The Rich Roll Podcast - KJ Dell’Antonia Wants You To Be A Happier Parent

Episode Date: October 7, 2018

As every parent will attest, it's so easy to sublimate one’s self care for the interest of a child’s needs – it’s basically programmed into our DNA. Intellectually we understand you can’t truly take care of another unless you attend to your own well-being first. But this idea runs counter to every parental instinct, making it very difficult to practice this important principle. It feels selfish. But our selfless intentions, albeit good, can lead us astray. Not only do they undermine our well-being, they're not in our kids' interest either — because an unhappy parent does not a happy child make. This is a solid solid life lesson, whether you have children or not. So let's talk about it. While the vast majority of parenting advice focuses on raising happy children, today's conversation flips the lens to concentrate on the radical, almost verboten subject of how to be a happier parent. To walk us through this hornet's nest is KJ Dell’Antonia, a former New York Times reporter who wrote and edited the Motherlode blog from 2011-2016 and was a contributing editor to the Well Family section from 2016-2017. In addition, KJ co-hosts the #AmWriting podcast with parenting expert Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure* (and former amazing podcast guest) and recently authored the new, aptly titled book How To Be A Happier Parent*, a delightfully instructive, solution-packed, and research-backed primer aimed at helping parents find more happiness and joy in their day to day lives. This is a very fun conversation loaded with practical advice and easy-to-implement take-aways for the parents among us. But even if you don't have children, there is plenty of wisdom here to mine. The principles discussed are applicable to all, irrespective of your child-rearing status. Because more than anything, this is a discourse on a crucial aspect of happiness we all share: self-care. Specific topics covered include how we can all do more by doing less (something I really need to work on). We discuss the problem spots that cause parents the most grief, with very small and doable steps to create a family life that serves as a pleasurable refuge rather than another stress point. We talk about the importance of promoting self-sovereignty in ourselves and our children so they mature into happy, independent self-regulators. And it’s a conversation about what family is really all about: not just churning out great kids on a success trajectory, but joy. It was a joy spending time with KJ. My hope is that you feel the same and leave this conversation with ample fuel to better the quality of your life and family. For the visually inclined you can watch it all go down here: bit.ly/richandkj Peace + Plants, Rich

I think for our kids, it's actually much better for them to see the adults in their lives having a productive, happy, pleasant, joyful experience. Otherwise, how are they going to learn to do that? And why would they even want to? I mean, you are a better parent when you are happier. That's KJ Del Antonio, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing?

What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome. Good to see you. Grateful to be with all of you here today. As I record this podcast introduction from our loft in the Arts District in downtown Los Angeles, a new venue, we talk a little bit about the hows and whys behind that. It's a long story in today's podcast conversation. But there's so much noise going on outside, so much urban

audio pollution, I suppose you could call it, that I was compelled to create this tent made out of blankets and I'm sitting on the floor underneath it like a kid playing camping at home. So if you need a smile, just try to picture this awkward scenario. In any event, very excited about today's conversation. This is a great one. It's a great one that on the surface, and I suppose also rather directly, is about parenting, specifically how to be a happier parent.

But even if you're not a parent, don't be alarmed. There's plenty here for you because percolating just beneath the surface, this is ultimately an exchange about self-care, the importance of self-care. But on that parenting tip, and as a parent myself, I know how easy it is to sublimate one's attention to self, to deprioritize one's own needs in the interest of a child's needs. It's basically something that's programmed into our DNA. interest of a child's needs. It's basically something that's programmed into our DNA.

But as I think we all intellectually know, you can't truly take care of another unless you ensure that you're taking good care of yourself. But this idea, as sound as it may be, ultimately runs counter to every parental instinct. And thus, I think it can be very difficult to put into practice because it feels selfish. But the result of our, albeit well-intentioned, selflessness can also lead us astray. Not only does it not serve us as parents, it's really not in the child's interest either. And I think it's fair to say that this is a solid life lesson,

irrespective of whether you have children in your life or not. To steward us through this maze, my guest today is KJ Del Antonio. KJ is a former New York Times reporter who wrote and edited the Motherload blog from 2011 to 2016 and was a contributing editor to the Well Family section of the New York Times from 2016 to 2017. She also co-hosts the M Writing Podcast with Jessica Leahy, who is also a parenting expert. She wrote a great book called The Gift of Failure, and she was an amazing podcast guest back in April, 2017. That's

RRP 282. Check that out if you missed it. And KJ is the author of a new book aptly titled, wait for it, How to Be a Happier Parent, which I found to be a very instructive and delightful solution-packed primer directed at helping parents find more happiness and joy in their day-to-day lives. And it's based on her years of research and reporting on this very subject. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources

adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple.

Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the

best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right. Thanks for taking that ride with me, you guys. I love my sponsors. They make this show possible. So in addition to subscribing to the show, sharing it with your friends and on social media, the best way to support what we do here is by supporting the sponsors. And I thank you for that. Okay. KJ. This one is as fun as it is packed with great and very practical advice applicable to any and all irrespective of your child rearing status. It's about how we can do more by doing less, something I personally need to focus on.

How family life can be a pleasurable refuge rather than another stress point. We discuss the very common problem spots that cause parents the most grief with very small and doable steps that we can take to make them better. It's about teaching self-sovereignty and self-regulation with our young people. And it's a conversation about what family is really

about, not just churning out great kids on a success trajectory, but joy. Well, I can tell you that it was a joy talking to KJ. So let's drop in. talking to KJ. So let's drop in. You can get one of those bird scooters, maybe. Those are so fun. Have you done that? I did it in Winston-Salem a couple weekends ago and I had so much fun.

I haven't done it yet, but- They're really fun. They're everywhere. And now the whole thing is like, I mean, they just get dropped on the street. Right. Like if you're in Venice or Santa Monica. You're just walking over.

Yeah, they're just like literally littered all over the place. So there's a little bit of a backlash happening right now. I feel like Winston-Salem was the perfect place because it's like a tiny downtown. I was going from a book festival to a hotel. So it was really, and also it wasn't scary to be in the road. You didn't have to be, because it was Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's not very big. I don't know that I'd want one here, but it was really, and also it wasn't scary to be in the road. You didn't have to be, because it was Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's not very big. I don't know that I'd want one here.

But it was fun. They look fun. Yes. And I can't pass judgment on them because I haven't tried them yet. And I don't want to be a grumpy old man about it either. Yeah, I think I would be grumpy if I were still in New York and they were all over the sidewalk outside my apartment. Well, the thing that's happening now is there's Bird and there's Lime. So there's two competing scooter companies.

And I guess they have their differences or whatever. So both of these scooters are like all over the place. Yeah, all over the place. So anyway, KJ, delighted to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming over here to talk about a subject dear to my heart, dear to your heart. You spent a little more time thinking about this than I have. I can just use this as a big session for you to help me answer all of my dilemmas. I think that's the most fun way to approach this.

Yes. Well, we're both parents of four kids of differing ages. And this book is fantastic because not only is it about the health of the children that we're all trying to raise as effectively as possible, it's about paying attention to our own well-being in this equation. How dare you write a book about making sure that the parents are happy. Right. We are supposed to put all of our energy and self and everything into our children, right? Until we're bleeding and we're left laying on the side of the road. Yeah, for them to walk over and ride to their next appointment or something. No, it is crazy how, as a society, how much we're feeling that right now,

that it's our job to sort of sacrifice ourselves and our well-being and our time and our energy and our money and all of our resources are supposed to go straight into our children who I don't know, are presumably supposed to somehow grow up and commit the same exact cycle for their kids. I don't know. One of the questions I like to ask people is, well, if your kid's life looks just like yours when they're your age, will you be thrilled? And if the answer is yes, then, you know, I guess basically carry on. But if there are things where you're like, well, you know, I was kind of thinking she spends a lot of time playing the violin now. It'd be nice if she were still enjoying that.

And I've lost mine. I don't know. It's an interesting sort of thought exercise. The kind of gut reaction that I would imagine a lot of people have to that thought is, well, I'm doing all of this so that they can have a better life, so that they don't do what I'm doing. Like I'm trying to instill in them or provide them with everything that they can have so that they can transcend the circumstances that I'm in to live differently and better. I think we get to do that for ourselves, too. And I think for our kids, I mean, if we need to put this all onto our kids, you know, if we sort of need to make them the focus of what we're doing and why we're doing it, it's actually much better for them to see the adults in their lives having a productive, happy, pleasant, joyful experience. Otherwise, how are they going to learn to do that? And why would they even want to?

I mean, sometimes I'll definitely look at my kid's life and go, man, I would like it if somebody just drove me around all the time and clapped when I did fun things. That would be great. It's somehow not how things have worked out. Maybe my mom could come and she could drive. Yeah. I don't think that's going to work out so well, but it's, it's really, this is like, this is our time, right? We've got 20 plus years of raising our families and being with them and being all together in that same house and sort of having this experience of being a family.

I just want us to make it great for everybody. Yeah. I mean, just hearing you say that and simply by virtue of the fact that you wrote this book makes me feel better, but it also, I can't help but also feel like I've been like a little bit, there's that little bit of like guilt, help, but also feel like I've been like a little bit of, there's that little bit of like guilt, you know, that creeps up. Like you're a bad parent if you're not giving over all of yourself for the betterment of your kids. You know what I mean? And maybe that's just social programming that we need to transcend and overcome. Well, I think it's social programming. So let's look at like, we'll go ahead. We'll take it from the kid's perspective. So one of my mantras is that you can be happy when your kids are not. And that definitely makes

some people kind of go, whoa. Yeah, it makes people nervous. A little step back there. Wait, no, I can't. I can only be as happy as my unhappiest kid, right? That's the saying. I can't be happy when they're not. But let's sort of, let's talk this, let's parse this out. So if you're the kid and things are going wrong for you, you know, like you didn't get invited to the birthday party and you're 11 and your mom is losing her mind because you didn't get invited to the birthday party, a couple of things are happening. First of all, you're like, whoa, maybe this is a big deal. I mean, I was thinking it was an 11-year-old birthday party, a couple of things are happening. First of all, you're like, whoa, maybe this is a big deal. I mean, I was thinking it was an 11-year-old birthday party, but maybe it's huge. Secondly, our kids don't actually want us to be unhappy. I mean, all right, sometimes it

feels like they do, especially at two o'clock in the morning or whatever, but they really don't. So here's your child going, hmm, when I tell my mom that things like that happen, going, hmm, when I tell my mom that things like that happen, she gets really upset. Maybe I shouldn't tell her. Or, oh, my dad got really, you know, like when I didn't make the team, it really freaked him out. So maybe like, maybe I should, maybe I should either pretend it doesn't matter to me or not try out because like, I don't like to upset my parents. So those are some unintentional consequences that they are feeling. Plus, you know, our kids don't need the burden of our happiness on top of theirs. That's the bigger point, right? Yes.

I think, you know, having that kind of extreme emotional reaction to that situation, even if it's well intended, is only sort of putting, you're just adding to the problem. You're amplifying something. Yeah. And like you carry that into adult life. I mean, if you're 35 and getting a divorce, then things aren't going great for you. You don't also need your father to be falling apart because you're getting a divorce. Like you don't, you know, you want to be able to go, okay, you're getting a divorce. Like, you don't, you know, you want to be able to go, okay, I'm having a mess right now, but you know, my parents are, they're okay. They're at their even keel and I can look to them and I can, I can go to them. I mean, and that's true when you're very young too. You, you want, you want to be like, oh, I'm having this crazy emotional teenage

thing, but my parents, you know, they got a tennis game. I mean, they're here for me. They're empathetic. They're sympathetic. You know, they're trying to help, but also they're showing me like that there's going to be a life past my crazy teenage experience. And that, you know, also that my family is here for me in a different way, that they're not sort of all wrapped up in whether or not I get the lead in the play or not. Yeah. I mean, there's something just fundamentally very unhealthy about a parent who is overly emotionally invested in the vicissitudes of their child's daily emotional interior life. There has to be a healthy boundary between that. And Julie might always have been great about this. I've learned from her when our kids were younger, if something is upsetting our child or, you know, a child is pitching a fit over something or something like that to just not

buy in, just be like, okay, I see you're really upset. But to be completely unfettered by that, I think demonstrates like a strength or a level of stability that is a buffer. Like if you buy into that mania, then you're just, you're accelerating this whole process. There's something really unhealthy about that. You're feeding the beast. Yes, exactly. Is what you're doing. And then they're taking your emotions and they're gobbling them up and then they're feeding back to you and you're gobbling them up and everything just, I'm raising my hands here, but everything just goes up and up and up to this other level. We call that, you don't have to go in there in our house because one of our kids used to have her tantrums in a

closet. We would literally stand outside the closet. When you're done, dinner's ready for you. Pretty much. Yeah. We would stand out there and look at each other going, are you going in there? I'm going in there. And eventually it just became, you know what? We're not supposed to go in there. It's better because we, you know, I mean, this is not like I know all the things. This is more, I've talked to a lot of experts. I've done a lot of research and I've got a fair, you know, I've got some experience and all of that is piled into this book. And that was one where we used to go in there, you know? We used to sort of throw ourselves right in with it and either try to fix it or yell because, why are you getting so upset over this stupid thing? Or, you know, just there's sort of a lot of different reactions that you can have to a kid who's upset.

That feels like you're parenting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It feels like you're doing something, but you're actually working at cross purposes. Right. Sometimes nothing is the best something. Right. So let's take a step back. I mean, why write this book? I mean, you've been a columnist

for the New York Times for many years leading up to the point of writing this book, writing about parenting, writing about well-being in the family for motherlode, and then it became Well Family, right? Like you rebranded it. What inspired you to even write this book from the beginning? Well, I wanted to go deeper into our experience than you can go in like a series of 800 to 1,000 word pieces. And it really started with, you know, I've written a lot. I've written more about the societal and the cultural and the policy parts of parenting, you know, sort of the reasons that these are, the reasons that things are hard, or that we perceive things as being hard when they're not. And some of the reasons that things are objectively difficult. I mean, you know, realistically, we talk a really great game in this country about how we're all about family, but it's really hard to find daycare.

And, you know, if you have a baby and you have a job, those are two things that are not necessarily compatible, you know, and yet we expect you to do it. And that's, I mean, that's sort of a really, it's a different conversation. So I thought about writing about that, but that has been written about and really, you know, brilliantly by people that I respect. And I just kept sort of thinking, well, I'm a part of this movement to try to change both the policy that impacts families and also the way that we talk about family and the way that we support them. But that's not going to, honestly, it's not going to help me. We can get all the family leave that we support them. But that's not going to, honestly, it's not going to help me. We can get all the family leave that we want. That ship has sailed

for me and for many of my fellow parenting. So what I wanted, or fellow parents, what I wanted to talk about is like, how can we make our day-to-day better right now with the cards that we're dealt, with the fact that soccer is insane and, you know, your school expects you to be doing kuman and violin class thinks that you're going to play the CD over and over in the car until your head explodes. Like, how can we sort of take the world we live in? And Susie down the street is always doing it better. Oh, Susie down the street. Let's don't even get into Susie down the street. I mean, the way she's got her kids in their trapeze classes and all that stuff, it just makes me crazy. kids in their trapeze classes and all that stuff. It just makes me crazy.

Right. Well, what I really kind of like, love and appreciate, you know, about the kind of core theme of this book, which really boils down to this idea that you can't take care of others unless you take care of yourself first, which flies in the face of like our instincts, especially as parents to kind of sacrifice ourselves for the betterment of our loved ones. But it really is true. Like you have to tend to your own garden. You have to put that oxygen mask on first before you put it on the child. Right. That has just become such a saying that we've sort of, I feel like we've started to just kind of give it lip service,

like, oh, well, yeah, I mean, I'm taking care of myself. I eat healthy. You know, I go to a couple of exercise classes. But, you know, to really have, you know, to really model a great and full life for our kids and also to just have it for ourselves because we are worthy of putting time into ourselves and making our own decisions about how we want to spend Saturday and where we want to go for vacation. And even what we want to have for dinner, it doesn't have to revolve around somebody else, whether that's your kids or your parents or anything. I'm sorry, not your parents, your partner or anything. I feel like... I talked to this great expert,

Rick Hansen. You probably know him. He's a neuropsychologist. He's the author of Hardwired for Happiness. And he's written a lot about how human brains are really kind of... They're wired to look for the bad stuff, right? Because bad stuff is dangerous. I mean, we've got to look for those tigers. We've got to remember where the tigers are. And his idea is that the more time we spend soaking in the good stuff, the more we can train our brains not to freak out about imaginary tigers because there aren't that many. But the point, the reason I'm sort of telling that story is that at some point he said to me, you know, sometimes I feel like Americans are afraid to be happy.

And that really soaked in for me. Like, I don't want to be afraid to be happy. I want to go for it. I want to like grab all the happy that I can. And that doesn't mean, you know, everybody else out of my way, I'm going to get my own happy. It means, you know, let's build something that's wonderful for all of us. Where do you think that fear of unhappiness comes from? Well, we really, you know, we kind of, we don't think it's worth our attention, right? I mean, being happy, how is that productive? But that's what we're all driving towards. I know, and we're supposed to be like, you know, the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But how is happiness productive? How is happiness improving the economy? How is happiness improving the political situation or the, you know, the suffering of other human beings? Like, I don't know. I think, I feel like we really, again, it's a sort of one of those ideas we give some words to it. But then we see it as an indulgence. It's that same thing that keeps us from taking all of our vacation time or from really shutting our computers down at night and actually doing something instead of sitting there with your email in front of you and Netflix on the TV and sort of half working and half watching. Yeah.

And sort of half working and half watching. Yeah. Well, there's the theoretical aspect of what you're saying, which I think we can all kind of agree with. Yeah, I get that. Like, I need to be happy and blah, blah, blah. And then there's the practical implementation of trying to make this happen. And so I'm just imagining somebody listening to this. Okay, yeah, I get it. And so I'm just imagining somebody listening to this, okay, yeah, I get it.

But like I have two jobs and I've got kids that go to different schools and carpool and soccer practice. And by the time, you know, I get home and then I got to make dinner, like I'm depleted, I'm exhausted. It's literally just a race to the finish line each night so I can crash and repeat the cycle once again. Right. So how do we break out of this? That is exactly the thing. So, I mean, you know, when I hear it that way, that's the experience that I sort of started from. Well, I didn't have two jobs. I only had the one job, the one paying job. But I think that's where a lot of us start is sort of we get up in the morning and we lace up our skates and we start to go and

we run all day and then we get to the end and we just sort of collapse into bed. And if we've got a partner, we start arguing with them about whose day sucked more because that's what we're seeing around us. So, I have a bunch of answers for that. And one of them is just this question of why we're running so hard and where we're running to. You know, we've really, we fill our days. Like, we fill our kids' days, or they fill their own days. Because there's really, I mean, there's so much great stuff. Like, I want to do all the great things.

I want to learn to surf and learn to draw cartoons and take violin lessons and do. But you can't do all the things. And sometimes we get a little caught up in the idea that we can, you know, that we can have it all. And that we should. Yeah, and that we should. Or that we should provide our kids the opportunity to do all the things. But what we're forgetting then is that we actually really both want and value and need time to do none of the things. This is sort of part of my whole get more sleep, have happier mornings, make everything slow down. But a lot, a lot, a lot comes back to the idea of protecting playtime,

downtime, and family time for our kids and for ourselves. Because a lot of what we forget when we schedule all the, and it is magnificence. Like, it really is fun. It's great that we can give our kids tutors after school to help them grow and that they can be in it. Or sometimes they have to be in an after-school program because we're still at work. But then afterwards, we feel like, well, we can still get them to football practice. We don't want them to miss out on that. God forbid there's half an hour of free time. Yeah, exactly. So what we forget is that we really want and we crave and we need that free time. And a lot of the time we take that free time and we suck it out of our sleep. And then we get more unhappy because then

the next day we get up and we didn't get enough sleep. And the whole cycle just starts all over again. Yeah. We're in this culture in which we feel compelled to schedule our children to the hilt and that we're a bad parent if we don't do so. And we've lost the art of doing nothing and the beauty and appreciation for just free time or play time because it provokes something inside of us that makes us feel like we're not doing a good job if we allow for that. We're scared. And it's not unreasonable because when you look at your kids and sort of the world that they're going to go out into, there are some numbers out there that I don't remember that some huge percentage of the jobs our kids will have are jobs that don't even exist yet.

So how can we possibly prepare them for that? College applications are a totally different, like whatever, I don't know what your experience was in applying for college, but I can tell you your children's will not be that. No, of course not. It's completely different. I mean, the world is changing so rapidly right now. We're dealing with an incredibly antiquated educational system. We don't know what things are going to look like in 20 years. know what things are going to look like in 20 years. I'm not sure that we're adequately preparing kids for this futuristic world that, you know, exceeds our ability to comprehend with the advent of AI. Like I just did a podcast with Yuval Noah Harari, and he said the most, he's like,

our education system is broken. The most important thing to teach and to learn is emotional and professional flexibility. To be able to have incredible interpersonal skills, to be able to ride the wave of change by being resilient. Right. And so multiple thousands of parents just heard that and thought, where can I get a class in resilient schools? Anxiety. Yes, because we want to control that. Okay, if that's the most important thing, I want to make sure my kids learn it. And unfortunately, a lot of what our kids are going to need to know is how to make decisions for themselves, how to decide for themselves how to spend their time, how to find something that they can get into deeply and, you know, sort of focus on and concentrate on. And instead of giving them the opportunity to explore and the space to explore and the time sort of dope around and do nothing, we want to fill their time with structured

activities that are going to make sure that they've at least learned something. I mean, I get that. I don't want to sound like my kids are all out blowing dandelions right now. They're not. I don't know what time it is exactly, but they're at various practices and sort of things of that sort. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that is being motivated by fear, right? That fear that somebody else is getting ahead or they will be unprepared or that you're not measuring up as a parent or something like that. This is the one class or the one test that's going to make the difference. And my special snowflake is going to get into the drift that gets into the Ivy League versus the drift that doesn't. And the snowflake thing is a big thing too. I mean, we're so terrified of them being hurt or injured because we are generally afraid.

I mean, when I was a kid, look, it was a different time, granted. But, you know, I just, in the summer, I got on my bike in the morning and left and came home at dinner. My parents dropped me off at the neighborhood pool and I just hung out all day and I came home at night. Right. You're not even allowed to do that anymore. Yeah. And I think it's a crime, actually, in some places. It's terrible. You know, if you're unsupervised. And I don't know how I feel about that. Like, I understand we need to be Well, and if you are that parent, your kids' friends probably aren't. So, you know,

you have the only kid riding around the neighborhood on their bike while everyone, this is, it's a problem. I mean, it's really hard. We're sort of all sort of psyching each other up together. It's hard to fight against this. I don't, you know, I don't want to pretend that this is, that it's easy to say, well, you know, we're going to step back and we're going to try to prioritize happiness and balance when everybody else is kind of like doing what's called the rug race, rug rat race. But if we can agree that it's important to instill in our children a sense of independence and a sense of self-sovereignty and self-confidence, we have to relent. We have to take a step back and provide some modicum of freedom and decision-making on their behalf, which I think is scary on some level for a lot of parents. Especially because a lot of parents then say, well, all my kid's

going to do with that is like get on their phone or play video games. Maybe that's true. Right. And so how do we do that responsibly? You know, I honestly think that we kind of, You know, I honestly think that we kind of, they need actually enough time to get bored with those things. And that is really hard. I don't know that they can, there is no boredom anymore. I don't know. If you have hours every day that are available to you to do whatever you want as a kid, you're going to spend some of them on your electronics and on your screens and all that sort of thing. I don't know if anyone's willing to do this experiment, but eventually those things get old. Kids start looking around for other things. I mean, am I giving my kids that opportunity? Sometimes yes, sometimes now. Am I going upstairs and saying, stop playing Fortnite now? Yes, I absolutely am. But

yeah, we have to give them the space. When we were kids, for us it was TV, like how much TV. And so some parents were like, no TV. My kid watches no TV. And some parents were like an hour a day. And some parents were like, go for it. All the love boats you can watch or whatever. And then you have A-list Hollywood directors talking about how they were latch kid keys and just watched television all day long and now they're, you know, making massive movies in Hollywood. So it's not a simple, you know, linear equation.

It's really, really not. And I think, you know, we have to take some risks. to our kids, well, you know, you can do whatever you want on Sunday, but I'm going to, you know, schedule the heck out of you on Saturday or whatever, that they're not going to spend Sunday in ways that are what we would choose for them. That's the whole point. They need to learn to choose for themselves. Yeah. I think one of the differentiating things between television and screens is, I mean, beyond the obvious that it's a supercomputer that can do many more things. It's more active than passive compared to television, but it is the device by which the younger generation not only communicates with each other, as do we as adults, but it is really

the way that they're going to make their way in the world. Like they have to be fluent in the language of these devices. So the solution isn't like remove it. I know with my younger kids, it would take a very long time for them to get bored and say, okay, I'm done with the screen. I want to go do something else. Like it's so addictive. It's so compelling.

But if you restrict that time and say, okay, now you're off, suddenly they're painting or drawing or going outside, things that they're not inclined to naturally choose on their own when they have this screen in front of them. Yeah. I mean, it is a compelling option. I feel like when kids are littler, when they're younger, you really have to, you know, the adult needs to be in control of it. The thing is that as they get older and they start, you know, becoming teenagers and getting into high school, we need to start relaxing our control while talking to them about taking some control. Because otherwise, they're going to hit college in their freshman year, and they're going to walk out out your door and they're going to sit down in front of the PS4 they take

with them in the dorm room and they're not going to move for a year because they haven't sort of had any experience with trying to moderate that themselves. This is so hard and it's hard in part because our parents didn't have to do it. We didn't experience it. You know, the screens are obviously different than TV if for no other reason than you couldn't really watch TV 24 hours a day when a lot of us were little. And then you got into the point where you could, but it's not like you, it's not like it was good TV. How many leave it to be reruns can you possibly watch? So, so right. So these are different. They are more compelling, but I think an important thing to remember is that our teenagers are part of our national conversation about how these devices are going to be a part of our lives. So, they're thinking

about it too. You know, they're not, I don't know any 16-year-olds that are like, and what I really want to do with the next three hours is be on my Instagram. Now, that doesn't mean that they won't be, but they're aware that that's not like the best choice. They're Instagram. Now, that doesn't mean that they won't be, but they're aware that that's not like the best choice. They're aware. Yeah, like filling their glass with something nourishing. Yeah. And they're talking to each other about it and they're talking to their pediatricians and they're talking with their teachers and they're writing papers and they're trying to solve this problem, which is going to be theirs as a generation in a big way. They're working on it. They really are. So I think we should feel a little less panicked about sort of turning that over to them.

I feel like I'm interested in your reaction to this. Like, for me, I feel like two of the most important things that I want to instill in my kids are a strong sense of self, whether that manifests in independence or just self-assuredness, self-confidence, just an independent security in their own being. And also to the extent that this is possible, I don't know if it is, to help guide them towards something that they feel

passionate about, that makes them feel alive, whatever that thing is. Because I feel like if they have a motor that is self-generating, that feels like half the equation is solved right then and there. And that has to come from within themselves. But I feel like as a parent, part of my job is to, when they identify something that lights them up, to kind of move in and support that or help kind of like fertilize that soil so that like little sprout can bloom. Right. I think the most, I honestly think that the biggest thing that you can do for both of those is to have those things for yourself and your partner as well. To set an example of being a person in the world who has something that they choose to do sort of above, that really lights them up, like you said. And also someone who is not super concerned about how others view them or what the neighbors think and that sort of thing. To be that strong person yourself and

also to have those strong interests yourself. If we look back at that sort of, I mean, you're a person who has that and so am I. So if you sort of look back at, well, I mean, you're a person who has that, and so am I. So if you sort of look back at, well, what helped me to get there? The answer, I'm just guessing, but the answer is probably not that your parents were driving you to these things that you felt passionately about. The answer is that you had time to find it. And when you found it, you pursued it. And probably some of that came from maybe seeing other people in your lives and maybe it wasn't your parents, seeing other people find things and pursue them. The thing about

passion for our kids is we can't find it for them and we can't sign them up for it. And if we sign them up for too many things that might be their passion, how are they going to, you know, what if their passion is glass blowing? You know, you didn't sign them up for that. I mean, how will they find it if all of their hours are filled? I feel like being, you know, being ourselves and being that person ourselves is honestly the best thing that we can do along with supporting them in their interests, but also letting them sort of let go of interests as, you know, even if they've spent 10 years playing baseball, which at this point, you know, your 13-year-old could easily have done,

that doesn't necessarily mean they need to keep playing baseball through high school. And it's not a failure if they decide they want to walk away from it. No, it gives them room to find their thing, which is probably not baseball. It's been a wild kind of journey that my family has been on. And yes, you're correct. Like, I'm very blessed. I get to do this thing that does light me up, that makes me very excited every day. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I have.

But to get to this point, I had to go from a dark place of having a much more traditional career, walking away from that and having to endure many years of difficulty and hardship to get to this place. So now it's all great, but I had to, I put my family through a lot to like get to this place.

And I've had to work through like a lot of guilt that I've had over that because I couldn't buy the things that Susie was buying. I couldn't take the kids on this vacation. I couldn't, we had cars repossessed. Like there was a lot of humiliating things that happened. It was very, you know, or I couldn't take the kids on this vacation. I couldn't, you know, we had cars repossessed. Like there was a lot of humiliating things that happened. It was very, very difficult. And I spent a lot of time like feeling really badly about that. And we have two boys that are now 22 and 23, and they were the ones who were kind of old enough to really have

an awareness of what was going on. Our girls were kind of too young. And it's been interesting to have conversations with them about that now. And what's interesting is that they'll say, they say like, yeah, it was hard. Like there were parts of that that were, that really sucked. But they do have some gratitude for it because they got to see somebody take control of their life to do something

that they felt strongly about. And they got to see how hard that is. Like in a world of entitled young people who feel like they just deserve to be rich and famous, they saw how difficult it was to like make that transition and to build something. And they're like, that was incredibly valuable. Like they're artists, they're trying to be musicians and they're like, they realize like, this is going to be difficult. You know, this is

not going to just get handed to me. And it was such a, it was a, you know, it was beautiful to hear that. I still feel guilty because I wish I could have done these other things. Yeah. But I do think that there's, there is value in that. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, is for somebody who's listening, who feels like they can't do what moves them because there'll be negative financial ramifications that perhaps there is a way through. And the lesson that you're teaching your kids is, you know, there is value in pursuing something that you care about.

Like you don't have to settle for a job for the purposes of making sure that you can pay the Netflix bill. Right. Or if you choose to do that, if you choose to say, you know what, accounting is not my passion, but it is what I do so that I can do the thing that I love on the weekend and in the other time, to embrace that as an active choice. Because that's an okay choice, too, right? I mean, we can't all make the right choices, but what we're showing our kids is I make decisions that affect all of our lives. And then I look for the good. I look for the things about this experience that I'm having that I'm enjoying, that I'm appreciating. And I find those things and I share them with you. And, you know, we all go out and we try to sort of enjoy, I don't know, I'm reaching for like a thing that anybody

can do. But, you know, I go to work because I choose to get the paycheck so that after work, you know, we can choose to hike every weekend or whatever. Right. You know, and maybe everybody makes different choices, but the important thing to show our kids, I think, is that we're not just sort of letting life fall where it may. We're not just accepting. And if we want to make a change, we make a change. Mm-hmm. But I think, you know, I wanted to go back to something that you said, which was about how your road included some darkness. And I think the thing that's really hard for us as parents, and this is hard for me, so this is not like me, the expert, saying I'm going to do this because I haven't done this yet.

Our kids are probably going to go through some darkness. Yeah. It blows. But on the other hand, really, really, do you want to raise the kid who's never so much as lost a balloon? Of course not, especially in an environment where resiliency is going to be important. Yeah. Do you want to send that kid out in the world? Do you want to send out the college roommate that doesn't even know that when you put the dishes in the sink that fairies don't come. You know, we don't actually, we're not doing anybody a service if we give our kids the happy unicorn rainbow childhood.

We're doing them a service if we give them the real childhood, you know, and the real experience of being part of our real families and our real lives. Yeah. All right. So I have a scenario. Okay. I'll present you with for your advice. So we're in a very interesting moment right now. Our family, our two older boys have moved out.

So this is my wife and our two girls who are 14 and 11. Our 11-year-old goes to school around the corner. our two girls who are 14 and 11. Our 11-year-old goes to school around the corner. Our 14-year-old just got into this performing arts high school called Loxa that she spent a year preparing her portfolio for. She's a visual artist and against tremendous odds was accepted. And she just started ninth grade at this school. This school is east of downtown.

It is a two-hour drive from our house. Ooh. So we have been doing a lot of game theory around how to solve this equation and maintain the cohesion of our family unit. Should we, you know we take turns driving? Should we like, whatever. We spun all the scenarios and we ultimately decided that the best way to maintain the health and integrity of our family

and support our daughter is to rent an apartment downtown. And so we did that. I'm very blessed to be able to do that. But my wife and I, and this is just starting, like we're only in our first month of this. My wife and I have now had to take turns or we get to take turns spending time with her,

our older daughter downtown, while the other one is here, tending to the other one. So now we're in this situation where we're ships in the night, both single parents to one child and taking turns going back and forth. Yeah. And the kind of scenario that's presented itself or the choice that we have is to say, this is unbelievably burdensome, how hard, how difficult, it's never going to work, or to say, what an incredible,

look what our daughter created. Because of what she's manifested, we now get to have this adventure where we get to experience what it's like to be in downtown LA and have a different kind of lifestyle experience while we support her in her pursuit of her dream in the way that, in many ways, our family and our kids really had to support Julie and I in the pursuit of our dream. Right. But what I want to do, what I want to make sure that I do is carve out that time for family and to make sure that, you know, because there's still, even with the back and forth, there's still all this driving. It's insane to make sure that we're

still functional professionally and with respect to like our marriage so that we can make all of this work and be happy and functional. Right. Wow. I mean, that's so exciting for your daughter and it sounds like she really made it happen herself. Totally did. And she's very self-sufficient. She's ready to move out and be emancipated. She'd be like, I'll just stay down here and eat Postmates. Postmates deliver my food and take Ubers. I'm like, all right, well, you're 14. That's not happening yet. Yeah, and you probably don't have the financial resources to bring that off yourself. Yeah, and you probably don't have the financial resources to bring that off yourself. So, yeah, I think that you're right that if you're going to go all in with the daughter downtown that it needs to be like, you know, this is an adventure.

We're doing this thing. But realistically, like you and your wife are making huge sacrifices so that she can go to this high school. And your other daughter is making a sacrifice too, which she presumably did not sign up for. Yeah, she didn't have a choice in the matter, really. No, which is okay. Kids don't always, you know, you don't always get a choice. And presumably she'll get her turn. presumably she'll get her turn. Yeah. I would, I mean, one of the things I think as I sort of hear the story is that I would make sure that that daughter is also making some sacrifices. Like, you know, she may not be able to do all, or maybe, you know, she needs to be getting her own,

you know, finding rides or finding friends that she can stay with or, you know, some of the time it can't fall, it can't fall in our way. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, yeah, and we're having that conversation a little bit. Yeah. But yeah, I'll report that. So far, so good. The hardest part is I'll get an email or a phone call, hey, can you do this thing?

It's in like six weeks from now on this day. Right. And I'm like, well, I don't know if I can do, where am I going to be down? And where am I going to be? I'm not sure, you know, so having to figure all that out. But I think with some just communication, we can solve all of this. And it's a challenge. I mean, we're up for it. It's cool. We'll see how it goes. Well, and you're just, you know, it's embracing the drive time. I mean, that's, you know, what I talk a lot about, like, don't let your kids do things that are, well, I don't, I don't really. I mean, my kids all play travel hockey. That means that my husband or I, we spend, I mean, we spend hours in the car with one or two. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I have made a conscious decision around is exactly what you were talking about, about the adventure of the apartment is, you know, it's very easy to go into this stuff and be like, oh, this is the last place I want to be. This is awful. I can't believe I have to drive two hours in the snow to, you know, stand in a cold rink for 40 minutes while you play a high and then drive back. This is stupid.

But the truth is that there's actually nowhere I would rather be given that you are this child and that you want to do this thing and that I want to support you. And I don't give you everything by any means, but this is something that we can do. So we're doing it and we're going to do it in, you know, in a joyful and open spirit instead of making everyone like sort of suffer for, I mean, some days it's, who are we kidding? Especially when it is snow. But, and I think I'm sure some days that that downtown piece is going to be like a huge slog for you guys. And you know, you're that. You're so lucky that you can make it happen, but that's okay. It's okay. You've built a world where you can do that for your kid and you can enjoy that you can do it. And how do we, as kids become teenagers, 14-year-old daughter,

11-year-old daughter is going to be a teen soon. And I'm concerned about maintaining open communication, right? Like making sure that they feel safe and want to talk about what's going on. Like we did a great job with the boys with that. Girls, it's a different thing. And you see as they age up and become pubescent and that their interior lives start to, they cloister themselves a little bit and they don't wanna talk about everything that's going on. And there's that compulsion as a parent,

if you're gonna spend an hour in a car that you gotta like make this conversation happen, right? What's going on? And it's like nothing, how's everything? Fine, okay. And then, okay, do I like press here? Do I just let it go? How do I, as a parent, try to, you know, create I've reported on, this is what I'm seeing around me, is that kids who are communic that you can, you know, that you can change. And that the best things to do are to have a lot of conversations around a lot of like sort of to, you know, maybe you fill that drive time with, with podcasts that start communication, you know,

that start conversations. Maybe you set a rule that they, I mean, this is not a rule in our family. It's just more so it happens that the It happens that the child who rides in the front seat most is not a phone child. He has one, but he'll talk. And it has occurred to me that I need to actually make a rule as the others move up into the front seat, that if you're going to ride in the front seat with me, you can't do it. I'm staring down at my device. Then you have these competing interests. Like everyone wants to be in the front seat, but they also can't do it. I'm staring down at my device. Then you have these competing interests. Everyone wants to be in the front seat, but they also want to be on their phone. So what wins?

If you're up there, you have to do your part. You have to talk to the driver. You have to be entertaining company. I mean, within reason. Can you answer your friend's text and tell them when you're going to be there? Absolutely. But can you control the radio and force me to listen to nothing but hits one only if i'm in the mood um so making i guess making sort of establishing expectations especially as your kids are getting into this that they won't be sitting there with the phone that they won't you know that that they have you know and then just if the conversation's not about personal stuff that's happening in school, that's okay. Yeah. And I don't know. There's this wonderful writer about adolescent girls, Lisa DeMore.

You should look her up. She's got a book coming out and another one already out there. But she's taught me a lot. She used to write for me at the times. And one of the things that she taught me is that a great way to get your kids to talk to you about what's happening in school is for them to tell you what other people are doing. It's not that they're, well, you know, so I don't know, are your friends... I keep hearing that everybody is Snapchatting. Is that something you're seeing your friend... That's not a great example, but is that something you're seeing your friends doing? Not not a great example, but is that something you're seeing your friends doing? Not, are you doing it? But what are you seeing? Because a lot of the time

they'll sort of get down into it with gossiping about one of their friends or somebody that you both know, and you can just learn things about what's going on. It cracks that door open. And then before they know it, they're talking about other stuff. Yeah. I mean, I've noticed that if you just start talking about, well, in general, just talking about things they're interested in that you're not even asking them questions, then there's a relaxation that I think takes place. And we are a big, we listen to a lot of news and podcasts in the car, more so than music, but are always lots of times turning it off to talk about it or talking about it while it's still going on. I have had some really surprising—one of my kids get completely obsessed with Bernie Madoff. Oh, really? Yeah, I think it was a Freakonomics episode where they played part of a podcast that was like the story,

and he was like, what? What? And we had to go and get the whole podcast and download it for multiple rides. We did nothing but made off. And how can that happen? And he wanted to find within himself, would I be the person who would have spotted this that nobody else spotted it? Like would I, you know, it was like he could see all these people going along. You know, that's actually been a theme of conversations that I've been having with my kids for a long time. All these people that go along with things that are wrong, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's sort of the record screech and everyone realizes that

it's wrong, but tons of people get caught up. I don't know, we talk about that a lot. I'm not quite sure why. Wow. How old is he? That kid is 12. But even with the other ones, we're often talking about all the guys at that military academy that had the secret Facebook page where they were talking about whether the women were hot. Like, would you be the one to say something? And I don't know if that's... Right. Yeah. It's like a thought experiment. Right. So these hypotheticals are great. There's no right answers, but it provokes a discussion. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be like a personal discussion. I don't know. You may get the kid who's going to say, you know, my boyfriend and I are considered... But honestly, you probably won't. I mean, I don't think I have that kid. I don't have any idea.

Well, let's turn the focus back on the health of the parents. Yes, we really got off into kids, didn't we? That's all right. It was super helpful. Thank you. So you have these, like, mantras, right, that you talk about in the book about ways to think about this. You can be happy when your children aren't. Decide what to do, then do it.

Soak up the good. Yeah. I have the, don't go in there. You don't have to go in there. Those are really things that like are sort of constantly playing in the back of my head. I seem to need to clean the things. Like things you can put on the refrigerator to remind yourself. In fact, I have a magnet.

Oh, you do? I do. Really? Yeah. For each one of the mantras? It's got five mantras on it. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

What's the one that you think trips up parents the most? Like, what's the number one thing where you see parents kind of going awry? Well, and this is me, too. What you want now is not always what you want later. This goes to the core of what we were just talking about. Because what you want now is for your kid to be happy. What you want later is for your kid to have learned resilience and learned to bounce back from setbacks. But goodness knows you don't want to be supplying setbacks.

That's not what any of us want. And then it goes down into sort of the very nitty-gritty level of parenting. What you want now is to pick up the towel off the bathroom floor. What you want later is to have a kid to pick up the towel off the bathroom floor. What you want later is to have a kid who picks up the towel off the bathroom floor. And that will take 12 years of daily repetition. But it's much easier to just pick up the towel. Because what you want now is no towel on the floor. But the thing to do is to go get the kid and drag him back into the bathroom.

It's just easier to pick up the towel than to like, oh, pick up the towel, pick up the towel, pick up the towel, put your shoes on, put your shoes on, wear your shoes, where'd you leave your shoes, where's your shoes, where's your shoes, put your shoes away. Yeah. You know? Oh, yeah. No, we're all doing that. And you're not going to get that. This is another mantra. You're not going to get that right every time.

We don't have to get it right every time. But if more often than not, you're trying to err on the side of what you want later, it's better for everybody. Happier parents, happier kids. What do we do about the parents that are overly invested in their children's successes and failures? And what I mean by that is, you know, the parent, everything from the parent who's on the sidelines at the soccer game, like losing his or her shit, you know, like we all know that person. Oh, yeah. To the parent who is super invested in their children's grades because they want to make

sure that their kid goes into the right college so they can tell their friend at the cocktail party. Well, we wish them luck. This is an epidemic of parents living vicariously through their children's experiences, which I think is just creating nothing but suffering and harming children. We wish them luck. We try to find someone else to talk to at the cocktail party. You know, if we talk to a parent and they're not already doing that, we talk about how we don't want to be that parent so that, you know, I guess we're assuming that those are not us. But I think the real question is probably what do we do so that we're not accidentally, you know, how do we know if that's us?

Right. Like, obviously, it's a spectrum, right? So, I feel like psychologically, the more dissatisfied we are in our own lives or the more we feel like we've made compromises, the more prone we are to that predicament of being overly invested in our children. Yeah. Well, and plus, it can be fun, especially like kids' sports. That can be like a real family experience. You can go and then maybe you end up on the board of whatever the sport is, and you're part of making it great for the kids, and you're part of hiring the coaches, and you're really into this. And all of a sudden, your kid's like, you know, I don't want to play baseball this year. And you're just like, but all my friends, you know, so, so we have to sort of watch that.

Well, there's involvement and then there's over-involvement, right? Yeah. And then there's, there's over-involvement, right? Yeah, and then there's over-involvement. So kids will say, there's some really great research out there done by some coaches. Kids will say that their least favorite part of a sports event is the ride home when dad or mom has tips, ideas, thoughts, advice. Maybe you should think about doing it this way. Yes, constructive criticism. And there actually is a right thing to say after a game, and it is, I love to watch you play. Would you like some ice cream? Well, whatever. It doesn't have to be ice cream. And it's really, it's nothing more than that. If your kid wants to analyze,

it's listening, it's supporting, it's not... I think that the thing to look at is nobody wants to be that parent in the eyes of other parents, but you really don't want to be that parent in the eyes of your kid. You don't want your kid to be the one saying, I really hate the ride home. Can I get a ride home with someone else? Or the one who is like, I don't know if I want to play this next year because I'm afraid of disappointing my parent or because I'm tired of going through that. So if we shift the lens onto how it's affecting our relationship with our kids, that can maybe help us to step out of it. But to me, probably the greatest way to keep yourself from obsessing about packing for your kid's swim tournament is to be packing for your own swim tournament. I talked to this one parent, and she had high school-age triplets that were all on the swim team. And as she was taking them to all the swim practices and stuff like that when they were in about middle school, she had swum as a high schooler.

It turned out their coach was starting a master's league. She had swum as a high schooler. It turned out their coach was starting a master's league. And, you know, the next, so instead of sort of going down the road of, I'm going to run all your tournaments and I'm going to do the scoring. She signed up for the master's league. And, you know, the next thing you knew, sure, they had a meet. She had a meet. She had a meet.

Yeah, so they're all practicing at the same time. Well, and they have to get a ride. You know, they have to find their own way because she had her own thing. And that's, I mean, that's really great for kids to sort of have, you know, you want to swim, you want to do your thing, make it happen, make some stuff happen for yourself. I'm not going to facilitate all of it. I'll facilitate some of it. But because I've got my own, you know, I've got my own stuff going on over there. So I think the biggest antidote is having your own stuff. Yeah. That's a hard leap for a lot of people though. I mean, it goes back to how we opened this with somebody who's like, look, I'm just trying to keep it together, like my own thing.

Like I don't have time, you know, I barely have time to, you know, wake up in the morning and trying to get the kids out of the house. You know, I'm exhausted before I've even started my day. Well, let them get themselves out of the house. Yeah. How does that work? Oh, that works great. That's actually one of my favorite things. So I have two pieces of advice about mornings. And the first is get more sleep, which makes everybody crazy. And people just want to throw me off of things because that's boring. It's been said, but it's so true. But we'll put that aside and just go to this question of, oh my God, you have to get your kids to school. And

they have to have their backpack and and their homework, and their sneakers, and their violin, and their lunch, and six manila folders, and a jar of grape jelly, and you have no idea why. But, you know, and it's $7.52. So the big thing for parents is it's a big deal to your kid, whether they get to school at $7.59 or $ 8.01. It's not a big deal to you. You're okay. I mean, maybe you need to clock in, but most of us have a little breathing leeway there. So we don't need to go in there. We don't need to go into that chaos because if your kid gets to school and they don't have their homework and they don't have their sneakers and they don't have their violin and they don't have their lunch and they don't have their sneakers and they don't have their violin and they don't have their lunch and they don't have six manila folders

and a jar of grape jelly, you'll be fine. And so will they. In fact, it's good for them because then they have... Next time. Exactly. But this is not like, oh, I'm going to make you fail so you will learn. This is just more like, hey, it's morning. I'm getting myself ready. I'm helping you get ready. But I don't need to be losing my mind. We don't need to do this thing. And believe me, I used to do this thing where you screech into the drop-off line at the last possible minute, and your kid opens the door, and you scream out the window after him, I told you you'd be late. And the door slams, and you drive off in a cloud of smoke. You just don't have to go to that place as the parent.

You can be more, you know, you can say, hey, I'm sorry you can't find your lunch. Let me give you a hand. Or I'm sorry you can't find your lunch, but I'm braiding your sister's hair now. I can't, you know, I can't do that for you. Man, it really sucks that you didn't finish that homework last night. That's going to be tough. We got to get out of the house. You want to pop tart for the car ride. I mean, you don't have to be in the crazy with them. Instead, you can be like sort of a calm,

or if you're crazy getting yourself out the door, then be crazy getting yourself out the door. But their thing is their thing. Yeah, it's not changing the reality of what's going on. It's changing your relationship to it, your reaction to it. Yeah, because you don't have to suffer that with them. I mean, it's actually really great. You don't even have to inflict the consequences for them being late or not having their stuff. Somebody else is going to do that. This is one of those areas of parenting where you can sit back and let the world take care of, you know, this is going to be a problem your child will have their whole life. They will always have to be, you know, I don't know. It's been

the story of my life anyway. You always have to be somewhere earlier than anybody wants to be anywhere. That's just, for whatever reason, that's the way we have arranged modern society. So they might as well deal with it now. What about homework? Homework. is that exists between being overly involved and allowing space for that exploration, whether it's failure or success. Like, did you do your homework? What do you have for homework?

Do you have all your books? Do you have everything you need to perform your homework? Where are we at with the homework? You can't do that until you've done your homework. Can I see where you're at with your homework? What happened last day? Did you turn that thing in? Like, I don't wanna be that person, but I found myself being that

person at times. And I can tell you it doesn't work so great. No, it's not that great. It's not that great for anybody. And yet you have to do some of it. So every principal and educator that I talked to wanted parents to know one thing about homework, and that was that when we make it our job to make sure that it gets done, to make sure that it gets back in the backpack, to make sure that it's done correctly, to make sure that it's done right, when we turn that into our job, we've defeated the whole purpose of homework. That's not what the teacher wants. That's not helpful. Some teachers, and I talked to one teacher who was like, I just, I don't even, the school requires me to give homework. This is frustrating. And we can, like, whether or not there should be homework is a whole different conversation. But the teacher was like,

yeah, the school requires me to do it, but I don't even pay any attention to it because I know the parents are doing it. Oh, ouch. That's the worst possible thing. So there's that piece of it. But on the other hand, you got to know what's going on. Because if your kid has a massive assignment due on Wednesday, and it's Friday, but what you know is that Tuesday is a big day for your family because it's got soccer, but then you happen to have a meeting. So after soccer, they have to go home with somebody else and have dinner, and you've arranged all this stuff. But maybe they're either only vaguely aware of that or not aware of it at all, depending on how old they are. And then they have this thing due on Wednesday.

So to some extent, like homework affects all, you know, it affects the family plans. It affects... Yeah. And, you know, if I don't intervene on some level, that homework won't get looked at until Tuesday at 10 p.m. And then it'll be 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. And so I feel like I have to say, look, you want to be with your friends all weekend. You can do that if you get all of your stuff done beforehand. Right. But I'm not letting you leave it to the last minute. Yeah.

That's more like, to me, that's in the area of, like, guidance around you have a lot of stuff to beforehand. But I'm not letting you leave it to the last minute. Yeah. To me, that's in the area of guidance around you have a lot of stuff to do and you want to do these things over the weekend. So how are you going to set your... Depends on how old the kid is. If the kid is eight, it's probably you have to get this done before you can do this stuff over the weekend. If the kid is 12, it's more like, if you don't get those things done and you do this stuff on the weekend, Monday night's going to be ugly. And yeah, are they going to get their healthy nine and a half hours of sleep? No. But you want them to have that experience at 12, not at 19. Yeah.

So, you know, letting some of that happen is okay. The thing, sort of the thing to avoid is the thing where it ends up being your fault because you didn't tell them that there was all this stuff going on on Tuesday and they didn't. So, there's this complicated. And it's drama. Yeah. Well, but then that's the other thing about homework though. If you are the homework police, if you are the one who's always saying, do you have it? How much do you have? How long is it going to take you? Is it done? Let me look at it. Let me make sure that it's done right. Suddenly, the homework is your fault. And I hate you because you are making me do my homework. And that isn't like, it's not a great role to be in with your kids. So the goal is to have the homework be what the

school gives the kid that they're expected to be able to do on their own, but to provide them from the guidance to turn into somebody that can get those things done for themselves. And how you do that kind of varies. Some kids can do it really. I have, I've got four. One of them, I don't need to... Two of them, actually. I don't ever need to say the word homework. That's their... They got this.

The third one is somewhere in between. And the fourth one, he spent a lot of time with his homework. He didn't spend a lot of time doing his homework. He would just exist in the space with his homework, and it would sort of make us all really, really insane. That one needed a lot more guidance with how much, you know, when, and sort of still does to some extent. So it kind of varies from kid to kid. But the goal, ideally before high school, is somebody who can figure out their own schedule because high school is when things start.

Yeah, and in order for that to happen, you have to let go. You do. We just keep coming back to that, don't we? I know. And for the 400th time, it's not like I'm doing all this perfectly. It's just that I know what we're supposed to do.

And sometimes that's really miserable. Sometimes I stand in my kitchen washing dishes going, I know I was supposed to make the kids do this. Like this is not, I'm not doing it right. But I just want to go to bed. Exactly. I don't care what I want later. I want what I want now.

Let's talk about like family time and meal time. How do you think about these things? How do you approach these opportunities in a healthy way? I think it is so important to find a good space, like a good rhythm for your dinner time in particular. And this isn't like dinner time prevents drug use or whatever. It's more that there's some really great in-depth research out there where they watch the patterns of families living in a house all together. And

the time that you and your partner, if you have one, and your kids all spend in the same room at the same time, especially once kids start going to full-time school, is really consolidated around the dinner hour. So that's your time. So whatever you do to make that look like a good, positive time, that's the important part. I mean, is it important that your family eat a healthy, balanced, wonderful meal where they're all singing grace beforehand, I guess that's up to you. But really, the key is just that's your time. That's the block. That's the space people tend to be all together. So, find a way to make it good. And if your way of making it good involves everybody eating cereal, that's okay, because it's the finding the good thing that matters to me. I mean, or that should matter to you. That's important. This is the time your kids are going

to look back on. And it's not any one meal. It's all of the meals. It's all of the things. It's, we always did it this way. And so-and-so always sat here. And, you know, we always argued about this. And that's your sort of, that's your ritual time. It really is. Yeah. Now that's gonna, for us, that's only gonna be maybe one day a week, you know, which I'm lamenting. But the flip side of this for me is that, and this really is about like- And remember, you've had a lot of it. Yeah, no, we have, we have. But with my 11-year-old, like I just, you know, when you've had older kids that have left the house, you become much more acutely aware of just how short and fresh, you know, this time period is and how you really need to take advantage of it because it does pass so quickly. It does pass so quickly.

And one of the things that I became aware of is that when our boys were living with us, and we also had our nephew living with us, we had a lot of people in this house. And it's great. There's a cacophony and just a community kind of spirit about it that was really beautiful and wonderful. But I found that my individual relationship with one particular kid was not as strong as it could be because there was very few opportunities for total one-on-one. Right. And I would have to be very intentional about carving out time. Like, hey, you and me, we're just going to go do this. When you have four, it's hard to make sure you're balancing all of that. Yep.

And I didn't always do a very good job of that. But I would always know like when I did do that, you know, like, hey, we're just going to go spend the afternoon. It doesn't have to be some big thing. Right. No. In fact, it's probably better if it's not. Come to the grocery store with me. You know, you can pick out some stuff for your lunch and I'll do the shop.

Yeah, there's like a bond. So despite the fact that we're not going to have this total family unit meal time, I actually am excited about having that one-on-one time. Like whether it's with my older daughter downtown or my younger daughter here, like I rarely get to be with them alone. Right. And so there is something cool about that that I want to make sure that I'm paying attention to. Yeah. And how do I do that in a way that can best foster our relationship and our communication? Well, just the doing it is, I mean, it think we put a lot of value on the quality time or the one hour or the one interaction. But just knowing that you've got a whole, who knows what will happen after this year,

but you've got a whole year of this is the time when I'm going to be with this child, and this is the time when I'm going to be with this child. And that's going to turn into that year when we ordered Chinese for every single, every Wednesday. Or, you know, that one year when, you know, we had to eat dinner at five because I had something at seven. In our family, it's that year when we ate at the Skinny Pancake every Tuesday and Thursday because our hockey practices were like at five, six, and seven. So somebody, some chunk of the family would sit in this crepe restaurant while other kids sort of got cycled through. Yeah. You know, it was a crazy, ridiculous year.

Those are the memories I have when I think back on my childhood. Like, I remember my mom went to night school and my dad would take us to the hot shops diner. And like, I still remember that. Like, I remember that more vividly than most things that happened. My mom went to college and my dad would take me to throw food to the ducks, you know, in the pond at Texas Women's University. I'm sure that, well, they probably weren't because it was that time and they were, you know, trying to make something of themselves and that's what they were focused on.

But if they thought about it, it was probably, you know, feeding the ducks is not the best use of this child's time. Right. I mean, I think I have this instinct like, oh, if I have, I've got an afternoon and I can just be with this child, it needs to be this epic adventure. We're going to ride roller coasters and we're going to do it. And it's got to be amazing so that she'll remember it forever. And in truth, like I always have to remind myself, like it has nothing to do with any of that. Like we could just go, you know, do something, let's go walk the dog, you know, let's go to the grocery store. We can't control what they're going to remember about what we're doing either. It's just that, you know, we do get to do a lot of it. And that's really important.

Like, we have a lot of time here. Then, like you said, suddenly it's gone. But you do get to sort of accumulate this big. That's why family relationships are so big. That intensity probably is much more acute if you're a single parent. And your time, like, you only have a certain amount of time, like, if you're a single parent and your time, like you only have a certain amount of time with your, like if you're sharing custody, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some of the single parents that I've talked to sort of see that, you know, you can look at it as a boon because

then you can have your own, you know, you can have your own and then you can have your kid space and you can sort of create these. You have more opportunity to like be, you know, take care of yourself. Exactly. And then when you're with it. So it's possible to see it as a boon. Not everybody does. And I don't think you have to.

But, you know, some people sort of are like, well, it's a silver lining. I mean, you know, this is not necessarily what I planned. I mean, this is not necessarily what I planned, but we're looking at it as opportunity for my partner to spend really solid time and for me to spend really solid time. Yeah. I feel like so much of the perspective, the place that you're coming from, isn't necessarily about doing things differently. It's more in the how you're doing them, like your emotional disposition while you're carrying these things out. Yeah, it's how you think about it. Some things we can actually do differently. I mean, I still come back to not packing in our time and trying to value sleep. So you can find the thing. I just talked to someone,

and this was so cool. She like realized that one thing that was making her unhappy as a parent in her week was that every Friday, for whatever reason, when she picked her kid up from school, the kid, the transition was too much. And I've had this. The transition from school to home can be huge. And the kid would just lose it in the car, just yell at her or just this really unpleasant ride. So this was a pretty little kid. He was only six. So she said to him one day, I noticed that every Friday when I pick you up, you're angry, like you have a tantrum. And that's actually not working for my schedule.

Friday afternoon is not a good time. So I was thinking, could we schedule the tantrum for Friday evening? Because I think that would be better working for my schedule. Friday afternoon's not a good time. So I was thinking, could we schedule the tantrum for Friday evening? Because I think that would be better for both of us. And the kid laughed and then they made this sort of big joke. And when he got in the car on Fridays, she would say, so remember we're scheduling the tantrum for later.

And then like later he would have a big fake tantrum. So I thought that was this great example of like looking at a thing that was making her and her kid unhappy and finding a thing to do differently. So we can do that around small things. But you're right that a lot of being a happier parent is about your mindset. It's about choosing how to look at the experiences that you're having and choosing how, you know, how to interact with your kids and sort of deciding. A big part of being happier is what you pay attention to. It's, well, you know,

it's deciding to pay attention to the things that are happy. How do you think about respecting your kids' privacy and when it's appropriate to, you know, impede on that. Like, if you feel like something isn't going right, like, do you look at their phone? Do you never look at, like, how does that, how does all of that work? Like, I've never had to really, you know, I've never gone into my kids' phones. Right. I mean, we have good, healthy communication around that, but I'm also not naive, you know, about what's going on online. And so, I'm always wondering, you know, where that, but I'm also not naive about what's going on online. And so I'm always wondering where that kind of line is. Yeah. I'm not an expert in that. I too have not had that experience. I've talked, I've interviewed, and I've researched, and I've looked into it. And the biggest thing that I've found and the advice that I've found is that if you're going to spy on your kids, they should know that you're doing it.

So if you're tracking their phone or their movements or whatever, they should know that you're doing it and they should know why. That there should be an open communication about, you know, I know that you are with these people, and I know that they are smoking pot, and therefore, you know, I'm going to be smelling your clothes when you get home, or, you know, therefore, I'm going to be, and I told you that I want you to be in this place, and I know that sometimes you've gone somewhere else, so I'm going to be watching where your phone is, and if you turn it off, there's going to be consequences. But I too haven't had that experience yet. So I don't know that there's, you know, sort of one size fits all advice about that. Yeah, it's tricky. It gets even more complicated when, you know, all these kids have their, they have their other private hidden

accounts on all these social media platforms. You know, they have their one account that their parents know about that's whitewashed because they know their parents are looking at it. Right. But then there's the other account, right? Well, and that's the argument for not looking at it. Right. Is sort of more like, you know, and then, I mean, if you can be in that place and that's, I mean, it's a luxury.

It's the luxury of the parent who doesn't have reason to suspect that their kid is putting themselves in danger with behavior. But if you can be in the place of, you know, I'm not paying attention to your social media accounts. I'm not watching your every move because you've always been, you haven't shown me that I need to. And as long as you don't show me that I need to, I'm not going to be that parent. And this is kind of the conversation to have about, I mean, we talked about having the conversation about what other kids do. It's also fun to have the conversation about what other parents do. Those other, those bad other parents of your friends that are the parents that would spy on them. I just want you to know that I don't do those things because you've never given me a reason to think that I had to. And I

think that's great. And what you're kind of also saying there is, and if you give me a reason, maybe that would change. But if we're in that position where we don't have to, then I guess the hope is that the kid can have just the one social media account and be reasonably responsible with it. I think, you know, we hear a lot of horror stories, but you got to remember you only hear the horror stories. You know, it's not like, you know, the 500,000 kids who are just Snapchatting themselves, pictures of themselves making pouty duck faces don't make the news. It's the one who's, you know, Snapchatting their private parts that does. Yeah. I think even more kind of pervasive than that is just this idea that I don't know that we fully appreciate that. I mean, when you're, you know,

a young adolescent, there's nothing more important than how you fit into your social network. Like the stakes are so high emotionally. And if you're not quite fitting in, the fact that you can go on these social media platforms and watch in real time, the people in your social network enjoying their lives without you, or perhaps even at your expense, is so psychologically damaging. And it hasn't been around long enough yet, such that I think we can properly gauge the impact of that. Right. But the extent to which, you know,

a marginalized person can have that marginalization exacerbated by these tools that seem innocuous and are kind of intended to bring us closer together that are really wreaking emotional havoc on young people. There is a flip side, which is that that marginalized kid can connect with other marginalized kids. That's true. Yeah, of course. You know, if you're the one, you know, the one LGBTQ kid in your very tiny, you know, 60 person high school in northern rural New Hampshire, you can find a whole network of other, you know, you can reach out, you can find those people. If you're the only kid who is super, super, super interested in coins and all your friends think that that's completely nerdy, you can find a world of people that are interested in coins. So there is a flip side that is, you know, the same kid who feels marginalized and alone where they are now can see that there's another place to be and can work to get there.

Yeah. That's. It's true, it is true. I think what happens is, well, this is just a larger observation of just parenting and having kids. Like we live in a fear-based environment. That fear is, you know, instilled in us

from every source of media that we absorb throughout our day. And it spills into how we parent because we're terrified, we're either gonna be a bad parent or we're gonna put our kid in danger or that our child's pain is our own pain or a reflection of our failures. And all of this is like this waterfall spilling onto our kids.

Meanwhile, we're not taking care of ourselves because that feels indulgent. Right. And like we're not being a bad parent and we're falling behind and all of these sorts of things. So what's great about the book is it's like it's saying, stop, you do have to take care of yourself. That's the best way forward. But it can be so hard to break that cycle of fear when it's so constantly reinforced. Well, there's a lot, especially around the screens and the social media, there's a lot to be afraid of just because it's not part of our own experience.

And I think it's kind of interesting to look at the history here. So we are maybe the second generation of parents for whom we can look at our kids' experience and go, well, that looks a lot like mine. Like, you know, I went to elementary school, and then I went to middle school or junior high, and then I went to high school, and then I went to college. And what you're doing, sort of what you're marching through looks like what I did. Our parents, you know, like our mothers, a lot of them weren't necessarily, you know, sure, they went to elementary school, junior high, high school, maybe college, but they weren't expected to excel in math and sciences. And maybe they weren't expected to have a job when they got, like their experience of adolescence and childhood had a different flair to it. Their parents, unless you are from a historically wealthy family, probably didn't even, maybe they didn't go to high school. They probably didn't go to college

historically. And then you sort of get immigrant parents who were looking at kids having, the point is we're the first generation to look at our kids and expect them to have the same experience that we did, but they're not going to. It's not as much the same as we think that it is. So we sort of have this weird fear around, I need to make this the same. I need to make your experience look like mine. I need to control it. And I think our previous generations didn't, they didn't even have that expectation. They were sort of looking and going, well, you're going to high school and I didn't go to high school, so that's different. You're just going to have to learn to figure that out yourself.

It was like a different, just a different space. So we're coming at it and we're looking at that and we're not, you know, we don't like all those areas where it's different. Those are the scary bits. I think that's a great point. And I also think that we're judging the kids through the prism of our own experience. We're laying on top of that expectation of sameness. is really going to be all that relevant in terms of what they really are going to need to be happy and successful in this rapidly advancing world. Right. I mean, if you can somehow just step back from your own, like, if you can go back into your history and think about, like, you know,

in my case, I have this uncle, and he, you know, he went to college, but he couldn't quite, you know, just, and then he went and found himself, and then he did some, and eventually he went to vet school and became a very, but it took, you know, there was this winding road. And you probably have high school friends that had, you know, the winding road. They drove a van in Vail for four years before they, you know, before they founded a country, a company. Or they drove a van in V veil for four years before they decided they

really loved driving a van and veil for four years. And they got married and they raised their kids while driving a van and veil for four years. And that's what they did. And it worked out. We're sort of able to accept that variation on working out for other people. But for our kids, it's really scary. We would like them, you know, we think we would like them to go elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school, consulting firm. And I don't know that- Makes us feel safe and comfortable. And we love to go, oh my God, did you hear so-and-so's driving a van? Can you believe that? What is he doing? And then he finds the company and the company does the IPO and you're like, isn't that amazing? You know,

it's all filtered through this weird judgment machine that we all have built into our DNA, I guess. Yeah. And I think we, you know, we easily lose sight. You know, we've talked a lot about Susie, the neighbor down the street who's doing all the things right and has the best Instagram pictures and stuff like that. I think we forget that we are all doing something super cool. We're all doing something. We've all got our thing. So maybe your thing is that every weekend your whole family gets up and goes to church all together. Not a lot of families do. A lot of families don't

do that. Maybe your thing is that you're hiking all the 4,000 footers with your kids. That's a thing up in New England where we are. Maybe you're a family of traveling circus artists, and therefore your kids are being raised as traveling circus artists. But if you're not a family of traveling circus artists, you can't recreate that. So it's really important to be like, what? You know, when other people, when other people look at your Instagram, when other people look at your life, they're saying, oh, I wish I baked cookies every week with my kid. Or, you know, oh, I wish that, you know, my kid and I were taking pictures outside of every donut shop across New England while they went to hockey. Oh, I wish that my kid and I had dedicated a summer to finding the best

burger in New Jersey. You're doing your thing, but the thing is your thing doesn't look cool because it's just your thing. That's a boring thing. But everybody else, we all have a thing. You have to find a way to sort of value what it is that you're doing with your kids and not worry quite so much about what other people are doing with theirs. Yeah. It's so true and so hard to do. It is hard to do. In all the research that you did for this book, what was something that most surprised you? What did you not expect to discover?

This is actually, there's a really clear answer to that. So, one of the pieces of research that I did myself was to work with a professor at Fordham University, and we created an academically peer-reviewed appropriate, I would call it a survey, but I think there's a better word for it, reviewed appropriate, I would call it a survey, but I think there's a better word for it, study in which we got a thousand people who were demographically reflective of the United States, not a thousand of my closest Facebook friends, to respond to questions around happiness and parenting. And we used the academic measure for happiness, which is satisfactory. It's called efficacy, and it's how good do you think you are at this thing. Is that Gretchen Rubin approved? It probably is Gretchen Rubin approved. But yeah, Gretchen does her own stuff, and oh my gosh, it's amazing. Anyway, so we did this thing,

and one of the things we had on there, as well as lots of questions about, well, how do you decide what your kids have to eat, and how do you feel about how much homework they have? And how do you feel about your involvement? We had this open-ended question. We actually had two. And one was, what do you like most? And the other one was, what do you like least? And you could just write. So many people responded with some variation of the word discipline that I went back and read through our survey to make sure we weren't secretly cuing them. Like, did we use the word discipline 46 times or something? There was nothing. You know, I couldn't find anything. Like, a third, about a third of the answers accumulated around this idea of, I hate disciplining my kids. I hate making my kids

follow the rules. I hate it when my kids do something wrong and I have to punish them. I hate having to come up with consequences. Like there was this real consensus that that was the thing. And I really think that if you had surveyed our parents, they would not have said that. I don't know what they would have said, but I don't think it would have been that. So that was really interesting. It didn't bother them to discipline. No. Right. So what do you make of that? I mean, what does that mean? Well, my theory is that one of the things that's hard is that we are expected to have disciplined kids who behave in public spaces and act like disciplined kids, but there's no consensus anymore on how we're supposed to get

there. Like when our parents were parenting and when we were being raised, there was this more authoritative culture, authoritarian culture, where the idea was if your child does something wrong, there is a consequence, and that will teach your child not to do the wrong thing. And whether, actually, that didn't necessarily work, and it's got its problems, but it was a thing. Like there was an expectation. So when your child didn't do the right thing, you knew what you were going to do. You know, you were going to ground them, or you were going to take away the television, or you were going to, you know, not let them go to the dance. You knew. But now we don't really have an agreement around that. Now it's sort of, well, you know, do you have a conversation with them? Is this a learning experience? Do you try to, you know, do you try to talk to them? What works for your kid? And that's actually, you know, do you have a conversation with them? Is this a learning experience? Do you try to, you know, do you try to talk to them?

What works for your kid? And that's actually, I mean, it's a better space. But it's confusing. But it's confusing. There's no social consensus. It's upsetting. And if you, well, I have a kid who's tough and who has emotional challenges. And one of the things that we discovered for her with this, the consequences just completely backfired. So we would be in a public space and this child would do something,

you know, horrific that would cause everyone else to sort of turn and stare at waiting for you to impose some form of, of, you know, terrible consequence and, you know, and, and would observe us sort of just standing there and watching. And it feels terrible to be that parent who's sort of getting all the burden of the approbation. You know, everyone on the airplane, and it wasn't, airplanes are tough, but, you know, everyone around you expecting, sort of waiting for you to do something, and you knowing that the something, that your best choice is to ride this out. Or even maybe to, you know, what looks like reward the child was, okay, here, why don't you, you know,

I know that you're feeling bad, have a lollipop, and we'll talk about this when we get home. And that looks like terrible parenting, but maybe it's the right thing for you. So anyway, I think that makes that lack of a consensus around what we are supposed to do and what we're expected to do and what the people around us will approve of our doing makes that a really stressful thing. Yeah, and so we second guess every move that we make. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and we have mental conversations. We go, well, I was just doing that because, yeah, it can be really.

So that's my thought is that that is a really stressful area because we're not necessarily, you know, we just don't have an answer. We hate that. We don't like not having answers. Right. I don't like it. I feel like so much of what you're saying in this book boils down to, like, just chill the F out a little bit, right? I'm okay. You're okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it really is. We need to just take a step back and take some deep breaths and look around and notice that we're safe. We're secure. Most of the things that we think are chasing after our kids, the terrible things that are happening to them, that they're not in the first grade class with their best friend or they didn't get into the college that they want to. It's not a tiger. It's not the end of the world.

It's okay. It's going to work out. And if we can do that, we can just be in a much, much nicer place for everybody. Yeah. Are you familiar with Susan David? Yes, I love Susan David. Yeah, so she's kind of all about like... Emotional agility. Yeah, emotional agility, which is basically, you know, instilling resilience. I

mean, she talks about it within ourselves, but certainly I think it's important to... The more you kind of understand about that, it can help inform a healthier parenting approach to instill that in the kids, right? Yeah, no, I think it's great. And it's just so important to find some perspective on all the things that get us, put our shoulders into our ears and really freak us out. Yeah. So what are you working on now? What's next? You're not doing the, are you still writing for the New York Times? I write for the New York Times sort of when the opportunity arises. I'm not a regular columnist anymore, and I'm not editing anymore.

That was so much fun, but it was time to move on. You can't, happier parents don't spend their whole lives writing about parenting. Actually, what's next for me is fiction. Really? Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm moving out of the nonfiction realm for the moment. I've got a novel with my agent, but that may end up in a drawer and I may start working on the next one. But I'm going to just work on talking about this book and getting out there and enjoying

this experience and sort of having this conversation with as many people as I can while I do some different creative things. Yeah, cool. And you host your podcast, M Writing, with the great Jessica Leahy. Yes. I think one of the most, that's just on a completely brilliant personal level, one of the most brilliant things that she and I ever did was to create a podcast that wasn't about, we both write a lot about parenting and family. Creating a podcast that wasn't about that was perhaps the smartest thing. Because I think we'll both evolve in terms of our journalistic careers, but we'll always be writers. So that's what we talk about in our podcast, writing. We can do that when we're 80. It's cool. And how's life on the farm? Life on the farm is really good. That's the society.

So you live on a farm in New Hampshire, like a fully functioning. As in, let's see, as in they are stacking hay without me right now. I was part of the cutting. As in my kids. Is this involving your four kids? Oh yeah.

How do you get them to do that? They have to. That's it. Yeah. I mean, and that's, you know, that's actually the answer to how to get kids to do any chores is,

you know, it's not, it's not optional in our family, whether or not you go down and stack hay because there's hay and it has to be stacked. It has to be stacked. Yeah. Yeah. So, I had to get some other people. I mean, we have a barn manager. We farm with other people and our community comes together to do that part of it, the haying, but yeah, sort of long distance managing, which is unusual.

But you can't schedule hay. You can't control hay. Hay must be cut when there are enough sunny days to cut the hay. And unfortunately, that coincided with me being in California. Right. So are they doing it? Oh, yeah. In your absence? Oh, yeah.

I mean, they have to. It's cut. Like once you've cut it, there are no alternatives to bailing it. Do you approach this with the carrot or the stick or some combination thereof? I will pay you, if you are my child, to help with the haying if you are doing the work of an adult. So, I am now to the point where my youngest kids are 12, and they do get paid a little to work. Well, two of them do. The one who rides horses and works at the barn and is very integrally involved with the farm doesn't get paid in money because she gets paid in sort of doing what she loves. And then my 17-year-old gets paid a lot more because he's much more useful when it comes to haying than I am. He's six feet tall and, you know, can throw a hay bale into a truck, whereas I have to like sort of

heft it up gently. And so he gets a full man's salary. Carrots of varying sizes. Carrots of varying sizes, but you know, they haven't, they haven't always. And there's a lot of farm work that they do that doesn't come with any kind of carrot. It just is what it is. Right. Cool. All right. Well, we got to wrap this up, but let's leave people with some inspiration, a little nugget of wisdom for the parent out there that still suffers, for the parent that just can't, they just can't get past the obligations of the day, just can't wrap their head around the indulgent idea that they can and should exercise a little self-care. How do we get that you are a better parent when you are happier, that it cycles around. It goes happier parent, happier kid, happy family, happier parent,

happier kid, happier family. And if you need to, I mean, people who spend time on their own happiness, they make better employees. They're healthier. They live longer. There's a lot of research around this that it is worthwhile to put some time into making yourself a positive member of society as well as a contributing member of society. Powerful, KJ. Thank you so much. Thank you. Delight to talk to you.

How do you feel? This was great. Good. Awesome. The book is How to Be a Happier Parent, available everywhere you buy fine books. Is there an audio book? Oh, yeah. And I read it myself.

Did you do the voice? Good. Awesome. I learned a lot from reading it. It was kind of interesting. It taught you? Well, I learned a lot about writing a book and reading an audio book. But also, yes, in rereading the chores chapter, I spent a lot of time going, oh, oh, we should be doing that.

Oh, geez. And then I went home and we made that better. So, yeah. I learned in reading my audio book that it's very difficult to read an audio book and very awkward. That's what I learned. I learned that I cannot pronounce the word towards. Towards. T-O-W-A-R-D-S. They I cannot pronounce the word towards. Towards. T-O-W-A-R-D-S.

They wouldn't let you say towards? Towards. Yeah, but I can't say that. Oh, you can't? Yeah. I can say, in conversation, I would say toward. Is that a Texas thing? It must be.

I would say toward. I wouldn't say it with the S, but I always wrote it with the S. And then there I was, and I can't tell you how often I used that word. I was just ready to shoot myself. If this is your biggest problem, you're doing well in the world. Yeah, I should be happy. Yeah, cool. Do you do public speaking stuff or any book signings or anything like that?

If people want to reach out to you, connect with you, how do they do that? Where's the best place to do it? It's really easy to find, kjdelantonia.com. I do do some speaking, not a whole lot because I live in rural New Hampshire and it's hard, but I do get out there once in a while. And I'm very active. You can always find me online. Yeah. And listen to our podcast. Please. And please say hi to Jess for me. I will do that. All right, cool. Come back and talk to me again.

Thanks. Cool. Thank you. Peace. again. Thanks. Cool. Thank you. Peace. I very much enjoyed that. I hope you guys did as well. To learn more about KJ, go to kjdelantonia.com and please find her and hit her up on the social media networks and let her know what you thought of today's conversation. She's on Instagram at KJDA. She's on Twitter at KJDellAntonia. And please pick up her new book, How to Be a Happier Parent. As always, check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com

to expand your experience of today's conversation beyond the earbuds. You can also watch this entire conversation on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash richroll. And if you're enjoying that, subscribe there as well. If you're looking for additional nutritional guidance, please check out our meal planner at meals.richroll.com where we will provide you with thousands

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See you back here in a couple of days with a conversation with filmmaker and friend and multiple podcast guests, Keegan Kuhn, as well as ultra runner, Fiona Oaks. We talk about their new movie, Running for Good. And this one was recorded before a live audience at the film's premiere a few weeks ago. So you have that to look forward to. Until then, may you be a happier parent.

And if you're not a parent, well, may you just be happy. Thank you.