Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Make Believe Doesn't Have To Be A Lie

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

In this episode we get into magic and fantasy and we don't want to give anything away to your kids who might be listening with you. So please enjoy this episode on your own.Imaginative play starts in a child's mind. But that doesn't mean parents can't join in. And in fact, they should. Dr. Becky sits down with the illustrator and author Oliver Jeffers to talk about magic, fantasy, and the power of make believe. Click here for all your Good Inside gifting needs: https://bit.ly/3hvOI8I3/15 DFK Event: https://bit.ly/3LlzbEXJoin Good Inside Membership: https://bit.ly/3cqgG2AFollow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinsideSign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletterOrder Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books.For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcastToday’s episode is brought to you by the following sponsor: Frida Baby’s All-In-One Potty Kit has everything you need for a successful potty process — including exclusive tips from Dr. Becky. Frida Baby’s kit comes with a Grow-With-Me Potty that adapts as they learn - first as a standalone potty and then as a toilet topper and step stool for the big toilet. The Frida Baby All-in-One Potty Kit is a total game-changer… pairing a ground-breaking product with content and tips that bring you and your child confidence and success. Pick yours up at Fridababy.com, Amazon, Target or Buy Buy Baby.

Just a note before we start. In this episode we get into magic and fantasy and we don't want to give anything away to your kids who might be listening with you. So please enjoy this one on your own. Oliver Jeffers. I know that you know this name, just like I know this name from so many of his amazing books. You know, with adult books, novels and one, you tend to only read them ones, but with picture books,

they are repeat appearances. So hopefully you're not bored of me by now. The conversation I have today with Oliver is one that I think is going to really touch you, or I can tell you it really, really deeply touched me. And what I promise you is that by the end of this conversation, you'll have new ways to connect to your kid and new ways to reconnect to yourself. I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside.

Hey Sabrina. Hey. So I've been thinking about toys recently. I don't want the toy to do that much of the work. I want the toy to inspire my kid to do the work. Because actually the toys that get really busy and do a lot of things, kids actually lose interest in so quickly. Oh totally.

There are certain toys that my kids have just played with throughout the years. I have a six year old and a three year old. Like what? So I have these wooden blocks from Melissa and Doug. They're super simple, just plain wooden, no color. And my kids love them. They're always building castles or like a dinosaur layer. And then my oldest will tell my youngest

to like decorate them after he's built this crazy cool structure. My go-to's are Melissa and Doug too. I feel like we have this ice cream scooper thing that my kids use when they were two. And then they used again when they were developing better fine motor skills. And then for my kind of four year old,

my seven year old, still using it in imaginative play. I really only like talking about items and brands that we actually use in our own home and Melissa and Doug. I just don't know if there's any other brand I feel so good about items and brands that we actually use in our own home and Melissa and Doug. I just don't know if there's any other brand I feel so good about naming the way that their toys actually inspire creativity and open-ended screen-free child-led play. It's just unmatched.

And like what's honestly so exciting is to be able to offer everyone listening to this podcast, 20% off. Visit MelissaandDoug.com and use code Dr. Becky 20 dr BECK Y 20 for 20% off your order. Melissa and Doug timeless toys, endless possibilities. Maybe we can start. I don't know. We can rewind a little bit. I'd love to hear a little bit about what you were like as a kid. I think I was short as a kid. I was, I think, yeah, sort of on the quieter side,

playful, mischievous. I was definitely much more interested in digging holes, climbing trays, playing football in the street than I was, even in really in making art. Or certainly, I was not a big bookworm until, really until I went to college. And, you know, maybe a healthy disrespect for authority, but whenever you had to read a book, it felt like a work, it felt like a chore, whereas, you know, I heard one somebody say that education is what somebody else does to you, but learning is what you do to yourself. So suddenly, whenever I wanted to read, it changed everything.

But it sounds like there was a lot of learning then in digging holes and all the other things. Oh, yeah, yeah. No completely a lot of learning, but just not, you know, sort of on my terms. And my dad is a teacher. And he, you know, he's always said that he's always thought that the Western education system is fundamentally broken, that we're teaching kids how to pass exams more than anything else. You know, the two most difficult things a human being ever learns to do is how to walk and how to talk and on day one of school, you're taught to sit down and shut up. He says that you only really need to teach human beings two things, curiosity and empathy. And I think the curiosity is there naturally and it's just a matter of supporting

that, encouraging that. Oh, sorry, you know what, I'm gonna turn all my things to do not disturb. Curiosity, empathy, and turning off notifications. Yes, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. That's what he always said. Your wife's father. Were you always an imaginative person?

Like, it was that part of your explorations? Yeah, I think so. The arts runs in my family, certainly, and my mother's side of the family, and my great-grandfather was a published poet. One of my uncles is a documentary filmmaker. Another was a sculptor, carpenter. Another was, I don't know really what he was,

like a true artisan or a bum. As other people called him, never really at a job, was always just kind of like true like artisan or a bum as other people called them never really at a job was always just kind of like doing weird things. You know, and one of my books once upon an alphabet is my, I work a lot with my older brother. He does the design for a lot of the books, but we dedicated it to, to our dad and we, we, we said, you know, to dad, thanks for never making us get a real job. So we were encouraged. We showed interest and enthusiasm in this direction and we were encouraged. I want to go back to those two words. You said curiosity and empathy. I mean, those are two words I think about a ton also. Curiosity especially, I feel like curiosity kind of

leads to empathy almost naturally because, right, but tell me how you see it. Well, yes or no. I mean, I think, you know, curiosity can be very self-indulgent. An empathy, I think, is remembering that you're not the only person alive. So there's like an out-wordness to that, whereas curiosity doesn't necessarily imply out-wordness. I think old children are curious. When people ask me when I started becoming an artist and I tend to answer them with a question, which is, well, when did you stop? You know, because all kids make art. You know, I think at a certain point, we just become self-aware, you know, and whereas kids are making art and they don't really care what people think or feel about it, they're just pure self-exploration and there's something wonderful about that. The not thinking that it has to look a certain way, you know, and the,

like a lot of the, when I was told art, it just, it confused me because you're given a, especially in secondary school, you're given a grade, you're given a mark, you know, told to do an observational drawing of, I don't wanna wear a pineapple and a shoe. And then you're given a percentage on how much it looks like that,

but that's not the point of art at all. And you know, that discourages a lot of people. The point of art is not to make something look exactly like it's supposed to look. Sure, that's, you know, there's a certain skill and craft and extremely figurative work. But often the more interesting art is the things that don't really look like the thing that they're supposed to look like. But there's an energy there and it's a communication of feelings. So I kind of remember with the question, though, at this point. No, we started with curiosity. of feeling. So I kind of remember with the question, though, at this point.

No, we started with curiosity, but I think that, yeah, that at some point are, or play, right? Yeah, we were talking about education there as well. And in Scandinavia, they don't start teaching kids how to read and write until they're much, much older. Because it is, it's about that learning through play and that exploration. And then those kids tend to, you know, obviously at the age of eight or nine be way, way behind in terms of Western schools, but by the time the 12, they're way ahead.

It is that sense of enjoyment about it, and rather than the siloed effect of, well, this is this discipline, and this is this discipline, but in real life, it doesn't work like that. Everything is connected, everything else. But it makes me think about in general things that can be measured or named on the surface versus trusting a process that's inside, right?

And yes, absolutely. But there is a process to learning how to, we become visually literate before we become actually literate. You learn how to read a room, you learn how to read emotions in a face, you learn how to read it, a picture, way before you learn how to recognize letter forms and words. But yet that's kind of ignored, I think, an awful lot. And art, even in curriculums, in education, especially as you get older, drops away and it's sort of seen as like a thing to do if you're not really good at anything else.

And I think that's such a pity, because I think art is probably the most important thing that can be taught. Okay, so I want to make a leap, but maybe it's not even that much of a leap because I think about the words curiosity, even empathy, wondering, and then I think about this word magic. How do you think about magic? And do you believe in it? Yes, in the sense that, I don't think not Harry Potter style, wizardry or anything like that, but I think there is magic and it's that sort of sense of suspension of disbelief, where we are, we're story driven creatures.

We're a storytelling species. And I think, and this came up in a fine arts show that I had in New York a couple of years ago, I was like, I think that people are no more than a collection of stories. The stories that you're told, the stories that you tell and the stories that are told about you. And the ones that you tell, you can control. You can't control the stories that you're told and you can't control the stories that you're that are told about you, but you can absolutely control the story that you're told, and you can't control the stories that you're told about you, but you can absolutely control the story that you tell, the word and the that you tell yourself.

And I think that is the magic falls into there somewhere. It's this sense of belief of feeling more than anything else. The filter that you can put on anything can change absolutely how you feel about something that, you know, the perspective that you choose to place so that ultimately can flip anything on a table. And I think I've come up with an example, and I'll test it with you. Just imagine right now, just close your eyes, imagine right now, it is Christmas Day, right now.

Right, really think about that for a second. Everything feels slightly different, right? It's like, it's not what it should be. It's like, there's a different feeling about that, like you're about to have your dinner or you have or it's about family. Christmas, they feel different because we've been brought up understanding that it's different. And if you feel like that right now for a second, imagine the part that you have, if you realize you can flip that perspective and that lens at any point.

To get to that feeling. Not necessarily that feeling, but any feeling. Like, you choose how you feel. Well, I guess I feel not in agreement personally with that, but you're saying our framework, the lens we have. Our framework and the lens that you have and the story that you tell, there's the Victor Franco, you know, that philosopher,

he was an Auschwitz survivor, and he realized that his captors could take away his dignity, his possessions, his family, his health, even his life. But the one thing that they could not take away was how he felt about it, how he chose to react to it. And he says, all the power in the world lives in between the moment of action and reaction. So, I'm sure between urge and behavior. That's where we're human.

You know, I'm thinking about those three stories, you said, the stories were told, the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that are told about us, right? But, you know, I think about the moments that happen with my kids, with certain books, definitely with your books. And I think there's this other category of stories, sometimes we need to tell different stories about ourselves. I was just thinking about how I think,

in some ways, like your stories, right? These books, these stories. Yeah. They actually activate different parts of ourselves. So we can kind of expand the stories we tell about ourselves. Like your stories add such magic and wonder and curiosity, right, which I think a lot of parents in our serious lives have trouble maintaining in ourselves and therefore have trouble kind of maintaining in our kids, right?

With that question, and you know, I've always thought that there's that very famous law school wire quote, be yourself, everybody else has taken, right? But I think somebody else said it better, which is a share and she said all of us invent ourselves, some of us just have more imagination than the others. I think that the act of parenting in that sense is that we tend to sort of use parenthood as an attempt to rewrite our own lives by trying to ensure our kids don't make the same mistakes that we do, and you know, almost by doing that you embrace those mistakes all over again. Yeah. So it's a by actively walking away from something you use that, that, that becomes a, a lengepanomized on your life, which means it exists as opposed to just

creating this new human being as, as a, as a different person than you. And that milestone might not even need to exist. Yes, to all of that. And how do you know, I don't know if the right question is, how do you feel parents can like foster imagination or how can parents not shut down imagination if it's there to begin with in their kids? Do you know, my older brother has got two kids

that are much older than mine. And he gave me one piece of advice. He was like, listen to the small stuff. Listen to the small stuff. And if they trust you with the small stuff, they'll tell you the big stuff. And that basically means you don't have to bring imagination to your kid.

You just have to make space to hear it when they have it, naturally, because they will. You just got to make time to listen to that and give them a respect to hear that. Yeah. A lot of parents have a lot of trouble navigating make believe. Right, because they're trying to make it up

and they've lost that curiosity and that imagination whereas they don't need to make it up. They just need to let the kids do it and be willing to play along. That doesn't need to be a parent driven thing. That can and should be a child driven thing. But that means being ready to move. You know, I was like say it doesn't suit you,

but your kid is kind of into a game That means that you got to stop and pay attention as opposed to right now. I'm gonna play with my kid right walkie-m Can we play? I like to try to make things as concrete as possible because I know our listeners as they're listening to this I know this is not Concrete right but what what would you I mean, I know there's a parent who's thinking, yeah, like, parents feel really bad. Often that play is hard for them. Because they are self-aware, they feel like I'm pretending

this feels fake to me. And they've lost something a long time ago. And I think just in the act of doing long enough, the exposure to it, you'll remember yourself. You'll remember yourself of old. And you know, interested, I'm just thinking as I happened the other day, with my daughter who was like barking.

She was just like, she likes to play dog, play, you know, cat, she just embodies them. And I wasn't sure exactly what to do. And I kind of just paused, even though part of me was like, I don't wanna do this, it's so annoying. Right, but I just kind of paused and she told me, you're a big dog, I'm a little dog, you're a big dog, right? And I really mean this even though it feels

almost self-conscious, saying it, like I just leaned in to barking. Yeah. I did. I just gotta drop a gear and go for it. Yeah, I did. And it wasn't natural because I have, I mean, I have a playful side for sure still that's alive.

But I feel like I was in the middle of like writing an email. You know, I was like in my like adult work mode. And it was like we had this connected conversation through barking that no words could have substituted for. It was really powerful. That's great. Because you know, I would say that to the parents who have the feeling comfortable playing is that you used to do it.

Yeah. All right, you can't wait till we're comfortable. Don't wait till you're just leaning. Yes, and were you as uncomfortable at the end of that play as you were at the start? Not at all. And my email, it mattered less at the end. like obviously I figured out how to write the email after can you even remember what the email was for? No, I know I've no fucking right now what the email is about

But you will remember that barking conversation probably for decades to come and Going back to our kids and and how I think about things a lot in terms of wiring right? I don't know if my daughter will still bark when she's 30, right? It should she wants to. I hope she does. But what she's really learning is I can continue to have access to this playful, imaginative part of myself. Yeah. You know, I do think that it's difficult for parents who have busy lives, busy careers and being a parent. And I've given a lot, a lot of thought to this. We have created an unachievable expectation for ourselves. There's no saying that it takes a village through as a child,

you know what they said it, because it does. And we've really discovered that moving back from Brooklyn to Belfast, where my family is and where my wife's family is, we're like, oh yeah, this shit doesn't need to be this hard. I think that this idea of a nuclear family who are expected to do everything, I think it's especially tough on young mothers who have ambitions, because it's up to them to both almost single-handedly, no offense to dads out there, raise a family with all the important stuff, and you know, turn out and be present for work, and be ambitious, and remain stylish and on point and relevant.

And that's kind of an impossible task. and be present for work, and be ambitious, and remain stylish and on point and relevant, and that's kind of an impossible task. For sure. Whereas years ago, it was like, there's the neighbor, there's the my sister, there's my mother or my grandmother, and it's like the disability series a child. And I think this feeds into this larger conversation

about the slow breakdown of community that has been happening for the last really 70 years, ever since end of World War II where it's sort of, it's all about this. It's like you're all important, but with that it's kind of we've forgotten the importance of community. Yeah. Well, that's deep, you know, and deeply touches, like, honestly, my mission around, you know, first of all, changing this idea of motherhood as martyrdom, motherhood as like doing it all seamlessly, perfectly with an Instagram photo. Nobody is doing that. And nobody is happy about that.

Even if they seem like they are. It's I think we've created an atmosphere where it's a sign of weakness to ask for help. And I think that's not okay. And yet we can't beat the truth that humans need each other. It's just you can't beat that. We do. Hey, so I want to let you in on something that's kind of counterintuitive about parenting.

The most impactful way we can change our parenting actually doesn't involve learning any new parenting strategies. The most impactful way we can change our parenting is by giving ourselves more resources so we can show up as sturdier so we can show up as calm amidst the inevitable chaos. It's what our kids need from us more than anything else. This is why I'm doing my mom rage workshop again. I'm doing it again because it is one of my most popular ones to date. It's coming up July 19th, but no worries if you can't make it live. It'll be available as a recording for whenever you have the time. I promise it's really the best investment we can make not only in ourselves, but also in our kids.

Can't wait to see you there at GoodInside.com. So, okay, so I have some other thoughts at this time of year related to magic and imagination. Things like the tooth fairy and Santa. I don't know if you're asked about this, but I'm asked about this often. Right, not actually. Interesting, well good. I'm the first one in.

I'm gonna get Oliver Jeffers' thoughts on the tooth fairy and Santa. You heard it here first. So how do you think about, let's take a sample. How do you think about Santa as related to magic, that space, that belief of your feelings more than anything else? Yeah, the inner child of me,

I still remember that sense of magic about it all, that feeling that was reignited when we had kids. As a parent, I put it on Twitter once, I was like, okay, no, what am I supposed to do for bribery leverage for the next 12 months, or 11 months, once Christmas is over. I think my thoughts are basically a combination of both those answers.

We came to absolutely love Thanksgiving when we moved to the States. And it's I almost prefer it, not because it's, I think there's a lot of pressure on Christmas as a parent, as an adult. It's the commercialization of it. It's the build up. It's the expected to kind of do everything

and be at every party and be everywhere and keep your family happy. But there are little, you know, there's beautiful moments within that. But with Thanksgiving, it's not about buying stuff. It's not even about religion or a made up person or a made up story about possibly one's real, existing person. It is just simply about, and now the origins of it are, I think, you know, don't exactly hold

up to scrutiny, but the feeling of it now is, is get together with food and family and just be grateful. And so there's something, there's something nice in that. But I think, you know, the tooth fairy, even the Easter Bunny, the magic is like that sense of, you know what it is? It actually refers back to a question we're asking earlier. It's an adult involved in a child's game. Is that wine that'll pretend with you that this is real?

And so the children really lean into it because you're actually acting like it's, it's happening. Well, I, you know, I want to, I want to slow down on that. I think that's really poignant and it's interesting. Part of the magic of Santa, the Easter Bunny, of the tooth fairy for kids might be that we finally join in the magic of something that they're interested in. And so the lower the interest, the obsession in O.A.

Right. It's highlighted by the fact that the obsession in O.A., it's highlighted by the fact that we're not doing that more often, you know, with more day-to-day topics. Interesting. I think that's really, that's a really powerful framework. You know, and I'm not, I'm not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination. I, I, I kind of joke that I have three children and my work is one of them. And I'm not going to lie that oftentimes my favorite child is my work. And I'm not going to pretend that like, I'm too busy to do that right now. And I often am, but I think it's, I catch myself often enough to make it worthwhile. I was like, you know, this, okay, I can drop this for a minute or ten minutes

and go play football in the garden or go be the tickle monster. You know, whatever it is, and they never wanted to end, but they're, they're, they're like, they get it, then I got to go again. But the fact that I'm willing enough to do it, I'd say half of the time, a piece is them, I think. Yeah. So, so I think there's nuance to my question.

So it's a seemingly simple question, but I know there's nuance here. Do your kids believe in Santa? Do they believe in the tooth fairy? Yeah, completely. Yes. Actually, our son kind of threw up an interesting moral conundrum because he was like, I don't want to put my tooth under my pillow for the money because I

want to hold on to my tooth. And we're like, dude, we're going to hold on to it anyway, but I didn't want to break the spell. So we're like, why don't you write a note explaining that to a tooth variance, see what happens. And so, you know, you did, and it got to keep the tooth out, and it got the money. Which he went and bought candy with. Of course he did. He's smart. Sounds like a smart kid. So, for parents who might say, what's the difference between allowing a kid to maintain a magical belief and lying? How do you think about those? Well, I think, you know, truth is a very interesting topic because a truth for you might not be the same as the truth for me. I don't think there actually is such a thing as an objective

truth. So it depends on how you define lying. And I think we give different versions of ourselves to different people. Does that mean that we are lying? I don't think it is. I think you could call it lying if you're being a super literal, you know, very, very, the dactic adult, but you could look at it as another way

is that you're playing. Yeah. And I guess, you know, playing is one big lie if you want to frame it like that. My books are one big lie. I actually do make a joke out of, that, you know, people ask me where I get my ideas from.

And I was like, and I sort of start off pretending that they're all true stories. And then I say, normally joke, and I make them up, which means I lie professionally to children. And we're all, we're all better for it. So I appreciate your efforts there. No, but I think that that matters because it's true. Like a parent who would say, okay, I'm, I'm dressing up as a construction worker and, you know,

joining in my child's construction scene. I don't know if that parent struggles after being like, I really lied to my kid. I need to make sure they know I'm not a construction worker if it's in fact they're not. But it's something happens where, and look, and I think, I appreciate this in parents, especially parents who say like, I grew up in a family where there was such dishonesty, where I looked back and I felt so gaslit my whole life, that they're especially sensitive to wanting to be

really direct and honest with their kid, and play, and thinking about Santa and Tooth Fairy and make believe and imagination, all of them is play, though, gives us that space in between truth and lying. And I think, you know, like maybe by the lack of play, you're trying to prepare your children for the cold, brutal world that it is. But in a way, I think that's kind of an easy way, right?

Because like if you want to prepare them for the cold, brutal world that it is, have a meaningful conversation with them about the things that are actually happening in the world. I suppose they just go and know life's shit, everybody's made to each other, you're going to get to take advantage of. It's like, this is not true. I think that's an easy way, as opposed to, why don't you play and then also explain,

well, this is why there's conflict happening right now, or this is why we're talking about equality right now. You know, it's like, if you want to do it that way, I think you got to, you got to sort of, it's a double-aid sword. I always like what Neil Gim and kind of said about, you know, wide kids embrace his books, which are sort of dark and macabre, and wide kids love rural dial stories. It's because the children are willing to go to frightening places because they know what's make believe, and it's good, almost emotional practice for the real world. So yeah, I think that it's more important to play and have a real conversation

than it is to just sort of explain that this is not true. I feel the same way about a lot of Robert Munch books where kids just say offensive things and they're nasty to other kids and my kids love those books because it actually allows them, you know, it normalizes that and it allows them to like play around with those ideas that are on kids minds anyway. Yeah. Any last thoughts on topics like magic, imagination, fantasy, play, you know,

you've so much of value to share. Yeah, well, I think, you know, a magic imagination, fantasy play, those have been real human emotions for tens of thousands to share. Yeah, well I think you know a magic imagination fantasy play those have been real human emotions for for tens of thousands of years whereas actually the the idea of childhood is relatively new, you know, children's books have only really existed for the the last 200 years maximum and you know when you look into the reasons of that it's actually kind of sad because maximum. And you know, when you look into the reasons of that, it's actually kind of sad, because children just just not live long enough for parents' formal relationships with them. So everything is getting better, you know, no matter how I broke when you feel that the world is,

but leaning into that, that magic and that curiosity and that the mysteriousness is like, that's life and that, but it feeds back in to the stories that you're telling yourself and that you tell the world. It doesn't have to be just limited to parenthood and childhood. It's like it's user human being. Should embrace all of those things. It's like, do we believe in ghosts? There's a fascination and a horror about those. I had a ghost book come out last Halloween. Really thinking about why people are both terrified and fascinated by ghosts is a very, very human reason that I think we're terrified because we don't like to not understand something, but we're fascinated because we also don't like the idea that something has to just end. We don't understand everything. We don't have

the answers for everything. That's where magic and mystery and curiosity really flourish. And it's, I guess it's sort of understanding that it's all a story. Everything that we know is a story that we've told ourselves. Well, I mean this, I feel like I could talk to you forever and you've used so many, I think really important ideas that you share so succinctly and so powerfully, so thank you. Oh, I appreciate that. And I appreciate this conversation. I really appreciate, you know, you putting so many amazing, provocative, important things into the world. So thank you.

Thank you. And I hope you enjoy the next time you play Big Dog with your daughter. I will probably later today. I will lean in. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast. You could also write me at podcast at goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share good inside membership. The first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at

Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Nat, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela, and the rest of the good inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside. I remain good inside. you