May 6, 2025
141: Success: What really shapes who we become and are parents that important?
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What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover? What really shapes who we become — nature, nurture, or something more hidden? In The Family Dynamic, award-winning journalist Susan Dominus dives deep into the invisible forces that shape families and how those forces ripple through generations. In this episode, Susan joins me to talk about sibling bonds, overcoming adversity, and what happens when bold parents fill their kids with belief in their ability ...
What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover?
What really shapes who we become — nature, nurture, or something more hidden? In The Family Dynamic , award-winning journalist Susan Dominus dives deep into the invisible forces that shape families and how those forces ripple through generations.
In this episode, Susan joins me to talk about sibling bonds, overcoming adversity, and what happens when bold parents fill their kids with belief in their ability to change things.
If you’ve ever questioned how important your parenting really is, the impact of siblings on your child's life, the role of community, or whether our kids should do chores, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
THE BOOK:
The Family Dynamic by Susan Dominus
CONTACT DETAILS:
- Website: Susan P Dominus at susanpdominus.com
- Instagram: @Sue Dominus
- Blue Sky: Susan Dominus
- Facebook: She remains active and friendly on Facebook
- Additionally, the New York Times Magazine.
SIBLINGS:
One fascinating area we explored was the underestimated power of sibling relationships in a child's development and success, particularly in creating a supportive and motivational family environment.
Spillover Effect
- In lower-income families, the success of one sibling can positively impact younger siblings. When one child achieves, it creates a pathway and belief system for other siblings.
Motivational Influence
- Siblings can inspire and push each other to achieve more. Children are more likely to listen to and be inspired by siblings than parental suggestions
Knowledge Transfer
- Siblings share practical advice about schools, guidance counselors, and educational opportunities
- They can provide vision and perspective that parents might not have
Thank you so much for your support.
Please hit the follow button if you like the podcast, and share it with anyone who might benefit. You can review us on Apple podcasts by going to the show page, scrolling down to the bottom where you can click on a star then you can leave your message.
I don't have medical training so please seek the advice of a specialist if you're not coping.
My email is teenagersuntangled@gmail.com
My website has a blog, searchable episodes, and ways to contact us:
www.teenagersuntangled.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/teenagersuntangled/
Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/teenagersuntangled/
Susie is available for a free 15 minute consultation, and has a great blog:
www.amindful-life.co.uk
WEBVTT
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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.
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Untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards, parenting coach, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now we've all seen stories about families that produced multiple high achieving children, and I find reading about them makes me I don't know, a bit uncomfortable, but I can't help wanting to know. I think all of us have parenting anxieties common in our time.
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Are we encouraging our kids enough? Are we enriching them enough? Are we instilling in them a strong enough work ethic, or are we crushing them with our expectations? Now, Susan Dominus is a prize winning staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, known for storytelling that has shaped the way we understand human behavior, family life and social structures. Her latest book, The family dynamic, draws on years of richly detailed case studies. What she uncovers is not a formula. It's something I don't know. It's more insightful the interplay of drive, opportunity, parenting philosophy and emotional undercurrents that guide ambition and resilience. Well, if you're a parent who wonders how much of your influence really matters, and obviously this is a conversation for you.
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Susan Dominus, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me and for that really beautiful summary of the book.
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I'm going to go transcribe it and use it. When I talk about go use it. I am so in awe of the work, because it's the most beautifully written book. The stories of the families are absolutely fascinating, and you've managed to weave in a huge amount of research to sort of back up what you're you're seeing. And I think that that must be that's so hard to achieve. And I instantly loved your book, because it's you start out explaining what sort of kicked off your interest in families? Can you tell us about that teenage experience where you had to go and spend time in another family's household? So my father? Yeah, I'd love to my father and I used to travel a lot for work, and my mom would often go up, go with him for even a week or two at a time.
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And so they would put us in the homes of family, friends. And,
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you know, I think I became a little bit of a familyologist, because you see the different rituals that other families have. And one of the families, we're still really close to, their dinner time rituals involved, you know, very elaborate math games and discussions events, whereas current events. Whereas in my household, as I write in the introduction, our primary obligations were to finish our clear our plates and chew with our mouth closed. Well read people, but it was just a much more informal dinner table experience. And think, I thought, Wow, maybe I'd be better at math if my parents had been, you know, giving me elaborate math questions over dinner question, yeah. And you know what, if I were expected to opine on current events, maybe I'd be more civically engaged, you know. And so I was always curious. I always collected stories about those kinds of in stories of enrichment that happened in the childhood home.
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I just love it, and that's occurred to me too. I had the same experience. I went to another household, experienced a completely different way of doing things.
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So you set out to write about high achieving families. What do you consider to be high achieving? And how did you choose the families that feature in your book? That's a great question, because, you know, obviously you could define success a number of different ways. I particularly was interested in families in which the kids did something that I considered bold. They became real, sort of game changers, or even just to decide to become a novelist, much less an award winning, innovative, groundbreaking novelist. I was curious about families that kind of led their kids to believe they could do anything. And so it followed a little bit the things that I value, you know, art and social justice. And,
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you know, people who also overcame, you know, financial disadvantage to do great things were really interesting to me. I was less interested in the kids who grew up in middle class, sorry, upper middle class homes had their college paid for, went into, you know, careers that were basically about profit. You know, God bless all of that. But I that was a little bit less interesting to me. I that's fascinating, yes, and there were some really interesting stories about immigrants and people who had they didn't have any money, but they were resourceful. And when you talk about being bold, I mean, one of the things you talked about was you sort of had one story of a young man who felt that his parents really didn't feel they didn't have a belief in his ability to shape the world or even in his dreams, and that left him without that real sense that he could achieve things. So what was it? Do you think that it was in these families of boldness that gave them that sense that they was it the parents just saying you can do anything? What was happening?
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There is something to that. And I do think that if you are the kind of person who.
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Believes that it is helpful for your child to hear it. I mean, I did hear it at the level of family mottos or just even implied. You know, Marilyn Hollifield, who was one of three people to desegregate a high school in Tallahassee. You know, not long after the Civil Rights Act passed, she would say that in her family, the informal family motto was all things possible. I mean. And then another family I interviewed, a Mexican American family, also who were actually, you know, quite financially struggling.
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Their family motto, they have many but their mother used to say, with God's help, all things are possible, you know. So I do think there are people who convey a sense of optimism, even if their own circumstances are very humble. And I think kids internalize that, and they even they feel it that their parents believe it. And you know, often the parents themselves and these families had overcome great hardship. I call them overcomers. And so they also have seen it, you know, they've grown up with the stories of how their parents, you know, grew up at a farm and traveled, you know, to Alabama to put himself through school and then built a real estate empire. This is true of Marilyn hollifield's parents.
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So it's, I think kids pick up on the rules for other people maybe don't apply to us, because, look what can be done.
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Yes, how. How fascinating. And I it's interesting, because when we think about high achieving families, we often, we often think about the the people like the Kennedys, who, you know, and Joseph Kennedy used to sort of assign topics to the kids like Algerian, one child would be expected to present on that topic, while the other kids were expected to have gone and found out about it, so that they could pick apart what that child was saying, which is more like what happened to me at university, and that sort of intensive, focused parenting. But what you're sort of talking about is a sense that you can achieve things. And can it be playful?
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Can we have a lighter touch about that boldness?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that Kennedy is famously, really instilled, like, deep competition. I mean, there was, like, a lot of sporting events, and one of the Kennedy parents or grandparents used to say, in this family, we don't like losers, you know? I mean, it was some, you know, this real sense that you know our value is, you know that our love of you is somewhat conditional. And so I do think the more playful approach is to the way I think about it is, it's not that the parent is saying you have to achieve at a very high level or else we will be disappointed.
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It's more creating in the children, there's a sense like, whatever you want, we're cool.
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But if you want to change the world, you can do that. That's you know, that is, that is within your realm. And we know it's possible. And we have seen people do incredible things. We ourselves have, you know, done incredible things, even if it's just immigrating from China to Bristol, Virginia and Appalachia and started a thriving restaurant. Like, how hard is that? What? What could be harder for you than what we did? You know, the world is your oyster.
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Basically, that's how I see it.
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Yes,
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I do think seeing other people managing these things can give us a real sense that it is possible, I can see how that would be the case.
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What about struggle? Because I think one of the problems we've had as if we are comfortable, if we're raising kids in a comfortable environment, parents tend to over stress, the need for academia, and this has happened a lot, where you just go, well, studying your academics, and don't worry about the housework, don't worry about this and and yet, various studies have shown that when parents do that, kids don't thrive as well. In fact, you know, parents intervene when kids are struggling there, it's demotivational. Can you talk more about what you found in terms of families that do well?
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Yeah, I do think there is often a real sense of fostering independence and letting the kids lead the way and letting them take risks, even if it means they might fail. You know, that includes Sarah trues parents, when she was 14, wanted to swim the length of the lake outside their home. You really did not think she's great stories, and they almost didn't, because they were so afraid of her disappointment when she failed. You know, a lot of people don't try that swim and don't make it and but they thought, okay, she really wants to do this. And not only did she do it, but we broke the record, and still holds the record for the fastest swim of that lake.
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There's a plaque in the, you know, town, and it turns out it's for men and for women. So it's kind of remarkable and but, you know, I do think another example of that is also Marilyn Hollifield. When she was 16, she told her parents she wanted to be, you know, the white, terrific, big, famous High School in. Tallahassee was now finally open to black students, and she wanted to go to the best school in Tallahassee, and her parents were sophisticated enough to know what that was going to be like for her, and it was not their idea. She had the feeling that they would have preferred she continued going to the excellent school she was attending, which was, you know, it was a school for black kids, but they didn't say no, and they didn't try to scare her out of it. And it was a really difficult experience. It must have been very hard for them to watch, but it was also hugely formative. And I think she came out on the other side, means she was always very strong, but it was very, you know, I think that her toughness was impenetrable after that, and I think her parents knew her well enough to know it wasn't going to break her you know, that's another thing that I feel like I agree with from this book, is you have to know your child, that you know the parenting rules are not one child you know do not fit all. And I think parents sometimes have this idea that if they have high expectations, then all their children will reach those expectations. And they don't understand when the maybe the older child does so well, and then the younger one doesn't succeed at the same level. And they think, well, we set the same expectations for both of them, but you have to get that stuff just right. You know, it's like you want, you want, you want to push them to their limit, but not some arbitrary limit that you have set for them, because that is a recipe for disappointment, heartache and stress.
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Yeah, I love that David Yeager, who you quoted in your book. I interviewed him for my podcast, and he was talking about how important high expectations and high support are, and that actually, you know, if you just put in those expectations, and you've got a kid who's not he doesn't find it as easy, and you don't have the support in place where some kid might not need it, you know, the other kid is going to fail if you don't actually have that. There one quote you had in your book was one of the researchers saying that her prior work shows that when you take over for one task, it demotivates kids on the next task, even if it's a totally different task, yeah, it has a spillover effect,
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yes, and so it's really hard to get that right.
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You want to offer them the support that they need. It's the difference really, between writing good edits on your students, you know, paper like maybe asking some provocative questions and rewriting sentences for your student, right? Like, that's when you are just taking over, but maybe pointing out, like this could be stronger. I wonder what you're really trying to say here that seems helpful when you start rewriting it yourself or introducing new ideas that were not original to your child, that's probably when you start to lose the yes effectiveness of whatever help you're actually trying to give.
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Yes, I love that. And David Jaeger says you have to forward foot when you're giving the feedback and saying, Oh, this could be stronger. You say, I believe that you are really capable, and this could be stronger because then that that fills them up with that cup of sort of expectation, belief in themselves. And coming back again to the chores we've, you know, there's such a battle over chores I've had, you know, I've made our whole family know that we're in a team. I don't expect to be doing everything. They've all got to muck in. I've interviewed a woman called Sam Kelly about the notice and do method, which is basically teaching your kids they've got to notice what's going on.
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Because if you're in charge of the chore chart, then you're still taking control away from your child. What did you find in these families? Were these families expecting their kids to do chores? Or were they, you know, just expected to focus on being brilliant?
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No, that's that's a great point. I mean, I remember one of the families I wrote about. It's this family of very high achieving female executives. They definitely had, like, a chore jar where they would pick out a chore, but they also could, like, swap with their sisters, so they did have some over what they ended up doing. I do love this concept of notice, and do actually, because I think there's passivity among a lot of young people who are used to having things done for them, where just they don't have the common sense. Okay, let's just admit it. Sometimes I see it in my own teenage boys. They don't that. It doesn't occur to them, like, oh, there's a piece of candy wrapper on the floor. I am as good a person to pick that up as any Yes.
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Job is that somebody, somebody should pick that up? Yes. Well, maybe you know exactly.
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So, yeah, I do think that. Yes. I mean, and sometimes it can be in a really loving way. The Holo fields, Father did a lot of farming, and Marilyn has a lot of fond memories of helping when she was very small, and being made to feel helpful and being made to feel that she was being effective. Yeah, the www sisters, I think, ironed, you know, they got, maybe paid to do that. But I there, it's funny, because there's all this research that does show that kids who, you know, kids who do chores that's highly predictive that later, they will be successful in life. I also think that there are some kids who are impervious to doing chores you know, that you ask them to do when they do it, and those, surprisingly, are often the kids who do not, you know, perform at such a. High Level later on. So it's not, it's not totally clear that it's the chore doing that is formative. It could be a little bit like this client, children, you know, kids who have a sense of responsibility later, have a sense of responsibility about whatever they you know, need to be doing.
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That said, you know, my friend Jenny Wallace is writing this book called mattering, and it's a follow up to her book, never enough, which is about the feeling that kids have forced to do achievement that's kind of empty. And I think being made feel that your contributions are important. We're relying on you.
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We're a team. I think that's not just about instilling grit, actually. I think it's about you matter and you're you're capable, you're competent, and you're important to this team,
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yeah, and that's what I've been it's actually made a massive difference in my household, where I just everyone, I say, right, I've done this, this and this for the team. What are you offering? And it gives them autonomy, because they can say, well, I'm going to offer this.
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But then they also think about it as you know, nobody in the team does everything somebody you know, everybody's got to pitch in, and it gives them a much more sense that they're important. I am interested also in the downside, because I think a lot of parents fear that their kids will be filled with anxiety, or they're going to suffer too much stress, or they'll end up unhappy later on in life. I get quite a few listeners who were those kids who were pushed really hard by their parents, boxed into, you know, Susie, my co host, was basically locked in a room until she could learn a piece of music. And yes, it became, she became a good musician, but at what cost? And so she's very much like anti rules. So to, you know, work, what were the what were the costs, benefit analysis. Do you think, I mean, did we end up with very anxious adult? That's one of the great things about your book, is that you're not just looking at teenagers. You're looking now at people who've grown up and achieved things in the world and and we're seeing the end product.
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Yeah, I do think we know that there is an epidemic of anxiety among young people, and there has been quite a bit of literature about how when parents set expectations too high. It does translate into anxiety. You know, perfectionism is the anathema of, I think, well being. And you know, the gra family, it's hard to know.
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You know, there was always this sense in that family that it was, that it was, it's not that the parents ever explicitly said it, but there was somehow this feeling in the air that it was never enough, that you could always do better and that you could and so then, you know, that's when you get people who write 18 drafts of a novel, like longhand and are never satisfied. Or, you know, Sarah true, who this Olympic triathlete who trained through injury, and, you know, sacrificed so much. I mean, one of the things that I think just really came through in the book is that this is not true for everyone, but when you are achieving at such a high level, you know, often you sacrifice something. It could be, you know, quality sleep at night. It could be relationships. It could be taking the time to really, if you're so busy doing and achieving, maybe you're not reflecting on yourself, and if all of your value is in that next high profile elevation, obviously there are, yeah, there are things that suffer and and for the parents who pushed these kids, I found they that, You know that the Chen family lived in Virginia, and they adored their children. They drove them very, very hard, and then their kids succeeded and left Virginia and went off to elite universities. And then now they live very far from their parents and and I think that, you know, there was a while when, when their mom was kind of hinting like, oh, there's earthquakes in San Francisco, and safer if you move back here to Virginia, you know, to Bristol. So I think parents don't always think through they want their kids to lead these exciting, glamorous lives. But, you know, there were other families in the neighborhood, Chinese families, whose kids stay around and run the family business and have kids of their own. And there's nice things about that too, you know, yeah,
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and that's such an interesting one, because when I've done research on whether our kids should pay rent, you know, you look at different attitudes towards it around the world, the Asian and also the Mediterranean model is much more to do with keeping your kids close by, and that's an achievement in itself, yes, yes, yes. And one of the other things you talked about was investment in kids. And there was some research by Connelly, which said that middle class and low income families parents tend to invest more heavily in the child who seems more destined for success.
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And you know, there's tutoring for private school or college, and then the talented children have fewer resources, whereas with the wealthier families, they tend to spend the resources trying to help the struggling students succeed. Is there any evidence for whether one works better than the other, or whether you know, what should we be doing?
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It's a really great question. You know. I actually just published an excerpt in the magazine.
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There'll be an excerpt for this from this book in the New York Times Magazine. And I actually drew out a little bit more research in a way, it does make sense to invest in lower and disadvantaged families, in the child who is most likely to succeed, because we actually find there's a sibling knockoff effect, and the better one of the sibling does. And you see this effect most it's most prominent in these you know, lower income families, if you can really elevate the level of the older child, it will have sibling spillover effects on the younger one. So it can be very efficient. And in upper middle class homes, if there is a child who's struggling, you know, you can they have the resources to bring that child up. So it's, it's, it's just the mechanism is more effective in these disadvantaged homes to invest in the more talented, seemingly more talented, child.
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And I love what you say about the siblings, because actually, that's one thing that I really, really took away from the book, is the impact of siblings, and you said in the Holyfield family, the and and others you interviewed for the book that siblings, sort of the parents, shaped the values and expectations, and then the siblings took over in with with their influence. Can you talk more about how much sibling competition and support matters with families.
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You know, it's hard to I mean, so these sibling spillover effects, I think, are really powerful and are and suggest, by the way, that interventions that you could do with one child are actually more effective than we even realized, because it'll trickle down to the younger child. So that, I think is interesting. The other reason you see that effect more powerfully in lower income homes is because those kids have fewer extracurriculars, and so they're spending more time in each other's company. So there's the idea to influence each other a little bit more. But yeah, I think that it's almost something that I saw at a kind of qualitative research level, which is, let's say you have parents who immigrated from Mexico and they are now living in the United States, and your children are bright, and you convince them that the world is their America is the land of opportunity, and they're in a good school and they have opportunity. It's the siblings who can give them advice about what college is best. Or the older siblings who say this is the guidance counselor everyone in my grade said was great. Or you should think about applying to this law school. You know, when Marilyn Hollifield went on to Harvard Law School as a black woman in 1968 or whatever it was, I don't know that her parents would have ever pictured her there. It was just a new world and but her brother had gone to Harvard Law School himself, and he could picture her there. So I think young people have vision for the future that the parents often can't see, or they have resources and access and connections that are closer, you know. So, you know, there's a classically in affluent homes, the parent picks up a phone.
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Could just see my kid, you know, but especially in more disadvantaged homes where the parents don't have those resources, it's the first talented sibling who's making who's blazing trails, who can then bring along the other siblings. Yes,
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I love that, and I I've seen it working with my three four, right? How so, oh, absolutely. You know, the older girls are really sort of powering up the younger girls and in and often, my youngest, you know, she'll listen to me, and then she'll go out and she'll go and talk to her sister, because her sister's much more important in terms of what she really thinks. So, yes, it certainly makes a difference.
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And I think for families where, you know, if they're listening and they're thinking, I only have one child, one thing I thought was fascinating was when we my daughter's studying for a levels, which is sort of 18 year old, and, you know, she's working so hard, and we brought her best friend, well, one of her friends, to with us when we went away. And they both both study together. But it had a massive impact on the younger daughter, because she could see this rather gorgeous girl who's really interested in studying, who wasn't her sister, who she could then model herself on. And I think neighborhood, the environment you talk about that, and you talk about considering living in a college town or somewhere where where kids can can find other people who inspire them and then get out of their way. Can you talk more about how the environment that our neighborhood and our environment can do that for our kids?
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Yeah, so, you know, there are all this there's all this interesting research on twin studies that finds essentially concludes that parents have, like, much, much less effect on their child's outcomes than we ordinarily think as parents. It's because there's so many other environmental forces at play.
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But one of the things that you see is that kids who grew up in the same household do attend college at the same kinds of race. It's you know, where you go to college or not is very much a function of the home that you grew up in. And obviously so much comes from. Having a college degree, but that shared environment, it's hard to know, is it the parents who are kind of saying like, look, you're both going to college, so it's going to happen, or is it that they are in a town where the expectation is that everybody is going to go to college? And, you know, we live in a town that just we picked it because my sister lives here, but it happens to be very rich in PhDs and people in sort of creative class fields. And so the level of competition, you know, these people have very bright children, and the competition, it was very much coming from the children in the grade I you know, this is a town full of like therapists also, you know, I think everybody is self aware enough to take it pretty easy on nobody in our town was like making their kid take Mandarin or, so far as I know, locking them in a room until they finish their box Sonata. But the, if, you know, if your kid is an environment where other kids are very driven, it's, it's going to motivate that child as well, because they kids, they care about siblings. They care about their siblings, friends. It's the whole environment. I was thinking about how, in the in the book, I tell the story of how my brother suggested that I start a school newspaper. And if my parents had suggested it, I think it would have felt like something that was dutiful and that they wanted me to do for my college application. And my friend Lisa de Moore calls parental suggestions of this nature the kiss of death suggestions, because this is another reason why siblings matter. Kids are kind of inclined, developmentally in adolescents, to reject whatever their parents tell them. Not so with siblings. And I know more than one parent who has successfully asked a sibling to plant an idea if the sibling was on board with it. And I will say that as a little tip, if you can do it convincingly, the sibling has to believe in it too and be on board. But in that case, it can be effective.
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And one, one of the wonderful stories, I think it was the Chen Family, who were a Chinese immigrant who, you know, they were working all the hours of the day, really tough life, but they've created a restaurant, and in that restaurant, their kids had to come and work every evening to do their homework, but the people who came into the restaurant were prepared to step in and help the kids with the homework. And and I've spoken with people who've said, Oh yeah, I was on a bus coming home, and somebody every night, somebody would help me with my maths. And I think also as community and as parents, we can step in and be, be supportive of other people's kids. This actually does make a difference.
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I love that idea, and I also love, I love help that comes freely. You know what I mean? I love help that is not paid, but it's just, you know, I think kids pick up on that too, and they're being supported out of the goodness of people's heart. And by the way, I really encourage my own children to do the same for others. So for example, you know, if we have a snow blower or, you know, a power washer, I want them to, you know, do it out of the goodness of their heart for our next door neighbors, or like a friend who's been wonderful for us, who asks, like, it's great for your kids, just to say, no, no, no, please. I This is me, like, I'd love to do this for you. And I don't know if you feel the same way, but I think a lot has been commercialized in community life. You know that we once asked somebody's son to help a few younger kids with Dungeons and Dragons, and there was the expectation that we would pay him. And I thought, like, you know, it would be just as good for him to, you know, do it, because it'll be great mentoring, and he'll feel great about it. And, you know, anyway, I, yes,
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I and we, and, I mean, we don't need the money.
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Why are we doing this? And I saw this really great. I think it was in on Twitter where this he said, I'm a black man, and I'm in my 70s, and I've just found out the guy across the road is charging this man next to me $5 a week to take his bins out. So this black guy is going to go and haul out this white guy's bins. Because why would you do that to someone? And I just think this community spirit, showing kids that actually it's not all about commercialism, taking them away from that online life that seems to be all about money now, and giving them a sense of how wonderful a community is when we pull together, it's got to be really beneficial. Yeah, and I'm interested in your view on that, because, you know, as parents, we often think we have, you know, we're very important. Our role is so it matters so much, and we pick apart the tiny little things we're doing and hope that we're doing it well.
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To what extent do we really have much power now, particularly in a world of social influence and social media and and different cultural messaging. I mean,
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I do look, you know, do parents matter? I think they matter in, like, the day to day lives of their children, you know, and how do they feel in the moment in their home? And that obviously matters, because life is an accretion of a million tiny moments. Are you going to change your child's personality? You know, if you are, you know if your child is a. An introvert and you're constantly like trying to force them to go to parties and be more outgoing. Is that, you know, through whatever methods you have, is that going to be effective? You know, probably not. I always say that the best way to maybe instill real perception shifts in your kids is to outsource it. You know, in other words, I think maybe it's about encouraging your kid to do the sport with the coach, whom you really admire, who you think is someone who the kid's going to look up to and learn from, or it is the, you know, the piano teacher who is has a love and infectious, you know, desire to convey the passion for music.
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It's just you can't be everything to your kid. Your kid does not want you to be everything to your kid, you know. And speaking of neighbors, you know, one of the reasons, I think, like encourage your kid to help out with a neighbor is, you know, maybe that's a neighbor who has something to teach your child. And I don't know. I think that, you know, trying to be the parent who forces your child to learn grit.
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I just think that's such a recipe for a backfiring situation, like, let the wrestling coach teach your kid how to have grit and toughness, you know, or send them to a summer camp where they do that with love, you know. But it's about seeking out good role models for your kid, rather than thinking that you can do it all.
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Oh, I love that. And that just, I think there's so much stress in parents nowadays. We feel like we've we're just carrying too much and and that actually just says it's, you know, you can move some of this pressure off your back and bring in more people. And people say, Where's my village? But we have to kind of create it. We have to actually reach out and find ways of reaching into the village and doing that, creating that ourselves, right, absolutely looking around, going, where is everybody? Well, we've kind of got to do some of that ourselves. Yeah. And just before I let you go that I'm very interested in the extent to which there's no because we're constantly looking at it going, is it nurture? Is it nature? And I I saw one bit, which was talking about how talent is the generator that gets things started. But if you don't actually have that engine that you're just not going to go anywhere. So there's, there's, it's somehow, there's, there's only so much we have power we have over this, right? I mean, I think winter Marsalis was a good example you had in your book.
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Yes,
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I loved winters, because there's this great moment when an interviewer, his father was a, so listen, his father was a legendary music educator, right? So he had this sense of, probably, growth potential, and, you know, growth mindset, and understands that, like work translates into success. But at the same time, his father, somebody, an interviewer, asked, www, did your father force you to practice? And he said, No, my dad was too cool for that kind of thing. I just loved that quote, you know, and it's not, it had to come from him. He had to want it, and he had to, he probably knew he was, you know, David Epstein, in his book The talent gene, talks about this, kids who are really talented.
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Sometimes they know it, and they know it's worth it. They know they can get very far. They have an innate sense. So, you know, can we make every kid into a wind in Marsalis, no, we can't.
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There is some element of talent that mixes with Drive. To me, it's about, if you can exposing your child to as many things as possible so they can stumble on the thing that they're passionate about. You know, it's about having lots of books in the house or going to the library a lot. It's about having instruments lying around. I mean, I have so many stories about friends whose kids were diffident about whatever instrument had been assigned to them, but there was a guitar lying around the house. This is my own family, true. And you know, Josh, my son, played bass for many, many years, very, very diffidently, I must say, barely practiced, but we always had guitars my husband played, and he picked it up one day, and it's become a great source of joy for him, because it wasn't attached to lessons or right auditions. It was just for him and I it's, you know what? He's not now going to go on to become a professional guitarist, but I do think he does see, oh, when I practice, it gets better. When I put in the work, it's more rewarding. He owns it, but he would never would have come to it if we hadn't had the guitar lying around in the first place.
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So there's a million movies like that that you just, you know, you take your kid to the museum, in case it lights them on fire.
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You give them the opportunity to they want to go to the soccer camp, and you can afford it, or there's one that you can afford.
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Yeah, sure. Make the eight hour drive to drop them off, and then they'll see if they love it or they don't. I mean, you know, all you can do is what you can do. And for some of us, that is, you know, finding a neighbor or a friend or a volunteer group that the kid can be part of. And for other people, it is, you know, expensive lessons and things like that. But, yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, it's.
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Was like, sometimes I think that when my friends were dating and they would want to know, or is this going to work out? And I would say it just, it always takes a different path, right?
00:35:08.340 --> 00:35:17.219
Like, it's the same thing with children, you know, it's, it's hard to know what is the happenstance that's going to make it all come together for your child?
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Absolutely. And I was always a much better parent before I became a parent, you know, you kind of you start realizing that things are just so much more complicated and we just have to do the best we that we can with what we've got.
00:35:29.900 --> 00:35:35.840
Susan, it's been amazing. So it's such an interesting discussion. Thank you so much.
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Best of luck with what is really an excellent book. I loved every minute of it. I will be poring over it regularly, just to go back and because there are lots of little, little moments of recognition and just special stories. Particularly, I love the people that you picked, because they're not the people we always associate with high performance, right? And that's that's so special. If people want to find you, what's, what's the best way to for them to get hold of you?
00:36:03.059 --> 00:36:22.820
Well, I have a website, which is Susan P Dominus at, at Susan P dominus.com I'm on Instagram as Sue Dominus, and I am on blue sky as Susan Dominus. And I'm actually super Facebook friendly. I still love Facebook.
00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:27.980
I have a lot of old friends on it, and I am definitely on there regularly. So yeah, brilliant,
00:36:27.980 --> 00:36:32.960
so you can regularly see Susan's work in the New York Times Magazine, so there's that as well. Brilliant.
00:36:32.960 --> 00:36:40.099
Thank you so much, Susan. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with at least one other person. Go out and buy the book.
00:36:40.579 --> 00:37:03.119
You can review it. That would be amazing. Five stars is always very great. I'm very, very welcome. And you can find all of my information on my website, which is www.teenagersuntangled.com Any questions, any you know, suggestions, ideas. It's teenagers untangled@gmail.com That's it for now. Have a great week. Big hug from me, bye, bye.
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