Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:02.520 --> 00:01:06.000
Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards parent and coach, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now our kids spend most of their days at school, so obviously, what they do there and how they feel about it matters a lot. The thing is, so many of us can tell that there's something not right with the education system. Our kids seem disengaged from school and a weird mixture of being both bored and stressed. But most of us parents feel unsure about exactly how to tackle it. Now, I see my job as hunting for the answers so you don't have to And today, I've hit the jackpot. For the past five years, the Brookings Institution's global education expert Rebecca Winthrop and award winning journalist Jenny Anderson have been investigating why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescents, and they produced an excellent book called The disengaged teen, absolutely packed full of research and stories that really grapple with what's going on.
00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:47.079
The most exciting thing for us parents is that they give us a really simple, easy to use framework for helping our kids that I've already started using with mine and well, they love it. In this interview with Rebecca Winthrop, you're going to learn how to identify the four modes of learning and which one your kid is in, how to help them think about their own learning journey so they can feel more empowered. How doing all of this will help them form an identity that is secure and less troubled by teen pressure, and it will give them the best start in creating a life that suits them. Now, it's my longest interview yet, but Dr Rebecca Winthrop, who also has teens, was so interesting and so full of insights that I just could have talked to her all day.
00:01:47.379 --> 00:01:59.439
Don't forget to share this with others if you enjoy it and give it a five star rating now for the interview. Now, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. First of all, how did you and Jenny decide to work together on this project?
00:01:59.859 --> 00:02:18.840
Well, this is a story that I will tell you about, but it is very much me going on bended knees to Jenny, asking her to work with me. So I had been working on family, school, community engagement and really realizing that parents are the missing piece in education system transformation.
00:02:18.840 --> 00:03:11.819
They are overlooked and they are the missing piece, because when parents are brought in as partners with schools, schools are 10 times better. Wow. So I knew, I knew that research we had with my team at Brookings founded a global network on family, school community engagement across 14 countries, and I had an aha moment that set me on the journey for this book, which was during COVID. I have two boys, and I really thought that the oldest one was super engaged in their learning, super motivated to learn, because he was bringing home great marks, great great in the US. We call it, great grades. And I thought when COVID hit, no problem. I'm not gonna have to worry about him. He'll be fine. Not true.
00:03:05.400 --> 00:04:26.360
The minute school went from home and school went pass fail, which means, you know what Pass Fail means. But he lost all motivation. He told me, Mom, if it's not counted, it doesn't matter. Which was a dagger to my heart as an educationalist. And I said, of course, learning is what matters, not the grade you get at the not your performance at the end. But he that was not where he was at and I didn't see it. And my little one was struggling in school deeply. He had just been right before COVID, diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, and he was several grade levels behind. And he had really internalized a narrative about himself that was not true, but that he saw all around him, which was, he wasn't smart. He was behind in reading. He couldn't keep up at the pace that lessons were taught again because he had dyslexia, and we hadn't intervened to help him learn to read properly. And I thought, Oh, he's the one I'm going to have to worry about in COVID. I'm going to have to spend so much time making sure he doesn't fall behind. He turned out to be a super motivated learner. Wow,
00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:27.019
he
00:04:27.019 --> 00:04:35.899
caught up two grade levels, freed. Yes, he was free from the having to keep up with the pace of his peers.
00:04:35.959 --> 00:05:24.199
He was, I didn't know he was so motivated and engaged in his learning. And I thought, oh my gosh, if I can't tell I've been I'm a, you know, global education expert, if I can't tell underneath the grades what kids are doing, how engaged they're in their learning. And I knew this learning science, and that is incredibly important for skill development. And. How can any other parent tell? And that is when I went and searched. I knew storytelling was going to have to be a huge part of of helping parents. And Jenny was my favorite education journalist. She has a really big global perspective. And I went to ask her, please, please, will you do this project with me? She was very skeptical at first.
00:05:19.259 --> 00:06:18.120
She'd written a book. So she was not so sure she wanted to tackle it again, but she had two girls, and she had gone through her own journey, and she was very dedicated to journalism and storytelling around the learning sciences, child development. She had done a ton of work and finance. That was what she cut her teeth on. And then when she had her own kids, was shocked and dismayed at how poor the quality of journalism was she'd been in the New York Times. She said, You know, there was one person just dedicated to JP Morgan, yeah. And then I went and said, Oh, I want to, I want to learn more about child development and learning and write about that. And she said there was no child development learning beat at the New York Times, where she was there was an education beat, total, very poorly resourced, one person for all of education. Wow. So anyways, so she, she, I eventually convinced her how,
00:06:18.420 --> 00:06:46.060
yes, amazing, and it's and we know we parents can tell something's wrong. We, you know, I get so many whenever I do anything about education, I get so much feedback from parents. And you know, they're the kids, but people with the neurodivergent kids, or they're the people who've got the kids who are, you know, achievers, like my older daughter, who are hyper, you know, perfectionists, or, you know, they're all sorts of problem. We're thinking, what's going wrong? And I've done stuff about grades and what's why those are failing us.
00:06:46.060 --> 00:07:07.379
But now coming on to what you've identified, which I think is fascinating, as you talk about how we've had this whole age of achievement, which is all about kind of, you know, win, win, win. Keep going, you know, and it's hijacked our kids natural tendencies in their teen years.
00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:12.720
Can you explain what you mean about that? Because you say we're coming into a new era, and this is really interesting to me. So
00:07:13.019 --> 00:07:24.259
the age of achievement is that we are measuring success in the education system by who can win.
00:07:25.040 --> 00:09:35.120
And let us be clear, every single education system virtually around the country, because actually, most education systems look the same, and there's a historical reason for that, but is designed to create winners and losers. Yes, it is not designed to lift every child up to self discover what their path should be, to develop self awareness and set them on their way. It is not designed that way. Now I want to be very clear here. Teachers are stuck in the middle. They're stuck between a system from above, of you know what success looks like, what you need to do for your students, etc, and their pressure from below, from parents really about their their kids, yeah. So this isn't to blame the teacher situation, and many teachers wish the system would be different, but literally, if you look at the history of education, school systems really rolled out from for many reasons, but in Prussia, in the US, based on, you know, we had higher education first, and school systems were a good feeder for higher education. And there were other reasons. It was about strengthening citizenry, strengthening competitiveness things like this, but that system is no longer serving our kids. What we need is a new system. And we have looked very closely at this, and there are signs and movement that this system, a new era is emerging, and we call that the age of agency. So for example, in the United States, sort of the spine of the architecture of schools is the Carnegie unit, which is seat time, how long you have to sit in order to pass and get credit for your learning, which doesn't make much sense. The number of hours you sit in a class doesn't actually correlate to how much you master a skill.
00:09:28.820 --> 00:10:34.100
So the entire organization who created the Carnegie unit, Carnegie Foundation for teaching and learning, is redesigning that and some of the major testing companies, again, this is in the US who administer the the assessments of what it means to succeed and who are the winners and who are the losers, are thinking about broadening, not throwing out, but broadening what they're tracking to include a range. Of other important competencies that we know the world needs interpersonal communication, empathy and perspective taking, collaborative problem solving, creative thinking. So there is a new era coming and generative AI is accelerating this. It will take time, because systems take a while to change. But we really wanted to give parents a heads up and give them a tool kit for what they can do today. And
00:10:34.100 --> 00:10:44.500
I think that's, that's what the nub of why this book so amazing. So we're going to come on to that. I just you know what I thought was fascinating when you were introducing this whole subject.
00:10:41.620 --> 00:10:56.139
You were saying that across 72 countries, from the US to Europe to Latin America and Asia, the more wealthier country is, the happier its adults are, that the adolescents satisfaction goes down
00:10:56.379 --> 00:12:34.580
this. This is one of the saddest, most heartbreaking studies, yes, in the in the entire book, when I read this piece. And so what this is, is it looks at Pisa, which I'm sure you're well aware that is, OECD assesses 15 year olds across 70 plus countries, and the researchers looked at this question of life satisfaction. And they looked at it with adults and in general, there is a theory that has that has been well established, that if you have the richer a country is, more wealthy a country, the happier its people are, which is true, you get health care, you have some disposable income, you might have easier transportation. You know, there's a range of things you get if you if you have a bit more resources. And so the richer, what they did is they looked at in countries Poor, poor countries to rich countries, and the wealth. And it's true for adults, the wealthier a country gets. This theory holds adults increasingly said they were more had higher life satisfaction, and then they looked at adolescents with a piece of data, and it was the opposite. The wealthier a country is, the lower the worse adolescence life satisfaction is, and they put their finger on why they dug into like, What the hell is going on? Excuse my language, and it was educational pressure and competitiveness.
00:12:35.419 --> 00:12:46.720
Yes, yes, a lot of it coming from just parents mopping it up from the environment around them, and we've seen parents responding to that because they just don't know what else to do, right? And so you have
00:12:46.720 --> 00:13:14.700
parents fault. It's no, no. You know, we all are primed to help our kids get the get the best and be successful. That's our job, and if our community and the people around us are telling us the best way to do this is to make sure they win at the game of education and be in the winner's circle, not in the losers circle. Parents are going to push their kids, yeah,
00:13:14.820 --> 00:13:27.200
yeah. And I have had horrible reports of some kids in London who, if they get 90 lower than 90% their parents beat them. I'm not going to go into it anymore, but I was told that recently, and I just thought, this is horrific.
00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:37.159
Anyway, we don't want that. So the what you talk about is you talk about four different modes.
00:13:32.539 --> 00:13:59.860
So you the book is called The disengaged teen, and there's a reason for that. And one of the things you talked about was this zone of proximal development, which is this kind of sweet spot for learning, where a student, they don't find it too easy, they don't find it too hard, and then they're really engaged. But you said that most of the when you in your research, most of the time, kids are not in this zone, and the parents think they are. So can you talk more about that? Sure, let's
00:13:59.860 --> 00:14:52.299
talk about the zone first, and then we can come to the modes. So the zone of proximal development has been around in education for eons. It was developed by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, and it is sort of a profound guidance that continues today, which is, there's a sweet spot of learning, where an individual is challenged enough to keep it interesting, and you're stretching, and that's how you learn. You grow. You can you don't learn if you already know something and you're just repeating, and that's consolidating, perhaps skills and memory, but which you need to do a bit of, but you're not going to learn and grow if that's all you do. So where it's challenging enough that you're stretching yourself, but you get support to help you get there, support as a teacher, support as a parent. Support can be a peer.
00:14:52.419 --> 00:14:58.179
Support can be a YouTube video.
00:14:52.419 --> 00:16:08.820
So that is the that's the key, the stretch. With the support, and we found, and it's true, most kids are not in their z, p, d. It's called an education in class, and it's not a teacher problem, because teachers are struggling to to get 30 kids or 25 kids or 40 kids. It depends on which country you're in, in their own ZPD, and it's very hard. And so what teachers often do in the US, and I also believe in the UK, is, and certainly in Australia, where we've seen this data, actually, is they try to bring the kids who are it's too hard, they're outside of their CPD, and it's too hard. They try to, they focus on them, to catch them up, right? And there's a lot of kids who come in in school and they're, it's too easy, yeah, and but they look fine because they're on grade level. They might grow a little bit and get exposed a little, but they're, they're actually flat lining across the entire school year, because they kind of get it initially, and they got it and then they're just sort of coasting. So what do?
00:16:09.539 --> 00:16:15.600
What do those kids do? What is the rational, rational reaction?
00:16:15.899 --> 00:16:21.860
Kids say school is boring, and they check out and they coast.
00:16:22.100 --> 00:16:30.740
And sometimes, sometimes when your adolescent or child says, school is boring, it's boring for them, oh,
00:16:31.340 --> 00:16:32.240
without a
00:16:34.039 --> 00:16:36.620
doubt they are not. They've been too easy.
00:16:36.679 --> 00:16:41.259
And, you know, every kid is kind of at a different place, and it's very hard for a teacher.
00:16:41.740 --> 00:16:50.259
I think you did a really good job of summing that up like by saying, you know, imagine if a doctor had to see 30 patients at one moment, you know, they just would never be
00:16:51.220 --> 00:16:54.039
diagnosed.
00:16:51.220 --> 00:17:11.160
It'd be like, you're sick, you you know, it's like you and I were sick, and 28 other people, and we showed up to a doctor's office, and they had to diagnose us in an hour, and then, and then prescribed, personalized, you know, care over that kept changing and evolving, because the learning you change, you know, ideally, you're evolving, yeah,
00:17:11.459 --> 00:17:24.378
yeah. So, um, so let's talk about these four modes, yes, because there's one mode we want to be in. Let's talk about the modes that we're finding. So that one was the kind of, what do you call that mode where they just checked out coasting
00:17:24.439 --> 00:18:57.878
up passenger mode? So here are some formats, right? So here's the four modes. You've got kids who are in passenger mode. They are coasting, doing the bare minimum, and this is the majority. This is in our research, in the US, a large survey with Brookings and transcend of across 65 over 65,000 kids, 50% of middle school and high school kids said that their school experience inspired basically coasting. And that's passenger mode. Then you've got achiever mode. These are the kids who are putting in a ton of effort and trying to collect the gold stars for every hoop that's put in front of them. And we can come back to that, because that can be good, but it can also be bad. And then you've got resistor mode. These are the kids who everyone dubs the problem children. They are the most visible parents. And our get calls home. Teachers tear their hair out. Meetings are called, these are school refusers? Yeah, well, it can be a mix. It can end in school refusal, right? But it can start as being class clown, interesting, not doing your homework, disrupting class, talking back, withdrawing deeply, not connecting, skipping a class, finding other things to do, and then it can end in school refusal. And these kids, people call them the problem children, but really they are kids with problems who need help, and it is a cry for help.
00:18:57.878 --> 00:19:07.439
And they do actually have some gumption, because they have enough wherewithal to say, often inappropriately, but they say, or they behave in a way that says, This isn't working for me.
00:19:07.499 --> 00:20:22.398
Yeah, I need help. Yeah, I need help, exactly. And then you have kids who are in or you have a mode that kids can be in, which is explorer mode, which is where we want kids to spend the most amount of time, but they actually, in our research, spend the least amount of time. Less than 4% of kids say they regularly get to be in Explorer mode in middle school and high school in the US. And these are kids who are engaged. They show up. They are interested. They are, you know, cognitively processing what they're learning. But more than that, they are proactive around their learning interesting. They are taking initiative to bend their learning environment to ways that is more interesting to them, and that could be, you know. Asking for extra the teacher if they could write a essay on a certain topic. It could be just getting, you know, getting inspired by a class on extreme weather, about tornadoes, and going home and asking their parents about tornadoes, or going on YouTube, and, of their own accord, diving into tornadoes. And it makes class more interesting, and then they're more invested, so that those are the four modes. Yeah,
00:20:22.400 --> 00:21:35.180
yeah. And it's really interesting because I remember reading David Jagers book about how to motivate kids, and he talks about how, you know, when they get into the tween, teen years, young adults, they are motivated by status and respect. And if they're not getting that, or they're not getting stimulation, they're just not, you know, they're looking for it somewhere. And if they're not getting it in the classroom, they're going to be looking somewhere else, which is where we get the problems. So let's start with what? So we've got the passengers, and these are the people who just kind of just going, oh, I'll just check out, you know, I'll just go to all the classes and do what's which is what your son was doing, by the sounds of it. And then we've got those, those achievers, and the achievers of the things, the people who most parents want. I right, one of my daughters became an achiever, and people kept going, Oh, this amazing. Oh, you're so and I kept saying, no, no, you don't understand. She puts too much pressure on herself. Is too because this perfectionist streak can be really, really hard for them. It's very and they can be very and you sum it up as like they've got ways and they're following it, but they're not looking around for what else there is. They're just trying to keep going down the track that they've been set so why shouldn't we want our kids to be like this?
00:21:35.539 --> 00:22:15.779
So the achiever mode is very tricky. We call it in the book the achiever conundrum, because there is nothing wrong with high expectations. There is nothing wrong for striving for excellence. And when you have happy achievers, kids who are in achiever mode, they are creating great study skills, great organizational skills, great Orient, goal orientation. These are good things that will stand them in their Well, in the rest of their life, whatever they pursue, and they're happy because they want this. They want to win at the Education game, and they feel good they are winning. So that is good.
00:22:09.599 --> 00:23:20.960
But many kids in achiever mode, if they get stuck there, and actually, this is very important point, the modes are modes. You can shift between them. They are not identities. Kids can move be in one in school, one and after school, they can be one mode in one class, a different mode in a different class. But if kids get stuck in achiever mode, oh, it becomes an identity, and that often is what tips them into unhappy achiever mode, where they're not striving for excellence, they're striving for perfection, where and no one can be perfect, not a child, not me, not you, not anybody. And they end up being very fragile learners. They feel that if they don't get the top marks, that a they their identity is in question. I am the the smart one. What does it mean that I got a lower market? I am? I no longer smart rather than, Oh, that was tough. Maybe I need to, you know, rejigger my strategy.
00:23:20.960 --> 00:25:01.079
They're not resilient. They're very fragile. They take they end up having, actually, some of the worst mental health outcomes of all the kids, and they often also do not get enough downtime, space, freedom to explore what they're deeply interested in, personally, and the sort of self awareness around what they really care about, because they're busy trying to win at the Education game. And the system is insatiable. It will put it, will put it. It won't stop. It will not say, Dear child, you know, you might need to sleep more. It's okay. You're successful enough. You're you know, this is just a journey on your way to helping you develop competencies and skills and mindsets on your way to the longer journey. Don't worry, you don't have to do that extra curricular or take that extra GCSE or whatever, so that but that's where they get trapped and and schools and parents rightly say, Well, this is how kids succeed, so this is what should be done. And I you want to come in, but I just wanted to say that actually, when kids are in Explorer mode, they get better grades, they get better marks, and they're happier, yes, and they're resilient learners and developing some type of proactive initiative that gives them a sense of being the author of their own life, which is the skill they're going to need when. They leave our nest.
00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:49.480
Yeah, love that. I love that. And it's so true. And I think one of the problems with the whole achiever mode is that it's the kind of Zeitgeist, you know, people are thinking, you know, I've got to get my kid into, you know, X, Y, Z, like an Ivy League college, and then they they don't actually pay attention to all those other things, like doing Saturday jobs or spending time out, going in, you know, doing other things that develop their character and will come on to a lot of the identity development, because that's actually key in your book. But also, one of the statistics I thought was amazing that you put in the book was about the research that says that getting into an Ivy League school, the only people who find that changes their lives is those who come from the poorest families. For the rest of the kids, it's not the institution that makes a difference, it's how engaged, yes, they are when they get there,
00:25:49.720 --> 00:26:07.680
yes, which is another reason we need them to spend more time in explore mode. So this is in the US there are, and you're slightly different in the UK, I'd love to I'm not sure how that works. But in the US, there are 4000 degree granting higher education institutions. 4000
00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:11.220
that's a huge number. They're not
00:26:11.220 --> 00:26:49.420
all fabulous, but no, generously, at least half of them are 2000 higher education degree granting institutions are very good and solid. Let's let's just say that there are many places kids can go to thrive. And again, it's exactly like you said. If you are a child from a family that has minimal financial resources, they might have a lot of other resources, psychological resources, assessor, but minimum financial resources. It largely is transformative to get into the Ivy League schools because of social capital and networks.
00:26:50.740 --> 00:27:17.220
But for the rest of the kids, it's much less which higher education institution they go to, and more how they invest in their learning while they're are they excited to pursue things, or do they show up burned out and lost? Are they do they have the resilient learning skills so when they hit a bump, they can dig in, seek help? Asking for help is really important.
00:27:17.220 --> 00:27:32.720
Knowing how to ask for help is really important. A lot of high achieving kids don't know how to do that because it's an identity thing. I'm a smart kid. Why would I ask for help? What does that say about me if I have to ask, ask for help, figuring out how to get the help, and there's always many resources for help.
00:27:32.900 --> 00:28:35.480
Do they proactively seek relationships with their professors? Do they join groups who have similar interests so they can, you know, explore areas and learn about things they might be interested in doing. Those are the types of things that really lead to success long term. So we should all keep that in our mind, amazing. And I like to call Rachel. I've started, I think, I think I would like you to help join me. This is my request. You I have started calling the sort of Ivy League institutions, which, you know, I don't have anything inherently against them, but I think that they are like luxury goods. They just keep getting more like yachts, you know, they just keep getting more and more expensive. And, you know, the the admit they have enough money to admit double, triple the amount of kids, but they admit about, you know, three to 5% of kids. So I'm starting to call them the, you know, instead of the elite institutions, I call them the high rejection institutions. Oh, oh, that's
00:28:35.480 --> 00:28:37.519
so good, which is true.
00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:42.279
You know, you could send your kid to the high rejection institution,
00:28:44.619 --> 00:28:46.599
right? Yeah, I'll remember that one,
00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:56.140
right? Like we should all just start calling it what it is. Because, yeah, you know, why? Why are we so
00:28:56.140 --> 00:29:10.859
obsessed with going to these I do think it's slightly different in the UK, in the sense that, just because I know what the pressure in places like Oxbridge, yes, is like in
00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:13.559
terms of you have a small number, yeah,
00:29:13.619 --> 00:29:20.579
well, it's more that you know the level of work that's required while you're there is so much more extreme than some of the other educational institutions.
00:29:20.579 --> 00:30:12.779
There's only certain types of kids who really would flourish in that environment. You know, you can call it a great university, but they don't. They don't. They're not their hand holding at all. Anyway, let's get back to this, because you've got so much in this book, and it's such a brilliant book. So I now wanted we talked about the achievement mode. And again, it's a mode. These are all things that we can go in and out of and then let's talk about the resistor mode, because that's a very interesting one, because these are the kids, like you say, who misbehave in classrooms. You know, we've got a lot of boys who are underachieving in schools at the moment, which is really worrying, particularly in the lower classes, the working classes. In the UK, it's happening in America. You know, Richard Reeves has written books and. Out a book about this and and a massive problem with absenteeism and school. School, I don't know, people have different words for it. School kids who don't want to be in school. Yeah,
00:30:13.019 --> 00:30:16.859
the US, I could talk about chronic absenteeism, UK school, yes, yeah, yes. So
00:30:16.859 --> 00:30:20.420
this is that.
00:30:16.859 --> 00:30:30.740
So what is this mode? And I you mentioned it as being a cry for help. How do we spot it? What you know? What's the response?
00:30:24.319 --> 00:30:30.740
What should we be doing? The the
00:30:30.859 --> 00:30:36.440
school refusal. In the US, there's high levels of chronic absenteeism.
00:30:33.259 --> 00:30:41.559
UK, you have huge problems with school refusal. Is the tail end of resister mode disengagement.
00:30:42.039 --> 00:31:30.740
So it is important to spot it sooner so we can address it and prevent it. And this mode includes, like I said, kids who are withdrawing or disrupt disrupting their learning. And the main thing to think, to keep in your mind, it's very difficult as a parent, and it's even difficult for educators, is that these kids are asking for help. They are not trying to be disrespectful, even though they may they are not trying to be harmful to themselves or others, even though they may be and the first thing we have to do is to figure out why we talk about connecting before you correct.
00:31:26.900 --> 00:31:44.319
We're not saying there shouldn't be repercussions. We're not saying there shouldn't be discipline or consequences for actions. But before leaning in, you skip class. You need to be in class. This is bad. Why did you do this? That's an example.
00:31:41.319 --> 00:31:47.319
Before you get all the way to chronic absenteeism or school refusal is a skipping of class.
00:31:47.319 --> 00:33:54.099
Perhaps it's a typical one. You have to figure out why they are withdrawing or disrupting, because we found that there was always a reason interesting and you can't really help them get back unless you tackle this underlying reason. And some common ones are, it's the tricky thing is, it's different for every kid. But some common ones are incredible sense of overwhelm. So many kids we talked to, and we interviewed 100 kids for this across the US, and some kids in the UK, and many of them we followed over three years. So we found talked to so many kids who would get behind in school, and then maybe they missed a concept, maybe they missed some homework, and then it piles up, and they didn't quite have the study skills, and they didn't know how to ask for help, and they dug themselves into a hole, and they would just sort of felt totally overwhelmed, overwhelmed. And so many kids said, Well, I guess that's it. I guess I'm done for I guess I'll never go to college. I guess I won't be able to pursue my I guess I should drop out like instead of No, you know, no, no, no, no, no, wait, you know, you'll be okay. Ask for help. There's makeup days, you know, reach out. But kids don't have those skills necessarily. So overwhelm is a huge one. Bullying and lack of a sense of belonging is another one that can be from peers. We have this incredible story of a young man in the US who was in the talented and gifted program in elementary school, and then, for some bureaucratic reason, he was not in the talented and gifted program when he moved to middle school, junior secondary, and he thought, oh my gosh, I guess I'm stupid and unworthy, because all of His friends who went on to the talented and gifted program, so he felt totally ostracized and alone and self confidence shaken, and it just set him in the downward spiral. So that's a very odd, peculiar unique to
00:33:54.099 --> 00:33:57.579
him, but you had to, but that belonging is critical, isn't it? Sense
00:33:57.579 --> 00:34:06.299
of belonging, and for many kids, it's it's across many dimensions. It could be race, it could be socio economic status.
00:34:03.299 --> 00:34:11.820
It could be, you had an incredible, incredible episode.
00:34:06.299 --> 00:34:29.840
So moving on cancel culture. So, you know, could be peer dynamics. It could be many things. And then, of course, mental health problems. Really is a it's a sort of negative downward spiral. So when kids are more engaged, they have higher mental health outcomes.
00:34:30.380 --> 00:34:33.139
But it also is the same as true.
00:34:30.380 --> 00:34:52.960
When they're more disengaged, they have worse mental health outcomes. And sometimes it's an outside event, a family trauma, or, you know, there's a whole bunch going on of things in the world why kids struggle, including social media. For girls in particular, sometimes it's their mental health goes down and then their disengagement goes down. But it itself. It's self reinforcing.
00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:58.960
So those three things were, were very common, overwhelm sense of belonging and mental health.
00:34:56.559 --> 00:34:58.960
Yes,
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:31.519
and I love how you. You point out that when this is this is happening, the most important, and it's something I do with my daughter all the time now, is, rather than tell them what they should be doing, we have to get in the hole with them and and and absorb some of that, that emotion, you know, you said, avoid the positivity paradox, you know, rather than denying their emotions and pretending they don't exist, and then making them actually step away from them and not even look at them. We need to be saying so what's actually happening there?
00:35:27.980 --> 00:35:31.519
You know what it
00:35:31.519 --> 00:36:03.659
does? This is just adolescent 101, in some ways that nobody tells you as a parent, because we have no guidebook. We have to listen to podcasts like this one, Rachel, which you are doing an incredible service to the parents of the world. So when you recognize someone's emotions without trying to fix it, it reduces the steam, the anxiety, the pressure, and it opens up dialog. And that is the first first thing, even if we think their emotions are unjustified.
00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:15.179
This is taking an emotional coaching approach, and it's much better in terms of outcomes for kids when parents take an emotional coaching approach than an emotion dismissing approach.
00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:36.860
Interesting, yes, so just listening to what they have to say without judging it. We don't have to fix it. We just have to get a sense first, you know, just first. Yeah, cool, yep, okay. It sounds like you're really upset, or this seems really frustrating. This is what I'm hearing you like this idea of replaying in headline form back what they're saying.
00:36:38.179 --> 00:36:48.219
Sometimes that's enough for kids who are really stuck in their identity has become a resistor, and resistor mode. They're not just in the mode for a moment, but they have this identity.
00:36:48.219 --> 00:37:04.019
You're probably going to need to do more, which will include helping solve the core problem that's leading them to resist in the first place, but also will include helping talk through with them, strategies for dealing with difficult emotions.
00:37:04.139 --> 00:37:06.780
That's, again, the emotional coaching piece. You know what?
00:37:06.780 --> 00:37:33.980
Okay, when you're really frustrated, what are some things you can do? This is what I do, and we can model too. We can give a little voice over when we're frustrated. Oh gosh, at work, I was super frustrated, and my colleague was going to give me this report. She didn't do it on time, and now I look bad, I don't know. So I had to go talk to her, and I also took a walk around the block before I did that. So I settled down. I'm making this up. I love that some sort of modeling is very, very impactful. Also, I
00:37:34.099 --> 00:37:46.360
completely agree. And I remember talking about that in one of my earlier episodes when I learned about that this sort of, I think they call it narrative, when you when you just go through how you deal with things, and you're not necessarily addressing them.
00:37:43.960 --> 00:37:48.880
You're just going through it so that they can hear it out loud, and they can hear the process.
00:37:48.880 --> 00:38:20.039
And also, when my kids always tell me the fact that I admit that I make some really stupid dumb mistakes, and I used to make even worse ones when I was a teenager, gives them the the permission in their own minds to admit to their own mistakes and make their own mistakes. And I love, I love how you then go on to talk about, so what can we do? Because we have a really, really wonderful, important role in this and and what we're trying to do is create agency.
00:38:15.960 --> 00:38:24.619
So what, what is, you know, we're going to talk about agency. What is agency? How would you sum it up? So
00:38:24.679 --> 00:39:16.920
agency is the skill and the will to identify a meaningful goal, meaningful to yourself, and pursue it. And under, underneath that is the self awareness, the confident self awareness, to be able to identify something that is meaningful to you. So it could be what others are asking you to do. It could be, you know, what that is meaningful. I do want to be the captain of the football team or whatever, or it could, but it could not be. So it has to come from within. What is a meaningful goal to you? And the skill is, how do you pursue goals? So there is setting it.
00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:31.400
There's thinking of the steps to get there, crucially, crucially, and I'll keep coming back to this, there's having the confidence to ask for help to get there. If you have a barrier that you cannot jump over yourself, and this will happen all the time for young people.
00:39:31.400 --> 00:39:55.780
They're young people. It happens for adults too, so but having the confidence to ask for help to get there. So that's the skill. These are skills you have to practice. They don't just poof, show up when, when we send them off to college or work after they've left our home. You have to practice these like you practice reading or or algebra.
00:39:50.079 --> 00:40:04.199
And the will is what we call self efficacy, the the belief.
00:39:55.780 --> 00:40:50.079
Deep down that you are able to pursue something of meaning for yourself. So there's that those are that's a lot of pieces, but it's incredibly important, and we can let kids practice having agency in their learning in small little ways. It does not mean we give them the car keys and the house keys and the keys to the curriculum of the school like, you know, they're, you know, I, for some reason, every student we talked to kept saying, Why do I have to learn the quadratic equation? Somebody really doesn't out there the quadratic equation is getting a bad name. Well, they might have to like especially if they want to be an engineer or, you know, there's reasons, but do they know what they have to learn?
00:40:50.079 --> 00:41:51.280
Not necessarily, but they could make decisions. If you provided them with three different options for homework to demonstrate your mastery, they could choose which one they might want to pursue. And that very act of choice, think about it, it makes you if you're presented with three options, Rachel versus do this, you have to think, Oh, which one do I want to choose? And it only takes a minute or two, but it goes through this whole process of self reflection, Which am I interested in? A little spark, a little bit of autonomy, and then you have a little bit more ownership over the piece of which your choice is. You invest a little bit more. And it's this upward cycle. And that's one little, small thing that teachers can do in their classroom without even changing schools. And there's about six other small stylistic shifts like that that actually make a big difference for kids. Yeah, and
00:41:51.280 --> 00:42:15.719
I think, I think the teachers and parents this book, you know, get the book because actually they've got, you've got loads and loads of kind of things that you can go through to help you, because some of this stuff is step based, and it sort of just really helps reinforce that. But I loved that because there was a quote that children who have strong relationships with parents, neighbors or teachers, are 12 times more likely to flourish than those without regardless of their finances.
00:42:12.900 --> 00:42:40.039
And what you're talking about there in this, this, and you've mentioned a couple of times now, this, the ability to go and ask for help. I think we foster it by giving our children the opportunity to learn how to do that with us, how to how do I go and ask an adult or somebody for help and not have them slam me or fix me or, you know, they need to get that practice, knowing that it's not going to be just a negative experience, don't they? Yep.
00:42:40.400 --> 00:43:40.300
So this is data that comes out of very rigorous research on what is called relational health. And the data is so strong it looks at adverse childhood experiences such as trauma, losing a parent, not having enough to eat, severe neglect, like the homelessness, there's a, you know, really difficult things that kids go through and when kids have strong relational health, which is literally how connected they feel to their to adults, largely their caregivers. But it could, maybe it's a teacher or a pastor or a imam or, you know, a neighbor or an auntie or whatever they when they have strong relational health, they have better flourishing outcomes and student engagement, school engagement, than kids who have no adverse childhood experiences. Whoa, but no very weak relational health. So
00:43:40.780 --> 00:43:47.380
parents, listen, parents are power. We have so much power. We have so much power. Yes,
00:43:48.099 --> 00:44:15.719
this is part of why I said that parents are often overlooked, but they are really I feel they are a missing piece to shifting our systems. And it's not to put the burden on parents, but just for parents to know that they matter, and they matter in the adolescent years, when, when we think we don't and we we think that they just care about their parents, their peers, or their video games or social media, we do matter. We do and we
00:44:15.719 --> 00:44:44.199
have, we have all that we need in us. We don't need specific, you know, textbooks on, you know, new parenting skills. This is, this is connection. This is having a relationship with your child, where you notice and you and it's really interesting because you said, you quoted Sarah Jane blakemo, and I wrote her book on formation of teenagers. And, you know, her point was that identical identity formation is not a byproduct of adolescence.
00:44:39.380 --> 00:45:11.159
It's the main goal. This is what we're trying to do in adolescence, isn't it, and that they trying on their identities, like, what do I care about? Who do I want to be? What do I value and what can I contribute? And that we can really help with this by rooting our values in our family to. Yeah, and then allowing them to find because they'll find other things that to add to their identity, but giving them something strong to start from can make a massive difference, right?
00:45:11.159 --> 00:45:46.780
And being and being there for their exploration process, as long as they're not hurting themselves or other people, our job is to help them stand out, to fit in, which is the job of adolescents finding your unique contribution to the tribe you're in is how we have evolved. And that is what they're doing, and that is why they often are searching for meaning. They're asking big questions. They want to know how things fit together, and it's also why they get frustrated when we are just telling them.
00:45:43.900 --> 00:46:11.099
Here's the formula for the quadratic equation, not hey, why don't you go use it and try to do X, Y and Z with it and see how it works. And this is why it's important schools are short, short circuiting their ability to stand out and fit in, often through a really sort of standardized learning process.
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:29.960
And Jenny and I, my co author, are very clear. We're not against excellence or generalized knowledge. This is important, but in the world we live in, especially with generative AI, we need also for them to both acquire knowledge and learn how to apply it and figure out what meaning it has, yeah,
00:46:30.199 --> 00:46:39.619
and that's the stuff that comes on the periphery, you know, they're delivering a core, you know, obviously the teachers are going to have to teach, and they've got to do what they've been told they've got to do within reason.
00:46:39.619 --> 00:47:19.800
And then, you know, this is where we parents. So I you mentioned, I think, the alterable curriculum of the home. Yes, you know that. And then Ellen Galinsky, who argued that teens want their parents to respect them, and that you can do, you can involve them in decision making with your home curriculum. So you talk about having parent child conversations, and, you know, everyday events and getting their opinions, which is something that, you know, we do a lot of episodes, or I do research on all sorts of things that are happening in the world, and you can draw from them and use them as a springboard for having conversations with your kids, like, what do you think?
00:47:16.380 --> 00:47:20.840
And not pretending you know everything that's
00:47:20.840 --> 00:49:13.019
right, and the alterable curriculum of the home is a great sort of fun, great that a researcher several decades ago came up with in the US and did a massive study of what drives learning. And he found, you know, of course, in school, factors play a big part, but that what we do at home, which is what the algebra curriculum of the home is. It doesn't mean you have to home school or actually develop a curriculum. It's what we parents do at home when we interact with our kids, which costs nothing, yeah, and is available to every parent. Is two times more impactful, predictive of good learning outcomes and engagement in school than socioeconomic status. So it is something that is a real lever. And the core of that, as you said, Rachel, is how we talk with our adolescents, because discussion is to adolescents what cuddles is to infants. It's how we develop relationships, it's how they build their brain, it's how they grow and develop their sense of self. So there's a lot we can do, despite the messages that often come back from school, which is, Sammy didn't get a good grade on history and, you know, June or Samir needs to finish their algebra, so we should track how our kids are doing in school, but I would suggest, really only check in, if you must, once a week on their performance, do not check in. Yes, every day, I have a crap meeting at least once a day, I'm sure, and I don't not want to relive it. And it was not the end, end of my career.
00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:46.300
If I messed up on my PowerPoint presentation, which I do regularly, I run out of time I had the wrong slide. Whatever, my career is not over. No, I will reflect on it and try to do better next time. So if my kid gets a bad bombs a quiz, it is not the end of their life as a student, but I do check in once or twice, every once a week, or every two weeks, how are they doing? Because I if their grades, their performance really drops massively, all of a sudden, it is a sign that something is wrong or they need help. So you want to monitor.
00:49:42.639 --> 00:50:33.980
But really, what I do, and we talk a lot about this in the book, is I talk about the content of their learning, and I share what I'm learning. So hey, you know, and I know enough you know, on the days that they have science class, I'll ask about science class. I won't ask about science class on the days they don't, and I won't say just how was school? And stop there, because they're going to say fine or good, or boring or whatever. So you know this, as a journalist, you ask better questions, you get better answers. But a lot of it, we have a whole discussion guide in the book about tips to do this where it does. You can do it anywhere you are, wherever you're interacting at the dinner table, while you're making dinner, on the car ride to practice, while you're doing laundry, whatever it is. And it makes a big difference.
00:50:34.340 --> 00:50:50.019
And I think you were saying, go deep. Don't go what you know, actually, just go really go into the topic, rather than because then it sounds like you're genuinely engaged, which hopefully you are, but it's that, yeah, rather than skirting over. And another thing you talk about is transcendent thinking, which I love, and I think a lot of people will be like,
00:50:51.519 --> 00:50:53.739
what is that? And when we discovered it, so
00:50:53.739 --> 00:51:01.619
really, yeah, it's great. It's great the ability to do the exploring and questioning needed for their identity development. What
00:51:01.619 --> 00:52:27.199
do we mean by transcendent thinking? Is a term coined by an academic called Mary Helen mordino Yang, who's a neuroscientist, and what it is is when we toggle back and forth between and these are different parts of the brain networks that are firing when we are really focused on the here and now, which a lot of school is. So I'll give an example of a soccer game just to take it outside of the classroom, but the same is in the classroom. If you're playing soccer, you are running. You're looking who's going to pass to me? Who can I pass? Should I shoot? Who's open? Where's the space? You are thinking about the here and now, right now, and that fires up one part of the brain. Now you do not if you're so busy doing that when you're on the pitch, you are not thinking, huh? I wonder why female athletes get paid so much less than male athletes or Huh? I wonder why this is so popular in Brazil and South Africa and, you know, not in Japan. I don't know. I'm making that up. It's the meaning making part of the brain you're fitting the here and now information die. You know which is important we need. We need that. We need to know what is going on. But this is the reflection part.
00:52:24.440 --> 00:52:32.659
It's basically powerful reflection to understand what's hap how the world is working.
00:52:33.320 --> 00:53:32.960
And when you go back and forth between the two, that is transcendent thinking. And it's what we need to make meaning of the world. And what this academic Mary Helen, found is that process of trend, of going back and forth between the here and now and powerful reflection literally grows connectivity in the brain and predicts a couple years out, if kids are more likely to say I know who I am, I choose my own goals. I i ask friends to join me in endeavors, versus, which is signs of strong identity formation, versus, I rarely do anything on my own, I go with the crowd. I'm afraid of, you know, putting myself out there, which is weak identity formation, and we all as parents, do not want the latter.
00:53:33.199 --> 00:53:36.260
No, no, that's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing.
00:53:36.260 --> 00:54:20.159
Wow. What a great tip. Just there and you. And also, I was sort of looking at the various things that we can be doing as parents, which is things like, and this has come up with Angela Duckworth, who said, Never ignore your passions. And she's the she's the woman who talks about grit. And also Elaine Taylor class, when I talked to her about, you know, parenting ADHD kids or or neuro divergent kids, is this Holding, holding up a belief for them that you can see something, something interesting, and pointing to it like, oh, I noticed. And one of my daughters, I always say, did you notice this is your superpower? That's different.
00:54:16.559 --> 00:54:30.079
I'm seeing that you can do this, and I'm not seeing that amongst other people, and it can be some really crazy, small thing, but just holding that up and saying, Oh, I think you're really good, really can give them a direction.
00:54:30.559 --> 00:55:39.260
We we heard that from every kid we interviewed, and the and the data bears that out. Where it's different from saying, I want you to be a piano player. I'm going to stick you in piano lessons. Yes, it's, oh, you seem to gravitate towards, well, this is maybe when they're younger, who knows? Or it can happen when they're older. You seem to always gravitate toward the piano. And you use you seem to really love music. And you know, there's a whole world out there that you know you can participate in. Yeah, so spotting strengths is something that adults can do for kids, and we have a whole again, in the book, we don't have time. I know we have to wrap up in like three minutes, but in the book, look for the Holland codes, which are these six sort of strength based areas that are used all over the world and in most of the career counselors in the high schools in the US and we as parents can spot these. Can spot our kids strengths too. It doesn't need to just be a career counselor, and it doesn't mean we're telling them to do something.
00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:58.179
But so many kids said I didn't see that in myself until someone pointed it out. And the other piece is connecting it to a pathway to right? You know, it doesn't have to be a career, per se. It could be, but it could also just be an interest, an interest. And interests are the canvas upon which kids develop their agency and explore muscles.
00:55:58.539 --> 00:56:41.559
Wow. And I just want, before you go, I want to coming back to these, these modes again, because we've said you can switch between them. And one of the really incredible things that you pointed out is that once we understand what these modes are, so the achievement mode, the path is it, the passenger mode, and the resistor mode, and then the agency mode, once we know what these are and we can name them, then what we can do is we can get our kids to start noticing for themselves when they're in those different like we don't try and say, you've got to always be taking agency. That we can actually say, have you in which mode Do you think you you spent most of your day in? Or what you know, did you change modes when you went to different classes so that they can start to take responsibility themselves
00:56:41.739 --> 00:56:44.739
Absolutely.
00:56:41.739 --> 00:56:50.679
And Rachel, I think it was you who talked about, with your daughter, you would have this color coded thing. Are you in red? Are you in amber, right?
00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:53.260
Yeah. I think that was Susie.
00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:53.260
Actually, maybe that was Susie.
00:56:53.260 --> 00:58:11.400
I couldn't, I couldn't remember which of you was talking about it. So Susie was talking about, yes, sort of giving a color coding system to naming her emotional state, or both of them, emotional state, which is an act of self reflection, and that is the exact same thing here. So if you can give kids this language, and we worked really hard to make sure this language was accessible, the modes sound like what they are, and it it is also a tool for you and for them to talk through how things are going. Because kid, there may be reasons kids are in passenger mode, and it may be that sometimes passenger mode is the right thing to do in a particular class. If it's easy, they need to coast and they're super stressed about other classes, and if they are in achiever motor explorer mode, through all of them, they won't get any sleep. It's okay to take passenger motors. Yes, I love that. And it may be that sometimes, sometimes resistor mode is right. Are you being bullied? Yes, hit back. Stand up, defend yourself. The healthy response, yes, yes, rather than take it and withdraw. And, you know, horrible things happen, which is tragic and happens all the time. So there are cases when each mode is appropriate.
00:58:11.400 --> 00:58:32.059
My son, who was 16, wanted desperately to get his driver's permit. And I said, Okay, he spends a lot of time in passenger mode and explore mode outside of school. And I said, Okay, well, you got to, I'm not going to take you until you get into achiever mode and you memorize, learn the stuff, because otherwise I'm going to wait in line and the Department of Motor Vehicles to for you.
00:58:29.360 --> 00:58:34.159
We're not going to pass, and I'm gonna have to go back again.
00:58:32.059 --> 00:58:42.099
It's gonna be annoying. He's like, right? I'm gonna get into achiever mode. And he did. He studied up, and it didn't matter that. It wasn't interesting. He just needed to pass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
00:58:42.099 --> 00:58:53.320
love that. I love that great incentive. Give them an incentive that they actually want, right? Because otherwise you're just never going to get them to do things that they aren't that interested in. No, that's brilliant.
00:58:53.320 --> 00:59:14.639
Rebecca, thank you so much. What an amazing, fascinating book, wonderful discussion. You've really been very clear and explained an awful lot to us. I think there's so much in here for us parents, certainly for me, I spent a lot of time going through like with the fine tooth comb going, I've got to remember that. Got to remember that. So yeah, I highly recommend the book, and good luck with it. And congratulations. Thank
00:59:14.639 --> 00:59:24.380
you so much, Rachel. And thank you for all that you do. You have a really incredible resource you're giving to parents and and we, we of parents of the world, are so grateful.
00:59:24.800 --> 01:00:01.019
Oh, I really appreciate that. Thank you. That was Dr Rebecca Winthrop, making my day with that lovely compliment. Don't forget to share this with others. If you enjoy it and give it a five star rating, you can find links to her and details of the book in the podcast notes. I'll put more on the website. And if you sign up to emails, I always try to send out a summary of the key points from the interview, so you've got something you can keep. Go to www.teenagersuntangled.com and email me with questions or suggestions for topics at teenagersuntangled@gmail.com thanks for listening. Have a great week. Bye, Bye, for now, bye.
