My view of social media is nuanced, hopefully, but when I worry about it, one of my biggest worries is the way in which it shapes norms for teenagers. Teens will start to have a different understanding of norms around those things and then will change their behavior, and so it matters what gets mainstreamed.
On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I chat with the clinical psychologist Lisa de Moore about the emotional lives of teenagers. Lisa dispels a number of myths, such as the idea that emotion is the enemy of reason, that difficult emotions are bad for teens, and that with their
amped up emotions, teens are psychologically fragile. She puts a lot of nuance and compassion into the discussion and shows us that emotional does not mean fragile, and she also offers the best evidence based ways to support teens through their emotional and mental journey. I've been willing to have this conversation with Lisa for quite a while, and I'm so glad we finally made it happen. This was a very informative episode and I'm excited to share it with
you all. So without further ado, I bring you Lisa de Moore, Hi, Lisa, how are you?
I am good? I am good, and we have a good mutual friend in Annie Murphy Paul.
Oh.
I love that.
Yeah. So just for our viewers who won a little Jeopardy trivia, Annie Murphy Paul was the first ever guest of the Psychology Podcast ten years ago, coming up on ten years and we have our tenth year anniversary this year.
Good choice.
Yes, yes, I adore her. So I have been willing to talk to you for a long time.
Yeah.
I love your work, and it's just I just want to have a really nuanced, compassionate discussion today because I think there's just so many competing theories out there right now about what's wrong with children, especially teens, and I want to just know.
What the truth is. I want to know what's going on. What's going on?
You see alarming headlines basically on a daily basis about the adolescent mental health crisis. Now that can make it terrifying for a parent, you know, thinking about conceiving.
So what are your thoughts? Do you have any thoughts on this topic?
Just a few, just a few. I just want to rest for a minute though on your phrase nuanced and compassionate, right, I mean that, man, oh man. If we can accomplish that, I will be I'll feel like it's a good day's work. You too, boy, oh boy? Okay, So I have cared for teenagers for my whole professional life. I got my PhD in ninety six. Of course, you know I was working clinically before that time. So I'm pushing thirty years of caring for teenagers. And let me just start by saying,
teenagers have never been easy. It has never been easy to be a teenager or to raise a teenager. So it's not like, oh was easy going, and then the pandemic came and made a mess of everything. That's never been the case. But the pandemic did make things harder for teenagers without question, harder for the people around them, without question, and we are now dealing with the aftermath of that. So it is a hard time in raising adolescence.
And it's the combined effects of the natural challenges that have always been part of being a teenager, layered with the realities of the historical moment in which we find ourselves. And I think we really want to think about it in that way, right that we are dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic, political polarization at a level you know that I don't remember in my fifty three years. You know, climate concerns that teenagers rightly take very seriously,
changes how they think about themselves in the world. I mean, there's a lot happening here that impacts family life, but goes way beyond the scope of what we have normally dealt with in family life.
Yeah.
You know, it's so interesting because there's there's different perspectives on that matter, you know, So I want to know, like taking stripping politics aside, you know, to what extent do you think we are causing some of this anxiety in teenagers versus the other view, which is like they're understandably anxious. They're understandably and we're more the healers than the instigators.
Okay, little questions that have fourteen ramifications. So let me just just on the climate thing for a minute. In some ways, I think you could say that the climate crisis has to do with a failure of anxiety. Right if we had gotten appropriately anxious about this at scale decades ago, we would be in a different spot. You know. Anxiety is here to help us to help us pay attention,
make a change, you know. And so I think there's sort of an interesting conversation to be had about anxiety and climate and and what it means now what it would have meant, you know, decades ago, to really get on this. Okay, But then the question of does talking all this feeling talk doesn't make things worse for kids? I think that's a really really critical clies. It's an interesting question, and I think it's one that doesn't need
to be politicized. I think it's just a really fascinating question, and I think there's a yes in there. And what I mean by that is that if we are misunderstanding feelings, then the conversation around them can actually be more harmful to kids than helpful. And what I mean by that is that we are up against the circulating definition of what mental health is, which is that mental health is about feeling good, which it is not. Mental health is not about feeling good or calm or relaxed her at ease.
This is all around us as a framing. It happens in traditional media, it happens in social media, and then it creates conditions where adults and teenagers have understandable levels of discomfort and then suddenly have a lot of anxiety about the possibility that they have a mental health concern
that's not helping us. So what I try to put forward in my work is a different definition, one much more true to how we think as psychologists, which is that mental health is about two things, having feelings that fit the context you're in, and then managing those feelings.
Well.
So what I'd like to think is that definition actually kind of shoots down the middle.
Both says, how dare you? It feels like you're a shamed if you're not extreme these days, I know, I know.
Or another way to put it is you're on the right track if everyone's annoyed with you. I also of feel like that's the way to do it.
I have a cop. I have a coffee cop that's says something similar.
Yeah, well it's true. So I think think the way I like to walk up to it, which is really, as you know, in line with how we think as researchers and clinicians, is feelings are important, and negative feelings are part of life, but they don't need to stop us in our tracks. They do not need to always be taken as a sign of a mental health concern, and that really what matters matters is coping and coping
well with the range of human emotions. So they don't need to paralyze us, they don't need to sink us, and yet they shouldn't be ignored either.
I love that.
I mean, you talk about some what's the word I'm looking for, myths, That's the word I'm looking for.
How do you say myths?
You talk about some big ones, and you know, there is this kind of notion that, oh, teenagers are just so emotional and that's the problem. But again, nuance and compassion, you argue that is not necessarily the enemy of reason. Can you elaborate a little bit more?
Sure? Sure so.
I In my book I credit a dear colleague of mine, Terry, and she's referenced in the back Terry Tobias, who's another clinician, and she has this fabulous metaphor, and what she says is we should think of emotions as being like one member of our personal board of directors. That we all have a personal board of directors that helps us run our lives. On that board, our interests, our obligations, logistical considerations, you know, financial considerations all sorts of things and our feelings,
how we feel about things. And the way Terry tells it is, you know, they have a seat on the board, but they don't share the board, and they very rarely have the deciding vote. So again a nuanced view that doesn't throw feelings out or put them in charge, but says they get to weigh in on how we live our life. It matters how we feel about things. They're actually rich with data and we want to treat them as such, but they shouldn't be calling the shots.
Well, I do love that, especially in a university setting, and they're still a teenagers in a university setting. In the first couple of years, and as a college professor, you know, I've noticed an increasing level of entitlement and that can't be good.
That can't be good, it can't be well.
And especially if the format takes is I'm uncomfortable. Everything has to stop until I'm.
Comfortable exactly exactly.
And one of the ways I'm talking about this a lot with the people I care for is is the situation uncomfortable or unmanageable? Because sometimes it's unmanageable, and if it is, then we need to make a big change, but to offer uncomfortable as the alternative to unmanageable, as opposed to saying either it's unmanageable or it's entirely comfortable. I think lets us move forward.
You know, it's such a tough line to know, like when does it go into the realm of coddling versus compassion. I've had this discussion with Jonathan Hight and Greg lukianof We did a discussion at the Comedy Cellar in New York about this when Ricky Schlott as well, And I asked that question because to me, sometimes I feel like the wines are hazy. Sometimes some things that people are like, oh, we're calling we're caddling. I'm like, no, I think that's
just caring. But then there are clear examples to me of coddling. But it's it's just there's no, it's not objective science.
No. And I think, you know, I love you think big and you think about big ideas in big ways. And I think one of the traps that one risks falling into with that, you know, in these conversations is to try to come up with a one size, all solution solution answer you. So sometimes I mean, any you can come up with an example of anything that you want right, and you can. They're certainly coddling examples, and
there's certainly deeply compassionate examples. But the question is who's the person in front of you and what do they need and what do they need to move forward in their own lives? And that is going to depend on the moment, the person, the data, the specificities of it. And so they're interesting theoretical arguments, but I don't think they actually give us answers that you can take to working with people specific people.
But I do see some really nice linkages between some of the things you're saying and some of the things in the coddling of the American minds, such as difficult emotions are not necessarily something to immediately shun from the kingdom, but there isn't a level of nuance here. I think it's really interesting because you say even with their amped up emotion, that doesn't always translate to fragility. But that's something that stood out to me personally, is.
I was like, that's a really good point.
I think that we have this kind of societal connotation that to be strong means to not have your emotions, that you're fragile if you're emotional, but those two don't necessarily go together, right, No, But.
Again, like just to say it, people do mistake emotional for fragile. Like that that is, that is an equation that exists in the world which is highly unnecessary. That you can be a deeply emotional person while being totally sturdy in terms of your ability to move through your
day and do the things you need to do. And again, it's really about our posture toward emotion, right, whether it's natural to life waves that rise and crest and recede almost always on their own, or whether we treat them as fires that need to be stamped out as quickly as possible.
Absolutely, absolutely, In terms of as a psychologist, where are the lines? And I know, I feel like whenever I say lines, you're going to say everything's contextual. But give me something more in the sense that how do you know when professional help is required versus when a certain situation is something where we have a discussion with the teenager and say, look, what your experiencing is actually normal
human emotions. Because I do fear we're living in a sir right now, we're attributing everything to like, we need immediately get your professional help.
And there is a clear line. Actually I am heavy. And also there are some parameters I can easily lay down. Okay, So the way I like to think about.
It relatives really requires this. So thank you. My autism really requires some clear.
And actually EU autism. And also anyone who's trying to get through their day needs at some point nail this down somewhere. Tell me where the line.
Is, give me rules.
Me, I can give you rules. So the way I like to give rules is to in my when to worry approach to things. So in my first commercial book, Untangled, at the end of every chapter, I have a when to worry section. So the first part of each chapter is all the contextual stuff that comes up with teenagers, and now it's time to worry. If you see this, this, and this. So in the generic when to worry about
a teenager, I want adults to be worried. Not as we've been saying, if their mood goes up and down that is adolescence, but if their mood goes to a dark or concerning place and stays there and stays there, I mean, depending on the kid. Twenty four hours thirty six hours. Teenager's moods, as you and I would say, it should be highly labile all over the place. We worry about the kid whose mood is low, ranky, blank, nasty for an extended period of time. So that's one
thing to be concerned about. Another thing to be concerned about is what I call costly coping. So this is the not managing feelings. Well, so they may be coping but by abusing substances, or they may be coping but by self harming, and so it's all coping, but there's better and worse coping. And if they're relying on destructive coping,
that's a problem. And then of course if there's any question about safety, right, if there's worries that they might harm themselves or someone else, then of course it's time to get that kid to safety. And you know, those are the rules, Those are the rules in terms of when to worry. But everything up to that is probably the rich and spicy business of being or raising a teenager.
Yeah, great point.
I mean just even just saying sometimes, like you know, way you're experiencing your emotional volatility is is quite a normal part of being too. I mean, yeah, I experienced, your father, experience to your mother, whatever it is, and you know, we all you know, been through it. Called hormones, hormones or a thing, it's a real thing. I think there's a certain empowerment to also validating experience and and
and and normalizing some of it. But you know, with the exemption of a lot of things you just mentioned, which I think it's very very important. So thank you so much for for for outlining that there's you know, it's a controversial area when you talk about gender differences. Actually interesting enough, it's more controversial if use the phrase sex differences. I find it's the phrase gender differences, it's not as controversial. And so you use the phrase gender differences.
So you're safe. Yeah, you're safe. But I it's so interesting in your book some of the the ones that you outline are the most salient that you've noticed in your own work. Can you kind of outline that for our listeners, the most salient ones?
Sure?
So, you know, it's so interesting, as you know, to write a book, because you go in with one idea and then you start mucking around on the research and you come out with better understanding and maybe not the same understanding. That you went in with. And so my goal in this section was to really lay out what the data are on gender differences in terms of the expression of emotion, because this is where the data sit. It is a very binary approach to gender. That's what
the data. That's the data we have. Now, So that's what I'm summarizing. That's true and one critically two critically important things to say before we get into the nitty gritty of it. First of all, these are broad generalizations. They do not apply to any one kid. And of all, when we think about things like this, when we think about gender and the expression of emotion, we want to remember this is all almost entirely a function of socialization.
Very very little of what we would consider a gender difference in emotion is grounded in biology. This is how we teach kids to do emotion, whether they are boys or girls. And so that's like, you can't walk forward without first acknowledging those two key points. Okay, so then what do we find when we go into the literature, what do we find? What we find is that bluntly, girls enjoy a very wide emotional highway with many lanes. They can be sad and anxious, and vulnerable in all
sorts of ways. They also express anger and frustration, and they are not much constrained in terms of the emotions they are culturally allowed to express. Boys, on the other hand, in our culture, are given a two lane highway of permissible emotions. And then I'm going to come back and trouble this because I think there's more to this story, much more. But as the research says, right now, boys are culturally allowed to express anger or pleasure at someone
else's expense. Those are the two permissible emotions for boys. Okay, here's my big giant fat asterisk on that. That and this is thinking I've done post submitting this book and writing this book. You know my thinking is proceeded. I'm like, Okay, that may be true in many domains, but we also need to acknowledge that boys have all the feelings and
express all the feelings in some circumscribed domains. So, for example, around sports, either as a viewer or a participant, a lot of boys use the universe of sports to cry, be excited, be disappointed. I mean, like a much more colorful and rich emotional experience than we're seeing other places.
And so I've started to think it's not really fair to say guys only have these two emotions or guys only express these two emotions, if we can point to domains, and especially I mean the Kelsey brothers right now are like bust in this wide open with like tears all the time in a highly permissible way. If we see other areas where we do see a much more rich emotional life, I think the question more becomes why are those emotions not allowed in other domains? Not why don't guys have these emotions?
Ooh, what a great question you just give me. You gave me a moment of reflex in there. You know that's that's a good point. And then that's boys. And then for girls, what do we do about mean girls? Because they exist? Do they tend to grow up to be mean? Is there a research showing the correlation between being a mean girl in college and being a mean girls an adult or in high school in adulthood.
I don't know. I don't know honestly that there's a very rich literature on mean behavior among adult women. I don't think that's a well studied.
Not familiar with that.
Yeah, okay, so here's the deal. I'm not the world's biggest fan of the term mean girls. The reason why is when we look at the research literature, it's usually used to describe relational aggression, a form of aggression that girls do specialize in of experiencing rumor spreading things like that. When we actually look at the data, boys engage in as much relational aggression as girls do, and on top
of that, they engage in physical aggression. And so what we see in the literature is that boys not that anybody's a winner in this. I'm not saying this is good. Boys are actually meaner than girls. Oh and interestingly, girls will bully girls, but not boys. Boys will bully boys and girls, right, I mean, so there's all of these interesting nuances. Okay, but we hear about mean girl behavior
more often. And I think, and I wrote about this for The Times ages ago, I think you can actually chalk that up to another gender difference in kids, which is how they respond when upset. Girls are more likely to discuss. Boys are more likely to distract. So there's a mean interaction at school, and the most likely outcome for a girl is that she's going to talk about it. She's going to tell her friends, she's going to tell
another adult or something. And this is good in many ways, and that she may get social support and awareness of what's happening. It also can turn the corner into rumination, where there's talking and talking and talking and talking and not feeling better. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to distract, to come home after a painful day, hop on a video game, lose themselves in something else, and not necessarily share what it is they went through.
And so girls aren't actually meaner, but it looks that way in terms of what rises to the level of adult perception.
Thank you for elaborating that data. I really appreciate that.
I really appreciate that, because you do you mean. You see in this psychological literature in terms of adults, you see this sex difference over and over with relational aggression indirect they call indirect aggression higher in females direct antagonism amongst males. I was generally curious what the data looks like for teenagers, and it sounds like things are a little bit more nuanced than they are.
But I will say we're seeing much more meanness post pandemic. It's been interesting. I work for a lot of schools. I spend a lot of time speaking at and consulting to schools, and there is a rawness in kids, a just a straight up madeness in kids. Then feels of a different order than what we were seeing before the pandemic, much lower tolerance for one another, much more eager to push kids out of their social networks, to use pretty
aggressive ways to do it. But it's funny when you're in When I talk to all boys' schools, there's a i'm gonna use finger quotes teasing that boys do with each other almost incessantly, which is sort of meant to be funny, and you know, not rarely crosses a line into something that actually feels really painful. And I hear plenty from schools that have younger boys. You know, it's all really funny until somebody's badly hurting, hols off and punches the kid who was given them a hard time.
So I think our job as the adults around kids is to be attuned to when they're getting hurt and to help them handle conflict well like, regardless of gender questions at all.
That's that's a great point.
What I want to bring to the picture is the appreciation of the highly sensitive boy or the highly sensitive girl as well. But let's just double click on the highly sensitive boy for a second, because.
That was me.
That was me, so I could come at this from a very personal thing. And I wear that badge as an HSP with pride. I don't wear it with like I'm ashamed of it, you know.
Uh.
And I also like to think I'm strong, you know, and maybe like there's no there's no contradiction there between being a highly sensitive human and being strong. But I do think we have this kind of societal stereotype that these those two things are not compatible in some way, that you're being too sensitive if you if you don't like bullying, you know, when as opposed to just like you know, like no, you're you're you're having a normal human reaction to something.
I think your question about are sensitive and strong compatible? I think linds up very nicely what we were talking about, which is that emotional and being sturdy, you know, are both compatible. You know, emotional doesn't mean you're not sturdy. Sensitive doesn't mean you're not strong, right, I mean, I think that the more we can have these things live
side by side, the better I think. In terms of the question about highly sensitive and a tuned and aware I think that maybe, and this is the kind of question you are the best of all at getting into. Maybe it's that everybody feels things, and that there are differences actually in people's ability to shove those feelings to the side or hide their internal reaction. Because I think
boys are getting hurt all the time. I think it's really a measure of how good are they at faking not being hurt, and that there may be guys who are better at faking not being hurt than all that.
That may be work here. But the other thing that you gestured at it and I think it's really important when I'm taking care of teenagers and I hear about these dynamics unfolding where often it's a guy either going after a girl or a boy with some joke that's meant to be funny, but it's not funny, it's mean, and then the person on the receiving end has a totally rational reaction of like ouch or stop or don't.
Usually the next play from the kid who just did that is like, oh my god, I was just kidding, Like why are you making such a big deal? So that just joking thing is actually I think a pretty tricky armor that gets worn by people who are doing
things that are not that nice. These are tough questions and I think, you know, I think about what gets served up in the context of entertainment and what it means if meanness becomes part of entertainment, right, I mean I think that again, like you have to move across the domains, like why is this here? And does it belong here? And what does it mean for it to show up here? I think are tricky questions. You know.
One of the areas of research that we have is the idea of desensitization, right that if you're exposed to something over and over again, the first time you see it, it may be shocking, but then if you see it repeatedly, it stops being shocking. And years ago I wrote a piece for The Times about rape being shown on TV, right, And it's actually not that rare anymore, especially with streaming platforms, for pretty violent stuff to just be woven into stories.
And we do have data showing that repeated exposure to you know, violence, violent rape makes it less alarming to the viewer. And I think it's probably just a naw rual human you know, defense that comes up, and so I guess what I would say, Like setting aside the question of whether it's funny or not funny, you know, cancelable not cancelable, like that's you know, above my pay grade.
I think that the question I would ask is if these things become mainstream, you know, viewing rape, joking about you know, anti Semitic jokes, right, I mean, like, if these become mainstream, they threaten to stop shocking us. And I think that that's a problem of its.
Own great point.
And they also in a way I'm gonna sound so woke right now, and also in a way they perpetuate stereotypes. They reduce a whole group of people to a particular stereotype that's exaggerated and which may make us as a society start to view people we view in that group only through that lens, all.
Right, And so okay, So there's two things we can play with just from the side of psychological sign you know. So one is the idea of desensitization. The more you're exposed to, you know, something that was shocking, it stops being shocking. Another common example among adolescent boys, a lot of boys game, you know that in and of itself is a complex world, not all bad by any measure, But one thing that's very common is for them to have kind of banter going on over headphones or through
other you know, simultaneous means. And that banter often involves a lot of you know, kind of giving each other a hard time and or using slurs, and so like the N word, for example, comes up a lot in
these environments. And then what we see is that it's not then all that unusual anymore for like some sixth grade kid to show up at school and be thrown around the N word because it's lost its potency, yeah, and doesn't seem as like completely over the line because he just heard it thirty times over on discord.
Right.
So that's one phenomenon we want to be really mindful of, which is related to the second, which is norms. We are shaped by norms, and you don't want to know who's really shaped by norms adolescence. Right, So what you're describing of, if we, you know, talk about this group in one way all the time, that starts to be how we see them. Well, yeah, because the norms of how we talk about them are shaping how we perceive
them and how we think about them same thing. This is like, you know, for all my worries, my view of social media is you know, nuanced, hopefully compassionate, hopefully you know, not too single sided. But when I worry about it, one of my biggest worries is the way
in which it shapes norms for teenagers. Then the way the algorithms work, they will flood a feed with a single topic or lots of content in one area, and if it is ultra fit, ultra thin people, if it is heat content, if it is you know, any variety of things, teens will start to have a different understanding of norms around those things and then will change their behavior. So they will start to diet, they will start to engage in hate behavior. And so it matters what gets mainstreamed.
In my own work and I on my own podcast where I answer questions from parents, I try not to get bogged down in what the broad and quite polarizing discourse is around these topics, and just to go to our science, which is such a wonderful thing to say, well, here's what we have from the research, here's what I know from thirty years of clinical practice, and hopefully that's of help to people.
I love it. I try to do the same. I try to do the same. I love that. Why does your team hate how you chew?
In other words, why do the little slightest things cause such big drama?
So okay, so Scott, we're going to file this under things that looked a lot different to me once I became a parent myself.
Okay.
So I have two daughters. I have a daughter who's twenty a daughter who's thirteen, and I've been practicing and working and writing for a while before I became a parent. And one of the things you know in our science is this idea of separation individuation that kids get to a point around adolescents where they need to become separate individuals. They need to, you know, make their individual like nature known.
And so, yes, great theoretical understanding, seeing it in my practice, Okay, then there's living it with your own kid.
Okay.
So around thirteen, what I discovered is like nothing I did was okay, nothing I did was okay, And then I started to put it through the lens of separation and individuation, and I understood that theory, that concept in a whole new way. Okay. So here's how I write about it in my book. So the way I like to think about it is, teenagers around thirteen suddenly need
to create their own brand, right. They need to sort of feel like their own brand and separate from their parents and their own individual brand when they are doing this. Anything we do as parents that overlaps with their emerging brand is annoying to them because we're stepping on their brand. So here's how this played out in my house. I have liked Beyonce for a very long time, a long
long time. She's been around for a while now. And there was a moment when I had Beyonce on in the kitchen and I was bopping to Beyonce in the kitchen, and my thirteen year old daughter walked in and she had just discovered Beyonce and Beyonce was now hers, and she was like, mom stop, I could not have Beyonce anymore.
I'm any more of adults like it, right, like Beyonce's mine.
They get away from Beyonce, okay, so I'm stepping on your brand. So that was a problem. We were overlapping, and that was a problem. Yet at the same time, they are still so close to us and still so embedded in family life that anything we do that doesn't match their brand that is emerging is also antagonizing to them.
So I think here of my dear friend who for her son's eighth grade graduation and not graduation orientation, she laid out all the potential outputs she could wear, and she's like, just tell me what you want me to wear, like, because you know, if she wore something that was like not cool enough, he was going to be in pain, and then if it was too cool, he was going
to be in pain. So, Scott, what this looks like is there is a juncture in raising a teenager where everything you do that is like how they see themselves becoming is annoying. Everything you do that is unlike how they see themselves becoming is annoying. So everything you do is annoying.
That makes complete sense from the individuation perspective, makes complete sense. So it's almost like it's really hard to just be viewed cool as a parent.
It's hard.
It certainly is at that point. Yeah, And I will say, teenagers don't really want their parents to be all that cool. One of my fat learnings. I'm coming to you from my practice office so a lot of what I've learned about teenagers I've learned right here from teenagers. Yeah, and I have such a vivid memory. I've had this conversations
a few different ways. But it's the kind of conversation where a teenager will say to me like, oh, you know, we're going to go to Jenny's this weekend, her mom will buy for us, and I'll say really, and they'll go, I know, it's so weird. I don't know why she does it. Right, So they sometimes press adults to loosen up, be cool, but they actually much prefer that we be unpredictable and rigid and adult, not rigid to the point of, like,
you know, being miserable. But I know, but I think for them, they're like, listen, I'm surrounded by unpredictable people who are pushing the limits, Like I need to know that. You guys, you know, you middle aged people are not that.
Oh wow, wow.
You know there's so many parenting books right like what's the ultimate? And in all the research just keeps going back to a middle of the road, you know, it just keeps going back over again that there's a there's a there's a gentle mix of author of not authoritarianism, but a gentle mix of a parting style that's flexible but also firm.
And it's like.
Structructure, right, you just see it over and over again, and yet you still see all these other best selling books that try to depart from that in some way.
Yeah, and then you wonder. I mean, one of the things that's tricky about writing about parenting is that it's a very big world with a lot of people with strong opinions who don't have actually broad training. And so I think if you are pulling books from people who are trained in the field, you're going to get a more measured take on it, which is not always the sexiest possible take on the topic.
That's true.
Yeah, yeah, you know that that the middle the middle ground view is usually the least sexy, and it's usually the most correct.
Correct and grounded in the science exactly. But I think I think you know, one of the things I've worked really hard to do is to create content that is available and interesting and pathy without actually bending to any extreme or reacting to what's going on in a way that's unhelpful.
Yeah, oh for sure. Are you also friends with a Do.
We have another mutual friend Jess Lahy we yes, am I imagining that? I feel like, yeah, okay, awesome, Yeah, she's She's written some great stuff about from an education perspective. For the remaining time we have today, can we talk about education a little bit? Why do kids hate school so much? What do we do about that to get their love of learning? To increase their level of learning?
Yeah?
All right, so a matter. I love metaphors, and one metaphor that I detail in this most recent book is that I think it's appropriate for us to think about school as being like a compulsor a buffet of things, where teenagers are required to eat everything on the buffet. And what I like about this metaphor is we accept the idea that there are food preferences. We do not shame people for not liking beats, right, We accept that
that is, you're not going to like everything. I think we shame kids for not liking every single thing they're served up. And I think it's fine to ask kids to try everything on the buffet. I also love being an adult. I go up, I serve myself some psychology, you know, A side of a novel for the evening, But like I don't I haven't dealt with physics since I was in high school, right, I mean I haven't.
There's a lot I don't engage anymore. But I think if we can take that attitude that you didn't choose all of this. Left to your own devices, you would not have selected all of this, but you do need to consume it, I think it does a lot of good. First of all, we take the shame piece out of the picture, which is not helpful. Secondly, and think like, what supports do you need to get through the content
that you would not have chosen. How do I think about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, not as like the bad motivation and the good motivation, like you know, bad kids need extrins that good kids are all intrinsic, but rather see them as two different strategies for getting through that plate of food. I think it just moves away from a very judgmental and again the word shame seems like, you know, shaming of kids not being into all of it.
And I think Scott about this, like I basically I love my I love my job, like I love what I do. I'm with you like I love the like variety of what it means to be a psychologist how you never stop learning. There's still plenty of times, I mean, especially as the week drags on, where I'm like, I don't want to do this work right now. And so if I feel that way about the stuff I chose that I'm getting paid for, of course, kids are going to feel that way about things they did not choose
and that they have to do. So we can be on their side a bit more, I think, as we help them get it done.
Well, that's a great point. And a subset of children in the school system are neurodivergent.
Yep.
That's an area my career that I've been very interested in. I've been studying twice exceptional children who are both have gifted. They both have gifts as well as learning difficulties. I like to say learning difficulties, not disabilities. Now in your own work, well, how much have you worked with children who are neurodivergent? First of all, a.
Fair bit actually, because I have spent a lotos And the nice thing is schools like the I love marrying practicing and working in schools because practice you get a slice, schools you get to see a lot more.
Okay, Yeah, and in your own experience. Then do they have unique emotional lives needs slash needs? What have you observed?
Okay, There's a lot one could say, so I'm just going to pick a couple of things. So, first of all, I have so much respect that they maintain motivation at all. I think all the time about what it must feel like if you go to school and everything is presented in a way that is not working for you or not accessible for you. I am like, how do these kids came day after day after day if we're not
actually making this work for them? And just like the like when I think about, like, who's really showing us what motivation looks like? It's so often the kids from school is not well designed, and yet they persist, And I just don't know that we admire that nearly enough. In terms of the emotional piece, there's a couple key things to say. It's not unusual. I mean, neurodiversent is a big, big tent, as you know. Oh yeah, it's not unusual for there to be some language challenges in there.
Yeah.
And one thing we can say about emotion and its expression is that being able to put words to feelings is a real asset right that it helps bring the feelings down to size, It communicates what's happening, it can bring good support on board. And so for the subset of neurodiversent kids where there's a language interference, we see they struggle more to share what they're feeling in ways that are legible to the people around them, and to
get relief through talking about emotions. So that's one issue. The other thing, though, that I think needs to be sort of thrown into high relief and appreciated and probably shared more broadly about neurodivergent kids is that you know, from my book, I feel like talking about feelings is one way to get relief for negative emotions. But there are many, many, many options, and language is only one
of them. And so you will see neurodivergent kids in particular really be incredibly wrong at finding ways to calm themselves when they feel upset. They may not involve language. Ways to find a brief distraction that can help manage the feeling effectively does not involve language that they are
often quite a bit more fluent in. These other highly adaptive, perfectly wonderful ways of managing feelings that we don't showcase nearly enough, because everybody's pretty preoccupied with getting kids to talk about feelings.
Good good.
That's that's a wonderful huh. Layers lots of shades there that we should consider in the Dare I say, the full rainbow of a lot of minds, Yeah.
The huge variety that is kids at school.
Yeah, I get it, I get it. I see you, I see you for sure.
Sort of.
Last, this is my last question for our interview today to be I want to be respectful of your time. Do you have any sort of parting thoughts on the best ways for parents to stay connected in an authentic, meaningful way to their teens and provide the kind of relationship to the adolescents may not say they need in one but actually need in want.
I have two suggestions, Okay, So the first, when I talk with teenagers about what they really want from adults, I can sum it up in two words, our agenda less presence. So they like us and they like to have us around, but not so much with all the
questions all the time. So I would say, you know, make sure there's plenty of time in a week where if you have a teenager where you're just driving in the car letting them pick the music, or you're watching the show they want to watch, or you're over there doing their email, your email while they're sitting near you doing their homework. They like us there, but they're surrounded by adults with an agenda, and they like a break
from that too. So that's one thing. The other thing I will say is like the no fail help you connect with your kids strategy. Kids do share that they're upset when something is wrong. The first response. I cannot think of a time when this is not a great first response. The first response, I think should almost always be empathy, where you just say, oh man, that's stinks, or I'm really sorry, or I wish that weren't true, or of course you're upset. Start there, you may be done.
That is often all kids want. That is all they are looking for. I think. Usually instead they get advice.
Or quite have adults. Sometimes it's all an adult ones too.
Exactly, it's all any of us want. And so if you do those two things, make yourself an agendleist presence as often as you can, and respond with empathy when your kid comes your way with distress. Honestly, those two things are like superpowers. For connecting with teens.
It's wonderful.
Always a doctor de Moore, Thank you so much for your level headed and empathetic approach. It's obvious to anyone listening that you really care about this population and and you genuinely want to You want what's best for them.
You're not you're not in this too for finger.
Pointing or too for political re like you know what I mean, Like you really want to use the science to to help them.
So thank you so much for being on my podcast and for the work you do.
You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me the real honor.
It's an honor for me too,