The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It by Jennifer Breheny Wallace AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The definitive book on the rise of “toxic achievement culture” overtaking our kids' and parents' lives, and a new framework for fighting back In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.” Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools. Parents, educators, and community leaders are facing the same quandary: how can we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them? In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Drawing on interviews with families, educators, and an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents, she exposes how the pressure to perform is not a matter of parental choice but baked in to our larger society and spurred by increasing income inequality and dwindling opportunities. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments, a message that is reinforced by the media and greater culture at large. Through deep research and interviews with today’s leading child psychologists, Wallace shows what kids need from the adults in the room is not more pressure, but to feel like they matter, and have intrinsic self-worth not contingent upon external achievements. Parents and educators who adopt the language and values of mattering help children see themselves as a valuable contributor to a larger community. And in an ironic twist, kids who receive consistent feedback that they matter no matter what are more likely to have the resilience, self-confidence, and psychological security to thrive. Packed with memorable stories and offering a powerful toolkit for positive change, Never Enough offers an urgent, humane view of the crisis plaguing today’s teens and a practical framework for how to help.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaks and Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends.

For 15 years, two to three episodes a weekday. What is it? 15 shows. Two to three shows a weekday. 10 to 15 shows a week. I can't feel my legs after 15 years anymore, people. Can you tell already? The Chris Voss Show family is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you.

At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. But, I mean, she kind of has a point, really, when you think about it. She's written the show. Please, you know who you are out there. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing author on the show. She's going to be talking to us about her latest, hottest book that just came out, August 22, 2023. Before we get to that, we give the guilt and shaming section of the show,

what we call the guilt and shaming bit. Uh, please go to Goodreads. Oh God, please go to goodreads.com for chest Christmas, youtube.com for it says Christmas LinkedIn.com for it says Christmas, Christmas one over there on the, uh, tickety talkity where the kids play. And, uh, I go over there and waste four hours of my night. Uh, also those tech talk videos. You just, you're just like i'll just

watch one more one more and then i'll go to sleep one more and then the sun's coming up in the morning you're like damn it not again uh anyway guys five stars over there on the on the uh itunes if you would please uh she is the author of the latest and newest book to come out as i mentioned in august uh the book is entitled never enough which is i think that describes my tiktok addiction never enough when achievement culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it jennifer uh wallace joins us on the show she's going to be talking to us about her book and her amazing insights on it uh and the one thing that's a pretty awesome about this book is it was an instant, not, not delayed. Cause, uh, you know, mine's delayed a few years. It's an instant New York

times bestseller. Uh, so that's important to know because she's, she's basically kicking butt. Let's just put it that way in the book world. They got, that's actually a little term we use in the book world. Uh, Jennifer Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the new book we mentioned. She is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, or what we like to call the WAPO, and she appears on national television to discuss her articles and relevant topics in the news. She graduated from Harvard College and began her journalism career at CBS 60 Minutes, where she was part of the team that won the Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. She is a journalism

fellow at the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and she serves on the Board of Coalition for the Homeless in New York City, where she lives with her husband and their three children. Welcome to the show, Jenny. How are you? Thanks for having me. Great. There you go. And did we decide I was going to call you Jenny through the show? Jenny sounds great. There we go. Okay. Because you put it in the thing, and so now it's stuck in my brain. So Jenny, welcome to the show. Give us your dot coms. Where can we find people,

have people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, it's jenniferbwallace.com i'm also on linkedin i'm on instagram i should know my handle i don't shoot over there on the insta as the kids call it the insta just google me up whatever which is funny because i grew up near where insta was like the kodak camera where you had put film in it and you had to take that photo map. That was the Insta. Anyway, so what motivated you to want to write this book?

So I have three teenagers, one of whom is applying out to college this year. And while I've been parenting for the past 17 years, I've been noticing how different my children's childhood was from my own growing up in the seventies and eighties. So I wanted to know one, why was it so different? Why was it feeling so pressured in my house? And two, what could I do about it? Ah, there you go. And, and, uh, raising teenagers is hard. Were you a Gen Xer then? Yeah. Gen X. And so are you raising, uh, the greatest generation ever? Of course.

There's just why we have a hard time understanding these younger people. Uh, so, uh, is your, is your, are your children Gen Z or are they millennials? Uh, they are Gen Z. And then I think my youngest is Gen Alpha. I don't know if that's a real name. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. is gen alpha i don't know if that's a real thing he's just calling oh okay well it goes to a there you go well i mean you know you might as well maybe i should start calling myself gen alpha will i become younger if i do maybe it sounds like a sounds like those people who always say

they're 20 when they're really 50 and that might be me so uh give us a 30 000 overview if you would of the book and what it entails yeah so it looks at why our children's childhoods are so much more pressured and solutions. So just quickly, when I was growing up in the 70s and early 80s, probably like you, my parents could be more relaxed because life was generally more affordable back then. Real estate was more affordable. Higher education was more affordable. Food was more affordable back then. Real estate was more affordable. Higher education was more affordable. Food was more affordable. Healthcare was more affordable. So there was more slack in the system. Parents back then felt pretty assured that even with a bunch of wrong turns, their kids would be able to replicate their childhoods, if not do even better.

And that's the American dream. And now parents are seeing a first generation that's not doing as well. And so that's where a lot of this tension and pressure is coming from. There you go. Are you sure that's what it was though? Because maybe it just was parents just didn't give a shit. I mean, they had to have a PSA that had to tell parents at 10, 10 PM where they'd be like, Hey, do you know where your kids are? Like, have you thought about that today? It was on TV, man. They had to run that shit.

It was crazy. Like, like my, my, my parents will leave me in the car in California when that, uh, when that, uh, you know, it's crazy to run around like, around like Manson and other people and stuff, she put a sign on the window, free children. When she's going to Rouse, she should be like, don't pick the middle one. Take the other two first.

I will tell you that there are lots of reasons why modern life and parenting is changed, but I think it's the macroeconomic forces we're living in today that's putting so much pressure on all of us. Definitely. It seems like everyone says the world's moving faster and things are getting more complex, and that's the compression element of it.

Is that true, according to research? I think it's true. And it's also that it's becoming more uncertain. So it's always been the job of a parent to raise kids who will thrive and survive without them one day in the future. But the future has never felt so uncertain, right? We don't know what half the jobs are going to be when our kids hit the job market. AI is now on the scene. Parents are really preparing their kids for what we don't even know.

And so a lot of them are relying on, you know, a good college as a kind of life vest in a sea of uncertainty. They're hoping that they could strap that on. The kid will survive. But it's actually, it's drowning too many of the kids. Especially with the debt of college. Oh, my gosh. College loans. That's it. It's not, too many of the kids. Especially with the debt of college. Oh, my gosh. College loans. That's it.

It's not, you know, the pressure. I'm glad you brought that up because the pressure that the parents are feeling is not to get their kid into Harvard and Yale. And I think that's a misnomer. The pressure many parents are feeling is to be able to afford college at all. And so wanting to get their kids a scholarship wanting to get some financial aid and a lot of that is now dependent on achievement so that is the pressure parents are feeling definitely and some of them are still paying their college loans i know a lot probably a lot of millennials are i mean i've had i've had some of my friends that uh you know they've hit 50 and they announced on

facebook they're like hey i just finally paid off my college loans. I'm like, you're 45, 50. What? You know, and we, you know, I had a mortgage company for 20 years. Uh, it was astounding the people I would see. And back then, I think it was still just coming into the thing, but I mean, I would see doctors that had their, with their college loans were basically living on minimum wage um with the payments they would make and there were doctors like you know they were eventually probably gonna get it paid off and make money but it was just extraordinary um you know what was going on there and so you know the one thing i the one way i figured out how to solve uh you know raising children and worrying about all their achievement is don't have them as my audience knows i never had kids at least not that uh have been able to locate me yet

but uh mari's still working on it i just don't return mari's calls anyway um so give us a deeper dive uh what were some of the things that you found and and in in your title you talk about how um how this achievement culture becomes toxic and uh give us a little bit more deeper dive on why this becomes so toxic is is it like a silicon valley thing well it's it's actually not just a silicon valley thing i i conducted a survey with a with a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And we surveyed 6,500 parents around the country and it's being felt in Alaska. It's this pressure is being felt in Maine, in Jackson, Wyoming, Cleveland, Ohio. And so the way that this is not an anti-achievement book, I'm a high achiever. I get joy from achievement. I think achievement becomes toxic when we entangle our worth with it.

So in other words, when we're only worthy when we achieve or we're not worthy because we fail. So that's when it becomes toxic. When our entire sense of value and self and worth is wrapped up in our achievement. And that's not just true of youth. I mean, that's true of adults too. Yeah. You know, I learned to fix that too. Don't give a shit.

No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, people. Those are jokes. Do you find that maybe some of it is social media? Because I know that, well, you're the researcher. It seems like a lot of people and then in the, in the youth, the youth there, God, I talk like an old man. I talk like a guy on a lawn going, Garfunkel kids. Um, you'll find that the youth, uh, there's this kind of this

fantasy culture that's been developed on Instagram that everyone's a millionaire, that everyone's running in jet planes you know they they even got it so you can go down to a studio in LA pay like I think it's 60 bucks and they'll take photo of you photographs of you in a a setup mocked up jet plane private jet plane so that you know people think that you're you're uh whatever the kids call it these days um and there's this kind of faux culture of, of everyone's successful, you know, in the dating environment, all the girls, um, in the studies, they, they, they do seem to think that every guy's a millionaire and they grow on, they grow on street corners and,

you know, it's just got to find one, um, is, is social media and some of the delusion of, of the, uh, the fakeness of it, what's maybe contributing to that where people think they, you know, Hey, I'm 13 and everybody, you know, is 13 is flying on private jets and a millionaire. So I need to keep up. So do I think social media is part of it? Absolutely. Do I think it's an accelerant? Absolutely. Do I think it's a magnifier of these issues? Absolutely. I don't think social media hits at the root of the problem. So, and what scares me about how we've come to talk about social media is that our kids were totally normal. And then social media came on the stage and it ruined them. And I think for parents,

like, boy, wouldn't that be great if it was just social media and we could say, okay, fine, let's just shut it all down and then we'll have our kids back. That's not what's going on here. In my opinion, in the research that I've done and in the research that I've read from others, that there is a deeper issue here. And that is that people don't feel like they matter. And mattering is actually a psychological term that's been around since the 1980s. This guy that gave us the idea of self-esteem also conceptualized mattering. And what he said was mattering is feeling valued for who we are deep at our core, away from our achievements, away from our success. So just mattering for who we are as people.

We, you know, a lot of kids and a lot of adults out there just feel like they do not matter for who they are, that they only matter when they achieve. That to me is the root of the issue. There you go. So what contributed to that? What created that? Was it a cultural thing?

I think it's cultural. I think it's economic. I think it's economic. I think we as a society are much more materialistic. We are much more motivated by extrinsic goals. So I found this fascinating, and I get into it a bit in the book, that values impact well-being. So researchers who study values sort of separate extrinsic values, which are career values, you know, wanting the big house, you know, wanting the statusy job, et cetera, et cetera, versus intrinsic values. Those are, I want to be a good neighbor. I want to, you know, grow myself. I want to be a good friend. those values are in conflict. And so the more we

pursue materialistic values, the less room and time we have in our lives, lives to pursue intrinsic values. And the reason this is harmful, is that extrinsic values are linked with negative mental health issues and substance abuse disorder. And so we are, you know, as a culture, we've become much more materialistic. I think some of this has to do with the fact that we've also become very secular as a society. You know, we used to have values in church or in 4-H clubs or in communities. And now we are living very isolated lives, going to work every day, feeling like we're not enough, coming home, both learning on social media, also feeling like we're not enough. And we're absorbing this and we're internalizing these messages. Whereas back when we used to go to church or we used to have close-knit communities,

we would see our value. We would see ourselves as a son or daughter of whatever God we were worshiping, or we would see how we really impact our small community, being a good neighbor. I mean, people don't even know their neighbors anymore in a lot of communities. Yeah. Wait, I have neighbors? I know. So where do we get our value we get our value based we've replaced sort of religion and community with capitalism there you go where do you get your value in capitalism you get it when you're contributing to the capitalistic system making the money so that's pursuing those materialistic values and i I think that's impacting our wellbeing. There you go. Is this a factor? I, I, I, I don't know where you were at on the thing on the scale, but I was born in 68. And when I graduated high school, the, the, the robber baron sort of 1980s

of wall street, the, the Ivan Bielski agreed is good era began and and we probably grew up in that era where you know you work for a company for you know our fathers were you had that business where you work for a company for 40 years you get the gold watch at the end of the thing the IBM suit you know that's that whole sort of really kind of it it felt like a guaranteed sort of way of life of that nuclear American dream which really wasn't all that great. And it was kind of a blip on the screen if you understand it. But then we had that, you know, the greed is good sort of wall street era.

Uh, and then we hit Reaganomics, uh, where, you know, that trickle down thing from what I'm reading, it's not, it hasn't worked out. Maybe there's still time. I don't know, 20 years maybe. And one thing I've watched over since I turned 18 in those years was I started to see the dissolving of the middle class from trickle-down economics. And it seems like the more desperate the middle class has gotten, and of course, more of it's disappeared into the lower class. It just seems like the more

desperate they are at everything to succeed and claw at it. Is that a factor? I think that's definitely a factor. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about how my dad worked for Exxon for 30 or 40 years, right? So you get that, the pension, you put in the time, you're loyal to your company, your company will be loyal to you. And we don't have that anymore. We don't have, you know, with Reagan, when he came on the scene and Margaret Thatcher, you know, there was, we now, the reason that parents are parenting so intensely in their homes is because we are now tasked with weaving safety nets for each individual child because they no longer exist in our culture. We no longer have pensions to rely on. So parents are feeling this pressure to catch their kids or create this safety net for each of their children. Yeah, I think you hit it on the nail on the head.

Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurm uh podcasting corporate stuff uh with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as ceo and be sure to check out chris voss leadership institute.com now back to the show let me ask you this too one thing we've seen or i've seen this is my theory and you're the researcher is over the last 40 well what 60 years somewhere in

the 50s and 60s we started going from meritocracy to a victimhood competition culture and i don't know if it was the proliferation of attorneys you know i mean you and i grew up in a world where they didn't have to tell you not to jump off the bridge because you know you just kind of went that's probably going to kill me right you know they didn't have to tell you not to jump off the bridge because you know you just kind of went that's probably going to kill me right you know they didn't have to tell you not to put the bag over your head and the people who did never mind i'm not going to do a darwin joke uh but um you know it they they didn't have to do that but we came in this culture where uh you know we got an attorneys coming out or our bum telling us hey you're not at fault for anything you did or decided to do, and we're all trying to figure out how to sue.

It seems like everywhere I go, I mean, if you really tune into victimhood culture in the news, every story almost leads with either how you're a victim or I was a victim of this. And it's become so prominent. It's become a competition. Like one of the times it really struck me was when Whoopi Goldberg on The View was trying to do an equation that somehow the experience of African-Americans and racial injustice in America was larger than the Jewish people who went through the Holocaust.

And both were horrific and extensive, but trying to figure out which was worse and try and play one down to play the other up, you saw the victimhood competition on it. And is that part of it? I mean, we seem to be, it just seems to be emotionalist, lack of self-accountable society, emotion-based, lack of accountability society, lack of self-actualization, where everyone just runs around and is like, I'm a victim. It's never my fault. I will take the other side of that, a similar, I think, argument. So two things, you mentioned meritocracy, which I'll talk about in a second, but what I think you're talking about when you talk about victimhood is a real distrust in our society and how we've become very hyper individualistic. We feel like we are on our own

that we, um, you know, we have to take care of our, our, our, the family within our walls and not, and, and it's a, it's a dog eat world, dog eat dog, hyper. And I, first of all, hyper individualism is a myth that we are interdependent. And I think we have to stop raising our kids. You know, we're told as parents that the ultimate job is to raise self-reliant, independent kids. But I would argue that that's what gets to the victim mentality, that you're on your own,

that you're vulnerable, that you can't trust anyone else. And instead, I think we should be focusing on healthy interdependence, being somebody who can rely on others and have others rely on us. What that requires is trust. And there are lots of reasons we've lost trust in this world. I don't get into it much in the book, but it is very sad to me. And I certainly am not raising my kids to believe that they should mistrust strangers.

But I think people are making money off of selling mistrust, like you pointed out. But also, I want to talk about the meritocracy, which also, I think, is a myth and has always been a myth that meritocracy, especially for a white person like us, you know, who gets a headstart, a few rings up the ladder. Meritocracy is like a really interesting idea. But what,

what we have come to realize is that meritocracy actually doesn't quite exist. That certain people are starting in way ahead of other people. And so meritocracy as an idea and there was this great book that i'm going to butcher the name of but the author is daniel markovitz and he's a yale law school professor i think it's called the meritocracy trap and it's such an interesting take his subtitle is something like, you know, the myth of meritocracy. Do you have it up there?

It's such a good last name. Daniel Markovits, M-A-R-K-O-V-I-T-S. Something like that. The meritocracy trap, how America's foundational myth keeps, feeds inequality, dismantles the middle class and devours the elite.

That meritocracy works for no one. Anyway, that's his argument. It's beyond the scope of my book, but I do think you're hitting on interesting points. A lack of trust, how meritocracy doesn't actually work the way we want it to work. It's just another way in the words of scott galloway i think it's he who says it's it's really meritocracy is a caste system the caste system of america oh that's interesting to look at it that way yeah yeah i do think self-accountability though is one thing we missed uh did you see any play in uh in your research from you know with the

with the i believe it started with the late gen x uh parents or the millennial parents where they started doing the participation trophy thing and the coddling of their children the helicopter parenting and all that sort of stuff so i i think the the trophies came from the idea that it was certainly a popular idea in the 80s and 90s that if your child had a healthy level of self-esteem, that they would feel good about themselves and they would be better citizens of the world. And so parents really focused on building up their kids' self-confidence, but they did it through extrinsic motivators like those participation trophies. Kids know that they didn't earn it. So it was a misguided effort to build stronger, healthier kids and therefore stronger, healthier communities, but it's backfired. I wonder if it did it contribute to where we are today then? Um, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it contributed. Um, and I would say I wouldn't

be surprised because I think it's become so much a part of how we've overschedulized our overscheduled our kids. And that has fed into achievement culture. There you go. You know, one of the resiliency of young people, and I imagine it varies across. You can't throw, you can't lump a whole generation into one ball. But one thing that I've seen that's disturbing to me is this rise of incels

of young men. And, uh, and I just don't get them like, you know, you'll see these, and I believe there's a, uh, an equatable female, uh, version of, I forget what they call it, uh, fem cells. Um, but it's young men who literally, they ask a girl out once, so they tell a girl they like her, you know, all that stuff you do when you're a kid. And, you know, the girl says, no, I'm not interested in you. That one rejection destroys them for life. And then they just go right into hating women. And, you know, we see this a lot in our gaming communities and other stuff with incels.

And I've talked to some of them. And I'm like, you know, I've been seeing all my life. You're going to date a lot of women. They're going to tell you they're not interested. You're trying to find people who are so that's a good thing and uh the fact that just one or two women tell them no and they just give up and just hate women is i just i just it just bends my mind to try and understand it but it's kind of weird how this some of this generation they just don't have that resilience and they don't have any self-accountability to go, well, maybe it's me. Maybe it's how I

approached or talked to her, et cetera, et cetera. I actually think the young men that you're talking about have an unmet need to matter. And so they are looking. So what I find fascinating about mattering and how it relates to these young men that you're talking about is that researchers who study mattering say that after the drive for food and shelter it is the instinct the need to matter that drives human behavior for better and for worse so when we feel like we matter we show up to the world in positive ways we want to contribute we have the confidence to believe that we can make a positive impact on the world we feel significant when we don't when we feel like we don't matter when we've been told by our parents that we don't

matter when we've been bullied at school when we haven't given been given a chance to get social proof that we matter because no one's ever asked us to add back in any meaningful way, that need to matter goes unmet. And so the way to meet it could be through anger, through shutting down. When we feel like we don't matter, we can turn inward and become anxious and depressed, or we could become very angry and we could, you know, workplace shootings are like an example of this, right? You don't think I matter. I'll show you I matter. So I think what you're, now that I've sort of introduced this idea of mattering to you, I think you will see how it plays out in everyday life.

There you go. I mean, the people that do do school shootings, I mean, they, they're looking for fame and fortune. They're looking to, um, and many times they're copy. Yeah. They're looking to matter. That's very interesting. A very, uh, thought processing. Uh, you, you did a survey, uh, when you did interviews with families, educators, an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents. And what did you find when you talked to them? Oh my gosh, they were so honest. I'll read you a couple of things. I wanted to get to the roots, to the hidden academic achievement cultural landscape. So I'll read you just a couple of things I asked them. So we had a series of

questions. One of the questions I asked was on a scale from one to four, how much should they agree or disagree with this statement? Others think that my children's academic success is a reflection of my parenting. 83% of parents somewhat or strongly agreed with that statement. Now, do we think that our parents felt like others were judging their parenting success by how well we did in school? No, they didn't give a crap. So I think that we are also like living in a culture where parents, adults are getting their moral worth based on how well they fit their kids into society's ever shrinking definition of success. Sounds like we can blame this on their parents then.

Well, I don't think we can blame it on the parents. I think we can blame it on the macroeconomic forces i really i think parents are just the social conduits communicating those macroeconomic forces to their kids i'm probably feeling the same thing too and that's why they're passing along maybe yes yes yeah yeah my parents were like hey why don't you get good grades and you know then i bring home the good grades or you know b's or a's or whatever i flunked everything i think that's a callback joke on the show uh and then you know your mom would be like okay just get the hell out of the house come back whenever i don't know next year or something whatever and when when i yell at you or

when the street lights come on sometimes we play a game with her and be like let's see how long after the street lights come on that before she starts yelling for us, it was like, let's see if she forgets us. And, you know, and then of course you'd see the 10 o'clock thing.

It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your child is? And she'd be like, damn it. I should go find them. Otherwise CPS, I don't think there was CPS back then. Maybe,

maybe. I mean, I, yeah, I mean, people like to blame parents. I'm, I'm here to say, here to say I don't think it's not all on the parents. It doesn't mean that we as parents shouldn't be held accountable for our actions, but I don't think that parents have to be held accountable for the anxieties and fears that they feel because of this huge inequity we are seeing in our country. There you go. So you talked in the book about how you give some resources to how people can start, I guess, individually working with this,

with their kids and their parents. What are some of the best things or some things you can tease out from the book that people can do? Is one of them, like I did, just send the kids to the military school for 18 years? No, I don't think that one is in the book. But the best piece of advice, or not the best, but one piece of advice that really hit home to me was said by a researcher, excuse me, and it was minimize criticism, sorry, prioritize

affection. And what she meant by that was, it doesn't mean as parents, we can't have standards, but it means that we need to be clear about separating the deed from the doer. So your kid didn't study for the math test. You're frustrated. Instead of saying you're lazy and making him his achievement or his failure. It is get curious. Why didn't you study? What do we need to do? Is there an underlying learning difference here?

Do we need to have more structure at home? Do I need to keep a closer eye on how you're doing your homework and you're studying? So getting curious, not furious with our kids. And then prioritizing affection. Greeting our kids once a day the way the family dog greets us when we walk in the door with just total joy. I just love you so much. I'm so grateful to have you in my life. Let your kids feel that joy. So much of parenting is about pushing our kids to do the things they don't want to do.

I'm saying relish in the joys of parenting. There you go. So I got to feed them and love them too, is what you're saying? A lot of work. This is why I didn't have kids, people. So I like this. Thanks to Noreen commenting. We are not only our child's only influences and they make their own choices.

I'm not sure where to go with that, but thank you for your comment, Doreen. I would say that is true. And I will say that as our kids get older and they naturally are supposed to be individuating, that means like creating their own individual identities, they're pulling away. It doesn't mean that the parent should be pulling away too. And I think as parents, we could get very wrapped up in our kids rejecting us, the closed door. What I talk about in the book is that parents need to lean in as their kids are leaning out, respectfully lean in, check in on them. They really do care and listen to what we say, even as they're rolling their eyes. There you go. There you go. Maybe some extreme parenting. This is kind of going viral in this

moment right now that we're in, in September of 2023, if you're watching this 10 years from now on our YouTube channel. Have you heard of this Ruby Frank young lady or young lady? Oh, is that the one in Utah? Yeah, in Utah who got arrested she was uh really big on the you know teach my kids to be self-accountable she's like you know not feeding your six-year-old the sandwich because she didn't make it and take it to school and so she's like let the kids starve you need to learn self-accountability and i'm like that's like going a little far yeah i have not been following the case. I just saw the headline.

Yeah. It's, you probably don't want to, you'll spend hours watching the videos and it's a whole thing, but it seems like she was trying a little bit too hard at some of the extreme, um, uh,

uh, achievement oriented stuff to her kids. I mean, she's like, she, I mean, she's like trying to get three year olds, I don't know,

to win the Nobel peace prize and stuff. And you're just like, Hey, you should calm down. That kid's like three, man three-year-olds, I don't know, to win the Nobel Peace Prize and stuff. And just like, hey, you should calm down. That kid's like three, man. Just like, you know, let him have a childhood, you know. Otherwise, he'll look like Michael Jackson or something. So there you go. What about, so parents need to try and maybe dial back a little bit on the achievement. Maybe, you know, maybe don't be the tiger mom so much, tiger parents. Let the kids

have a little bit of a hallway space to bounce around and have a childhood. Yeah. Well, I will say what the researchers that I spoke to who studied this population tell me is that modern childhood today, they are saturated with messages about achievement. They're saturated in the classroom. They're saturated on social media. They're saturated in our culture. Our kids already know we want them to do well. They already know that. We don't have to consistently hammer it home to them every day. Home today, because of these excessive pressures, needs to be more like a haven. It needs to be a place where our kids can recover from the messages, where they never have to question whether they are enough. Now, this doesn't mean that parents shouldn't have standards. If we want our kids to know that they matter to us, we have to create boundaries. We have to say, this is how work gets done. This is what bedtime is.

This is what we, but it's, it's, it does not have to be hammered home the way I think some parents feel like it is their responsibility. Our kids already know. That may, that gives me a great epiphany. That really makes sense. I mean, you, you've got to give them a timeout place. The world is already pressurizing them enough as it is. And while you can't just let them play video games all night long, you've got to give them the love and affection like you talked about and maybe focus on letting

them know that they matter and giving them maybe self-worth or more self-actualization. Yeah. Finding out what they're getting. I call it getting a PhD in your kids. What is it about your kid that uniquely makes them tick? Are they really funny? Are they really generous? Do they have a lot of empathy? And really help to, a researcher said to me, the self becomes stronger less by being praised

than by being known. And so to me, that was really profound. So that my job as a parent is to know my child intimately. And that's how you can know where the bar should be as it relates to your kid and achievement. When you know them intimately, then you could set up parameters, healthy parameters. There you go. And maybe tell your kids you're proud of them more. I mean, I don't know about your parenting relationship, but I remember the first time my father said he was proud of me. And I can remember this day from the very moment. That's how unique and rare it was. He might've said it twice when he was in his 60s or 70s before he passed. But I think it was he might have said it twice when he was in his 60s 70s before he passed but i think

it was about three times total and uh we never heard that a lot in the gen x generation i mean usually it was like who are you are you mine uh but uh you know like dad i've been here for 20 years and uh he's like are you sure uh but uh no tell you, one of the most important things I think most parents can tell their kids, Hey, I'm proud of you. I've, I value, maybe that's the thing they need to say.

Cause that's kind of what my dad was saying. Hey, I'm proud of you. I value before that. I was like, who are you? I'm proud of you for who you are. I see you.

I know you, you are, you are enough. There you go. Where they feel like they're enough and that should be at the home there you go well important message for all the parents out there and uh and uh you know every parent should read your book and understand it better and and and probably realize that they're in the same sort of box of of this you know striving clawing challenging you know

it's just it, it feels like if you remember that movie network back in the day when the guy goes, you know, we, we just reached the point where we just want to watch her. We just want to radials and we want to watch TV and we just want to be left alone by, you know, a few minutes, you know, and that was in the seventies. And so, you know, now it just seems even more toxic environment uh managing social media i think is maybe important for children i i one of my friends who's a father of uh three girls he's he's devout catholic um and so he believes in spirituality and religiousness and a bit of conservatism but you know he's he he says to me what he constantly has to do is sit down with his

girls and their instagram and what they're seeing on their Instagram and go, okay, honey, some of this is not reality. Some of this doesn't reflect on you as a person, as a value. You don't need to be this person doing that, et cetera, et cetera. And he says it's a constant battle. And young women struggle with their value and their self-esteem and different things, and they see the images of the world around them, and the competition, of course, amongst women is

pretty something else. And so he has to constantly try and reset that. And I've talked to other parents that struggle with that, too. They're like, we constantly have to tell our kids that, hey, the people in the fake private airplanes and the fake diamonds and whatever the hell they're putting on you know maybe they're you know those people going to dubai it's not really what you think it is so there you go i

think that's absolutely right and i think um you know as parents it would really benefit us to get as involved and interested in our kids online world as much as we are what's going on in the cafeteria table there you go note to self call the kids i sent for 18 years to military school and tell them i love them and i'm proud of them and i'll see them when they graduate all right there you go uh well this any uh any final thoughts you have before we go out, Jenny, on your book and what's inside of it? I hope parents read the book and feel seen and not judged and that they walk away with really practical advice that they could implement in their homes tonight. There you go. Anything we can do to make parenting easier and raise better children so I don don't have to stand on lawn anymore and spray them with the hose and

tell them to get off my lawn. I've kind of become that Clint Eastwood character who's on the lawn, just going, just growling it at the, at the youth. And, uh, it,

it's not a pretty sight. And, uh, so there you go. I don't know. Uh, well, thank you very much for coming on the show.

We really appreciate Jenny. Give us your.com. So if you can find you on the interwebs, please. Yep. Jennifer B. Wallace.com. Um.com so people can find you on the interwebs please. Yep, jenniferbwallace.com and there you'll

be able to reach me. There you go. I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn. There you go. Order it up, folks. Wherever fine books are sold, remember to stay away from those dirty alleyway bookstores. You might need a tetanus shot after you wander through those alleyways. August 22, 2023.

Never enough when achievement culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it. Order it up. Hey, just remember, there's the holidays coming up, folks. We always tell people at the end of the show now, buy five to ten books so you can give them away to all those people who bought you gifts, but you didn't think highly enough for them to get them gifts. And then you got some backup gifts. And then, of course, give the books away to the people you love too as well.

Thanks for tuning in folks. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, and chrisfast1 on the tickety-tockety.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out. Fun show.