KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Season 1 Top 10 | #8 Giving Children More Control. A Conversation with Bill Stixrud.
We're continuing summer break with #8 of our Top 10 Season 1 episodes.
Can freeing your child from the shackles of constant parental control lead to a happier, more successful future? Kaity and Adriane unlock the secrets to self-driven learning with Dr. William R. Stixrud, a renowned clinical neuropsychologist and co-author of "The Self-Driven Child."
The episode also explores:
- the power of shifting from fear-driven parenting to fostering a calm, supportive atmosphere that allows children to flourish
- the transition from protective to consultative parenting as kids grow
- practical advice on managing parental anxieties through therapy, exercise, and meditation, ultimately benefiting children by reducing control tendencies
- the contentious issue of homework is tackled head-on, advocating for a respectful, supportive approach that honors children's individuality and promotes autonomy
- and so much more!
By understanding the critical relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and recognizing the biochemical factors influencing child behavior, we can create nurturing environments where children feel valued and empowered to take charge of their lives.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Dr. William (Bill) R. Stixrud is a clinical neuropsychologist, founder of The Stixrud Group, a member of the teaching faculty at Children's National Medical Center, and an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He is the author, with Ned Johnson, of the bestseller "The Self-Driven Child." He is also a frequent lecturer on adolescent brain development, stress & more.
📚 Want to read "The Self-Driven Child?" Buy it here.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Adrienne, how's it going? It's so good. It's so good because this re-release is with Bill Sticksrud. This was our first guest interview right, yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 2:It's so fun to remember this.
Speaker 1:I remember I was sweating so much, I was so nervous, especially because I have read his books, I have listened to him. I was like it was almost, you know, like a fan girl.
Speaker 2:I was fan girling so hard during this and it's like man this like neuroscientist probably doesn't get that a lot, but it's like I would rather talk to Bill Sixer than like meet Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1:Hands down 100%. Did you say he was a neuroscientist? Is he a neuropsychologist?
Speaker 2:Neuropsychologist. Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Same thing right.
Speaker 2:Neurosomething, yes, so okay. So giving children more control. I love this episode because I mean, for a long time at Prenda we've we've given away this book like over 600 times to all of our guides and just to families and trying to get people to understand this whole concept. So I'm just really grateful for Bill Stixrud's work and his co-author, ned Johnson, who we interview in a later episode, also excellent. But I just think that this book and this conversation does a great job overviewing like the whole idea of like what we're trying to do, how we're trying to change school and change childhood and change our interactions with kids to become less controlling and like demanding and a little bit more like collaborative and understanding, and I know that my parenting and my educating has gotten a lot more happy, like just a lot more joyful, and it is totally founded in this line of thinking, and so I just think that they do such a good job explaining these ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he's just super fun and was such a fun interview and just does not beat around the bush, he just says how it? Is, and I love that and I appreciate that. So let's listen to episode three, with Bill Stixrude giving children more control.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling the motivation, curiosity and mental wellbeing of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 1:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Hey, katie, who are we talking to today?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this interview today.
Speaker 1:It's going to blow your mind.
Speaker 2:We are talking to William R Stixrud. William R Stixrud isa, clinical neuropsychologist and founder of the Stixrud Group, as well as a faculty member at Children's National Medical Center and an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He's also the co-author, with Ned Johnson of the national bestselling book the Self-Driven Child, which is published in 14 countries and 12 languages and has sold more than 2 million copies in China. Even he and Mr Johnson have also co-authored a critically acclaimed second book what Do you Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, stress Tolerance and a Happy Home. Dr Stixrod's work has been featured in media outlets such as NPR, cnn, msnbc, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Times of London, the Wall Street Journal, us News and World Report, time Magazine, scientific American Business Week. The list goes on and on. This guy is amazing. He's a longtime practitioner of transcendental meditation and he plays in the rock band Close Enough. I did not know that about him.
Speaker 1:I did not know that either.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to interview Dr Stixford today. Dr Stixford, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to learn from you.
Speaker 3:I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 2:So we started Prenda Microschools in 2018, and I didn't read Self-Driven Child until I think 2020. When did it come out? 2018. It's like, right when we were having our pilot semester, you were publishing this, and then I didn't find it till later and I emailed our founder. After I read it, I was like, well, someone had just written an entire book that completely substantiates everything that we've been doing.
Speaker 3:That's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Thank you and honestly, your book is why I'm here too, at Prenda, because I read it, my kids were struggling in school and the whole part about like well, ask them where they want to go. So we did and they started in Prenda and I loved it so much and again saw the similarities and here we are today. So your book played a big role of why I'm here.
Speaker 3:It couldn't make me happier to know that. I just, I don't know where I started thinking like this, but I've been. I raised my own kids, kind of walking this walk, and they turned out great. I just, I just know it's possible to raise successful kids without worrying about them all the time and being on them all the time, and that's what that's.
Speaker 2:my mission is to try to help people feel safe to do that safe to do, that there's so much pressure as a parent to make sure your kids are so on track and like hitting all these metrics and that they're the same as their peers and all of these things. It's really hard to hold onto that message. So something that reading Self-Driven Child really did for me was kind of helped me feel like a little bit of authority behind what my intuition was kind of already telling me. Tell us a little bit about who you are and your work and why you're so passionate about what you do, like what's your big? Why?
Speaker 3:So for the last 40 years I've been a clinical neuropsychologist and my day job is I test kids who have learning problems or attention problems or emotional problems or social problems, and I try to figure out where their strengths are, what's going wrong and how to help them, and I never get tired of it.
Speaker 3:I love the work. And also Ned Johnson and I have written these two books A Self-Driven Child and a book called what Do you Say, based on mainly on our concern about the mental health crisis affecting young people and what we consider to be a kind of unusual solution to the crisis, which is giving kids more control over their own lives. So we wrote the Self-Driven Child about how important it is for young people to have a sense of control over their own lives for a variety of reasons. We wrote a follow-up book with a lot of language in it to make it easier for parents to communicate in a way that supports that sense of control. And my mission in life is, where I can, is to help reduce suffering, and I think this approach can help with that a lot.
Speaker 2:I love that and I have also read. What Do you Say? It's also excellent, so really practical advice. I love it.
Speaker 1:I have a similar why? Because I do see the mental health crisis and I talk to parents all the time about the same exact concept and it's amazing that you're able to see it in the clinical setting and you know I'm seeing it more just on the playground in the social setting and you know I'm seeing it more just on the playground in the social setting. So I really, really thank you for this work and thank you for writing these books to get them out to as many people as possible, because I really do think it's going to help with this crisis.
Speaker 2:I hope you're right, bill. Can you give us a little bit more information about what that mental health crisis looks like, some of the statistics, if you have them on or you know, to help our listeners really understand that we do have a problem?
Speaker 3:I was just talking with a scientist who just was went into three suburban Ohio school districts and these are pretty high achieving school districts. 76% of the kids reported symptoms of an anxiety disorder or major depression or both. They asked them to rate the sources of stress and pressure in their life. The first 12 did not include social media, did not include global warming, did not include income inequality or shrinking job market. All 12 related to school performance and academic achievement and getting into college. 12 related to school performance and academic achievement and getting into college.
Speaker 3:And I think that the rate of completed suicides, even in young children, 5 to 11-year-olds, has increased significantly before the pandemic and it's worsened, Everything's worsened in the pandemic, and the challenge since the pandemic is, in my experience, it's almost impossible for you to find a therapist who has an opening, who can take a kid, or find a psychiatrist who can do medication, and so it really is kind of crisis level when you think that if a child or a teenager develops an anxiety disorder or gets depressed, it changes the brain in a way that doesn't doom them, but it increases the likelihood that they're going to have recurrent anxiety or bouts of depression well into adulthood because they're sculpting a brain. We don't want kids to be sculpting a brain, particularly teenagers to be sculpting a brain that's used to being exhausted and unhappy and anxious. So we want to prevent mental health problems and we want to treat the ones that we have, and I think that this focus on giving kids more control is one of the most powerful ways that we can do this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. In your book, the Self-Driven Child, you and Ned outlined four false assumptions that we commonly hold as adults, which makes it hard for us to be able to give kids what they need right. So we'd like to look at each one of these and have you flesh them out a bit. So the first one is that there is a narrow path to success. The stakes are too high just basically what you're talking about, this pressure cooker that we're putting these kids in and it's too high to let kids make decisions for themselves. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3:It's based on a scarcity assumption, that there's only a few people are going to be successful, and it's based on the insane idea that only top students develop meaningful, successful lives. And it's this idea that and also based on the idea that if you ever fall off this neuropath, you're screwed. You know, I was just talking with a friend of mine whose kid graduated recently with a 1.67 grade point average from a pretty high achieving suburban school district in Northern Virginia and he figured I don't have any educational options. So he goes into the Navy and actually qualifies for the SEALS program. But they discovered a medical condition and so he couldn't be in the SEALS.
Speaker 3:So they put him on a boat and he's smart and outside of school he loves taking on responsibility. So they teach him a lot of skills. He learns quickly, he takes on as much responsibility as they give him. The admiral loves him. After two years on the boat he decides he wants to go to college. He takes the SAT, gets a letter from the admiral. He's a fourth year student at Harvard and he graduated from high school at 1.67. And in this self-driven child, the last chapter called Alternate Roots, it's just all the people that I know personally who either flunked out of school or didn't finish college or took some kind of circuitous route to developing a successful, meaningful life. The thing is that when you tell kids how broad the possibilities are, that at least in America you have a lot of chances to recreate yourself, that it motivates them. It doesn't do well, okay, I'll just do a half-assed job. It doesn't do that it motivates them.
Speaker 2:I think that there's something to be said for the scarcity mindset that you mentioned, right, and we come to parenting or educating from that place where a lot of our behaviors are really driven by fear, and then that's affecting our like neuro system and we'll talk a little bit later about being a non-anxious presence. But it really starts here, doesn't it? We'll talk a little bit later about being a non-anxious presence, but it really starts here, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does, and certainly. You know, in our new book we wrote a chapter called Communicating a Non-Anxious Presence and we start with all this anxiety. The message that kids must be getting is to be very afraid. And why is that? And so much of it is just not based on reality, and that's why my mission is to show the science of why it's safe not to worry about your kid all the time and not to be on top of them and feel you have to control your kid all the time. So, yeah, I think that that assumption is simply incorrect. And when you give kids a more accurate model of reality.
Speaker 3:I just tested a kid who flunked all her classes in 10th grade. It was her first semester of 10th grade and the first thing I, before I tested her, before I told her, I told her mother tell her that she can flunk all her classes the next two years. If she decides that was a bad idea, she can go to community college for 30 credits and then she can apply to almost all the colleges in this country and they don't want to see her high school transfer. She's so overwhelmed. What's the point? I've screwed up my whole life. What's the point of trying.
Speaker 3:I had the mother explain this to her. There's a point in trial. You don't have to turn around immediately, and she started working hard the next day. Kids need to see there's a path for me, there's a way that I can get from where even if they're struggling, where I can get from where I am to some better place, and that's part of my job is helping to figure out. I can see how you can get there. My job is helping to figure out. I can see how you can get there. But if the communication is that you've always got to do extremely well if you ever fall off the path, no wonder kids are so afraid, including the high-achieving kids who buy into that and the lower-achieving kids who figure out what's the point of trying.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:The way kids maximize their potential is we've got to always be pushing them. In my experience, kids, we know that constant stress and pressure is terrible for the developing brain, and we also know that excessive pressure to excel is the fourth leading cause of unwellness in adolescence, besides poverty, trauma and discrimination.
Speaker 1:Wow, and what I see, too, is we're not meeting them where they are developmentally. That's kind of what you're getting to, right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It turns out that most people in most parts of the world are living in the safest place in the safest time in human history. Because if a child gets abducted, we hear all about it, we think it happens so much more than it did when you were growing up or when I was growing up, and it doesn't. And by far. If a child gets abducted, most likely culprit is a divorced spouse. Certainly, there are things that have always been dangerous in the world, but the idea that somehow there's this increasingly dangerous world, it's just not accurate.
Speaker 3:There's a story in his second book about Mr Rogers, when he was a kid and he's walking on this high wall and his mother and his grandmother said how did you got to get down? You could fall. And his grandfather said let him walk. You know, if he falls he can handle it. And Mr Rogers Fred Rogers concluded that was one of the formative experiences in my life. He had confidence that I can handle things myself. And we know, we know and I can talk more later about this, but we know that the way kids become resilient and emotionally strong and be able to handle stressful situations is by handling stressful situations with support is necessary, but that you. You're in a stressful situation and you cope with it. It changes your brain in a way that makes it more likely you're.
Speaker 1:When something stressful happens, you're going to go in that coping mode as opposed to freak out or try to avoid it right and that's part of the human experience, but yet we try to protect them from being human, because we all are going to fail. We need to learn how to overcome from those failures.
Speaker 3:Right, you know, I was in Houston before the pandemic and we had dinner with a bunch of parents who that had brought us to their school in Houston and one person they're talking about Life 360, the program they're tracking and he said what do you think about this? And I said I think it's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1:Should I delete it from my phone right now, if your?
Speaker 3:kid says mom, I feel safer if you did. Okay, but what does it communicate to each kid? Well, I'm so anxious. I couldn't go five seconds without knowing where you are. I don't trust you to keep yourself safe, and kids are much more likely to be safe if they know that, ultimately, they're responsible. You could be tracking them and it gives you a false sense of safety, but your kid could still get hit by a bus, and so I think the best message for kids as they get older is that I can't keep you safe, but I have tons of confidence in your ability to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1:Wow, and I'm here if you're not safe.
Speaker 2:I would love you to go into that a little deeper, like just the idea that kids are actually safer they make better choices when we trust them and can you talk about that effect?
Speaker 3:I felt my whole career that the best message you can give a teenager is they have confidence in your ability to make decisions about your own life and to learn from your mistakes, and I want you to have a ton of experience doing that before you. I send you off before you leave home and I think with younger kids I want to say you're the expert on you. Nobody knows you better than you know yourself. And I want you to practice making decisions because ultimately, many kids, I think, do things that are dangerous out of a false sense that somehow their parents will rescue them. And I think that they really are safer if we care about them. We express concern about them, but we trust them and we say if you ever need me, I'm always there for you, but I trust you to manage your own life. That's what we want to do, is we want to entrust them.
Speaker 3:I gave a lecture to a school probably the most prestigious high school in Washington DC and a woman came up to me after the lecture and said you know, I'm a therapist here, a psychotherapist here at the Menagerie Clinic. It's a really excellent mental health clinic in Houston and we know this school in DC really well because so many of the graduates get into the most elite colleges. But as soon as they get a D, as soon as they realize that everybody here is as smart as I am, as soon as a girl won't go out with them, they can't handle it emotionally. So they take a medical leave of absence and they come here for treatment. And she said to the one they just don't have enough experience growing up, running their own lives, making their own decisions, solving their own problems.
Speaker 2:Wow, in the book you talk about the idea that we can't really control our kids and I just wanted to kind of hear your take on that and what your experience has been helping parents and educators understand that. What looks like control to you with rewards or punishments or you know, any sort of pushing we do like it's not actually control, pushing we do like it's not actually control, and how parents and educators typically respond to that because we like control, I like control, everyone likes to be in control.
Speaker 3:it's part of mental health is feeling like you have autonomy yeah, yeah, I mean, I just I, I can't tell you how. You know, since we wrote the book, you know, I I've continued to, to follow the research on a sense of control and, not surprisingly, a low sense of control is hugely related to every form of anxiety disorder, to depression, to substance use disorders. If you just think about it, if you're anxious, your thinking's out of control. You'd like to stop your worry, but you can't. And so all mental health is really about that sense that life is. I'm not in charge here. I can't get myself to do what I need to do, I can't manage my thinking, and so it's huge.
Speaker 3:And actually some recent studies are suggesting that the reason certain kinds of most therapies help and exercise helps you feel better and meditation helps you feel better is it increases your sense of. I mean, it's really a powerful idea, but it's not easy. It's not easy for adults. We aren't wired to do that. We're wired to to protect and to soothe our young, and that's so. As mammals, that's what we're wired to do, and so making that transition from protecting and soothing an infant to progressively pulling back and trusting kids to make their own decisions is we experience less control, which makes it more stressful for us. So much of this work is on ourselves and managing our own anxiety. We try to help people understand that it's just natural to feel that need to control that kind of we're wired that way.
Speaker 3:On the other hand, it's also obvious to me you really can't make somebody do something against their will and I did a lot of years of psychotherapy with kids and teenagers and what I realized is the parents didn't like their friends or didn't like what they're interested in and we try to talk them out of it. And the more they try to talk them out of it, the harder the kids would hold on to it. And I realized you can't make somebody want what they don't want. You can't make them not want what they want. And just making peace with it.
Speaker 3:So, as a parent, try to make a two-year-old eat, try to make a four-year-old get into the car. I mean you can carry him to the car but then he's not doing it. You can't make it. You can't lay someone on the floor, you can't make him do it. And making peace with that. The implication is it couldn't be my responsibility to make my kids turn out a certain way. It couldn't be my responsibility to motivate my kids so that they always work hard. That's not my responsibility. My responsibility is to love my kid and support them in any way I can and to play that consultant role over time to help them learn who they want to be and develop the kind of life that they want.
Speaker 1:So can you dive more into the consultant role? What does that actually mean and how can parents apply that? And even, can we apply that as a role as a teacher or a coach or some you know, an adult in a child's life?
Speaker 3:Yes. So in 1986, I reviewed the literature on homework and its relationship to learning and I was stunned that at that time, after 60 years of research, nobody had demonstrated that homework contributes to learning and several studies actually found negative correlations between the amount of homework and learning because it turned kids off to school. And certainly after 90 years there's still no evidence that homework is necessary for learning in elementary school. But also, so many of my clients would say stuff like God, I dread dinner time because after dinner it's like World War III, fighting about homework. And so all these homework-related problems are causing so much stress. So I wrote an article in McCall's magazine. It just said tell your kid I love you too much to fight with you about your homework, but I'm willing to be your homework consultant. I'm willing to sit with you from 6.30 to 7.30 every night, or, if I can tutor you a little bit, I'm willing to do that. But you're the most precious thing in the universe to me. I'm not willing to fight with you all the time about it. I'm not willing to act like somehow I'm supposed to be able to make you do it. I couldn't make you do it. All you have to do is close your eyes and flop to the floor. I couldn't make you do this stuff.
Speaker 3:And if I take responsibility for something that's yours, the educators I'm working with, who are really focused on student-directed learning and student autonomy, they say we're guides, we aren't the sage on the stage. You see, in education we aren't the sage, we're guides to help kids learn, and so I think this metaphor applies both in parenting and in education. But the three implications that Ned and I talk about are number one we offer help, we offer advice and our wisdom, but we don't try to force it down kids' throat. The worst way for kids to use their energy is to resist help that's being offered to them, especially repeatedly, because it drives them deeper into denial that they have any problems. So it's offering help, it's offering advice, it's encouraging kids to make their own decisions, and with little kids, I mean.
Speaker 3:I was lecturing at a school and this guy came up to me and said I just finished my doctoral dissertation on promoting autonomy in two-year-olds. Do you want to do it this way or this way? What outfit do you want to wear? We're just giving a limited range of choices. You give them choice because it communicates respect and it communicates that I know you're different than I am. What's important to you, or what you like, may be different than me, and I love the fact that you're your own human being. So it's offering.
Speaker 3:And with teenagers, as I said, I want to require older teenagers to make the important decisions about their own life After discussion, so they can make informed decisions with people who know more than they do. When you say to a kid I have confidence in your ability to make decisions for your life and I'll support you, but I want you to practice making them, because that's how you become a good decision maker. I've never experienced anything that matures kids more than that. You see kids who are resisting everything you try to throw at them. You say wait, wait, wait. This is going to be your call. They want their life to work. So then the whole energy changes.
Speaker 1:It's that counter will. Yeah, and they become more joyful too. I have a 13 year old and, because of reading your book, we had allowed him to leave the traditional school in fourth grade and we had some, you know, the path was a little rocky, trying to figure out the best fit for him, and he's been out of school now and he loves it and it's incredible to see how much joy he has and how many more good decisions he makes. It just clears up all the cloudiness that I feel like he was living in from not being able to make his own choice and being told what to do all day long and being told that he was not a good kid because he had big behavioral problems because of his ADHD. And now he's in an environment where he's celebrated and they're able to see all of these big uh behaviors that he has as strengths and it's incredible to see how it is truly cascading into every area of his life.
Speaker 3:Oh God, I love hearing that. You know, when we wrote our second book, ned and I interviewed dozens of middle school and high school students and one of the questions we asked them was who do you feel closest to in this world? And one of the questions we asked them was who do you feel closest to in this world? And some of them said my mom or my dad. A lot of them said my older brother or an older cousin, or my uncle or a teacher or a coach. And we asked them what is it about this person that makes you feel so close to them?
Speaker 3:And invariably they said something in the order of they listen to me, judging me, and they don't tell me what to do. And I think that there are times when, as parents say, come on, you need to get with the program. Here we're trying to get out the house, but for the most part, most adults don't like continually being told what to do, and I think that kids are no different. This idea of being a consultant doesn't mean that the five-year-old is the boss of the family. It just simply means that sense of control. It doesn't mean I get to control everything. It just means I'm not helpless, I'm not hopeless, I'm not stuck, I'm not chronically anxious and tired. I can make decisions, I'm respected what like that.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. So I'd love to take a few minutes and really kind of dig into the brain, if that's okay. Adrienne and I are like neuroscience junkies. So in the book you go through some of the main structures of the brain the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala. Can you kind of take us through that and just take us on a tour of the brain and what happens like? Describe the brain on autonomy and then the brain off of.
Speaker 3:So I think arguably, um, the most useful thing I've ever learned about the brain is how slow the prefrontal cortex develops. The prefrontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of your brain, right behind your forehead, and the prefrontal cortex is able to think. It does the executive functions of planning, organizing, working, memory, flexibility. You can put things in perspective, you can organize your thinking, and it's extremely slow to develop. I say the cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex aren't mature until about 25 plus minus 3. And the emotional regulation function is not mature until about 32 plus minus 3. And the reason this has been the most useful thing I've learned is that so many of the kids that I see who are struggling that I can assure the parents they're going to have a completely different brain basically in the next three years from now. And I just get messages from parents all the time about how you told me my kids couldn't turn out right and that you were right and you were right.
Speaker 3:So but the prefrontal cortex, the second really useful thing, is this the best marker of mental health, the neurological marker, is the strength of the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
Speaker 3:The amygdala is this very primitive part of the brain in the middle of your head that doesn't think, it senses and reacts and you can think about the amygdala as a threat detector.
Speaker 3:And so some kids come out of the womb with a really sensitive and reactive amygdala and other kids come out with more of a laid-back amygdala. But certainly anxiety disorders are associated with a kind of overactive amygdala and overactivity in the stress regulation circuits. And what mental health involves in part is these strong connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and these deeper stress circuits. Because the idea is that if you start to get a little stressed, you activate your prefrontal cortex, that if you start to get a little stressed, you activate your prefrontal cortex and it sends these inhibiting messages to the amygdala and the stress response that you can calm yourself down. You know you start, something happens, you start to get upset, you say, well, wait a minute, it's not that big a deal, and you put it in perspective. And so you want those strong connections to be able to do that. And what we know is that if you don't sleep well and so many kids are just chronically sleep-deprived, it weakens the connections.
Speaker 2:If you're highly stressed.
Speaker 3:It weakens the connections between your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. If you're stressed for a long time, your prefrontal cortex actually gets smaller and your amygdala gets bigger, and more real Wow. Which is part of the reason why we want to prevent stress-related mental health problems.
Speaker 1:So can we look at what causes stress. I love the acronym that you use NUTS.
Speaker 3:Sure, there's a neuroscientist in Montreal by the name of Sonia Lupien who I heard lecture in 2008,. She says I defy you to think of anything that makes you stressed that you can't summarize with the acronym NUTS. And it's novelty unpredictability, potential threat and a low sense of control. And the reason that Ned and I, partly that, focus so strongly a sense of control is a stress. Scientist say that's the most stressful thing because you can be in a novel or new situation. A lot of people like these situations. Right, you could travel.
Speaker 3:There's some places you've never seen before, even unpredictable, I mean, the same old thing can be boring and um and so, but but, or even something that's threatening. If you, you have a sense I can handle this. I've been in this situation before. I'm not scared of this. It's, it's, it's not. It's not really stressful, but stressful is when something challenging is happening and you don't know what to do about it. You got a sick kid and nobody knows what to do. You know you're that you're in a traffic jam, you know you're late for work and there's nothing you can do about it. That sense of control is so stressful. But I think that understanding it is hard to think of stressful situations that don't involve at least one of these. It's a new situation, it's unpredictability, it feels threatening or involves a low sense of control unpredictability, it feels threatening or involves a low sense of control.
Speaker 1:It was very helpful for me that you also break down positive stress, tolerable stress and toxic stress, because what we're talking about, too, is does it build upon itself or does it just depend on the situation and how much control we have or don't have? That's a really good question, adrienne.
Speaker 3:I think that current scientific thinking is that you can really divide stress up into these three categories that you just mentioned, which is that positive stress is the kind of stress you get before you have to perform, before you take a test, before you perform musically, or you're playing sports and you're in a pickup basketball game. If you're kind of lackadaisical, you're not going to play well. You need an optimal level of stress hormones to play well. And if you're a really good basketball you've got a really good basketball team and you play an opponent who's really crummy, it's hard to get up and really play your best. You're going to play best with somebody who's as good as you are when you really have to kind of give it all. So that's that kind of positive stress that actually activates the brain in a way that optimizes performance. Tolerable stress are things that can be things including the death of a parent or a parent's divorce or just really very difficult things. But tolerable stress doesn't go on forever and you experience it with support. You have supportive people helping you through it. Toxic stress is stress that is unrelenting and or there's no support, kind of on your own dealing with it.
Speaker 3:One of the branches of research that we paid a lot of attention to in writing. The book was the research of a guy by the name of Steve Mayer at the University of Colorado who studies rats, and rats' brains are actually organized a lot like ours and we can learn a lot. But his basic paradigm was rat A and rat B are in these plexiglass cages and their tails are outside the cage with a little electrode on them. Inside the cage is a wheel. Rat A gets shocked and it's not painful but it's annoying and he wants it to stop. And he discovers if he turns the wheel the shock stops. Rat B gets shocked, turns the wheel and nothing happens. His shock only stops when Rat A turns the wheel. So Rat A rescues Rat B, but Rat A, after several experiences like this of being able to control a stressful situation, rat A becomes almost impossible to stress.
Speaker 3:After those experiences. Rat B, who doesn't develop that sense I can manage stressful situations, something I can do becomes a nervous wreck. When they're turning the wheel, the prefrontal cortex activates, and when the prefrontal cortex activates, it dampens down, it inhibits the stress system and you think about it. If you're in an emergency and you're coping with it, it's not that stressful. It's just when you're in an emergency and you don't know what to do. That's what's really stressful and we want kids basically to condition their brains, when something stressful happens, to go into coping mode, as opposed to panicking or freaking out or trying to avoid the situation.
Speaker 1:It's very helpful for adults to understand that there's a lot going on in the brain. A statement that you guys wrote in the book that literally was so profound and transformative for me was about how a lot of kids' behavior is actually chemical and not character, because my boys are neurodivergent so I used to find myself saying it's like there are three different people and reading that I was like, oh my gosh, that's what it is. It's the biochemicals and the stress and all of these things compounding that make it so that they can access their social engagement system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that certainly for kids that have social challenges, just the social engagement system, when they're calm, the circuits that involve eye contact and reciprocal language and reciprocal interaction activate.
Speaker 3:And just even for me, I remember seeing these brain scans of people with ADHD and the guy who did the scans concluded that the harder they try, the worse it gets, meaning these people with ADHD would try to make themselves focus and the more they focus, the less their brain activated, presumably because it was stressful and I realized they can't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And then we've learned that part of what ADHD is is low levels of dopamine, that the neurotransmitter dopamine, that's the neurotransmitter of drive. It's also a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and even addiction, but it has this very important role in drive or motivation. And we know that kids with ADHD just tend to have lower baseline levels of dopamine. And we also know that the medicines for ADHD one of the things they do is they increase the availability of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex so kids can actually focus and get stuff done and so, recognizing that, my kid.
Speaker 3:I can scold him all I want, I can threaten him all I want, if he doesn't have a high level of dopamine, the chemical part is really important.
Speaker 1:So sometimes what you're saying is we need to change the environment and not be so focused on changing the child.
Speaker 3:One of the most useful assumptions I think we can make is that we're all doing the best we can. If a kid had more dopamine he'd be more focused. You know, if the kid had different circuitry for social processing he'd find the social part of life easier. But for where he is right now he's doing the best he can.
Speaker 2:I think that that information is so freeing to me as a parent, because I don't have to make my child's behavior mean something. Now it's just like, oh, he didn't have enough dopamine. This is just biology, it's not disrespect, it's not laziness, which are all things that are very triggering to me, because I can't have a lazy kid, I can't have a disrespectful kid, and then that makes me bring the opposite of a non-anxious presence to parenting. So that understanding is just very calming to me.
Speaker 3:Good, good, and that's what we want, because I test kids for a living. So many parents, they feel terrible when they learn. Actually, your kid has trouble understanding the directions. He doesn't understand the language, and it's not that they're being disrespectful or it's not that they're not minding, they just don't understand it. There's something the left hemisphere is not allowing them to understand it, so we'll work on that. One of our mottos and we didn't make this up is to seek to understand before we judge. So often we judge without really understanding and we do kids a disservice when we do.
Speaker 2:One more thing with nuts the T on there threats. I've read that it's most commonly a threat to the ego. It's not like a mountain lion, right.
Speaker 3:Oh God, you think about a kid sitting in class who's embarrassed about being called on. You know absolutely. And so it can be something that's physically threatening, but also be something that's going to make you embarrassed, or or, or, or just or. There's something else that could potentially harmful to you financially, or that there's all kinds of things that make us fearful or worried that have nothing to do with physical safety. You're absolutely right, kate.
Speaker 2:I mean we think about. If you look at a child's life, they are constantly being compared to other kids being judged, and then all of those judgments can come back at them relationally If I don't do well on this test. So there's the threat to the ego. I'm already in my, I'm stressed, so I'm detached from my prefrontal cortex, I'm less focused, less able to think of those answers, so it already decreases my the likelihood that I'm going to perform and I know that if I don't, I'm going to be grounded or I'm going to lose soccer privileges or in some environments that I'm going to be yelled at, screamed at hit like that, like what's happening in the brain.
Speaker 2:There is just so far from setting the child up for success, and it's so hard because the average teacher or the average parent does not understand that the environment that we're creating and what we're asking of these kids is creating this neurotoxicity in their brain that makes them almost incapable of meeting those expectations.
Speaker 3:You're exactly right, Katie. I mean I think that I've been following people's attempts to apply brain research to education for almost 40 years now, and very early on people were saying that the ideal internal state for learning is relaxed alertness and the alertness part. If you're sleepy or you're bored, you aren't going to learn very well. And if or you're bored, you aren't going to learn very well. And if you're too stressed, you aren't going to learn very well. And that's because one biologist at Yale says the prefrontal cortex is the Goldilocks of the brain, meaning that the prefrontal cortex functions on this delicate balance of dopamine and a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine, and stress hormones will jack up the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine to such a extent that the prefrontal cortex can't function and it can't regulate the rest of the brain the way it's supposed to. And so the worst possible thing for learning is for kids to be highly stressed for a long time.
Speaker 3:Again, relaxed alertness and the optimal learning environment is high challenge, low threat. Give me something that's challenging, Otherwise it'll be boring. But don't make me feel threatened. Make it safe for me. If I don't get it right away, I can still keep working on it. But it helped me feel safe here. So my brain will work from both a learning point of view and a social engagement point of view, as you were saying.
Speaker 2:And I think that that really brings it full circle, where you have a challenge that feels possible but difficult. So that's, you know, if we go back to our self-determination theory that you guys talked about, that would meet the competence level, and then we have autonomy, we have all of this. It's your call, we trust you, and then we have this support, which is the relatedness, and we've kind of created just the perfect working environment for the brain there to learn and to succeed. We're almost out of time, so we have one last wrap-up question. This is a question we ask all of our guests who has been the greatest kindling influence in your life? Who is someone who has inspired your curiosity, your passion, your motivation? Who has been that person for you?
Speaker 3:The first person that comes to my mind is an English teacher I had in my senior year of high school and I graduated from high school with a 2.8 grade point average and I didn't do homework, I never turned anything on time, I didn't read books much, I did as little as possible and I flunked English. I guess the first or second quarter of second grade I flunked English, got a 2.0. And my father was dying of cancer and I realized that I don't want to do this bad and I had. So I went to talk with this English teacher, um, who, uh, really kind of I think it was non-judgmental and said well, if you want to do better, I can. I can give you some kind of extra reading here and some extra, some extra work.
Speaker 3:And so I read, actually finished a bunch of books and I actually became an English major. But I would say that she kind of expressed I knew, she knew I wasn't stupid. I mean, I think she kind of expressed confidence that I could. She knew about my father, but I didn't really have any intellectual curiosity until I was almost 19. And she really helped spark the development. She gave me stuff to read that I really did find interesting and I felt kind of compelled to read it because I didn't want to plug English again.
Speaker 3:But, so I would say she comes to mind as somebody who kind of, in a very subtle and gentle way, I think, encouraged me and gave me some interesting stuff to read. She thought I'd be interested in it and I was.
Speaker 1:She was able to help you tap into that intrinsic motivation, which is really what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3:It's just huge. This intrinsic motivation is just huge. Yeah, I couldn't say enough about it.
Speaker 1:It really is Well, we thank you so much. Would you like to share with our listeners where they can find you your books? All the fun things Sure.
Speaker 3:Theselfdrivenchildcom Start there.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. We've learned so much from you and we hope that everyone listening has enjoyed this interview with Phil Stixrud, author of the Self-Driven Child.
Speaker 3:I really had a fun time talking with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda Learn. If you have any questions you'd like for us to address on the podcast, all you have to do is email us at podcast at prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group, the kindled collective, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday spark the kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
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