Sept. 30, 2025
Stop pushing your kids: The link to success, resilience, and reduced stress with Ned Johnson
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What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover? Is your kid stressed or lacking motivation? What if the antidote was pushing them less and giving them more of a sense of control over their lives? It doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. As elite teen coach, Ned Johnson, explains the science tells us we can help our child sculpt a brain that is resilient, and ready to take on new challenges if we stop taking over. In his practice he uses sci...
What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover?
Is your kid stressed or lacking motivation? What if the antidote was pushing them less and giving them more of a sense of control over their lives?
It doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. As elite teen coach, Ned Johnson, explains the science tells us we can help our child sculpt a brain that is resilient, and ready to take on new challenges if we stop taking over.
In his practice he uses science, behavioural therapy and extensive case studies to offer help kids who're struggling with stress, anxiety, or lack of motivation.
His mantra is that as parents, we need to get out of our kids' way. We can only drive our kids so far. At some point, they will have to take control over their own path and our job is to help them develop the skills to do that.
Introducing technology to teenagers: My Substack Big Hug Guide
Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4920136/
Failure to Launch: Ken Rabow
https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/failure-to-launch-what-we-can-learn-from-struggling-young-adults-about-how-to-help-our-teens/
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by Dr. John Ratey.
The Tech Exit book: https://www.sheldonpress.co.uk/titles/clare-morell/the-tech-exit/9781399828208/
Never Enough book: https://www.jenniferbwallace.com/about-never-enough
10-25: The Science of Motivating Young People: https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/motivation-how-to-motivate-your-teenager-and-why-blame-and-shame-doesnt-work/
Intrinsic Motivation and Positive Development: Reed Larson https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23259190/
Default Mode Network: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26168472/
Ned on TikTok:
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
And my website has a blog, searchable episodes, and ways to contact me:
www.teenagersuntangled.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teenagersuntangled/
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/teenagersuntangled/
You can reach Susie at www.amindful-life.co.uk
03:23 - Understanding Stress and Motivation: Explanation of stress triggers Discussion of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation Impact of control on adolescent experiences
05:25 - Challenges of Modern Parenting: Problems with school portals and helicopter parenting Strategies for supporting children's learning Addressing homework and academic challenges
08:35 - Emotional Support and Validation: Techniques for emotionally supporting children Understanding the brain's response to stress Importance of listening and validating feelings
11:49 - Stress, Control, and Brain Development: Detailed discussion of learned helplessness Neurological impacts of control and stress Experimental insights into coping mechanisms
17:02 - Parenting Strategies for Different Backgrounds: Supporting children from various backgrounds Creating a safe home environment Helping children develop resilience
22:48 - Technology and Screen Time: Challenges of modern technology Strategies for managing screen time Importance of peer relationships and social connections
42:28 - Motivation and Academic Success: Alternative paths to success Importance of passionate pursuits Supporting children's individual learning journeys
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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.
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Untangled the audio hug for parents going through their tween and teen years where we learn to stop comparing ourselves and our kids, practice curiosity instead of judgment and become confident in our own ability to parent our kids. I'm Rachel Richards, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now if you've been following the podcast for a while, you'll know that my two teenagers are very different, both as individuals and in their learning styles and as a parent, particularly when it comes to supporting my neurodivergent daughter, it's been very challenging working out how best to be there for them, but also in a way that's supportive without overreaching. The most important thing I've learned is that I need to demonstrate absolute faith in them, and that the more they feel in control, the more they engage with learning and the world in general. Now it's not easy to master. I have so many interviewees to thank for helping us to understand how to strike that balance. But today I want to introduce you to the team coach, Ned Johnson, who co wrote the self driven child.
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It's a book that most closely sums up everything we talk about on this podcast. Hello Ned, and thank you so much for joining us.
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Oh, I'm bouncing in my chair. What a what a lovely thing to know that some of what we try to share in our book so aligns and resonates with the work that you're doing. So it's genuinely, genuinely, yeah, genuinely brilliant. You run an elite tutoring service. So we're getting some very expensive advice here for free. This is what my podcast is about. I've got, I've got these kids. Like, let me how do I get free advice?
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Let's start by, why did you get together with Dr sticksword And what preempted this book. Yeah, so. So my writing partner, Dr William R stikrud, is a clinical neuropsychologist. He's about 20 years older than I am. He'd been lecturing for, really, for decades about the negative effects of stress on developing brains, and probably about 15 years ago, we were invited to lecture at a local school about motivation and how do we foster healthy more intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, motivation in young people? And we started palling around and doing a bunch of talks, and just kind of felt that we liked the way that one another thought. And at some point, Bill said it feels like it might be worth maybe writing some of this stuff down to put put in a book. And he asked me, said, Does it seem to you that there's kind of an organizing principle around this. And I thought for a moment, I said, well, it feels to me that every all the advice that I'm trying to give, the we're trying to give to young people, is to foster in them a healthy sense of control. And when we started looking into this, it, I mean, it's it's everywhere, and we thought about this really, to tackle what to us look like two kind of epidemics in young people, one the runaway rates of stress related disorders of anxiety and depression and all that stuff we know about, and part of it is rooted in a researcher named Sonia lufian, who's studies stress in Montreal, Canada, and points out that the most stressful thing that A human nervous system can experiences a low sense of control. She said, You can summarize what's stressful with the acronym nuts on novelty. Who is unpredictability, T is threat, and so for adolescents especially, Am I cool enough, smart enough, pretty enough, whatever, enough. But then a low sense of control is the worst.
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So you can handle hard situations, even even life threatening situations, so long as you feel that there's something that you can do here.
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The second thing was really about motivation, because we see so many kids who are either obsessively, extrinsically motivated, and they'll sacrifice their values, their sleep, their friends, their relationships, everything to achieve it at a super high and frankly unsustainable level, or kids who are thinking, well, if I can't be top 10% of my classes, like, why even bother? And they're completely not engaged with it, too often, with their with their learning, and sometimes with their own lives. And so when we started researching this, it's it's everywhere. I mean, the need for autonomy in in two year olds, if all the way up through adulthood. This is Ellen Langer's work. If you have a parent or grandparent who is, you know, you know, in an assisted living facility, and you give them choices, saying, hey, they're the young these young people from the school who want to come by, do you want them to come the Tuesday or Thursday, as opposed to, they're coming on Thursday, choices about when they have dinner? Do you want to water the plants? Do you want me to water the plants when we give elderly people choices they live longer. I mean, it's a really big deal. So for us, we really feel that the most important thing that we can do as parents, apart from loving kids, you know, unconditionally, is to foster in them, this sense that they can, that this is, these are their lives that they can handle hard stuff. They're going to get out of life. What they put into nine you're gonna get out of it. But to your point, we trust you. We trust you, because this is your life, and you want it to be you know, you want it to be wonderful, because it is your life, and I'll support you as your mom, your dad, but I can't act like this is my life to run because, yeah.
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Slip. Yes, that's so interesting. And Dr Josh eyler, when he I was talking to him about the problem with grades, is he was explaining that what he thinks, he thinks, one of the worst things, is these portals, which give you an instant ability to see exactly what your child's doing. Because he said, it's just turned parents into these monstrous helicopter parents who are desperately constantly on the children's back without trusting them.
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I literally did a tick tock or Instagram, I guess, the other day on just that. And because parents will often ask me, Well, how often should I check my kids portal? And for me, really, it's the wrong question. You simply ask your kid, would you like me to check your portal? Would you want?
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Yes, backs up. I know you get involved with things. You get a little carried away. Sometimes you miss things, because you know you're human. Is it helpful? And when would you like me to do that? And if I notice something that's missing? And so you step into what we talk about as kind of being a parent consultant, as opposed to looking for, oh, I told you, I can't trust you with everything.
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Well, then, I mean one it, it deprives kids of the opportunity to feel like, you know, this is their lives, and when they make mistakes, to solve them. It also creates this wonderfully adversarial position where, where kids are trying to hide struggles from us, when, you know, if we're on the about homework, when then things really go sideways. Are they really going to come to mom or dad about this when we've been writing their tale about, like, a missing worksheet? Probably not, probably
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not. Yeah, and I like what you're saying about actually just asking them. I mean, what I learned with my daughter was, well, it was actually she was avoiding doing homework when she first got to school, her secondary school, which is quite a common thing, and what I did was I said to her, you know, you don't seem to be doing any homework, what's going on? And she said, Oh, I haven't got any. And at that point, I said, Well, that doesn't really make sense. So can we talk about what's actually going on? And I gave her a chance to talk to me about what she was experiencing in school. And it was, it was all sorts of other things. So actually, just getting on her back about the homework wouldn't have helped her unpick the other reasons why she was feeling the way she was.
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Well, I think that.
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I think that's really well said.
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And importantly, for folks who don't know this, the major manifestation of anxiety is avoidance, right? So if you feel overwhelmed by homework, or you you're not going to do it well enough for you know, you know you're gonna you're gonna make a mistake, you're gonna look stupid. Did it up. Then you just put it off. You put it off and put it off. And then oftentimes, kids having put stuff off, then they feel like, well, I've put it off so long, it needs to be really perfect. And then you're kind of stuck in this vice. On the flip side, there are kids who just don't give a rat's patoo about the homework. You know, they just don't, particularly, if they're ADHD, a friend of mine who's a really great parenting coach, Sarah Rosen suite, Hi Sarah, if you're listening. She said, We want to remind ourselves that ADHD is an interest driven motivational system, rather than importance driven motivational system. You can look at six times to someday how important this is, but it doesn't ever make them want to do it, right? And so if you've got, I mean, my kid, my 23 year old is ADHD, my 21 year old, brilliant, autistic, so a lot of the anxiety that goes along with that, and they would have very different reasons to not do homework. And I remember my daughter, this was covid, so, you know, full on everything, right? And she's like, This is so stupid. And the tendency for parents often, well, no, it isn't it, you know, when you try to tell
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them, right?
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Yeah, so depend it, you defend it. And half the time we think it's stupid, but we're like, well, we've got to make them do it, right?
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And so I look like, well, well, that. And to be fair, I never make them do it.
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I'm always trying to help. This is me. I'm always trying to help them want to find the reasons for themselves. And this is my Latin because most kids don't want to go to school unprepared.
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They don't want the teachers looking at them. They don't want to feel like they're slackers, like they're not capable data and so this is hilarious. So my my wife teaches Latin at a local school here. My daughter is this brilliant kid. I mean, brilliant, but, you know, she's complicated, like a lot of humans are, and she has this assignment in Latin, and she can do anything that she puts her mind to it, but sometimes she doesn't. And so she's like, This is so stupid. And my wife, and my wife takes the bait, and she says, Well, of course you can do this. And I'm sure that I can help because she teaches Latin.
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And this, of course, just just adds fuel to the fire. So my my wife, was stuck because she either says, Well, of course you can do it, which feels invalidating, or she can say, Oh yeah, you're stupid. You're never gonna get to I mean, she obviously she can't say that, right? So what are you gonna do?
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And so I come in and, you know, true to form, just, just play dumb and like, well, what can you tell me what this is?
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Because I don't know anything like, what? And she said, I said, Well, that does sound stupid. What's the most stupid part about it? And I just validated it six ways to Sunday.
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She wants to get this stuff done. And then I simply ask, you know, is there a way that I can help? Well, no, this is stupid.
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I've got an idea. What if we do?
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The whole thing is a cartoon, and she's like, what? So we just, we just, we just screw around for a while, if emotionally, because emotionally I took her side on it, logic never calms anyone's hard feelings. That's not how the brain is wired. So emotionally, when I take her side, this does sound stupid. I understand why you're so frustrated. I wouldn't want to do this either. But of course, she's ambivalent, because she does want to get it done. She just doesn't actually want to do it. But when I can emotionally take her side, it calms down those hard feelings, and she all those executive functions, including mental and emotional flexibility, come back online, and she starts to figure out how she can get this done herself. And because she's not spun up. I swear the kid does the homework in like seven minutes, because that's the brain that she has where it just wasn't going to work any any other way. And so it is hard if you got a kid who's ADHD, if it's a car hard if you've got a kid who's anxious, and it feels like today everyone's you know, got a kid who is like that, but yeah, emotionally, take this side and offer help. Don't, don't, don't. Yeah, I
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know what. I love that. And it's funny, because I remember when I was talking to David Jaeger, who wrote post 25 and he was talking about how they, yes, it's a great book. And he talked talked about how when kids are nagged, when they've been put them in an FMRI machine, that they simply the front the prefrontal cortex, the thinking bit just switches off. It goes completely dark, and the back, the emotional side lights up like a Christmas tree.
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Yes, and that we have to sort of that, that sort of relating to them and calming that system down by just going, Yeah. That sounds Yeah. That does sound stupid. That does sound hard, somehow they feel heard. And I've had this so many times where once my kids feel like someone's got them they understand how annoyed they are and why it's so stupid, then they can go, oh, okay, well, maybe I can. It's an interesting process, isn't it?
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It is really interesting. And David's got that exactly right. I mean, our book is really like his. Is simply about, how can we be more effective with our kids, with our teens, especially, and it's challenging, because particularly when you get into upper and into high school, we worry enormously, if a kid is not doing well, we think, oh my gosh, you know, is C student?
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This kid's going to have a C life, and that breaks our heart.
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And because that's so stressful to us, we then start to try to exert more control, which is then more stressful to our kids.
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And then we're, then we're off to the races because they're we're trying to have a rational conversation while we've really shuttered the rational part of the brain, as he pointed out, the prefrontal cortex, and we're not going to get anywhere. And so he talks about, you know, the mentors dilemma. We use the language of parents shifting from thinking about themselves as the homework police or the boss or the manager that I've got to make my kid do things to the idea of being a parent consultant. Are you really the three ideas? You offer help and you offer advice, you know, I got an idea about that. Would you like to hear it? No, not really. Okay. If you change your mind, let me know, because it's respectful, and it makes much more likely that either my daughter figures it out on her own, or she comes around later, says, what so what was your take on this? And then you're much more likely to get buying because you get you don't get that defensiveness. Two, we let kids make their own decisions as much as we can, unless we think it's crazy, because most decisions really aren't 7030, they're 4852 and we want kids to own their own decisions, even if they're suboptimal, because they will work harder to make a success out of a mess when it's their call than it is when it's our call. And that's really we want kids to have every opportunity to solve their own problems, because what often happens being more capable, more competent adults that we are.
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Our children make mistakes, we get nervous, we are there, or their tears, and we swoop in and we solve the problems for kids, however, we've now given kids this experience often repeated, that they're the problem creators and we're the problem solvers, and that's not good for developing brains. The research that we some of the research that we lean on most, is a guy named Michael Meaney who did all this, if you know his work, did all this work on what was called learned helplessness. And he has this paradigm paper that I encourage people to go and read, even if you just read the front page of the abstract of it, and the paradigm paper is called learned helplessness at 50 meaning, after 50 years of research, what do we get right?
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What do we get wrong? Yes, and he said, what we got wrong was this. These animals didn't learn to be helpless and passively sit in a cage and be shocked over and over and over. Rather, they learned to ever learn a sense of control. So here's the experiment. You can think about how this applies to parenting.
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So you have two rats in a cage.
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Their tails are out the back, electrodes attached to them.
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It's not life threatening, but it sure isn't fun. A light goes off lets them know they're going to get shocked. And here it goes. And you watch the explosion of stress hormones in the brains, and they start. Up thinking clearly. At A, they both have a wheel in the cage.
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Rat ace spins a wheel, and he learns when he spins the wheel, it stops the shock. At B has a wheel that he spins, nothing happens. Rat a, when he spins the wheel, there's this massive activation in the left lobe of the prefrontal cortex that you just mentioned, that David mentioned, and it dampens down the stress response that amygdala, at a neurological level, this is what coping looks like. Oh, my goodness, this is terrible. And you were what can I do here? Spin the wheel. It dampens down the stress response. The more he has this repeated experience, it deepens the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, importantly, the strength of those connections is the single strongest neurological marker for mental health. This is what coping looks like. You get upset, I get upset. You get angry. But then ideally, your brain goes into what can I do here? What are my solutions? What are my options?
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Or Okay, now it's not the big a deal. You've been here before.
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You'll be able to handle this. I know you're really mad, Rachel, but it'll be okay. She isn't usually like this. She must be.
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And you and you just put things into context and you reframe them. Rat a then they could put him in other situations with bright lights, loud music, big, scary rats. He doesn't freak out. I'm sorry. It's not Michael Meaney. It's Steve Mayer. I got those mixed up. Said that it appears that one experience in adolescence, at least for rodents, and they've repeated a lot of this with with humans, one experience of having a sense of control when you experience an adverse experience seems to inoculate the brain against the effects of stress through the rest of life. It's really big deal. Rat B, by the way, it's a big deal. We asked him. I said, All due respect. Dr Mayer, should we be thinking about, given the impact of this? Should we be thinking about administering mild electric shocks to teenagers? There's a long pause, and he says, it's an interesting question.
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Now the reality, I'm sure there are a lot of parents who'd like to do that
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quickly, right? And the deal is, of course, we don't have to. We don't have to shock our kids. Life has enough ways of sending, you know, a rocket your kids head and drop them the dust, and it's socially, emotionally, friends, school, soccer, everywhere you go.
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Here's the thing, though, the coolest experiment that they did was they yoked the two rats, meaning when rat ace, rat B, by the way, ended up being a basket case, he was, he was kind of toast. They yoked the two rats, so when rat a spun the wheel, he stopped the shock for him and rat B. Now I'm sure brother F is like, thank you so much. I mean, she was grateful as all get out.
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But though they had the same amount of shock, same intensity, same duration, rat a had a sense of control. Rat a saved himself and his buddy. Rat B got saved over and over. He ended up being the damsel in distress, where someone else was the superhero, and so we want to take that seriously as parents, as coaches, as teachers, when we solve problems for kids that they can credibly solve well enough themselves, we're depriving them of the opportunity to shift from being victim to hero.
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Wow, that's just mind blowing. I had heard frequently that I think, I think the first time I heard about learnt dependence was when my daughter was young, and, you know, she was, she's neurodivergent, and I had been trying to kind of, probably over parent her. And yes, since then, I've actually completely volt fast and changed the way that I do it. But it's fascinating hearing how important that that process is and how protective it is, and it's really interesting because, of course, we don't have to do that in our homes.
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That's happening outside. We can help them. Oh, such a good point.
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Yeah, second chapter is called, I love you too much to fight with you about your homework, because so much of the stress and strain is around homework. And somewhat amusing story when, when the book first came out, Bill had a client who picked it up and read the book and read the chapter, turned to her seventh grade son and said, Sweetheart, I love you too much to fight you about your homework. And at first he smiled, and then he hugged me, and then he sat back, stepped back and said, is something wrong with you, mom, so it can be a little bit of adjustment.
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Say funny, but we have a chapter where we talk about, I guess it's chapter four, the idea of being a non anxious presence, because it is hard to watch your kids struggle. It is hard to watch them make messes. It's hard to watch and you don't know that they're going to fix it.
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You don't know how they're going to fix it. And a low sense of control is stressful for us as well, but we want to move in the direction of doing that in part because, if it's so doggone, important for young people to have a greater sense of control, a greater sense of autonomy in their own lives. And it's stress. For us to not be in charge of their to run their lives around that rather than letting them live them, then we really need to work hard on helping ourselves take the long view and be less anxious in order not to deprive our kids of the autonomy that they need. So we talk about the idea of making home feel like a safe base. So when you score an own goal in football, right? You know, oh my gosh, that they could. You screw up something with your friends, right? You do terribly On your marks, whatever, and you come home that the parents don't unintentionally in their exit.
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Oh my gosh, what you failed, but you studied so hard for that, and what will happen is, oftentimes kids will stop bringing problems to us either, certainly they won't feel so validated. But oftentimes kids, because they worry about distressing their parents, they often don't bring those problems to their parents. And so as a parent, it's really hard to help solve a problem that you don't know about. Yeah, so when, when our second book came out, book holidays, what is, what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance and a happy home came out in summer of 21 so things are still full covid. And I was talking at a local school, and this mom came up to me afterwards, lovely woman, African American, this important, and she said, You know, I read the self driven child during the summer that covid started, and I decided I was going to commit myself to making home feel like a safe base. Because if we remember, the whole world felt on fire, and especially as a black mom, she said it felt this is George Floyd and all that stuff. And she said it felt like America was hunting young men who looked just like my son, but I committed myself. I was going to make home feel like a safe base no matter what was on fire outside of our four walls, and she said it completely changed my relationship with my kid.
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Wow, and that's what we know.
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You know, kids develop resilience, AK, stress tolerance, inner drive, by dealing with challenges and then fully recovering from the stress and then putting themselves out there and then recovering again.
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And if home feels too charged, then they aren't going to put themselves out there as much as they might in the real world, because they have to reserve emotional reserves for the battles they feel or fear that they're going to have to fight at home, and when you can drag yourself across the front door, slings and arrows sticking out of your back, you know, covered in dust and blood, and someone just says, Well, looks like you've had a day as opposed to what do you Yeah, yes, change the energy enormously.
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Gosh, I love that. And actually, that's absolutely everything that I try to do in my own home. It's not always easy. And I'd like to, I'd like to just, you know, are there any tips you've got for parents who have really stressful lives, or they find, you know, they were brought up in a way where they don't have any kind of resources to fall back on, where they understand how to de stress and how to not overreact. I mean, I've got lots of episodes on this, like and I have an episode on how not to overreact and how to calm yourself. But do you have any great tips for parents?
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Well, you know, we have, for what it's worth, every chapter of the self term child ends with what to do tonight.
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And so everyone has different methods. I mean, for me, the single biggest thing that if I could wave a magic wand, everybody in the world would be more well rested than they currently are, because sleep deprivation elevates cortisol, the dominant stress hormones.
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See the effects of sleep deprivation on brains look remarkably similar, almost identical, to the effects of stress on brains. And most of us are so wildly under arrested, we don't we don't even realize it, and then we react or overreact to, you know, kids, children, spouses, traffic, politics, all of it because sleep deprivation weakens the connections back to the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. I had a complicated family. My my dad was an alcoholic, my mom was institutionalized with all sorts of mental health I spent three months of seventh grade in a pediatric psychiatric hospital.
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So I I had some really hard times my life. At this point, if I act like a person who's institutionalized, please don't tell me. But you know, because I was depressed as a teen, I'm really vulnerable to falling in that again, I'm pretty good at my work and hard, because I don't tend to lose my mind when other people are stressed. And for me, part of that secret sauce is that I am incredibly committed to three things. One, exercising on a daily basis. I practice something called transcendental meditation twice a day, and I may be the most well rested person in Washington, DC. It just makes it makes a really big difference, because I just don't get a little cranky and dark when I'm sleep deprived. I kind of go like borderline how. Homicidal.
00:25:00.539 --> 00:26:21.740
It's not, it's not, it's not, yeah, but for people who can't currently in their lives, find ways to connect with people who support them, to exercise, to get enough sleep, because you're just you're it's four alarm fire in your life, and you're just doing your best to hang on. I I get it, and I can't possibly talk to about self care when you're like I can't. What I would say is this, you can credibly feel when you are frustrated with your kids, angry with your kids, scared about your kids, and if you are, they feel them. They feel that too, because of what are called mirror neurons, and so it's really hard to hide. No, don't worry, sweetheart, everything will be fine. Is not really gonna work. And so what my advice would be is to be honest about your feelings and to kind of emotionally model them. Yes, absolutely not that. You know, my my wife and my son are some of the most easygoing people on the planet. My daughter, who's wildly more intense, gets all of that from her loving father, and so we can push each other's buttons like nobody's business and no one's ill intended. It's just, it's just, it's the it's wiring that we have in our nervous systems. And so what I would do, she would say something that would get me going, and then, and we go back and forth, and it would be hard.
00:26:19.380 --> 00:26:43.720
And we're both sitting there, we can both feel it, and in that moment when you're feeling dysregulated, when you when you're scared, it's really hard to say the right thing. And so when I found myself, probably by the time she was 13 or 14, saying, Listen, I'm really, I'm really, I'm having a hard time right now, I'm not upset with you, but this is hard for me.
00:26:38.660 --> 00:27:00.180
Can you give me 10 minutes and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna walk around the block. And this one time, remember I was fighting, I was fighting with her. She was wildly dysregulated, and I was trying to make the case for her to get exercise, and she was fighting me. I lost my cool and, like, forget it. I'm going for a run.
00:27:00.839 --> 00:27:49.839
So I went off for a run, and I got lost in the woods. And it wasn't like a three mile run, it was like a 13 I do not have a good sense of direction. It was hilarious. And I limped my way back after a very long run. And everyone's great. And my daughter, because my energy had left the room, had, of her own accord, decided to go on a stationary bike and get some exercise. It was a riot. So if you're feeling intense, just say to your kid, your spouse, I'm sorry I'm not doing great right now. Can you give me a moment and listen to some music? Take yourself out of the situation, because stress is so incredibly contagious, and we never can fully know where it starts. If I'm stressed, I can stress out my kid. If my kid is having a hard day, she can stress out me.
00:27:47.319 --> 00:27:51.339
And then we're all wondering why everyone's having a hard time,
00:27:52.000 --> 00:28:34.700
and I absolutely mirror your entire life situation. My kids know because I now I'm very honest if I'm struggling, and what happens is, if you're not honest about it. They think they're angry with them. So I'm much better now at saying, Actually, I'm really sorry. I just have such a short fuse. And they'll go, Mum, go for a run. Did you just driving us nuts? Now, where I did an interview talking about kids who failed to launch, and one of the key things he said, we just start with the sleep wake cycle. If you can, everything's falling apart, but we can just get that one thing right, that's a good building block to work from. So I totally agree with you. And on the stress side, there are different types of stress, like positive, tolerable, toxic. Are there ways that parents can tell the difference? How can we tell?
00:28:35.420 --> 00:28:38.359
Well, effectively, with us or with our kids,
00:28:39.740 --> 00:28:41.920
probably with our kids. I mean, kids,
00:28:42.578 --> 00:29:59.919
so, so there's something called the Yerkes Dodson curve. And across so it's, it's an axis. So across the bottom, the x axis, there's what's called physiological arousal. It's measured in a stress hormone called cortisol, low, medium, high. And then on the y axis, up and down is performance. And so if the stress is too low, if there's no stress. Typically, there's no performance at all. Right? If you didn't have to hand in a paper, who would probably write the paper, right? You're not the it's you play in a team in sports who are terrible, well, you're going to win, but you're not going to play your best because they're not good enough to make you play your best. In the middle is what is called optimal arousal. So we experience this as butterflies, excitement. There you're a little on edge, but you're also a little excited. And that's where we like to be most of the time, and not all the time. It's hard to do that, but more often than not, and then, but then it's the stress keeps getting higher, the performance does, and it comes back down. And this is where we're in distress, and that avoidance that I talked about before. Oftentimes parents will this is important. Parents will see kids who seem to be doing very little there. They don't seem to be trying very hard. They're not. Their performance is poor, and we think that they don't care enough, and what we need to do is lean on them. But the reality is, they're way out there on the right tail of the curve. And.
00:29:59.999 --> 00:30:22.878
Performance is low, and so is their engagement, because they've fallen into that stress related avoidance. And the more we lean on them, the more they they resist even more. And so a lot of times with kids who seem to be underperforming, we think you got, you got to get this kid, you got to get this kid, you got to get this kid. And our experience and the science supports do just the opposite.
00:30:18.959 --> 00:30:25.699
Say, to kill interesting. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't make it do this homework, right?
00:30:26.058 --> 00:30:29.058
Like I'm going to duct tape you to chair. What am I going to do?
00:30:29.118 --> 00:31:57.338
Quite or, you know, I can see that you really don't want to do this right now. And for what it's worth, I'm not worried about it, because it's not a crisis. It's not a crisis if you don't get this done now, if you don't get a good mark, because I know you've got a brain in your head, and I know you can do well. You know when you when you decide that it's the right time for you, and if you want my help, I'll help you any way that I can't. We're back to that parent as a consultant. I'll help you any way that I can, but, but I I'd be foolish to act like it's my job to get you to do this stuff, because that won't work. I couldn't make you if you wanted to, and it's not really respectful. Yeah, respectful. What I would say generally, the question that you asked is, can we know where they are? We think we can, but because that, that low engagement, can look very similar, because you don't care enough, or you care too much, and it's really individualized, and frankly, around any activity, whether it's sport or school, to be optimized, it has to be individualized. And what we think, we think that our children experience things the way that we think they're experiencing them, and we don't know that there's a wonderful book, and if you ever talked with John rady, who's a professor at Harvard, and he wrote a book about athletics, and it's the book starts with a physical education teacher Minnesota, whatever it was, and they were now doing all their classes with kids having a heart rate monitor where they're all working on their personal best.
00:31:57.699 --> 00:32:34.459
And he points out this kid and she is trudging around the track going like, like, it's 18 mile, minute mile. I mean, really slow. And he said last year, I would have been yelling it, come on, pick it up. Slow poke. What do you what are you doing out there? But her heart, look at I've got her. She's 160 beats a minute, while she is really working really hard. But we don't know that. And so from my perspective, we just want to assume the kids are doing the best that they can in that moment, and sometimes they're underperforming, or they're under engaging right now because they're saving that energy for somewhere else. We just don't know. I just in our
00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:49.059
I just think, presumably, actually asking them, like getting into a kind of conversation about how are you feeling? What's going on in there? And rather than judging it, just letting them talk about it, which end of the spectrum is it? At least we know that it would be one of those things.
00:32:49.180 --> 00:32:50.740
It's a great some information.
00:32:50.858 --> 00:33:12.778
I mean, there's a there's a study, this is so funny. There's a study that came out of Yale, 2020, so pre covid around school, and it found them, for the majority of kids, 70 75% of their feelings around school were negative, and more than half of kids, this is great. More than half of kids were tired, bored and stressed.
00:33:07.919 --> 00:33:50.798
And I looked at Bill, I'm like, bored and stressed, like, wow, that's nifty. How do you pull that off? And he said, well, because being bored is stressful, yeah. And so around school or sport, art, music, whatever it is, do you feel is this? Is this too you know, I feel like you're not really leaning into this this much. Are you working as hard as you want to, it's okay. Do you feel like this is too intense for you, to feel like this is too boring for you? And that's to your point, that starts that conversation, because it's really hard for kids and for teachers, for that matter, particularly in a large classroom, to get it right.
00:33:51.038 --> 00:33:58.598
Maybe a third of kids, it's perfect, challenging enough, but they're third of people like you who are, like, bored out of your minds, like, why won't Mr.
00:33:56.078 --> 00:34:03.538
Johnson make up the pace? And then there are 30 kids who are like, Oh my gosh, she's going so fast and I can't keep up. Yeah, and it's hard
00:34:03.659 --> 00:35:16.199
I did. I did that with my daughter, and she was just bored once we uncovered that, I then just said, so all I want you to do is, every lesson you go into try and find one thing that you're interested in and focus on that just at least one thing, and tell me about it when you get home. And that really did help her sort of to inch her way through the lessons, because she was just checking out. One thing I wanted to talk about, because we talk about, we talk we think about kids doing nothing, and that really concerns a lot of parents, because they schedule everything for their kids to make sure they're getting everything. And then you mentioned transcendental meditation, and I think I wasn't really aware of the benefits of it, really before I read your book and before I actually ended up spending a week on a yoga camp with a young woman who has really quite strong ADHD. And she said, every day, twice a day, can't I can't function if I don't do this. And I said, Well, where did that come from? What is it? And she. Said I just taught myself so clearly she has that ability to sort of self correct. But let's rather than just talking about Transcendental Meditation, which you use, let's talk about the default mode network, because I only recently understood more about that. So what is the default mode network?
00:35:16.559 --> 00:36:44.559
Well, so I'll go really quick, if I may, in meditation, they're kind of two types of the two big classes are what are called, known as mindfulness meditation and transcendental meditation. And in many ways, these work a little bit differently. We think about kind of mindfulness meditation is really a practice of developing a tool for focused Med, for focused attention, and so can be really helpful during an anxious moment where I'm stressed about this other thing, and I can think about a mantra, I can think about my breathing, and I can really shift my thinking in ways that are helpful for this young woman whom you mentioned with her ADHD, she has her thoughts oftentimes going all over the place when she would wish it to be more focused and so that mindfulness meditation can really develop a habit of mind that allows her to focus her attention ways that are really powerful. Transcendental Meditation is a practice of sitting twice a day and thinking, and you're taught kind of a nonsense Sanskrit word. It has no particular meaning, but you think about this, an order is a way to enter a state, of transcendence, and it's a process of really deep relaxation. The TM is a little bit more about kind of working on your nervous system. Writ large, mindfulness is a little bit more about of a tool. And for us, we think about they both have their place, the default mode network, and I'll come back to the meditation in a moment.
00:36:39.559 --> 00:37:25.099
The default mode network is a whole network in the brain, not it's not, not a part of it, but a whole network across the whole brain that's in that activates when we're not actively involved in a cognitive task. The beginning of this was when they were first using functional MRIs, and they'd have Ned in a MRI tube and, say, sing a song and see what part of my brain lights up, or calculate numbers in your head or whatever. And it was based on the assumption that if I'm not actively doing anything, that my brain would sort of be like, you know, quiet, flat line. And it turned out to be exactly the opposite, when, when I wasn't tasked with something. Man, this thing lights up.
00:37:25.639 --> 00:37:28.880
It uses, and it's using, yes, 70% of the
00:37:28.880 --> 00:37:32.480
brain's energy. Who knew What? What? Right exactly?
00:37:32.480 --> 00:37:42.699
And so what's going on there is we reflect on our past, you know, relationships, things we've done, experiences, we project ourselves in the future.
00:37:39.079 --> 00:38:00.099
It's what's involved in what is called autobiographical planning, where you kind of connect with your younger self and then your future self, kind of who am I? How do I want to contribute the world? For our perspective, there probably is nothing more important for work of teens than who am I? How do I want to show up in this world?
00:38:00.099 --> 00:38:24.440
How do I want to contribute to this world? It's also in when the default mode network engages. It's also when people develop a sense of empathy, which, goodness knows, the world could use more of. And one of the things that you and I and all of us you know have concerned about is that kids so often, rarely have chances to be bored one because we too easily, over, subscribe them over, program them with activities.
00:38:24.440 --> 00:38:33.679
And two, they've got these digital devices in their hands, so they rarely spend their spend their time with their heads in the clouds, because they do it with phones in their hands.
00:38:35.480 --> 00:39:06.900
It's funny, isn't it, because I've mentioned this to Susie before, where I said it's not based on any science whatsoever, but I just have this feeling that when we're scrolling, our brains are trying to do something, we feel like we've got downtime, but it's not happening. And I found what's amazing is, if I go for a dog walk, I'll think, Oh, I'll listen to this music, or I'll, I'll listen to this podcast, and within two minutes, I just think, no, no, I just want to, I want to be with my thoughts. And that's that stuff that I that's what's happening. It's this kind of figuring things out, and I guess so what in that respect?
00:39:03.659 --> 00:39:07.260
What do you think of screen time?
00:39:07.260 --> 00:39:23.480
And we want to live, you know? I mean, you know, obviously big fans of the work of Jonathan Haidt and the anxious generation, you know, we should do everything we can to delay screens, delay screens, delay screens, delay screens.
00:39:23.480 --> 00:39:49.059
For children, it becomes more complicated when they become teenagers, because a cell phone is the device by which they entertain themselves, sure but connect with their peers, explore the world outside of their environments, figure out tools of communication. And adults can live lives successfully, without drinking alcohol, without gambling, without doing all sorts of things that are really optional.
00:39:49.719 --> 00:40:31.940
But unless you're going to join, you know, an Amish community, you're not likely to have a technology free adulthood. So our right, our perspective on this is we wrap. Than controlling teenagers use of technology, we want to help them learn to control for themselves their use of technology before we send them off to university with hopes, dreams, best wishes and a suitcase full of our money, because that's a kid who's ill prepared, right? And they can be coming home pretty quickly with that cell phone and the money gone. So it's a complicated issue, and part of it, of course, is that none of us grew up with a cell phone, so we can't, we can't reflect on what we did when we were 14 or 17.
00:40:33.079 --> 00:40:47.320
Yeah, it's interesting, is it? Because I think I've written an entire sub stack about how I think you can look at this as a parent within your family, and how to graduate your kids into using a smartphone. And I'm so with you.
00:40:47.320 --> 00:41:21.440
Just hold them back as long as you can. But the problem is, if all the kids in their school are using no preferably not at school at all, but if all your kids in your friendship group are, I was one of those kids who didn't have a TV and then you're weird, you know, because you're the person who doesn't understand any of the references, and that can be okay, but it can also be really difficult and and so it's, it is, because it does become a very, very complex subject. And I do, I think we really have to be thinking about how we discuss with our kids why they're doing what they're doing and what they're doing when they're online. But there's no clear cut answer unless the entire community is doing
00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:27.920
it? Well, no. And the thing, and I will put a wedge in there, where it may not have to be the entire community.
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:31.940
It just needs to be a community.
00:41:27.920 --> 00:42:27.559
There's a, even a small one, small there's a there's a book called The Tech exit, a woman named Claire morale, M, O, R, E, L, L, who has a book about how to foster almost like, you know, like we had learning pods, how to have a group of families work together so parents can support one another. But you also can have your kids, have young people with whom to play, who aren't, you know, if you go to, if you go to play, and everyone else is on a phone. You don't have a phone. Well, you're, I mean, you're stuck, right, but, but it, but certainly it's hard to do this unilaterally, because, particularly when kids become teens, focus development, developmentally shifts from caring most about what their parents think to caring most with their peers think, and so having them shut out of the to your point, the social life of other teens is complicated.
00:42:28.219 --> 00:42:54.518
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so let's look now at kids who come from very fortunate backgrounds, and I've seen studies that say that they the pressure that parents put on them, or can put on them with these high aspirations desperately that gets them into the best colleges and things can actually be as damaging as it can be to come from a really disadvantaged background. Is that something that you you see, or that you think is true?
00:42:54.760 --> 00:43:29.000
Yeah. I mean, well, the first person who did the research, I was senior luthier, who was looking at the effects of stress on under resourced kids and cognitive development and behavioral issues and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but she needed a control group, so she selected a group of highly academic, high achieving kids from high affluent families as a control and she found that their stress was even higher than the than were the kids who were under resourced. Yes, yes, yes, it's a big deal. There's a book called Never enough for a writer named Jenny. Www, she's brilliant. She's lovely, right?
00:43:29.000 --> 00:44:03.480
And so that research out of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the fourth leading cause of stress was excessive pressure to excel, behind only poverty, trauma and discrimination, and none of us would willingly inflict those first three on our kids, but most of us feel like we have to somehow put this pressure on our kids to achieve, otherwise they will never do well. They'll never air quotes live up to their potential. And much like because I know you've spoken with David Yeager, we talk in our second book about a chapter called What about expectations?
00:44:00.659 --> 00:45:34.460
And the idea of looking at healthy versus toxic expectations. And healthy expectations like Yeager talks about, are, I have every confidence that you can do this right, and I'll support you in any way that I can. Toxic ones are my approval of you, my love for you, is contingent on you have to do this. If you don't, I'm going to withhold my approval of you, and that's and we can do that in ways that are really overt. We can do the ways that are subtle. I had a dad years ago. I do all this test prep, and I had a father say to me, in great frustration, I expected so much more from my daughter, and I was like, if you can even shift that from to four, we might be in a healthier brain space. You know, really, really hard. Then, if we go back to the idea of of home, should feel like a safe base, and especially if you've got kids who are neurodiverse, who aren't gifted with the same intellectual. Says other people who are struggling with anxiety or their mental health, for some kids just getting out of bed in the morning deserves an effing parade. I mean, I was my podcast. I spoke with this young woman named Rihanna Alexander, who, at age 18, founded, or 17 founded a mental health nonprofit in Chandler, Arizona, and her origin story was, I went from being, you know, you know, Dean's List top student, all these emails from home, from my teachers, like, oh, Ran is amazing. You should be so proud.
00:45:34.460 --> 00:45:48.159
My parents like, oh, my gosh, we're so proud. You're so amazing to then I collapsed during covid under mental health, you know, and issues, and I didn't go to school for weeks at a time, and I'd show up at school, and my teachers have been like, Miss Alexander, you know, where have you been?
00:45:48.159 --> 00:46:08.219
You're you have all this homework is overdue, as opposed to, Hey kiddo, you okay? It's been a while. It's nice to see you. And so, you know, my daughter was full school refusal for three months of eighth grade. I'm a guy who helps people get into college. What's going through my head? Right?
00:46:08.579 --> 00:46:26.719
Yeah, and it took, it took four more years until she had the diagnosis of autism, and so I always knew we could. I mean, you can feel, you know, that she's anxious and the rigidity that goes along with that, and she had a harder time making friends and all this stuff. But you know, you like, if only this kid would, and nobody knew, including her, right? Yes, yes.
00:46:27.980 --> 00:46:56.980
And what we want to do again is make home feel like a safe base, you know. And I remember this conversation she was end of eighth grade, and I mean, everything's a mess. She has no friends. I mean, just everything's hard, and we're out for this long talk, a long walk, and, and, and I said, Listen, kiddo. I said, you're going to have great friends. You're going to do really important work in this world. I said, your your your creative is all get out.
00:46:53.920 --> 00:47:36.320
You're smart as attack, you know, you're vicious at board games I haven't won since you were six, and you're going to do really cool things. And she said, Well, it sure doesn't feel that way. I said, I know it doesn't. I said, everything is hard for you right now. It's hard for me too. And it said, and I don't like to play the I'm older than you card, but I have gone around the sun a few more times than you have, and I can see in you all the things that you need to have the life that you want. It's just that right now, it's really hard, and so our job with mom and your brothers just to get through this, and we're figuring this out as we go along. And it was easier for me to have confidence in this because I pieced out for three months in seventh grade in a pediatric psychiatric hospital, as I mentioned before.
00:47:37.159 --> 00:49:20.159
And so when kids aren't doing well or they're not living up to their expectations. I'll talk about that in a moment. We as parents get really worried, and we think again, catastrophize, right? We catastrophize, prophesize and generalize, right? And think that this is the way it's going to be. And if we can remind ourselves that your brain, your kids have brains in their heads, and they want their lives to work out, because this is their life. This is not a video game. This is not a do over. And one of the ways that kids can kind of heal up and catch up is when we don't focus on the performance. It is hard to overstate how little work my daughter did for so much of her high school career. I'm just sort of watching like, well, you know, is that good enough? It's good enough. All right, great, moving on. And I was not going to put my thumb on the scale for her to work hard, in part, because I knew how bright she was. And most of what we think about academic achievement, most of it is healthy brain development. You develop these executive functions. You develop greater attention, you know. And I should say this, we have a chapter in the book about motivation, and we lean on the research of a guy named Marie Larson who, in the 90s, was looking at, how is it that teens become intrinsically motivated and learn how to work hard, if we're honest with not just that we want kids to work hard. We want kids to want to work. Sure, absolutely. And so he said he found it was not by their dutifully doing their homework, but what he described as the passionate pursuit of past times. So if a kid is working hard at sports, at music, at coding, at rock climbing, at knitting, at small engine repair, dog animal vet, anything,
00:49:20.219 --> 00:49:24.079
anything. Oh, this is just brilliant. This is exactly what we need to do, yes, where they
00:49:24.079 --> 00:51:31.280
work harder and harder and harder to get better and better. It's something that matters to them. We don't worry about them because those executive functions, but they've got to learn to take things seriously. Like you don't do that by getting your cleats packed and getting to practice on time that you don't do that by making a painting, and, you know, a drawing, you screw it up and like, you go back and do it again to be a six year old, and you not, you make this, you know, tower to the sky, and the whole thing gets knocked over, and you're in tears. But what do you do? You go back and build it again, because dog. On it, you know, it could have gone and so it's those experiences where kids are working hard, working through frustration, and the motivation is it matters to them. That's where we're really wiring brains. And when kids become more kids who are not currently interested in school become more interested in school. And oftentimes school becomes a method to the goal rather than the goal itself. We just don't, I mean, there's a client. Kid had a high school GPA of 1.2 out of 4.0 this is a terrible grade. So he went to, he went into the Navy. He wanted to be a Navy SEAL. He had a heart condition, so he couldn't do that. He got put on a boat, on a sub. He hated it, but he's really, really bright. He worked hard at Commandant or whatever is. Could see this guy was bright. Gave him more and more responsibility. At some point, he said, Have you ever thought about college? He said, Well, I did, but I didn't do well in school. I said, Well, you know now that you've done here in the Navy, they don't care about your grades, but they may want you to take the A C T. So they sent off for the A C T. He took it on the boat. Did great on it. Kid is now in his third year of university at Harvard. Wow, 1.2 to Harvard. And so one of the things that we as parents and just adults. Know there are a lot of paths to success. The last chapter in the self driven child is called alternate roots and doggone it, there's so many ways that people can get there.
00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:42.099
And if we don't catastrophize and prophesize about kids, if we don't worry that they're going to get stuck, they don't tend to get stuck either, because they don't want to stay stuck.
00:51:42.940 --> 00:52:30.440
I absolutely love that message. One of my best friends, when I was a young woman, had worked in a filling station for two years because she didn't really like school, came back, did a levels, she ended up at Oxford, and what's Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and it's interesting, because my my older teen, she's going to Oxford, and she we never gave her extra tutoring or put that extra it's all all come from her. All come good teaching, but it's all come from her. And my other daughter, she was really finding school hard. She was undiagnosed ADHD. She's always had dyslexia. We always knew about that, dyspraxia, all those things, just the most wonderful character, such an interesting person. And at 16, we just, she said, I just don't want to be here. And we said, Fine, okay, leave school. You can't just stay at home. You have to work.
00:52:30.619 --> 00:53:14.159
So she worked two jobs. She had, I said, you have to study in your spare time. So she started studying chemistry, even though at her school they'd said, No, you can't do chemistry. We weren't doing well enough. She took a year out and really, really figured out what interested her, and she's gone back to college, and she's now studying three academic subjects and absolutely loving it. But I think in that period of time, she had the chance to just take ownership. I think she'd been in a schooling system that didn't work for her, which, like you said, she had no ownership over her path and and now I constantly say to her, and you made this happen. You were the person who said, because that's the other thing we need to do, isn't it? We need to actually say to them, you're, you're the person who's making this happen.
00:53:11.159 --> 00:53:14.699
It's not me. It's not you know that I'm,
00:53:15.298 --> 00:53:53.378
yeah, you're the reinforcer. You're the expert on you. It's funny, I have this kid I'm working with she's went to an Ivy League college, super bright, super academic. Her little brother, complicated, ADHD, anxious, depressed, and his father's circle, he just started his first year of university and his father's circle. Then just popped in for some reason. And I said, How is he doing? And he said, he's doing really well. And honestly, when he went off to college, I told him that I wasn't I wasn't really that confident about him, because school had been such a disaster. And he said, he looked at me, said, Dad, but there's a big difference. I had to do high school. I want to do college.
00:53:53.858 --> 00:54:09.659
Yeah, big Oh, that's it. That actually sums it all up, doesn't it? Yeah, we have to give them the chance to find the thing that really fires them up. And if there's a parent listening right now, what can we say to them that will help them give their child that self driven life equals them towards that?
00:54:09.659 --> 00:54:12.778
Yeah, I'm going to say that. You know, it is hard.
00:54:12.898 --> 00:54:28.938
Raising children has never been easy. And you've got a kid who's struggling, of course, it's hard for you, right? And you worry enormously about your kids, because you love them just the way that we love our kids, yeah.
00:54:24.079 --> 00:55:24.378
And of course, you have peers and parents. And looking at, you know, when my daughter was going through this part of my head, I'm thinking, what, what kind of a parenting expert am I if my kid is struggling? Yes, much, right? And my writing partner, Bill said. He said, thank goodness, thank goodness, you know the things that you know, because Katie, I mean, she does not have an easy nervous system to live life in a neurotypical world. We didn't know these things about her. We could feel it, but we didn't know this because we didn't have these diagnoses. And thank goodness this approach. Works, and part of our message is we just want to make parents feel that it's safe and it's right to trust your kids more and worry about them less, and you give them all the support that you can, but you treat them respectfully, like they have brains in their heads and want their lives to work out with all the support and love that you can give them.
00:55:24.918 --> 00:55:31.878
But it's true, because they do have brains in the heads, and they do want their lives to work out. Beautiful.
00:55:31.880 --> 00:55:34.039
Beautifully.
00:55:31.880 --> 00:55:42.940
Said, right, Ned, I will put a link to your website and things in the notes. Is there any particular way you'd like people to find you? I know you're on Instagram and what you've got a podcast. What other
00:55:42.940 --> 00:55:58.480
Yeah, so, so on Instagram and Tiktok. I'm the other Ned Johnson, and our podcast is the self driven child podcast. If you have a child who's ADHD, this might be particularly amusing to you. I made a video a couple years ago.
00:55:58.480 --> 00:56:05.820
I finally got coaxed into doing this called the last minute kid that explains the kind of neuroscience of procrastination.
00:56:06.179 --> 00:56:29.059
It's a little over the top. I'm a tutor, so I can write upside down, so I'm right upside down in this glass desk. I also have a shaved head, because my son, at that point had he had it, he had a brain term. He's great now, but when he started to lose his hair, we shaved one of those heads. So I'm as bald as bald can be. And the whole thing is, it's, it's, it's a little unhinged, but you can find me on the other Ned Johnson on Tiktok.
00:56:29.059 --> 00:56:31.219
That's brilliant. I absolutely love it.
00:56:31.219 --> 00:57:10.199
So if you found this really useful, please share it. Share it with friends. Share it with the school. Share it with anybody you know who might find it useful. If you want to contact me, the address is teenagers untangled@gmail.com I have a sub stack, and I write up extra bits that have come out of my podcasts and think pieces. So you can find me on there. You can find me on YouTube. You can find me on www.teenagersuntangled.com I'm on Instagram more than other social media platforms. I'm terrible at tick tock. Need someone to teach me, and that's it. Have a great week. Big hug from me. Thank you, Ned. Thank you Bye, Bye, for now. You
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you you.
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