Jessica Lahey breaks down Autonomy-Supportive Parenting and how to empower our kids by letting them fail

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Casey O'Roarty 0:01
Joy, joyful courage. Parenting podcast episode 21 you

Jessica, hey, podcast listeners, welcome

back to the show. I am so excited about this week's guest. Her name is Jessica Leahy. She is a writer, blogger, super wise mama woman, and she's going to talk about her new book that came out a few months ago called The Gift of Failure. And the reason that I was excited about getting her on the show is, you know, I have all the love and intention in my heart to hold space for my kids, to be their best selves, to learn from their mistakes, to have the opportunity to be uncomfortable and grow and develop skills. And even though that is where I'm coming from, I still find just like I'm sure many of you do, that it's really

difficult not to want to just, you know, help them out.

You know, drop that homework off, drop that lunch off, solve that problem, especially when I see my kids in a lot of discomfort. And Jessica's book has not only grown my awareness around how often that tendency shows up in me, how often the opportunities are laid out in front of me to rescue my children. But also this book has taught me, and not so much taught me because I knew it was there, but really has just emphasized deeper, the idea that our children will only gain their autonomy if we give them practice in stepping into it. We're going to talk in the interview about autonomy, supportive parenting, and what that looks like, and how we can really aim and strive to be that kind of parents for our kids, because you know what? That's what they need. They need to go to college. They need to leave the home and know that they can get to the other side of discomfort, that they can have difficult conversations, that they can advocate for themselves, that they can take accountability when they screw up. They need to be able to do that stuff, and if we don't give them the opportunity to practice when the stakes are relatively low and they're at home and we can be there loving them through the pain of it all, they're not going to be able to do it as adults. And I want to live in a world where adults are willing to do that. Adults are willing to say, Oh, wow, I really screwed up, and this affected you, and I'm sorry about that, and this is what I'm going to do about it. Or I want to live in a world where adults are asking for help, right? Instead of blaming instead of pretending that they know what they're doing. I want adults to have these skills, and the only way that the adults in the world are gonna have the skills is if we give our those same adults as children time to learn, time to practice. So can you tell I'm kind of excited about this, because I am, and I'm just super excited to introduce you to Jessica, because she's brilliant and wonderful, and I had a great time talking with her. So how about we listen in on that conversation? All right.

All right, podcast listeners, I am so excited to introduce my guest for today's show. Her name is Jessica Leahy, and she is an educator, a writer and a speaker. Has been on the road for the last few months, has taught middle and high school for over a decade, and is a correspondent for The Atlantic and PBS parents, commentator for Vermont Public Radio, and writes the biweekly parent teacher conference advice column for The New York Times. Her New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure, how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed, was released in August by Harper books and hit the New York Times bestseller list in September. I am mostly finished with that book, Jessica, and completely loving it. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the show.

Jessica Lahey 4:53
Thank you, and please call me. Jess,

Casey O'Roarty 4:56
okay. I will. I already love to call you. Jess, I. Tell us a little bit more about you that the bio didn't cover.

Jessica Lahey 5:05
Yeah. So I taught for a long, long time. I taught high school, I taught middle school. I think the reason I identify as a middle school teacher is that's really where my heart lies. I never thought I would teach middle school. When I got asked to consider a position in middle school. I was just horrified. I was like, there is no way I could teach middle school kids. But I fell so in love with them. God bless you. I did. They're just the best. And right now I'm actually teaching high school kids again. I can't teach full time just because of my writing and speaking schedule. So I'm teaching, I actually teach high school kids in in an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab somewhat near my house, so it's a nice, flexible position, and yet I still get to teach a group of kids that I just love. These kids are, they're pretty amazing. So it's good. It allows me to sort of keep one foot in the classroom and continue to write. Yeah, what

Casey O'Roarty 6:01
do you teach them?

Jessica Lahey 6:02
I teach writing and English. Really. I teach many of the kids come obviously dealing the recovery. Their drug and alcohol recovery is sort of the first priority. But many of them come from school districts that will kind of give some assignments. Some of them come there, you know, because they and they've dropped out of school, so I just sort of meet them where they are and teach whatever. Sometimes it's etymology, and I actually slip some Latin in there, but for the most part, it's writing. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 6:31
I bet that that's a really powerful tool for them, once they kind of embrace the idea that it can be a way for them to express themselves after the pain of I think

Jessica Lahey 6:43
most English writer most English teachers, or writing teachers, will tell you that we get a lot of stuff in essays that students aren't willing to say out loud. And certainly that applies, you know, in the rehab too, but I mean, over, over the past 17 years that I've been in and out of the classroom. You know, it writing tends to be a kind of therapy for kids, or a safe place for kids, and so it's, it's sort of a wonderful, unnatural extension that, you know, some of the, some of their recovery work they'd be doing in their writing anyway. But I get to read some pretty privileged stuff. I feel in the sense that I feel privileged to be able to to read some of what they they care to share with me and trust me enough to share with me.

Casey O'Roarty 7:27
Yeah, well, so I've been reading your book, The Gift of Failure. Tell the listeners. Tell us all. How did you find yourself writing about this topic?

Jessica Lahey 7:37
Huh? It's funny that you use the find yourself the passive voice there, because it a little, it was a it was surprising, and it was fast. I mean, I had been writing about education for a while at the core foundation, Core Knowledge Foundation blog, and on my own blog, you know, to teachers and to educators and admitted, you know, people who are sort of interested in education policy, in the art of teaching, and all of a sudden, I wrote this piece that came out of a study that that came out of Australia about what happens when kids are over parented. And I had suddenly, I had the quotes and the context to talk about these kids and what happens to them with their education, I had been something was feeling off. Something was clearly wrong in the schools where I've been teaching, the kids were increasingly afraid of messing up, afraid of increasingly anxious. All the stuff we've been hearing lately about, you know, for example, with the Palo Alto suicides article in The Atlantic and what Carol Dweck writes about in in mindset that kids are so worried about not looking effortless, effortlessly smart and effortlessly perfect, that they they were just afraid to make any mistakes, and the parents were really feeding that by saving them from the consequences of their mistakes, and also, you know, wanting them also to look effortlessly perfect. So when I wrote this Atlantic piece, the first piece I wrote for The Atlantic why parents need to let their children fail, it just kind of exploded and and publishers came to me, and my wonderful, wonderful agent negotiated through an 11 publisher auction for the book. And, you know, three years later, here we are. It's, been a wonderful ride. And, you know, I continue to write for the Atlantic, and that's been really wonderful to have that home base of the times in the Atlantic, to continue to try things out. So, yeah, and so just can't just got off the road from three months on on tour. And while that was amazing and wonderful, it was also tiring, and I didn't get much of a chance to write, so I'm really excited to get back to work on my writing. Well,

Casey O'Roarty 9:45
I always laugh when I tell people that I belong to this amazing Facebook group where there's all these incredible parent educators, and people post things like, this is my latest please piece from the New York Times. And I get to post things like, this is. My latest piece from the Monroe monitor.

Jessica Lahey 10:04
I mean, I just, I just wrote a note to a journalist in Tucson, Arizona today for a piece that she wrote about kids in foster care. And, you know, I it's been this amazing well of new writing that I get to read from other people that I may not stumble across on my own. So, yeah, well,

Casey O'Roarty 10:19
and when you were talking about the kids and their anxiety and wanting to appear perfect and not making any mistakes, all I could think about was that whole identity of mothers. Suppose, you know, trying to look like, you know, the house is clean. I'm in great shape. There's a home cooked meal in the oven. Everybody's homework. So I wonder, I'm just imagining how that all feeds into itself as well.

Jessica Lahey 10:47
Well, you know, we kind of do it to ourselves and and the problem is, you know, we don't mean to do it to ourselves, but we do. And it, I think it's the confluence of that sort of Instagram culture of, you know, all the messes outside of the edges of the photograph, and everything looks perfect and wonderful. And it's all, you know, we're all living this sort of real simple Martha Stewart Living kind of existence, which clearly we're not, but that's what we we tend to want to put out there. And it's life is just messier than that and and that's why I think people, you know, the people who are willing to admit to how messy life can get. You know, that's why Glennon at monastery is, she's, she's willing to admit to how difficult life can be and how messy life can get. And I think that's kind of relief. And the last thing I wanted to do was create a book that required us to, you know, have to work harder at our parenting, if anything, I think this book gives us some permission to let go of some things that aren't as important as they sort of might feel in the moment. Yeah, definitely.

Casey O'Roarty 11:48
And, you know, it hit home for me because I was raised in a family where you really the the message that I received was you should always be striving to be the best one, right? And, and, for whatever reason, I was able to kind of, yeah, I'm good. I'm good with my 3.0 you know. And it didn't necessarily derail me. My parents also did a great job of, you know, to counter that, I think, you know, I had to call and make appointments in high school. It was super annoying, something that I make my daughter do as well. Like, hey, why don't you call and write yourself a hair appointment? And, you know, I get the eye rolls and everything, but whatever, see, you get

Jessica Lahey 12:31
eye rolls I get. Could you just stop doing that Gift of Failure thing and just make the phone call for me? Like, I have, it's a total catch 22 I make my kids do that stuff too. But then they're like, oh, man, she's working her agenda again. Well,

Casey O'Roarty 12:45
I read, I actually read out loud from your book to my daughter. Like, look, somebody else is saying to do this isn't that cool. And she was just, man, there's, there's

Jessica Lahey 12:55
one of my my favorite testimonial on my speaking page, on my website, is the very first one. I put it at the top because it comes from a little kid that his dad sent me a quote that said, you won't do anything for me since you went to that dumb speaker thing.

Casey O'Roarty 13:13
That's awesome. I love that. But the good results, yeah, and I think that you know, from the way that I was raised, I mean, I want my kids to be successful, right? I'm putting air quotes up. I want them to do the best that they can. I want them to strive to do their personal best and to show up well. And I know that there's gonna that life is messy, that we're emotional humans, and we fall apart and get railroaded by our feelings in the moment and disappointment and all that stuff. So how, where does hoping for the best for your child get messy for you? Like, where does it where do we go wrong? I mean, I know where we go wrong, but Well, honestly,

Jessica Lahey 13:57
I think, I think talking to parents who really, really are invested in their kids lifelong happiness, and not the moment to moment happiness. I mean talking to parents whose kids have learning issues, or kids for whom life is a little bit more of a struggle and successful to them means that their kid is living a life that is well lived, and that is, you know, where they have character, and where they are happy and what they're doing. I think the problem is, is for parents that have kids that where everything looks effortlessly easy and they do well, and I call them the raised by wolves kid kids is that we tend to think of those kids as needing to fit into this incredibly narrow, these incredibly narrow parameters of what is success. And so for many people these days, their parameters for you know, success are go to a really selective college and get a job as a doctor or a lawyer. Or or some other, you know, high paid tech, whatever that sort of is seen as successful. And we forget that, you know, there are a lot of people who are very happy and successful plumbers and, you know, writers and all these different things that may not fit into this very narrow i

this very narrow definition of success that you know, I just got back from places like Palo Alto, where you're in a community where everyone seems so successful that for you to consider doing anything other than be an extremely successful entrepreneur or finance person or lawyer or whatever is is sort of seen as as abnormal. And I think, I think the problem with that is that we're imposing so much of our own agenda on our kids that, you know, we're handicapping them and we're it doesn't allow us to see what's really special in our kids and what they really love. And you know, no matter how much we want something for our kids, we can't make them want what we want for them, that that sort of has to emerge on their own. That's

Casey O'Roarty 16:11
so annoying, so annoying I know exactly well, and I, and I, what I'm hearing too is like with this drive for success, as far as academics go college that piece, there's this whole missing realm of being, which are the social and life skills, which you talk a lot about in your book, well,

Jessica Lahey 16:35
and creativity and play. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's without going to, you know, sort of touchy feely about it. There are kids I know, kids I have taught, who really just don't have any ability to be frivolous and play and do silly things. And that was weird to see that. And then the other issue is that we talk about success as being, you know, like a kid goes to Stanford. Well, you know, the wonderful corollary book to mine is Julie lithcot Hames how to raise an adult. And Julie lithcott Hames was admit she sorry. She was an advisory Dean for freshmen at Stanford, and what she was seeing was kids showing up at Stanford unable to cope with life, with basic life stuff, and those kids have achieved within our very narrow parameters of success, like, you know, wow, Stanford. You're at Stanford. You must be the best of the best. And yet, what she saw were kids who couldn't hack the emotional trials of day to day life at that place. So, you know, one of the things I talk to parents a lot about is reconciling the fact that there are a lot of ways to be happy and a lot of ways to be successful. And we have gotten We've really lost our imagination around that, and lost our ability to see anything other than, you know, within those blinders that we've put ourselves, put on ourselves. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 17:57
so you talk in the book about controlling parents versus autonomy, supportive parents. I love that term, autonomy, supportive parents. Can you kind of speak a little bit into these two styles? I find myself in both categories so well. It

Jessica Lahey 18:15
was interesting. A lot of the criticism that I've gotten at the Julie lithcott, both of us have gotten for our books is that we're talking about that sort of the price of privilege. Madeleine Levine's price of privilege audience, that this is a very narrow slice of upper class society, but it is absolutely not as like I said, Julie and I were just talking about this, that over parenting may look slightly different in different socioeconomic groups, but So, for example, you have sort of wealthier parents. Parents are used to having some power. Are very good at the whole you will not discipline my kid unless you talk to me first. You know, going in and pounding on the teacher's desk kind of entitlement, whereas, you know, people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum tend to do the micromanaging their kids at home kind of situation. So autonomy, supportive parenting, is parenting for your kids, ability to control some details of their life, whether that's how they do their homework, where they do their homework, you know, I like to make the analogy that we don't tell toddlers. You know, would you like to wear a hat today? We say, Would you like to wear the red hat or the blue hat? And we give them, we give them autonomy to own part of that decision. And what we don't tend to do, what a lot of parents are not doing, is giving their kids any control around school life or sports life, and if they do give them any control around it, then they also rescue them on the other end, if kids forget stuff or irresponsible on their end. So what we're seeing a lot from as a teacher, what I'm seeing a lot is parents controlling every aspect of the home life, and then if the kid gets any ability to. Make mistakes, then the parent also swoops in on the other end and protects the kid from any consequences of their mistakes, which completely short circuit the teaching. Short circuits the teaching process. I mean that especially middle we were talking about middle school, that's what Middle School is. It's giving kids new opportunities to mess things up that have to do with, you know, executive function, and you know, all that organization and planning and all that stuff they screw up over and over and over again. And what middle school teachers hopefully do you know or help them learn better ways to do it? And if the parent is constantly fixing things for them, we don't ever get that opportunity

Casey O'Roarty 20:36
well. And I love the title of that chapter about Middle School, which is prime time for failure.

Jessica Lahey 20:43
I love that chapter because, like I said, because it's about middle it's about those pupa people, those middle school kids, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 20:49
well, and my listeners know I've got one. I have a seventh grader and and it's so even the difference between sixth and seventh grade has been huge, yeah,

Jessica Lahey 21:00
wait till you the is this a boy or a girl? It's a girl. Okay, seven. I mean, for boys, especially, the difference between seventh and eighth grade is just unbelievable. For girls, you know, they tend to, they tend to grasp that whole executive function thing a little bit earlier than boys do in middle school. Yeah, they're showing up

Casey O'Roarty 21:19
in the boys that are giving her attention. Just have to tell her things like, well, they just don't have the skills to let you know that they like you. So they're doing all these weird things.

Jessica Lahey 21:28
You know, in middle school, the cool thing about middle school is, you know, the job of the middle school teachers to get them ready for the increased rigor and increased responsibilities of high school. And there are plenty of kids where I look at them in sixth grade as their advisor, and I say, oh my gosh, we're never going to get there. There's no possibility this kid can go to high school. And yet, I don't know, something happens. All those connections start to happen in the frontal lobe, and they learn how to control themselves, and they learn self regulation, and they learn organization. And then all of a sudden, I'm saying goodbye to them in eighth grade, and I go, Oh yeah, okay, they're gonna make it. They're gonna be okay in high school. And it just it's a matter of time. And the neat thing about it is it's not a matter of smarts. You can be the smartest kid in the school and still be terribly disorganized and not able to plan things, or not able to understand metaphor, whatever, and that has nothing to do with how smart you are. It has to do with the connections in your brain. So making sure kids know that about themselves, that's one of the fun things about middle school, is explaining that to them and helping them understand that it's not about being smart, it's just about brain development and patience. And you

Casey O'Roarty 22:36
know, what's so exciting is that it wasn't until middle school that my daughter's teachers started talking to her about the things that I talked to her about, meaning brain development and neuro pathways and, you know, the practice of things. And she comes home and says, Mom, my teacher was talking about the prefrontal cortex. And I'm like,

Jessica Lahey 22:57
Yes, I actually just visited a school in Dallas, Texas called the momentous Institute. And they do that from kindergarten, well, from preschool, they really, they talk about in kid friendly language, the way their brain works. And that I saw these really cool posters where they had, like, you know, kids talking with pictures of brains talking about, you know, I'd like to learn how to pay attention better in class, and that's a function of my frontal lobe. And, you know, it's pretty

Casey O'Roarty 23:25
cool, awesome. Well, and we, I teach positive discipline in the classroom to teachers, and that's what we talk about. We talk to them about helping kids understand their brain so that they know that when they've lost their, you know, brain in the palm of the hand. Dan Siegel's work, when they've lost their prefrontal cortex and all they have is their emotions. Yeah, they need to come up with some ways, not in the moment, but have some ways to help them come back to their fully functioning brain well. And you talk so about the back to the autonomy, supportive parents. I love the story that you tell in the book about being at the park and watching that poor dad exhaust himself, because every time his daughter had a problem in the sandbox, or a voice was raised, or whatever, he was up on his feet, ready to save the day, and then the other kid was like climbing on something, and he was just Busy, you know. So it starts at the very beginning, right? I mean, it starts really young,

Jessica Lahey 24:25
yeah. And what's what I love about that particular scenario, and in I talk a lot about that sort of kids in the sandbox throwing sand at each other. That's where the beginning of sort of negotiation and standing up for yourself and developing your voice to say, I don't like that. Don't do that. You know that kid who learns how to do that stuff early on and stand up for herself and say, I don't like the way you're treating me is the kid who you know has the where emotional wherewithal to stand up to bullies later on. And when we swoop in there, we grab that kid and we lift them out of the sandbox and we take them away. We. Nigh them that ability or the moment they need in order to like, resolve that stuff between themselves. And we feel like what we're doing is being good parents and being attentive parents, but what we're really doing is short circuiting the learning process and socialization. I mean, we let puppies do it. We take puppies to puppy socialization time and let them nibble on each other. And yet we don't let our children do the same thing. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 25:25
well, and then it shows up later on. You write later on on the playground, when the one kid's being a punk and the grown ups, you know, the whole bully culture terminology,

Jessica Lahey 25:39
don't I mean, there's that fantastic. Oh, crap. The comic who talks about why kids shouldn't have cell phones, Louis CK, he talks about the fact that, you know, it's so easy to be mean online because you don't have to look at the face of the person you've just hurt. And leaving the kids in the sandbox long enough to hear that made me mad. That hurt my feelings. That's an incredibly important part of learning how to learning empathy and perspective, taking and a kid who doesn't learn that ends up never understanding how their behavior impacts other children, and they end up being a bully, and that when that happens, we blame that kid for being mean, and yet we're that we as parents are the ones who have not given him the opportunity to learn how to not be that way. Learn that, you know that things we do hurt other people's feelings or make other people happy, or, you know, whatever that that social interaction is, and that's really unfortunate, because, you know that's we're creating that situation. Mm, hmm.

Casey O'Roarty 26:49
Why do you think that these loving, I'm sure, loving, well intentioned parents, right? Absolutely. How do we get into the habit of taking over or controlling our children's lives? Why do we?

Jessica Lahey 27:01
Well, I think part of it has to do with the fact that we're thinking really short term. We're thinking about in this moment right now, what will make me feel like a good parent, and inevitably, that's, you know, make give my you know, it's sort of that hand a kid a cookie moment, and they look at you like, Oh, thanks. Or, you know, deliver the homework to school when it's been forgotten. You know, you feel really good in that moment and you get a chance to check off that box of, oh yeah, I was a good parent today. But if you think about sort of what helps kids over the long term, what'll make us be good parents over the long term, what'll help us raise adults, as opposed to dependent raising a dependent child, that stuff is a little bit harder, because we may have to put off that feeling of, oh yeah, I was good and loving and had my kids back just a little bit longer. But you know, I think thinking more long term and thinking more about process than the end product is really going to go a long way to helping us be better parents and not rely on those moment to moment. You know, topical, really superficial feelings of, Yay, I'm a good parent. I made my feel can feel good. I made them smile. I made them feel loved. I gave them a cookie. I, you know, whatever, they behaved in this moment because I gave them a lollipop, that kind of thing. We got to stop thinking so short term?

Casey O'Roarty 28:21
Yeah, well, what about the tendency? Because I know I work with some parents and again, loving well intentioned, but it's that fear that creeps in, like, if I don't nip this in the bud right now, they're gonna end up in prison. Like, it seems like it always goes there, right? It's always like this the worst case, Doomsday future for my child, if I don't get this handled right now, and sometimes getting it handled means getting in the way,

Jessica Lahey 28:48
yeah, taking over and intervening. I mean, if we go back to the sandbox, you know, we're afraid that the other parent is going to see us as not hands on enough, or not a good parent, if we don't, you know, take our kid out of the situation so they can't hurt the other kid, or, you know, that sort of the day where, you know, the moment where kids pinch each other or throw sand at each other or push each other down, we're not allowing those moments to play out. And I think a lot of that just comes back to that we're so worried about being perceived as something other than perfect as a parent. And I think if we're so worried about everyone else's perception, then you know, maybe we need to think about what our motivation is. And by the way, you're about to hear my I believe you're about to hear my sixth grader burst through the door and yell about something like or throw lunch boxes all over the floor or something. But if there's my sixth grader coming through the door,

Casey O'Roarty 29:44
so I want to jump off, not off topic, but I was reading. I had a long car ride with my husband yesterday, and I was reading to him from the friends chapter of your book and about how, you know, as our kids get into middle and high. School they, you know, they could get curious about all different types of of people, all different types of kids, and not panic when the new friend is, you know, dressed in all black with, you know, kind of that image of gloom and doom, or whatever, you know, and and I loved what you wrote about how it's a great way for our kids to be curious, yeah, about, you know, we're attracted to people and then be forming a friendship is, really, can be about figuring out what that attraction is, right? Why? What is it about you that I find so interesting and either plays out, you know, into a deeper friendship or not, right?

Jessica Lahey 30:42
I mean, if I think back to, you know, high school or middle school for me, you know, there were plenty people I was attracted to socially because they were so different from myself. And I wonder, and that plays out today. I mean, my taste in reading tends to be reading about people who are having, who have life experiences that are completely different than mine. You know, I've reading about what it takes to be, you know, a principal dancer for the for the abt or reading about someone who walks the Appalachian Trail, or reading about someone who's an ultra runner. I love reading that stuff because that's not what I do. Yeah, and that's, that's attractive to me. I want to know that stuff. So it's very similar for our kids. You know, we want to try things on and see if it fits. I, you know, I was thinking just the other day there was a kid that was my older son's friend, and he scared me to death because he was constantly in the ER, because he was such a risk taker. I loved this kid, but I didn't want that risk taking stuff to rub off on my kid. And you know, when they were eight, I was looking ahead to when they were 16, and my kid getting in the car with him. Well, number one, I wasn't giving this kid enough credit for the fact that he was eight and hadn't grown up yet. But also, it was really great for my kid to see this other kid go into the ER every time he careened down a hill on his, on his, you know, they, you know, this homemade luge track that he made through the woods around trees in the back of his house. And, you know, it was sort of like a way for my kid to try on that risk taking personality, and see the ramifications of it, meaning the casts and the band and the, you know, the bandaged ear, and the, you know, hair caught on fire without having to, you know, suffer those things himself Exactly. And, you know, I think that we get so nervous about, you know, when our kids are really, really little, we get to pick their friends, because it's proximity, right? You know, get

Casey O'Roarty 32:37
to pick who, what moms do we want to hang out with,

Jessica Lahey 32:40
right exactly, and because the kids are there, that's who they're friends with. But all of a sudden our kids, you know, develop their own taste, and it's like, oh my gosh, now I have to be friends with these moms that I didn't want to be friends with, or these parents I didn't want to be friends with, or my kids are friends with kids that I'd prefer they not be friends with, and that makes us super nervous. But I think attempting to view that as what it is, is the trying on of different identities and adopting what they want for themselves and what they don't want for themselves. I think that's a it's an incredibly powerful time for them. And you know, I look back on some of the people that I thought were people I liked, and then they, you know, that that didn't work out, and that was stuff I you know, those their traits were things I didn't want in myself, and that was a good learning experience for me. Yeah. And by the way, that eight year old kid that I was so nervous about totally chilled out and became a much more reasonable human being, and hasn't been in the ER, in like, six years and and he's perfectly healthy and fine. So, you know, it helps

Casey O'Roarty 33:45
me not to because I was my mom, like, be careful. Be careful. You know, anything we did, she would say, like, my head, my brother wanted a bungee jump. And she said, Well, she always had this story that went like this. Well, you heard about the guy that did it, and it it broke, and he died, and he was the instructor, right? Like, if the instructor is going to die, then clearly you shouldn't do it. So I have to work against that tendency to always want to be like, ah, be careful. I'm

Jessica Lahey 34:14
married to someone. I married a physician, to a physician who's been through an emergency room rotation, so he knows the worst case scenario for everything, and he worked in a shock trauma unit when he was a resident, so at near a ski resort. So he's seen, you know, what happens to in the worst case scenario for everything? So you know that's that's something we've had to work against in our household too well. And

Casey O'Roarty 34:35
what helps me is to remember, not for my daughter, but my son is definitely the risk taker. What helps me is to remember that he doesn't want to break his arm. Like there's there is something working inside of him that is like, you know, doing the the risk cost, risk analysis, or whatever, that you know that he's pushing himself enough, but doesn't necessarily. Want to break a leg, so that helps me to remember I don't need to continuously tell him. Well, the other thing

Jessica Lahey 35:06
that's there's something in the book also about this mom who realized that every time her kid left the house, she was saying be careful. And I love that, as if it was putting some like extra horse field about him. But as we all know saying be careful is for our benefit. It doesn't actually do anything. The kid is not going to be more careful because we told let alone like an hour later, once they've left the house. And she realized what her husband would say when her kid left the house was have a good time. And she realized what she was communicating to her child was a general fear of anything out there that that she didn't a and also that she didn't trust him to be careful. And there's actually a great line we say this all the time in our house, that was on friends where Monica was constantly saying to Chandler when he was handling their wedding China, be careful. Be careful. Be careful. And he finally stopped her and he said, let's just assume that I'm always going to be careful, because, you know, it becomes this, you know, it becomes nagging, and it becomes this thing that also becomes the peanuts, like wah wah wah thing. Because, you know, if we're saying it constantly has no meaning whatsoever, anyway,

Casey O'Roarty 36:16
right? And I love that, because if we're not assuming that they're being the message is, I'm assuming that you're not exactly right, exactly whether it's spoken into or not.

Jessica Lahey 36:26
And this is the big thing. We have a Brook behind our house, and it's it's a dangerous spot if you don't know how to walk on if you don't know what slick rocks look like. So one of the first things we do, if my kids have a friend over, as we say, if we show them, okay, see right there the rock is dark, that's slippery, and see right there, the rock is light, that's dry. Okay, go have fun. So now we've taught them, you know, this is how to be careful, not just if I yell at them, be careful as they're walking out the door. That that has no actual learning benefit to it. It's just, it's just the wah wah wah wah thing,

Casey O'Roarty 37:02
right? It's like when we tell toddlers to use their words, right? That kills me, because it's like, well, you know, first you got to spend some time on the words. What are the words? How do we navigate this? And right? And so on that note, it is so hard to see our kids navigate painful emotions and hard situations, whether it's a bad grade or not making a team or friendship drama or I know it's in my future, the whole romantic thing, yeah, and it's so hard not to sweep in and want to just make them feel better, right, as we can. But there

Jessica Lahey 37:39
are so many stories I reveal in the book, and I have permission for all those, and there's so many I'm not allowed to reveal, especially when it comes to romance. But just know, although I'm not allowed to tell the stories, man, I wanted to swoop in and just make it better. And you know, but think about your own life. Think about the heartache you had to go through in order. I mean, you know, you have to go through bad relationships in order to find out you know what you want in a partner and a life partner, and totally can't save them from that. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 38:07
well, and we know, and I know that with my head, and I know I'm a lot of parents. We know it with our head. But as far as that, you know, it's like a it's like a freight train that hits us in the moment, and we see our child in pain for whatever reason we have to net as parents, as the adults navigating that flood of emotion and desire to swoop in. Like, do you have any tips for parents around that piece, around that, that gap between, yeah, you know what we're seeing and what we do,

Jessica Lahey 38:38
I think recognizing it for what it is. I mean, the Wendy grolnick research that's in the book, I really respect what she's done. And there are two things, two really big things I learned from her. Number one, that sort of anxiety that we feel about everything being so dire all the time is so contagious. And if you think about, you know, I wrote about it for the Atlantic. I wrote this article called, why back to school night made me feel like a bad mom, because I went to back to school night. And although I knew my kids were at home doing the stuff they love to do, I think my older son was practicing the song Layla for like, the 3,000th time on the guitar, and my younger kid was probably paying playing Minecraft or something. And you know, I felt perfectly good about that when I left the house, and then I got to back to school night, and everyone's talking about the tutoring and the traveling Soccer League and all this stuff. And I honestly had to step out of the room because I started to hyperventilate a little bit thinking about all the things I wasn't doing as a parent and we we stir each other up. So, number one, having an understanding that that sort of anxiety is really contagious number one, and knowing that sometimes you just have to step away from it to get some sanity, but also understanding that you know our sort of biological imperative is to rescue our children and all. Our primitive brain, our amygdala, doesn't always know the difference between, you know, the girl who hurts our little boys or girls heart, or the, you know, the kid flying down the soccer field to, you know, steal the ball away from our kid, or tackle our kid in a football game, or whatever. Our brain does not our our sort of reptilian brain does not know the difference between that and like real, actual danger. And so we, you know, we tend to get into high we go into high gear, and we go into save my kid mode, even if it's something that they really need to endure on their own. So just having a basic understanding that that's okay, and that's how it works, and that's what's happening in our head. So you can take a deep breath and say, okay, not so much a saber toothed Tiger attacking my child, just a kid tackling him on this on the soccer field, and we can relax a little bit.

Casey O'Roarty 40:53
I love how all of my guests come back to that place of awareness, being mindful, recognizing when you're freaking out over something that is not actually the reality that's happening in front of you. Well, and

Jessica Lahey 41:05
a little more honesty with our kids too. I think, you know, if we're being honest, one of the things that parents of teenagers come to me and say is, oh my gosh, is it too late I've been over parenting blah, blah, blah. And I say, you know, relative to little kids, older kids can actually hear you when you go to them and say, Look, you know, I think I've, I think I've messed this up, and I really want to come at this parenting thing from a different place now, and I'm going to start giving you some autonomy and explain about that, and explain the research, and not only that, modeling for our kids when we screw up. I mean, that's an incredible, incredibly valuable education for our kids, and yet we keep it from them, because we're so worried about appearing perfect in front of our children. So at the dinner table, we talk about, you know, all this other stuff, but not man, you know, that guy really double crossed me at work today, or, you know, I really inadvertently insulted someone in an email, and I had to make amends with her. We don't want kids to see us as anything other than, you know, these perfect figureheads of parenting, and so we don't share that stuff. But that's, oh my gosh, that stuff's so valuable.

Casey O'Roarty 42:11
Oh yeah, I share it now. Life is messy. Yeah, life is messy. So your whole book, Jess, your whole book totally speaks my language. And there's chapters like I mentioned, the chapter on friends, you've got chapters on sports, which, by the way, it was really exciting to read the section about. Yes, you can talk your your five year old into, basically into playing soccer. And two weeks in they might decide they don't like soccer, and that's not necessarily the moment to teach follow through and commitment, because you're the one that signed them

Jessica Lahey 42:52
up well, and not only that, if you're doing soccer and they hate it, then that's all that time they couldn't be trying something else. Because, I mean, childhood in particular is supposed to be this time of trying out lots of different things. And my younger somebody in particular hates, hates team sports. So why on earth am I going to force him into something he hates? Out of some feeling like, Oh, I'm supposed to do that, that that's like on, that's on the plan that has to be a part of my child's development. There are lots of other ways to learn about working with people and stuff like that. Then, then, you know, the one route that we sent and we, you know, we think, okay, every kid has to learn music, and every kid has to do a team sport, and every kid has to, you know, I, I, I disagree. I think there are lots of ways to get there.

Casey O'Roarty 43:42
I agree with you and and I love that you have you speak into, you know, supporting through homework and cultivating relationships with kids teachers, and so there's a lot in your book, right? And it's so good, and I think everybody should buy it. And I'm going to have links to all the things that you've mentioned in the show notes and including a link to your book. But if parents are listening to this and thinking like, Ooh, yeah, I'd probably definitely fall into the more controlling end of the spectrum. What is a good place for a parent to start, what's a baby step for a parent to move towards, to move in the direction of being more autonomy, supportive.

Jessica Lahey 44:29
I think the very first thing you have to do is in your own head. You have to switch from a short term perspective to a long term perspective. I mean, that's the very, very first place to start. And then from there, you know, start with one thing at a time. Start like, if it's about if, if you've been incredibly controlling about school, or you've been incredibly, incredibly controlling around sports, just find ways to back off a lot. Find ways to give your kids a little bit of control. And I think if you the thing, the book I wanted was a book that was very. How to but rooted in the research, and I think it, you know, constantly what I'm doing in all of those chapters about sports or homework or whatever is say, Okay, now remember back when I talked about, you know, what it looks like to be an autonomy, supportive parent, and why that works so well for kids. Here's an example of where it would be great to back off and just let them have a little more control over the details. You know, I I love the research stuff, but what I really needed was, here's how to back off around sports. Here's how to back off around homework. Here's how to back off around social life. Because I wasn't finding that anywhere and and when I, you know, realized I was doing it myself, and I was kind of, I was, I was, it was kind of inconvenient for me, because I just wanted to be pissed off at my students parents and and that wasn't working for me anymore. I couldn't just be mad at them because I was doing the same stuff. I really needed that. How to

Casey O'Roarty 45:51
Yeah, well before you go first, I want to say big, huge. Thank you so so welcome. This was so fun, so great to talk to you, but I want to know all the ways that people can find you and follow your work.

Jessica Lahey 46:07
Well, I'm just like I said, I just got back from book tour, so I am busily working on all kinds of fun stuff. My [email protected] not only is there a link to the book there and links to all my articles and the times and the Atlantic and Vermont Public Radio and all that stuff. And what I do as a speaker, there's also going to be a bunch of bonus content on my site. I have stuff I'm working on. When I go speak at schools and I talk to the kids, I really give the kids sort of a way to think about the same stuff I talk to parents about so that there's going to be kind of a bonus chapter for kids. There's going to be some frequently asked questions, there's going to be all kinds of stuff there. So if you sign up there, I don't, I don't email people newsletters very often, and I'm very careful about what I send out, because I take that when someone gives me their email address and offers, you know, a way into their inbox. I take that very seriously, so I send out stuff that I think is sort of, you know, important and relevant and that kind of thing. So jessicalehe.com is sort of the best place to start. Okay, do

Casey O'Roarty 47:11
you? Are you on social media?

Jessica Lahey 47:13
I am. I'm just at Jess Leahy on Twitter, and I do a lot of tweeting about education and parenting. And I'm at I have a professional page on Facebook, Jessica Leahy, and, yeah, I'm on Instagram too. Teacher Leahy, so you can find me all kinds of places.

Casey O'Roarty 47:33
I'm putting all those links in the show notes. All these people are gonna be like, where is this lady? I'm gonna find her. Well again, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you for writing this book. Because I love it. I love it, and I think it's Yeah. I mean, imagine the world that we would live in if the entire generation of people who are raising kids right now were leaning towards that autonomy, supportive parenting style. I just think it would change our whole world.

Jessica Lahey 48:02
Yeah, when I, you know, when I really, when I looked at the research on autonomy supportive parenting and the difference between the kids who are autonomy supportive and not, I kind of blew the top of my head off. And, you know, I totally agree. I think it could be a much more interesting and innovative world.

Casey O'Roarty 48:18
Yes, well, thank you. I'm really excited to see what else comes out of your brain, because this is good. Well,

Jessica Lahey 48:25
keep you posted on how your stuff's going. I will

Casey O'Roarty 48:28
Monroe monitor. It's been a while since I've been in there, but thanks, Jessica.

Unknown Speaker 48:35
Thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 48:40
How about that? Jessica Leahy, isn't she fantastic? I had such a great, great time chatting it up with her, and I'm excited that I get to bring her work to you and allow you to get to know her. And it's just total love fest happening on the podcast today. Folks, so glad that you're a part of it. Remember that it's December and the subscribe a THON is happening. So if you are listening to this podcast through my website, please hop on over to iTunes and search for the joyful courage parenting podcast and subscribe I am going to have, do you hear that my phone even wants you to subscribe? I am going to do a couple shows that will only be available to those of you, those of you that have subscribed through iTunes. So I have a holiday show coming up where I interview Amanda roo about her ebook, all about taming our holiday experience. Because I don't know about you, but sometimes things get a little crazy this time of year, and that's going to come out late this week, so be sure to subscribe through iTunes so you can listen to that. And then again, there will be a Chris. This Eve show that will only go out to subscribers with more information about the giveaway. So get on it, my friends, get on it. And if you're not a part of the joyful courage tribe and receiving newsletters for me, hop on joyful courage.com and sign up for emails from me. They don't come out that often. Well, like every other week, they're usually pretty short. They have links to podcasts. I don't say a lot. I just let you know what's going on. Um, join the tribe, and of course, if you're on Facebook, come on over to live in love with joy, for courage, because it's a really great group people like minded parents, who are supporting each other through all the ups and downs of this journey that we are all on. I love to see you there. All right, as always, feedback is welcome. Email me at Casey, at Casey, joyful courage.com or reach out to me in social media. Joyful courage is on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, because I am just that social. So have a great day. My friends and I look forward to next time. Thanks for spending this time with Me.

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