Secret #58: Raising a Self-Driven Child with Dr. William Stixrud & Ned Johnson
Are you struggling with how much to help—or how much to back off—when it comes to your child’s motivation, schoolwork, and screen time? Dive into this insight-packed episode as leading neuropsychologist Dr. William Stixrud and tutoring expert Ned Johnson reveal game-changing research on autonomy-supportive parenting, fostering resilience, and why letting kids solve their own problems builds lifelong confidence.
Hosts Chris McCurry and Emma Waddington join Stixrud and Johnson to unpack the science behind why children crave autonomy, how a low sense of control fuels anxiety and stress, and what it actually means to become a “non-anxious presence” as a parent. Learn the crucial differences between supportive guidance and hands-off, laissez-faire parenting, how to talk with your kids about technology and motivation (without endless fights), and why prioritizing your relationship beats chasing perfect grades.
Plus, you’ll hear deeply personal stories of setbacks, surprises, and bouncing forward after failure—reminding us that the path to thriving adulthood is rarely a straight line. Whether you’re worried about homework wars, video game battles, or just want a better connection with your kids, this conversation is packed with actionable wisdom, empowering you to raise self-driven, resilient children while keeping your sanity and joy as a parent.
Highlights:
Autonomy supportive parenting strategies
Fostering intrinsic motivation in children
Navigating technology and screen time
Building resilience through adversity
Cultivating non-anxious parenting presence
ORDER Justin Case Sits with Anxiety: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Workbook for Ages 8-12 (ACT Workbook Series for Kids)
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Autonomy: Key to Stress Reduction
06:30 "Autonomy: Essential Across Lifespan"
07:28 Intrinsic Motivation in Adolescents
10:47 Rethinking Student Motivation
15:53 Prioritize Connection, Not Perfection
18:32 Handling Gaming Passion in Kids
21:39 Students Acknowledge Excessive Phone Use
26:26 Empowering Kids in Tech Use
28:08 "Motivational Interviewing for Change"
34:27 "Remember Childhood Empathy"
38:11 Party Trouble: A Cautionary Tale
40:11 "Embracing Children's Perspectives, Calmly"
44:41 Cultivating a Non-Anxious Presence
48:19 "Adversity Plus Support Equals Resilience"
51:52 Adversity's Hidden Benefits
55:50 Parenting: A Complex Emotional Journey
56:58 Love for Children
About Ned Johnson and Dr. William Stixrud
Order The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives
Ned Johnson is president and “tutor-geek” of PrepMatters, an educational company providing academic tutoring and standardized test preparation. A battle-tested veteran of test prep, stress regulation and optimizing student performance, Ned has spent roughly 50,000 one-on-one hours helping students conquer an alphabet of standardized tests, learn to manage their anxiety, and develop their own motivation to succeed. With Dr. William Stixrud, Ned is co-author of 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, and, coming in March 2025, The Seven Principles for Raising a Self-Driven Child: A Workbook. Ned is the host of the The Self-Driven Child podcast. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, US News, Seventeen, and many others.
Dr. Stixrud is a licensed psychologist, a clinical neuropsychologist, and the founder of The Stixrud Group. In addition to conducting comprehensive evaluations, he has co-authored two books with Ned Johnson: The Self-Driven Child (Viking Books, 2018), which has been published in 18 countries and 17 languages, and What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home (Viking Books, 2021), and they finished a third book that will be published by Viking in February 2025
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Chris McCurry [00:00:01]:
Hello. Welcome to Life's Dirty Little secrets. I'm Chris McCurry.
Emma Waddington [00:00:07]:
And I'm Emma Waddington. And today we're thrilled to welcome two guests whose work has profoundly shaped the way we think about parenting, resilience and what kids truly need to thrive. Dr. William Sticksrud is a clinical neuropsychologist, founder of the Sticksrud group in Washington D.C. and a best selling author who whose work blends science, empathy and deep wisdom. He's best known for his three books. The first one in 2018, the Self Driven Child. Then they published what do youo say? And now the third book is the Self the Seven Principles of a Self Driven Child.
Emma Waddington [00:00:46]:
All of which offer powerful guidance on how we as parents can foster autonomy, motivation and connection in young people's lives.
Chris McCurry [00:00:57]:
And we also want to welcome Ned Johnson. He is an author, speaker, coach, professional tutor, geek and the founder of Prep Matters, an educational company providing academic tutoring, educational planning and standardized test prep. And Ned has written for the New York Times, the Telegraph, U.S. news & World Report and the Washington Post. And he is also the co author of the books that Emma just mentioned, the Self Driven Child, the seven Principles for Raising a Self Driven Child and the book on what do you say Talking with kids to build Motivation, Stress tolerance and happy home. In addition to a book Conquering the sat, how parents can Help Teens Overcome the Pressure and Succeed. So welcome gentlemen.
William Stixrud [00:01:47]:
Nice to be here.
Chris McCurry [00:01:49]:
So I have a New Yorker cartoon of living room setting parents in the living room, Dad's on the chair, mother's on the couch, kids are on the floor like destroying their toys and the father is looking at the mother and saying me, I thought you were raising them.
Ned Johnson [00:02:09]:
So.
Chris McCurry [00:02:13]:
We interviewed Emily Edlin a while back who wrote a marvelous book the Autonomy Supportive Parenting. And we have the Self Driven Child. What is this interest in autonomy supporting and the self driven aspect? Is it just parents just don't want to deal with parenting anymore or is there something more important going on here? Sort of. Obviously a loaded question, but what is your sense of what's driving this clear desire to to support parents in seeing that their kids do well without burning themselves out by trying to over control their kids lives?
William Stixrud [00:02:59]:
I mean Ned and I got to autonomy through our research on a sense of control and the research on stress and stress in the brain. And we learned that the most stressful thing you'd experience is a low sense of control, a low sense of time. I'm stuck, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm passive, nothing I can do about it. We also knew that mental health problems are rooted in a low sense of control because they're all stress related problems. And also every place we look to try to understand how do kids develop that self driven, self motivated, intrinsically driven kind of style of motivation, Every angle, every arrow pointed in the direction of autonomy. And I think that it's crucial. It's just a basic human drive, it's a basic biological need and psychological need. And I think there's just so much evidence now, there's so clear scientifically that autonomy supporting parenting is way better than controlling parenting in terms of raising kids who are happy, healthy, respectful, kind like that, emotionally resilient.
Ned Johnson [00:04:14]:
I mean that helps across the board. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris McCurry [00:04:20]:
So how does this differ from just laissez faire parenting?
Ned Johnson [00:04:25]:
Was a good question. I mean, you know the literature on parenting styles, I mean the six years of research shows that the kind of three dominant styles, right, there's authoritarian, my way or the highway. This is my house, my rules, I'll tell you what to do. Which is terrible, terrible for childhood development, right? Healthy development. The only thing that's worse than that, of course is laissez faire. You do what you want, I don't really care because it makes kids feel so deeply unsafe, as though the people who should care about the most really don't care. And you can kind of do whatever you want. And the sweet spot is in between of authoritative parenting where we as parents have natural authority because we're older, we're taller, we have credit cards, all those things.
Ned Johnson [00:05:07]:
But where we, we naturally exert our authority through wisdom and lived experience. But we're not doing it in a way that is overly controlling. And we'll get into this, I'm sure, but when so often some of the people who will read our work think, well, you're just saying let kids do whatever they want. We're not talking about that at all. We're not saying you let a four year old run the household because that's not good for everyone, especially the four year old, because it's overwhelming. We don't want to give kids choices that they can't handle. It's just that we don't want to deprive kids of choices, particularly about their own lives that they can handle with our support. Not perfectly, not perfectly because they're adults in training, they're grown ups in making.
Ned Johnson [00:05:53]:
But the approach that we take of being a parenting, what we talk about is parentage consultant where we offer help, we offer advice, prescribe limits, but we Give kids a huge amount of autonomy within bounds. Right? So this is not at all laissez faire. It's really, rather than stepping away from kids, we're just stepping back and we're walking side by side with them rather than pushing them from behind or leaving them to their own devices.
William Stixrud [00:06:30]:
And I'll just add that we gave a lecture a couple months ago to a bunch of educators on why the brain craves autonomy. And the idea is that they're four months old, you see babies crawling, exploring. Nobody's telling them to do it. They do it on their own. And if you thwart that drive to explore and explore to master the world themselves, it really interferes with development. And arguably the two most important aspects, the features of adolescent development are, number one, that ability to connect with people outside the family and that intrinsic drive for autonomy and independence. And even with elderly people like me, people in a nursing home, you give them a choice about one thing, what time they have dinner, they live longer. It's just this basic human drive, and we thwart it at our peril.
Chris McCurry [00:07:28]:
So let's, let's talk a little bit about intrinsic motivation. I mean, having worked for decades in child psychology, particularly working with adolescents, you know, I've had so many adolescents, you know, shrug and say, I don't do my homework because I'm not motivated. And I sometimes talk about the motivation fairy. You know, they're waiting for the motivation fairy to come in the middle of the night and go, ding. You know, now you have motivation, which horrifies them. And they'd probably swat it with fly swatter if it ever, ever came into their room, because that's their, that's their excuse for not doing their homework. It's like, I don't have motivation as if it's a thing. So, you know, what is your advice to parents? Because this would always, like, leave me just going, I don't know what to do with this.
Chris McCurry [00:08:15]:
But, you know, what is your advice to parents around this idea of motivation? And, you know, whether it's a thing, you know, it's certainly not something that you can go and buy at the store. But this idea of intrinsic motivation, you know, what, what do you do when there doesn't appear to be any.
William Stixrud [00:08:40]:
You understand a lot.
Ned Johnson [00:08:41]:
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to be said about motivation. And what, what I'm going to push back a little bit because what I hear, and you're, of course, voicing the feelings about parents. What about that? Is hearing that rather is my kid is not intrinsically motivated to do the thing that I want him to do. He's not intrinsically motivated to do a schoolwork or to care about his homework or to care about grades. And that may be true. 100%. May be true.
William Stixrud [00:09:09]:
It was true for me.
Ned Johnson [00:09:11]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:09:13]:
This is a delightful story.
Ned Johnson [00:09:15]:
And, you know, the thing that we want to keep in mind is what really matters most. The homework, the motivation to do homework. The fact that kids get all A's, the fact that they do particularly well in school, or that they develop one, a sense that they're gonna get out of life what they put into it. And two, that this is their life. Right. Who's responsible for what? And there are many people who couldn't have given a fig about the schoolwork, who went on to develop healthy and lead successful lives. And we'll come back to Bailey fabulous Dr. William R.
Ned Johnson [00:09:48]:
Dixrud in just a moment. And so our take on this is that the most. And I asked. So I'm a test prep geek. I help kids prepare for standardized admissions test at US Universities. And I ask kids this all the time, what's the most important outcome of high school and adolescence? And they'll look at me so obviously getting good grades and getting to a good college. And I say. And they say, what? And I said respectfully, respectfully.
Ned Johnson [00:10:15]:
Developing the brain that you're going to carry into university if you go. And the brain that you're going to carry into adulthood. Because adolescents are developing the brain that they're going to carry. This is it. I mean, apart from prenatal through age two, this is it. And so we want kids to be intrinsically motivated. And if that's for school, fantastic. But it might be for music, it might be for art, it might be for wooing the pretty girl, it might be for all, you know, for small engine repair, for their after school job, you know, for social justice, for environmental.
Ned Johnson [00:10:47]:
It could be for anything. And as long, you know, and I'll borrow a line from Bill, as long as a kid is working harder and harder to get better at something that matters to them, we don't worry about them because they're developing brains that can be high effort, high focus, the whole flow state, high determination, overcome obstacles, develop resilience. And parents somehow think, and teachers as well think that the only way that kids develop that is through dutifully doing their homework. And the research just doesn't support that, doesn't support that at all. Now, the reality is, in terms of schoolwork, most kids don't want to school go to school every day and have the teacher be like, all right, Johnson, what are you doing? They don't want to feel like, you know, like they're dopes. Most kids don't want to struggle in school. And we can get into the kind of the where and the why of what intrinsic motivation actually looks like. But a lot of parents think, I need my kid to be intrinsically motivated for school.
Ned Johnson [00:11:39]:
Most kids, one, they want to do well. But so many kids, what looks like intrinsic motivation is actually wildly extrinsic. They're driven by fear, meaning their parents don't have to say anything to get them to do their homework. The kids are already fearful that if I don't do well, I won't do, you know, this, that, or the other. And it's a tricky place because you're trying to get kids who don't engage with school to engage in a more healthy, authentic, and sustainable way. We also have kids who are obsessively driven, and they really don't care about anything apart from getting the A. And we're trying to down regulate them a little bit so that they can care about school in ways that are authentic and sustainably driven. Yeah.
Ned Johnson [00:12:20]:
Not easy to be, you know, kid right now. It's also not easy to be a parent of a kid going through school. But, yeah, we don't care about. We don't care as much about homework as a lot of the rest of the world cares about homework.
Chris McCurry [00:12:32]:
And I certainly agree. I'm always telling parents, you know, you can't sacrifice your relationship with your child on the altar of homework.
William Stixrud [00:12:42]:
Well put.
Ned Johnson [00:12:44]:
Really well put. Yeah. Gonna jump in and talk about I love you too much or.
William Stixrud [00:12:51]:
Sure, yeah, yeah. I mean, I. I just. As a neuropsychologist who tests kids for a living, I see a lot of unmotivated, underachieving kids. And as Ned implied, if there's something besides video games, if there's something, they work hard to get better. And I tell them, I'm not worried about you because I know that you're sculpting a brain that knows how to be really focused, how combine high focus, high energy, high determination, high effort, and low stress. And it's a beautiful brain state. And my sense is, as you get older, school is going to become more important to you.
William Stixrud [00:13:28]:
But I'm confident that when that happens, you're going to have a brain that can go pedal to the metal. I'm confident about this because I graduated from high school with a 2.8 grade point average in Bellevue, Washington, where You are, Chris, close to where you are. And that was rounding up. And I was a passionate rock and roll guy. I lived for my rock and roll band. And I did a little homework, and I go into this room where I had an organ at that time, a record player, and I'd say, well, I'll spend an. I tell myself I'll spend an hour on music, and then I'll do homework. And I'd come out of that music room three hours later having no idea what time it was and just going to bed.
William Stixrud [00:14:11]:
And I realized. And I graduated. My father died at the very end of my senior in high school, and I started college two months later as a straight A student. And I didn't get smarter over those two months. I carried a brain. School became more important to me. I took it more seriously. It kind of woke me up.
William Stixrud [00:14:32]:
And I could go pedal to the metal in academics, even though I wasn't motivated, particularly in high school.
Chris McCurry [00:14:39]:
Because your brain had been honed with your interest, by the way. I had a 2.7.
William Stixrud [00:14:51]:
I'm number one.
Ned Johnson [00:14:53]:
I'm thinking you had at least a 2.9. I'm just going to throw that out there.
Emma Waddington [00:15:01]:
I. I just wanted to add, actually, one of the favorite. My. Your. Your first book, the Self Driven Child, really shaped the way I parent. And it was such a. It was like a coming home. I remember when it was released, and I remember your interview with Diana Hill and your second and your third interview with her.
Emma Waddington [00:15:23]:
And I particularly loved the chapter where you say, I love you too much to fight over homework or something to that effect. It was music to my ears because, you know, I used to work with a lot of children. Now I work with mostly adults and couples, but I used to hate seeing that battle. And, and you're absolutely right. It's very, very difficult to try and motivate. I have air quotes. Your kid to do work. It just doesn't.
Emma Waddington [00:15:53]:
What happens is you sacrifice your relationship, and that's your sort of principle. Number one in your third book, you know, put connection first. What I just wanted to sort of validate because we've had a couple of conversations on our podcast about overachievement, striving, and we seem to be living in a time where everything is under the microscope of, you know, performance. And performance as parents is measured by how well our kids are doing academically in their sports. It's like nothing can just be savored and enjoyed. Everything needs to be, you know, excellence, this pursuit of excellence. So as parents, I noticed this incredible Anxiety about kids needing to do well that I think is trickling down to kids feeling like they need to do well. And they seem to choose one of two routes.
Emma Waddington [00:16:56]:
Either go down the sort of perfectionist over achievement route because they feel the pressure or check out. And obviously that's grossly oversimplified. There's lots of people in between, but the parents, we get sort of drawn into this fear that if we don't help our kids succeed, we are failing as parents. And I don't know how we got here, because that was the way I was.
Ned Johnson [00:17:23]:
And I would say it's not so much if we don't help our kids, if we don't make them succeed.
Emma Waddington [00:17:29]:
Yes.
Ned Johnson [00:17:30]:
I mean, our perspective on this is. My obligation as a parent is not to make sure my child is successful and make sure he gets good grades or make sure she engages in school. My obligation as a parent is to offer support if they want to succeed. How can I help? Right into your point about this chapter of I love you too much to fight with you about your homework. I'm not going to act like it's my responsibility for you to do anything, but if this matters to you, I'll help you in any way I can. Right. You know, check your homework. I'll sit with you.
Ned Johnson [00:17:58]:
Da, da, da, da. And this is, you know, our friend Tina Payne Bryson talk. You know that it's adversity, challenge plus support, where we develop resilience. And this is our obligation to, as parents, as educators, as adults, to support young people, but not in that authoritarian way that says you must. Because then everyone is stressed and everyone feels a low sense of control because the kids being told what to do and we're trying to make them do something that they can just close their eyes and lie on the floor. It's like this is a really disempowering place for everybody.
Emma Waddington [00:18:32]:
It is. But what I'm also hearing, and as you're saying, we want to be there to nurture that brain that's developing into that adult brain. That's really beautifully said. What happens, and you say in the book, in your fabulous last book, this idea that we want to be a witness of any passion, any motivation that they do show. It doesn't have to be academics. But what if they don't? Because video gaming is a problem? What if that is their passion? What if we have a kid that is spending hours every day in front of their screen with their friends, but mostly gaming and is sort of switched off, not engaged in sports, not engaged in A lot outside of the gaming. What do we do then? Because I know that is a concern.
William Stixrud [00:19:31]:
Well, we talk about technology, particularly in our first two books. And our angle is that our goal is ultimately for kids to be able to manage their technology independently. And one of the principles of motivation that we subscribe to is you can't make somebody want what they don't want and you can't make them not want what they want. So what recommends regarding technology is show interest in it, Appreciate how cool it is. How cool it is to see a kid playing with his friends and have so much fun and have conversations about it. This collaborative problem solving process where you start with empathy and you express it. How I got it, I'd love to learn myself. I'd love to play at some point and see if I can beat you.
William Stixrud [00:20:14]:
And express appreciation for what they like to do. And also say, we also know that if people spend way too. Kids spend too much time on this, it really screws them up. I mean, it undermines their development. It's not good for their health. They don't have energy. Everything else seems boring. And so I can't, I couldn't live with myself if I felt I was letting you spend way much too much time and you kind of focus on what you can control and what you could.
William Stixrud [00:20:43]:
And certainly, I mean, maybe 15 years ago, I saw a kid who was diagnosed with a feigned sleep disorder because he was getting up at 2 in the morning, playing video games all night and then pretending he couldn't sleep. Yeah, yeah. And we don't want to get into that kind of cat and mouse game with kids. But I think ultimately when we pay for their minutes, we pay for their minutes, we look where we have some leverage. And I can't in good conscience, you know, pay the electricity on this. I can't play for the minutes. If we don't work out something, some arrangement regarding technology that works for you, I want it to work for you, but I also want it to work for me. And our senses when we, when we start, we start with appreciation and empathy and understanding as opposed to just judgment.
William Stixrud [00:21:33]:
Because so much of what kids get is here, is get off, get off, get off, get off.
Emma Waddington [00:21:37]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:21:38]:
Ned, what, what would I.
Ned Johnson [00:21:39]:
Well, we were, we were just lecturing at a local school when our, our third book, the Self Driven, the Seven Principles, came out. And we put to the students, the whole upper school, I don't know, 700 kids or something at this, this independent school, a question that we've, and we've done this asked this multiple times at, you know, I don't know, a dozen different schools, and said, how many of you feel like you're on your cell phone too much? And this is separate from gaming, but kind of related. Said, how many of you feel like you're on your phone too much? And, like, 85% of kids raised their hands. Here's the great question. The follow up is, how many of you feel like you're on your cell phone more than you want to be? The same percent goes up. Kids know. I mean, look, if a kid plays for seven hours straight in a video game, he enjoyed it, but he comes off feeling a little queasy. What happened to my dad, I can't believe, you know.
Ned Johnson [00:22:33]:
And the challenge is, you know, the challenge is a kid in that situation is ambivalent, right? He wants to play with his friends. He wants to be, you know, beat the level. He wants to, you know, not do his homework. He wants to not clean his room. But he also recognizes he's given up something. His parents are a little frustrated with him. His sister would like to play a game with him, you know, that he's giving up something. And when we lean on all the reasons why not, he argues the other reason, too.
Ned Johnson [00:22:59]:
And so there's a story in what do youo say? We have a chapter in there, the hard ones, talking with kids about sleep and technology, because these are so often intertwined. And there's a story in there. My son, who's kicking around here somewhere, he's now 23, and he is the loveliest guy. I mean, he is just a great human and he's adhd. And so, I mean, when he was a toddler, we could have left him at the local convenience store. And he's watching keno, right? And then, you know, if we. If we could have walked out the door and if the clerk had fed him something, we could have come back in 10 days and he still would have been like, oh, number seven. He's just.
William Stixrud [00:23:34]:
He's.
Ned Johnson [00:23:34]:
He's transforming by all things on screens. And so Fortnite came through our house like a biblical plague. And this is all the. All of his attention was drawn to this. He was 10th grade in high school. So he has a day off from school. And he's a musician. He's a composer now.
Ned Johnson [00:23:52]:
And I asked him, so what are you going to do with your day off from school? I hope he was going to be like, bill, I'm going to play music all day long. He's like, I'll think I'll play Fortnite. I'm like, anything else? He says, I'll think about it. I'm like. So I come home, I come home the next day and there's the kid still playing. You know, it's 6 o' clock on a Friday night, still playing video games in his pajamas.
Emma Waddington [00:24:13]:
He had a pajamas.
Ned Johnson [00:24:14]:
I'm like. And I admit to being a little hot. A little hot. I'm like, dude, Matthew, can you please, you know, can you finish this game? Win, die, I really don't care because remember we were going to go out for pizza? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My son, fortunately, is much more, much more easy going than it is dad. And so he get, he wins. I don't even remember he wins the. He finishes the game, he gets dressed, we go out to dinner.
Ned Johnson [00:24:36]:
I simmer down, we have a perfectly lovely evening. I say nothing more about it. Saturday, I say nothing more. Sunday, I say Nothing until like 5:00 clock on Sunday. Which you, if you have a son, particularly an ADHD son, or if you've ever been an ADHD son, five o' clock is when you realize, oh no, tomorrow's tomorrow. Shoot. And all the things he didn't do. And he is at this point really upset with himself.
Ned Johnson [00:24:59]:
I can't believe I wasted my whole day playing for a night Friday. Why didn't I? If ever there were served under server silver platter an opportunity for parental I told you so, this was it. But Bill and I were writing this book, so I was told this isn't what I'm supposed to do. So I leave. Right? Right. And I'm so, and I'm like, oh, dude, I, I, you know, been there, done it. I'm so, I know how frustrating it is, you know, to have all this mile, this pile of work and you wish you'd done it earlier. Can, can I ask you a question, though? Sure.
Ned Johnson [00:25:32]:
How many, how many hours do you think you actually spend playing Fortnite on, on Friday? I don't know. 8, 9, 10 maybe. Awesome. Was it fun? Oh, it was great. Da, da, da, goes on. Whatever I say. Another question. In hindsight, how, how many hours do you think would have been enough to kind of get your first Fortnite fix? He's like five, maybe six.
Ned Johnson [00:25:53]:
That makes sense to me. Last question. In the future, would it be helpful for mom or for me to help you kind of manage your use of technologies? You can play it and hang out with your friends and enjoy it because it's your day off, doggone it. But not Feel like you've wasted your whole day. Yeah, I think that'd be really good. And now we had buy in to be kind of his technology consultants. And I know the kid that I got, we know the kid that we got, he's wonderful and bought video games, you know, like crack for all of us teenagers, right. As well especially.
Ned Johnson [00:26:26]:
But I also knew that he was two years before he would head off to college with hopes and dreams and a suitcase full of our money and we'd have no control over his use of technology. So to add to what Bill had said before, one of them we really want, we encourage people to share shift their thinking from how do I control my kids use of technology, how do I get him to, to how do I help him or her learn to control for him or herself the use of the use of technology? Because these things are insanely powerful. And it's not like a kid can go off and you know, they're not going to join an Amish community and live in a tech free world. That's not really an option for most of us. So we have to be supportive of kids as they learn to navigate these incredibly powerful technologies which if we're honest, none of us grew up with. So it's not like we can say well when I was your age, because these things didn't exist when we were their age.
William Stixrud [00:27:21]:
I'll just add that we talk about in all our books this idea of as kids get older we want to think about ourselves more as they're consultants to them to figure out who they want to be, how to create the life they want then as their boss or their manager or somebody who always knows best. Because by the time they leave home, we want them to trust their judgment, not ours. And so we want them to practice making decisions, solving their own problems. We want to offer help, offer advice, not try to force it. And there are limit. There are some situations where if a kid is deeply depressed, kids suicidal, kids very actively do drug involved. We get them treatment whether they want to or not. And also, you know, a small percentage, 10, 12% of kids who play video games seem to have a pretty addictive relationship.
William Stixrud [00:28:08]:
And they commonly they and their family need treatment. But many of the people we find in our second book we have a chapter called the language and silence of Change. And it's about, we study because when people say how do I get my kid to be more motivated? How do get my kid to spend less time is we're saying how do I change my kid? And we studied science of Change. And everywhere we looked we learned that if you try to make somebody change, who's not asking you to help them change, what you get every time is conflict and resistance. And so that's why we emphasize this kind of, we talk about in that chapter, motivational interviewing, which is psychology. You probably know there's this style of conversation where you simply ask people open ended questions. So tell me what you love about video games. Tell me what you love about the best spot about Instagram.
William Stixrud [00:29:02]:
What is it? So cool. And you express empathy. You kind of use that reflective listening to say, so what I'm hearing is, and commonly what happens is that after they wax rhapsodic about all the things that games, they'll say things like, yeah, but I'm worried that I've spent so much time on games, I'm not doing other stuff in my life.
Emma Waddington [00:29:23]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:29:24]:
Then they get to that, what they call change talk. And that's what we're after. We're after helping people figure out how to make their lives work. Because our premise is that kids have a brain in their head and they want their lives to work.
Ned Johnson [00:29:38]:
Well.
Emma Waddington [00:29:40]:
Yeah, go ahead, Chris, quickly.
Chris McCurry [00:29:45]:
In the kind of psychotherapy that Emma and I were trained in, acceptance and commitment therapy, we, we talk a lot about values. And one of the things that we say about values is that they need to be freely chosen. So if you're going around imposing, you know, your values on somebody else, it tends not to work very well. But it is terrifying for parents to think that, you know, their child is going to choose values that are antisocial or self harming or something like that. But you know, and there are kids out there that, that go down that path for at least a little while.
Ned Johnson [00:30:24]:
But yes, well, and the thing that, you know, is that the closer the connection is that a child has with a parent or another caregiver, the more likely he or she is to adopt the values of mom, dad or caregiver. Yeah. You know, and so. Well, yeah, no, yeah, I mean it doesn't happen overnight, but, but you know, we see so many parents who try to exert power over their children and okay, accept that if you have power, you squander influence. I've always wanted to have influence because, you know, because power only exists so long as they're under my roof or within my reach or you know, financial. I mean, you know, I had two things. I had a child who really lovely kid, old father, valedictorian in an Ivy League school, brother went to the same thing. This kid wasn't cut from the same cloth.
Ned Johnson [00:31:22]:
Super ADHD learning was hard for him.
Chris McCurry [00:31:24]:
You're kind of breaking.
Ned Johnson [00:31:24]:
His mother was quite controlling. Always resp. Oh, dear. Sorry. It's trying to reconnect. Nope. Am I back?
Chris McCurry [00:31:38]:
Yeah, you kind of got garbled there for a little bit.
Ned Johnson [00:31:42]:
Hold on. I'm going to.
Emma Waddington [00:31:44]:
I don't know if it's not really.
Ned Johnson [00:31:47]:
I was looking for.
Emma Waddington [00:31:56]:
Oh. Oh, no.
Chris McCurry [00:31:58]:
Well, he's coming back.
William Stixrud [00:32:03]:
He always does deal with it.
Chris McCurry [00:32:06]:
Okay.
Emma Waddington [00:32:07]:
Hello.
Ned Johnson [00:32:08]:
Sorry. Sorry for that. If I shut my camera off, is it. We're audio on. Is that better? Okay. So I was working with this kid. Okay. Lovely kid.
Ned Johnson [00:32:22]:
And. And. And he came and we're doing test prep. And. And he said. And he says, he's like, oh, this is so, you know, like, this is so annoying. I said, what's that? I said. I said, doing.
Ned Johnson [00:32:31]:
Doing this work? He said, yeah. I said, I don't want it, you know?
Chris McCurry [00:32:34]:
Well, it's just.
Ned Johnson [00:32:35]:
He said, no offense. I said, no, phone's taken. And explained to him how he could prepare for the act all by himself and he didn't need my help and what I would suggest. But I also talked him. I. What I hope he get out of it. And I get this email from his mom the next day. And the first three emails from her had been, thank you for working with my stubborn child.
Ned Johnson [00:32:53]:
Okay? And this one says, thank you. You know, she said, he's the only. Do you know how many tutors we've set him up with? He's the only teacher tutor he speaks about respectfully. And I said, well, respectfully, that's probably because that's how I treat him. And I want to have. I mean, my kids, you know, they are capable. They could, you know, as long as they have a credit card, they can run up and run their own life. They don't need me at all.
Ned Johnson [00:33:21]:
But I really want them to want my help. Right? And to want to circle back. I mean, my son had the second year of college. He was asking me all this advice about this girl that he was dating. He said, I can't believe the things that I tell you. And my hunch is it was because we spent his whole life treat him respectfully, as Bill said, like, he's got a brain in his head and he wants his life to work out. And what we want to do is watch him and help him if he wants it, as he makes his way through important decisions, you know, and the thing about most decisions, you know, if Most decisions aren't 90 10, they're 49, 51. So there's not.
Ned Johnson [00:34:02]:
Rarely is there clear that this is obviously the thing to do. And we want kids to grapple with those, but we want to. We want to be part of that. And so whenever, anytime, people, Parents try to have a power play, I think, well, you're sacrificing the future for the now. You win this argument because kids will bend, but long term, they're going to. You know, long term, they're going to go their own way, and that's. And you're going to miss out on stuff.
Emma Waddington [00:34:27]:
And I was. I was just thinking. One of the things that I said two things to myself as a child. I was probably 9 or 10. The first was never to be an expat parent, which I then became, which is part of my struggle moving to Singapore. But the second thing I told myself was never forget what it's like to be a kid, because I felt the adults forgot what it was like to be a kid. The fact that kids had an opinion, had ideas, were capable, were able to make decisions for themselves, and that adults kind of reigned above them, telling them what to do and not giving them much autonomy. And that stayed with me as an adult, really thinking about how do we support our kids so that they feel that we trust them, that we have confidence in their ability to make decisions and make wise choices.
Emma Waddington [00:35:28]:
That as consultants. That's why I love your work. I love this idea that we can help them come with their own, come up with their own decisions, trust their wisdom with some support. You know, really think about parenting more as sort of the job of a gardener versus a carpenter. There was that book a few years ago, because it just feels so much easier to be honest as a parent, when I take that lens and I see it in the couples that I work with. Yes. And the couples, you can see the same dynamics. You know, you have one partner in the couple that desperately wants the other one to do things their way.
Emma Waddington [00:36:10]:
And of course, what happens, we see it all the time, is that you become more polarized. You don't come together as soon as you want. Just what you said, Ned. As soon as you want control, you lose influence. Because nobody wants to be told what to do. We want to be more of a team.
Ned Johnson [00:36:27]:
Well, it's funny for me, my daughter, who is now 21, was diagnosed at age 19 with autism. We didn't know she was autistic. Nobody knew she was autistic, including the people who did our neuropsychological evaluation in 8th grade. But she was Always a little rigid. She was always a more sensitive stress response. Just literally from the day that she was born, this is who she was. And I figured out pretty darn early that I was not winning an argument with Katie Johnson. One, she had a few points on me, and two, she was just inflexible enough.
Ned Johnson [00:37:02]:
It wasn't going to happen. And so probably past age of three, I never tried to win that, but would always try to use influence. And you ask questions. And to your point, you played this consultant role, and it takes a lot more work, it takes a lot more effort. But, you know, I mean, I found for the longest time that I'm really, you know, what's the. Julie Lythcott Haymes we're not raising children, we're raising adults. And along with that, we're trying to foster really an adult relationship with our kids. You know, I mean, you know, because back to your point, Chris, you know, we're trying to.
Ned Johnson [00:37:39]:
We're trying to impart values to them. We want them to ideally believe some of the things that we think they were important. And there's a story in the self driven, in the what do you say? Where my wife and I were out for a long walk with our son. He was a sophomore in high school, and he was asking us about a party that night and what should he do if people were drinking there and blah, blah, blah. And this was like the first real, like, high school party. And it would have been easier for drinking. Wait, you're not going? Wait, who are these people? And we could have shut down the party and his whole social life before it even started. And we said, well, tell me what you're thinking about this.
Ned Johnson [00:38:11]:
And he danced around and he finally told this cautionary tale about some party where a girl got super sick, like, like life threateningly sick. And another student called 91 1. And the police showed up and all the kids scattered like roaches under the light. And this one good Samaritan stayed with his kid and ended up getting tagged with $500 fine for being at a party where alcohol was served. And so the way this was told among high school students, it was, don't be there when bad things happen because you could get in trouble even if you weren't doing anything wrong. And so this was his concern. Was he gonna get in trouble? And he was a pretty nerdy kid, much like his dad at that point, so he wasn't gonna, you know, so he was worried. And I just said, well, there's another way to think about that.
Ned Johnson [00:38:55]:
He said, well, what's that? I said one could credibly make the argument that that good Samaritan who stuck around to make sure that that kid was okay got pasted with $500. And that's a lot of babysitting money, don't get me wrong. But she paid 500 bucks to save the life of another kid.
Emma Waddington [00:39:13]:
Yeah. Beautiful.
Ned Johnson [00:39:15]:
And in terms of all of us as parents, that we don't care about money. We care about your virtues, your values. Would that conversation have emanated. Would he have had the courage to ask that conversation if my wife and I had been all command and command control? I don't think. I don't think he would have.
Chris McCurry [00:39:32]:
And so for that.
Ned Johnson [00:39:35]:
Right, that's exactly right. And so all of these things, all of these things matter. And it starts with things like homework. It really does.
Emma Waddington [00:39:46]:
Yeah. And I guess just. I love that I remember that story. I remember exactly where I read it too, because it struck me as such a beautiful conversation that you had with your son. And it was symbolic of where we really want to be. We really want to be in a place with our kids where they can bring these things up. That's what we want to be able to do for them. Right.
Emma Waddington [00:40:11]:
We have that wisdom, we have that lived experience, but we don't have their brain and their ideas and their interests, their culture. And yes, I love that story and I love this idea that we can be alongside them and watch them grow and hear their perspective on the world. That's one of my favorite things, is to talk to my sons, especially because they're a bit older and see how they make sense of the world because it's so different to the way I do and I learn so much from them. And I just wanted to ask sort of off the back of that in one of, one of your principles. So we're sort of working our way through your principles without naming them. But one of them that I think is so helpful to be explicit about is this. Be a non anxious presence or be a non anxious parent. Because that's the undercurrent, isn't it, to a lot of this that when we kick into control, it's often because of anxiety and fear.
Emma Waddington [00:41:19]:
Like I was saying at the beginning, you know, this fear that my kid will get into trouble, they'll get, you know, intoxicated, end up in prison. You know, they'll fail all their exams and be especially boys. And we know that boys are struggling academically more than girls. This kind of anxiety drives the desire to control. So how do we support parents to be less, less of an anxious presence without creating more anxiety? Don't be anxious.
Ned Johnson [00:41:48]:
You feel bad about things.
Emma Waddington [00:41:50]:
Dangerous.
Ned Johnson [00:41:51]:
Feel bad about being anxious. You should be anxious about not being. Anyway. Go ahead.
Emma Waddington [00:41:56]:
Exactly.
Ned Johnson [00:41:56]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:41:58]:
I saw this kid years ago when I used to do psychotherapy. I saw this kid, his family, and he was in eighth grade and he's going through a hard time. And his dad, I was meeting with the parents and. And the dad started crying. And he said, first thing he said was, this should be the happiest time in his life. I said, well, obviously you didn't go to eighth grade. I mean. But then he said, he's crying.
William Stixrud [00:42:24]:
And he said, I just wanted to feel good about himself. And after he stopped crying, I said, respectfully, I think we can more convincingly help him feel good about himself if we aren't worried sick. If we can kind of make peace with, okay, he's having a hard time right now. It's not the end of the world. We're going to support him. We'll get him help if he needs it. But people go through hard things. That happens to a lot of people.
William Stixrud [00:42:51]:
And I've been saying, I've been neuropsychologists for over 40 years now, and I've been saying in my lectures the last couple years that I wish I could implant in other parents, brains, the memory circuits of my brain that probably know a thousand kids who are a disaster at some time in their life, who turned out great. And I think that part of it is just remembering that we don't have to solve our kids problems. It's okay for them to go through hard times with support and that most people, their climb to successful life and a happy life isn't completely just a smooth ride uphill. It comes with some. So I think part of that is keeping this. We say, take a long view. And. And Mark's experience is that if we don't get stuck, if we don't get stuck in some kind of anxious, fearful kind of reaction to where our kids are, they don't get stuck.
William Stixrud [00:43:48]:
They grow out of stuff. And also there's just so many influences on kids who aren't us. We oftentimes think that we have to solve everything for them. If this doesn't get solved immediately, it'll just get worse. Well, it usually doesn't.
Emma Waddington [00:44:03]:
Yeah.
Ned Johnson [00:44:04]:
Because kids want their lives to work out. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, when kids are having a hard time or even when they're not having a time. Right. I think it's, it's a natural, it's a default setting for parents to want to protect their kids from having hard feelings. And I get it, but our job is really not to protect our kids from experiencing the whole range of human emotions, but to support them when they're experiencing them. And that's hard because you know, I think a lot of times parents try to head off problems because not just their kids distress, but it's distressful to them when their kids are having distress.
Ned Johnson [00:44:41]:
And so we talk about this being a non anxious presence where you're simply not overly emotional, you're not overreactive. You know, when the kid crashes the car, you say, well, let's talk. Are you first? Are you okay? And, and anything that could have led to that and can we think about what we might do differently next time? And you know, as Bill would say, when kids are struggling, if you simply knew that this was part of their path, but you knew they were going to come out on the other side, then you wouldn't worry about it. You just say, this is what it is. You know, in this book, in the seven principles, we talk about things that parents can do to be, move in the direction being a non actions presence. We talk about this both from things we can do physiologically and what we can also do cognitively, right? So sleep and meditation and exercise and all these kind of things that literally rewire the brain in ways to be more tolerant, emotionally resilient to stuff that is hard. My son, who's running around downstairs somewhere, the summer after his first year of college, he developed a brain tumor. We were literally on the phone with him when this went down.
Ned Johnson [00:45:50]:
It was quite a to do. And you know, he got to Children's national, he got good treatment, blah blah, blah. But my wife and I were out for dinner probably six weeks into this and she said, I've had three people ask me, how are you so calm about this? And part of it is, you know, we have a really good relationship. We had a really good team helping him. We had, we had confidence that this was going to be good enough. But she said, honestly, I think it's the meditation. And Bill's been practicing what's called transcendent Transcendental meditation for almost 50 years. And I've been at least a decade.
Ned Johnson [00:46:23]:
I'm not really sure. I don't pay attention to years. My wife for five, six, seven years and, and my wife is incredibly human, but she's from a family that are pretty neurotic, if I'm completely honest. And, and she said, really, you know, for, for whenever a nervous system or a family system or a school system, a political system has great. More inflows of stress than healthy outflows of stress, all kinds of bad stuff happens. And so it's capable and bright as she is, I think she handled things so much better because she had something she could turn to that with. Inflows of stress, outflows of stress. And we also talk about this, you know, from a.
Ned Johnson [00:47:01]:
From a cognitive perspective. As Bill said before, almost all of our fears about our kids, things not going well are about the future, right? Where they get stuck and they'll never have friends again or they'll never turn this around, they'll never be successful in college, they'll never have a good life. And my daughter was. Was which line going middle school for her. There's my canine welcoming. My. Was full. Athena, go away.
Ned Johnson [00:47:28]:
Sorry. I have a dog in the background. I hope you can hear it. Ended up in full school refusal for whole school refusal for the last three months of eighth grade. And it was really hard. You know, it was hard. It was hard for her, it was hard for brothers, hard for me, for my wife. And.
Ned Johnson [00:47:44]:
But I went out for a walk this one time and, and said, you know, I said, listen, kiddo, you know, I am confident this is going to work out okay. Somehow you're going to contribute in the world in a cool way. You're going to have really good friends, you're going to do stuff that's meaningful. And she said, it sure doesn't feel that way. I said, I know it does. And everything's hard right now. You don't have any good friends. You know, you're out in school.
Ned Johnson [00:48:04]:
Everything's hard. But. But I, you know, I don't play this card very often, but said I've been around the sun a few more times than you have. And from my experience, I think this is going to work out. And look, your creative is all get out. You're super smart, you're vicious at board games. You're gonna. You're gonna.
Ned Johnson [00:48:19]:
This is gonna work out okay? And part of the reason I can have confidence of this is I had a really child and my dad was an alcoholic. He drank himself to death. My mom was institutionalized. I spent three months in seventh grade in a pediatric psychiatric hospital. I'm not without my, my faults or without my scars, but it's like people want their lives to work out. And Tina Pate Bryson would say, you know the recipe, you know, adversity plus Support becomes resilience, and that's what we want to do. And if we can hold to that thought, that our job is not to protect kids from home hard stuff, but to say this is. We're going to get through this, and our job is to figure this out somehow.
Ned Johnson [00:49:00]:
So I had the most brilliant conversation with my lovely son about a month ago. So I can't tell the story without tearing up. And we were a long ride, and he was talking about metacognition, and he's really into this and pulls the bright people and TikTok and everything else about how to think about his own thinking. And I jumped in. I said, I have to tell you, when you were going through the. This brain tumor thing, I had to project myself into the future and imagine what would happen if you didn't have a good outcome. If you end up impaired or deeply impaired or you weren't who you were, you end up dead. Because I had to make peace with that so that I wouldn't be undone by utter fear.
Ned Johnson [00:49:41]:
And so in this moment, I could be the person I was trying to be for mom, for Katie, for you. Because otherwise I would just, like, melt. And he looks at me and he says, I did the exact same thing.
Emma Waddington [00:49:54]:
Oh, wow.
Ned Johnson [00:49:55]:
What? Yeah. I had to imagine what would happen if I died. And I'm like. And. And he said, well, I told myself, if that's what happens, I've had a wonderful life. And you're like, yeah. And he spent three months getting chemotherapy at Children's national, having made peace with that somehow. Wow.
Ned Johnson [00:50:22]:
Learning to become a composer and wrote all this beautiful, beautiful music. And you're like, are you kidding me? And so it's not. Sorry. I'm really teary at this because it just. It just. It moves me enormously. And it's hard. I mean, I know the people who listen to you because you give them so much wisdom, where things are so, so hard for their kids, emotionally, attentionally, physical health.
Ned Johnson [00:50:46]:
I mean, there's so many. I mean, if we could, the four of us, sit here and say to everyone who's listening, nothing truly bad would ever happen to your kid. You'd never get beamed in the head with a fastball. God, that'd be amazing. But there's this thing called life. And so when. I mean, Bill just. I mean, Bill has it so right, you know, for.
Ned Johnson [00:51:06]:
For you all, for us. We've seen so many kids who struggle, and they tend to. Not always, but they tend to make things work out because it's their lives and they Want them to work out. And so for us, if we could have parents. Just hold to that thought. And really years ago, who said, you know, she was a humorist, she said we really shouldn't call it raising children. We should call lowering parents. And we can work on ourselves and not be so anxious and say, yeah, this sucks.
Ned Johnson [00:51:39]:
This, everything about eighth grade sucks. And that's okay. That's okay. Yeah, it makes it a whole lot easier. Everything else is just footnotes, right?
Emma Waddington [00:51:51]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:51:52]:
I'll add, Ned, that some months ago, maybe a year ago, Ned's son said, I've been thinking about what happened with the brain tumor. Maybe it was a good thing because I had all that time when I was. I had to take time off from school to create all this music. And, you know, I'm sure it would have been easier for everybody had not had to go through that. But in the scheme of things, who knows? And so, and so often, so often we think that we know what's best for kids, but we don't really, generally, because so often we. When we go through something hard and it feels like a disaster six months later or a year later, two years later, oh my God, thank God for that. I mean, one of the most painful experiences in my life, at least most embarrassing, was when I flunked out of graduate school the first time I went. And it took me literally one month of being out of this doctoral program in English and realizing, thank God, there's no way I should have stayed in that program.
William Stixrud [00:52:55]:
No way I was meant to be an English professor. And it's the best. Actually, two years later, I ran into the one professor who flunked me so I couldn't go back. And I thanked him for flunking me. And, you know, so we just don't know. And we want kids to be able to trust their own judgment, to practice making good decisions, practice solving their problems so they become capable of running their own lives before they leave home.
Chris McCurry [00:53:20]:
Yeah, I flunked out as I flunked out as a pre med major. But the very, but the very last class I took before they kicked me out of UC Berkeley was a psychology, psychology class. And I thought, ah, this is what I want to do.
William Stixrud [00:53:36]:
I was at Berkeley too, when I clumped up.
Ned Johnson [00:53:39]:
I mean, every time Bill tells that story, every time Bill tells that story, I mean, it just, it's so moving to me because when I think about the thousands of people whose lives you have changed and put them in a different direction, thank, to your point, your words, thank God you're not in English, professor. And I know you write brilliantly and. But I mean. Oh, come on.
William Stixrud [00:54:01]:
Thanks, buddy.
Chris McCurry [00:54:03]:
Well, I mean, this reminds me of, you know, the. There's a doctor of social work from a Walsh, she's in Chicago. And she talks a lot about resilience and she talks about bouncing forward, bouncing back.
Ned Johnson [00:54:17]:
I like that, forward.
Chris McCurry [00:54:19]:
You know, that we come through these experiences better off. We've written a bunch of music, we've, you know, learned something about ourselves. We've connected with our neighbors because of, you know, the power outage that got us all like helping each other out. And then. So that's what we hope for our kids, is that they can bounce forward in these, through these situations.
William Stixrud [00:54:44]:
That's beautifully. In our new book, we talk about the reason that we want kids.
Ned Johnson [00:54:51]:
To.
William Stixrud [00:54:52]:
Have some problems and to solve them is that whenever. When something stressful happens to a kid and the kid tries to figure out what to do, the prefrontal cortex of the brain has to activate. And then whenever the prefrontal cortex activates, it dampens down the stress response, so the kid goes into coping mode. And what we want is for kids to be. To have that experience a lot. Not overwhelmingly, not, not toxically, but to be stressed and to figure out how to deal with it. And then that changes the brain in a way that when something stressful happens, they don't panic, they cope. They go into that coping mode.
William Stixrud [00:55:28]:
And that's the way you develop confidence. How do you develop confidence? You can handle hard situations. It's by handling hard situations.
Chris McCurry [00:55:36]:
Zone of proximal development.
Emma Waddington [00:55:38]:
That is so true. Yeah.
Chris McCurry [00:55:41]:
Well, in the interest of time, I.
Emma Waddington [00:55:45]:
Was just about to launch into another question.
Ned Johnson [00:55:47]:
Yeah.
Emma Waddington [00:55:48]:
Yes, absolutely.
Chris McCurry [00:55:49]:
I mean, if.
Emma Waddington [00:55:50]:
No, no, just very briefly, I was just thinking that so much of this conversation is for me, the sentiment also is about how we regulate as parents, how we trust that we can cope with whatever comes. I mean, Ned, your story about your son is incredibly moving and I'm beautiful and I'm so glad everything went well. But it reminds me that, you know, we, our job as parents is to practice self regulation and to recognize that that is really hard. Being a parent, it really does feel like I'm carrying my heart on my sleeve all the time. Like it's. It's the most anxiety provoking, beautiful, hard job I have ever done. It's the happiest I've ever been. To be honest, I wasn't very as happy as a non parent as I am as a parent.
Emma Waddington [00:56:46]:
I think I have, I feel incredibly Privileged to be a parent.
Ned Johnson [00:56:51]:
I love that there's so many parents, so many people right now thinking, well, it's not worth it. I love that you shared that.
Emma Waddington [00:56:58]:
Yeah. Thank you. It really is. And I do think I'm very lucky in that sense. Be it because I have tremendous kids, you know, genetically, somehow they've come out quite well. But also because I do love children anyway. Like, I loved working with kids. So kids, I find them quite fascinating, and they've just got a way of seeing the world that I don't want to lose.
Emma Waddington [00:57:24]:
And adults, we don't have as much fun as them. We don't have as much humor as them. We don't have the same curiosity, you know, being mesmerized by a stone. I mean, how cool is that?
Ned Johnson [00:57:36]:
Is it. Proust said that the journey of discovery is not traveling to far, to far distant lands as you've gone to Singapore, but in seeing the world through new eyes. And what is it? What is. What does a child do but see the world? Because literally has new eyes.
Emma Waddington [00:57:51]:
Yeah.
Chris McCurry [00:57:52]:
Help us do that, too.
William Stixrud [00:57:54]:
And I'll add it, as Chris knows, having having adult children is really great, too.
Emma Waddington [00:58:01]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:58:02]:
That's part partly why just focusing on putting a connection first. Don't. Don't sacrifice your relationship with your kid for their. Something about their achievement or be glad to see them enjoy them while you have them at home.
Emma Waddington [00:58:16]:
Yeah.
William Stixrud [00:58:16]:
Develop that relationship that's going to sustain. My kids are 42 and 40, and it's just so. And my daughter and her family been living with me the last three months, and they just moved back into their house but had some work done. But it's been so incredibly cool to have them here and have a relationship with my daughter at age 42.
Emma Waddington [00:58:39]:
Nice.
Chris McCurry [00:58:40]:
Nice.
Emma Waddington [00:58:40]:
Magical.
Chris McCurry [00:58:42]:
Well, this has been wonderful, and thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. I know this is going to be a very inspiring podcast for our listeners. We'll have links to your books and your websites on our show notes. And it's been a real privilege. Thank you.
Emma Waddington [00:59:10]:
Thank you, thank you for all that you do. This has been really transformative to my journey, and I know it has been for many others, too.
William Stixrud [00:59:18]:
Might have. Okay. All right.
