Like, what was one nice thing you did for someone else today? And everyone goes around the table and answers that you can model writing notes of gratitude just because like there’s always someone they can find to thank for something and show appreciation. Make your child write thank you notes, or you write them yourself too. Or send thank you videos. Even though sometimes it’s a pain in the neck, it’s nice to acknowledge people around you.
So again, if you do this with your kids, if you model this, they’re gonna, at the end of the day, understand that this is a value. We ask questions all the time about how you do on the test? You know, did you score any basketball? Did you score any? I can’t think of the word points in basketball today.
But we also want to notice the questions we’re asking. And again what value is it getting at. So if our value is kindness we might ask questions like what did you do that helped someone else today. How did how do you think that made them feel? Or if you know that a child is struggling, you might ask, is there someone you could check on?
How could you make the situation better? If you know a friend is left out in a situation, you might ask, how did you handle that when so and so was left out, or even later to acknowledge a positive response? You noticed if they did something nice like you’re. Yeah, you are a person who thinks about others feelings after they tell you some story where they did something kind. This then reinforces this part of their identity, which we want to grow and instill.
If the value that you’re trying to instill in your kids is gratitude, then think about the questions that would help model or instill gratitude. So you might ask every night for the kids before bed, what is something you felt thankful for today? If the value was to instill resilience, you might ask, was there something hard or uncomfortable that you stuck with today? Again, that question makes them think about grit and resilience. So what we ask matters.
Be mindful that kids learn by watching us. Our kids learn best by watching us all in action. And again, that’s why the kids have play cell phones and wear makeup when they’re really, really little in their play. And this also goes for how we treat others. They’re watching not just your best pals, but also those in the community at large.
So smile and say hello to your neighbors. Offer to help an elderly woman load groceries into their trunk. Let someone go ahead of you in line who has just a couple of items. Hold the door open for a mom pushing the stroller. And if you have a younger child, you could even connect your behavior once in a while.
For your kids to understand. Like I held the door because it’s important to be thoughtful of others, right? You’re not going to do that every single time, but it’s okay to make that connection when they’re little once in a while. Again, we want to model what matters to us. Find time to regularly watch videos that show kids how awesome it is to be kind.
You might say something like, someone shared this amazing video with me. Let’s watch it together tonight, right? And they see that if you search for these kinds of things, there are millions of heartwarming stories of kindness, empathy, and compassion. This is a good example. On the screen, you see a screenshot of it’s called Kindness 101, and it’s a series on CBS news.
And that would be an awesome thing to watch with your kids to show that kindness matters to you. If along with the, you know, many junky TV shows our kids watch, we watch this kind together too. In this kindness 101 series, one episode talks about how good deeds domino. And. One example in this episode was a man who anonymously donated $100 bills to a pharmacy to for people who couldn’t afford their prescriptions.
And it turned out that this person who was donating was incredibly generous but not incredibly wealthy. And when he passed away, they did some story on him. And his kindness basically was contagious. And his generosity dominoed into a global movement where other people then in turn began donating to pharmacies for this same cause. So how cool and uplifting to share that kind of an anecdote with your kid or to watch it together.
So the second way we can raise kind and grounded kids is let them contribute. This photo always makes me laugh, because I often joke with my other mom friends that our kids have pretty good lives, which I wouldn’t change, of course, but I also think that sometimes our kids need to get their hands dirty and work hard too. And so while I’m glad that our kids have the roofs over their heads and fun enriching childhood experiences, we can’t underestimate the value of hard work. So let’s talk about what it means to let them contribute. I hope it’s not just me, but sometimes I will be across the room and my kiddo will be much nearer to the silverware drawer, but nonetheless, my kiddo will ask me to get her a fork instead of getting it for herself.
It seems small, but these are opportunities to build responsibility and independence. In the olden days, and in certain rural or less affluent communities, helping out at home was not and is not a question. It was a necessity. So milking cows, gathering eggs that the hens had laid and hauling fresh water were actually necessary for survival and to put dinner on the table each night. And in lower socioeconomic areas, working to support one’s family or taking care of younger siblings.
And the daily is still an expectation. Here, however, in affluent areas and in modern day, where we have groceries delivered to our house and our survival does not require as much hard work. And so while we’re grateful for these conveniences, we also can’t lose sight of the values and the lessons learned when everyone in the family contributes to the running of our households. I have a favorite comedian. His name is Ronnie Chang, and he has a whole bit on Amazon Prime.
And he pokes fun at the American way. He jokes that no item is too trivial and we never have to even leave our houses. He jokes that we have now prime now even two hour delivery. And the punchline is let’s get prime before he says, send it to me before I even want it, before I know I want it. I highly recommend you watch that.
So we have a lot of ways, basically, to get what we need without the help of our kids. And sadly, they don’t learn naturally to help if our new normal is this way Instacart, Amazon Prime, and DoorDash, other luxuries. And so if they don’t have to help to make sure our house runs smoothly, we need to make sure they’re not just getting a free pass. It is always easier for me at least, to clean up the dishes from dinner, rather than teach the kids how to rinse it off and put it in the dishwasher and make sure they do it. It is always easier to clean up the playroom of the toys when the kids are little, little ourselves, than to sit with them and help them to do it and monitor that they’re doing it.
But of course, we want them to learn how to do this and to build up this hard work muscle. I read a great book this year called Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff, where she explores parenting practices from indigenous communities including Maya, Inuit, and Hadzabe families in many non-Western cultures around the world. Children naturally become helpful, cooperative, and intrinsically motivated members of their family from a young age. A key concept she speaks about in this book is in Spanish akum, Though, which roughly translates to helpfulness. And it refers to a child who notices what needs to be done and helps without being asked.
Amazing, right? Inaction. This would look like a kid seeing the dishes are piled high in the sink and without being asked or bribed or nagged, just automatically helps the family by loading the dishwasher. So remember at the beginning of this talk I said I did not want anyone to leave here feeling badly about their parenting. So this book was wild in that her example sounded to me almost make believe.
And I do think there are real cultural differences to how children are raised. For example, I do not anticipate the kiddos here doing what the author observed in one of the cultures she visited in Mexico, where toddlers were using real knives and even small machetes to prepare vegetables and assist with outdoor work. I remember thinking, okay, we are not doing that. I sometimes wonder if I can even trust my kids with a butter knife. But we can still learn a great deal from these cultures where being helpful is both valued and practiced daily.
We can learn from generations of people who engage their children in the work of the family, rather than sending them off to play while they did the work. A simple way to begin expecting more hard work from your children is through regular chores. Start slowly. Introduce maybe 1 or 2 age appropriate tasks for young children. This may be putting their toys away.
For elementary school kids, this might be helping to set the table for tweens. It might be loading and unloading the dishwasher. For teens, it could be doing their own laundry or preparing a simple meal. Not only does this teach your kids skills that they’ll need for daily living, but they also learn that they have a role in the family. They are part of something greater than themselves, and in turn, this makes a child feel effective.
instilling purpose and confidence. So if we start by giving kids a template for helping each other in the family, right? The little mini community. It eventually generalizes to the larger community, like maybe their school and ultimately the bigger community. So ideally, we don’t just assign individualistic chores, which might be, you know, clearing their own plate.
But helping other members of the family. So maybe like setting the table for everyone or clearing the whole table or organizing the whole mudroom, not just keeping their shoes in their, you know, appropriate cubby. Contribution creates confidence. So let them contribute to the running of the household. This is what it looks like to let them contribute.
This is not the same as having the child play in their toy kitchen while you cook. There’s nothing wrong with children using make believe play. I’m a big proponent of play, but I’m talking in this situation about truly inviting your child into the kitchen with you to stir something or to roll out dough, even if it’s not perfect, because then they feel that membership into our family, they feel a sense of belonging and they’re learning real skills at the same time. And this could be starting like something really small, like making rice in a rice cooker. A child can measure the water, pour it in, measure the rice, pour it in and push the start button, and in less than five minutes.
It’s a simple task. They feel like they helped make dinner and take pride in contributing. And the next time they can probably do it by themselves or after a few practices. So what gets in the way? You know, honestly, I think shorter term, like we said, it is much easier to just tell kids to go play while we do the work, while we clean up the mess and cook the dinner and tend to the to do’s rather than inviting them in.
The culture we live in, as we discussed, is pretty busy and pretty overscheduled, so sometimes we just lack proper time to devote to this and we focus. I would say too much in this culture on outcome and less on process. So I’ll get to an example where you can see what I mean. My kids love a breakfast that we call eggs in the nest. Basically, you cut a hole in the middle of a piece of toast or a piece of bread.
You fry the bread in a pan on the stove, you crack the egg in the hole, and then you flip it over. So when I engaged my daughter in helping to teach her how to make this with me, I noticed that she cracked the egg from way too high and it splattered all over rather than landing neatly in the hole. Immediately, I corrected her in the moment because in the moment I was really stuck. That my job was to teach her the proper way to make this breakfast so she’d know, right? You can imagine what happened.
It totally backfired. She did not want to cook with me the next day. And we have to remember. And I remembered since then, the goal in these interactions is not that they cook a perfect dish, certainly not the first time, but that they have a meaningful experience where they feel a connection to you as a parent, and they want to be helpful and join in the family work again and again. Sometimes kids are too young to actually do any of the cooking, but even if they’re being invited to watch and they’re in our space, maybe they’re coloring and watching as you narrate what they’re doing, we’re still nurturing this helping part of them.
So again, we have to think about short term versus long term what we are accomplishing. So the idea, come help me cook harder in the short term. Easier to say, go play while I get dinner on the table. But in the short term, if we spend more time redoing their work, like maybe we, you know, teach them how to use a dustpan and a broom, and we have to like redo it ourselves because they missed half the crumbs. Even if it doesn’t get cleaned up the right way in the long term, you have a helper and someone competent in their young adulthood, rather than someone who learns that we leave work to adults and we go play, or we go do our homework, or we go to our extracurricular activity, they learn that they have ownership in helping the family run smoothly.
I have college kids that I work with who are unbelievably smart and great academically. Often they’re at Ivy League schools, but they flail under the stressors of life skills that they lack when they go away to college. They don’t know how to do their laundry. They don’t know how to cook basic meals when they’re in an apartment, or how to call and schedule a doctor’s appointment. Their parents have done all of this for them, and now they’re not only learning how to be away from home for the first time, which is hard at first, but they’re also lacking in these daily living skills.
The same goes for emotional regulation skills. They may fall apart at the first. Be they have ever gotten at this Ivy League school because they haven’t had much practice coping with disappointment or their parents have really bolstered them over the years by emailing teachers on their behalf and so forth and avoiding the upset. The third way to raise kind and grounded kids is to step back so they can grow. These young adults who I’m describing at the Ivy League schools, I want you to know they are not alone in their struggles.
Kids today are just lacking in real world experiences that help them gain skills they’ll need for their lives, in part because they’re spending so much more time in these structured activities and so much more time in a digital world, and less of this free time learning, growing, and exploring in the real world. And this is exactly what Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation book, has been studying how the shift from real world childhood to screen based childhood is impacting kids mental health. Jonathan Haidt calls this the great rewiring of childhood, a shift from play based real world experiences to phone based, screen centered ones. And I should give a shout out to catch here. Doctor Lisa Novak gave an incredible talk on sort of this book and how we could, you know, understand how to implement some of these lessons in our community and in our real world.
And I would say it’s been something that we continue to talk about at many catch discussion groups. So if you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it, although it is lengthy. The premise of this book is more real world should be the goal and less screen world. The goal for kids and teens is to have more face to face interactions with family and friends. And when kids spend less time on the screens, they’re spending that same time in their real world relationships, right?
We only have so much time in a day. So while in a perfect world, I would love to, you know, say no screens is my recommendation. I understand that this is not realistic for most families and that is totally okay. I want you to instead continue to set smaller goals in regards to less screen time in your home that promotes healthy change. However you implement this is up to you.
And there’s no one size fits all way to implement this. So please don’t make you. I don’t want this to make you feel guilty. But for example, this might be screen free meal times. That’s a rule in the house.
We do not bring phones to the table. Right? Breakfast, lunch, dinner, any meal it might be. We do not use the phone in the car. Right.
That is a screen free space. Make small changes that work for your family. What’s going to happen is kids are going to obviously feel more connected, have more of these real world experiences, face to face interactions. They might also experience being bored and see what amazing things come from that too. Lenore Skenazy, who’s a journalist and an author of the book Free Range Kids, founded a nonprofit called Let Grow, which is focused on building independence in children.
Let grow is really about giving kids opportunities to build confidence through these real world experiences trying things, figuring things out, gaining independence. When kids contribute at home, they start to feel capable. Like they matter, like they can do real things. But even when kids feel capable, often we step in as parents and do things for them that we shouldn’t do. So again, we need to give kids the space to struggle, to try to figure things out.
And we really need to step back so they can grow. That’s where the growth happens. So the Let Grow movement encourages parents to let kids take more risks, be more independent, essentially do things on their own, like walk home from school or go to the grocery store. Themselves, walk to a friend’s house, make a meal for themselves, advocate for themselves by emailing a teacher or a coach rather than the parent doing it for them. There was a great reality TV show called Old Enough! that took place in Japan from several years back that I remember loving, and it followed young children.
Like seriously. They might have been 2 to 6 years old, approximately. So these kids who were like kindergarteners were sent on real errands alone, buying groceries, delivering items, completing tasks for their families. It’s hard to imagine, but they started early. And in this show, some kids walked surprisingly long distances, navigated complex routes, which is why it felt so striking to watch.
But this is what independence feels like in action. The kids were sent to do these things like go to the local store, pick up 1 to 2 items from the grocery, pay and return with their items. They needed to not get distracted, know how to get there, remember to take the money and the items home. But boy did they feel accomplished and helpful when they returned home. So in order to raise resilient kids, we need to let them do more.
So let them walk. Ride bikes further than you might be comfortable with at first. Let them cook a meal solo. Let them order their own food in a restaurant. Let them schedule their own doctor’s appointments.
Let them make their own lunch. Let them advocate for themselves with teachers and coaches. It does sound counterintuitive, but in order to raise a resilient adult, we do need to let kids experience setbacks and failures and accept that they’re not going to be happy and successful every second of every day. We need, as parents to let go of this hope, which is unrealistic, that every moment of every day is going to be smooth for them. We need to allow our children to experience life’s ups and downs to fall into fail and to not be happy every second of every day.
Let them experience uncomfortable emotions. We parents work so hard sometimes to shield them from disappointment and struggles and painful emotions, and instead we need to allow them to experience the challenges as they naturally arise, which they will. Instead of trying so hard to shield them when we bubble wrap our kids now picture on the left, it backfires. They end up with poor coping skills for their lives, which in turn usually results in more depression and anxiety later. Right.
The cartoon on the right, which I’ll read to you, shows a young man probably around, I would say age 30, all swaddled up. And the father, I would imagine on the left says, you know, at some point we have to stop swaddling him. Right? So it just illustrates how, of course, as our kids get older, we need to give them more freedom to navigate through life themselves. Here’s another example of what we’re asking you to do.
If your child auditions for their first school play and they don’t get the role they hoped for again, part of life. Do not allow them to drop out of the play. Instead, make sure they follow through on their commitment to be in the play and help them see that they can do the best they can in whatever small role they were given. This is an opportunity to teach your child how to cope with disappointment and learn that they will get through it. It also teaches the importance of being a part of something greater than yourself.
Like you can’t have a play without a chorus, right? So you’re contributing to the whole production. You have permission to defeat your child in games. How many of us have sometimes let our child beat us in a game? Again, I relate.
It’s much easier to let your child win and be thrilled. And sometimes people want to prevent their children from experiencing that disappointment or that huge emotion and maybe having a major explosion or tantrum. But it’s never too early to develop coping tools to deal with disappointment. So it’s okay to beat your kiddo in a game of basketball or board game. Sometimes we are letting them, after all, experience real life.
Many of us in our practice have clients who are kids, who come in with issues around competition, with peers where they’re hitting or kicking. If they lose a game, or say the ref made an unfair call and storm off, rather than handling the disappointment in that moment around not winning the game, but powering through and knowing they can handle it. We personally don’t have this struggle as much in my household because my husband is super competitive, so he just doesn’t let our kids beat them. So give kids space to try things on their own. Stepping back as parents includes allowing kids more space to do things on their own.
A big example of this would be overnight camp, but it could be as simple as a sleepover away from home. Any of these experiences where we’re not right there with them foster resilience and confidence. Some of my clients with separation anxiety, for example, take iPads with them to sleepovers. It’s kind of like a baby blanket where they know they can call their mom or dad. If they struggle, ask them to pick them up early.
Even just being able to say good night gives them some reassurance that they’re kind of connected. And so often one of my challenges to them will be sleep at their friends house again, a friend where they’ve slept a million times before, where they’re comfortable with the parents and so forth. But this time, don’t bring your iPad so they don’t have that constant feeling of connection to home, and they’re not going to realistically ask to come home or get picked up early, unless it was so bad that they had to use their voice and speak with the friend’s parent. It pushes these kids to try harder, to tolerate a normative feeling like homesickness and just push through. And again, what a great feeling when they know they did it and they could handle it.
Sometimes we have to remind ourselves the greatest growth stems from uncomfortable moments without parents right on the scene as a crutch. Kids naturally figure out how to do so much more on their own. So over the years, social psychologists have seen a shift in parenting practices. Partly, I would say, due to the misconception that the world is so much more unsafe than it used to be. Again, not true, but this different parenting style is something we’ve kind of grown accustomed to.
And unfortunately, I think the bubble wrapping of our kids has backfired. We now have generations that are less equipped to handle not just true adversity, but even basic life skills. And that’s why I do think we have so many calls in our practice for kids who are really struggling with emotional regulation. We just aren’t allowing our kids to cope with the feelings that are part of life. And again, I don’t say that in any judgmental way.
I do feel like that urge to rescue too. I know where it comes from and it always comes from a good place. I have clients, for example, who text their parents from the school bathroom when they’re having a peer conflict, or if they get a disappointing grade on a test. The parents, before I kind of counsel them, might again, best of intentions immediately reply to the text something reassuring to their kiddo, like it’ll be okay. Or even coach their kid on how to handle the peer conflict.
Like all in the here and now moment when the kid’s in the bathroom. So what kids actually learn from those interactions is that they need their parents to help them in the moment. And they start to lack confidence in their ability to handle these situations and emotions, which in turn creates a lot of anxiety. So again, when I would sit with these parents, I would say, I know it’s hard and I want you to let them handle the situation themselves, right? Maybe you have to do baby steps and give them an emoji like you got this, but that’s it.
And eventually nothing. Anytime, though, when kids and parents are not connected with their devices, whether in town or away from home, these are the moments that provide growth opportunities for both children and parents. And we as parents also need to get more comfortable not having that constant reassurance that our kids are doing great all the time. We also need to let them have the school day, let’s say, free of devices, which is supposed to be a rule, but depending on the school, it’s not always implemented. Discomfort equals growth.
I want you to look at this for a minute. Many of our kids are taught the growth mindset concept in schools from a really young age, and it’s important for us parents to understand also that from discomfort comes growth. So in therapy, I often talk to the kids I work with about the difference between feeling uncomfortable and true danger signals. We are wired to survive, so when we feel a rush of anxiety in our bodies, we have to check in with ourselves. And we have to teach our kids the same skill to ask, are we in true danger or are we just uncomfortable?
Right? Is there a saber tooth lion actually chasing us? Like true danger? Makes sense that my anxiety is up. Or are we just uncomfortable because we got a bad grade on a test?
And if the answer is I’m just out of my comfort zone, I’m not feeling particularly comfortable, then I want you to reframe it for yourself as a parent, for your child, as an opportunity for growth. When we try to shield our kids, we tend to hover, and when we hover, we are taking away true opportunities to grow. So when kids have to problem solve on their own, whether the middle school lunchroom drama or they need to talk to a teacher about needing an extension, they learn and they grow. When we jump in, we’re depriving them of an opportunity. This image, which I’ll read aloud in a moment, was from a Catholic high school for boys in little Rock, Arkansas.
The principal posted this sign and it says, if you are dropping off your son’s forgotten lunch books, homework, equipment, etc., please turn around and exit the building. Your son will learn to problem solve in your absence. If you have a teenager who forgot their lunch one time, of course it’s okay to bring them their lunch to school. But if you have a teenager who forgets over and over again to bring their lunch, they’re likely going to only learn the better habit through experiencing the natural consequence of feeling hungry. So it’s okay if your child feels hungry for the last few hours of school, right?
The hunger pains will not affect the overall health and well-being of your child, but they will serve as a reminder the next day and after that, to put their lunch in their backpack before leaving the house. If you have younger kids, you might not feel quite as comfortable with this scenario because maybe your child’s not old enough to pack his or her lunch. But if she forgets, let’s say, her favorite water bottle at the park outing, she’ll learn to cope with it, you know, and be okay and remember it for the next outing at the park. Remind yourself. Remind your child the goal is not to be happy all the time.
Your children will be in uncomfortable positions and we need to help kids practice feeling those feelings. I want you to think about a moment in your life, or in your child’s life, when maybe something didn’t go exactly their way or your way. But looking back, something good came of it. One of my kiddos was really into dance. She still dances, but she made a team.
She didn’t make a team. Excuse me? That she had auditioned for at the start of high school. Instead, she had to try a totally new sport. Or she wanted to try a totally new sport versus doing nothing.
In her case, she tried out for cross country. She turns out, loves this sport, made incredible friends and truly, I think, found a lifelong sport that she adores. Now, of course, she was disappointed at first finding out she didn’t make this team, but looking back, she managed that feeling and she learned such an important life lesson that life throws us curveballs but often leads us down another good, maybe even better path. So we all have times in our life where we felt disappointment, sadness, frustration. But after we tolerated those feelings, ultimately we benefited because we made the best of a situation.
We had a positive outlook. And again, usually good things follow, right? So if you parents intervene and call the school or other parents or the coach of the sports team, you’re sending a message to your child that you don’t have confidence that they can handle the situation, and you’re taking a true opportunity away for growth. Again, this is how kids learn emotional regulation. So the bottom line is, if you remember nothing else, we don’t need to do more.
As parents, we often need to do less and trust that our kids are more capable than we think. So when we model what matters, when we let them contribute, and when we step back so they can grow, that is how we raise kids who are not just successful, but grounded, capable and kind. I want you to notice the slide. These are all amazing parenting books that I highly recommend. Much of which are incorporated into this talk.
And feel free to take a picture or look back later on at the recording, but I would really highly suggest all of these books and I discuss many of these parenting topics in more depth on the coping podcast, where I interview guests and experts on parenting, child development, and challenging issues for parents to navigate. So please tune in if you want to hear more of any of these topics. The Coping Podcast is on the Coping Partner’s website, but it’s also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all the places where you can find the podcasts that you listen to. And now, finally, I’d like you to take out a pen and paper and just jot down at least one more. If you want values or goals and a corresponding behavior you want to promote, that will be in the support of that value or goal.
And if you make this one change, that’s an amazing start. And then if you extrapolate this for years to come, you’re basically planting a seed and watching it grow. My hope is that this feels helpful and doable. I really want to thank you for taking the time with us today to reflect together on what’s most important. So I’m happy to open it up now to any questions from our participants and after the lunch, and learn if you have any other questions, feel free to take a photo of this screen so you can have my contact information.
For other questions in the future, email me at info@drleighweisz.com with questions. Absolutely. Anytime. Do not hesitate. And thank you so, so much for having us.
Outro: 46:42
Thank you for listening to The Coping Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes and check out our podcast page at copingpartners.com.