EP #96- How Parental Praise and Pressure Affects Children's Mental Health, with Melinda Wenner Moyer, Author of "How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes"

(gentle music) And what this does when we praise kids or coworkers for like the outcome is when they do make a mistake or fail, it makes them doubt the ability they were told they had, but it also makes them really want to protect their reputation because to them like struggling or having a challenge or having a failure is like evidence of not being able to do something, of being like bad at something. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Indoor Fins, a mental health podcast that discusses the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafnopoulos, and this week is all about exploring the parent-child relationship, looking at the effects of parental pressure and parental praise on children's mental health. I am so thrilled to have Melinda Wendermoyer on the podcast this week. She is a science journalist who's been featured in the Atlantic, she's written for The New York Times, she's also the author of Hadaray's Kids Who Aren't Assholes, which is a book that provides science-based strategies for better parenting. In this episode, Melinda shares how she got interested in the field of science journalism and specifically why she wanted to investigate the topic of parenting. We also talk about the difference between praising children versus putting pressure on them and how that can affect children's mental health, impacting their self-esteem, their self-confidence, and how they engage with challenges. I'm so excited for you guys to listen to this episode. I think that no matter who out there is listening, there's something that Melinda talks about that can be really applicable to anyone, anyone who's listening out there can take something away from this talk that hopefully they can apply into their lives and use to empower them, whether it be through self-discovery or better understanding the nature of their parent-child relationship or how they make decisions. There's a lot that we talk about here, so really excited for you to get into it. But before we dive into the episode, reminder to rate and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. (gentle music) - Hi, Melinda. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. - Hi Stella, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. - I'm really excited for this conversation and a lot of the work that you do as a science journalist really interests me because I am an only child that I'm very close with my parents. And so I think that the topics around parenting and raising good kids is something that's really interesting to me and I don't really know a lot about the science behind it. So really thrilled to get to have you on the podcast today to talk about your expertise in this area. I'd love to just begin with you sharing a little bit about your background in science journalism. So can you start with talking about how you got into this field and then more specifically what sparks your interest in the field of parenting? - Yeah, absolutely. So I have loved science since I was a teenager. And but I realized pretty quickly I did not want to be a scientist because I worked in a lab in college. I have a degree in molecular biology and I worked in a lab where we were studying cancer proteins or something and I was like, this is really important work. I know that but I'm so bored because it's like the same day you're just doing the same thing over and over and over and over again on this little tiny protein, right? And I get bored really easily. So I knew I loved science and I knew I wanted to do something related to it but I didn't know what. And I also have always loved writing. So I used to do a lot of creative writing as a kid writing short stories. And yeah, it's just something that's always come sort of naturally to me and I've just loved doing. And when I was in my 20s, my early 20s, when I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, I was working for a biotech company and I was writing marketing materials about the science in this biotech company I was working for. And I realized like, oh my gosh, you can write about science. That's really cool. And I started looking into it like how do I make a career in writing about science and I quickly discovered there's this whole little niche world of journalism called science journalism which is essentially people trained in both journalism and science who cover developments in science, who cover controversies in science and trends. And I was like, this sounds really perfect for me because it brings together those two loves of mine. But also I won't get bored 'cause like every week or every month, I could jump into a totally different topic and cover it. And so I just knew that it would keep me stimulated. I could keep learning about new things and it's been amazing. I've been doing this since 2006 and I'm honestly like never bored. I think it's so important to be constantly surprised every day and like keep you thinking quick on your feet. So compared to being stuck in a lab where you're doing kind of the same and not an as thing, I can imagine that this field is so much more dynamic every single day. And just a quick aside, I find your story so interesting because growing up I wanted to be in the science world. I wanted to be a doctor and I didn't study molecular biology but I did come into college as a bio major and then I pivoted into this interdisciplinary major called philosophy neuroscience and psychology. So I always had this interest in health and wellness at large and also had a minor in creative writing 'cause growing up I was always interested in writing. So it's funny to kind of see your path and also just think about my own interests and how they've intersected and diverged at the same time because I don't think that like the humanities and science need to be separate. There's so much opportunity for this cross collaboration. - Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's really funny that I know so many science journalists who have like other sort of artistic interests like their musicians on the side or artists. It's really interesting 'cause we do think of these as like one is right brain, one is left brain and they're separate and you're either good at one and not the other but that's totally not true. They're very, very well and I don't know. Yeah, it's really fun to be able to bring them both together. - Yeah, absolutely. And once you started really focusing on parenting in particular, you wrote a book, How to Raise Kids who aren't assholes. I love the name, very catchy. What inspired the creation of this book? (laughs) - Okay, so yeah, I fast forward from 2006 to 2011 and I had my first kid, my son. And I was totally lost like I was like, how do I, how do I do this? Like parenting is really hard and there's not a lot of good information out there about like how to do it and there's just so many choices you have to make and you're sort of at least I was like, I wanted to know like, well, what's the best way to do X, Y and Z? Like is there a consensus? And I would ask my friends, I would get all these different answers. I would ask my parents, they would tell me something totally different. So I wondered whether science could basically answer my own parenting questions and I started digging into the science of child development and all sorts of things with like child health. And I found there was so much information there and a lot of it really hadn't been communicated to the public. And as I got older, I found that the questions I wanted answers to really kind of shifted and eventually I started really just getting preoccupied with this question of like, how do I raise good human beings? Because I felt like this was maybe three or four years ago, I felt like there was so much bad behavior in the world around us like so many people who were just in the public eye who were behaving not so kindly and you know, not setting good examples. And I was worried about my kids learning from these bad examples and I was worried about just like, what were they getting from osmosis from the world around us? Like everybody's fighting, everybody's angry at each other. And I was like, how do I push against this and like raise a human being who is empathetic and who cares about other people and who knows how to communicate well and who's just basically not an asshole. So that was the impetus for me to write my book. Because I felt like this is like the most important question and there weren't a lot of good answers to it but there was a lot of research out there and some of it was really counterintuitive like it went totally against what I thought the answers were going to be. And so that was, I was like, this is definitely a book that I need to write. Yeah, and kids really learn from what they're observing around them, especially their parents or who they're around often. So it's one thing to see like the parents that your, or the behaviors that your parents are modeling, but it's another to see things on TV or from what you're watching or what you're being surrounded by and for kids to start mimicking that behavior. And I know in the past few years, we've had a very polarizing climate politically. So I can only imagine what it's like to raise kids like in this era right now, in the stage. But you mentioned that some of the strategies that you thought would help raise good kids actually maybe didn't prove to be true were there things that you surprised when you were doing some research. So as we were researching, what are some things that you found that you didn't necessarily think would contribute to raising good kids? Wow. Well, there are a lot of things. So I could pick out a few. You know, one big one that I was surprised by when I first came across this research was there's a tendency, I think, for white parents in particular to not talk about race with their kids. And they think, oh, well, if I don't talk about race, then my kids will just not notice race. And they won't grow up to be racist. And they won't make a big deal out of it about skin color. And I found the research actually kind of suggests the opposite that if we don't have conversations with kids about race, then they make-- dangerous inferences and part of that is because they look around at the world and kids are like social detectives, little social detectives. Like they're trying to figure out why does the world look the way it does and why do some people have more power than other people and very quickly kids, they do notice skin color. We know that we know this from research that even as young as three months old kids can see differences in skin color and they start to notice the very salient power hierarchies that exist in society according to race and they notice it with gender too. And if we don't explain to them why it is that like almost all of our presidents have been white men, then they start to think well maybe that's telling me something, maybe that means like white people are smarter or you know men are better leaders. And so they look at what the world looks like and they make these really dangerous inferences about like the you know the nature of people and what you know who has more ability. And so that's one big thing that like we actually have to have conversations with our kids about race in order to sort of interrupt these processes from developing over time and from kids basically making racist inferences based on what they see. So that's one of them. I don't know I could go on but that's that's a big one. And I think you I believe you also wrote an article about that as well. I was looking on your website and you also wrote another really great article for the Atlantic with talking about COVID and how that's impacted struggles with parents. Yes. Could you speak a little bit more to that as well just given that I think now we're coming out of or we've been coming out of COVID but I know right when the pandemic hit it must have really been a struggle that a lot of parents were facing having to be stuck at home raising their kids and working at the same time. Yeah it was really I'm kind of survived. I'm kind of surprised that we survived. I wrote that piece for the Atlantic. It was actually last winter. So we were starting to come out of the pandemic like there were vaccines but we had so much conflicting information like parents were still kind of expected to be working but also having to deal with all the stress of like some of them had kids back in school. Some parents didn't there were no tests available. I don't know if you remember like it was really hard to get tests then. And all this information like we had been told certain things throughout the pandemic and it was starting to change and shift and you know we were suddenly being told no no no schools really safe like your kids will be fine don't worry when for the whole year before that we were told like it's not safe for your kids to be in school we're shutting down schools. So there's all of this like cognitive dissonance that was happening at that point where parents were like having to sort of shift their understanding of what was happening and make just endless decisions about what's best for their families with like not much information to go on and so so much decision fatigue and just so much stress over time that we've you know had to bear over the two years that was like really affecting our own mental health and then affecting our kids mental health. So I feel like it kind of hit this fever pitch last last winter and I remember seeing the reason I wrote that piece in part was because I saw there was a group of moms in Boston who on one night in January and you know cold Boston is in January they decided to meet up in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere a bunch of moms who didn't even really know each other and stand in a socially distant circle and just scream for an hour and that's like that was what they wanted to do more than anything like that seemed like gee this is the best use of my time in the middle of January like that tells you that something is very wrong with the state of the world if like that's what moms want to do and that feels like the most appealing use of our time. So yeah I just kind of hit this crazy point last last winter when I wrote that piece and yeah in a middle of an viral and I think we're all just losing our minds basically. I think it's also good timing to have had that released last winter because Ome Cron started to come out and so I think people were starting to feel more or less safe with COVID but then the minute the new variants emerged it was like uncertainty all over again like I remember I wanted to go out with my friends for new years but then all of a sudden there's this new variant out on the town and I ended up just staying at home for New Year's with like a few friends and starting out 2022 no one really knew like what was going to happen it felt like we had kind of reverted back to almost the beginning days of COVID so there was still this sense of uncertainty and anxiety so I think it was actually great timing for the article to come out even though it wasn't you know March 2020 when it was released right and I think also in order to make in order to write something about the impact of COVID on parenting they're needed for some time to have passed for us to really see what it was like I want to talk a little bit more about the parent-child relationship as it pertains specifically to kids mental health I think that's super huge and really kind of a big focus of the conversation this afternoon so why would you say that the parent-child relationship is really fundamental to our well-being like what about it is so important for children in particular yeah it's a great question and there is so much power in that relationship between parents and kids so I mean our relationship with our parents really shapes how we come to understand ourselves and what our identities are so how our parents engage with us like how they talk to us how they respond to us how much affection they show us you know what they encourage from us and what they discourage they I mean they're just crucial for helping us understand like who we are and how much value we have you know what we believe about ourselves and our abilities how much we feel we deserve to be loved these are things that are all shaped by our parents and then we carry them into our entire lives and and ultimately like maybe shape how we will parent our own kids one day like we talk about like it with abuse like the toxic cycle of abuse I mean parenting can shape multiple generations now that's not to say that it's like totally deterministic that if we have crappy parents then we're like doomed to a terrible life and to be terrible parents it's definitely like not that simple either you know if if we have parents who make a lot of mistakes like we might be more likely than other people to develop like anxiety or depression but it's not like a one-to-one like you are definitely doomed to to be you know unhappy for your whole life if you had if you had parents who were abusive or who you know didn't show the kind of love that that you needed but it but it does make it it does make a difference it really does and so that was something that became very clear as I was looking at the research on on parenting and on the power of parenting and how you know how much of a say parents have in terms of like who their children ultimately become they there's they have a big say yeah and it's it's interesting now like at my age for example because when you're a kid I don't think kids are that attuned really to how how much of a of a force that parents can have on children they're just not they don't have that awareness but as you get older I think people start to really examine the parent child relationship when they were kids but then also how it's evolved throughout the course of their life like throughout out of lessons and to adulthood and so it's interesting to see now the power that parents have on children and I think like for example when we look at mental health in particular therapy now has become very normalized when we destigmatize the conversations around mental health and oftentimes I think in therapy a lot of the conversations go back to your childhood and any trauma that you've experienced and I think a lot of that is centered around the way you were raised or like certain experiences that you've had so I think even in in that situation there it shows that there's really this intricate like connection between the way parents act around their kids or how they how they raise them. Absolutely yeah it's I was thinking of therapy too as I was talking about this like yes I feel like so much of when you go into therapy you realize like the root of whatever issues you have come from something that happened with your parents or some way that they parented you right and just like working through that and getting past that is like a big part of at least for me for therapy and my parents are wonderful but you know there's always something right like there's always something yeah exactly and also I think as you get older oftentimes the conversation is like oh no I'm turning into my mom or this this exact thing that I do is just like my dad is is there any science behind that like from what you've seen or through your research is there any science behind like as you age you start to see more of yourself maybe in your parents that is a really great question and I haven't seen science on that but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist I just I don't think I've ever searched for it I certainly am going through that right now as I'm in my 40s and I'm like oh my gosh I'm so much like my mom and my dad but in very different ways um you know I think but it's funny like when you become a parent it's really interesting because we do know that parents often go and one or like one of the other direction one is like they parent just like their parents did and the other direction is they do the exact opposite like on purpose they are very intentional about like I do not want to be parented the way my parents parented me and they kind of like go completely in the opposite direction and so that's interesting and we do know that there's like often these two sort of ways in which parents go in terms of how they parent yeah absolutely and I'm sure like the motives behind either decision may may differ as well so that's that's definitely interesting to think about and I think there's also this disconnect between the way that children define success for them for themselves versus how parents want their kids to succeed so So just generally speaking, I think we'd both agree that like every parent, most parents want their kids to be healthy, happy, feel loved, be safe. And in one specific scenario, maybe a certain type of parent thinks that the way that they're a kid will be happy and have a successful life is if they really excel academically or in their extracurriculars and maybe one way that parents want to encourage their kids to do these things is by applying a ton of pressure on them. What have you seen in the research around the effect of parental pressure on their children's happiness and while being in success? So this was really interesting in my book because this is another area where I had no idea that there was research on this and I had no idea how important it was. But I wanted to look at like what are the key things that shape self-esteem in kids and as they get older. And I found that there's this really rich and rather disturbing literature that suggests that the pressure that parents put on kids, which is very well-meaning and I'll talk about like why we do it as well in a sec, but that pressure we put on kids to excel, to get good grades, to you know, do well in the SAT, get into good colleges. That pressure can really deflate a child's self-esteem. And it can lead to all sorts of problems. So before I unpack that, I just want to say that it's totally understandable why parents do this. I mean, we know that for instance at the 10 most competitive universities in the US admissions rates have dropped like precipitously recently, like 60% I think between 2006 and 2018. And so it is harder for kids to get into college. And we know that just financially like our kids will not, they'll have to earn more money in order to achieve the level of status and comfort that we have. So there are really good reasons to think that like we need to make sure our kids excel and stand out so that they can, you know, get into a good college and get a good job and be comfortable. So it's totally understandable why we think that like putting pressure on them when they're young is the best way forward. But the problem is that when we do this and we imply to our kids that, you know, achievement and grades, those are like the things that really matter to us, then kids will infer that basically achievement defines who they are and how much value they have as a person. And when they sense our disappointment, like if they bring home a bad grade or something like that, they sense that our love for them is basically contingent upon their success. Like when we, when we show this deep disappointment when they come back with a bad grade or they don't go on the soccer team or whatever, they sense that, oh, wow, mom and dad love me less because I didn't achieve. So these two things go hand in hand and make them ultimately think like my value is defined not by who I am, but by what I do. And so therefore I need to keep doing and doing and doing and ultimately this leaves them really feeling not good about themselves. You know, self esteem, there was one researcher who described self esteem as basically the ability to let go of the question, am I good enough? And if you have healthy self esteem, you can let go of that because you know deep down, you are good enough and you don't need to keep doing things in order to be a good person. But, but the problem is when we put a lot of pressure on kids, then they don't let go of that question. Like that question is like driving everything, right? Because they've sensed it from their parents all the time. Like I'm not good enough. I have to keep doing this in order to be good enough in order to earn my parents love. And this is true even if we don't, like even if parents don't outright say like I will not love you as much if you don't get an A or you know, we don't have to say it out loud in order for our kids to infer this and we know this from surveys. Like kids who are in middle school and high school, they've done surveys where researchers have asked them like, you know, do you think your parents are prouder if you get good grades than if you're a good person or vice versa and like students are three times more likely to say, oh no, my parents are more proud of me if I get good grades and if I, you know, help others or if I'm a caring community member. And the research just shows this over and over and over again. Wow. Do you think that this contributes to people's issues with imposter syndrome? Like as you get older, do you think that like the way that parents put pressure on their kids and perhaps signal this message that their children are not good enough if they don't achieve XYZ? Does that narrative start to impact perhaps like the development of imposter syndrome as you get older? That's a really great question and I don't know if there's any research on that. I haven't seen any, but I think that that's a really good theory because if you're the type of person who yeah, keeps thinking like I'm not good enough, which is essentially what imposter syndrome is like I'm not good enough to have this job or I'm, you know, I'm not able to perform the way other people think I should perform. That is going to be rooted in probably low self esteem. And yeah, this idea that like who you are is defined by what you do and and that, you know, you're not just good at like you're not good on your own. Like you're not a good person or you're not, you know, just capable on your own. That's a really good question. What we do know about the long term outcomes of this kind of parenting though, there's a researcher Sunya Luther who has been studying kids from what are called high achieving schools like schools that really where parents put a lot of pressure on their kids. She has found that kids who go to high achieving schools are six times as likely as like the average American kid to have symptoms of anxiety and depression. They're more likely than even inner city kids from like low income families to use substances to engage in delinquent behavior and to have mental health problems. And they are much more likely to have problems with addiction. So one study she did found that at age 26, women who had as teenagers gone to high achieving schools, they were three times more likely than like the average woman who's age 26 to be diagnosed with a drug, a drug or alcohol dependence. And I think men were like twice as likely to for whatever reason it seems to affect women more. But yeah, like it is, there are a lot of long term repercussions of this kind of like high achieving pressure that we put on kids and it's kind of scary. Right. Both physical and mental. So where is the line where like where do you draw the line to ensure that your your children are successful and feel they feel fulfilled and are happy? Like how do you get your kids to achieve that without applying all this pressure? And because I think it could be easy to argue that, you know, if a parents not applying this pressure or helping their kids stay focused and have some sort of direction, they will go off into the wrong crowd or they won't have skills like motivation and determination and grit and resilience. So how do you, I guess in other words, how do you parent children so that they are leading a healthy and successful and happy life? Yeah. The balance is really, really tough. But I think it comes down to how you frame what you what you're hoping for from your kids and why. So, you know, I'm not a very big fan of like paying kids for grades or, you know, punishing kids for bad grades because I think that that can really, that's not great for kids self-esteem. But at the same time, I think it's fine to encourage learning and to communicate to kids that you want them to love to learn and that learning is, you know, powerful and fun and a way, you know, and that it's a good thing to want to learn, right? With grades, it can be really tricky. What I've done with my kids, for instance, is, you know, I've said to them like, look, grades are just numbers or letters depending on how your school does it. You know, they don't mean a whole lot in and of themselves. What I want is I want to know that you're learning because I think that's really important. And you know, grades matter in the sense that in order to do what you want to do with your life, you know, colleges are going to be looking at grades and maybe jobs are going to be looking at grades as well. And so, if you want to have more options when you get to be a young adult, then having good grades is important for that. But to us, they're just a number and they don't, they're not the most important thing to, you know, to me and to your dad, like, we just want to know that you are trying hard and you're learning. And, you know, if you want to have the most options when you're older, then yeah, getting good grades matters for that particular outcome, right? So it's like, instead of saying grades matter for how good of, you know, just instead of like emphasizing it as like the be all end all of everything, you kind of couch it in like, well, here's why they're important. And you know, I think they're kind of silly, but at the same time, they do matter ultimately. So I do want you to get good grades for this reason. And so I think that's one way is sort of like framing it carefully. And then the other big thing that I will say is like, you just want to constantly be telling your kids that you love them for who they are. And it doesn't matter what happens or who they, you know, what they end up doing with their life. Like, you will love them no matter what. There's a book that I grew up with and I'm older than you are, but it was called The Runaway Bunny. And it was this like really sweet book from like the 1960s. It's basically like this little rabbit kid is like being all mischievous and doing breaking all these rules. And the mom after every time he does is like, I will love you no matter what. Like you, you know, you can be bad and you can make mistakes and it doesn't matter because I will always love you. And I think we need to, as parents, make sure that we are actually like saying this to our kids on a regular basis. Like, I love you no matter what happens, no matter what you do, no matter what grades you get, I will love you the same. And I think that's a really powerful way to overcome this. Yeah, I mean, it seems like it all comes back to this emotion around love, this feeling. And it's really interesting because as you get older, I don't think that adults that don't have kids. I'm speaking of like young adults, people maybe in their 20s, early 20s that don't have children. Think about love in the same way. When we think about love, we think about romantic love. But when it comes down to it, like love is so much more complex than that. And this is something that I'm just hearing throughout our conversation even, like the way that parents speak to their kids. It's about giving them love, which could perhaps be a whole other conversation entirely. But going back to what you were mentioning around some strategies that you take with your children around their grades and certain things that they achieve in school, I think that's so important about reframing it because when we have this outcome oriented mindset, we're just attaching our self-esteem and our self-worth to kind of like the end desired state without learning to be present in the process and appreciate that process. And I think that's very thematic and can show up in other aspects of your life away from just getting good grades in school. Because once you enter the corporate world, and once you're just not a student anymore, there's no metrics of success like an A or a B or a C that will determine your success and the things that you achieve. And so I think it's super important, especially at a younger age, to have that be reframed to children. Because once you're outside of the traditional school environment, you don't have those benchmarks to tell you that you're on the right path. And I think for my audience in particular, once you graduate school and you're working in your 20s and 30s, it's a whole other climate that you're working in that you're learning how to define success for yourself because you're no longer benchmarking yourself against those preset milestones. It's a whole different ball game now. Yep, that's such a good point. It totally changes after school, right? It's a whole different world. And it can be hard if you've kind of been basing like how yourself worth on what you achieve. It can be really hard to like recalibrate after that. Yeah. And I think it's also important to distinguish what we've been talking about around parental pressure versus parental praise. And I know there's a lot of research around the effects of parents praising their kids for achieving certain things. On their children's health and well-being. Can you speak a little bit more to what that relationship looks like when parents praise their kids for achieving some desired outcome? Yeah. And I think that this information applies not just to like parent child relationships, but like in the workplace too, you can use some of this research to your benefit when you're thinking about like how you talk to your colleagues. Yeah. So it goes back to what you were just saying about like process versus outcome. And emphasizing process and effort is basically much, much better and praising for effort is much, much better than praising for outcome and praising for intellect. And this is something that parents struggle with though, because I don't know about you, but my parents always wanted to say things like you're so smart or you're such a natural piano, you know. And these are appraises that are like basically implying that like you're either born with it or you're not, right? You're either born smart or you're not or you're born good at soccer or whatever piano or you're not. And it's sort of framing ability as this all or nothing like black and white thing. And the problem is let's say like you praise your kid for being good at math. And then the next day he gets like a D on a math test. And he's thinking to himself, okay, well, gosh, mom told me I'm good at math. But then I just got a D on math, my math test. So maybe that means that she was wrong. And I'm actually bad at math. And because we framed it as this thing, you're either good out of your not, then the kid is like, well, if I'm bad at math and there's nothing I can do about it, right? Like I'm just bad at math. And what this does when we praise kids or co-workers for like the outcome is it makes them, when they do make a mistake or fail, it makes them doubt the ability they were told they had. But it also makes them really want to protect their reputation because to them like struggling or having a challenge or having a failure is like evidence of not being able to do something and being like bad at something. And so a lot of times people who've been praised this way will avoid challenges. Like they will not choose to do the hard thing because they don't want to struggle at it because to them struggling is a sign of an aptitude. So they get scared by challenges. And they get scared away by them. And so that's not what we want from anybody, co-workers, kids, whatever. We want them to embrace challenges, right? And we want them to think of like challenge and failure as like stepping stones on the way to success. And so the way you do that is by praising effort and tying effort to outcome. So with a kid who, you know, instead of saying like, oh, let's say your kid does come home with an A on a math test instead of saying, oh, you're so good at math, you would say, oh, you did, you know, you got an A on this math test that must be because you studied so hard or it must be because you focused so much during the test. And you really emphasize like that effort that they put in rather than the outcome itself. And when you do this, this helps to teach kids that, you know, it's overcoming challenges. It's doing hard things that make you better at things and that and that how good you are at something changes, right? It gets you get better at something the more you try, the more you work on it. And that like failure and challenges are not signs of an aptitude. They're just like these stumbling blocks on the road to success. And so it's just really like reframing how we think about challenges. And then this affects motivation and resilience and how willing kids and adults are to, you know, try something hard. It's really powerful. Yeah, it's like a dominant effect, basically, which is really interesting. And I mean, I've had my parents when I was growing up, they definitely would say like, I played the violin and I used to sing and I used to dance. And I always like to science and the humanities kind of tying back to earlier just what I studied in school. But they would always say like, oh, you're like, they would, they would constantly tell me that I was smart and that I was talented in those areas. But they also would tell me that I needed to study hard. And if I did well on an exam, they would praise the effort that I put into it. So do you think that it can also be beneficial for parents to praise the effort but also the outcome simultaneously? Like does, does the outcome have to go to just praise effort? You know, I don't know if there's been a lot of research on the mixture. Like there've been, there've been a lot of studies done where they've sort of split people up into two groups and praised them one way or the other and then seen how that has affected their motivation and their interest in trying hard things. And they've definitely shown that like, praising for effort leads people to choose hard things more than praising for outcome. I don't think there's been a lot of research on mixing it. But I will say that I think most parents do mix it because I find it impossible. Like it just comes out of my mouth sometimes. Like I'll be like, oh my gosh, you're so smart. Or you know, whatever it is to my kids. Because of course we believe that. You know, and so I think that most kids are getting a mixture of, you know, maybe they're not getting that much of the praising for effort depending on how careful their parents are about that. But they're definitely, I think most kids getting like the praising for outcome and the praising for ability. And I don't think it's like screws up kids. I think that the more you can focus on effort, probably the better. But I also don't think it's like a, you know, you have to do this all or nothing phenomenon. Like it's, I think it's still going to have an impact. If you do occasionally praise for effort. If you remember to that is going to have a positive impact. And it's okay if like you are occasionally also praising for ability because that's, I think that's just reality. Right. Exactly. And maybe it's also about if, for example, if a kid comes back with like a C on their math exam, still letting the kid know that they're smart, like still sharing that with that. And like letting them know that they are smart. But the reason that they didn't succeed on this exam wasn't because of their inability to get the good grade. Like maybe it was due to something else. So I think even in those moments, like reframing that is super important as well. I don't know if there's any research on that that you've seen. I haven't seen research on that. But I agree that, you know, how you respond to a bad grade is important. And yeah, I tend to emphasize like, well, let's problem solve and figure out what, you know, what made it hard for you to get a good grade. Or, you know, to what was hard about this test for you. Maybe like you didn't focus on or you didn't study the parts that were actually on the test. In which case, let's figure out how we can know better in the future. What, you know, what you might need to study. And just sort of like problem solve with your kid, instead of like getting angry at them or shaming them for the bad grade. Like think of it, like approach it with curiosity, basically. Like, oh, let's figure this out. Like, what went wrong? How could we do better next time? This is interesting. We can learn from this. Like again, like in a way, like you're framing that, quote unquote, mistake of the low grade. as like an opportunity for growth, right? Like we can learn from this. This is actually helpful information 'cause now we know like this, the way that you studied last time maybe wasn't the right, like the best way for you. And let's figure out what that best way is. - Yeah, absolutely. And just reflecting on my own like childhood experience, I went to very test-oriented schools, like middle school and high school in particular. I had to take this specialized high school admissions test to get into the high school that I went to. And I think that sometimes like I would do well on exams and other times I wouldn't do that great. But I came to realize that I would perform optimally in a more creative environment. Like sometimes testing worked, but other times it was like writing papers even in college. Like I always enjoyed writing a paper more than sitting down to take an exam. So maybe it's also about like the way you learn and the way that you are able to communicate your knowledge as well. I think that's like a different type of skill set that maybe testing doesn't necessarily allow for as well. - Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, and I had a similar experience. Like I went to a high school boarding school. So I took that SSAT, as that's probably what you're referring to right that you had to take. And it was a very, very competitive environment where I was in boarding school. And it was a lot, it was too much for me. I think it wasn't good for me. And so I see a lot of myself in this research show where I think I definitely got some anxiety that I'm dealing with. And I think it's some of it is rooted in all the pressure that was put on me, but also that I ended up putting on myself over time because I internalized it too. And I still struggle with it. Like I still am like, I think overly ambitious sometimes. And I think it's because deep down, I haven't sort of figured out like how to just be okay with like myself, like when I'm not trying to achieve. - Do you think that's a character of or a quality rather of people who are really high achieving and very successful? - You know, that's a really good question. I think some of, I suspect that some of what drives some people to be constantly, you know, yearning for more achievements is this feeling of like not being good enough that maybe is rooted in how they were parented. I think though that other people have probably different motivations for it, I think it certainly doesn't explain all of that. You know, and there's also like a lot of interesting research on what motivates you. Is it like intrinsic motivation that's motivating you or is it extrinsic motivation like being recognized as being good by others or is it like just like you get this like feeling of like happiness by doing it? And I think some of that, you know, is going to affect it. Like what's really motivating you? But yeah, it's a really interesting question. And I think I'm definitely like partially motivated by just this low self esteem in some way of like, I need to keep doing things so that I feel like I'm like a good enough person. - Yeah, I mean, okay, I hate to say that I saw this on TikTok, but I saw a video on TikTok that was talking about like the qualities of people who are like really successful entrepreneurs or people who are super ambitious and high achieving. And they're the person that was speaking in this video mentioned to qualities that these people have. I can't remember the second, but the first one was that these people are constantly thinking that they're not good enough. And that really caught my attention because I think it ties into what we're speaking about right now. Like maybe this feeling around not being good enough, like having a sense of imposter syndrome can be productive because it can motivate you to want to achieve and be successful. However, you define that to be for yourself. But then there's the flip side of that where it gets to be really dangerous and it can also contribute to really low self-esteem, which can also just be another domino effect to other areas that can impact your mental health and your well-being. So just our conversation now reminded me of this video that I saw and I thought it was really interesting because I was reflecting on myself and I think I constantly have these thoughts of, oh, I'm not doing enough or I need to do more, I need to be more productive. And I think it can help me to a certain extent. But then sometimes it'll all reach this breaking point where I just completely burn out and I feel exhausted. And then I have to kind of recalibrate. I don't know if this is something that you've also felt throughout your career or a feeling that you can also relate with. Oh, absolutely. Yep, it sounds just like me. And the weird thing is is when you're a parent who is like that and you have a kid who's not like that, that was something that I didn't know how to deal with. My daughter is kind of like me, I think, in some ways. And she just keeps wanting to do stuff. My son is perfectly happy to just chill out and hang out with friends and is like, I don't want to do chess club or any extra activity. And at first I was like, what's wrong with him? He doesn't constantly want to achieve achieve. This is bad. And then I remember talking to my therapist about it. And she's like, no, actually, I think you need to reframe this. Because maybe he's just really healthy and has healthy self esteem. And he knows what he loves and he's doing what he loves. And I was like, wow, this just blew my mind, right? Because I had so much trouble getting out of my own headspace about how you're supposed to be. And I was kind of projecting it onto my kid. And like, yeah, it's weird. [LAUGHS] Yeah. And I think also-- I mean, I'm not a parent, so I wouldn't know. But I do think that it's also natural for parents to project onto their children. To some extent, I'm sure my parents have done that to me. If we psychoanalyze the parent-child relationship for me, myself, and myself, my parents. But aside from what we were just speaking about, I did want to ask, what are some strategies that kids, parents can adopt to help amend a strained parent-child relationship? So if you think about the extremes of what we've been discussing around parental pressure and parental praise for the outcome versus the process and the opportunity, if a child has a very strained relationship with their parents, how can they start to amend that in a way that's healthy for both the child and the parent? Yeah, that's such a good question. I think it's a really big question. And yeah, it depends in part on what's straining the relationship. But I do think so much of the problems that develop between parents and children are-- so much of it is rooted in ultimately this feeling that the parent doesn't love the child unconditionally, that so much of what makes kids struggle as they go through life was this feeling that they weren't unconditionally loved. And so I wonder whether-- and this isn't possible on every family, but trying to have a conversation about-- I know you didn't mean this. And I know that you love-- I'm sure you did love me, but I kind of need to hear that. Sometimes it felt like you cared more about my grades than you did about me. And I know you didn't intend that. But I felt that way sometimes. And I just would love to hear you disagree with that and tell me like you love me unconditionally, no matter what happens. I mean, I wonder if sometimes we can just ask our parents to communicate that to us if we need that. And a lot of times, I think we do need that. We may not realize we need that. But that's really healing. I think the problem is like having that conversation is that going to then cause your parents to get defensive. It really kind of depends on your relationship. But if you feel you're at a point where you could have that conversation and just say, you know, it would mean so much to me to hear you say that no matter what I do in life, like you will love me the same. That would be really meaningful if you can get your parents to do that. I think that could do a lot. That could be really powerful. Yeah. And I think also there's such a relationship between giving love and feeling love and also feeling safety. I think those are two very interconnected feelings as well. Like you can feel like you're in a safe environment. Your, I think it's also like deeply related to just feeling love, like feeling accepted. And so again, that's why it's so great to also see conversations on therapy being normalized and even like family therapy. Because I think that can be an environment where you are allowed to have these kinds of conversations, maybe in a more structured way, that can be helpful. I also just wanted to ask, what is the secret for raising kids who are not assholes to tie it back to your book and really the theme of what we've been discussing today? The secret. The one secret. If you had to boil it down and a nutshell. Yeah. You know, what I would say is that the secret is in approaching kids. And I've said this already in this podcast with curiosity rather than judgment. There's so much of what parents consider to be like quote unquote bad behavior in kids that they interpret as like my kid is trying to define me and drive me nuts and being bad on purpose to make me angry. When 99% of the time challenging behavior from kids is just a reflection of them, like not knowing, not having the skills you thought they had or having an unmet need. And that if we can take moments as parents, you know, those challenging moments when we think our kids are pushing our buttons on purpose and take a deep breath and recognize that maybe they're just struggling in this moment over something. Maybe they need something that they're not getting and to really try to like approach those moments with curiosity rather than judging our kids or yelling at them, that actually will go a long way towards like nurturing a better, stronger relationship between you and your child over time, which then opens the doors to, you know, just so many other wonderful things that I think ultimately will lead kids to be good human beings who do not act like assholes. So that would be my key tip. There are many more in the book, but I love that. I think that really boils down a lot of what we've said today really well. And I think it also can just be applied to all aspects of life, like approaching everything with curiosity and in a sense of wonder and that that can also help like reduce our expectations and reduce pressure and reduce like this feeling of needing to achieve a certain thing and tying that with yourself worth. So I really like that piece of advice and wisdom that you shared around just keeping it curious and open mindset and reframing those conversations to be more curious rather than judgmental. I have a few questions left for you, Melinda, more focused around how you define health and wellness in your life. And I'm really interested to hear your perspective as a science journalist. And now a former contributor to the well, which is the New York Times, like wellness, health, column. So in your perspective, how is your definition of health and wellness shifted perhaps over the course of your life? That is such an interesting question. I definitely think I have learned how important it is to both take care of yourself and to have compassion for yourself. I think self-compassion is so crucial and often overlooked in terms of just how it affects your overall mental and physical health. And I think that we, I don't know if it's fair to say, but I think sometimes women we are like maybe even more self-critical than men are. And I mean society puts so much pressure on us to do so many things. And so it's not surprising. But I have learned that like I am just so much happier when I'm both like giving myself what what I need mentally and physically like making sure I get some exercise going for walks where I just listen to audiobooks like making that time for myself. And then really trying to practice self-compassion, which again is about like being curious rather than judging. It's like the same concept, but just like recognizing when I'm putting myself down or saying I'm not being a good enough parent or I'm not being a good enough writer or whatever it is and like really trying to turn that around and say, you know what, I'm struggling right now, but I'm a good writer. I'm a good parent. This is okay. We're going to get through this and really that's been really powerful. Yeah. And you know, I love that answer because it's less about maybe the physical practices that you can do to better your health and well-being, but it's more about how you speak to yourself, like really the mindset that you develop. And it really I think goes to show the power of our mind and our mindset and the way that we speak to ourselves, the way that we reframe our thoughts. And I think that can even be more powerful sometimes than some of those like fundamental practices that you can do to boost your health and wellness. And specifically in the health community, there's so many health fads that are out there. And I just feel like there's so much noise to filter through that we see around like tips for healthy living. And so as a journalist, like what are some strategies that you've taken to just filter through all that external noise and no and rather find like what actually works for you and like how you define health and wellness. Hmm. Well, I don't know if this is exactly answering your question, but what I will say that I have filtered out entirely and become much better at recognizing is like diet culture. And the influences of like all of the messages that we get sent about what we should be eating and when and how much and what we should, you know, what our bodies should look like. I just I feel like that's so toxic. And it is so prevalent in our culture and it's so hard to avoid. But I think I've gotten a lot better at just sort of like letting it go and not worrying about like just kind of trying to just like eat balanced foods and not worry so much about like what I'm putting in my mouth and when and just sort of letting that go and recognizing that like so much of what we're told. I mean, I've done a lot of reporting on nutrition and there's so much we don't understand. And yet there's so many articles written as if like we do understand it and that we know what matters when we really like it's just still a mess. And so I think I've just learned to like let it go and be like, I'm just not going to I'm not going to spend my mental energy worrying about like what I'm eating and what my body is looking like right now. And that's that's that's fine. So yeah, that's a big one. I'm so glad you mentioned that because I think specifically diet culture, there's just a million things that are out there that just contradict each other and lead to confusion and stress. And then it just is this negative self perpetuating cycle. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. My final question to you, Melinda is something that I ask every guest that comes onto the podcast very tied to purposeful living like finding things in life that bring you joy and happiness, which are topics that are largely discussed across all my interviews. So my question to you is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? I would say reading fiction. And this is something that I feel like I gave up for a long time when I was really busy and when I had young kids and I didn't know that I missed it. And now I've rediscovered it during the pandemic in a way as an escape like I just needed to like I couldn't leave my house so might as well like go into a you know a different world through a book. And now I'm like how did I not how did I live without fiction for so long? I just love escaping through you know through fiction and especially like thrillers and I think those give me endorphins. I recently like wrote a piece about why people love like horror. And it does have a lot to do with endorphins and sort of like experiencing like the stress of something but like in a not real way and how it sort of gives us these endorphins. So I would say yeah my love for thrillers is what gives me endorphins every day. I love that. I think like you years ago I saw something about how actually watching horror movies or like scary shows can calm you down in an interesting way. I think it ties into it. Yeah like what you were just talking about. And there's probably no better feeling than when you can just escape into a book and you just cannot put it down. And I haven't had that feeling in so long so I think this is a great reminder for me to instead of be on my phone at night before I go to bed start a new book and just read before going to bed because it's one of those it's like meditating for me. Like I know if I do it I'm going to feel better but the like ability for me to get myself to do it is so hard and it's the same with reading. So I just have to find the book that like really excites me and I know once I open it I will not be able to put it down. So it's a great reminder. Yeah no I was there too and yes it once you start doing it again I think it will get easier and yeah but I used to have that same like hurdle of like I just I can't get myself to do it but now I mean now I do it every day it's like easier and yeah it pays off it really. You built the habit exactly well Melinda it's been so wonderful having you as a guest on my podcast where can my community follow you find you on on social media. Well thank you I've had so much fun too. So my website is probably the easiest place to go which is Melinda whennermoyer.com and you can sign up for my newsletter there. I have a parenting newsletter on substack which is basically like me answering parenting questions to science. Busting parenting myths and and then I you know there's more information about like my writing and speaking on there as well. Thank you again so much for coming on to the podcast Melinda. All of that will be linked in the show notes so whoever's listening feel free to connect with Melinda. Well thank you so much for having me Stella. It was just fun. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard make sure to like, rate and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events and all things related to mental health, well-being and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.