Speaker 1Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. At Harmony Bank, we
Speaker 2believe that better happens together. We're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success. Our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions. No big bank bureaucracy, just a custom approach to help you thrive. From business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs, Harmony Bank provides a secure, modern experience with a touch of Texas hospitality. We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together.
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Speaker 5Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 147 and today's episode, Are We Too Soft? Really came about after a conversation I had with my old school friends. Now, these are school friends that I have known. For 44 years. Gives you a bit of a context as to how old I am. I've known them literally since year one at my secondary school. So, year seven nowadays. And we were having one of those sort of types of conversations around remembering that when we were young, you know, all of the things that we were, I guess, in lots of ways, just had to just do. Because there wasn't this awareness of emotional well-being. There wasn't this sort of mental health awareness in the same way. And so, we were having one of those sort of conversations about when we were young, we had to and children of today type thing. You know, you get, and it got me thinking. We often talk about this idea about a pendulum swinging. Swinging one way and then the other. And it did make me think, has the pendulum from when I was younger, from that sort of extreme, we didn't talk about mental health. We didn't talk about emotional well-being. You just had to kind of get, put your big girl pants on and get on with it. Has it swung too far the other way? In lots of ways, you know, have we kind of been looking to kind of compensate and be aware? And it's moved the other way. So, that's what it got me thinking. And I sort of wonder, have we given our children a bit of a get out clause with this emotional well-being so that they opt out of doing difficult things? Do we expect less of our children? Because maybe we're too scared to expect more for fear of being seen as a pushy parent or creating a mental health issue or being seen to be unfeeling and uncaring. So, here are my thoughts. Now, bear with me as I go off slightly on a tangent for a moment. I will. I will link it back to the topic soon enough. I promise you. Now, as you may or may not know, I studied psychology as a mature student in my late 20s. I was about 27. And I can remember quite vividly a research study we covered as part of that undergraduate psychology degree in a module around human memory. And it talks specifically about divers and learning. So, bear with me. So, it was Godin and Baddeley back in 1975. Now, they showed that divers, when they were given a set of words, to remember, basically, learn these words and then recall them back. What happened was that the recollection of those words were much better when they matched the original learning environment, in other words, whether they learnt the words underwater or on land, with the condition that they had to then sort of recall them. So, now, there's some question marks over how much we can generalise the findings from this particular study. But to me, it really highlights a super important psychological concept that we typically perform better if the conditions that we learn are similar to the conditions in which we're asked to perform and recall and use what we've learned. It's one of the reasons why I typically advocate for a little bit of stress when children and teens revise and learn, because by using practice papers and those sorts of things, because an examination or a test situation, is going to create stress. So, if they're learning and revising and working through things that they're going to be examined in or tested in, in a super, you know, relaxed environment, you're not really simulating the environment that they're actually going to have to recall and test it in, you know, and that's what generally happens. So, what has this got to do with being too soft when it comes to parenting? So, in my view, it has everything. So, if we go back to my usual, children are building under construction analogy, yeah, the idea that children are a building, we create the foundations through the values and their character that we develop at home, and then we move to becoming the scaffolding as that building rises. But our children get to choose what building that they construct. Now, the reason why it's so important, this particular study, and that study has literally not been linked to parenting in any way. It's just me. It's a study that I remember really vividly. But if we don't train or instruct or teach or educate our children, in a similar context to the world with which they will find themselves inhabiting in this house that they've built, then they're highly unlikely to succeed. And succeed, in my view, is not just about getting a high-paid job. It's about getting along with people, managing setbacks, having difficult conversations, persevering, understanding money, and so on and so on. We know, because we're living in that real world. And that's the context in which we should be educating teachers, and for our children to be learning, and so that they can apply that knowledge. So when we ask ourselves the question, or people throw out the easy criticism, that the issues that we have in society now are because we have gone all soft on children and teens, we have to ask ourselves the question, are we teaching and instructing our children and teens in a context which is similar to the one that they will live most of their lives as a fully paid-up adult or not? You know, remember, our children are sort of with us. Maybe they're with us till they're 18 or their early 20s. That's a fraction, really, a quarter, maybe, of the life that they're going to end up leading. So 75% of their life is going to be lived beyond our home, beyond what we give them. And actually, we need to be thinking about, in those years that we have them, and that we can have that most significant input, are we preparing them for the context in which they're going to be living? And if the answer is no, then we're not. If the answer is no, most of the time, then we're not parenting in the most effective way. And this could be because we're either being too soft or too hard. You know, like the whole Goldilocks porridge story, we want to get it just right. We don't want to swing the pendulum one way and be too hard, too rigid, too dictatorial, too helpful, all of those two bits. And we don't want to go the other way and being too soft. So like Goldilocks with her porridge, we want to get it just right. How do we do that? Well, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this slightly differently. Typically, I'd give you my top five tips. I'm going to give you three today. That's all I'm going to give you. Because what I want to do, as I was sort of planning out this podcast, I realised that actually, this is a massive topic. It's huge in the, not only in terms of the strategies we use, but actually, how do we apply those? So I'm going to do this in two parts. I'm going to give you my top three tips in this episode. And then in the next episode, I'm going to give you some more. But I'm really going to dig deep into some of these strategies, and how do we actually implement them? What does this look like if you've got a toddler? What does it look like if you've got a 10-year-old? What does it look like if you've got a 16-year-old? Because all of you that are listening to the podcast have children at different ages. You've got children of different characters. How do we implement these when we've got a child with neurodiversity? How do we implement these when we've got a child who's really sensitive or who is really struggling with anxiety? All of these things I want to really tackle because I think of all of the epigenetics, all of the episodes that I've written and recorded, this one to me is almost the one that I want to talk about. you to keep coming back to, because this is the one that is going to have the most impact on your parenting, but also the most impact on your children. So let me just talk you through the three strategies that I'm going to talk about in terms of how can we avoid this situation of being too soft or too hard, and how can we make sure that we are allowing our children with teaching, educating, parenting them in a context which is congruent, which is similar to the context in which they're going to end up inhabiting and living their lives, so that we equip them. Because one of the really crucial things, as I'm learning, and I'm probably that far, that much further down the road, not only in parenting, but just in terms of my years, is that when we're in the thick of parenting our young children, and when our children are in the thick of schooling, so much of the way that they view themselves, they're not going to be able to do that. So I think it's important to is within the realm of how they're assessed, yeah, how they're performing, and also within the realm of how they benchmark amongst their peers. And that so hugely informs who they believe that they are, and what they believe that they're capable of, as well as the environment we cultivate at home. What we know, and really we know this as adults, is that when our children then get into the world of work, because we have done that, is a lot of that changes. Now, in some professions, it 100% doesn't. You know, the academics, and the accolades, and the degree, and all of those other things really matter in that context. But that is a very small fraction of the employed workforce, the entrepreneurial workforce. Any aspect of the workforce, it really doesn't play into that. And so it's actually much more about these other aspects of who you are, your resilience, your determination, your confidence, your self-belief, your ability to keep going despite adversity, your ability to communicate, collaborate, bring people on board in terms of your ideas. Those are the crucial aspects, and those are not things that we typically prioritise within school, that we examine in school, or that is an area that we actively nurture. And so I want you to be remembering this as you're listening to this multiple times. I hope that you share it with friends, because as you can probably tell, I'm incredibly passionate about this. But it really keeps driving us back in those moments where we slightly get into that competitive parent, because we're caught in comparison, and then we're thinking, oh my goodness me, my child is not going to get that great job, or get that great place at that school, or get that particular degree, or whatever it might be. Remember, we're playing the long game. We're raising resilience, adult. We are thinking about them as fully paid up adults, functioning and thriving in that adult world. I'm super excited to announce that tickets are now live for my inaugural It Takes a Village to Raise a Resilient Adult conference. This is an in-person event, and I cannot wait to meet so many of you there. This conference is for you if you are a parent who wants to raise a resilient adult. If you're a teacher, an educator, a nanny, a therapist, an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent, or anyone who's invested in raising the next generation of resilient adults. Head over to the website, link in the show notes, where you can buy your tickets now.
Speaker 1You say what you actually mean instead of hurting someone else the most. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both free and free therapy. Grow is here for you. Both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends.
Speaker 5So let me talk about the first. So the first strategy is we should hold our children to high expectations. Now, you probably weren't expecting that one. Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that we should expect our children to be able to dot, dot, dot, whatever that might be. That is not the same as having high expectations of their academic success. Remember that academic success is the result. It is not the process. If we go back to Carol Dweck's work around growth mindset and fixed mindset, when we focus on results, tick this box, get this grade, we're not giving our children and equipping them with the tools and skills that they need. That is the adaptable piece of the puzzle when it comes to adulthood. That's the bit that we want them to have. The results may tick a box now at school or at your university, but it doesn't then necessarily translate into that workspace. So we should hold our children to high expectations in the process things. So for example, we never ever question, do we really, that our children, when they start toddling around and falling on their bottoms, that they are actually going to be able to walk. We don't find ourselves angst ridden about this idea that I'm not sure my child will ever walk in a typically developing child. Yep. Well, there is no physical I want you to hold that because that's about process. Yep. So we understand that they're going to fall over, that they're going to bang their head, that they're going to have accidents. And yet we don't inhibit them generally. Yeah. We might sort of put soft cushions around so they can have a bit of a softer landing, but we have every faith that they are going to walk in the same way as we have every faith that our children will eventually read and write. I think we get a bit more angst ridden about the reading and writing because we get so caught up in comparison. We do with the walking, but I don't think it's quite as much. So I want you to hold in your mind that when, that we should be holding our children with these high expectations from a process of having faith. It's not about being a pushy parent. It's about having faith, unwavering faith that our children will be able to dot, dot, dot. And I'm going to talk about some of the things that we can look at very specifically in the next episode. I just want you to hold that specific thing, view in mind and think about the things that you worry about for your children that they're currently struggling with. So if you've got a child who's supremely anxious, it's about having faith and high expectations that they can overcome, that they can place themselves in specific scenarios and that they will be able to. Remember, we're not, it's not about cushioning our children from difficulty and from hardship. They need to have anxiety because that's a normal part of life. So holding those high expectations is really crucial. So that's number one. Number two is it is our role, crucially our role in developing a sense of agency for our children. So this is the idea about our children knowing that they can act upon their world. Our children get to choose who they are, how they show up, the results they get, exams. Every action that they choose has a reaction and we want to teach them to learn from those experiences. Agency is crucial to our developing process of parenting our children because it's crucial to the world of adulthood as well as obviously in terms of their childhood because agency allows them to know that whatever situation that they find themselves in, they can get themselves out. Now they may not be able to get themselves out of that situation immediately, but that with each action that they take and that feedback that they get from the results, they can then make a different choice the next time. And it's that step ladder, isn't it? It's about building on and creating that sense of capability. That's really what we're talking about with agency is that understanding that they do make choices. And of course, in the heat of the moment, they experience a massive wave of emotion and it feels overwhelming. It almost feels like something is taking over their body. And it's a big wave of emotion. And it's a big wave of emotion taking over their responses. But they'll learn over time through this constant feedback that we give them and the feedback that they get from the choices that they make that they can impact on their lives rather than this is where we get too soft. It's where we race in. It's where we fix. It's where we tell them what they need to do. That doesn't create agency. That in the long term creates the exact opposite, which is this idea, about learn helplessness. I can't make any changes. I can't impact my life. Things happen to me. i don't act on my environment my environment acts on me and that's the worst situation to help you know to find ourselves in as adults because that just we become massively disempowered we don't feel that we can make any changes to what might be happening so developing that sense of agency is crucial and i will talk you through how do we create that sense of agency with a toddler with a child that maybe doesn't have that that language yet for us to be able to do that how can we then create that agency sense of agency with a 10 year old an 8 year old a 7 year old with a 15 year old so it's obviously you know if you're listening to my podcast if you've discovered me and you have got really young children you're in a great position because you are teaching them from the outset you're helping those neural connections be formed in that sense of agency from now for those of you with older children doesn't mean that you can't of course you can we know that the develop the brain doesn't really you can't you can't you can't you can't fully mature until 23 24 it just means that for you you're probably going to have to do two things you're going to have to do the learning bit the new connections as well as the pruning bit and understanding that there are sort of old connections old processes old habits that we need to be simultaneously disconnecting as well as reconnecting the new one so the first is about holding our children to high expectations the second is about developing a sense of agency which is absolutely crucial and the third one that i think is really crucial is all around boundaries boundaries for us as parents boundaries that our children learn for themselves now boundaries are not about i am this sort of rigid person that you can't communicate and connect with but boundaries is around being really clear what your role as parent is your role is to parent to make those difficult decisions and to say no your role as a parent is not to be their best friend that doesn't mean that you can't be a listening ear doesn't mean that you can't cheerlead for them it doesn't mean that you can't be empathetic and be there when they need to offload of course you do that you do that alongside being really clear about the expectations that you have for them around their sense of agency and you're seeing the bigger picture and you're seeing the bigger picture and you're seeing the bigger picture and part of that seeing that bigger picture is also being able to make those choices that are difficult for them around the boundaries that will help them create and inhabit this incredible building that they're going to live in and to help them through the modeling of your boundaries for them to develop boundaries of their own space where they can say this is okay around with friendships but this is not okay this is how i take care of myself first this is for our children as well as us and this is how i then create space for others so these are the three crucial areas that i want you to kind of hold in your mind and what i will do in the next episode is i'm going to expand on that in terms of what does this actually look like in practice across the ages and stages of our children and how can we begin to instill those so my give this week are going to be those three but i'm going to give those three on a three page downloadable because what i want you to do at the beginning for each of these is to do a bit of a reflective piece before you go to the next episode and that reflective piece is where are you now in terms of hotting your children to high expectations remove the academic bit this is all process not results so reflect and audit on how do you currently hold your children to high expectations so each page will be divided you'll get the the initial header which says about holding your children to high expectations the first bit will then ask you to do an audit and then the second bit will be about the actions and that's what you'll need for the second episode because that will be where you can take the strategies and the tips that i talk about and say right how can i now implement them relative to the audit that i've done for my child so you'll do that for each of these how do you hold your children currently to high expectations how are you currently developing a sense of agency or potentially learn helplessness and then the last one is how do you currently create these boundaries and boundaries are not about strict rules boundaries are around the enforceable daily practice your daily habits what do you do what do you say that communicates to your children how important it is around those boundaries and how important it is for them to create those boundaries too so i would highly recommend that you download this resource so that you can do the work of the audit first and then hop into the next episode now as usual what you need to do if you haven't done this before but if you are a sort of a seasoned listener you head over to my resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the resource all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode i would love it and be so incredibly grateful if you could follow rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time at harmony bank we believe the better
Speaker 2happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank where better happens together
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