Dr. Madeline Levine, READY OR NOT
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[1:42]people find great podcasts. Hopefully like mine. Thank you. Hi, just a little disclaimer here. I'm so
[1:47]sorry. But for some reason, my microphone did not work that well during the recording of this
[1:52]episode with the amazing Madeline Levine PhD. You should totally listen to everywhere she has to say
[1:58]and you can still kind of hear my questions, but really the best part is Madeline herself.
[2:02]So or Dr. Levine, I should say so you can still hear me, but I apologize for the mix up.
[2:08]I'm really, really sorry. I don't know what I did wrong that day, but don't punish Dr. Levine
[2:12]for my mistake and please listen because she has such good advice for all of us, especially right
[2:17]now. So thank you. I'm here today with Madeline Levine PhD, who is a psychologist and the author
[2:22]of the New York Times best selling books, the price of privilege, teach your children well
[2:27]and most recently ready or not preparing our kids to thrive in an uncertain and rapidly changing
[2:32]world. She has close to 40 years of experience as a clinician, consultant, educator, and author.
[2:38]Dr. Levine is a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project at Stanford's Graduate School of
[2:42]Education. A graduate of SUNY Buffalo with a BA in English and an MA in Education,
[2:47]Dr. Levine earned her MA and PhD in Psychology in California. She currently lives with her
[2:52]husband in San Francisco and is the proud mother of three adult sons and a new grandchild.
[2:57]Welcome Dr. Levine. Thanks for coming on most and have time to read books.
[3:00]My pleasure. So can you please tell listeners what ready or not preparing our kids to thrive in
[3:05]an uncertain and rapidly changing world is about, although that really did kind of give it a
[3:09]moment. That's like cool. When I've heard anybody ask me that, I say read the title.
[3:14]Because it's really about that. I'm interested in children and parenting and I think that
[3:20]times have changed so radically. Not that the uncertainty is so great because times are always uncertain,
[3:26]but the velocity of change is incredibly fast. And so if you have a child like you do
[3:34]of those kinds of ages, nobody really knows what the world will look like and certainly what
[3:39]their jobs will be like. So I wanted to take a look at how people behave in situations of uncertainty.
[3:47]It's definitely when you're introducing all of the things that we could be uncertain about. I started
[3:52]getting like so stressed out. Oh gosh, I haven't been worrying enough about these things. These things
[3:57]are also uncertain anyway. Right. But thank you for giving me the questions of coping mechanism.
[4:02]So this is your third book. Why this book next? Why did you want to write this book?
[4:07]So the reason is really important. So thanks for asking that question. My interest is in
[4:12]kids' mental health and teenagers' mental health. And so I had written two really popular books,
[4:18]price of privilege, sort of spawned movement. So there's a whole bunch of us running around the
[4:24]country talking about kids need more sleep and less pressure and less homework and more downtime.
[4:30]And the reality is while it helped individual families and kids, it wasn't a tidal wave of change.
[4:39]And if anything, rates of impairment have gone up. So rates of anxiety have gone up,
[4:46]rates of self-mutilation have gone up, rates of depression have gone up. So that would be pretty
[4:51]depressing to think that you spent 12 years trying to fix something and it's only gotten worse.
[4:58]But instead of getting depressed, I actually got really curious like there are really smart people
[5:03]researching this and the needle doesn't move. Why not? So I decided to not look at my usual
[5:10]suspects, which are psychologists and educators. And see if I could find people who had been in
[5:16]situations of great change and what they had to say. And whether or not there was something about
[5:21]the environment that made us not think well because parents are always saying to me,
[5:28]you're right, I should do it, but I just can't or I can't swim upstream or they can sleep when
[5:36]they graduate or these kinds of things. So when I first started 13 years ago, there was pushback
[5:43]against this like you're trying to lower the bar, which I wasn't. I'm Jewish and my husband's
[5:49]surgeon, you know, sort of like we're not known for lowering the bar. But it was really to get kids
[5:55]to work at their best. And I really wanted to know why the needle wasn't moving at all. And what
[6:03]about the way our brain processes uncertainty makes it harder to make good decisions.
[6:11]I found a few things. One is under uncertain conditions, we have very conservative brains.
[6:18]And so we tend to look for past to the past for solutions when we should be looking to the future.
[6:25]So I'll often hear something like well, brown worked for me. So my kid has to get straight
[6:31]A's and I don't care if they sleep that much and they have to take APs to get into brown because
[6:36]that's your ticket. Maybe. And just it just is likely maybe not. We just don't know. So there's
[6:43]tremendous consensus about the kinds of skills kids will need going forward, but no consensus
[6:50]about what they'll be doing none. So in talking to AI people or futurists or things like that,
[6:57]it goes from well, you'll probably have a self-driving car in 20 years and maybe your refrigerator
[7:02]will tell you if you show it on milk to your brain will be fused with your computer and you
[7:08]will be a cyborg. So there's like zero consensus on that. And if you really don't know what your
[7:16]kids are going to do, I think that's really tough for parents. And I think there are three reasons why
[7:24]well, there are many reasons when the needle didn't move, but the three that I see is this tremendous
[7:30]uncertainty and anxiety, right? Anxiety is the number one diagnosis for kids and their parents, one
[7:36]and three. There is social media, which I think leads to a kind of compulsive comparison
[7:44]comparing. I cracked up in the times they had that article about, I wish I could remember the
[7:50]title exactly, but it's like, I feel bad about my body after watching JLo. And that was written
[7:55]by, you know, a grown woman. And she's like complaining about it. What if you're a 13 year old kid
[8:02]with pimples and yeah, it was right. So pressure uncertainty, social media, which I think has
[8:17]really raised anxiety because of constant comparison and the 24 hour news cycle, which is just
[8:25]becoming bigger and bigger. And so the constant exposure to school massacre to the horrible things
[8:33]that are going on. And I tell people to get on YouTube and take a look at a preschool drill, active
[8:42]shooter drill. And you see these little kids with people in the hallway and it's horrifying. So
[8:50]there's some research that says, if you're exposed to negative imagery that you will perceive
[8:56]the world is more dangerous than it actually is. So parents who worry about sending their kids out
[9:00]on a bike, they really shouldn't be worried because violent crime is actually down. But the constant
[9:08]exposure to these horrendous massacres in this country, I think makes people very fearful.
[9:13]Yeah, sure. Today I was reading the paper dropping off the kids like in the car on the way there.
[9:19]I was like, you know what? I just don't think I can read about this current virus anymore.
[9:22]I think I'm just going to not worry about it and wait until like it's too much. It's like too much
[9:27]to keep all that worry inside and then like go out and wish your kid a good day at school, right?
[9:32]Right. I mean, right. And I think the other thing about that's worrisome about it is that
[9:38]when with that overwhelmed, I think we get we throw our hands up exactly what you said and say,
[9:44]hey, I'm just going back to my house and my kids and leave me alone. And you know, we're at a
[9:50]political moment in this country where we can't afford passivity. And I think that that constant
[9:57]exposure does. We end up being like,
[10:00]Brown with victims, right?
[10:01]You know, it's like, did you hear about the mask?
[10:03]I don't want to hear about it.
[10:04]Did you hear about, I don't want to hear about it?
[10:06]And I think that leads to a kind of passivity.
[10:09]When my kids were young and they sprayed chemicals
[10:13]on the apples in the local supermarket,
[10:15]we all went picketed.
[10:17]We didn't feel helpless.
[10:19]We felt like we could affect some change.
[10:21]And we did, they stopped spraying Alar on the apples.
[10:25]But I think now people are starting to feel like
[10:28]it's out of control in this,
[10:29]nothing they can do.
[10:30]And that's a bad feeling because helplessness leads
[10:33]to depression and anxiety.
[10:34]Yeah, that whole section of learned helplessness.
[10:36]Learned helplessness, right?
[10:38]Throw back to my ecology.
[10:40]The use I did research that confirmed
[10:42]that people prefer to make choices based on known variables,
[10:45]even though making it slightly less certain choice
[10:48]could potentially lead to greater rewards.
[10:50]That's what you were basically just arguing on.
[10:51]So I wondered if this is like why I book vacations
[10:55]to the same place over and over,
[10:57]even though there's so many parts of the world
[10:59]to see you things to do.
[11:01]And yet this is like a safe choice.
[11:03]Is that, is this one of the hacks
[11:05]that parents tend to use?
[11:07]I think, look, you know, you were talking about
[11:10]having what it's like to have four kids.
[11:11]I had three kids.
[11:13]I think we overestimate our bandwidth.
[11:16]And so if you're handling four kids and a career
[11:21]and friendships and being a wife
[11:22]and being all these kinds of things,
[11:24]if you can simplify parts of your life,
[11:27]I mean, it was always a discussion.
[11:29]My husband always wanted to go someplace else.
[11:31]And I always wanted to go to the same place
[11:33]because it was easier for me.
[11:35]And, you know, you have to remember
[11:37]that the brain sees unpredictability as a threat.
[11:41]So it because it has to expend more energy,
[11:44]figuring out what to do.
[11:46]And so I think we reserve bandwidth
[11:49]by doing what we know will be successful.
[11:52]It's actually just resolved a long-running conflict
[11:54]with my husband.
[11:55]Well, you can tell on my said so.
[11:58]There's another thing I tend to do,
[11:59]at least I don't know if anybody else does this.
[12:01]At the last minute, I realize, wait,
[12:03]I don't want to go to the same place.
[12:04]Right, right.
[12:05]It's imminent.
[12:06]And now I have the bandwidth, I guess, to focus on it.
[12:08]That's right.
[12:09]And so, and it doesn't feel threatening to you anymore, right?
[12:12]It's, if you have to plan for six months,
[12:15]it is threatening because it's gonna take a lot of time.
[12:17]If you're walking out the door and you say,
[12:19]hey, I'd rather go there.
[12:21]No time for it to be a threat.
[12:23]Thank you so much.
[12:25]What's your husband saying?
[12:26]His name is Kyle.
[12:27]Sorry, Kyle.
[12:28]Yes.
[12:29]So you have a quote from sports that you talked about
[12:31]eventually the book.
[12:32]Well, the most important play is always the next one.
[12:35]Right.
[12:35]How does this relate to parenting?
[12:36]Parenting.
[12:38]You know, I think, I think we get stuck
[12:41]in what's happening in the moment being incredibly important.
[12:45]So I can remember when my kids were young,
[12:49]every decision seemed like a big decision.
[12:53]You know, select soccer or traveling soccer
[12:56]or a local soccer or whatever.
[12:59]And we get stuck in that and go in a way
[13:03]that our kids don't necessarily.
[13:04]So we go to a soccer game and they'd be a bad call
[13:08]and the kids would lose and everybody'd be really mad.
[13:11]But then we'd go after pizza and the kids were fine
[13:14]and the parents were still sitting at a table,
[13:16]you know, kind of bitchin' about the bad call.
[13:19]So I think to the extent to which we can let go of things
[13:22]and stay ahead, it's helpful.
[13:25]Once you've learned what you needed to learn
[13:27]from something that didn't work,
[13:29]it's time just to move on.
[13:31]And my favorite line actually is from Carol Dweck,
[13:35]who is Stanford, who's known for, you know, mindset.
[13:40]But she uses the word yet and so she'll say,
[13:44]a kid will say, I'll never be good at that.
[13:46]And she says, not yet, you know, or a kid will say,
[13:49]I just can't get calculus or whatever it is.
[13:52]Well, not yet.
[13:53]And I think that's a good ton for this idea
[13:57]that you get things quickly,
[13:58]because you don't just like this in a side
[14:01]and don't like the word passion.
[14:03]Like everybody's talking about what's your kid's passion
[14:06]and the kid is like six, like they're not supposed
[14:09]to have a passion yet, passions take a lot of work.
[14:13]And I don't think we acknowledge that.
[14:15]A lot of work, a lot of failure,
[14:17]a lot of falling down and getting up again.
[14:19]And so I think you keep your eye forward.
[14:22]I think when I was your age,
[14:25]I tended to see mothering as a snapshot.
[14:28]Like, oh, this kid's doing really well,
[14:31]but this kid's not doing as well.
[14:33]And now it's a movie.
[14:34]I mean, all those things that seem so important
[14:38]at the time really pale next to the fact
[14:43]that you want to turn out kids that are good people
[14:46]who have some sense of purpose
[14:48]and who have good relationships.
[14:50]And whether or not they got to be or see
[14:52]in their fifth grade,
[14:55]social studies becomes really irrelevant.
[14:59]So your father sadly passed away when you were younger.
[15:03]And your mother had a very old fashioned parenting style
[15:08]telling you things like, you should know your place,
[15:11]don't have such big eyes,
[15:13]telling you even don't be so smart around the boys.
[15:16]Things are like completely different.
[15:17]And yet, you give your parents all this credit
[15:20]for your ability to synthesize information
[15:22]and all these other interpersonal skills
[15:24]which you end up using as a psychologist.
[15:26]What do you think the effect of your parents
[15:28]has really been on you?
[15:31]Yeah, that was really interesting question.
[15:34]Losing my father was a terrible thing
[15:37]to have happened that I was very close with him.
[15:39]And I was 17 when he died.
[15:43]So I was just going to college and sort of launching.
[15:47]It's an important time for a girl to have a father around.
[15:51]And I ended up actually with a pretty severe anxiety disorder.
[15:55]After that, I had panic attacks for many years,
[15:58]which makes me an expert on anxiety
[16:03]both by training and experience
[16:05]and how debilitating it can be.
[16:08]My mother, it's interesting, you said old fashioned.
[16:10]At that time, it was so thorough.
[16:14]Right, at that time.
[16:15]And I think the impact that had on me,
[16:18]and they were incredible integrity.
[16:20]And so it's not that they helped me to learn
[16:25]to synthesize, they listened to me.
[16:28]And I think life is about chance as much as anything else.
[16:34]Chance favors the prepared wine, you know?
[16:36]And my parents were smart, my mom went to college,
[16:39]my father never did, but they were really curious.
[16:42]And I was really curious.
[16:44]So I'd come to the table with whatever it was,
[16:46]marijuana laws or gay marriage, even back then,
[16:51]or political stuff, my very first conversation
[16:54]that I remember was, I must have been really young,
[16:56]but Adley Stevenson was running for president.
[17:00]And nobody liked him because he was an egghead.
[17:03]That was the word they used for him.
[17:04]And that was weeks of conversation
[17:06]about what was wrong with being smart.
[17:09]And so in the process of their receptivity
[17:13]to the outside world, I think I learned to translate
[17:18]things especially as like a little older
[17:22]into the language of just every day sitting around the table.
[17:27]And I think that's carried through in my writing, you know?
[17:30]I'm not like an academic writer.
[17:33]I kind of write the way I talked around the table.
[17:36]So that was helpful.
[17:38]The biggest thing was their sense of takunalum
[17:42]or healing the world, yeah, I saw you, Mrs.
[17:45]That whenever there was an accident,
[17:48]my dad was a cop, he'd be outside in a slash helping people.
[17:52]That was a real, we used to have a box in the kitchen.
[17:55]And at the end of the day, you'd put whatever pennies
[17:58]and nickels and dimes you had.
[18:00]And that went, and then you decided on a project together
[18:03]for helping other people.
[18:05]So that was incredibly important.
[18:07]My mother's stuff, what my mother actually used to say to me
[18:10]is don't beat the boys because it was a very good ping-pong player
[18:13]and I didn't beat any of the boys.
[18:15]And she'd come down to the basement and now
[18:17]and you're beating the boys again, I think she thought
[18:20]that would lessen my chances of getting married.
[18:22]And that was like the deal back then.
[18:25]Did it have a lasting impact?
[18:26]Yes, because two of my best friends now
[18:29]are the next generation after me, both physicians.
[18:33]And they won't even go to like a woman entrepreneur
[18:37]or a woman doctor thing because they consider,
[18:40]they don't think that way anymore.
[18:42]So they'll go to an entrepreneurial thing or a physician thing,
[18:47]but not specific to being a woman.
[18:50]So in some ways, it encouraged the adaptability
[18:53]because what did I do when that was the way people thought.
[18:57]I worked at the Naval Hospital and they were getting
[19:00]a new head of psychiatry.
[19:01]It was a woman and all the secretaries hit her male
[19:06]because they didn't want to work under.
[19:08]I mean, it was such a different time.
[19:11]And my solution back then was to go into the wing
[19:16]of somebody I always found somebody who was willing
[19:20]to take me under their wing.
[19:22]I just had a funny experience.
[19:23]Mayor May not relate.
[19:24]I went to a reading at book passage by local independent
[19:28]bookstore and it was Robert Haas, who
[19:31]has been the poet laureate of the United States twice.
[19:35]And he was my teacher at Buffalo.
[19:38]And so I'm speaking there 10 days after he's speaking there.
[19:42]And I'm like, wow, you remember me?
[19:43]Oh, yeah, I do.
[19:45]And he was like, aren't you speaking here?
[19:47]And I said yes.
[19:48]And he said, Madeline, what took you so long?
[19:51]Which was sweet because that college was
[19:54]the beginning of understanding that there were people
[19:58]who didn't feel you had.
[20:00]to hide your light or be subservient.
[20:04]But it was so, just, you give me memories.
[20:07]When I did my PhD, you have a PhD meeting
[20:11]at the end with your committee.
[20:13]And these four men walked into my house.
[20:18]And the first thing they said is, could we have coffee?
[20:21]And I was not a coffee drinker then.
[20:23]I didn't know how to make a cup of coffee.
[20:25]And they were a poem.
[20:28]So things changed.
[20:30]Things changed.
[20:31]I just have a carry like me and someone
[20:32]would have to know the difference.
[20:34]All right, cheers.
[20:36]Right.
[20:36]And now we have Starbucks, so you know, right?
[20:39]You don't have to make, but you have to understand in a way
[20:42]that back then, it wasn't like, oh my god,
[20:45]I'm being screwed by this or at Buffalo.
[20:47]I, you know, it's very good student.
[20:49]I graduated five by the cap of blah, blah, blah.
[20:51]I went to my counselor and said, I'm interested in medicine.
[20:53]They sent me to the school in nursing.
[20:56]Didn't want to be a nurse.
[20:57]But didn't have any thoughts of, why did they do that?
[21:00]I mean, that came later in the woman's movement
[21:04]and all the things that have changed opportunity
[21:07]and were no in and done, of course, by the way.
[21:10]And the one thing from your life also
[21:12]that I found so interesting and something
[21:14]that, as parents, probably we would all
[21:16]like to replicate with our own children
[21:18]is your, you touched on this adaptability,
[21:21]but to follow the squiggly path, right?
[21:23]That not every job opportunity is the right one.
[21:26]And you say in the book, like,
[21:27]you didn't beat yourself up about it.
[21:28]It's just, you realize, okay, that's not the thing
[21:30]for me moving on.
[21:32]And I don't think that's the way a lot
[21:34]of people respond to things like that.
[21:35]It seems that it can seem like the end of the world.
[21:37]Right.
[21:38]Oh, no, I tried this and didn't work.
[21:39]And how do you build up that resilience?
[21:42]Like, what do you think they did to you?
[21:44]And like, did you do that to your kids
[21:46]and what should parents everywhere do?
[21:47]And how does that make us ready to adapt
[21:50]in this rapidly changing world?
[21:51]Right.
[21:52]I think people have misplaced ideas
[21:55]about how kids become confident.
[21:57]I mean, to be able to say this job is not for me
[22:00]and I'm gonna do something else,
[22:01]it's really about confidence
[22:03]that you'll be able to do something else
[22:05]and you'll get another job.
[22:07]And so, you know, there was this long period of time
[22:09]about how do you build self-esteem,
[22:12]which was nuts and it was like every kid gets a trophy.
[22:15]And I was once, this is a visual.
[22:18]I was once in a classroom, a preschool classroom
[22:21]and this little kid, mom comes in with this little kid
[22:24]and he's walking to hang up his coat
[22:27]and mom is right behind him clapping.
[22:30]Good job, good job, honey.
[22:32]And it's like, guess what?
[22:34]He's four, he's supposed to know
[22:35]how to walk across and hang up his coat, right?
[22:38]That is not how you build confidence in a kid.
[22:41]And I think that that whole self-esteem movement
[22:45]did a lot of damage and, you know,
[22:47]the researchers that it did a lot of damage
[22:49]and it did not build self-esteem.
[22:51]I think the way you build self-esteem
[22:53]is to let kids learn how to master things
[22:56]without breathing down their neck
[22:59]to see how they're doing.
[23:01]I'm back to Carol Dweck for some reason.
[23:03]She has this marvelous experiment
[23:05]where she gives four-year-olds puzzles.
[23:08]And the first set of puzzles are easy, they all do it.
[23:11]And the next set of puzzles she tells half the group,
[23:13]oh, you're so smart, you know, you're like,
[23:15]you're gonna get this and the other group
[23:17]she tells nothing to.
[23:18]And if you watch it for the first couple minutes,
[23:21]the group she told is so smart, looks like really good.
[23:24]But that fades very quickly.
[23:26]And the group that didn't have that extra burden
[23:30]of pleasing the adults and looking so smart,
[23:33]they way outstripped the kids
[23:35]who were told how smart they were.
[23:37]So I think to the extent a real positive
[23:40]in the way parents used to parent,
[23:42]they just weren't that involved.
[23:43]And you learned to pick yourself up.
[23:47]And you learned that it wasn't the end of the world.
[23:49]You know, I never hear parents say something like,
[23:52]oh, you can handle that.
[23:53]You know, I think that's the most important thing
[23:56]a parent can say as opposed to,
[23:58]even as opposed to how did that feel
[24:00]or how do you feel about that,
[24:01]which is, you know, another, tell me more.
[24:04]What does this psychologist say?
[24:05]Tell me more.
[24:06]But just letting kids find their way.
[24:09]They all day, to everybody.
[24:10]By the way, damn it.
[24:11]Do you know who comes in here?
[24:12]I'm like, tell you more.
[24:13]Yes.
[24:14]Now I have to find a new one.
[24:15]No, but that, I mean, you know,
[24:17]people are always like, can you read my mind?
[24:18]What does this psychologist do?
[24:20]And it's like, no, I'm just incredibly curious.
[24:22]Tell me more.
[24:23]And I think that opens up the conversation.
[24:26]And I think the fact that I knew my parents were proud of me,
[24:29]but they left me to my own devices.
[24:33]You know, I was fortunate.
[24:34]I was good at some things and not good at some things.
[24:38]And it was all the same.
[24:39]It didn't change.
[24:40]I didn't feel any of my value rested on the fact
[24:43]that I was an A student in English
[24:46]and probably a C student in math.
[24:48]I was a beloved kid, regardless of my grades.
[24:53]You have a section in your book called For Moms.
[24:55]It's harder to find fun.
[24:57]Yes.
[24:58]Thank you for that second.
[24:59]What can moms do about that?
[25:01]So I'm aware that being a mother is a trajectory
[25:05]and that when you have young children,
[25:07]those are my son has a baby.
[25:09]And those first few months, I have nothing to say.
[25:12]It's exhausting.
[25:13]You do the best you can.
[25:15]You sleep deprived.
[25:16]And you're not going to have a lot of fun.
[25:18]Other than the miracle of having a child.
[25:21]I think that intensive parenting,
[25:23]this kind of intensive parenting,
[25:25]like all your money and all your time
[25:27]and all your energy going into your kids's misplaced
[25:32]on a whole bunch of levels.
[25:33]It's misplaced for the kid.
[25:35]It's a burden for a child to feel that their performance
[25:39]is what dictates their mother's state of mind.
[25:42]And it sure changes ourselves terribly.
[25:46]And so I think in ready or not,
[25:48]I talk about how in retrospect having three boys that
[25:52]meant every weekend, I was at some soccer game
[25:56]or lacrosse game or whatever.
[25:58]And it's not that I didn't think I shouldn't be at them
[26:00]because there was a sense of community
[26:02]when there's not a lot of community left.
[26:05]But for sure, if I had to do over again,
[26:09]I'd go to one a month or two a month instead of every weekend
[26:13]and spend some of that time with a girlfriend
[26:16]or reading a book, breakfast with my husband,
[26:19]laying in bed, doing something because we can't
[26:24]parent that intensely in four kids.
[26:26]I mean, that's huge number of children to keep track of.
[26:30]So I think it would help for mothers
[26:34]to start thinking about looking at what their day is.
[26:37]Like I do this, we do this to challenge success all the time.
[26:40]We make 24 hours, right?
[26:42]And you put in your sleep
[26:45]and for kids going to school and homework and sports
[26:48]and whatever.
[26:49]And the kid looks at it and sees he's working 34 hours a day,
[26:52]but there's only 24 hours in the day.
[26:55]And I think that's good exercise for moms is where do you find,
[26:59]and I'm realistic, you know, it's not like you're
[27:02]going to have hundreds of things.
[27:04]But I worked part time when my kids were growing up.
[27:07]And I think that was an enormous help for them.
[27:10]And I think you find something that interests you.
[27:14]I just gave a talk and a woman came over to me
[27:17]and said, I just want you to know you changed my life
[27:19]with that stuff about moms because I heard you 12 years ago.
[27:24]And 12 of us, no, 10 of us went out and formed a tennis team.
[27:29]And we still play, so it's years later.
[27:31]Understanding that carving out time for yourself
[27:34]is critical for you, but it's also critical monitoring
[27:37]for your child, that there are other things in the world
[27:42]besides just there, just them.
[27:45]And I think the world's so broken right now
[27:47]that it's really important for kids
[27:49]to see that there's some responsibility
[27:51]to something other than accomplishment and performance
[27:55]and their GPA.
[27:57]Don't worry, I agree.
[27:58]When you're writing, where and when, how do you write these books?
[28:02]Do you do all the research and then you sit down, carve out time?
[28:05]Like, what was your process like writing this book, for instance?
[28:08]So 80% of the book is laying in bed thinking.
[28:11]So my husband will get up for work in the morning
[28:14]and he'll say, I have to go to work.
[28:16]What are you doing?
[28:16]And I'm like, I'm working.
[28:19]No, I'm not sure he have a totally bought that,
[28:21]but that's true.
[28:23]But it's absolutely true.
[28:24]So the vast majority of writing a book for me,
[28:28]because I like writing, the vast majority of it
[28:30]is what do I have to say?
[28:32]What's missing?
[28:33]How do these things fit together?
[28:36]I think what I'm good at is sort of a natural tone,
[28:40]but also weaving things together.
[28:43]I don't think I'm the most creative person by a long shot.
[28:46]What's smartest, so none of that.
[28:48]I think my real interest is how did these pieces fit together?
[28:53]This wasn't working, why not?
[28:55]And it goes right back to your point.
[28:57]It wasn't like this isn't working.
[28:59]Oh, shoot, I've wasted 12 years.
[29:02]I mean, I think you're maintaining your curiosity
[29:06]in the world is incredibly important.
[29:09]So I'd say 80% of writing a book for me is figuring out
[29:13]what I want to say, how things fit together, frankly.
[29:18]Part of it is finding something I don't know anything about.
[29:21]And when I handed in the chapter on the brain,
[29:25]Gail, my editor said to me, I'm really glad
[29:27]you took neuropsychology, but your audience didn't.
[29:32]And so that had to be trimmed back.
[29:35]But after writing about kids so long,
[29:37]it was like, what am I missing?
[29:39]What's interesting that I can learn.
[29:41]And then I have a little office on a garden,
[29:44]and I never go into the garden, but I can see it.
[29:47]And I'm not a discipline, my son writes also, my middle son.
[29:51]And he's like, oh, every morning, and he's at the net.
[29:55]I learned having all those kids all my writing
[29:58]took place between 10 and one.
[29:59]I wrote.
[30:00]price of privilege and teacher children well and two books before that between 10 and one in the
[30:04]morning because it was quiet. Why does nice? Do you know what your next big idea is yet for the next
[30:11]book? Are you still considering? I'm not sure. But if I do, if I do write again, I will write about
[30:19]this stage of life. I really feel like I've said a lot of what I have to say about kids unless
[30:25]things change radically. But it strikes me that me and many other people have written about
[30:32]child development. There's dozens of us who are interested in child development and there's a whole
[30:37]literature on child development. But there's not on parent development. There are no books that are,
[30:44]this is the trajectory of parent development. And we change over the period of time that we
[30:51]raise our children. We change radically and to think that the person you are now is going to
[30:58]be the person you're going to be in 20 years is foolish. You won't be. But nobody's looked at that.
[31:04]So again, it's the same kind of, if I get interested, which I obviously am because I'm talking
[31:09]about it, it would be about the lack of information about what you're going to face and what kinds of
[31:17]resources you're going to need. And yeah, that's probably what I do. You should structure it around
[31:22]the scene in this book with your son when you were so sad and you said, yeah, I don't have kids
[31:29]anymore. And he said, no, I don't have children anymore. And he said, you always have kids,
[31:34]we're going to find this quote for a message of where was it? What was something like that?
[31:39]Yeah, if you don't have, I said, my children are grounded. You said, you don't have,
[31:44]he told you, you don't have children anymore. Mom, you'll always have kids. Right. Which is so sweet.
[31:50]Right. That's my favorite. That's my favorite line in the book. Me too. Yeah, that or go play.
[31:55]You know, when he's telling me instead of sitting in the stands and being bored watching my 800
[32:00]soccer game, he says, why don't you guys go play, which is why I say it's a burden for the kids to see
[32:06]you week after weeks, sitting up there. You know, you work like a dog all week long. And then you
[32:13]watch children kick a ball. And so yeah, those are my two favorite lines. And it, yeah, it is about
[32:19]that. It is about that change in your relationship with your kids. I have two daughter-in-law's
[32:27]all of a sudden. Well, that's a whole new thing. I have a granddaughter. That's a whole new thing.
[32:33]And right now, I'm sort of realizing that that as much as I love them, they're not my children.
[32:38]My children know me. They know how I talk about things. I know them. So now I have to adapt to
[32:44]new people, new configurations. Just my husband and myself in the house. You know, what's that
[32:50]going to be like? And yeah, they're always your kids, but your relationship changes. And you
[32:57]wanted to change. But it's a mixed, it's a mixed bag. Maybe I had an interesting experience. I had
[33:03]written a piece called losing Lauren when my oldest son went away to college. And I never
[33:09]showed it to anybody. It was highly personal. And it was a difficult time for me for my kid to go
[33:16]away and going away to college was when I lost my dad. Anyway, it was, it was psychologically
[33:21]demanding time. So I wrote this piece about how it's hard to let your kid go away. And unfortunately,
[33:29]the magazine that printed it used the title heartbroken. And somebody wrote to me basically,
[33:35]what's the matter with you? You should be delighted. And it's like, it's not that simple. It's
[33:41]never that simple. We have incredibly complex feelings towards our children. And I would like more
[33:49]acknowledgements of that fact. I had wanted to write a book somewhere along one here about
[33:56]mom's ambivalence. And like, nobody wanted to hear about that because mom's is supposed to only
[34:03]be thrilled and love their kids 24 seven. I mean, I've seen moms for 35 years. That's just not
[34:09]the way it is. I didn't write. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? Yes, I do. Actually,
[34:17]and that is to get an agent to write, don't try and impress anybody. You know, when you write
[34:26]my experience, I can not only go back to my experience of writing a book is it's a conversation with
[34:31]myself. And I have trouble reading books where people are trying to show me how smart they are.
[34:37]You know, it's kind of the way I'll occasionally feel reading the New Yorker where they're
[34:41]words. I don't know. And I have to go to the dictionary. It's like, I get it. You're smarter than I am.
[34:45]But I don't think that's the way to write a book. And I think it's when if people find out I
[34:50]write, they say, oh, I have a book I want to write. And it's like, beware of what you wish for.
[34:55]And that took four years of my time in addition to having to practice, in addition to having
[35:00]two jobs, in addition to having a family. So you have to really, I think you have to really like
[35:06]to write. And you'd be fine if it was for yourself. And you'd be fine if it was a big seller.
[35:15]Well, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on mom's after him to read books and for all your amazing
[35:18]advice. Thank you. All your stories. Thank you very much.
[35:22]You've been listening to mom's and have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[35:26]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates about episodes
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[35:42]books. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to
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[35:51]Thanks for listening. You could always email me at zibiatzibiowens.com.