July 8, 2025
Motivation vintage: How to motivate a young person, teen or tween
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What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover? We'd all love our children to breeze through school, enjoying a satisfying academic life, having lots of friends, and coming out at the end feeling a success. But what if you have a child that doesn't thrive in an academic environment? What if they can't or won't do the work? How do you deal with it and what techniques can you use to motivate them? According to eminent psychologist, Dr David Yeager, when kids hi...
What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover?
We'd all love our children to breeze through school, enjoying a satisfying academic life, having lots of friends, and coming out at the end feeling a success. But what if you have a child that doesn't thrive in an academic environment? What if they can't or won't do the work? How do you deal with it and what techniques can you use to motivate them?
According to eminent psychologist, Dr David Yeager, when kids hit puberty they're primarily looking for experiences that give them social status and respect.
He says the common belief that teens and young adults are lazy and incompetent causes us to miss what really motivates them, and do some pretty dumb things that don't help.
In his book, 10-25: The Science of How to Motivate Young People, Yeager - who's ranked as one of the top 0.1% most-influential psychologists in the world - explains how the science of motivating young people can help us to harness their drive for social status and a growth mindset so they're motivated to achieve their best.
BOOK:
10-25: The Science of Motivating Young People
DAVID YEAGER: Author/Professor/Scientist
yeagerds@austin.utexas.edu
TED Talks: Sir Ken Robinson Do schools kill creativity?
https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en
Books referenced:
The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey
Thrivers by Michele Borba
Thank you so much for your support.
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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
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You can reach Susie at www.amindful-life.co.uk
WEBVTT
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Rachel, hello and welcome to this vintage episode of teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the tween and teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters whilst I'm on holiday, I thought you'd like to hear the most downloaded episodes with a few tweaks to update them, and also, so you know that you're not the only one thinking, How on earth am I supposed to do this today? We're talking about motivation now. The first time I researched how to motivate young people was back in January 2022 my youngest was 13, struggling with senior school and the expectations they had of her. I knew she was neuro spicy, but I've always thought that there must be some universally good ways of motivating our kids. I just wasn't completely sure of what they were. I learned so much from creating that episode, and it's become one of the most downloaded. It was two and a half years later, in October 2024 that Dr David Yeager, the eminent psychologist, published his book 10 to 25 the science of motivating young people, and he agreed to talk about it on this podcast. What he said genuinely filled in the gaps for me, helping me spot the things that we do that hinder motivation, either by having high expectations and giving no support, or having low expectations and giving too much support. His book has been described as life changing and a must read for anyone who works with young people, and my episode has been passed on by countless listeners. I just want to say I'm constantly humbled by the how many incredibly wise and powerful people will take their time to talk to me, and that's all because you listeners make it worth their while. So thank you. This episode begins with Susie asley, my magnificent mindfulness coach friend, reading out comments from parents about some of the issues we face, followed by discussion about the approach she and I take. The second part is a filet of the interview with Davey Jaeger, focusing on the key points that are relevant to this episode. If you want to hear either episode in full, the links are in the podcast notes.
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Now over to Susie. Yeah,
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it's a really fascinating topic. We have from Tracy. There is so much pressure to do well academically now in the core subjects that we risk churning out carbon copy children all with the same ologies. Yet in life, it's the creative abilities that are most revered act as artists and musicians. Another listener said that she's seen many parents over the years pay for tutoring to improve the child's grades and complaining to schools about their child not getting into a sports team when she thinks they just need to accept that their child isn't brilliant at those things,
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great points.
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And then with Owen, he says, We live in an interesting world when it comes to education. We admire entrepreneurs and groundbreakers, but free thinking is discouraged in our education system, or at least it seems to have no place. Do you embrace their ability to think outside the box, or do you coerce them to do something they can see no point in, and that's a very interesting start for our discussion. Don't you think, because whether our children see any point in something is going to make a difference? Susie, what is your experience with academic motivation?
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Yeah. I mean, I have three children who are very different, very different in academic ability and academic motivation and in their whole approach to school, to be honest. So my eldest is very science based. Finds the sciences and sort of that sort of side of things really easy.
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And then I my other two children, they have, well, my one of my children is, is really not in science. She finds that incredibly difficult, and she wouldn't mind me saying that here, it's just not her thing.
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And we've had many conversations in our family about, well, society in general, but particularly school, as we're talking about school really put so much weight on particular types of intelligence, academic intelligence, that's seen as the superior and within that, the superior branch of the academic is science and logical thinking is seen as the sort of pinnacle of intelligence, which
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is what Sir Ken Robinson talked about in that TED Talk. So all those years ago, that's had millions and millions of hits, and he's so right, yes,
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he's a fantastic TED Talk. It's amazing. Whereas we talk in our family a lot about that, there are, I think there's seven types of intelligence and how they are of equal value.
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They are of equal importance.
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There isn't one that's superior just because it can be measured.
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It's the measuring, isn't it, which is why the schools are going in that direction, because if it's easy to measure, then they can check the teachers are doing the job properly, and those things become considered to be more important, because you can measure them, you can measure them, you can
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measure them. You can also, you can measure them.
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And they're also, they lead to maybe more exotic or exciting workplaces. You know, it's just seen, seen as more important your your bet, you're a better person somehow, whereas empathy, you know, emotional intelligence, the creative intelligence, the physical intelligence, they're just seen as lesser than. Yeah. So we talk about that, probably my daughter will have way many job opportunities because their emotional intelligence is off the route, you know, off the charts, yeah. And that had does seem to have sunk in, and that does really help. You know, we're looking at whole children.
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We want, we want our children to be whole people. They're not just walking brains who are getting grades.
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The perspective I would look at it from is being in the workplace, being a manager, having staff, which is a revelation, because what I discovered was that if you try and take a member of staff and get them doing a job that they don't enjoy or they're not particularly good at you are not going to get good results. We all know that, and every workplace is going to require a range of skills, and somehow forcing people to do things they're not particularly motivated by never works. And yet, in the school environment, we are trying to get a base level across the charts of children doing well, and the children who have quite spiky profiles, so they're particularly good in one area, or they're not particularly good at anything, are punished for
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that. Yeah, we focus on so maybe a child is not so good in a subject, and not quite often, the focus is on, oh, well, then we'd better get that grade up. We'd better put all our efforts into the one that's not going well, whereas, actually it would be better to go, okay, that subject, if there is a subject, or that activity that you enjoy doing, which maybe has nothing to do with school, is what makes your heart sing. Let's put our energy there and run with that and see what happens with that.
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I can, I can hear parents palpitating because, because, because, of course, you panic, because you think, well, maybe I'll let my if I let my child put so much energy into something that isn't valued in the educational system, am I letting my child Yes,
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that is a huge problem, because a lot of it is based in fear. It's the fear of, okay, my child's I want my child to be a success in life. But what does that even mean? And we kind of tie it into education grades, adversity. That's the way they want to go, getting
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very high now, because of so many graduates, there's so many, so hard to get into,
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but there are so many kids that fall out of that those categories, and they're not going to be doing that, and then they end up feeling just that they're not good enough, which is a terrible starting place to start your adult life.
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The books
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that I was looking at were things like the self driven child the Gift of Failure thrivers. And they were all books looking at how you make your child make the most of themselves. And overall, the message was that grades limit children sample. Psychologist Hara estroff Marano was saying, the best thing to do is to be setting self determined educational goals, not the ones set by the school curriculum. So in other words, what I did with my daughter, who isn't highly academic and she has some learning difficulties, I said to her, rather than trying to be good at everything which you're not going to be able to achieve, and worrying about whether you're going to get this grade or that grade, why not? When you're in a class situation, think, what do I find interesting here? Well, you know, whatever the subject is, is there something in this that I can find interesting? And then focus on that, yeah, just make that your your thing, that you're going to explore, and Stop panicking about trying to do everything.
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Yeah, I love that.
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That's brilliant, because it comes back to the whole idea of, actually, children are hungry to learn. And we're talking about teenagers, so they're older, but they're hungry to learn. They want to learn. But quite often, we sort of force it, ram it down their throats very, very early.
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You know, they start school before they're ready, most of them, particularly the boys, and they're fed up of it. Whereas, if you leave them that's the whole sort of unschooling or the alternative school system, the kids will sit and do nothing, and then they'll be like, Oh yeah, but I need to know that, and I want to know that. And then they'll learn it in a flash, because they want to know when we shove it down their throats, they go, ah, too much.
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And then they switch off. So encouragingly, I love that you get your daughter to pick out bits that she wants to learn, and then that's interesting and and makes it meaningful for her.
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And
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that's what a lot of the researchers have found, is that stress levels are greatly increased in everybody when they feel that they don't have control over their lives.
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So when you come to children who feel that they're being forced to do all these activities and all this work, but they don't have any sense that they have control over their what's happening in their lives, their stress levels will be increased dramatically. There's a psychologist called Wendy grolnick, who come up in quite a few articles that I read, as well as her research. And she's an American, and she studied autonomy, and looked at both supportive and controlling parents. And she found that children who were controlled by their mothers gave up much faster than those who weren't when faced with frustrating situations. And so her attitude is, you know, don't provide the solution. For your teenager until they've had the chance to work things out for themselves.
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We actually have to be prepared to let them struggle, yes and even fail.
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Even fail, yes.
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Would they need to? You know, that can be the best learning board. Can't it? You know, you don't, you don't do well, oh, maybe that's okay. Maybe that's not the route we want to go down, but maybe that's the kick up the bum they need to reprioritize or or to work out.
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Well, what do I like doing? What what is interesting, and how can I get there?
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Yes, and I sat down with my daughter again, who was finding the whole concept of having to go through years of schooling, which is not it doesn't make her shine. She doesn't feel like a hero in her environment, and she's there every day. I said to her, Well, what do you want to do? And she talked about university, and I said, Well, the thing is, the path you're on at the moment is not University, which was a massive shock to her, and because I think we will, for some reason. Everybody's been told nowadays that university is the answer. And I said it doesn't mean to say you can't do that, but University is for people who really love studying and who find a subject they absolutely love. So you need to think, are you, are you going to enjoy studying? And if you are going to enjoy studying, you need to find the thing you're going to enjoy. And that's your choice. It's not, I don't mind.
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You know, there are other things. There are all sorts of training programs which, yeah, which are fantastic, yeah. So why not put them into the mix?
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Yeah? Consideration,
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yeah. We sort of prioritize the idea that, you know, University is the place to go if you've been at secondary school, if you're able to go there and all of that. But things have changed so much. We don't need that many academics.
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No, we really don't need them.
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Oh, that many debts. No, it is so unbelievably expensive now. I mean, my son's college had a talk last night, actually, about he's in the lower six, about options after, after college, which was really interesting.
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And it's just, you know, university is one option of many. It's, it's, um, there's apprenticeships which are really booming. There's, again, this sort of hierarchy within, within the system, which stresses the kids out. And we all know that stress is terrible for everything, long term stress size. It's
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interesting because the book the self driven child was saying that you can help your child come to an informed decision on their own, rather than acting like a boss.
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So you kind of need to think of it as being a consultant. They have the ability to make good decisions. And again, all of these psychologists say they have done lots of tests on children of different ages, and they find that, overwhelmingly, they will make really good decisions. What they don't know is the information. So actually sitting there with them and saying so, for example, again, coming back to my daughter, I said to her, you know, you don't have to go straight through to university. Take some time out.
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What? My friend went and worked in a filling station for two years. Then thought, actually, I think I need to do some A levels. I'm bored. And ended up at Oxford, yeah, because she had a dip, she just had a different attitude to life. And they, the tutors there were fascinated by her. So the truth is, we're not looking and actually, I've spoken to Oxford dons, all right, so this is the pinnacle that people think of. I've spoken to Oxford dons who are absolutely infuriated by this, how do I get an A? How do I get a first? So they come to the university with the same attitude of, how do I get this grade? And the one particular Don I was talking to said, I turn to my books on the wall and I say, read the greats, feel the passion, come up with interesting idea. This is what we want, but what we're actually teaching our children is, it's all about the grades, yeah,
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and also the pressure of talking to teenagers of, you know, what do they want to do? You know, who do they want to be? It's really weird.
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It's almost, you know, we see childhood and teenage years as sort of as some sort of stepping stone to real life. No childhood and teenage years is part of life. You know? Why don't you just leave to be in that world and stop worrying about what they're going to do and what they want to be? If we can teach our children to be happy with who they are and to be healthy and have good mental health and be comfortable and know what they like, know what makes them light up, they will find what they want to do. And
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that's a very interesting point, because another technique that I read about was helping your child find what it is that they're passionate about. What you need to do as a parent is look at your child and see what is it that they do, where they will keep going when it becomes difficult. So if you see them doing things and they just give up as soon as it's tricky, that's probably not their thing.
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But if they are somebody, for example, in a kitchen, and they'll keep going to keep.
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Trying to make the thing until it's perfect. Okay, that's something that gives them joy.
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So then you know that this is one of their key their core loves, their core skills. And you can encourage it by saying, Gosh, you know, I noticed that you really enjoy doing that, and reflect back to them and let the child get to the point where they say, actually, that's a thing for me, it's not because they're good at it. It's because they'll persevere when it's difficult.
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Yeah, and if they don't have a thing, that's also fine, you know, they'll find something. They will at some point, if they know who they are and if they feel good about themselves. The problem is when they don't feel good about themselves, and they have this feeling that, you know, co school, I think, is designed for the good girl who works hard and and gets good grades. I mean, I will. I was quite like that at school. I got good grades. I found school Okay, and I did well. So for me, it was kind of fun to get good grades, but they're not designed for everybody. So a lot of people come out of school with a feeling of they don't know what they want to do, because everyone's been asking them since the age of 11, what do you need to do? What do you want to do? You want to do? They have no idea. They just want to leave.
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And a feeling of, actually, you know, the comparisonitis thing, that they're not really good enough. So
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coming back to one of the comments, Tracy said, if you've got any tips on, how do I motivate my child to revise for their GCSEs, I'm all ears.
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And it is tricky. And I think coming back to the comments made in all these books. The pointer was, they need to feel that they're in control of this somehow. So when they come home, rather than saying, Have you done your homework? You say, so What time were you thinking of doing your homework? So we can schedule our evening time around it, or where were you thinking of doing your homework? Little hints like that, and then created so what I've done with my daughter, because she finds it very challenging, is I have said to her, right, all your electronic devices need to come in and sit on the kitchen table when you come home. And there was a little bit of pushback on that, but actually I said to her, this is not a punishment.
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This is, I'm trying to give you space so that you can do the things that you really should be doing, which is, you know, relaxing, doing other stuff.
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When you do your homework, you can do it here at the kitchen table, or you can do it in your room. If you do it in your room, you can take your computer with you for half an hour, because you're not going to work longer than that. No one does. And then you can come down for a break and then go back again if you need to. And she went away for half an hour. It was a struggle on her own. So came back, and then we sat together. And actually it's been transformative, because she feels like it her choice, and also because I had said to her, so what actually are you trying to achieve here? Do you want these grades? Does it even matter? Yeah. And because she wants them. She wants to get better. She wants to be in better classes. She wants to be with her friends. Who are, you know, smart? Yeah. She is now prepared to put in the that extra work, make the mistakes, try again, because it's her who's doing it.
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It's not me, so she's got that motivation from motivation, sorry, from inside, and I was doing that wrong before. Yeah. I mean, it's hard.
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I mean, then if you have a kid who's not really bothered, gets bad grades but and doesn't care, maybe that's fine. We don't have a structure with homework. I kind of leave, leave it for them to do themselves, and they do it very differently, like one will do it immediately they get home from school because they don't want it hanging over them, and the other will be doing it after bedtime. But the idea that you know, if they don't do it, then that's on them. Yes,
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and they do say you have to let your child fail.
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You have to let them fail, but you do need to. You are the person with the knowledge. So in letting them fail, you need to say, so here are the consequences. Should you fail?
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Yeah, and they learn them anyway. You know, they'll meet them anyway.
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What one of them was saying was that is not about not giving them boundaries. You actually do have to have something they can push back against so that they can test their real resolve. Is this something that really matters to me or not? And if it doesn't matter me to me, I'm making a choice. It's not a passive choice. It's an active choice that this really doesn't matter to me, and I don't care if I don't, then have this option.
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Yeah. So what we need to do is present them with after all of this. Here are your options, so if you don't pass these exams, so what you can do is this that you know these here are your options, and being really positive about it, not threatening them, just saying.
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So you get these options, and if you do, you get these options.
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And here's how you can manage this life that you're designing for yourself. You're in control.
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You make those choices and
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providing them with a with a safe space, because sometimes that can really stress them out as well. Can't it, the idea that they have all these choices and it's up to them, yikes. And actually, it's not going very well. And now there's this and this and this on top of it, one of my kids did quite didn't do very well in some tests. And I kind of said to you know that I you know that that doesn't matter. So she. Knows that. You know that she's absolutely loved and accepted just for who she is.
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Your soul is different. You know you're so right. And that's the other thing. Is never, ever connected to your love. For them, they need to know that your love is completely disconnected to anything they managed to do in school, all the mistakes they make, it's irrelevant.
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Totally irrelevant.
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Totally, totally and and they know that value them for exactly who they are and what they bring to the table just by being who they are.
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Yeah, that was Susie Asli, mindfulness guru and mother of three teenagers. That final point was enforced when I talked with another brilliant psychologist, Dr Greg wwalton.
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He explained that the most important thing is to start with what they call unconditional regard, so letting our kids know that we love them no matter what, when they're secure in that, we can ask them when they're secure in that, we can ask them what they want to achieve, and then say, I'm giving you feedback because I believe You can do better. Here is where you are, and then give them the scaffolding they need to get where they want to be, but let them do it. Here's David Jaeger explaining the problem with the way society tends to think about tweens and teenagers, and he calls it the neurobiological incompetence model.
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The incompetence model is my term for this general belief in our society that young people are short sighted, selfish and capable of thinking about their long term future in a wise way, and that because of that, if we care about young people, then we need to kind of make the decisions for them As much as possible, and withhold kind of autonomy and agency and authority. It's not an unreasonable thing for for people to think the model doesn't come from nowhere. It's got its its origins in ancient Greek philosophy, where the passions that are ignited by the onset of puberty, which they didn't call it then, but just aging and maturation, those passions then have to be learned, controlled and harnessed by the logical reasoning brain. And that ancient Greek idea carried over into modern neuroscience as neuroscientists started looking at how the prefrontal cortex, the regions of the brain, related to judgment, decision making and planning seem to be less activated than the emotional regions of the brain and certain tasks, and so that's given us the idea that we can't expect young people to make wise decisions, because their brains are hijacked by their emotions and their prefrontal cortices are not fully developed. Now it is, of course, the case that the case that the brain continues to develop, but if you start from this position, that their brains are so incompetent that they can't be trusted, then it makes us as adults, do a lot of weird stuff that ends up being pretty ineffective.
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Can you talk a bit more about the prime drivers of a young brain, sort of 10 to 25 which is what your book's about. What are they driven by
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in the book, I'm summarizing a consensus from a large group of scientists focus on adolescents, and I'm one advisor among many for something called the Center on the Developing adolescent. And the group has tried to reframe the period of adolescence in terms of normal developmental needs, rather than kind of pathologizing the teenage years as a time of impending doom and disaster that we need to where we'd be better off just locking them in a closet until their brains are ready to think, which, you know Shakespeare writes about that you Know, whether they're no age between 10 and 20, young people are really trying to meet a set of goals that they have that the prefrontal cortex is about goal directed behavior, and goals at their most fundamental level are positive ways we want to feel more or negative ways we want to feel less. And so the you can think of the prefrontal cortex is like learning in that in that age group, how to maximize the positive feelings and reduce the negative feelings. And it's not just hedonic feelings like the pleasure of drinking something sweet, right, or sex or whatever it is. It's also social feelings. So the feeling of pride never feels as good as it does in the midst of puberty, and the pain of in humiliation, of shame never feels as bad or of righteous indignation, is never like dominating our attention as much as it is in this age group. And the argument that the neuroscientists make, that I find compelling, is that one key task of adolescence is to figure out how to be a social self that brings something to the table in and that's and that that contribution is perceived by others who have influence in the social group. And the historical evolutionary argument is that as humans were, I don't know, roving the Savannah, if.
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You're a child, then a child can take for granted that their parents are going to take care of them. Four year old doesn't have to go kill a wooly mammoth for to be a good four year old.
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You're like, okay, we're taking care of you. No one questions that. But at some point as a teenager, you can't just sit there like a like a lump on a log, expecting everyone to bring you meat and protect you from the attacking tribe and just like cater to every desire you got, to show that the calories they're spending on you are calories well spent, is one way to think about it. And so the brain goes into alert mode of, oh, wow, I better show the rest of this group that I've got something of value in this social group. And so you can think of pride as the emotional byproduct of having demonstrated your social value in shame or humiliation as the emotional byproduct of having failed to do so in a very public way.
00:25:50.440 --> 00:26:09.119
What I thought was really interesting is when you talked about the adolescent predicament, which is this mismatch between the neurobiological needs for status and respect, and then the level of status, respect that they get from their current circumstances. You know, it's really, really stressful for them, that they've got nothing to show for it.
00:26:09.838 --> 00:27:29.479
Yeah, there's a study I I'm not sure if I cite it. I teach it when I teach a graduate course and an undergraduate course on these, on these ideas, and it's from the late 1990s and it's on what's called self determination needs so self self determination theory is a famous theory in psychology which says people want autonomy, competence and relatedness. And the idea is that You especially want that as you come to feel like a social self who gets to be in charge of my future. And that's one way to define adolescence, is like I, I want the rights afforded to an adult, basically, to be viewed as a competent, related, worthwhile person. And the study is very simple. It asks kids about certain rights that they think they should have. Instead, at what age do they think, yes, I should definitely have this right. And then they ask the adults, at what age should kids get that right? So an example is being able to write a critical letter about the principal's decision making and publishing it in the school newspaper. And so adults think maybe like 10th or 11th grade, so 1617, they should be able to do that. And kids are like seventh or eighth grade, right? So there's a multi year gap between the right and to be respected and have your voice respected that a kid desires and when it's afforded by the adults in their society.
00:27:29.959 --> 00:27:56.138
And that's one example among many in those studies to say that there's this adolescent predicament that if, if their bodies and brains are screaming, I want the right to self determine, and in our culture is not affording that, then it could cause a lot of the most frustrating kids these days behaviors, not because they're idiots, but because we haven't crafted environments that take advantage of their neurobiological drive for status and respect.
00:27:56.200 --> 00:28:06.720
I saw that there was some research about being nagged by a parent and that, and I'd love you to talk about what like, what happens in the brain when we nag, because that's another thing that people are really interested in.
00:28:07.259 --> 00:28:23.240
So there's this great study that I love to talk about by Jennifer silk, who was a neuroscientist at Pittsburgh at the time, and she as a part of a larger study of moms and their daughters, brought daughters in and had them listen to audio recordings of their moms completing the sentence.
00:28:23.359 --> 00:28:58.960
What bothers me about you is so the daughters are in the FMRI magnet that's whirring around their brains detecting blood flow in order to detect neural activity in one region or another. But on their earphones, the listening to their moms say things like, what bothers me about you is that I tell you to stop fighting with your sisters, and you never stop. I tell you to bring your shoes downstairs, and you don't do it. I walk past your room and say, it needs a little sweeping and dusting. It needs to be cleaned, and then you never clean it. You just need to calm that down. Stuff like that. It is like, I get it.
00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:13.140
I mean, I have four kids, and so I understand what it's like to feel like no one listens to you, and at the same time, what is the daughter thinking when she's hearing that? Is she thinking, you know, Mom, you have a point.
00:29:09.960 --> 00:29:23.839
I'm really glad you raised these issues, but I thought I was doing good, but now that you've given me this checklist, I've got some work to do. And so good chat, and I look forward to completing all of your requests.
00:29:24.140 --> 00:30:02.279
So like, no, that's not what happens. Instead, what you see is an increase in anger regions of the brain, or regions that are related to affect, and also a decrease in regions related to planning ahead, so the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and also a decrease in social cognition regions, which are the regions related to mind reading, so inferring what the mom is saying. So take the example of the mom saying, I walk past your room, I'll say it needs a little sweeping and dusting. Right now we hear that we're like, oh, the mom has clearly asked the kid to clean the room. Yes, but that's not literally what the mom said.
00:30:02.519 --> 00:31:10.200
The mom said it needs sweeping and dusting. And so a kid who's not engaging in social cognition because that part of their brain is shut off, could say, Yeah, you're right. It needs sweeping and dusting. I wonder who's going to do it right? Because that's the literal response, yeah. That's not the implied response. And so it's as though nagging is causing this nagging, induced frontal lobotomy where there's a temporary loss of ability to plan ahead and to listen to what someone else wants you to be doing. And it's not really the fault of the kid, it's their brain reacting to this, the threat to status and respect that's coming from both the tone and the words, and that causes a frustrating situation, because the mom's like, I told you very clearly to clean your room, and the kids like, Who's this lunatic yelling at me for something they didn't tell me to do? And there's like, they say one thing, there's a misinterpretation, and then they fight over that misinterpretation. And what I've argued in the book is like, what if we just didn't have to have that problem anymore? Let's just solve that and move on with our lives and be happier and feel more confident. Instead,
00:31:10.500 --> 00:31:44.079
one thing that really struck me, which I wanted to share, I don't have sons, but I noticed that in what I think is the Vegemite study, where actually the people who had low testosterone before they did this test on them and then were given testosterone, the ones with the highest testosterone, correct me if I'm wrong, actually were more likely to follow the rules and be compliant and do the right thing. Because we always think, oh, testosterone, you know, is that they're going to become much, you know, less likely to do what we say. But actually, it looks from that study like they're actually just more driven by that social recognition? Is that right?
00:31:44.078 --> 00:32:09.659
Yeah. So we did a study to experimentally test what happens if you switch from the nagging version to a more respectful version, a version that honors status and respect needs. And the way we did that is we we had participants in a study be asked to take a medicine that we knew they wouldn't like, and we told them it was medicine. In fact, it was a spoonful of Vegemite, which is an Australian food supplement.
00:32:09.659 --> 00:34:08.219
And that to Australians, it tastes good, but to non Australians, it's pretty gross, and it's like basically the after you brewed a barrel of beer and just took all the yeast at the bottom and then turn that into a spread for toast, so people don't like it, but we had cover story in which they were told this could be good for their health and also good for science. And in one condition, we spoke very disrespectfully, so we threatened their self determination needs by saying, You should listen to me. I'm the expert. Things like, if there's an unpleasant taste. Just try to ignore that. Thank you in advance for your cooperation, basically not granting any agency or autonomy, and in the respectful condition, we said things like, you might consider taking this medicine. Implied, hey, you're smart, so we're going to explain the real reason why you need to take this or why we're asking you to we would say, think of the unpleasant taste as you doing your part to help science and thank you for considering this request so very respectful granting agency embedded compliments to try to say we think a lot of your thinking abilities. What we found is that in some analyzes, participants are almost twice as likely to take the Vegemite but that was especially true if they were high testosterone at baseline, or if at at baseline they were low testosterone. But we gave them a nasal inhaler to make them high testosterone so we could, like, temporarily induce the hormones of being a teenager, and then that caused them to really distinguish between the way the request was framed, if it came with respectful language or not. And you're right that that challenges our theories of testosterone, instead of thinking of it as it's making our brains like just chase sex or fight everybody, or, you know, just be impulsive. It's instead causing us to be hypersensitive to the social status rewards and punishments in a situation, and therefore reading between the lines if someone with a high testosterone is being asked disrespectfully.
00:34:08.759 --> 00:34:42.759
And that matters, because for most of the teenage years, on any given day we're talking to them, that's the day on which they have the most testosterone they've ever had in their entire lives, and then the next day when you talk to them and see them again, now that will be the day in which they have the most testosterone they've ever had in their entire lives. And that's affecting we think, how they process information, how they deal with a request, and therefore, whether or not they do what we ask. And if we ignore that, then that's this, like powerful biological source of motivation that we're fighting against rather than
00:34:42.760 --> 00:35:03.599
harnessing amazing I mean, to me, this is just so interesting. There are a couple of things I really want to delve into. One of them is the growth mindset. And one of them is these mindsets to do with the way that we parent, because from what I understand, they're interlinked. Let's start with the parenting. Because I'm sure a lot of parents saying, well. Get onto the parenting.
00:34:59.739 --> 00:35:12.960
Get onto that. So when we look at the three mindset frameworks that you talk about in your book, you talk about enforcer, protector and mentor mindsets.
00:35:13.139 --> 00:35:25.460
Can you give me a kind of explanation of what these different ways of looking at being a parent are, or even a boss at work? Because this is really good for people who are having to mentor people in a workplace. What are we talking about?
00:35:25.519 --> 00:35:58.000
What we realize is, if you start with this neurobiological incompetence model, that teenagers brains are deficient, short sighted, et cetera, then there's a next question, which is, they're incompetent, but do I want to be nice or tough? And if you think you need to be tough, then you end up in something I call the Enforcer mindset, where I'm enforcing the rules at very high standards. I'm not going to support you to meet them, because it's up to you, but for your own good or indoor for the good of society, I need to uphold these tough standards.
00:35:54.639 --> 00:36:49.780
And if it makes you feel bad about yourself, if you cry yourself to sleep at night, if you question your competence or whatever, that's just the side effect of what a necessary evil, which is me upholding the standards. And you can see how, again, people could put their heads on their pillows at night and feel good about themselves, because at least they are the last bastion of sanity between this weak generation of Gen Z who's trying to take society to hell in a hand basket. And if you instead answer the question of they're incompetent, but I want to be nice and friendly, and the most important thing to me is that when I put my head on my pillow at night, that young people knew I cared for them and I was on their side, then you end up in what I call the protector mindset, and that's very low standards with very high support. And that's the idea that maybe young people have been through so much.
00:36:47.380 --> 00:36:49.780
They've got toxic stress.
00:36:49.780 --> 00:37:11.699
They've been through one crisis after another. I can't possibly expect too much of them. And so what I'm going to do is try to build up their confidence with really low standard stuff, that bit by bit, they feel a little bit more success until they're competent. And that makes sense.
00:37:06.360 --> 00:37:29.000
Again, you understand why people think that. But young people kind of know what you're doing, and they end up being offended by the low standards, or terrified, because it makes them think that adults think so poorly of them that they're not going to then be prepared for the real
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:31.340
world. And they start to believe that as well.
00:37:31.400 --> 00:37:31.519
They
00:37:31.519 --> 00:37:50.199
start to believe that, and then they start to depend even more on adults doing things for them. And we create the very problem of the supposedly weak Gen Z generation, in part because of our low estimation of their abilities. The I see this a lot in low income urban schools.
00:37:50.679 --> 00:38:16.380
Kids call it the po braceito mentality, like the poor little ones, where the teacher takes pity on the children in poverty by having the easiest possible class right giving you the review for the exam the day before that, you see this, memorize the bullet points, and then you can ace the exam. But everyone knows the kids are going to forget the information the second the exam is over. So you're not actually prepared for your future as a student at all.
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:50.739
You are just jumping through some low standards hoops to get a fake a and students will be like, yeah, sure, I like that, because it's not in any work, but it terrifies them about their future. And the third way, though, kind of takes the best of both of those, and it's, well, that's what I call the mentor mindset, and that's the idea of, I'm going to have very high standards, and this is going to be hard. It might even cause some discomfort. There might be some crying involved, because it's tough, but I'm going to be very supportive. So that way, if I'm a parent, my kid can meet that high standard.
00:38:46.960 --> 00:39:19.559
If I'm a boss, my direct reports can meet that standard. If I'm a teacher, they can learn that content, right? And so it's another term for this. Is inclusive excellence. You set a standard for excellence, but you create an environment in which you include everyone in meeting that standard. And that's different from exclusive Excellence, which is what you get in the Enforcer. It's like, Yeah, super high standard, but only two or three people are going to meet it, or inclusive non Excellence, which is like, we're nice and friendly, but no one's going to be pushed to do something
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:29.960
too well. You go through lots of really good details about how you can do this specific, you know, lots of examples. So if you're sitting there going, how exactly does this work? It's in the book. But
00:39:29.960 --> 00:39:40.960
yeah, we were obsessed with practical strategies, and we there's 75 pages or so at the end of the book. That's just scripts where, if you're a parent, you want to apply the different techniques.
00:39:38.179 --> 00:40:01.559
We've already dry run it. We've tested it out, and we've got techniques for people to apply right away, because they view it not as a sign that they lack a fixed trait, but instead as a route for developing some characteristic, like their ability in that domain. And so we've done lots of experiments where we shift people from fixed to growth mindset, and we found.
00:39:57.820 --> 00:40:43.420
You can do it kind of quickly, sometimes in 25 minutes. And the way we can do that is we first say a little bit about the brain and how it works. We're like, All right, well, the brain is not static. The brain is learning from its environment, and that's its task. And so if you're challenged and you learn, then that is changing your brain. You're forming new and better connections that's helping you get smarter. So if you struggle, it doesn't mean you're dumb. It actually means you're becoming smarter. Is the first point. And then they read stories from upperclassmen who have heard this idea in the past. So a ninth grader would learn from a 10th or 11th grader who's like, I used to feel dumb if I struggled, and I thought people were looking down on me.
00:40:43.420 --> 00:40:49.239
And then I realized that actually, you can't put me in a box. I'm not either smart or dumb. I'm actually improving.
00:40:49.239 --> 00:41:30.679
And so they hear that it's a useful idea, and then last they do something we call self persuasion, where participants in our study try to write a letter to a future student who might be struggling explaining how these growth mindset ideas could help motivate them. And what we find that's called, we call it a saying, is believing effect. And this is the idea that the to the extent that I try to make an argument to convince you of something, I'm actually convincing myself of that idea. Yeah. And so these are things any parent can do, but notice what I didn't say is that you should fire hose kids with what they're supposed to believe and tell Don't you know you should have a growth mindset and don't you know your brain.
00:41:31.159 --> 00:41:58.420
So we very much are respectful in how we communicate. So it's like the respectful condition in the Vegemite study where we say this is hidden information you might not already know other people like you already believe it. How could you apply it? Do we ask them to generate the information? And that's why we can change our attitudes in such a short amount of time. Is because we're drawing on the psychology of status and respect and embedding that into how we frame our mindset interventions.
00:41:58.780 --> 00:43:04.139
Tony BRYK is a famous sociologist, and he studies respect in organizational settings, like bosses with employees, and that when you ask employees to define respect, one of the number one things they say is that they feel listened to and listened to in the sense that what they say could change the mind of the other person, and if we signal right away, we're closed minded, then they don't feel listened to. And that's like the definition of disrespect for a lot of human people. And the last thing I'll say about this is that, like, if you have the incompetence model, you would never ask questions and get curious, because you know why they're making the wrong choice, it's because they aren't thinking, and so you're not curious if you think that their brains are fundamentally flawed, but if instead you think, Oh, wait, they had a status and respect reason for their behavior, and therefore my task is to come up with the most charitable interpretation for why the bad behavior made sense from their perspective, then you're troubleshooting. That's why I think it was important for us to start with you and Co.
00:43:01.719 --> 00:43:52.659
Start with the incompetence model. Here is that if you're stuck with the old incompetence model, you would never do the questioning. It would make no sense to you, yes, with whether it's our kids or someone else's kids, if we're a coach for a boss, if we're, you know, a teacher, professor, whatever it is, you never know when you're going to say something that they're gonna remember for years and years and as much as possible. Let's try to not have that be the Enforcer stuff of yelling, telling, blaming, shaming, and let's also have it not be the protector stuff of you can't do this. Let me remove all the barriers in your life instead. Let's make it be things like, Yeah, this is super hard, and I think you're up for it, and when you do it, you're going to feel great, and you're going to remember that. And I want you to feel that confidence going forward, and more often than not, that that final mentor mindset version will help them.
00:43:52.900 --> 00:43:59.619
It comes across as a respectful thing to say, and so their ears are open to it, and I think it can help them cope going forward.
00:43:59.619 --> 00:44:11.519
David, that's what a beautiful message. It's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about in my blog. I've talked about how to set high expectations without piling on the pressure. I could talk to you all day. It's fascinating.
00:44:11.519 --> 00:44:19.559
Thank you so much. What an interesting book, and I will be reading it for years to come, I'm sure, because there are so many messages in there. Thank you so much.
00:44:19.559 --> 00:44:21.480
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great. That was
00:44:21.480 --> 00:44:55.119
David Jacob, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and author of 10 to 25 the science of motivating young people. One of the standout bits in that interview for me was that if we believe our kids are incompetent because of that neurobiological incompetence model that's so prevalent, then we won't be curious. We won't ask the questions that show our kids we respect them and believe in them, and that will shut down their natural motivation. I really believe this is key to building our connection with them, motivating them, getting them to accept our boundaries.
00:44:55.239 --> 00:45:13.739
It's all links. But what do you think I'd love to hear? You can email me. Using teenagersuntangled@gmail.com Find me on most social media, or visit my website, which is www.teenagersuntangled.com That's it. Have a great week and a big hug from me, Toodaloo. You
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