Fresh Air - Best Of: St. Vincent / Kids In An Age Of Anxiety

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Songwriter, guitarist and singer St. Vincent talks about her new album, All Born Screaming. Also, we talk with child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz. His latest book is called Scaffold Parenting: Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety. To get staff recommendations, highlights from our archive, and intel on what's coming up on the show, subscribe to our newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, the songwriter, guitarist, and singer known as St. Vincent. She didn't exactly name herself after a saint. She took her stage name from St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, where the poet Dylan Thomas died. Why not use her own name? I want to have a moniker, because I felt like it would give me license and freedom

to be bigger than Annie Clark. And she can go big in her dark lyrics or sometimes shredding guitar and how she dresses in performance. Her new album is called All Born Screaming. Also, we talk with child psychiatrist Harold Koplowwicz. His latest book is called Scaffold Parenting, raising resilient, self-reliant, and secure kids in an age of anxiety. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is the musician known as St. Vincent. She's a singer, songwriter, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and a three-time Grammy winner.

Her songs can go pretty dark. Her guitar playing can be shredding, but her lyrics typically read like good poetry. New York Times music critic John Pirellas described her as, quote, a grown-up fascinated by personas, gender roles, connections, obligations, self-destructive behavior, and looming mortality, unquote. In addition to her own albums, she co-wrote the Taylor Swift song, Cruel Summer, and the Olivia Rodrigo song, Obsessed, and recorded an album of duets with David Byrne. St. Vincent has a new album called All Born Screaming. Two musicians featured on the album have played in bands that deeply influenced her in her formative years,

Nirvana and David Bowie. Dave Grohl, who was Nirvana's drummer and later co-founded Foo Fighters, is featured on drums. Mark Giuliana, who played on Bowie's album Black Star, is also featured on drums on some tracks. When Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, St. Vincent sang lead on the band's performance of Lithium. Let's start with a track from St. Vincent's new album, All Born Screaming.

This song has been released as a single, and it's my favorite track from the album. It's called Broken Man. On the street, I'm a king-size killer. I can make your kingdom come. On my feet, I'm an earthquake shaking So open up my little one Hey, what are you looking at? Who the hell do you think I am?

And what are you looking at? Like you've never seen a broken man Love the nail yourself, lie to me If you go, I won't be well I can hold my arms wide open But I need you to drive the nail Like what are you looking at? Musik Like you've never seen a broken man. St. Vincent, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. This is a terrific album.

The song that we just heard, those lines, what are you looking at? Who the hell do you think I am? It just reminds me of what happens on the street sometimes when you accidentally look at somebody and they get really upset and start hollering at you. What were you thinking when you wrote those lines? You know, all the songs on this album are very lived experience. In times past, I've certainly played with persona. But on this record, I would say that this is just pretty close to the vest, pretty cut to the pink meat, as it were. So were you looking at someone or was someone looking at you? You know, I think that there are

these kind of frequencies that we can tune into in our brain that are like, you know, whether it's deep ego stuff that underneath that is really just a whole lot of pain. And you're walking down the street and you feel like you could fall in love with somebody or kick over the trash cans. And if someone looks at you the wrong way, you just could explode. I just, I have that feeling. I mean, not every day. Like I said, it's a frequency you can kind of tune into when life takes you there. But art, luckily, is a safe place to explore all emotions, all ideas, no matter how dark or complicated. And you're not saying, haven't you ever seen a broken woman? You're saying, haven't you ever seen a broken man? Yeah. Why did I say it like that? Was it because of the number of syllables you needed?

You know what? Yes! Or was it something deeper than that? You know, sometimes it really is as, well, that just sings better. It sings better. And it makes me feel a certain kind of way. And so therefore, that's what it should be. The chorus of the song, after what are you looking at? And I think this is on the second chorus. There's this really buzzy, dirty chord, and I'm not even sure if it's your guitar, or you're playing synthesizer or what. What is that? Oh, Terry, that's're conveying through the song. I just think that chord gets it perfectly. And I love that it's used as punctuation.

It's like the exclamation point in the song. And it's not happening throughout. So it's so effective because you use it so sparingly. Thank you. Yeah, I look at music sort of like architecture, you know, and call and response and tension and release. That's the whole game, right, in music is tension and release. So you get these little just explosions of release, and then it goes back to tension, and then an explosion of release and then tension. But it's this simmering, creeping, creeping dread, I guess. I look on this record, I swear, some moments are almost like horror movie jump scares.

Like, I think of that. That chord is like a jump scare. Yeah. So I want to ask you about David Bowie and the influence he had on you. And I'm wondering what it meant to you when you first heard him or over time that he performed in persona like you sometimes had and that he you know we

didn't use the word then but he was genderqueer and he was called androgynous in his time um so as a performer what influence did that what impact did that have on you well i think bowie even went went so far as to say that he was bisexual in the. So, yeah, I, you know, I'm queer. So I've always felt like gender and identity were a performance. I've been aware of that since I was a young child and learning how to code switch growing up in Texas and everything. So it kind of makes sense for me to deal with all of that, to deal with persona, to deal with identity in my work. And as far as David Bowie, I mean, gosh, he was just an artist. He was just an artist with a capital A. He took us so many places. or in persona liberate you in a way? Is it easier to do certain songs if it's not you? I mean, even having the name St. Vincent,

which is clearly not your birth name, but even having like a stage name, is that like some people might think, oh, she's hiding behind that. But is there something actually liberating about it? Well, I mean, so my name is Annie Clark, which, you know, it's a lovely name. It's a just fine name. But there's also there was already an Ann Clark, who's a great artist.

And so that name was sort of taken, so I thought, okay, I need to, I want to have a moniker. Because I felt like it would give me license and freedom to do, to be bigger than Annie Clark, I guess. I think there is a tendency to look at, you know, people performing with theatricality and think of it as inauthentic. But I find that, you know, sometimes people who are selling you authenticity are, you know, are lying to you. You know what I mean? It's like art to me is a place where I get to take everything that's happening in my life at that moment, in my internal world, in the external world, and play with it and make sense of it and go, there's chaos, but somehow, if I sit in my studio for long enough, I can alchemize that chaos into something that makes sense to me. And so, whether it's putting

persona on top of that or getting at truths through exploring identity? Sure. I will say on this record, All Born Screaming, I'm not playing with persona. It's a really a record about like life and death and love. That's it. That's all we got. Well, we need to take a short break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is St. Vincent. Her new album is called All Born Screaming. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. In 2021, you made an album called Daddy's Home. And the title of the album, which is also the title song, refers to your father getting out of count of conspiracy, seven counts of wire fraud, five counts of securities fraud, and one count of money laundering. He was 62 at the time. Did you even understand the crimes? I was reading about this and thinking, I'll just say financial crimes. So it's so complicated. Like, did you understand what he did? No.

I mean, I don't really understand, like, the stock market in general or that. So, no, I'm still a little bit unclear. But that might be also a question of my own financial literacy. Were you shocked? Did you know that he'd be capable of this? I don't, he's not, I mean, I've seen the man try to figure out email on an iPhone. He's not a criminal mastermind, I can assure you. But I think that he was caught up in some unscrupulous stuff and everybody else pled out. And he was the guy, he and his partner were the guys still holding I just, we, it just didn't ever occur to us that, that, you know, that anything but like, okay, go on home. I don't know. I just was so naive about, about so many things. But my sisters and I were in the courtroom when they called the verdict and said guilty, and they took him away. And, you know, we got to give him a quick hug,

and then they took him away in front of us. And we were all just devastated and confused and shell-shocked and then trying to help pick up the pieces. And he's got seven kids. So, you know, I have four little brothers and sisters who were, they were kids. I mean, they were kids and now their dad's gone. And I do have to say that we all did manage to stick together as a family. And I'm so close with my younger siblings, and I'm so close with my sisters. And he was released, my dad was released in 2019, kind of just before just before the pandemic uh and and yeah i mean we'd go and visit him in prison and there's a line in daddy's home about going and signing autographs in the visitation room which is just like it was sort of known that like oh rick's rick's daughter you know

she's she's a singer and if i was on a tv show if i was on you know snl or you know, she's a singer. And if I was on a TV show, if I was on, you know, SNL or, you know, Fallon or whatever, it'd be like all the inmates would gather and watch. So I was sort of like me and Kamaru Usman, who's a UFC fighter, we're sort of whose dad was also in prison at the same time as my father. We were sort of like the pride of the prison camp. So, you know, so if Kamara was fighting or if I was on TV, you know, playing a late night show, like everybody would rally together and watch. And so anyway, I'm waiting for my dad to to you know go and to to see him for for an hour a couple hours or whatever it is and and i'm like signing autographs on like the back of someone's target receipt in a in a you know in a prison visitation room just like oh god yeah this sounds like a strange experience but you know i'm thinking if um if you your father has a fellow inmates all watching you on tv sometimes on on tv and in your videos you'd be wearing very sexualized clothes terry i prefer not to think about that no but i

mean in an immense prison that must have really been a thing. Like, that's your daughter. So, I know. Did you think about that? Well, I mean, I'm only thinking about, you know, what I'm wearing is going to be some kind of a thoughtful rendering world creation of the music that I've made. So I'm not thinking about the fact that it will probably also be seen at the men's prison. If I, you know, if I did that, maybe I would have worn more burlap, but, you know, whatever. I wasn't thinking about that. But yeah, but, you know, he's out and life is long. People are complicated. You know, I love my father. My father gave me grit. He taught us to be tough.

He instilled in me like a love of literature and films and foreign films and music and was a cultural kind of guy. So I really appreciate the gifts that he gave me, and we're all still trucking. In those 10 years, a lot changed in your life. You became kind of famous in the 10 years that he was in prison. It must have been so odd for him to see what was happening in your life

while he was behind bars. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, again, it's whether it was like the late-night appearances were kind of a thing that, you know, or getting SNL was that was a thing that was I almost like looked at it like throwing little paper airplanes over the prison walls or something. Like at least he could see, you know, that sort of we were doing all right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, St. Vincent, it's really been a pleasure to talk with you.

Thank you so much, and thank you for your music. Thank you so much, Terri. I'm a massive fan, and this was a real pleasure. It's such an honor to hear you say that, and I have become a big fan of your music. Thank you. The new St. Vincent album is called All Born Screaming. There's so many reasons for children to be anxious today, beyond all the standard childhood

problems. There's the setbacks from the COVID lockdown, mass shootings in schools, feelings they're not measuring up to the great lives they see represented on social media, fears about the whole planet being in jeopardy. It's hardly unusual for parents to be unsure how to handle their child's anxiety, depression, learning problems, anger, tantrums, and it can be difficult for parents to evaluate whether their child should see a therapist or take medication. My guest, child psychiatrist Harold Koplowitz, has dealt with these issues with many children and their parents, and there have been times he's been confounded about issues his own children faced.

He's the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. Its stated mission is transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders by giving them the help they need to thrive. The institute also conducts related research. From 1997 to 2009, he was the first director of the NYU Child Study Center. Koplowitz recently stepped down from his 25-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. His latest book is titled Scaffold Parenting, Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety. Dr. Harold Koplowitz, welcome to Fresh Air. What are some of the problems and anxieties you're seeing now that you can connect to outside problems like the COVID lockdown and its lingering after effects? How are you seeing that manifest in the children's anxieties that you're seeing?

Well, I think our kids are not okay. And unfortunately, they weren't doing very well before COVID. But COVID has had a negative effect on all children, children with mental health disorders and kids who are typically developing children. Being locked up for two years and living with fear that somebody close to you, someone near and dear will die is very problematic. And we also know that 1 million Americans did die, which means that about 170,000 American children lost a caregiver or a parent. And if we go back to 2001, after 9-11, we lost 3,000 Americans. And I can tell you that in New York, in certain pockets, Staten Island, where there were a lot of firemen, and Manhasset, where there were a lot of finance people who were in the building, and certainly people around Ground Zero, it was very hard to get kids to go back to school.

Attendance rates didn't return to 9, 10, to September 10th levels for over a year and sometimes even longer. So we do know that this kind of traumatic event is going to have lingering effects. And we have seen increases in anxiety disorders and in depression, particularly in girls, but certainly even in boys, there are higher rates of kids trying to hurt themselves. And there is even an increase in the number of young people who have committed suicide. So there is no doubt that we had a problem before and we have a greater problem now. The average child isn't necessarily like watching cable news or reading the newspaper. But you pick up a lot of this on social media. And it's also just in the air. Like everybody's talking about these issues like environmental catastrophe, you know, political divisions. Is this the end of democracy? Is the planet burning?

I mean, you're just, it's just in the air now. Well, you know, there's something dramatically changed between 2010 and 2018. So the numbers started to jump when we started looking at children's mental health. There were higher rates of visits to emergency rooms by kids for suicidal thought and suicidal behavior. And the increase in the number of kids who died from suicide went from around 5,000 to 6,000. Now, just think about that. If it was diabetes, if it was cancer, that would have made the front page of every newspaper every single day. It would be on cable news 24-7. And somehow, we don't take mental health disorders as seriously as we take physical disorders. And so, you know, what happened between 2010 and 2018 is that all of us started carrying a device with us that connected us to everybody on the planet 24-7. And that definitely had a negative effect on a certain percentage of the population.

So I want to be clear that social media is not like smoking. It's not terrible for everyone. But it is particularly bad for kids who have mental health disorders. And we've really looked at this very carefully at the Child Mind Institute, where we had done a study before COVID that was looking for an objective test, a biological test. Psychiatry is the only discipline in medicine that doesn't have an objective test, doesn't have a chest X-ray or a blood test or a strep test. And therefore, that's the holy grail, right? We make the diagnosis with clinical information,

which is how you start all diagnosis in every part of medicine, but you can confirm it with an EKG or with a brain scan. So psychiatry is missing that. the ages of 5 and 21, free psychiatric evaluation, free neuropsych testing, which looks for learning disabilities, a functional MRI, an EEG, physical fitness, cardiovascular status, nutritional status. And this became, and still, the largest collection of the developing brain of kids 5 to 21 that's ever been collected. And we share it with scientists around the world who make an agreement with us that they won't try to find out who the subjects are.

Wait, so is the point of this to figure out, is there like a biological diagnosis you can make? Does the cohort of people who have like depression or anxiety or whatever share certain biological markers? Is that the point? That would be the point. The real trick is, can you tell the difference between one atypical child and another? Not the difference between a typical developing child and someone who may have a mental health disorder or a learning disorder, but the difference between Terry who who has anxiety, and Harold, who has depression. And is there something on the EEG or on the functional MRI? Can we find a definitive objective test? But the good news here is that when you collect all this data,

and it turns out that 9% of the 7,000 kids that participated did not have a disorder. They had symptoms, but they didn't meet psychiatric criteria for a diagnosis. You now have described very accurately and very specifically, phenotypically, what these kids look like. And then you get COVID and you find that their use of social media jumps. They are using the Internet six to eight hours a day. All the kids in the state? No, no, no, just a large percentage of them. And we start defining that as problematic Internet usage. Not only are you using it a lot, but when you force them to stop, they get distressed.

It almost feels like an addiction, right? And we do know that it turns out for the 9% who are typically developing kids, that when you use the internet more than six to eight hours a day, you will sleep less, you will exercise less, and you'll have less interactions in real life. All three of them are important for healthy brain development, but you don't become mentally ill. However, if you have a mental health disorder and you start behaving that way, your symptoms get worse. It's almost like a toxic agent. It turns out that the internet usage of over six to eight hours a day can make your symptoms of depression, your symptoms of ADHD significantly worse, which is a really important phenomena. Why do you think that is?

Well, it's a very good question why. Our guess is that for these kids, someone who has depression, they're already socially more isolated than the average person. And they start losing their skill set and their ambition to interact with the rest of the world. Kids with ADHD can get very hyper-focused with certain activities and at times feel very lost, very impulsive, feel very often like a failure when they can't pay attention in school or are missing things that everyone else is picking up. So what's important about this is that if you're a parent and you know your child has one of these disorders, you have to be very aware that their usage of social media, it could potentially be toxic and it has to be controlled. It can't be unlimited. Not that it's good for anyone to have unlimited, but it's particularly bad for those kids. So we know that social media was out there between 2010 and 2018. And unfortunately, there's no regulation on it.

And it means that parents have to be more aware. I mean, I think of it as, you know, a jungle, right? The jungle is an exciting place, very nutritious fruit and vegetables and lots of terrific stuff. Maybe medicines even can get discovered in the jungle. But it also has snakes. It also has dangerous plants that can kill you. It also has animals. And therefore, if you're going to let your child participate, you should be a very active participant in that permission. Harold Koplowitz, the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. His latest book is called Scaffold Parenting, Raising Resilient, Self-Reliant, and Secure Kids in an Age of Anxiety. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. So if you think that social media can be very harmful to certain children? How would you suggest parents try to limit their time on social media?

That's something that is really hard to do. I think it is challenging, but I think it's very doable. We also have some good data. We know that parents who are using the internet in a problematic way are more likely to have kids that are doing it. Parents have to model this. They have to have periods where we're putting the phone away at nighttime and you're not allowed to look at it because we want you to sleep. We do want to look and see how much time you're spending on it. And we want you to be aware of how much time you're spending on it. So it want you to be aware of how much time you're spending on it. So it's not, you know, punitive. It's a collaboration, especially if they're a teenager

or preteen. But I also think that, you know, it's time for us to get much more sophisticated about this. I want to talk with you a little bit about suicide since you brought it up. And I want to ask you first, just in terms of our show, we always give warnings when we're going to be talking about suicide. And we always give the suicide prevention hotline number. The idea being that hearing talk about suicide can almost be encouraging to someone who has had suicidal ideation. So do you think that's helpful? I think it's important to recognize that even if it's a small percentage, to give people that information, that lifeline is very important. And also to let them know that they're not alone.

So I think the way to think about this is why are teenagers so much more at risk than you or me? The way to think about a teenager is they feel everything. They're boiling. They're freezing. I hate you. I love you. You know, what happened to I'm warm or it's a little cool in here? That doesn't happen.

And in some ways, it's really kind of terrific because they are so creative and they see opportunity everywhere and they don't recognize risk very well. I mean, there's some really interesting studies of a teenage boy who goes and picks up a friend to come into his car and the teenager driver is wearing a seatbelt and the teenage male who sits down next to him doesn't put a seatbelt on

and the teenage driver takes his seatbelt off. He goes and picks up a girl and the girl gets into the car and she puts his seatbelt off. He goes and picks up a girl, and the girl gets into the car, and she puts her seatbelt on, and the teenage driver now puts his seatbelt on. So they're very easily moved by their peer group in a way that they hadn't been before. And parents should note this,

that even though the peer group becomes significantly more influential when you're a teenager, parents are still the most influential factor in a kid's life. But it's important that parents keep talking, keep sharing their viewpoint, keep listening to their kid's viewpoint, and not back off because their kids say, well, everyone's doing it. A child comes into your office, let's say a teenager comes into your office. You think that the possibility of this teenager attempting suicide

is real. What do you do to try to prevent that from happening? Well, it really depends on how serious they are about the attempt. Do they have a plan? Have they been thinking about it a long time? Have they stopped doing their usual pleasurable experiences? They no longer are hanging out with friends or not eating the food that they love. And you have to really recognize that if they are very serious about it, you have to intervene or ask them if they feel safe. And then sometimes make the decision that they have to be in an environment where they'll be watched in a hospital. Or you'll talk to their parents and see, can they watch them until this mood and this ideation actually passes? So I just want to pause here and give the National Suicide and Crisis Hotline number. And this is the number to call or to text. It's 988. So it's a simple number, just three numbers, 988 to either call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Hotline. So if you're having thoughts of suicide, please get some help.

You specialize in ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Why don't you define what the symptoms are and how to recognize it? So it's a challenge for lots of people to think about it because they think, oh, aren't we all hyperactive at some time? But the difference here is a deficit in attention toward what's normal developmentally. So the attention span of a five-year-old is very different than the attention span of a 10-year-old. But any individual who has ADHD is chronically less attentive, tends to be more impulsive. And if they have hyperactivity, they're moving around more. They can get themselves into physical problems because they basically have ants in their pants. They're constantly in motion.

The diagnosis when you have hyperactivity is much easier to make than when you just have ADD without age. But it's a chronic illness, and therefore it may change over time. Your symptoms might lessen, hyperactivity might go away when you become a teenager, but you are always going to have a shorter attention span and going to be more impulsive than the average person your age. I think this is one of the problems in which brain imaging is starting to be used, fMRIs, where you can see which parts of the brain light up in different situations and different thoughts. How are fMRIs being used in ADHD? Right. It's the holy grail for us to find that objective test. One of the things we've discovered at the Chalmon Institute is that the way your brain connects to itself while a child's at rest turns out to be diagnostic. It's called connectomes.

So does the front of the brain connect to the side of the brain or to the back of the brain? And what's been very interesting is that we took a few hundred scans and sent them to a group of people who were statisticians, who were electrical engineers, and asked them if they could group those different scans in different buckets. And we found the group that actually won this competition were statisticians from Hopkins, and they said, well, these 150 scans go together, and these 50 scans go together, and these 100 scans go together. And these are individuals who've never seen a patient with a psychiatric disorder. But what's really interesting, in bucket one, the overwhelming majority of those patients had ADHD. In the group of 50, they had autism. In the group of 100, they had both ADHD and autism. So we're really excited by the fact that we have found something that might lead us to a definitive

objective test. Now, the important part for everyone to remember, it's not just one child. It's not a strep test, yes, you're positive, or someone else is negative. It's a group difference. But that's the way we're going to get closer and closer to making a definitive diagnosis. So in a study like the fMRI study that you were referring to, how do you know whether the brain is reflecting the behavior or whether the behavior is predetermined by the brain. Do you know what I mean? Sure. It's like if I move my left arm, if I say I'm going to move my left arm right now and I'm doing it with intent, it's going to register on an fMRI probably. But it's not like I have a disorder that's moving my left arm. It's like I've decided to behave this way and it's registering in my brain.

So, you know, let's think about this for a second. This is exactly where the field of research in functional MRI has gone to. You know, they used to give a trigger to a kid, you know, pay attention to this while you're in the machine, or we're going to show you scary faces and see what happened to the brain. It turns out that the most powerful way of doing this is just letting kids rest or sleep in the functional MRI. And your brain is incredibly active while you're at rest or sleeping.

And that's when you're going to see most of these connections. So in the case of the study, we weren't triggering them. We weren't saying, you know, this clearly should be what makes, you know, we'll catch them being inattentive and then we'll look at the MRI. We're just looking at their brains at rest. Oh, that's really interesting. So has this affected your treatment at all? So we're not there yet. You know, it's not ready for prime time. I wish it, you know, I could say, oh, we're going to give everyone EEGs because they're only 60 bucks and an MRI is 500 and we found some correlation. That's what I'm hoping for. But science has to wait for real data. So at this moment, we still have to rely on clinical diagnosis. You're asking parents what they think. You're asking teachers and report cards because

this is not something that just pops up when you're about to apply to college or because you didn't make partner at the law firm. This is a lifelong illness, and you can document that by looking at things from a longitudinal basis. And then you have to examine the child. The child basically confirms the diagnosis or doesn't. I think it's fascinating when you do give a kid meds, and they do significantly better, that a young child will tell you the medicine's not working. And you say, really, what's changed? She said, my teacher is much nicer. I said, that's really interesting. You take a pill and your teacher is much nicer. That really is absolutely amazing. And they said, yeah, you know, you're eight years old. So this is a kind of personal question, but knowing what you know now, and there's so much more research that's been done into childhood, you know, behavioral problems and mental health disorders.

Do you think you had any undiagnosed problems as a child? I don't think so. I don't mean that like I recognize symptoms and not your behavior. But I would tell you that I clearly became much more of a student when I was in college than I was in high school. I had Eastern European parents. I had parents who survived the Holocaust and got to the United States in 1949. And they didn't believe that education was a journey. It was a destination. And they couldn't wait until you graduated and go to college. And so I was two years younger than everyone in elementary school. And I think that was most probably not a great idea that most boys developed late. And so that was a problem. And I would also tell you that, you know, the parents that I had when I was growing up were much more traumatized by the Holocaust than the parents I had later on in life when they were in their 80s and 90s and were less anxious and the nightmares had stopped and they felt more comfortable in the United States and also comfortable that, you know, I was going to be successful. I had graduated medical school.

I had children. I was married. And that seemed to really calm them down. But I do recognize that they were overly invested in my being successful because they were trying to recreate stuff that they lost. My parents were both, by the way, my father had graduated law school in 1936, and my mother was in law school in 1938, and neither one of them ever practiced law. They came to this country as immigrants. They had to start all fresh again. My father started a business. I think they struggled financially. My mother eventually went back to school and got a BA and then an MSW. But there was this idea of what could have been if there wouldn't have been the Holocaust. And therefore, my sister and I had to carry, you know, that weight, which is, you know, understandable, but was very unpleasant when it was happening. Were your parents in camps? My father was literally in 14 concentration camps and the Warsaw Ghetto. And how is that possible? Well, at the very first camp, they asked who knows how to make airplanes. And my father raised his hand. And when asked about that, he

said, well, they had already killed the lawyers. And he figured, well, I know how to use a screwdriver. I'll figure it out. And he went from camp to camp, and he was with one other man who kept being moved with him. And they got a little piece of metal. and the other guy was very artistic, and he engraved a sailboat and a horn of plenty. And on the other side, every time they moved from one camp to another, my father inscribed the date and the name of the camp. And they were hoping there would be at least a record that what they were experiencing would be recorded and documented. And that piece of metal, by the way, is at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in New York. I'm sorry, in D.C., in Washington, D.C. So you mentioned your mother was in camps too?

No, my mother got papers as a Catholic and false papers as a Catholic and walked out of the ghetto. And in some ways, it was more trying for her in the respect that, think about it, you have fake papers. And if the Gestapo stops you and starts really examining the papers and starts asking you questions like, what is your mother and father's name? Oh, they're dead. Okay. And what was your priest's name? And where are you from? It wouldn't take very long. So she moved around 16 different villages outside of Warsaw, working as a maid, and she was a terrible housekeeper. So it is really amazing how she managed to do that because she, you know, she really had a very tough time

and was very isolated and just basically, you know, surviving from day to day. And it was, I think, a little more than two years where she was moving around. The war ended first in Poland, and so my father didn't come and find her until several months later. Well, they were married before the war started. Well, I wish I could tell you that's true, and that was the story I was told. But it turns out that when my then 12-year-old son was doing a— my wife insisted that if he was going to be bar mitzvahed, it had to be intergenerational. So he kept asking my mother her life story and recording it. And at a certain point, my son said, I don't understand, Grandma, where was the infrastructure in the religion, you can get married and become the stars and the moon. And my son said, I don't think that's true. I think you need a contract.

And she said, well, August 12th, it was the day I lost my virginity with your grandfather. And he came home and said, I don't know if grandma and grandpa ever were married. I think they're celebrating the day they had sex. So I called my mother and said, I don't understand. Why did you tell him that? She said, I never slept with anybody else. And I thought enough. And he asked much better questions than you ever did. So I think they got married when they were leaving Poland to go to a displaced persons camp in Germany. And I have to tell you as an example, their people, my mother was madly in love with my father before the war. She lusted for him. He was very attractive and he was a lawyer already. And then after the war, when he returned,

he was skin and bones. And, you know, he was truly a different person. And she was a different person. She was no longer a bit of a princess. She was a survivor. She knew how. And he came and found her. And she said,

I'm going to let you come in, but I'm leaving. I've got papers to go either to Palestine or to Australia or Canada or the United States. I'm not staying here. And he said, well, I am staying here. I'm a lawyer and we're going to make a lot of money. And she said, that's OK. The idea that they lived together for three months and she got the papers and he decided to go with her, it's really a very romantic story that they fell in love again. And my father, every year on their anniversary, would give my mother, if they had money, he gave her a red rose for every year they were together and three white roses for the three years they weren't together with the same note, life had no color without you. So they really rediscovered each other. And I think that bond was so close. In some ways, my sister and I sometimes felt out of it, because they were such a partnership that that's what carried them through later on.

Dr. Harold Koplowitz, thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, it's been a pleasure, Terry. Dr. Harold Koplowitz is the you so much for talking with us. It's been a pleasure, Terry. Dr. Harold Koplowitz is the founding president of the Child Mind Institute. His latest book is titled Scaffold Parenting. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with Engineering Today from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salet,

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