don't get stuck in this period of angst and discomfort, and we know from decades of research that if kids feel discomfort, emotional or physical, unless they learn to do one thing to cope, they are likely to just curl up and wait for someone else to make it better. So we have to give them loads of options and opportunities for one thing they could do, and that could be, you know, if they've if they've messed up, do they need to make an apology if they misunderstood something? Do they need to go do a little research and learn learn something if they've broken something? Do they need to repair it? If they're lacking confidence? Do they need to do something that will push them outside of their comfort zone so that they can rebuild a little confidence? If they've broken trust? Do they need to rebuild trust? So there are lots of things in the book that kids could talk about with their parents and say, I'll do this thing. That's resolve, that's the ball in the kids side of the court. And what I want to say before I move on is that doesn't have to be perfect or dramatic. It has to be really like a micro movement, just so that they learn to do something, and then the ball bounces back to the

Ned Johnson: 41:55

parents so they learn to sense control. Because you with people who know our work, know about learned helplessness, which you talk very clearly and eloquently about in book. The key, of course, is that in order to you have to do something to undo learned helplessness. Right? To learn a sense of control, you actually have to do something so that resolve is to your point, that's back in the kids side

Michelle Icard: 42:19

of the court. Thank you. That is exactly right. They and it doesn't. Parents often get caught up on this step by saying, I really wanted her to do something like bigger I wanted her to go talk to the girl made fun of her. It doesn't it's not you, it's them, and maybe at their tender, young age, they are only comfortable with writing a journal entry. Maybe they are only comfortable with reaching out to another friend, right? They're not ready to go slay the dragon yet. That comes later, hopefully once they do this for long enough that they build that muscle. So then they do something. Let it be small. Let it be, you know, let it be what they choose. And then the ball bounces back to your side of the court again. So we had contain parents. Job, resolve kids. Job, evolve parents. Job, parents get so worried that their kid isn't going to have learned a lesson, that they don't evolve from the setback or the failure. Instead, they keep poking the bruise to make sure their kid has learned something, and when that happens, the kid doesn't have a chance to reflect and to feel they're just deflecting the parent at this point. So at a certain point, your kid has done the thing, however big or small you feel like it is, and then you need to say that was hard and I'm proud of you for doing something to help yourself feel a little bit better. Let's put this in the rear view mirror, and anytime you want to talk about it, I'm here to talk about it, but I'm not going to keep asking you about it or making sure that you learn something from this. You did a great job, and we're going to just move on from this, and that's

Ned Johnson: 43:59

all you do. That may be my favorite insight from the whole book, because, you know, those those experiences are in the back of, you know, a kid's head, in the back of a parent's head, and we will, you know, we keep going back to those. But to your point, do we move forward from them, or we just sit there and then, all the while, years ago, I stumbled on the word cicatrized. Do you know the word cicatrized? I don't. This came to my I was probably in college. Cicatrized is to heal by the formation of a scar, and so we can't have an open wound forever, because your to your point, if you keep poking the bruise or poking at it, it will fester and you'll never heal up and move on, right? And the thing that's so interesting is, at least for me, and maybe it's because I still have the brain of a teenage boy, I am wildly proud of all the scars I can show you these ones I you know, if you doesn't work so on a podcast. But you know, people tend to be proud of them because, like, here's what I did. And look what I overcame, and look what I've moved past, and if we don't let them move past, how, how?

Michelle Icard: 45:06

Yeah, that is so good. We think we're we think we're being caring, and we think we're being responsible if I don't make sure my kid doesn't screw up again. But who among us learns every lesson the first time? I know the universe has to keep turning up its volume on things for me until I go, Oh, dang it. Finally, I hear it loud and clear. It's unfair of us to expect that a kid who screws up won't keep screwing right. That is very unfair, and to think that somehow we have enough control to keep pressing that bruise and to keep asking the questions and to keep grinding the lesson in it's it's wrong. We need to let them experience it.

Ned Johnson: 45:50

I have that in your, in your your bill of rights, right the kids who make mistakes still deserve the right to make more mistakes. And I because you know anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly, even if it's multiple times.

Michelle Icard: 46:06

Yeah, you have to do it to learn you really do and we're okay with that with toddlers in elementary school kids. We're not okay with that with older kids, and we need to get okay

Ned Johnson: 46:16

with it. Can we end with your turkey story? Sure.

Michelle Icard: 46:23

So this was my big rite of passage story. This is my coming of age. I'm sure I had several of these, but to me, this stands out as my biggest coming of age story. We talked earlier about that you got to separate from your group, learn some make a mistake, learn from it, and be better. For me, that was I was 16 years old. I was just outside of Boston, and I went to school in Cambridge, and my school participated in a program called the Mountain School, which is in Vermont, and various private schools from around the country would send kids to the mountain school for a semester where it was academically rigorous, but also you worked on a working farm, and so you raised the food that you were going to eat, and you took care of the animals, and you, you know, made sure the barn was in good condition. You learned a lot of kind of earthy hippie skills, which were, this would have been in the 80s, so that that wasn't like, really super cool back then, but, but anyway, I applied, and I and I got accepted, and I went to the mountain school, and no friends who were attending at that time. So it fulfilled the category of separating from my parents and from my community, and I showed up and I we had chore duty that rotated every two weeks. So in the morning, you would do your chores, then you would go to school, and then you would go do the farm stuff. So my chore duty on one of the rotations was Turkey duty, and that meant in Vermont, in the dead of winter, in the darkness before the sun rose, I had to get up and trudge up Turkey Hill and fill a bucket of grains and scatter it across the icy Hill for the turkeys to have their breakfast. And I did that for about a week. And then one morning, I was like, I'm so tired, and I was 16. And I said, it'll be fine if I just sleep in one day. So I did, and then I went to class, and then no one mentioned anything. So I was like, Okay, I did it. I am gonna get up tomorrow and get back on schedule. And the next morning, I was freezing and so, so tired, and I just had this feeling that Turkeys didn't need to eat as much as people said they did, because I didn't get in trouble the first time.

Unknown: 48:40

There's other food out there. They're wild creatures, right? Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Icard: 48:44

And so I did it again, and I went to class, and I was very nervous, but nothing bad happened to me. And did my farm stuff that afternoon, and then I went to bed, and the next morning, I don't know what would have happened, except that the door to my dorm flung open at like 5am and the farm manager came in screaming my name. So every kid, every girl, came out of her dorm room bleary eyed and freaked out, like, what is going on? And he just read me the riot act in front of everyone who did I think I was what did I think I was doing? Did I know what happened when you don't feed turkeys? No turkeys. But what happens is they can become cannibalism. This. This did not happen. I need everyone to know it was like not a Donner party. It was a sort of a general interest they were showing because they were serving and so Tad pickish, as you say in your book, they I mean, I cannot even begin to describe the shame and the guilt that I felt. I was mortified just I mean, now he was right. I don't blame the farm manager. He was right and protective of. His farm and his animals, he was correct that I was not being a good community member, and I was a very shy, generally people pleasing girl who really hated to be called out. So luckily, it was busy at the mountain school. Everybody had to get on with their duties right away. And then school was hard, and then activities after school were hard, so no one had a lot of time to think about me or to talk about me and what I had done wrong. And the best thing that the farm manager did was he didn't bring it up again. He evolved, and when it was time to pin the next chore rotations up, he didn't say now, Michelle, I want to be sure that you know I didn't put you in charge of any animals this time, and I want and I want to be sure that you you know you do what you're supposed to do. He just assumed I had learned something and that I would do the right thing, and I did, if he had made a big deal about it, I know who I am. I am so such a nervous person, I would have called my parents and said, come get me. I'm leaving early, and then my parents would have had to ask why, and I would have told them about the turkey thing. And then they might have thought I was a socio. And they would have been like, well, let's watch her feed the cat. We can't just assume she's feeding the cat at home. And I it would have changed the trajectory of how I felt about myself, when, in fact, what it did was it taught me a really important lesson, that it's okay to indulge yourself, but not at the expense of people or animals who are counting on you. And I learned that, and i i that is a deep part of who I am. So I returned to my community a better version of myself, just like you're supposed to do, all thanks to the farm manager not making a big deal out of it, evolving past it.

Ned Johnson: 51:48

I love it, and I want to end with this at the very end of your book, all these folks who had some really hard stuff, you know, getting in kind of knock down, drag out fights with parents and not doing with school and not feeling like they fit in, and questioning all kinds of stuff. And hard for these young people and hard for loving parents, who, you know, are along for the ride, doing, you know, helping as best they can. And you said at the very end of the book that you asked these people a question, What did you ask about? How did that apply?

Michelle Icard: 52:22

I said, if I had a magic wand, and I could give it to you now, and you could erase this period from your child's life. I'm talking about your child was in the hospital from binge drinking, or your child was expelled from school for vandalism, or your child had so much self doubt, you were really worried about them. Would you would you erase this period from your child's life? And all but one parent said, No, I wouldn't, because what my child learned from this was too valuable. I think some of them joked, I would erase it from my life. I would like to not have experienced that, but for my child, what they learned was so valuable. And I, as much as I'd like to take away the pain, I can't take that away from them, so we're going to keep it. And the one parent who said that they would get rid of it said I might still be too close to this to answer. So that that is so important to realize that from parents who've been there, yeah, really pretty extraordinary setbacks, they are proud of how their children grew and came through those I

Ned Johnson: 53:30

suspect it is for them, is it is for you that those experiences were such a big part, much Like the Turkey Hill massacre, I'm teasing you. Those difficult experiences were a singular part of who they became. And those parents like you like the person that their children became,

Michelle Icard: 53:51

yeah, exactly, exactly. I love that,

Ned Johnson: 53:55

ideally, not sociopaths, but feed the turkeys people.

Michelle Icard: 53:59

Yeah, feed the turkeys. If you don't,

Ned Johnson: 54:00

please learn from it. Yeah, no, it's so I mean, I I'm don't want to broadcast to the world every thing that I've done, but I've certainly shared a lot of them. And you know, I'm right there with you and with those folks. I wouldn't necessarily want to relive the hardest parts of my life, but I like the life that I have, and that's what I had to get through to get here. Then it's worth it, right?

Michelle Icard: 54:25

I feel that way all the time. Yes, I love where I am.

Ned Johnson: 54:29

I love that well. Michelle ickard, thank you so much for joining me. Your eight setback that can make a child a success, added to 14 talks with to have with teen, you know. So now we've got 22 so what's the next numerically? What's up next?

Michelle Icard: 54:42

Right? I'm not going to numerical this time. I'm gonna say, I think a lot of people went numerical there a little bit. So I'm gonna pull back and, yeah, I'm gonna go slightly different direction.

Ned Johnson: 54:53

Well, I look forward to your next work. And thank you so much for this really fun conversation. Yeah, I loved it. Thanks, Ned. Marc, some takeaways. If you want to be part of the solution, you cannot be on Team blame as a parent. It can help your kids a lot if you can process your thoughts and feelings a little bit outside of your own brain so your kids can see and understand the way that you're thinking about things when you're on your kid about whatever, ask yourself, Am I doing this for me to feel better, or am I doing it for them? And lastly, if you're a teen listening to this, one of the main jobs that you have as an adolescent is to figure out who you are separate from the people who raised you. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven 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 stixrod, 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