[00:00:11.860] – Speaker 2
Well, hey, I’m Chris Tompkins, and welcome to the Shaping Our World podcast. My goal is to invite you into a conversation that will leave you more confident in understanding and inspiring the young people in your life. Each episode, we talk with leading experts and offer relevant resources to dive deeper into the world of our youth today. Today, we have Ellen Galinsky on the show. Ellen is a child development expert with years of research and writing to her credit. She’s the President of Families and Work Institute and the elected President of the Work and Family Researchers Network. She also serves as Senior Research Advisor to AASA, the School Superintendent Organization. She has written two books, Mind in the Making, a best-selling book about early learning that has been hailed by the New York Times as an iconic parent parenting manual. Her second book, The Breakthrough Years, was released this year and focuses on adolescents. It’s been called a “masterpiece” and a “tour de force.” Ellen is also the author of 90 additional reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the web. A popular keynote speaker, she has been a presenter at five White House conferences and has been featured regularly in the media, including appearances on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
[00:01:32.500] – Speaker 2
I can’t wait for you to listen to this conversation we have with Ellen. It’s clear she has great experience navigating the teen world and doing research and investigation into all the things that surround adolescence and childhood. You’re going to love even how she presents what she does and some of the things that she has developed around executive functioning and developing skills. It’s a great conversation. Can’t wait for you to hear it. Let’s get into the conversation with Ellen. Before we meet our guest, a quick word about an opportunity at Muskoka Woods. Starting as a staff member here, I found it to be more than just a job. I discovered a pathway to personal and professional growth. We are committed to intentional staff development, providing training and building a network that can propel your career forward. Imagine working where you’re nurtured to grow with access to amazing facilities and staff care events. If you’re seeking a role that prepares you for what’s next, visit jobs.muskokawoods.com for more details. Now, let’s get into the heart of our show. Ellen, it’s great to have you.
[00:02:52.960] – Speaker 1
It’s wonderful to be with you.
[00:02:54.430] – Speaker 2
Yeah, really looking forward to this conversation. We want to ask you, what shaped your world when you growing up, what were the big influences in your childhood or teenage years?
[00:03:04.420] – Speaker 1
Well, there were a number of big influences, but the one I want to talk about, given that you run a camp and have for 45 years, is camp. I went to camp when I was 10 years old. I didn’t really want to go. It was my mother’s idea, not mine. I was particularly homesick. I grew up in West Virginia. This camp was all the way in Maine. It was a far away away from home. I didn’t know Maine. I didn’t know there, none of the counselors, none of the kids. It was pretty overwhelming. What shaped my world in that experience when I was 10, just an emerging adolescent, was a friendship with a girl who’s happened to be sleeping in the next bunk to mine. Her name is Karen. She became my best friend at camp. She became my best friend in life. We’re still in touch. Years later, I was her maid of honor. She was my matron of But what really shaped my world was learning that even if I was in a difficult situation with the support of friends, with the support of adults, I could do hard things, and then I could even be a leader.
[00:04:12.390] – Speaker 1
I became elected the President of or the co-president, actually, of the camp council, which ran the camp. Oh, wow. That was something that was unfathomable to me as a 10-year-old, but I grew into it. Yeah.
[00:04:27.210] – Speaker 2
Well, in my world, you get to talk to a lot of people that have been in that. So many people point back to early leadership, identification, and understanding as that camp background. It happens in other places for sure, but camp definitely is a ripe environment for that.
[00:04:46.270] – Speaker 1
I think there’s a reason because in the teen years, there is an increase in emotion and feeling strongly about things in what’s sometimes called sensation seeking. And for years and years and years, it’s been studied in terms of kids taking risks and doing dumb things. It really isn’t that. If you go to the brain level, if you look at the hormones, it’s about learning to be brave. That’s the task of the teen years, and that’s what I learned at camp.
[00:05:17.430] – Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s great. We find it creates a bit of an even playing field, too. No one’s in their normal environment, so it gets this even playing field that people feel a little more courage to do things and try things, dress up, go a little bit crazy in a safe way, and step out of their comfort zone.
[00:05:37.220] – Speaker 1
You’re able to have the support of your friends, of the counselors. You’re not going out of your comfort zone by yourself. You’re creating a new community.
[00:05:46.050] – Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s great. Tell us a little bit about what’s shaping your world today. Let us get to know Ellen a little bit more beyond the bio. What are you interested in? What are your hobbies? Where do you spend your free time?
[00:05:58.430] – Speaker 1
I think of myself as It was a research adventure. That experience at camp when I was 10, going to new places physically when I was a kid, climbing new mountains, canoeing new waters, those sorts of things were the physical manifestation of who I am. But in life, I’ve been taking those adventures in my mind. I follow my questions. I’ve had one main question that’s driven me my whole life, which is how do you help kids learn and thrive? But to answer that question, I’ve had to do research on work and family life. I’ve done research on early childhood. I’ve done research on adolescents, and I do it in a particular way. I practice a form of research called civic science, which is that I never… You could translate it into a native saying, which is nothing about us without us. If I’m doing a study on the workforce or the workplace or kids, I start by asking the people who would be the subjects of a study what they want to know and what they think other people should know about them. So it’s always an adventure. It’s an exciting, thrilling adventure where sometimes you’re really in the fog and then the clouds lift and you can see where you’re going.
[00:07:12.830] – Speaker 1
So my whole life has been devoted to taking research adventures.
[00:07:17.040] – Speaker 2
Yeah. And we unpack the details of your bio, but through your organization and research and a lot of the books that you’ve written, you really unpack a lot of the stuff that you’ve discovered. And I’d love to to dive into that, if that’s good, and really get into some of the things that you’ve discovered on this adventure. And so, as you mentioned, you’ve dedicated your life to giving parents, caregivers, educators the tools they need to help kids learn how to thrive. With your organization, Families and Work Institute, and then later in your books, you distilled the research into essential life skills or executive functions that are imperative for kids to learn. In Breakthrough Years, your new book about Raising Thriving Teens, you promote five essential cognitive function-based skills that can help teens succeed now in the future. What are those executive functions that are so critical to the well-being of kids and teenagers alike?
[00:08:14.440] – Speaker 1
Well, let me start by asking a question. When you say the word executive function, what comes to mind for you?
[00:08:20.660] – Speaker 2
Yeah, the high-level things that help you think through function in your day-to-day life. So decision making, just things like that, I would imagine.
[00:08:34.770] – Speaker 1
Exactly. Yeah, that’s what they are. I mean, people, I find, don’t necessarily know what that word means. It’s not the most user-friendly, parent-friendly, teacher-friendly word. One woman told me that it sounds like an executive bossing you around in your brain. Right. Yeah. I have a straight suit, no less, she said. But these are the skills that now we have about 20 years of research on that show our foundational to all intentional learning and to success now and in the future. So they are critically important to both life success and academic success, health, wealth, well-being, overall, better marriages. We could go down the gamut for adults. For kids, they’re more important in the early years than entry-level reading or entry-level math for doing well in school. Oh, wow. Yeah, well, that’s right. And they’re just hidden. We’re just not paying a whole lot of attention to them. So I started on a question in 2000, one of my research adventures, which is we’re dimming that fire for learning in children’s eyes. I could see that. I could see that, and it was in studies showing that school engagement keeps dropping down and down and down. And what are we doing to dim that fire and what can we do to keep it burning?
[00:09:57.370] – Speaker 1
And then I went out to film and interview the best researchers in early childhood and discovered this set of skills with this name, executive function, that are so foundational to our life success. I have paid a lot of attention to these skills throughout the years. These skills are built on core cognitive functions. Sometimes people think of them as soft skills. They’re anything but. The most neurocognitive skills we have. But they do bring together our cognitive, our social, and our most functional capacities to solve problems, to achieve a goal. So your word problem solving was exactly right. Here are the core building blocks of executive function. They’re working memory. In other words, being able to use what you know, not just to memorize it, but to use it. It’s thinking flexibly because life is always changing. So what you did last time may be what you need to do this time, but maybe not. So you have to look at the changing circumstances and adapt in that way. It’s called cognitive flexibility or thinking flexibly. The third skill actually takes place in a different part of the brain. Most of these skills are central to the prefrontal cortex, the front part of the brain.
[00:11:11.520] – Speaker 1
But this part involves a toggle back and forth between what’s called the default mode network and the executive function network. That’s reflecting, it’s pausing, it’s thinking before you act, it’s not going on autopilot, it’s all of those things, reflection. You monitor what you want and you ask yourself, Is this going to get me what I want? You reflect, you pause. Then the final skill back in the executive function part of the brain is self-control or inhibitory control, as it’s called in the research, which means that, again, you use the self-control you need to achieve what it is you want to achieve. Those are the cognitive building blocks to a set of things that we talk about in terms of everyday, I think of them as life and learning skills because they promote both, which are making plans, setting goals. That’s the first one in the breakthrough years. The second one is perspective taking, which is understanding how other people think and feel how that’s the same or different than you. The third skill builds on both of those two skills. These are all attention regulation skills because what you pay attention to is what you do, what you learn.
[00:12:30.040] – Speaker 1
The third part is communicating and collaborating. You have to understand other people to know whether what you want to say is going to reach them and then to collaborate rather than conflict. You have to work with them to achieve what it is you want to achieve. That’s the third, communicating and collaborating. The fourth is problem solving, and that involves a suite of skills. First, meaning making, in other words, making sense of what the problem is. The second is creative thinking, which is brainstorming possible solutions. You just don’t go to the automatic solution. You think of what the possible solutions are. And then critical thinking. So you narrow it down, you evaluate it, what would work in this situation for me and for other people, and then you solve the problem. So it involves those four set of meaning-making, creative thinking, critical thinking, and ultimately problem solving. And The fifth skill, I forgot the fifth skill, and that’s really important because it’s central to the podcast as I’ve looked at some of the interviews you’ve had on with other people. It’s resilience plus. We talk a lot about resilience, which means being able to cope with the things that happen to us.
[00:13:46.980] – Speaker 1
I think the next step of that, and that’s the critical life and learning skill, is taking on a challenge, not just coping with what happens to you, but being able to try that next hard thing.
[00:13:56.500] – Speaker 2
As you go through this, I’m just curious. You’ve been doing work for a long time in this area, and I just wonder, what are you noticing that’s changing in these five skills? Are any of them easier or being sharpened because of the world we live in today, the cultural climate around us? Are there any that we might need to pay a little more attention to? In this podcast, I don’t really like talking about things that are really bad or negative And I always find there’s a nice contrast to being able to… We always talk about affirming the virtue and discerning the vulnerability. And I think kids aren’t all bad or good, right? There’s things that are different from when we grew up. So where might you focus us in looking at… Because these are all really, really great things, and I think they open the door to so many other conversations. But I wonder if just even starting, what are you seeing changing in where young people are around these essential skills?
[00:15:00.140] – Speaker 1
Well, the first thing I want to say is that most people think of learning as learning content. You need little kids numbers, letters, reading, writing, math, those sorts of things. Bigger kids, you think of making sense of the world, learning about history and geography and culture and science and technology and still math and literature and so forth. We don’t think of learning as learning skills. So there are two times in development when we’re particularly wired to learn these skills. The first is in the early childhood years where we’re forming the connections in the brain. We’re building the architecture of the brain. The brain is built to be adaptable to whatever culture whatever world, whatever family we end up in. That’s the first time of huge brain plasticity where we’re very responsive to the environments we’re in. A second time of huge brain plasticity is during adolescence, when we’re particularly responsive to our environments as well. And there, the superhighways of the brain are being built. We’re connecting different parts of the brain to each other in ways that are foundational for life success. Those two times are important. Parents and teachers don’t think about promoting these skills.
[00:16:18.730] – Speaker 1
They may, if they listen to your podcast when I’ve looked at the topics, you talk about a lot of things that are central to building these skills. So I would say where we are is we don’t know, as a general culture, how important these are. I also work with schools all over the country, and they’re feeling that what they’ve been trying to do over and over and over and over again to reduce the achievement gap, to level the playing field, to build better engagement in learning because it’s not very high. Our studies show that, other studies show that. They have tried all kinds of things, but they have not paid attention to, I think, the ingredient that is so critical which is promoting these executive function-based life and learning skills in real-time, in real-life situations. I would say where we are is at the dawn of awareness of how important these are, which gives us a critical opportunity to begin to promote them. I’m working with the school systems in the United States through the AASA, which is the School Superintendent Organization, that feel that these skills need to be the through line for everything they do.
[00:17:29.300] – Speaker 1
I’m working with groups of superintendents to develop tools and trainings for parents, for families, for kids to promote these skills. That’s the first answer to your question. The second answer, if you don’t mind, is that during the pandemic, these skills went down. There’s a population study in the state of Massachusetts in the United States, that actually measured executive function skills over time during the pandemic and found that they dropped considerably. Some of the problems we’re seeing in school, at least here in the United States, are related to the fact that we now need to be more conscious about promoting them. The brain is very plastic, so this is not… It’s all over a story. It’s that if we pay attention to it and we begin to promote them, we can make a big change.
[00:18:19.640] – Speaker 2
Just like an anecdotal add to that, one of the things that we saw coming out of the pandemic is a reluctance for a lot of people at the administrative levels to prioritize sending kids to camp. There was this like, we need to get them back into the classroom and learning again. And one of the things that some of our allies who are at the board level and superintendent level across the province is also countering that by saying, actually, getting kids away and to camp is just as or in some areas, even more important for some of this learning that we’re talking about because of the unique setting and what you can learn at a tangible, practical experience, like going away for a few days to camp than just in classroom alone. It’s not diminishing the classroom learning, but it was just interesting that the sentiment was we’ve missed out on school. In Ontario, we were locked out of schools for a lot longer than some of the places in the United States. And so the thing was we’ve missed the classroom learning, let’s get them back in. And sometimes at the cost of field trips or other experiential parts that I think in a rich tapestry, develop and build into what you’re talking about developing some of these skills.
[00:19:42.350] – Speaker 1
I couldn’t agree with you more, and I can use a researcher’s favorite sample, their children or their grandchildren. My grandson is 11. He went to camp when he was nine for one week, when he was 10 for three weeks, and this year he went for seven weeks. We saw the most significant change in him this summer. Just powerful change. He now sees himself just like I did, but nothing that I ever talked to him about it. But he now sees himself as a leader because the kids at camp saw him as a leader because he did take leadership responsibility. He loves soccer, and he’s just been elected. He plays in a semi-professional kid, Soccer League in New York, and he just was elected the captain of his team. This is going to help him in school. To the feeling that he can try something hard and succeed that he learns through soccer is critically important because they talk about the skills. And one of the important things about promoting executive function skills and why reflection is one of them is that you need to make it visible to kids what skills they’re learning through various situations, whether it’s in the classroom.
[00:20:59.060] – Speaker 1
I don’t want to do an either war between school. No. But doing more of the same, like boot camp for kids because they miss so much school, did not solve the problem here in the United States. It’s helping promote these skills in whatever they’re teaching wherever they are, helping them be aware of them, helping them learn how to work on them, seeing how, helping them understand how important these skills are to their learning and to their life success. Now, not just in the future, but now. These things are right now.
[00:21:28.920] – Speaker 2
I think maybe Just to wrap this up in a little bow, I wish that some people in the education world could see this type of learning as not separate or a distraction from the main learning, but as a way to enrich the in learning and to deepen it and expand upon it, like working together, not separate then. Let’s take a moment to talk about Muskoka Woods CEO Leadership Program. This isn’t just a summer program. It’s a stepping stone for your future. Teenagers can earn a grade 11 high school credit or complete community service hours, all while developing leadership skills in a supportive environment. Our team of passionate staff ensures every CEO has a remarkable and educational experience. Interested in joining this July or August? Find out more at mscokawoods. Com. I wanted to talk about kids and where they are today. The breakthrough years is said to have smashed common stereotypes about teens. Can you tell me what a common stereotype or misconception that we have regarding teens is, and how do you think teenagers defy that?
[00:22:47.810] – Speaker 1
Yes, I can. I can tell you lots, but let me just start with the big one. I ask parents for one word for the teen brain, if they had one word or one phrase to describe the The average teen brain and what wasn’t asking them about their own child, was asking them about the teen or the adolescent brain. What would that word be? Chris, what do you think? How many parents do you think use positive words?
[00:23:11.980] – Speaker 2
What %? Yeah, I probably less than half or more than half would use negative words.
[00:23:19.400] – Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, actually 59%, more than half. You’re right. What percentage do you think used positive words?
[00:23:27.000] – Speaker 2
I would say I’m guessing up in the 10-15% and the others are neutral, right? In the middle, maybe.
[00:23:32.620] – Speaker 1
You’re exactly right. Yeah, 27% were neutral and 14% were positive, which I think is pretty shocking in a sense because it matters. I found that We asked that question before the pandemic, and then we went back to see how kids were doing. In the research that we did, we could statistically control for the things that might affect parents behavior toward their children, like the words they used to describe their own children, how much conflict they had with their kids as reported by the parent, by the child, socioeconomic factors, all of those sorts of things. And what we found was that the parents who used negative words had kids who were more anxious, lonelier, sadder, that nine months later during the pandemic. So these words that we use affect how we see kids, how we view them is what we do. So at the core of the negative words, the most frequent I’ll ask to guess again, what word do you think was the most frequent word that parents used about the teen brain?
[00:24:35.390] – Speaker 2
Well, I don’t know about the brain. I know a word people often use for young kids and teenagers is entitled. That might be one that was used. I might say scattered or distracting, that type of sentiment.
[00:24:51.790] – Speaker 1
Yeah, those were all words that was used. But the most frequent word that was used by 11% of all parents was immature. And another 8% use words that mean immature, like unfinished, incomplete. And so what we’re seeing the teenage years as is what they’re not. We’re seeing them as a deficit adult. And yet these years are so important in becoming an adult. So the main part of that story of immature is that they’re part of what you said, but they’re all gasoline and no breaks. They don’t know how to use self-control, which is the common story that I hear. I just was in Hawaii speaking, and yet again, it’s the common story that I hear all of the time. The kids are all gasoline. That is go, go, go.
[00:25:41.040] – Speaker 2
Yeah, a lot of risk stuff in that.
[00:25:43.440] – Speaker 1
Risk, negative risk, not positive risk, but negative.
[00:25:46.280] – Speaker 2
Yeah, risky behavior, meaning the problematic side of that. Yeah.
[00:25:50.740] – Speaker 1
It’s not true. First of all, kids, if you look at any one point in time and you look at the cognitive control part of the versus the reward part of the brain. If you look at kids at any one point of time, the rewards part of the brain is developing a little faster than the cognitive control. But if you follow kids over time, that is in seven and 10 kids in one study and one and two kids in another study, the cognitive control part of the brain was developing as fast or faster than the reward center. So the notion that they’re all making negative risks. Very few parents see them as making negative risks. That’s one part of the story that’s not true. They can make very good decisions in low stakes situations where it’s not emotionally wrought. Where a decision making gets to be a little more problematic is if it’s something that they care a lot about. But that’s true for all of us, too. So this is the time when they’re learning to make good decisions, when they’re learning these executive function type skills, that’s really critical. So the news story, that’s the old story of adolescents, the new story, the stereotype is over that they’re all gasoline and no breaks.
[00:27:13.790] – Speaker 1
The new story is that this is a time when the task is to leave home. So they have to have a sense of adventure to be able to go out. Think of birds leaving the nest. You just have to leave the nest. That’s what the developmental task is. So they need heightened emotions to be able to figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe, who do they belong with. I think a much better word to describe the teen brain would be exploring and then learning to make decisions, sense making, making good decisions, because that’s really what’s going on developmentally during the teen years. It’s developmentally necessary. They’re wired, their hormones wire them, their brains wire them to seek out, to move out, because that’s the task of these years. And what we need to do is to help them learn the skills to manage in this new phase of their life.
[00:28:08.710] – Speaker 2
Yeah. One of them, and I don’t know if it’s really connected to stereotypes, but this idea or notion around which you talk a bit about being helpers rather than being helped. So what do you mean when you say that you’ve said that that teens actually want to be helpers rather than be helped in the context of relationship to parents? Because I think that’s one of the things in viewing that relationship, is think that kids are just there for us to help them do everything. And a lot of parents take on that burden. But what do you mean by kids actually want to be helpers rather than be helped?
[00:28:50.040] – Speaker 1
Well, I’m going to come at this in two ways. The first way is, what do parents do that promote kids learning these executive function skills? The things that parents do is to not fix problems for kids, but to help them gain the skills to learn to fix them for themselves, as is developmentally appropriate. It’s called autonomy, supportive parenting. It means that you don’t do that homework for your child, you don’t solve that problem for your child. You help them learn how to do it themselves. You help them learn how to solve problems in their lives. I think that’s so critical. In doing that, all of us have a need to feel that our lives that we’re doing something to make the world a better place. It could be helping your little sister across the street. It could be helping your grandmother. It could be any number of things. But again and again and again, a route to good mental health is helping others, being a helper rather than being helped. I think for parents, there are two messages here. One is autonomy support. That is, help your children learn the skills that they need for now and for the future.
[00:29:58.770] – Speaker 1
And two, give them opportunities to be helpers.
[00:30:01.550] – Speaker 2
Those are really good. It’s interesting you say that I was actually on a podcast as a guest just recently, and they asked me similar questions that I ask about what I’ve seen through our world. And we just did some research on Gen Z out of Muskoka woods and their attitudes around leadership and work. And they’re asking, what have I seen that’s different? And I actually mentioned without you saying us, you and I, connecting on that, those two different things. I said one of the things that I’ve seen is much more parent involvement in their kids’ camp experience and even the staffing experience in the last 10, 15 years. Parents, I would say probably overly involved in helping, even sometimes they’re young adults, navigate their employment experience with the kid, this staff member or the camper or guest themselves, really having nothing to do with helping solve the problem. Mom or dad just jumps in and fixes it. I’ve seen that grow in the last little while. And the other thing I said on the positive end is I’ve seen, and the research would point to this, is that young people want to be part of something that really matters and has meaning to it.
[00:31:11.510] – Speaker 2
And I think that’s an incredible virtue with this group, this generation of young people. And so I love your direction there is help them solve their own problems and give them or encourage them to find opportunities where they can help others, whether that’s in their own home or outside of the home. I really love that perspective, and I think that goes a long way. I wonder, just as a pause, what would you say to encourage a little bit further or any practical tools for parents that are just feeling that? They’re hearing you say that and they’re like, yes, but I want to advocate for them and I want it. That natural tendency to get in and problem-solve, because I think there’s a fear-based drive sometimes behind parenting that we so want to protect them from what’s out there in the, quote unquote, the world that we… You’ve heard the snow plowing or helicopter parents or whatever the different phrase is. We want to get ahead of things to protect them, to make sure that they’re okay. That sometimes can go against what you’re saying about autonomy supporting and helping them. What encouragement would you say to a parent who’s listening and nodding their head but also recognizes their own temptation and doesn’t know how to get out of their own way?
[00:32:34.460] – Speaker 1
Well, I think we mix up parent involvement from fixing things for kids. There can never be too much parent involvement. Never. If it’s done in an autonomy supportive ways. So the fact that kids these days are having closer relationships with their families is all good if the parents are doing it in an autonomy supportive ways. And so what that means is you’re about your counselors or your campers, being really supportive but saying, what ideas do you have to fix this? Or what solutions would you come up with? Or what have you done in the past that’s really worked when you’ve had something that’s challenging? You’re You’re not throwing them out into the woods with no help. You’re not. The newer the situation, the more help you give them. But you’re doing it always in ways that help them learn to solve their problems rather than fixing it. If you call the camp and fix it if two kids aren’t getting along or whatever it is, you’re not teaching your kids how to learn to get along with other people, which is the point of camp.
[00:33:39.870] – Speaker 2
Wow, yeah. I think that’s so true. I think quick anecdotal story is a parent who calls for a 22-year-old to tell us, our HR department, that their son’s laundry has been lost, and what are we going to do to fix it? We’re like, We haven’t even heard from your son yet. There’s a lot of things we can tell him to do. How about you have him come to see us? To your point, I think it’s, how do we get on the phone with our children and say, Okay, let’s talk about how to solve this, and rather than us taking the steps forward, giving them the encouragement and tools for them to take the steps forward to solve?
[00:34:18.940] – Speaker 1
I was just at an event last night. I sat with a head of a school in New York, and she was saying the same thing. Parents will text the school saying, My kid is having a problem in in such a class. We’ll say, because the kid text them about the problem. They’re saying, No, your child has to come and tell me about the problem. We can’t begin to resolve the problem if we don’t hear from your child. Having your kids learn to speak up and deal with things is really important. I felt that temptation when my daughter first went to college. For some reason, she She didn’t get any room. It was her second year. It wasn’t the first year. She had no housing. Zero, none. It was like three days to college and no housing. There’s a part of you that doesn’t want to pack and send your child off without a place to physically stay. But we helped her figure out who to talk to, how to go to the dean, what to say. And she got housing. And that she learned more from than if we had called up and arranged for her to get housing.
[00:35:28.500] – Speaker 2
I wanted to take a A stab at another topic. Social media, obviously, is a big topic in our world today. And in the blurb for the breakout years, you say that social media can actually be a positive influence for teens. And I think this is important to process a little bit because in the discourse Of course, we obviously hear a lot about the negative impact of social media, and we don’t often hear as much about the positive. So could you elaborate a little bit on your perspective on social media as a positive space for young people?
[00:35:59.100] – Speaker 1
Yeah. Yes, it’s the breakthrough years. I love the breakout years, too.
[00:36:03.600] – Speaker 2
Sorry about that.
[00:36:04.620] – Speaker 1
I love it. Yes. Social media is… There are things about it that are just designed not to be good for kids. It’s designed to be addictive, to have you keep looking at it, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, to have you buy things. They’re selling ads. The algorithms can take you down rabbit holes and the likes promote that part of like, am I popular? Am I not? Am I fitting in? Am I not? There are a lot of things about social media that just aren’t good for kids in general. Has it caused the mental health crisis around the world? No. For some children, it does cause mental health problems. But on average, in the United States, the committee that looked at this issue over bringing the best scientific minds said, no, we can’t say that it’s causal. So Where can it be helpful? Like any tool, we need to use it for what’s helpful. It can open up the world to kids that they might not know. They can see, have more experience than they might have in a living in a small town here, there, or the other, or even a big town. It can introduce them to other people.
[00:37:16.660] – Speaker 1
I don’t mean necessarily negative people, but it can introduce them to other people. My son is a musician, and when he was a teenager, he met other people who were interested in the music that he was interested in, and he would never have met them, even though he was in New York City. It can help them be creators. I think that being a content consumer is negative, but being a content creator is positive. So think about the creativity that goes into some of the TikTok things that kids are doing. If they could use that creativity in other ways or if we could give them other opportunities to use that creativity, totally cool. Would be wonderful. So I think we have to look at it as a tool, as a tool that it is, manage the negative parts and promote the positive parts. And in doing so, we need to set limits with autonomy. So I wrote an article on my Substack, so I hope your listeners will go to ellengalinsky. Com, which is the website for my new book, The Breakthrough Years. And there are lots of… On all these subjects, there are lots of articles that I’ve written to give you more information.
[00:38:30.220] – Speaker 1
And there is one on how you set limits by providing autonomy around social media or around the digital world.
[00:38:39.620] – Speaker 2
Well, we’re going to definitely encourage people to look through that. Speaking of your sub stack, there’s one where you talk about the importance of having a possibilities mindset. And a lot of the questions, a lot of things we’ve been talking about are having a different perspective, our mindset, the lens that we, whether It’s looking at stereotypes and blowing them apart or getting better understanding of some of these things. Our mindset, how we approach some of these things as parents is really important. Can you explain what is meant by a possibilities mindset? Can you help us see how that might correlate as a parent or someone who’s helping or walking alongside young people, how that might help and correlate to teens behaviors and outcomes that we might see?
[00:39:29.450] – Speaker 1
Well, I We didn’t start out to find a new mindset. What I started out with, I told you I’m a research adventurer, I started out with a question, which is we often know what we want to do as parents, but we don’t do it. And so my question was, what stands in the way between our wanting, let’s say, didn’t like the way our mother talked to us when we were a teenager, and we find ourselves saying the same things to our kids. So we know we didn’t like it when we were a kid. We don’t really want to do it, but there it comes right out of our mouth. And So how do we change? How do we live up to the positive expectations that we have? So what I did was I asked parents in between the two nationally representative studies of parents of 9 to 19 year old and their kids. I asked both parents and kids, but in this case, parents, to walk me through a time when they had lost it. And by losing it, I meant not being the parent you want to be. And just really walk me through it.
[00:40:28.570] – Speaker 1
What happened? What did you think? What did you feel? What did you do? How did your child respond? What did you think? What did you feel? What did you do? How did your child respond? What did you think? What did you feel? What did you do? Just again and again and again. And what I found was there were three things going on in two different mindsets, one I call an adversity mindset, one I call a possibilities mindset. The first thing that’s going on is the feeling that things can or can’t change. If You think that the situation is fixed, set in stone, will never be different, you can’t. That’s a big barrier to change. That’s a big obstacle to change. The second is how you see something that’s not going right. Do you see it as a challenge or do you see it as a threat? And we’ve made the notion of stress very toxic. It’s all bad. Stress is bad, stress is bad. But stress is actually how our body helps us deal with challenges. So teaching ourselves, teaching our kids to lean into stress, understand when our heart beats faster, when we get out of breath, when there’s something that we have to do that’s a little hard, that’s It’s a normal physical reaction.
[00:41:46.380] – Speaker 1
It’s not something that’s awful. It’s a normal physical reaction where we’re preparing to take on a challenge. And seeing it as a challenge versus a threat. A threat means flight or flight. It tends to wee they responding versus a challenge where the brain is never more open to learning than when you have a challenge. Then the third thing is, do you think you can make the change? Self-efficacy. I think I can figure this out. You might not know exactly what to do, but I think I can figure it out. Versus I might think that change is possible. I might see it as a challenge, but I just don’t think I can figure it out. Those three things go into a possibilities mindset. I think understanding that We’re in the process of working with teachers all over the country to develop a possibilities mindset as a lever to making the change and achieving the goals to be the educators they want to be. I’m very excited about this because we’ve already, in our research, gotten really very positive response. Mindsets matter, how we see things is, again, how we act toward them. I think having a possibilities versus an adversity mindset makes a big difference.
[00:43:00.580] – Speaker 2
Well, and I think we talk a lot about modeling as well, inevitably, when we’re in conversations on this podcast. I think what I love about this is, as we practice this as parents as well, we can also instill that in our kids implicitly as well. Not having a fixed mindset, believing that change can happen, seeing things as challenges, not threats, and then believing we can do something. As a parent, that’s important, too, to the challenges in parenting. But also, I think it’s really important, like you said, as kids develop that. I really like that framework. That’s really helpful.
[00:43:38.550] – Speaker 1
I found it was really helpful, too. I find that teaching it, particularly the leaning into stress, not just seeing it as bad, but leaning into what stands in your way, I think that’s really important.
[00:43:52.350] – Speaker 2
Do you have anything, like tips on the believing you can make the change that helps parents to approach that? Because I’m just thinking through some things. When I think of that, I’m like, part of that is also going, who do I have as resources around me that can… Because it’s not always just me solving it. I can read this book or I can talk to my neighbor, or pulling others in. Are there any other tips or tools or things that you find that really help you? Because the mindset stuff I think we can work through, but then really getting to like, no, I can do this. What helps us in that?
[00:44:34.680] – Speaker 1
Well, first, I think finding, we call them possibilities partners, but finding someone to work with because we don’t bring change without support, without accountability in a sense. So saying, I really, let’s go back to the example, I don’t want to talk to my kids the way my mother talked to me. Finding someone who’s going to be your partner in helping you make that change is the first step. Then looking at the How will I feel? Setting a vision for how you’ll feel if you don’t talk to your child that way is the second step. So knowing that I’m going to feel so much better about myself as a parent if I don’t talk that way. Plus, when I talk that way, my kids, it just inevitably ends up in a fight. That’s the setting an image. Then asking, what are the challenges? What stops me from making this change? And figuring out the challenges. If you figure out the challenge and then you figure out, this is the research of Peter Golditzer, but if that challenge happens, then I will. You need to have a concrete plan, also Gabriel Oettingen’s research, to deal with that as a challenge.
[00:45:44.210] – Speaker 1
Then Who are the people who can support you? What will support you in making that change? And then creating a change experiment. Okay, now I’m going to create this time where I’m going to, for half an hour, not try to talk to child this way. And then do it as a change experiment and see how it goes. Come back and talk about it with your possibilities partner and see how you did, and then go through it again. What would help me live up to what I want to do and be and what stands in my way and how I’m going to deal with that. So it’s that process of figuring out the obstacles, figuring out what helps you, and trying it out, figuring out the obstacles, figuring out what helps you, and trying it out until it becomes an established change.
[00:46:28.970] – Speaker 2
Oh, wow. That That was so powerful. Just even thinking through that, what a great way to process that. I love that possibility partners. I’m going to remember a lot from this conversation, but that’s one thing that’s definitely going to stick. I loved hearing that. Oh, thank you. Yeah. As you have possibility partners in that and bring about the change, you said, how do you get the help? I think we’ve unpacked so many ways for us to think through this and to get the help that we might need as a parent or as you work or anyone who’s helping young people thrive. And you as we land the plane here, I do want to go back to saying, I think the resources and the research and the stuff that you provide through your writing and research, I think is a great way to help parents. And so if we can direct them to your books, Mind in the Making and Breakthrough Years, not breakout, sorry about that. And your website, Substack with Articles. And there’s a lot resources for parents to tap into that have been piqued by this conversation. And if there’s something that they’d like to dive into.
[00:47:40.460] – Speaker 2
Are there any other resources that you might be able to recommend to parents? And feel free to zero in on some that you have and any others that you think would be helpful for parents who are wanting to dive into the topics we’ve talked about today a little more in-depth.
[00:47:54.940] – Speaker 1
Well, thank you. At first, I would invite your your listeners, and I’m so impressed by what you do. I would invite your listeners to connect with me. You’re a real person. I’m a real person. We only can do the work that we can do in a conversation with a possibilities partner or in a conversation with other people. So I read all the things that people write to me on my sub stack. And tell me what you’re interested in hearing more about or share your experience. And I I write articles every other week. So I’ll continue to write things that hopefully will be helpful. I continue to work with schools, so any thoughts that your listeners have there would be helpful. In terms of other resources, I think that there are a couple of other podcasts that are good besides your wonderful one. I like what Aliza Pressman is doing with Raising Good Humans. I like what Emily Edlin is doing with Autonomy Supportive Parenting. I think that there’s some other resources that might be helpful to your listeners as well. But my research is civic science, so I’m not going off into some academic book and trying to figure things out.
[00:49:18.800] – Speaker 1
It’s in response to the people I’m connected with and I’m doing this research. I just would invite your listeners to join the conversation.
[00:49:29.340] – Speaker 2
I love Did you call it earlier? I just want to get it right. Do you say you’d go on research adventures? Is that how you put it?
[00:49:36.770] – Speaker 1
I was trying… When you write a book, you write 600 introductions to it. I wrote the introduction to this book. I started, this took me nine years. I had a big major job. I was the Chief Science Officer at the Bezos Family Foundation during the time that I was mostly writing this book. So I was writing around the edges. I was doing this research and writing around the edges of my job. And one of the times I wrote the introduction, you throw them all away at the end, and now you know exactly what you want to say. But one of the ones that I wrote somewhere along this journey was describing my life as a research adventurer that I that I follow questions, that I look for answers, that that’s really what’s so exciting to me.
[00:50:20.290] – Speaker 2
I wonder if I can offer up to parents and listeners when they’re feeling like they’re not really sure what they’re looking at in the world around their kids or how their kids are behaving or acting. They don’t necessarily need to go down the academic research road like you, but I wonder what it would look like as people who care about kids to take on that disposition of a research adventure. I want to find out more about this.
[00:50:49.010] – Speaker 1
Well, if you were going to ask me for final thoughts, that would be it, which is that it’s a A learning adventure. Being a good parent is never something that you achieve. It’s always a work in progress, just like being a good daughter or a good son is. Having a good marriage, it’s always a work in progress. So think of it that way. Something that you’re always learning about. And if you can look at it through the lens of learning, you don’t take it so personally. It makes it a lot easier.
[00:51:23.380] – Speaker 2
Well, I was going to ask you a final thought. So there they are. So that’s fantastic. Ellen, that was a great conversation. So much learn and to ponder and to dive deeper into. And so, possibility partners and research adventures. So I’m going to keep those handles going with me through the week. Thank you so much for your time today and for all the work that you do to help. We know just in conversations in our own lives, sometimes this gets really hard. And I really appreciate you diving into some of these topics for us and sharing what you are learning along the way. I really appreciate the work you’re doing and really grateful for your time today.
[00:52:04.740] – Speaker 1
Well, thank you for your camp, for your podcast, and for this conversation.
[00:52:11.400] – Speaker 2
Great. Thanks, Ellen.
[00:52:12.780] – Speaker 1
Bye-bye.
