The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep7: Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, on why a one-size fits all attitude to screen time isn’t the answer, plus more secrets to connecting with pre-teens (especially boys).

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

The man who’s sold 150 million kids’ books worldwide, is also a dad of two teenage boys. In this episode of Sweat, Snot & Tears he joins us from his book shop in Plainville, Massachusetts, to chat about how he’s helping his sons negotiate these uniquely socially-distanced times, his approach for encouraging reluctant readers, which authors he’d encourage his readers to read next, and why he writes his books in the cemetery (parents everywhere will relate). Big thanks to this week’s special co-host, Atticus, 9 - aka Z-Boy-Gaming (he said he’d kill us if we didn’t promote his YouTube channel). NOTE: this is a kid-friendly listen so please do share with your mini Wimpy-kid fans - Jeff shares some great tips for budding writers, and is a thoroughly lovely man. We were utterly charmed and would quite like him to be our dad! Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End, written by best-selling children’s author Jeff Kinney, is available in hardback by Puffin now -  https://bit.ly/3jcPySl 

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears, brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary. And I'm Wendy Gollage. And together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments. With guests who are far more interesting than we are. Welcome to the latest episode of Sweat, Snot and Tears, your weekly dose of all things parenting. This week we've got a slightly different format. Wendy can't be with us, sob.

But in light of our special guest this week I'm joined by a different co-host, my son Atticus who's nine. Say hi Attie. Hi. Very good and the reason we're joined by Attie is that this week's guest is author beloved of nine-year-olds the world over. We've got Geoff Kinney, creator and author of the Wimpy Kids series. Welcome Geoff. Hi, thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. Now, Jeff, we usually begin every episode by asking our guests whether there's been any sweat, snot, or tears in their household today so far. Tell us, which of the three have you had? In my household today, boy, I only spent about 25 minutes with my kids awake and me awake before I left. And so there

wasn't any sweat, snot or tears that I'm aware of. However, they are doing remote learning. So there may have been a few stifled tears. Oh, that's hard. Is that because of COVID? Yeah. So we're doing kind of a phased situation here where the kids are only going to school in person two days a week, and then they work from home the other three days. And we just started yesterday. And how do you think it's going to go? You know, I've been a little bit surprised this time around. We did this, of course, in the spring and they did pretty well, but I think now it's much more regimented. And it's harder. And so the kids, they sit down at their desks at 730 in the morning.

And they they stay there until 230 with class after class after class. It's a little too much. You know, it's a little hard on them. Yeah, there's how old are they? They are 15 and 17 years old. Oh, wow. They're big kids. Yeah. They're pretty big. Yep. And they probably miss being with their friends. I think they do. I think that, you know, we don't know what the psychological effects on, on kids are going to be, but this is a lost year. Um, it's weird. You know, my kid, my oldest kid is a senior, he's a boy. And he is not doing the normal things that a senior should be doing. He's not going to parties or hanging out with his friends or

going out for pizza. And boys and girls aren't mixing at all. So by the time he gets to college, the girls will be an alien species too. Are you finding that they're spending a lot more time chatting on the phone and and on computers and stuff just so that they can stay connected no um i i don't think that kids really chat on the phone the way that we did you know when i was my oldest son's age 17 i spent hours on the phone each night with with my girlfriend with my friends who are male and that is not a part of their culture they will do everything to avoid actually having a conversation with somebody

at the other end yeah heaven forbid you should actually have to open your mouth yeah even um and they're not doing like based i think they've they've got their fill of zoom and all that with their their classroom situation so uh not a lot of interaction that's similar to what I had as a kid. Do you find that hard to relate to? It is a little bit hard to relate to, but I kind of understand it. Like take, for example, calling to get a pizza delivered. It's like it's much easier to do that in an antiseptic sort of way through an app or something like this than to call somebody and you know read your credit card and and have an actual interaction so I can see why the kids they find it just much more efficient to text or to communicate through a different form

than voice yeah I guess we're just really old-fashioned aren't we voices are so last decade now I've heard that you also as well as writing your books you run a book shop is that true i do i own a book shop i wouldn't say i run it but i am involved but i would be uh misrepresenting myself i said i i run the day-to-day operations that being said we we have um every week we have two or three pretty big guest authors that we have Zoom interviews with, and I'm always involved in those. Who have you had recently? kidlit authors, Shannon Hale. And it's really cool. We're in this weird space where we can kind of get anyone. And it's not implausible to think that we could get Barack Obama, for example, as an author to do a virtual event with us. So it's been a really enriching and unusual situation.

It sounds like a dream come true to get to speak to all of your favorite authors. Now, I want to take you back to the beginning of the Wimpy Kid kind of era. Were you a parent when you first decided to write them? Or did kids come afterwards? I wasn't even married when I first started writing them. So I started when I was, I think, 27 or 28. That's when I had the idea for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. As I worked on it, and I worked on it for eight years, I had lots of life events happen, including finding a wife and then having two kids. So I think that by the time my first book came out, I had a three-year-old and a one-year-old, if I'm doing my math correctly. And once you had them, did they help inspire you more? Or did you see them as quite separate from the characters in your books?

I do see them as quite separate. Greg Hefley is a kid who likes to read comic books and play lots of video games. And now my son's both like video games, but not in the way that I did, you know, as a child of the eighties with arcade games and, and things like that. But my boys are both athletes. They're both basketball players. That's a really big part of their lives. So they're different. And I don't get a lot of ideas directly from them what I do get from them is a second crack at childhood where I'm able to stay young because I speak the I understand the language that they speak and the types of interactions that they have um so that's helped and it's going to be really weird when they both move out and I'm just uh you know I don't have a lot of exposure to young kids.

I'm sure there'll be kids queuing around the block to move in with you and help be your inspiration. Now, you make it look effortless. Your books are clearly, they strike a very true chord, a very authentic chord with kids of a certain age. Do you think that's because you're still a big kid at heart? Or do you have very specific memories of that time in your childhood? Why do you find that easy to do? That's a great question. I do have specific memories of my childhood. So I really do remember what it's like to think like a kid. But I'm also as a a grown-up, I'm a flawed person. I'm not a perfect person. I'm not always a role model. And so Greg Hefley is really a kid who's not,

he doesn't have it all together. He's not a hero character. And so a lot of my own thoughts get filtered through Greg Hefley. And so that makes it really kind of easy for me to write. You know, I'm just really writing myself. Okay. Now, I think Atticus has a question for you that he'd like to ask at this point. Go ahead, Atty. We know you based Greg on you, but who did you base Rowley on? Yeah, you're right.

Greg is based on me. Well, I had a best friend named Ryan, and there were some things that Ryan had in common with rally, but mostly they're very different, but we had a very good best friendship. You know, we, we did all those things together, like went down by the Creek and had adventures and use our imagination, got into a little bit of trouble. So really, honestly, I'm just basing Rowley on the idea of having a best friend. And I was very lucky to have a best friend. And are you still friends with Ryan now? You know, we reconnected just recently in the past two or three years, we

reconnected after many years apart. And it was it. The last time I saw Ryan, he was probably a senior in high school. And he was so different physically. I think he grew to like 6'5 or something like that. So he's a tall guy. And I wasn't used to that. Also, he had shaved his head bald. I wasn't used to that. And so in a lot of ways, he had changed so much. And I'm sure he thought the same thing of me. And does he know that there's a strand of Rowley that's him? Yeah, he does. In fact, I think he saw me on the Today Show or something like that, which is our version of a morning show over here. And so I think that's when he first reconnected with me because I was talking

about something that we did when we tried to make a giant snowball and utterly failed. And so he, you know, he caught wind of that and then reached out. That's so lovely. Now your style is comic. And as parents, we get anxious if our kids aren't wading through the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Should we be, or should we be just as happy for them to indulge their love of comic strips and comic books? Does it matter? As long as a kid is reading, is that what's important? That's a great question. And I think every one of us as parents would love to see our kids reading really dense books, because it would mean that they're on their way, that they're elevated in some way.

You know, and in fact, my son, when he was in about third or fourth grade, was tearing through the Harry Potter books. And I think parents get a little bit anxious when their kids seem to be reading things that have a lot of illustrations or seem graphic in some way because I think some parents feel, you know, they question, is that reading? And I think that more and more, we're finding that graphic reinforcement is really important for kids. And it helps inform the stories, it helps fill out the stories in a way. So I think it's a different type of literacy. But I think it's a very interesting and important form of literacy. And which books do you a very interesting and important form of literacy.

And which books do you like to see your readers graduate onto? If you could hand them on to another author when they're kind of, I don't know, when they've reached their teens, who would you most like to hand them on to? That's a great question. I think Rick Riordan is a great author. I think he, you know, his books are full of adventure and they're very diverse in their representation. I think, honestly, the way that I'm feeling these days is that diverse reading is the best type of reading. You know, especially in, you know, my country, the United States, there's this lack of empathy that comes from the top. And it's really hurting us. And books do this incredible service to us, which is it allows us to see life from another point of

view. Absolutely. You're so right. Yeah. And so more and more, those are the types of books I've been reading. You know, I just read a book called Front Desk by an author named Kelly Yang. And she was a first generation Chinese, Chinese American immigrant. And when she was nine years old, she was basically running a motel with her family, running the front desk of the motel. And that's a story that I'm really glad that she wrote, because I hadn't had an experience like that. I was floored that such a young kid could, you know, could have such a position of responsibility. And I'm better off for having read it. And everybody who's read it's better off for having read it. So I think that more of that please is the way that I feel. I agree. Now, I've heard that you say that each of the books

starts with you writing jokes, and that you need at least 350 per book now what I want to know is how do you muster that level of creativity and humor when it's a boring Tuesday afternoon you've had a row with your wife your kids won't do the dishes it's raining outside how do you make yourself funny when you're not feeling funny? That's a great question. So here's something to make it even less funny is I do most of my joke writing at the cemetery. Why? Because with everybody in the house, it's impossible to write. So I'll drive my car to the cemetery on a cold day like today.

I'll bring a blanket because I can't run the car all day. And then I go through this process. I use this process called systematic inventive thinking, which is kind of like a grind in a way. It's a way to very reliably be creative. And I'd be happy to tell you more about it if you're interested. Yes, please tell us. Will it help all of us?

I think it will. So what I do first is I take a thing, like let's say I'm writing a book about airplane travel. So my first step is to take the thing, like the airplane, and I start by listing the parts, everything that's in the airplane. For example, the pilot, the seats, the wings, you know, are on the outside, of course, the bathroom, even the bag that you, you know, if you get sick, you've got on the plane. That's not a creative process, right? That's just listing. So, so far, so good. I'm about a third of the way there already. And then what I'll do is I'll start subtracting things and I'll see if that gives me comedy. So for example, I might subtract seat, right? Like Greg's seat. And you think, okay, how could that be funny? If Greg doesn't have his seat, what does that look like? If Greg is a seat physically missing,

has somebody sat in his seat? You know, eventually I'll get to a joke like that. Greg gets up from his seat, uses the bathroom, the restroom, and then he comes back and there's a sleeping baby in his seat. What do you do if there's a sleeping baby and everybody else on the plane is asleep? There's comedy there. And I got there in a really systematic sort of way. I didn't really need to use my imagination in a really active sort of way. I just kind of went through a process.

And so I use about five tools of subtraction, division, multiplication, and some others. And I'll just grind all the way through all of the components, all of the pieces. And by the end of it, I'll have, these days, it's more like about 700 jokes at the end. Oh, wow. Okay, maybe Ati, you can try using that tip with some of your creative writing homework. Now, I've seen that you were listed once as one of Time Magazine's top 100 influential people. How does that feel? Does it freak you out? Well, that really mystified me because I had just started off on my path to becoming an author. I think I was like, I don't even know if my third book was out yet. And so I wasn't, at that time, it was like, I had sold a few million books, which is awesome and incredible, but it didn't,

it definitely didn't feel appropriate for them to name me one of the most influential people. So I actually thought it was a joke. I thought it was a prank that somebody was pulling on me and I tried to get to the bottom of it and it kept coming out that it was legitimate. So that was really surprising and weird and funny and it was great. It was really cool. And now I get to talk about it all these years later. You'll be dining out on it forever now something that Atty and I were quite interested in when we were doing our research is that you say you were a complete computer games freak when you were younger which I think is

something Atty can relate to quite neatly um can you give some hope to parents everywhere including me that screen time doesn't necessarily ruin young people's lives? How do you or how have you managed screen time with your kids? I can't give you that hope, unfortunately. Please, please. How have I managed it? You know, the truth is, is that kids are managing us. It's not the other way around. Even if we

think we are managing their screen time, they'll always find a way to subvert us. It's kind of funny because obviously, even as an adult, I'm bouncing from screen to screen to screen. You know, it's rare that I'm kind of off my screens because we always want to know what's happening. We always want to be in communication with other people. And we've got a computer in our pocket. You know, it's a weird time. At the same time, I think there are some kids who will step away from their screen and they'll create something and they'll do something that's not related to the screen. They'll learn a new skill. And I just feel like for those kids, I feel like while everybody else

is paralyzed by their screens, there are going to be some kids who are going to be creators. And again, that's not to say that you can't create something on the screen. Of course, there's lots of great creators who create for the screen, for social media, for example. But especially during quarantine or these really unusual times, it's a really good opportunity to learn how to do something that other people can't do because most people are kind of paralyzed by screens. And I think that's advice I give not just to kids, but to grownups as well. Okay. And how about encouraging kids to read? Boys in particular aren't always the most eager bookworms. We do well because I think Atty's kind of hit on a formula that he likes, but how can parents who have sons who aren't really loving books make them fall in love with books? You know, I don't really know the answer to that.

From my perspective, I've had good success with getting kids to read because books? You know, I don't really know the answer to that. From my perspective, I've had good success with getting kids to read because they, you know, because that's, that's my life. That's how things have gone for me is that I lucked out and wrote something that kids wanted to read. But I think that, I think the mistake we make sometimes as parents is to give our kids material that's a little too advanced for them or covers a subject matter that they're not really interested in. Or we hand them books that work for us as kids, and they don't necessarily always translate into this generation. So I think that the best thing that we can possibly do as parents is to be really attuned to our kids' interests. Let's say Addy here was

really interested in Pokemon, right? It might not be your interest, but it's his. And so you can get Pokemon magazines or find a site where it's like, you know, a forum or message board about Pokemon characters. You can, of course, get books. And so I think feeding your kids' interests is the most important way to get them going. And then once a kid understands that reading is a pleasurable act, once they get all the way through a book and close the last page, then I think there's a hope that they'll say, that was good. I feel edified. I feel satisfied. Give me another one. I think that's the best that we can do is to just listen to our kids. What are they interested in? That's a good tip. Now, I think Ati wants to ask you something. Go ahead, Ati. What were you good at and bad at at school? Hmm, good question.

I would say I was good at art and I was good at English or reading. I think especially when I got to high school, chemistry and physics were just beyond me. So that's my answer is I was good at the arts, basically. He sounds like you, Atty. Maybe you could be him when you grow up. Is this what you thought you would be when you grew up? Is this what you wanted to do? I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist very badly.

I wanted to be like Charles Schultz, who does Peanuts, and Bill Watterson, who does Calvin and Hobbes. Like, it was easy for me to see my path. I read the comics every morning, and I said, hopefully there's a slot for me. And unfortunately, that didn't work out for me. I tried for a few years to become a syndicated cartoonist. Nobody liked my work. And so I had to kind of do it a very different way. And so I kind of created a new type of medium, which is a real hybrid of text and comics. It's a little bit different than

an illustrated book where illustrations are different than comics. And so at the time, it was a kind of a novel format. And now there's lots of books like it, which I think is pretty cool. And tell us about your childhood then. So you were this kid who was good at the arts, good at English, wanted to be a cartoonist. You liked computer games. But I've also read that you felt you were the odd one out between you and your siblings. How was that? How did that figure out? You've done deep research. And by the way, sorry, I just we have two sound effects here. I'm sitting in my bookstore. We have sirens going by and I dropped my microphone. This place really isn't as crime

ridden as it sounds right now. My siblings, yeah, I had two older siblings and one younger sibling and it was either my fault or their fault that it was always me against all three of them. I think I kind of liked taking them on and it really irritated them that I liked taking them on. And are you close to them now? I am. In fact, two of them, my older sister and my younger brother both live on my street. And I think one day that my older brother might also live on my street. So I don't know how we did it or how we ended up on the right side of things because it definitely didn't feel like

that was even a possibility growing up. But here we are, you know, we're going to do a fire pit tomorrow night. So that's what our life looks like now. That's very nice. Now, I think part of your success is that you've kind of given tweens a voice. So that kind of awkward pre-adolescent phase where you're neither a little kid nor a teenager.

And it feels like with you, they've got something they can identify with. I kind of touched on this earlier, but what were you like in that phase in your life? Why is that the phase you chose to write about? In the US, they call that phase middle school or junior high, right? And so we have like a long period of time, K through six, which is kindergarten through sixth grade, which is a big swap. And then we have middle school, which is only two or three years. And then we have a four-year high school experience, and of course, a four-year college experience. And it really always felt to me like they were taking the kids in this kind of prepubescent or larval stage, right? When you're in that transition

from going from a kid to an almost grownup. And it felt like they kind of segregated us in this, this school, they put us into this school, like to almost to hide us in a way. And, you know, you go into that grade, and there are literally kids, especially when you're 12 and 13 years old, there are some that have, you know, they're shaving really and truly are shaving. And then there are some kids who are years away from shaving. And there are kids who are literally twice the sizes of other kids. And so it's a very angsty time. Sometimes you can feel kind of unsafe during that time. Although I think things have really improved with this generation.

But I felt very vulnerable at that time. Oh, that's sad. Thinking of you as feeling scared and vulnerable. Now... It's all right. I'm making money off of it now. Yeah, I think you turned it into a good thing. Now, what do you think about your parents' role in all of this?

What do you think your parents got right in raising you? You're fabulously successful. You've brought joy to millions. You seem very solid and sane. Where did they get it so right? Oh, that's a great question. I'm sure they'd appreciate you asking that. Tell them I said hi. I think my parents, you know, they raised us to have good values. We also lived, we were kind of straight middle class.

And we lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. My mother was an early childhood educator, got her PhD in that field. My father was a military analyst, worked at the Pentagon. I think that the greatest gift that my parents gave me was the gift of normalcy. Where we lived in the world was we weren't in the rich neighborhood. We weren't in the neighborhood that wasn't as well off. To our south was kind of almost like a wild country, totally different types of people. And it was a really busy and congested place to live. So we were really in the middle of it all. And I felt like from my perch, I got to observe a lot. I got a little bit of a taste of everything. And so I don't feel like I had a really specific experience. I had an experience that was, you know, sort of very well-rounded.

So I think that in that way, that's what helped me make, helped make me the person or the writer that I am, is that I sort of lucked out having this very average experience. And obviously now you're a parent, though your sons are kind of getting older. What advice would you give to parents who are kind of facing the kind of what we call the coal face of those earlier years where it's hard and you're getting no sleep and you wonder why the hell you had these kids? What advice would you give to parents facing that stage? Yeah, well, it's funny.

I would dial it back a little bit. I have a coworker here who actually relocated from London. And she came over with, I think it was a three-year-old and a one-year-old. And I said to her, this is the hardest stage. You've got two kids who are in diapers. And you really need to be on top of them all the time. And it's like, it's going to get easier and easier. So I felt like to me, that was the hardest phase. This stage that we're in right now feels, feels really good to me because I can have

good, deep conversations with my kids. And I just feel like there's not enough time. My son's almost on to university and this was never the plan. I wanted them to be kids forever. So I feel sort of sad about it. And in particular, I was going to ask, what advice would you give to dads? The role of a dad feels like it's really changed a lot in our lifetime. What advice would you give dad to dad? Well, I wish, you know, if I was the ultimate dad, I could, you know, tell everybody what I think they should do, but I'm trying to figure it out just like everybody else. You know, I'm sure I've made mistakes along the way. I would say the best

advice I can give to dads that I do know is true is to be able to use words I understand, you know, because most of what your kids will go through, you have gone through yourselves. And so I think sometimes, because you have so much separation from your childhood, it's easy to forget that you've made some mistakes and have had some feelings that you'd be sort of ashamed to have now. But I think the more that we can tell our kids that we understand them and can relate to what they're going through, the better bridge we can build to our kids. And what about to parents of boys in particular, seeing as that's your experience? What do you think is the most important thing when trying to relate to your child who is a boy? I think that the most important thing we can teach our boys is how to be moral and empathetic.

We've seen, especially in the past few years, it really come to light how, you know, boys, if they're not taught how to treat women, for example, they can make some big mistakes later on in their life. And it's so important for boys to understand how sacred women are and how we should always treat everybody with respect. And I think that it's really important to try to look at other people's lives and to try to be empathetic towards other people's situations that are dissimilar to yours. That's very good advice. Now, Addie, you've got one last question to ask, haven't you?

Do you want to ask it now? When is your next book coming out? Poor Addie has been waiting this whole time as we talk about worrying stuff about parenting. And that's all he really wants to know is to hurry up and write another one, please, because he just got the new one for his birthday, but he read it in about day the new diary of a wimpy kid book comes out i believe october 27th over there um definitely over here it's october 27th um and it's called the deep end and it's kind of a mix of two things it's a mix of quarantine living and escapism like the thing that we we really want to do right now which is get away from our current situation so it's a camping book

and the family goes on on a camping holiday which is really kind of fun and that's what we're doing next week so it's perfect for us there we go now last two questions first of all Jeff Kinney how do you want to be remembered the only thing I want to be remembered for is being a good dad that's the only thing that I really care about and everything else is just um garnishing I guess you could say the cherry on the cake yeah okay and then the last question we always ask this of our guests each week. If you were tucking us into bed right now, what would you sing to us or read to us or say to us? What would your bedtime ritual be with your kids? Oh boy, that's a good question. You know, I'm going to be very honest with you, is that, you know, we haven't put our kids to bed in a really long time. I'm sure they're big boys now. But we always actually ended with a prayer, you know, we basically ask for, you know,

sort of protection and name all the people that we love. And I think there was something really rhythmic about that. And I think that my kids have carried that on without our guidance. So, you know, especially during these times, especially in my country, it's a scary time. You know, I don't think it hurts to be prayerful, honestly, in these times. That's a lovely note to end on. Jeff Kenney, thank you so much. Atticus, did you want to say thank you as well? Thank you. Thank you, Atticus.

I appreciate it. Great questions. Thank you for all? Thank you. Thank you, Atticus. I appreciate it. Great questions. Thank you for all the joy you've brought him with your books. I can't thank you enough. It's amazing. Thanks so much. All right.

Have a great day, Jeff. You too. Take care. Bye-bye.