[00:00:00] Michael Schulder: And now an important message on parenting from the former dean of freshmen at Stanford University,
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Around about2005, I was beginning to see that the rise in parental involvement in the life of university students came with a decrease in a wherewithal to be adult in those university students.
Michael Schulder: Julie Lythcott-Haims has witnessed firsthand a troubling change in a growing percentage of young adults on college campuses.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: They were constantly in touch with their parents to just sort of report on everything that was happening and to sort of seek permission about what would happen next. And I began to see the manifestation of what researchers have said is the world's longest umbilical cord, which is the cell phone.
Michael Schulder: It's the result of years of what we now call over-parenting.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: We have kids coming to college from relatively affluent backgrounds, middle and upper middle class, where parents have done so much hovering over, protecting over, involving over, directing, concierge-ing their kid’s life. They arrive having so much done for them.
Michael Schulder: And the consequences? [00:01:00]
Julie Lythcott-Haims: This is why the mental health clinics on every college campus are overflowing because young people not permitted to fail are experiencing setbacks and difficulties, disappointments.
Michael Schulder: Do not worry, parents. Dean Julie has developed a roadmap for us, one that begins with a change in how we see the road, as well as the destination. Her book, How To Raise An Adult is one of the most impactful parenting books of the year. You're about to hear why. This is Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious, I'm Michael Schulder.
So here I am sitting inches away from the author of a highly acclaimed new book called, and it's a memorable title, How To Raise An Adult: Break Free Of The Over-Parenting Trap And Prepare Your Kids For Success. Julie Lythcott-Haims. Julie, you’re gonna love this story. Last night, I’m reading your book, I read the chapter on the importance of chores in a child's development- and by the way, so Julie Lythcott-Haims, who spent, how many years did you spend as dean of freshmen at Stanford university?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I was in that role for 10 years, Michael.
Michael Schulder: For 10 years. And so I'm reading about the importance of all things, not grades, not extracurricular activities, chores, and I put the book down and I went into the dining room where my son was diligently doing his homework. And I said, “Can you please help me? I need to get the garbage canisters down to the street.” Let's start, out of sequence, with this idea of the importance of chores in raising a child to become an adult.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Congratulations, first of all, I love the fact that you read something and then decided “I can do this tonight. In my own home, I can be in charge of what's going on and try the chore thing out.” So congratulations. There's something called the Harvard Grant study, which is [00:03:00] apparently the longest longitudinal study of humans ever done. They began with the graduates of a particular class at Harvard in the 19- late 1930s - they were all men, of course, Harvard wasn't coeducational at the time - I think there were about 750 members of the class. And they studied these men over the course of their lifetimes right up until their death. And some of those guys I think are still around, uh, but most have passed on. So they looked at 60, 70 decades worth of life experience. And two of the major findings from that study are happiness in life, self-reported, happiness equals love, full stop. So if you want to be happy, it's the quality of your relationships. And if you want to be professionally successful, chores, having done chores as a child, are the greatest indicator of professional success. And the earlier you start the better Michael, when I read that study, I thought, “Oh my goodness. I'm doing it all wrong with my own kids. I'm focused on their grades. I'm focused on their performance. I'm focused on their enrichment. What [00:04:00] I really need to do is make them get off their butts and help around the house and love them in a way that makes them feel worthy of love, so they'll be inspired to go out and find it.” You know, chores and love… if my kids can exit high school, you know, with a sense of how to pitch in around the house and how to love another human and receive love. I think I'll have well prepared them for a meaningful and purposeful and successful and happy life.
Michael Schulder: And so this is coming from, and now I have, I have to give a little bit of your bio because it's, it's one of these overachieving bios, let's face it, okay? So right from your book, Julie Lythcott-Haims served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to undergraduate experience. She has… Okay, now we go on… where did you graduate from? Stanford University. Law degree from Harvard, now you're pursuing your MFA… So you are somebody who is clearly driven and clearly values [00:05:00] the best education possible. How do chores fit in on balance to succeeding academically?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, I think what I'm really getting at in the book How to Raise an Adult, is our definition of success in this nation has become quite narrow, quite myopic, if you think about it. In many cases, entities around the nation were so hell-bent on our kids, getting the highest possible GPA being test, prepped up the wazoo, as some people say, in order to be a competitive applicant for a tiny number of colleges and universities, two of which you just named in reading my bio. And what I saw as Dean of freshmen was over the years, more and more of our students were coming highly accomplished in a transcript and resume sense, but really quite unfamiliar with their own selves. They seemed to me to be existentially impotent, which is an awful thing to think about a person. It was frightening as [00:06:00] I saw it. What I mean is they seemed unfamiliar with their own selves. They were incredibly good at doing what was expected of them, but they hadn't been allowed to lay their own path, make their own choices. They'd not been allowed to fall or fail. And so they'd arrived at this destination, ill-equipped for what the real life would sort of throw at them. And as I tried to delve into why this was happening and why childhood somehow was not preparing kids to have the wherewithal to be an adult, what I came to appreciate was we've been so hyper-focused on their academic and extracurricular enrichment, we're absolving them of doing the garbage and the recycling and the laundry and the dishes. They're not learning that “pitch in” mindset, that sort of “Let me help. Let me, let me support this environment that I'm in. Let me do for others. Let me do the grunt work. Let me do the work that constitutes a functioning life.” [00:07:00] Deprived of those chores, they ended up gorgeous in a resume and transcript sense, but lacking this sort of hard-work work ethic that says “When it's unpleasant, I'll still do it. When it's a mess that has to be sorted out, I have the skills to figure that out.”
Michael Schulder: So let me ask you, when did you arrive at Stanford and when did you start noticing that this was part of the profile of these kids? And not just at Stanford, obviously, but a lot of places.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Thanks for giving that caveat. I always throw it in there because I don't want anyone listening to think this is just those kids at Stanford. You know, I'd talk with colleagues at colleges and universities around the country, in every tier, in every region, public, private, and they were all seeing what we were seeing at four-year schools. Community Colleges are different, and it's important to note that. And I think it really hints at the why behind this. This over-parenting, this sort of parents involved, and now we're sort of segueing from chores into the larger topic. But, you know, what I've written about is a set of, of young people, we now call them kids, we didn't call 18-year-olds kids when [00:08:00] you and I were 18 or 20 or 25. But we have kids coming to college from relatively affluent backgrounds, middle and upper middle class where parents have done so much hovering, over protecting, over involving, over directing, concierge-ing their kid's life, they arrive having so much done for them, less capable of doing for themselves. At community colleges, in contrast, you tend to have a population of quote unquote non-traditional students. They might have children of their own. They might have gone back to school after a career. They might be working during the day and going to school at night, living a life that sort of de facto is giving them a set of life skills, a grit, a resilience, a toughness, a “I can do this. I can figure it out” mindset that, you know, their more affluent counterparts lack. So, when did I begin seeing this, Michael? I was a lawyer for about four years in the mid-nineties, and I came to the university in 1998 as the Dean of Students at Stanford law school.
Michael Schulder: And let me just stop right there because lawyer in the mid-nineties, was that something that was your passion? Were you driven to go to Harvard Law [00:09:00] School because you loved the idea of being an attorney?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know, Michael, I was driven to go to Law School because I fell in love with law as a tool to mend and fix and heal and transform at the individual and societal level. What happened to me in law school, as happens to many, is I became tremendously swayed away from my own values. I went to be a social justice lawyer, I quickly learned that prestige and value were conferred upon those who chose the corporate route. And, um, you know, as a young woman of color at the time, I was so, so deeply interested in what others thought of me and was seeking approval. So I went the route of corporate to get the big salary and the fancy briefcase and meet the approval and applause of others. I came out to Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, began at a wonderful firm in 1994. It was the birth of the commercialized internet. Everything in intellectual property was rapidly changing and I chose that practice area because the people and the partners were lovely people. And I thought “I want to work for good people.” But [00:10:00] intrinsically there was little the firm was doing that really tapped into my personal values. And, um, after eight or nine months, I found myself feeling “Wait a minute. I'm so, so demoralized. I don't think this is why I'm here on the planet,” you know, “I'm doing well, I'm, I'm valued here, I'm being groomed for greater opportunity, I'm earning one hell of an income, but I don't feel good about what I'm doing every day.” And I was doing it every day, of course it was a six and seven day a week kind of practice, often. And, um, I sat with my own tremendous discomfort and thought “Julie, you don't have the right to be this unhappy. You've been well-educated, you know, you've got a great education, parents who supported and loved you. How the heck did you end up so far away from your own self?” You know, it was as if I was taking an aerial view of my life, as if my life could be plotted on a map and I was taking this aerial view and I thought “My goodness, I'm on the periphery of my own life somehow. How did that happen? How did I let that happen?”
Michael Schulder: And this was, and this was, by the way, in your mid-twenties. [00:11:00]
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, yeah.
Michael Schulder: Which isn't that old to be reconsidering what you want to do. Most people wait another 15, 20 years.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know what, Michael? I was bewildered because I had been given the very opportunities you reeled off when you read my bio, you know? And I thought “I don't have the right to be this unhappy.” You know, there are plenty of people on the planet who don't have anything, can't dream of the opportunities I've been given. You know, I've been given opportunities- it was sort of a wake-up call, slap in the face to myself, at the same time, soothing myself, like, “Come on. You're so unhappy, figure out what you're meant to do and go do it.” And this was pre-internet, as I like to tell my students, when I would tell them this story about my own discovery of myself, I said, you know, I didn't have the internet. And it was a weekend evening when I was miserable and crying on my back porch, so I didn't have a bookstore, you know, or a library - everything was closed. All I had was myself. So I took out a piece of paper and a pencil, and I drew a line down the middle of the page. And on one side I wrote, “What am I good at?” And on the other side I wrote, “What do I love?” And I just started to [00:12:00] brainstorm. I didn't even know what I was good at. I knew what people said I was good at, again, so young, so beholden to other people's opinions of me. But my instinct began to, to speak in that evening and said “You know what you're good at Julie? You're good at working with people. You're a people person.” And I think, Michael, I had devalued that as a skill, as a kid. I saw it as a soft thing that wasn't going to be marketable or valued in the workplace, you know? It was sort of like my personality or the color of my hair, irrelevant
Michael Schulder: But coming back for one second, because again, a lot of- you're making a lot of connections between this phenomenon, and we'll get to define it more carefully, called over-parenting, which sometimes prevents kids from hearing their own voice.Did your parents over-parent you, or was there another reason that you didn't hear your own voice until your mid-twenties?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I don't think my parents over-parented me. I'm gen X, they weren't hoverers. I was latchkey, I let myself in after school, they didn't ask me about my homework. They didn't check up on my [00:13:00] grades. I came from a family of, um, people who are quite accomplished. And so I knew it was college, you know, college for certain-
Michael Schulder: Can you share what their accomplishments were?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. Um, oh, wow. I'd love to. Um, my father, who’s been gone 20 years, was Assistant Surgeon General under President Jimmy Carter. And so as a kid, I grew up, spent four lovely years in Northern Virginia in Fairfax County.
Michael Schulder: What was his name by the way?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: He was Dr. George I. Lythcott and, um, you know, African-American, had gone to medical school in Boston University, graduated in 1943, was really a pioneer. Prior to working for Carter, he led the effort to eradicate smallpox in West Africa in the sixties, which is where he went as an American to do this important work, and he met my British mother there. And my mother's a teacher. My mother teaches people how to teach chemistry, that's her passion. She has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Michael Schulder: So I [00:14:00] have to, again, stop you, and we might not go linear here, but this is a very important thing. I mean, if your father went to medical school at BU in the 1940s, he understood what the meaning of struggle was.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Absolutely.
Michael Schulder: And I just have to thank that seeing a father who has, in your case, who succeeded enormously, I don't know if you saw the struggle part, but how did that play in? Did you understand it from an early age, that struggle is a part of life?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I appreciate your asking this question, because I think I hadn't really recognized it until you asked. But yes, my father's life was an American tale, was an American story and, you know, he persisted through terribly, terribly segregated Oklahoma, uh, which is where he grew up, and went off to college at Bates college in Lewiston, Maine, where he was one of four African-American men. And, you know, went on to BU medical school, you know, and became a [00:15:00] professor at Oklahoma at back in, you know, I'm talking 50 years, you know, plus years ago. He was a faculty member, but wasn't invited to the dean's house for a meal because the dean wouldn't have a black person into his home. You know, that was my father's reality. And, um, and I was aware of it, and my father, um, wasn't a victim. And my mother too, you know, was this educator of kids. She was sort of, she was the person that could teach anyone chemistry - she's still alive - she is the person, you know, who believes any kid can be turned on to chemistry and boy, chemistry can turn anyone on ‘cause it's magnificent.
Michael Schulder: So the over-parenter in me says “I want to hire your mother and bring her over to the house.” Would I be wrong to do that?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, if you're doing it because you want your kid to get the best possible grade, you're wrong to do it. If you're doing it to nourish your kid's budding interest in chemistry, you're right to do it. Do you see the distinction?
Michael Schulder: Very important distinction.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, exactly. Of course. We want the best for our kids. Of course, we want them to succeed. We've just got to pay attention to who they are and fan the flames instead of be hell bent on them, getting a 4.3 GPA and you know, the perfect SATs.
Michael Schulder: And so this isn't- I’m sorry, I want to lock in on this phrase you use, ‘cause I've never quite heard it used this way, “the rudder of purpose.” And you spend a lot of time in How to Raise an Adult talking about purpose. Okay, we can't all find our purpose early, but let me ask you, in terms of this distinction between nurturing or helping nurture a child's talent in something that you've identified [00:18:00] versus something you think the child has identified, how do you figure out that balance, when to push a kid and when not? Because sometimes they really might want to succeed in something and they just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: It's a beautiful question and I wish I had, you know, the simple step-by-step answer. The answer is complex and it has everything to do with your kid. What you're looking for as Bill Damon, another Stanford professor, adolescent development expert - he's a professor of education, runs the Stanford center on adolescents, really coined the definition of adolescence. He talks about purpose and he talks about, you know, kids as young as 12, you know, can have a sense of purpose, and that what we must do as parents is really look for the spark in them and then fan the flames. And so, you know, when the kid is hitting some kind of obstacle in music, it's to interrogat. It’s to not interrogate in an angry sense, but to ask good [00:19:00] questions about, you know, “How's it going? How's it feeling? I see you're struggling,” you know, “what's, what's that feeling like?” You know, “how do you feel about this instrument or how do you- tell me what you enjoy?” You know, sort of reminding them of their own enjoyment, uh, while also validating the fact that this is hard. What you want to do is be motivating them to overcome the hurdle rather than to drag them over the hurdle yourself. There's a colleague at Stanford of mine, Edina Glickman, who's founded the Resilience Project. With her counterpart at Harvard, Abigail Lipson, they decided that college students today are failure deprived. It's a lovely term, you know? We as parents think “I don't want my kid to fail. I love them. I'm afraid, you know, for what the world will throw at them.” You know, “I want to protect and prevent at all times.” And we're just doing too much. We've forgotten that childhood is meant to prepare a child for adulthood and that failure is life's greatest teacher. And so we've sort of removed all of those opportunities from their life path. They get to [00:20:00] college and, you know, Mom or Dad, aren't there to argue every point, you know, with the teacher, although they do try these days. And yeah, the kid is really struggling. And this is where, this is why the mental health clinics on every college campus are overflowing because young people not permitted to fail are experiencing setbacks and difficulties - disappointments, roommates, outcomes in the classroom, you know, an opportunity they wanted to get that didn't go their way. And they feel as if somehow their entire sense of self, you know, has been shattered.
Michael Schulder: And do you know, from the research, that this is really something very different from what was happening 20, 30, 40 years ago?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: It’s very different. I mean, there are new- when I was- Look, I was dean from 2002 to 2012. I wrote my first op-ed on this subject 10 years ago in 2005. And Michael, all I had then was a lot of compassion for young adults and some hunches that this was going to turn out to be problematic for them, [00:21:00] for their mental health.
Michael Schulder: So which is interesting because you didn't see it immediately. It just, it was sort of like some red flags you noticed. Can you give us, without mentioning names, give us some case studies of what-
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yes, absolutely. So, um, 10 years later there are studies from the field of psychology, linking an over-involved hovering parenting style with greater rates of anxiety and depression in children. So in the beginning, um, what we saw back in ‘98, when I was the dean of students at the Law School, I'd interact with the other student affairs people on campus, those who worked with undergraduates. And the first set of parents who came and didn't want to leave, came to Stanford in 1998. And we laughed at them, because it seems so silly. They were cute and quaint and odd. Who are these parents who think they have some role to play in the day-to-day life of the university? Of course they didn't stay literally, but they were very involved by email and by phone. And over the years we stopped laughing because their numbers were growing and we had to ask ourselves [00:22:00] what's going on.
Michael Schulder: So literally 1998 for you was sort of ground zero in terms of recognizing that, like, the first patient.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. Exactly. It didn't seem like the first patient though, because we didn't know that their actions were going to turn out to be really harmful and problematic in the lives of their kids. It wasn't until when I wrote the op-ed piece in 2005, this was now, you know, seven years later. It was maybe originally 2-3% of the parents, and then it was 5% of the parents, and then it was 10% of the parents and then 15 and so on. I think nowadays a good half, maybe 60% even of parents are, you know, doing some kind of over-involved hovering. Roundabout 2005, I was beginning to see that the rise in parental involvement in the life of university students came with a decrease in a wherewithal to be adult in those university students, okay? So to the examples, students were just whipping out their phones- well, that didn't really happen until I suppose the iPhone in 2007, 2008. Before they whipped out their phones, they were, [00:23:00] you know, I'm, I'm mixing my technology here at mixing my sense of what happened when. They were constantly in touch with their parents to just sort of report on everything that was happening and to sort of seek permission about what would happen next. So they were looking for guidance about “Well, what should I study? What should I take? Do you think this is all right?” Or, you know, “I just had a bike accident. What do I do?” Or “I've got a paper back in English and I don't understand my professor's comments. What do I do?” Turning to mom or dad as naturally as taking a breath of air, instead of going within, they seem to lack a sense of confidence in their own ability to sit with a problem or a discomfort or a decision and mull it over and handle it, cope with it and come up with some kind of next step or solution. And I became concerned when I realized my students weren't mortified like you or I would have been at 18, if our moms or dads picked up the phone and called the university. They were grateful. And that's when I became concerned for their sake and for the sake of us all. Of course, any one of us would be grateful to have a well-heeled, better [00:24:00] educated, better connected, you know, person or two on either side of us doing the heavy lifting of life. But what's to become of a young adult who's so heavily reliant on other adults, you know, to just walk the path of life for them? What's to become of us all as a society of the millennials, and this is who we're talking about, the biggest generation now in American history, if they can't really do for themselves, fend for themselves. God help us all when their parents are gone.
Michael Schulder: Now you must, you know, when you see freshmen come in, not every freshmen is dependent on their parents. So were there patterns in the kids who really were independent adults that you noticed? And can you give me specific examples of, like, “I know a kid and here's the way this kid was raised and it turned out great.”
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, absolutely. So contrast a kid who was in the advising office and didn't know where her next class was. And, you know, it's three o'clock in the afternoon and she's got a class at three 15 and she doesn't know the location. This [00:25:00] is, you know, an office with internet capacity, with terminals, for people to use. She has a smartphone, and yet she decides to call her mom in another country, many time zones away to have the mom figure out where the next class is. And the mom was quite happy to help out, okay? That sort of, just, reliance upon parent to tell me what to do and where to go, even though I am perfectly capable or ought to be, and there are people in this office employed by the university to help me… you know, that-
Michael Schulder: Did this happen right in front of you basically? Or-
Julie Lythcott-Haims: It did actually.
Michael Schulder: And what did you say to this- how old was she? S
Julie Lythcott-Haims: She was 18.
Michael Schulder: What did you say?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: She said “Dean Julie, I don't know where my next class is.” And I said, “Oh, well, we can help you figure that out.” And she's like, “It's okay. You know, I've just dialed my mom.” And she was saying this to me while she was holding the phone up to her ear. And she happened to be an advisee of mine. So I knew exactly where she was from and how great a distance that phone call was going [00:26:00] to, uh, span. And, um, you know, she sort of, then as mom answered the phone, she sort of waved me off politely, “I don't need you anymore. I've got my mom here on the other end.” And I began to see the manifestation of what researchers have said is the world's longest umbilical cord, which is the cell phone. And this was a perfect illustration of that fact. In contrast were the students who would sit with me in an advising conversation and, you know, talk about “Oh, this is what I'm taking, this is what I might take next quarter. This is what I might want to be.” And they never made reference to what their parents expected them to do or to whether it would be okay with their mom or dad. They're just- the sort of parent was not in the dialogue and those students had a sense of “I'm going to try to figure this out for myself.” You know, “I'm going to check this out and if I don't like it, I'm going to try something else.” And if they were struggling academically, I would refer them onto the resources in terms of tutoring and time management and all of the various scaffolds that, you know, a person needs to construct for themselves, even with a [00:27:00] great, tremendous intellect. Just the study habits you need, you know, in a rigorous college environment are often not what they're accustomed to from high school. And those students just had the sense, like, okay, you know, I’m embarrassed-
Michael Schulder: When you say they're not accustomed to the study habits, they're clearly accustomed to studying a lot of hours. But is it that the parents have sort of structured it for them? Or what, what, what happened?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, I think so, you know, harking back to my own days, um, what it took for me to excel in high school was not going to be enough for me to excel in college.
That is sometimes- it's just, uh, a real mismatch or change in the amount of rigor and expectation, a particular high school environment versus that at college. Of course, many students come to college and have been at extremely rigorous high schools and they may be more equipped with those time management and study skills. But yes, to the point of parental involvement, often today, parents are the ones who are keeping track of the deadlines. “Oh, you have a test coming up,” you know, “don't forget that quiz,” you know, “you've got a long-term project, it's a three week long project. You better get started.” Now, we're doing that for them in order to [00:28:00] help. If we do it for them, instead of teach them how to do it for themselves then they’ll get to college and they'll still need us to do it for them to kind of manage their workload, to be their project manager. If you will.
Michael Schulder: I'm always interested in who coins a term.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: And you found out who coined, or you reported who coined the term “helicopter parenting,” which is sort of the same thing as over-parenting. Who, who coined it and what was, what is the core essence of it?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: So it was Jim Fay and Foster Cline, who've gone on to found an organization called Love and Logic. They published this book in 1990, um, whose name presently escapes me, but they looked back at the eighties and noticed that [00:30:00] parents were starting to encroach upon domains previously reserved for children. And by 1990, they deemed that in the aggregate, these behaviors were what they called helicopter parenting. There were four things that were happening in the early eighties. And by the way, who was born in the early eighties? The first members of the millennial generation. So between 1981 and 1985, these things happened. Our fear of strangers was born – a ouple of tragic well-publicized cases of child abduction and murder really led to a nation's mindset that that could happen, any city, anywhere on any corner. And we began seeing the faces of missing children on milk cartons, you know, sort of staring out at us over breakfast. And what was happening was the center for missing and exploited children were lumping in actual cases of stranger abduction, which are an infinitesimal number with cases of runaways and child custody disputes and so on, having us believe that there were hundreds of thousands of kids a year when in fact the number was really 115 kids a year, [00:31:00] according to federal statistics in a nation with 74 million children. And yet our fear of this that this could happen was born. We stopped letting kids out of our sight in malls and grocery stores on sidewalks and parks. You know, we kept them near us. The second thing was the play date. In 1984, moms are going back to work. Dads weren't exactly staying home, who was going to be there to ensure, you know, the kids could play with each other? We started scheduling play. Maybe that wasn't so harmful, but we began hovering over it and observing play.
Michael Schulder: I have to pause, ‘cause you have one of those things I can't, I can't get my mind off. The play date was born in 1984. How did, how did she figure that out?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, the first documented use of it was 1984. I went to some reference material - I can't remember if it was Webster's or, you know, some, some source like that. But, um, this was the first use on record and, you know, it became the way- look, you and I played freely as kids. Somebody threw the door open, we ran out and played. We got called in for dinner. I mean, how quaint. It sounds like the 1800s, even though it was, [00:32:00] you know, the 1970s, you know, and before. And play became something organized by parents and observed by parents. And parents then really concerned about enrichment would tell kids what to play with, would give them ideas and would help kids sort things out when they weren't taking turns well, or somebody's feelings were hurt. We encroached upon this domain of play, which is, as the gurus of play Howard Chudacoff and Peter Gray would say, is the work children are supposed to do. We began doing it for them. And, as Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman have said in NurtureShock, this is the unintended consequence of our good intentions. So kids now need to be told what to do. They don't know how to construct their way out of boredom. Our toys became models to follow. You know, classic example: Lego bricks in the olden days were just a set of multiply colored bricks. And you had a thousand of them or 500 of them, or 200 of them. And you made whatever you felt like. You know, toys have become, Lego bricks have become, um, have come with a model that kids are meant to follow. So you create the star [00:33:00] blaster cruiser thing that Lego has decided, you know, looks the way it should, instead of you constructing it on your own. So stranger danger, the playdate was born, the self-esteem movement was born. This was “Let's praise kids for just showing up instead of for actual achievement, ribbons trophies certificates, just for anything, not for actual accomplishment.” So they became, you know, this sort of entitled generation that had a false sense of what it took to succeed. And number four, A Nation At Risk was published saying we weren't fairing very well as against- American kids weren't fairing very well academically against their international counterparts, we needed more testing and teaching to the test. So in homework and schools, extracurricular activities and play, and just walking through the grocery aisles, parents were all of a sudden, really, really hovering over their kids every moment. That's how the notion of helicopter parenting came about
Michael Schulder: So that last factor, about- you’re really talking about the international competition aspect of it. I know it’s really what's driving a lot of this right now, consciously. It’s like, you know, why [00:34:00] do people care about those name colleges? Because, well, the world is just more competitive now. It's globalized. Look who you're competing against. If my child doesn't have the opportunity to, during college, associated with other highly successful people with the best professors by certain metrics- and I guess, I guess here's the challenge. It's the metrics we use, because the qualities that you're talking about that are essential for young adults to thrive, resilience, independence, that is hard to measure. Grades are easy to measure. Is that part of it is that is that it's hard to develop a metric for resilience?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know, it is hard to measure a metric for resilience. Resilience is something that, that also cannot be manufactured. So, many parents these days appreciate that “Oh my goodness. Kids apparently need resilience in order to make it in life.” And I joke that in communities like mine in Paolo Alto, we're more likely to create a hardship summer camp [00:35:00] that will give our kids resilience than more closely examine “What is it about childhood? What is it about the way we're raising our kids and educating them that means resilience isn't naturally being developed?” Again, we're looking for a utilitarian approach - our child needs resilience, colleges value resilience, they'll need resilience in the workplace, how can I give it to them, as opposed to letting childhood do the work that it always did, which is let kids fail and get tougher skin as a result. You know, to your point about the economy and the world, you know, the 21st century is just exhilarating and terrifying, so unknown. And yet we know more about each other in the world than ever before. And of course we want to prepare our kids for, you know, to thrive and, you know, more than survive, to more than succeed, thrive out there. And here's the point: when we've micromanaged their every moment, when we've laid the path and sort of cajoled and coaxed them alongit - I like to say we're like handlers in the Westminster dog show, you know, they're on a leash and we're just urging them [00:36:00] along, down this path toward the elite college, let's say. When they get there, they might be at the destination, but they haven't kind of gotten there themselves. And in their psyche, they know it. So they have this terribly invasive thing that's born into their brain, which is “I'm not actually capable without Mom or Dad, right by my side, coaxing and cajoling and, and nudging me.” So they know they haven't done it themselves. They feel less capable or they have an overblown sense of self born of all of this overpraise.
Michael Schulder: Yeah, your kids are in high school, both of them.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: That’s right.
Michael Schulder: And you didn't always practice what you know now, correct?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: That's right.
Michael Schulder: If you could address the parents whose kids are just about to enter high school or who are in high school and maybe have, have, have done a little too much over-parenting and now want to switch gears, but you can't do a 180 necessarily… Prioritize it for us. What are some of the steps we can take?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: So here's what we can do. First, there's a couple critical mindset [00:37:00] shifts that must take place in the head, heart and soul of every parent. We've got to widen our blinders and see, well, first of all, the first mindset shift is: our job as parents is to put ourselves out of a job, and we've succeeded if our kid can fend for themselves in adulthood, which used to be 18 and is now 21 or 25. But at some point, Michael, we've got to know it's our biological imperative as mammals to raise our kids to fend for themselves. So we've got to shift, we've got to appreciate at a philosophical level that that's actually our job, that they need the wherewithal to fend for themselves, and we're supposed to prepare them. We're supposed to teach them. The second mindset shift is US News and World Report has got us all believing that there are only 20 schools we can be proud to have our kids attend. And I say proud because part of it is really tapping into our egos. Another word might be “excited” for our kids to attend, meaning we're under the impression that those are the only places with good faculty and a good undergraduate education. And they're simply- their algorithm is all wrong. Any [00:38:00] educator knows that the best teaching and learning happens in places where the faculty are motivated to teach and mentor undergraduates. And so, you know, while that's happening at some of the biggest brand named schools, it's definitely happening at the small colleges no one has quote unquote “heard of.” And so, in the book, I talk about how we have to widen our blinders as parents and be open to the fact that there are a slew of schools in this nation with 2,800 accredited four-year colleges and universities. So I like to say, as with anything, the top 5% are probably magnificent. That's 140 colleges and universities. So we can, when we really get that, we can sort of take a deep exhale and say, “You know what? They don't have to go to the Stanfords, Harvards, Yales and Princetons of the world to have a great education.” Take 140 schools. Most of them don't have these cutthroat admissions rates, but they've got faculty committed to teaching undergraduates and people emerge from those schools feeling proud that they went there, you know, having had a great education, a great alumni community and you know, they're successful in life. [00:39:00] So we’ve got to get our egos out of the way, allow our kids to consider more schools, help our kids find a school where they're going to have a great sense of fit and belonging. If we can make that shift, and I'm not suggesting it's easy, it took me years to make that shift in my own head, Michael.
Michael Schulder: By the way, how did you make it and how did it manifest itself in terms of action? What were the first steps, like, as you, you have the beginning dates for a lot of things. First play date, 1984 first Julie Lythcott-Haims sign of the mind shift, tell me when it was.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: All right. Well, I gotta give you another date. It was 2009 when I realized I'm one of those parents, who's not going to be able to let go when my kids go to college. They were eight and ten, and I realized, as I leaned over to their plate at dinner one night that I was still cutting their meat. And I realized, “Oh my goodness, I'm overdoing it. I'm over helping. I'm doing for them, what they can do for themselves,” which Madeline Levine, psychologist, author has said, you know, we mustn't do so. That was an ah-ha moment for me around over-helping. In terms of the [00:40:00] college, in terms of the I can widen my blinders and deeply exhale into the confident knowledge that my kids will go to college and will get a great education. And it doesn't need to be at one of these top brand name schools - I hate to say it, it happened for me as I was writing this book.
Michael Schulder: So please speak to now the parents, many of them out there who are sayin “Okay, yeah, but, you know, you, Julie Lythcott-Haims, you sort of know what it takes to, you know, you have a little extra edge and boy, if I have an extra edge too, you know, I might as well at least use it for my kids.”
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know, I think what's faulty in that thinking is we've put ourselves in the driver's seat of our kids' lives. So we've decided we're going to do that and put an extra effort into this and that. And what I'm telling you is it undercuts their sense of self, you know, so when they've arrived there- I mean, Page 88 of the book is this [00:41:00] terribly awful set of statistics about what a hundred thousand college students have reported in 2013 about their own mental health on 153 campuses. A hundred thousand college students in total report things like- I'll just read three of them. 84.3% felt overwhelmed by all they had to do, 60.5% felt very sad, 46.5% felt things were hopeless. Now, these aren't just the kids who got into the biggest brand named schools. There's something about childhood that is doing this to kids. And I think our narrow-minded focus on cultivating their every moment to perfected achievement leads them to feel this anxiety constantly, and a sense of depression and a sense that “I can't actually live my life without my parents constantly being by my side, praising me, pushing me or telling me what to do.”
Michael Schulder: So now let's go to the [00:42:00] people who are making the judgments about bringing kids into whatever school they're in charge of, the admissions officers. Is there a way that- ‘cause you, you really probably have a great set of lenses to identify pretty quickly whether a kid has been raised in a way that that fosters resilience. And now, of course, I'm already laughing at your joke, it's for the over-parenting type, it's like yeah, if they could, if they could make this a criterion in getting into school, I can incorporate this into my over-parenting plan and make them more resilient. But is there a way that you can recognize and should it be more apart? I mean, so there's the grade- you know, there’s GPA there's SAT, there's what courses you take. Do the admissions offices, to your knowledge, try to assess a kid for how adult he or she is, how independent he or she is?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know, I know that admissions officers and deans across the nation are really [00:43:00] mortified with the extent to which kids are now seemingly expected to mortgage their childhoods to get into their schools. It's sort of like the frog in the pot of water thing; you know, 30 years ago when I was applying, it took only this and I'm holding my finger at about an inch, you know, to demonstrate sort of an excellent record from high school. And now it takes this, and my fingers are drawing, you know, the distance of a foot or more. And kids just seem to be more and more accomplished every year. And now, you know, we're at this boiling point, but the frog has already boiled and stuff.
Michael Schulder: So maybe we can change something here. And I don't, I don't think you've addressed this in your book, but maybe- ‘cause we, we need a- we need parents to change, but we also need some cooperation from the people who are making the decisions.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Could you see at a Stanford or any of these 150 or 200 or more competitive schools, slots are sometimes carved out for excellent musicians for excellent athletes, is it maybe possible to create a little bit of a wave- I mean, you know, my show is called Wavemaker Conversations, [00:44:00] but maybe is there an idea that you have, or that you've heard somebody articulate where they could say, “You know what,? We're going to reserve some spots in our admissions for this freshmen class, for people who have demonstrated a great degree of independence and resilience?”
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, you know what they're already doing it, actually. They're already doing it because kids who have exhibited a great degree of independence and resilience are able to speak with a really rich, authentic voice about that in their essays. Kids who have- we talked earlier about passion. Passion is essential. We need that rudder, as I've called it, in life. But we parents think our kids need to have a passion. By the time they apply to college, most 16, 17, 18-year-olds are passionate about, you know, the guy or girl three rows over. You know, some kids do have a passion when they're applying to college, many won't discover it until college or beyond that's okay. We treat it now like it's some utilitarian thing, go find your passion. It's over on that shelf. Just look hard enough [00:45:00] and you'll find it. Take a flashlight, unearth that, you'll find it. No passion is discovered. It's really the discovery of oneself through the living of life, through the trying and failing. That's how we learn who we are and what we're passionate about. So when a kid hasn't been manufactured by mom or dad to be this and that, but actually is genuinely authentically interested in the stuff they've been doing, it shows. It comes out in the essays, it comes out in the letters of recommendation from the teachers who can really speak to it. I promise you colleges and universities are looking for that actual, authentic interest that that kid actually has. Here's the problem. We have a multi-billion dollar college handling industry that, in some places is incredibly successful at manufacturing a kid to appear as if they've got all that. And I think, you know, even the most seasoned admissions people are sometimes fooled by that, that you know, that industry exists to get kids into the right college. And I know as Dean that when a kid gets there having been [00:46:00] manufactured, at some point, they'll have this existential crisis. They'll fall apart, you know, realizing I'm- I didn't do this myself. I'm on a path of someone else's making. I don't feel very good about myself because the message I got was I wasn't capable on my own, I needed a handler. Parents maybe, I hope will believe and value that, that message, which is my overarching message. But, um, in the meantime, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful if maybe at an ethical level, we could have kids check a box on the application that says, I certify that I did all of this work myself. I left Stanford in 2012 to try to write this book. And I say try, because I certainly thought of it that way then. Who am I to write a book? You know, I was a lawyer who became a university dean, you know, who loved that work and thrived in it for 14 years. It was so much fun. Sometimes I couldn't believe they paid me. To be alongside young humans unfolding into their adult selves was a humbling joy, you know, to get to be alongside them and ask them good questions, as I said, that opened them further to themselves without regard to [00:47:00] what their community or their parents or anybody else expected them to become. It was joyful work, but I thought, you know, there's more that I want to do and maybe differently, so I'm going to try to write this book. And I wanted to go back to school to become a better writer. I'd never been confident about my writing and I was an insecure kid who was trying to please others. And it's hard to be a, a clear, cogent, coherent, let alone, you know, passionate, captivating writer when you're just worried about pleasing others.
Michael Schulder: It's an amazing sentence, by the way, coming from you with your credentials, with your life experience: “I was never confident about my writing.” How you got to this point- everybody's got their weaknesses and their struggles, and you just acknowledged one of them. And I, I would not know from reading the book that you were not confident about your writing, did the, did the MFA program help you get-
Julie Lythcott-Haims: It absolutely helped. I'll give a shout out to California College of the Arts in San Francisco - an incredible community that really grew me up as a writer and in the identity of writer. I began writing poetry in the final years [00:48:00] at the university, poetry and song lyrics. And it was really a way to hone my voice and really get down to the essential elements, um, in terms of the language that I wanted to convey. So poetry has been at the, at the heart for me. And often I, I enjoy it when I, when I give a big talk and someone will come up to me and say “I heard the poetry, I heard the cadence,” you know, “I know you intended it.” And I'll say “Yeah, I did. Thank you.” You know, I was a speaker, I was a public speaker before I was a writer and I actually just recorded my own audio book and I insisted on being the reader, because I said, you know, “There's music occasionally in a 305 page book, and I want, I want my listeners to hear it.”
Michael Schulder: Have you written a song based on the book that can- because I'll tell you about, I just interviewed, I just interviewed the, the New York Times, Andy Revkin who runs the Dot Earth blog, he’s one of the major environmental reporters. I just interviewed him and he brought his guitar along. He wrote a song called “Liberated Carbon,” on the [00:49:00] history of our love affair with fossil fuels. He said “I would have required a 500 page book for that, but sometimes in a song you can boil it down.” Have you written a song entitled “How to Raise an Adult.”
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Not yet. It sounds like I need to do that.
Michael Schulder: Will you do- if you do that and you recorded, can I air it on Wavemaker Conversations first?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: [laughs] Absolutely Michael, that's a promise.
Michael Schulder: That's it. I got the- that's how I'm going to make the money on this podcast, the song version-
Julie Lythcott-Haims: That's how I'm going to make some money by selling that song.Excellent, we'll do that
Michael Schulder: Julie Lythcott-Haims, thank you so much for joining me on this Wavemaker Conversation.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: What a pleasure, Michael. Thank you so much for having me.
Michael Schulder: You've been listening to Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious. If you find this podcast enriching, I hope you'll subscribe for free on iTunes. If you don't know how, just go to my homepage on the new CBS podcasting platform. Play it. That's play.it/wavemaker and click on the [00:50:00] purple iTunes logo. Or you can go to my website, wavemaker.me. Once you subscribe for free, the weekly episodes are delivered automatically to your phone or computer. And then every traffic jam, every train ride, every flight becomes an opportunity to get smarter.
Thanks to my editor, Brian Morris, I'm Michael Schulder. Thank you for listening to Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious.