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
When the World Feels Too Big: Talking With Our Kids About Hard Things
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In a world where violent incidents, political upheaval, and shocking news dominate headlines --- from immigration enforcement violence in Minnesota to studies pointing to "nihilistic" violence without clear motives --- many parents and caregivers are left wondering: How do we talk about this with our kids? And more importantly, how do we process our own feelings so that we don't become overwhelmed or paralyzed by fear, uncertainty, or anger?
In this episode, Ned speaks with teen mental health and parenting expert Julie Baron, LCSW-C guides listeners through developmental, emotional, and practical frameworks for navigating these conversations with children and adolescents. We'll explore the psychological roots of feeling out of control, the maladaptive ways people try to regain a sense of agency (including in forms of violence), and evidence-based tools from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and her innovative CARE model for parenting that help families cope, connect, and act --- even in uncertainty.
Episode Highlights
[0:00] - Why we fall back into old parenting habits—and how to change that
[3:11] - Julie’s work with teens and families using DBT skills
[6:39] - How parent and child emotions feed off each other (and escalate)
[9:46] - The impact of technology and social media on teen mental health
[15:12] - Practical strategies to manage overwhelming news and stress
[18:10] - The role of control—and why feeling powerless fuels anxiety
[21:33] - Understanding maladaptive coping (and what’s underneath it)
[23:43] - What we can control: attention and behavior
[28:21] - How to talk with kids about scary or overwhelming world events
[31:41] - Why connection matters more than saying the “right” thing
[36:22] - DBT communication skills: goals, relationships, and self-respect
[40:27] - Choosing your parenting battles wisely
[44:01] - The power of validation (and how to use it effectively)
[46:24] - Why inconsistent parenting responses can backfire
[47:45] - Managing stress: increasing healthy “outflows”
[49:34] - Final takeaway: connection is the ultimate buffer against stress
Links & Resources
What Works With Teens Newsletter
Parenting Teens Through Connection
Julie Baron and Associates: Website
Linkedin: Julie Baron
Instagram: @parentingteensthroughconnection
Facebook: Julie Baron and Associates
If this episode has helped you, remember to rate, follow, and share the Self-Driven Child Podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and create more content that makes a difference.
If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com
Hey, folks, Ned here, like me, you want your kids, your students, honestly, all the young people you know to thrive, and you know how much you can help. But like me, you probably also recognize that you fall short more than you like to, in part, because we tend to 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
Julie Baron:we don't control our emotions or our thoughts, by the way, right? They hit us. But what we can control is where we place our attention and then what with our bodies from there. Those are really two, the two only things, we have absolute control over our bodies, what we do with bodies and where we place our attention.
Ned Johnson: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 in a world where violent incidents, political upheaval and shocking news dominate headlines, from immigration enforcement violence in Minnesota to studies pointed to nihilistic violence without clear motives, many parents and caregivers are left wondering, how do we talk about this with our kids, and more importantly, how do we process our own feelings so that we don't become overwhelmed or paralyzed by fear, uncertainty or anger? In this episode, I speak with teen mental health and parenting expert Julie Baron LCSW, as she guides listeners through developmental, emotional and practical frameworks for navigating these conversations with children and adolescents, we'll explore the psychological roots of feeling out of control, the maladaptive ways people try to regain a sense of agency, including in forms of violence and evidence based tools from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT and our innovative care model for parenting that helps families cope, connect and act even in uncertainty, and evidence based tools from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT and our innovative care model for parenting that help families cope, connect and act even In times of uncertainty. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Well, Hi Julie. Thanks for joining me, Ned.
Julie Baron:It's really good to be here with you, and I'm really excited to have a meaningful conversation.
Ned Johnson:I am too. And you know, I would love for you to talk a little bit about the work that you do because, you know, for for all the people who listen to this podcast, and all the parents and all the people just finding, you know, being a human kind of taxing right now, we're all looking for good advice. And I think the work that you do, particularly as a DBT therapist, really centers things in the idea that we're what I guess the foundation will well, we're all doing the best that we can and but we might have to do things differently if we want things to be different,
Julie Baron:and we can do better,
Ned Johnson:and we can do better. So you work with a lot of young people where things could be going maybe better than they are. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Julie Baron:Sure, sure. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I have been working in one capacity or another with adolescents and their families for more than 30 years. Started off in community based mental health, worked in public and private schools, worked in a group practice, and Coming up on eight years opens my own practice. We have. Part of our practice is a comprehensive DBT program, dialectical behavioral therapy for those who aren't familiar, for teens and young adults. And part of the evidence based model of care, which we use is that the parents are also in a skills group. Once a week, we have 90 minute skills groups for the teens and for the parents to teach them the full curriculum of DBT coping skills. So yes, they are dealing with lots of hard things, and you know, we can't choose. When life throws us hard things, but we can choose how we're going to cope with them.
Ned Johnson:That's well said and and, you know, I guess with in your world, they talk about the kid or the parent, whatever, who's going to get the therapy as the identified patient. But of course, people don't live in isolation. They live in family systems, and that's really the idea behind engaging parents in the work as well.
Julie Baron:Yeah, correct. You know, typically the I think, let me just say that as a plug for DBT that I think we can all benefit from using these coping skills of distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness and mindfulness. These are all really good healthy coping skills that all of us can use. And typically, the clients that we see coming in to DBT are the ones who have, like, highly sensitive nervous systems. They're wired to be pretty sensitive to emotions and maybe, and as a result, more reactive, and sometimes people don't know how to respond to that or what to do with that. And your more, quote, unquote, typical parenting approaches not working, not because parents don't care, and they're not trying very hard. It's just that these kids need a different approach, and so the environment changing, and parents learning the skills alongside their teens, and having a common language, if you will, really makes all the difference in terms of establishing more lasting change.
Ned Johnson:It's interesting for me. Full full disclosure, when our daughter was having a lot of struggles through the end of middle school and the start of high school, was working with the late, great Anne wake, who, you know, opened, I guess, the first DBT practice here in DC. And, you know, was, it was so, was so helpful for me as a parent. And I'd like to think that I'm, you know, marginally better than average in terms of talking with young people and but still, when things were hard for her, they were hard for all of us. And maybe, you know, bi directional there. And one of the things that strikes me is that we know that emotions are contagious, right? So an so an anxious kid is likely to make an anxious parent, make a parent anxious? Well, in many ways, probably, particularly if you have a highly attuned parent, right, who's really emotionally attuned to their kid, they're going to have those kind of, those more intense reactions as well. But then often, because of that, at least, I'll speak for myself, I wasn't perhaps as effective in helping in the ways that I wanted to. And then when I wasn't effective, then she'd get more upset, and everyone was everyone. And I'm thinking like, I'm just trying to help, right? And oh my
Julie Baron:goodness, that's right. It's no one. It's no one's fault. It is a a cycle that evolves by in a bi directional shaping manner, child shapes parent, parent shapes child. And sometimes we get into these swirls and we don't realize or recognize that we may inadvertently be reinforcing the very things we are trying to help our kids change. So can you give an example? 17,000 probably. But wait, I mean, if a kid is, if your child is, you know, really anxious, and we are trying to assure them, reassure them, make things easier for them. We're we are basically colluding with the anxiety, as we know, and so that then does not help your child respond or, or or work against the anxiety, right? Everybody like is colluding with the anxiety. Similarly, if you have a child who is self harming, and you come running to take care of them when they've self harmed, then they learn that the way they get their needs met is through unhealthy coping rather than and it's tricky, because course, appearance urge, of course, a parent's natural inclination is to run to protect their child and to you know, when something is that is our innate wiring. That's our job. We're wired that way. We really are. And so sometimes it takes understanding these concepts to be very intentional and deliberate about the way that we're changing them.
Ned Johnson:You've been doing this work for an awfully long while. What have you seen in the last 10 years compared to the first 10 years of work that you're doing?
Julie Baron:Oh, I mean, I think my answer is probably consistent with pretty much anyone else's answer, which is the onset of technology, the fast. Fast development of social media and all of the things that kids can access on the internet and in the palm of their hand, around the clock, and now AI, which is happening so fast and we haven't even wrapped our heads around it, I think that the evolution and the development and of tech, of all, this technology is happening way faster than our human systems can keep up with so a couple of times, including from a parenting perspective,
Ned Johnson:yeah, yeah. I mean, a couple thoughts jump to mind for me is, you know, effectively, anything that speeds things up tends to make people more anxious, right? You have you even for no other reason, you get more inputs more quickly. And you know, brains capacity. You know, brains only go as fast as they go. It certainly strikes me as well that social media, much like the internet Jen and much like communication generally, has the ability to bring information, hard information, bad images, scary stuff, whatever, right into your household, right? Where, maybe before you just you keep it outside, but now they can, you know, safest space, right? That's really well said, into your safest space, and because, you know, cell phones and computers and certainly social media now allow, not only allow kids to access those in ways that they wouldn't have. You know, if the parents shut off a cable that was kind of it, not only can kids access that, but because with social media, it's not just kids reaching out to find things. It's being things pushed at kids Yes, before they may be developmentally ready to
Julie Baron:handle those. Yes, absolutely, with the algorithms and the companies trying to maximize engagement. Using that word deliberately, because I'm gonna use it. It throws things at kids, and it lures them in, and it keeps them and adults, by the way, like my 20 and 30 year old clients are like the ones who are also saying to me, addicted to my I cannot put down Instagram and Tiktok. And, you know, I'm having those conversations with, you know, 20 some year olds. So imagine, you know, for a 1314, 15 year old whose brains don't have the capacity to regulate the same way, how difficult that really is so part of kind of, what I am trying to do more educating on with parents is, how do parents engage their kids? Because, ironically, we could probably learn something from social media, right?
Ned Johnson:Well, yeah. I mean, you know, there's, um, because, effectively, the whole darn world, universe, internet, you can be available there. It can be. I mean, my son has learned he has the most wholesome Tiktok feed in the world, right? And among other things, he has taught himself to cook there, you know, which is like, wonderful byproduct, right? That's right, right, right? And so, you know, I went with the work that Bill and I do around around our book, one of the things that strikes us is that because children and young people aren't going to live lives, probably without technology, because most of us aren't, you know, Amish or Mennonite or whatever, that we have this real tension, right? Because we don't want to have kids be exposed to things that are beyond their capacity to handle, particularly if they're not doing it with, you know, adult support. But in the other hand, particularly as they become teens, they need to learn to handle that technology for themselves. So your 20 year is, right? You know, it's not like a parent is going to sit there and reach across the you know, I'm What are you going
Julie Baron:to do? So not so easy for the parent of a 15 year old, correct to pry the thing out of their hands, either want them physically engaging
Ned Johnson:in that way? Yeah, you know. And it's, and I just, I think it's kind of all over the map. I know Lisa tomorrow always talks about, you know, in talking with kids, kind of, what's the need that this that's being met? I mean, they're just flat out bored. Is this a social connection? You know, there are all kinds of reasons, good and bad, and I think about this, especially in today's world. And you know, I'd like to talk a little bit about today, kind of what's going on right now, in this moment in America, and how we can help people cope with that. But I had a student I was working with, this was what right before the election in 2020 and she was transfixed by it, and just incredible source of stress. And of course, when you're stressed, it's almost impossible to turn your back on the stressor, stress, or, I guess, word, right, yeah. And so I'd love your take on this. I said, I said, Bella May, my opera suggestion, this is important. Do you pay attention to I understand the election matters to you, this, this all matters. But when it's a drip feed, and that's all you think about all the time, your ability to think clearly about that is probably not and to cope with is probably not going to be as high. I suggest that try this as an experiment and put on your calendar. You know, 8am till 9am you know, 12 to 1230 and then again at night, where you play. This is where I will go, then pay attention to this totally freak myself out process or whatever I have to do. So you've got dedicated times to do that, lest it bleed into every waking thought in every moment of your day.
Julie Baron:It's excellent advice. I'm curious if she took it.
Ned Johnson:She did. We were trying to get her everything we could to make her feel a greater sense of control, you know, as ways as we talk about this, my other favorite one, by the way, this is apropos from nothing, but she worked, she worked in a an NGO and around women's reproductive health, and she was sort of out of her mind, because she was, like, the only woman there, and they were basically old white men who are even older than I am, which is a lot, and she couldn't get a word in edgewise. And her mother is a very well regarded OB GYN in this area, and she was just out of her mind. And what can she do? Like she's the young kid on the block there, and so to increase control, she was an athlete. I said, What I suggest for you is you go out for a run. She Well, she lived under Georgetown. Go out for run. And I want you to sort of predatorially Hunt old white men. Okay? And when you as you run, as you run by, them, accelerate just a little bit and under your breath as you go by, then go.
Julie Baron:Love it. I love that. It is a playful way to find a way to assert control. That's healthy, right? And, yeah, we there's a there. DBT has a list that they offer. There's this concept called alternate rebellion. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So instead of, like, the really risky thing that you're doing, if you feel the need to do something spontaneous or or stimulating. You know, some of these, some people are really stimulate stimulation seeking. Go and look at this list of alternate rebellion, right? And go, go do rock climbing, or, you know, say something that you, you know, respectful, but that you might not say out of the ordinary in a public place. Or, you know, I don't know, do something that that jolts that dopamine, dopamine system that is gives you that sense of like living on the edge a little bit, and isn't harmful.
Ned Johnson:I love it. It makes it makes me think I had a few weeks, a few episodes back, interviewed a guy named Chris Baum. And if you know him, he's, he's a middle school educator, and he's got a bunch of terrific books. Actual title, which I'm currently forgetting, was like 50 things to do in high school, in middle school, yeah. And one of them was, like, be like, a renegade artist, or stealth artist or something. It was to, like, make things and then, like, just deposit them in sneaky little places in the library, knowing that and nothing, ideally, that's completely unhinged, but just slightly subversive. So when people find this being like, no, wait a second. And you know, for your Marc, yeah, and for middle school kids, feeling like they're stuck between childhood and adulthood, and not being seen or taken seriously is a way to exactly your point to make a Marc in ways that are more adaptive than some of the maladaptive approaches that kids can fall into.
Julie Baron:But the sense of control that you're talking about in this example with your student is apropos of how out of control the world feels. And you know how people are struggling to find ways to cope with lots of things that we can't control right now?
Ned Johnson:Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting. You may know from our book, we lean hard into the work of Sonya Lupin, who has the acronym of nuts, of what stresses people out. And it's just, I find it so powerful of kind of what's freaking you out right now, Ned, and so it's n is novelty, unpredictability, perceived threat. And then S is a low sense control, and particularly when you look at some of the harder things in the world politically right now, it can feel like we've never seen things like this before. No one has ever done this any given day you don't know what you're going to wake up doing, find in the paper on your feed. Certainly this can feel threatening and more so for people who don't, you know, look like me, talk like me. You know, different populations have a lot more threat than I will ever have. And then, of course, the low self control, like, what do we even do about this? I mean, no wonder that stress is high, higher,
Julie Baron:yeah, yeah, it's absolutely true. And you know, we do need to find things we can control and small things that we can control, having an important conversation with someone else, sharing ideas, hearing a different perspective from someone you know, talking to as a parent you know, checking in with our kids and talking to our kids and asking them what they think and how they feel, and really just doing in a in a really mundane kind of way, what. Can throughout our day and recognizing it as, as you know, self efficacious that do have some sense of control over things, just not the big, large things that we can't control.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, no, and you know, better than I but the sciences I understand it is that you don't need to feel in control of everything. You just don't want to position where you feel in control of nothing. Yes, correct. I had a when I was in college, and sort of bumpy, and I take an ear off from college, and my dad connected me with a guy named Robert saisi, who was a physician and a psychologist into being the Secretary of Health or something for the state of Connecticut. Just a fascinating guy. And he had been a prisoner of war in Korea for two years, and he talked about, and this is really incredible. I mean, it's dark, but it's incredible. And he was, he reported, he said that was I was systematically tortured. And he said, When I knew they were coming for me, I would take a sliver of wood and I would stick it into like my back teeth or my my own lip. And then when they were doing to me what we're doing, I would manipulate that so I could focus on I felt a control thing that you could physically control, right? You know that? And I imagine, and I'm not an expert on it, but I would imagine that, you know, you mentioned before self you know, self injury when cutting that that's just a maladaptive approach to feel more control, you know, over feelings that you feel like you can't control. Is that fair for
Julie Baron:some people, that's the case, and just like any behavior, the function of that behavior is complicated, and you need to the person and the circumstance. And, you know, taking time to peel back the layers of the onion to help to figure out what exactly the function where that person is can be really helpful. One of the things tools that we use in the individual work in DBT is called a behavioral chain analysis. So we go through kind of piece by piece of the event and the and the whole interaction, and, you know, so what happened next, and then what happened? And we try to identify vulnerabilities, and what were the thoughts, and what was the particular trigger, you know, what was the emotion? And what did you do next? And then, how did it serve you? And then where can you be skillful next time? Because what happened is that you do an analysis and you see this, like this movie, consistent movie, right? Starts to develop. And we call that the case conceptualization. Then you figure out, ah, this is what you're trying to do. Let us help you figure out how you can get the very same thing accomplished in a more productive manner. So really learning and sometimes, sometimes in the moment when you are overwhelmed and your emotions are really intense and you're not feeling in control, distress tolerance skills is what you have control over, right? So, you know, slowing your breathing down, or using a cold ice pack to on your face that helps slow your heart rate, or watching a show that you get it get sort of hooked into and engaged in, to just have your mind in a different place, all of these different things, and there's a ton of distress tolerance skills, because we don't control our emotions or our thoughts, by the way, right? They hit us. But what we can control is where we place our attention and then with our bodies from there, those are really two. The two only things we have absolute control over our bodies, what we do bodies and where we place our attention.
Ned Johnson:What is it? William James, who said our experience consists of that which we give our attention to. That's right, exactly right. And I love the the chain analysis. Remember, we did a little bit this work of what makes people vulnerable. I have a for reasons good, a very high stress tolerance and but I could, because I'm human, and I suspect, find myself thinking and saying things you know, that were did, weren't, weren't, weren't helpful. My daughter and I, well, can have this complicated relationship, predicting when she was younger, because I was so I mean, when she was upset, I was upset, and it just it could, it could spiral. And one of the things was paying attention to what made me vulnerable and for me being under arrested. I mean, some people, when they're under arrested are sort of like cranky. I go from like shiny happy ned to like borderline homicidal Ned and so
Julie Baron:to know about yourself. And there are really some people, I'm that way too. I need my rest. You know, I knew? Yeah, I've known forever. And you know, just if I'm not getting enough, I. I'm, I'm not gonna, gonna look like I need a lot of help, yeah, and you're and,
Ned Johnson:you know, and particularly for the work that you do, because you carry, or help people carry, a lot of hard stuff, your capacity to handle that is going to be certainly affected by, by where your sleep is. And it's interesting when I, when I've thought about this over the years, and I can see, you know, my wife or one of my kids getting sort of bent out of shape in ways more than what they normally do. And I can feel less. And you want to say, like, Did you good or not asleep, but, but, but telling someone who's upset that they're tired? No, no, no, not that effective, right?
Julie Baron:Like when someone says, Do you need to eat, or did you take your meds like people don't want to hear that. Slightly invalidating, right? Lightly invalidating. And especially teens don't want to
Ned Johnson:hear that, no, well, and the thing that was so interesting for me is because I've always been the only thing I ever kind of gave my kids, you know, consistent messaging on is, you know, things go better when we're more arrested. But when I was I'll say, off my game, and, you know, I'd apologize. Hey, you know, please be a little more patient with me. I'm it's been a week and I've not gotten the sleep that I want. They picked up the message about connecting sleep to their own happiness, feelings, mental health in ways I don't think they would have had ice if I if I'd said this to them, as opposed to saying this near them.
Julie Baron:Yeah, of course. And as it goes well, we say all the time, parent, you know, modeling has a lot of impact on our kids, and thinking about how we are, you know, engaging and, by the way, how we're managing our intake of news and right all of the things that we were talking about before with, like the world is can be very distressing, and how we choose to structure our time, manage The amount engage with, with the information and the material and cope is also really important to be thoughtful about, because all of our kids are watching, even my, you know, 23 and 21 year old kids are watching. It's important.
Ned Johnson:So here's a question you mentioned before that. You know, if a kid is self injuring, and parents, you know, wired for connection and concern, sort of rush in with all the oh my goodness kind of thing, and that can unintentionally reinforce the behavior with everything that's going on hard in the world. And, you know, for people who are older, like we are, we've we've seen, this is not the first time we've seen bad things go down. But if you're 10 or 12 or even 22 this may be your first experience with like, oh my goodness, the world is on fire. And so the novelty of that, you know, and then their ability to cope with it, therefore may be a little bit less so. How do you or what would be your advice to anyone listening to this who has a teen or young adult coming to them with really intense feelings about what they're seeing on the news or their feed or what have you. What's the communication to them? So that we're not poo pooing those feelings, but we're also not like, oh my goodness, you're right, the world is ending kind of thing. So we're not reinforcing those hard feelings or that perspective.
Julie Baron:First of all, I just want to say, if you have a young person, one of your kids, who's you know, older teenager, young adult, coming to you and sharing that they are worried about something or concerned, bravo, because, like, we want them to do that. That's the goal. The goal is, parents can be their kids best resources if we create the kind of connection with them and relationship with them, where they feel they can engage with us. And that is what I was sort of speaking to earlier. Social media does a really good job engaging. It's a lot of positive, a lot of reinforcement, a lot of validation. And so they stay right as soon as they come to us, and we either pick up on a tone of voice that we don't like and we're critical, or in the middle of the conversation, we're going back to the thing they didn't do that they said they were going to do earlier, like social media doesn't do that so if we are going to keep our kids engaged, and there's a time and a place for accountability, and you know, being being honest, and we need to, we need to discuss this, and we need to work figure this out together. But if your young person is coming to you wanting to have a meaningful conversation, drop everything and tell them how much you appreciate having this discussion with them, and how curious you are about their point of view, and where did you get your information. So like my son is. Is, is tuned in, pretty tuned in, my 21 year old, but he, you know, I'm watching standard news. I'm reading standard of mainstream, more mainstream kinds of and he is listening and watching more these, these, like independent journalists who are putting themselves in the situations and then talking to people and and I don't see those people, and so when he comes to me and wants to talk to me about this, I'm trying to be really curious, because there might be an angle that I don't have access to that he does, and I certainly want to have the opportunity to share my perspective, my thoughts based on information that I understand, and also want to know what he's hearing, where he's hearing it, and what's what's hitting him, What's striking him. So these are the kinds of it's not the so much what is being said? It's the experience of feeling engaged with your kids that is really important. And you know, we need there are some really good relationship skills that we can be mindful of and work and learn, which was sort of the topic of my first book with Brit, or what works with teens when we wrote that for professionals to help them learn to engage with adolescents, and it's all about the relationship skills that we need to be able to help them really engage. And I know there was one part of your book, self driven child with Bill, you talk about the three legs of the stool
Ned Johnson:with DBT or with, excuse me, self determination theory, right?
Julie Baron:And one of those legs is relationships, right? And so, if we can so you're saying, sort of, what do you say to them? I'm not sure it matters exactly what is said, as much as that there's validation, that there's compassion, that there's there's a receptivity right, that we are able to stay regulated ourselves while we're engaging with them, that we're reliable listeners and sources of support, And that we're authentic in the in our stance, and that we're accepting of theirs. I mean, these are all the different relationship skills. So that is what I think is the most important, really, for any conversation. If you think your kid is, is in trouble, is is going down a particular rabbit hole, is doing something that's that's harmful, or you're concerned about engaging with them in conversations, and it may be more than one, because one sometimes isn't enough, and for them to know that they can come to you without you responding harshly or judging or and look all of our own emotions as parents we are when we are worried and we are scared and we are anxious, those are real feelings, and that is built in that there's that's not an option, and we can be really thoughtful about how we take care of those feelings so we can be receptive and available.
Ned Johnson:Hmm, and reminder for parents, you know, again, some, not everyone has your skills, right. And so again, they're families who have a lot more challenges, headwinds, whatever, than, you know, than other families do. And I think it can feel overwhelming to parents. Think, what am I supposed to do, or my kid is really struggling, and I've lost my job that my, you know, I live in Minneapolis. I mean, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. And just a quick reminder that the science as I understand it shows that the single strongest protective factor against the effect of stress on, on anyone's brain, but particularly young, developing brains, is how close the connection is between the child and a parent, yeah, or near the caregiver, yes. And so, you know, to your point about drop everything, listen to them. You know, be curious about the perspective, and not trying to correct them on the don't bring another agenda. But did you put the dishes? Where has that is that homework done? Because, yeah, we, while kids will, as you observe, all kids will engage with social media, some of which is helpful and some of which is sources of not so great information. They're not actually connecting with it in ways that we you know that that does the same thing as human connection correct and for to remind parents of just how incredibly powerful is that connection. Bill and I are giving a talk the other day. And you know that we know that children are better off living emotionally growing up in a war zone, highly connected to parents, than living in growing up in the most you know, beautiful manner. With every resource in the world, feeling emotionally disconnected from their kids, from their parents, I
Julie Baron:agree 100% with all of it. And by the way, parents are better off, too. Such a good reminder, because parents also are stressed, if you haven't noticed right now, and it is, you know, the kinds of hormones that get released when we feel understood and connected, and it settles the entire nervous system we release, you know, the dopamine and the oxytocin, which cop that those stress hormones of the cortisol and the adrenaline. And it's, it's a physiological thing that happens when we're when it's human to human connection and relationships.
Ned Johnson:I wanted to ask briefly, you had mentioned self determination theory and those three pillars of competence, relatedness and autonomy. And I know in DBT, and this, I think, is I found this really powerful, that the kind of three of three goals that might be different important differently important at different times, right of effectiveness and relationships and self respect, can you can talk about, can you talk through that? Because you can certainly articulate more clearly than I just did.
Julie Baron:Clearly than I just did. So I'm not sure exactly in terms of the
Ned Johnson:well, so well, so I understand. So, you know, it's kind of tied up in the dear man stuff of when I'm if I'm having a relationship with you or a conflict with you, and I'm trying to figure out how to resolve this. You know, there may be different things that matter. There may be a specific, objective priority I'm trying to get to, right? I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, please. So Jones, thank you. Thank you. It was not a great question, but I'm sure you're gonna have a good answer a little more.
Julie Baron:Thank you. This is in the interpersonal effectiveness module. There are, there are four different categories of coping skills for adults and five when we do the adolescent mod curriculum and but each has the interpersonal effectiveness, which is teaching people how to communicate effectively with each other so that we minimize Conflict and maximize bond. However, there are priorities and and for different skill sets, right? So if your priority is to build and maintain relationships, you're going to use a certain set of skills called give, which is being gentle and showing interest and validating and using an easy manner. Right, when you Your priority is to ask for something that you want or need, or to say, No, you're still valuing the relationship, but the priority in that moment is to get a particular need met. And teaching people how to get their needs met using effective communication is really important. Then they don't need those other behaviors to get their needs met. And that's called dear man, and it the, it's a, you know, describe, express, ask for what you want, reinforce what's in it for the other person. Stay mindful, act confident, and be willing to negotiate. I realize people aren't going to take all of this in, but I'm trying to be the internet will help you. If you need, the internet will help you. And I'm also trying to be, to be true to DBT, so I don't misrepresent it. And then the last one is, is really, when you're the priority over, over and above anything else you are willing to walk away from the relationship, if need be, is self respect, that when self respect is your priority, we just taught this last week in our DVD parent group. It's fast. It's being fair to yourself and the other person, not apologizing if there's nothing to apologizing, apologize for and apologize when there is something that is your apologize sticking to values and being truthful. And so these are not easy be you know people, if they perceive an encounter or a particular interaction to be threatening, they're avoiding a lot of these, like really authentic, genuine kinds of interactions. They're hard. They take practice, and they really help. I love that.
Ned Johnson:And in addition to, then the, is it? Oh, gosh, what is that? The Handbook of DBT? Is that Marc Linehan wrote that the
Julie Baron:actual, you know, Linehan wrote the adult manual, and raphas and Miller wrote the adolescent manual. There's also, I think, in the works, one for children, for younger kids, because now we're using DBT for younger kids and and starting with teaching the parents skills before the kids learn the skills, seems like a good idea, right?
Ned Johnson:And what I what I love about that, in addition to specific skills for each objective, you might try to you know each being effective in each of those domains. You. Is actually taking a half step back and being able to call out or to pay attention to what is it that really matters here? Is there a specific outcome that I want? Right? Is this all about my maintaining my self respect, or is it the relationship? And because feelings are messy, we don't often pull things apart and think about those things that clearly and especially, you know, if I'm dysregulated as a parent, that can get all mixed up. But this is
Julie Baron:really, this is a great point Ed, because this is relevant in so many instances whereby we would be we would better serve ourselves to ask ourselves, what is the goal here trying to accomplish, right? Am I trying to get the kids to do? Am I trying to get my kid to do the dishes that I'm asking them to do? Because if your goal is for them to do the dishes, and you take their bait and get into a back and forth argument and they storm out and go up to their room, you did not reach your goal.
Ned Johnson:So goal, and you get to do the dishes
Julie Baron:right, or they sit, you know, right? So what is your goal? Being being intentional in our action interactions, being right is your goal? I guess, have at it. That's not always the goal.
Ned Johnson:No, it's not. And especially, and this isn't to put all the pressure on the parents to sacrifice their own self respect and sideline or put on the shelf their own legitimate objectives, but it is. I'll make a plug for this. I don't think I'm wrong here is that when the world is scary and when your kids aren't doing well, especially when they're not doing well, it can feel like our job as parents is to fix the thing that's not going well for kids right, to get them to clean their rooms or clean their grades or clean up their lives. That can be hard because we can't actually control other people. No, we cannot. Where my experience has been, and certainly from learning people like you, that if we focus first and foremost on that relationship and bite our tongues, even though we're, you know, letting we're choosing, was it Ruth? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said some, sometimes the secret of a happy marriage is just being a little deaf. And it seems to me that being, you know, being an effective parent, is sometimes being a little blind. Like, yeah, I didn't, I didn't see that you don't have to call out every, yes, objectionable behavior and every, every falling short of standard that you feel like should be addressed. You don't have to do that all the while, especially when things are hard.
Julie Baron:And so I would just make, I mean, we say, you know, we'll say, Pick Your Battles, right So, and that really, what that means is what you're talking about, which is, know what your priorities are. People can't change everything at once, one thing to address and be really consistent with, and then, once that is is better in their repertoire, move on to the next thing hard. And this is where families, you know, when parents come to me for parent guidance work, I sort of help them sift out, well, what's, what's the barrier, right? So the barrier is usually, either they're highly reactive, they're under responsive. They're not able to be consistent, right? Or they're at odds. Parents are at odds with each other and undermining a cohesive or they and they try to do everything at once, and none of that is is going to be helpful. So we isolate what's, what the barrier is, and what the priority is, and that
Ned Johnson:makes a ton of sense, and I'd love for you to talk for a moment. People probably know the term, but the idea of validating proximations, which I think is so powerful with helping kids move in a different or better direction, but also really helpful for us as adults as well.
Julie Baron:I mean, validation is just a really powerful I always say it's, it's the skill that gets the most bang for your buck, kids and teenagers. And I think where parents get stuck with validation is, is that they, they they feel like they're gonna endorse something or give permission for something that they don't want their kids to do or be and and they don't want they don't agree, and they don't want to misrepresent themselves and come across as if they agree. And the and the, the nuance for, for, you know, validation is that we, we validate the valid what's what we what is healthy, and, you know, makes sense. It's really an expression of, Oh, that makes sense. So, you know, if your kids are are arguing, and one of. Them, you know, socks, the other one, you're not going to validate the punch. You're not going to say, oh, yeah, I totally understand why you wanted to punch your sister. You're going to you're going to not validate that. You're going to say, it's not appropriate to punch your sister and tell me what happened. And after they tell you what happened, you're going to say, well, I could understand why you were so mad, so you're validating, a feeling, a perspective, an intention, you know what they were trying to do, maybe, and miss the MARC and validation has its there's six levels of validation. There's all these skills. But I want, let me just leave you with this, this, because this is a really interesting there is a study, and I'd have to go back and find it. But one of the DBT conferences I was at, they presented research on a study on teens and parents and validation. And there were three sets. There were there was a set of parents and teens and where the teens felt consistently validated by the parents, and set of teens where the teens felt inconsistently validated by the parent and a set of teens and parents where the pain the teens were were, did I say inconsistently? There was that consistent, right? So sometimes they were validated, sometimes they weren't, and then there was a group where they were consistently not validated. Got it. Got it. Which group do you think fared worst?
Ned Johnson:I'll try to act like a good student here. I would guess the I would guess. I would guess the inconsistent, right,
Julie Baron:yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah. The kids who sometimes got validation and then sometimes did got invalidation had the worst outcomes because the unpredictability, because yeah, they were, they could, they would be caught off guard. They didn't know what to expect. And that goes back to our whole conversation also about sort of a sense of control. Yeah, you, if you can be predictive, you feel greater sense of control because you you know what, how to sort of prepare yourself.
Ned Johnson:Yeah, it makes me think Joseph Campbell about making a map of the world. You know, people make maps of the world all these domains, and if the map is constantly shifting on you
Julie Baron:boy, right, how are you going to get where you're going? Yeah, yeah.
Ned Johnson:Well, this is really helpful to me. I don't know about everyone else who's listening. Do you have final thoughts for parents and maybe young people listening to this? But you know one thing for me, and maybe you can riff on this a little bit when I think about if the inflows of stress into a nervous system, family system, political system, whatever, are not balanced by healthy outflows of stress, and every bad thing in the world you can imagine is probably going to get turned up
Julie Baron:and affect us in in greater ways. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ned Johnson:And it just, it strikes me that that so much of DBT is about, I mean, effective, just human. Effective is particularly, you know, communication, and that one of the great, I think oftentimes people want to figure out how to fix the world, to feel better. And you know, good luck with good luck with that. It doesn't mean we're not working every day and making choices about how we spend our time and how we spend our votes to try to move in a better direction, but in any given moment, we may just have to cope with what we have. And it strikes me that that one of the ways to help us be more effective is we can decrease we can increase the outflows of stress. And everything you've just shared about effective communication is such a powerful way for just be able to say, I'm upset, and here's why, and for you, you know, as a friend, as a therapist, as a parent, to say makes sense that you're upset, yeah, no wonder, no wonder, no wonder,
Julie Baron:no wonder, we're all kind of swirling right now, you know, but yeah, to answer your question about summing things up, the world is an unpredictable Place, changing fast, and so we don't always have control over what's going on around us. We have control over our coping skills, and one of the things that can really help aid that's almost like a bomb for our stress response system, are the connections and relationships that we have, and for parents and kids, that's particularly important, and can be a real stress mitigator for you know, just knowing that you have a sense of support and guidance and prioritizing that in terms of your communication is really key.
Ned Johnson:And to the last point of point, something you mentioned before, especially true for children who are wired with more sensitive nervous systems, correct?
Julie Baron:Yes, absolutely, and understanding that they are going to need greater validation. What your coping looks like in terms of behaviors may not make sense to people, but what you're how powerful it feels inside. You, makes total sense.
Ned Johnson:It's a beautiful night. Julie, thanks for joining. I am. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I mean, like everyone else the world feels like, Oh my goodness. And I, you know, I get stuck between. I just want to turn off, turn off the everything, and not pay attention to the news. But I also feel like I kind of is like I'm supposed to because, you know, I don't want to turn a blind eye to things here hard
Julie Baron:as middle path.
Ned Johnson:Thank you. I think that nailed it. There you have it. I'm going to meditate on the middle path.
Julie Baron:Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been really, really fun to talk with you.
Ned Johnson:Oh, you're so helpful and such a pleasure. Some takeaways, we can't choose when life throws us hard things, but we can choose how we're going to cope with them. When we see kids who are wired to be pretty sensitive to emotions, they may, as a result, be more reactive and more typical parenting approaches may not work, not because parents don't care or are not trying hard enough. It's just that kids like these need a different approach. If you as a parent are highly attuned to your kid, you're going to have more intense reactions as well. The evolution and development of all of this technology is happening way faster than our human nervous systems can process and keep up with, including from a parenting perspective. And lastly, one of the most powerful ways we can help the children we love, especially during difficult times, is simply to love them as much and as deeply as we can. 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 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, 9510350,