Episode 7: Transcript

"Hit the pause button on the Shoulds." - with Dr. Erin Hunter

Magda Pecsenye (00:00:00):

The reason I was so happy to talk to Erin was that I feel like we're kind of in this middle space with our older kid, ‘cause it wasn't failure to launch, it was like a weird sideways launch.

Doug (00:00:12):

It was someone put a cork in the launch.

Magda (00:00:14):

<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. And I don't think he's unusual at all. Like I think there are a lot of kids who either failed to launch or had this weird sideways launch. Like I think he's doing now probably exactly what he would've done right after college if he had finished college. I don't know. Just seems like,

Doug (00:00:35):

But even still, yeah, I think it's what he is doing is an appropriate response to the experience he had, as the schools he went to were still in the grip.

Magda (00:00:44):

There are a lot more schools that just sort of kind of fizzled out in the middle of Covid, who just really didn't know how to deal with it and, you know, it was left to the kids to figure out how to manage. Do they just keep showing up? Or do they quit and do something else for a year or two or three? Or do they just get really upset, take it on themselves, and go home? I don't know. I mean I just thought it was a very interesting conversation that to me was more relevant to what we're in the middle of right now with a kid who has launched in a different direction than we had anticipated and that he had anticipated, also.

Doug (00:01:25):

Well the whole idea of launching in general is I think turned on its head. Just the whole idea of what launching is. What you're launching yourself into. I mean I actually was talking to my mom about this. I wanted to get a generational perspective on this ‘cause you know, when I was graduating high school I asked her, “Did you get a lot of adults comparing and contrasting and keeping up appearances?” And that's been going on for generations. But it sounds like that's really on the run now because parents need to learn that their kids' experience is not wearing the T-shirt or putting the sticker on the back of the car.

Magda (00:01:59):

Well I mean I think that was one benefit of growing up in a Midwestern Rust Belt city <laugh> like I did. There were not a whole lot of us who went away to college and so there just really wasn't that level of

Doug (00:02:13):

Really.

Magda (00:02:14):

Oh my gosh. My guidance counselor had never heard of Bryn Mawr.

Doug (00:02:19):

The same thing. My guidance counselor had similar blind spots. There's a classmate of mine who was told to go to some technical college up in New England somewhere and he ended up going to Harvard.

Magda (00:02:30):

Okay. But I mean like you just grew up in a completely different world than I did. I mean. Like of about 300 kids in my high school class and I think 30, 35, maybe 40 of us went straight on to four-year college right out of high school.

Doug (00:02:49):

Really? Like 10%.

Magda (00:02:51):

Yeah. There was nobody to brag to about where your kid was going to college. So, yeah. I mean I think it was just a different socioeconomic and cultural place than you grew up in. So I didn't come to this bragging parental lifestyle until,

Doug (00:03:07):

Until you met me

Magda (00:03:09):

<Laugh>. Right. What?

Doug (00:03:11):

And I opened you up to a whole new horizon of crap

Magda (00:03:14):

<Laugh> Of bragging as a parent.

Doug (00:03:18):

Yeah. Of weird gratification through bullshit.

Magda (00:03:21):

<Laugh>. Right, exactly. So I just, to me it was a very interesting conversation because it was talking about something that I think is extremely common even for kids who have just gone on to college and stayed in college. I know a lot of parents are talking about how their kids have been having problems and stuff like that, even if they kept up with it. And I just don't think we're talking about it ‘cause everybody thinks it's just them. 

Kids work so hard in high school now. I mean so hard. I never worked even half this hard in high school. And I was valedictorian of my class, come on. I think kids have worked so hard that they just burn out and I mean, I know you saw it. When we lived in New York City, before we had the kids, you and I were both doing tutoring of a lot of kids who had very wealthy parents who put them in very, very high-pressure high schools, whether they were public or private high schools, and these kids were just on hamster wheels all the time.  And they were working so, so hard and they would bring us in to tutor these kids so they would get A+s instead of As and all this kind of stuff. And I remember there was one kid I was tutoring who just like, he kind of couldn't, he just hit a certain point. I was tutoring him in Spanish and at a certain point I could just see, like, I was not going to be able to summon a conjugation out of this kid, at all. And he was in the shadow of his older brother who had done really, really well at that high school, was going to a very prestigious college. And that kid came home in the middle of his sophomore year of college because he just, he had no bones left, he just couldn't, you know what I mean? I think that's it. I think it really is about contentment and satisfaction.

Doug (00:05:06):

And those are hard things to come by for any person. Especially, I don't know. I mean I think a lot of people our age are going through that.

Magda (00:05:14):

I think the target has moved so dramatically and I think the target was pretty clear for the people who were, you know, 10, 15 years older than we were, you know, the people who were like solidly right in the middle of the Boomer generation. And then it just all shifted during Gen X and Millennials and now I think like it's a completely different direction for Gen Z and, like, the rest of us are just trying to catch up.

Doug (00:05:40):

Which adds to the parental frustration, which adds to the family frustration, which adds to the kids' frustration and anxiety because we're all just kind of groping around for the light switch in the dark.

Magda (00:05:52):

Yeah.

Doug (00:05:53):

And the fuse might be out

Magda (00:05:54):

<Laugh>. Well, okay, so it was good to talk to Dr. Erin Hunter.

Doug (00:05:59):

So is Erin technically the first doctor we've talked to?

Magda (00:06:03):

Yeah, I think she is the first doctor we've talked to.

Doug (00:06:05):

Yeah. So if she's the first doctor we should afford her the respect that requires.

Magda (00:06:08):

I know, if I had watched that show I would make a Tardis joke right now. 

Doug (00:06:12):

A what? 

Magda (00:06:13):

A Tardis joke.

Doug (00:06:15):

A Doctor Who joke?

Magda (00:06:16):

Yeah. But I never watched Doctor Who, so.

Doug (00:06:19):

How can you make a Tardis joke if you've never seen the show?

Magda (00:06:22):

Because I know that there's a first doctor. I know that there are ordinal doctors.

Doug (00:06:27):

Ordinal doctors. <Laugh>. All right. So she's our first doctor. And you’re classmates with her, I mean you've known her through Bryn Mawr stuff, but

Magda (00:06:36):

She's a lot younger than I am. But we both went to Bryn Mawr, everybody who went to Bryn Mawr knows everyone who went to Bryn Mawr.

Doug (00:06:41):

Right. But irrespective of that, how did you come across her work or think she'd be a good fit for the show?

Magda (00:06:46):

Well, I knew her and I knew what she did <laugh>. And actually I was out drinking with her a couple weeks ago and the whole topic of failure to launch came up and she was like, “Oh, that's kind of my specialty.”

Doug (00:07:01):

I love the idea of podcast episodes being dreamt up over beers,

Magda (00:07:06):

<Laugh>.

Doug (00:07:08):

So how many more beers are we going to have as we map out the rest of the summer?

Magda (00:07:12):

Right. A lot.

Our theme music crossfades in, plays for twenty seconds, then crossfades in.

Doug (00:07:32):

When did you arrive here from Seattle?

Erin Hunter (00:07:35):

I went to graduate school out in Seattle. I did my year of internship, which is what you need to do to get your PhD in Clinical Psychology. And I did that in Rochester, New York. And then I actually spent a year as a professor at a small liberal arts school in Aurora, New York at Wells College before moving here as the trailing partner since my partner is faculty here at the university. So yes, I am a transplant and we moved here in 2010.

Doug (00:08:05):

All right. Magda mentioned your wife got a job first.

Erin (00:08:06):

The last good time to buy a house in Ann Arbor was probably then.

Doug (00:08:11):

So it occurred to me like as soon as Ross was over, you cleared out of Dodge. 

Magda (00:08:15):

Well, that was because of family stuff. It wasn't that I didn't want to be in Ann Arbor, it was that my parents needed me down at their house and all that kind of stuff. I mean I was sandwich generationing before sandwich generationing was cool cause this was like 10 years ago.

Erin (00:08:31):

You're the one that made it trendy to be a sandwich?

Magda (00:08:34):

Yes, exactly. Well, and the irony was that I was going down to take care of my parents' house because my parents had moved back to my mom's hometown to take care of my mom's 96-year-old mother. It was like a club sandwich actually. <Laugh>. Okay. Erin, do your introduction. Tell us who you are and what you do.

Erin (00:08:54):

My name is Erin Hunter and I am a clinical psychologist and the director of the Mary Rackham Mental Health Institutes, which includes the psychological clinic and the University Center for the Child and Family. And what that means is that I do a lot of administrative work related to mental health care that is provided at those centers. Basically a generalist community clinic that also does a lot of training. So we have social work and psychology trainees at varying levels. So doing a lot of training and then also seeing clients in all of our clinical supervisory staff also has their own clinical caseloads and see clients, which is something we're proud of. Cause I think it helps, keeps it fresh. So I do a lot of administration, I do a lot of clinical supervision and then I also see my own clients. My area of focus clinically is working with preteens, teens and young adults emerging into adolescence and young adulthood and the family systems factors, family communication complications that can arise related to all of that. I also really enjoy working with Neurodiverse and LGBTQIA plus families.

Magda (00:10:01):

That's cool. So I wanted to mention that this is at the University of Michigan we're talking about. 

Erin (00:10:08):

Yes. University of Michigan. I left that out <laugh>

Magda (00:10:09):

And that you're in Ann Arbor. So are the clients that you're seeing affiliated all with the university somehow or are they just community members?

Erin (00:10:19):

We do tend to get a good portion of people that are affiliated with the university in some way. But we are not exclusively seeing people that are affiliated with the University of Michigan. We are a community clinic. We see people in Ann Arbor in the surrounding areas and occasionally even for our testing services, people from, and even with our telehealth, move into telehealth services too. We have people that come from an hour and a half, two or more hours away sometimes.

Magda (00:10:44):

Oh yeah. Because with telehealth you could in theory be doing the entire state of Michigan.

Erin (00:10:49):

Yes.

Magda (00:10:50):

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So before the pandemic and all of this stuff happened, were students at that age--because we're going to be talking about this sort of launching age, right, like your last couple of years of high school and then getting out into the world, whether it's going to college or finding a job or apprenticeship or whatever. How much angst was there that was going around that you were observing?

Erin (00:11:15):

Well, I think that there were some trends that were happening pre-pandemic and then when the pandemic hit, it was like a game of Chutes and Ladders where then you just slid down to more interruptions or more difficulties fully launching.  Before the pandemic, I would say even, say, over the course of the last 10 years, I think that there was a little bit more of a trend where even after college students graduated college, they were much more likely to come home and live at home again after they graduated from college or continue to live with parents. You know, if they took a different career path after high school. We were seeing more of that even before the pandemic. But I think that there were still these like general guidelines or expectations about like it would be kind of temporary and then you would be moving into something and for cost savings.

Erin (00:12:05):

I think it was related to a lot of financial changes in our society, too, which is driving why more young adults were ending up living at home again. And then the pandemic hit and we were on lockdown for a while where you weren't supposed to do this. And then we saw many more young adults that were choosing and/or forced to move back home and live with their parents again for a longer period of time. And then it changed the social norms around where young adults live after they graduate high school and after they graduate college. And now it's much more common to have young adults be staying at home. 

I think the other thing that happened is the mental health effects, which again, we were seeing some increasing issues, you know, just with more mental health issues over the teen and young adult years pre-pandemic, and then the pandemic hit and it just really ballooned. And so then there was I think financial and mental health factors that were making it more likely for young adults to be staying at home.

Doug (00:13:08):

So what kind of specific mental health factors are you talking about in terms of, did you see something most commonly than anything else? Or what particular trajectory did you see in terms of the symptoms from which people were suffering?

Erin (00:13:21):

What we were seeing even before is just some increasing rates of anxiety, depression. I think the other thing is there's been increasing awareness that even over the last, I think two years has increased a lot related to neurodiversity. So just increased awareness of people that might have a ADHD or ASD, which is autism spectrum disorder. And there was some growing awareness of that. And I think that's in part because I do think there's been really a pattern of growing pressures on teenagers and young adults and parents and I think in a related fashion this kind of, you know, like “you gotta have a super awesome resume to get into the best colleges so that you can get the best job and get really good pay and really good money” that there's just been these increasing pressures where even related to the financial stuff that we were talking about that hit, you know like that there's been these financial changes where I think what's even happening now is that young adults now are a generation where they might not be expected to do better financially than their parents.

Erin (00:14:25):

Which I think is another reason why there might be more young adults that are ending up not fully launching, in part because there aren't the same jobs and the financial world has been coming into play and interacting with young adult development and even family expectation on things that it is actually a different world. But I think that there's also some generational differences in expectations about how it's going to go and parents are anxious, and then young adults and teens are anxious. And so there's all this pressure to try to be in the best situation, but that it's a pressure cooker and the more pressure there is, the more likely you are to have anxiety, depression. And if you do have any neurodiversity that it's getting more demands to try to navigate that might be challenging.

Magda (00:15:13):

I think it's a particular situation in that parents who are our generation were raised to think that if we did the right thing, we were just sort of following this track and everything would be fine. Right. Like when Doug came out of college and I don't know if he wants to say what year he came out of college, but I came out in 1994,

Doug (00:15:30):

1361. The Druids were in charge.

Magda (00:15:34):

<Laugh>. But I mean there was very much

Erin (00:15:35):

You look really great, by the way, Doug. You're really holding up well.

Doug (00:15:38):

Well you know all that pickle brine <laugh>.

Magda (00:15:41):

But I think there was very much this idea when I was in college that if you worked hard and got a degree in something that you were interested in, you were going to come out and you could get an entry level job somewhere that would let you pay your rent. You weren't going to get rich. You could figure out if you liked that industry and if not you would switch, but you could sort of start in and then you could keep going and you could eventually end up with some career that would pay you well that you enjoyed. Right. And if that wasn't your option then you could just go apprentice and you could go into a trade. But there was this idea that there was a place for you to start when you got out of high school or got out of college that there was, like, you could get on the train that was going somewhere. And I just don't think kids this age have ever really had that sense. I mean, I talked to our older son, who is 21 and I've been talking to him for years. He has said that his generation does not think that the world is going to exist 50 years from now because of global warming, and that there's nothing for them to come out of college to. So it's this storm of

Erin (00:16:49):

It's a broken social contract for today's young adults that before that we didn't really question. And I agree with, and there are so many things. So, again, political instability around the world but also in our own country where there's just much more conflict and tension. And that global warming that's what out there that's like, and again I think that this is probably affecting a little bit of the younger Gen Xers and the Millennials and then also the up and coming, too, but it is generational, you know, that there's been this yo-yoing of financial stability that has had these far-ranging effects and there is a broken social contract for young adults. So guess what you, you graduate with your master's degree and now you're qualified for a job at Starbucks.

Doug (00:17:35):

Right. Yeah. 

Erin (00:17:36):

There's a period where I was like, “Starbucks employees are probably some of the best-educated people around.”

Doug (00:17:42):

<Laugh>. Well, that social contract has even more pressures now because in many cases it involves taking six figures in debt, which is a big cash machine. And when you commit to that level of education and assume that there's going to be a fulfilling career on the other end of it. And then you realize there kind of isn't, but you still owe all that money. That's also going to give people pause in terms of “what am I in for here? What did, what did I sign up for, and was I sold a bill of goods?”

Erin (00:18:12):

And I think there's been this pressure to, “oh, if you go to college, if you get a college degree, you're going to be in a good place.” And then even when you, if you went into debt with that, you would be able to pay it off. And that is another social contract that is not necessarily the same anymore because it is harder to pay off college loans. And that I think that there's also been this pressure to drive kids in the automatic next step after high school, apply to college, go to college and do this. And then I think that because of those pressures, we saw a lot of kids going to college but they actually didn't really know why they were there.

Doug (00:18:50):

Because it was a thing to do, you know everyone else did it, and it was kind of a lemming thing.

Erin (00:18:53):

It was the thing to do. Their friends were doing it, their parents wanted them to do it, their teachers wanted to do it. And again, I can understand that where's coming from, but then it was college even over trades. So now there's some really good actually well-paying trade jobs and where they're desperate to get more people into trades. But people haven't been doing that. And then there's a bunch of people that are, that have like partially completed college. Or not even what I said partially ‘cause people start it and again they don't really know why they're doing it and it is really hard to motivate to do all the work that is involved in college. The college years are also a time of really big social emotional and identity development. And if you, if you're doing something but you don't really care about it and know why you're doing it and then you of don't do as well in that setting, you start to have negative beliefs about yourself. And then we're back into the mental health issues, where you're anxious and/or depressed and feeling like you're a failure even though it might not be that you were a failure but maybe you were on a path that didn't actually really fit who you are and your own strengths and challenges.

Doug (00:19:52):

The life you're living isn't as cool as the social influencer that you're following.

Erin (00:19:56):

No one's life is as cool as a social influencers, including the social influencers.

Doug (00:20:02):

Right. Why even go to school when you can just, you know, make money hand over a fist as an influencer yapping at the

Erin (00:20:07):

Or a gamer on YouTube. Right, exactly. 

Doug (00:20:09):

Exactly. Watch me play The Last of Us.

Magda (00:20:12):

<Laugh>. But 40 or 50 or 60 years ago, there was no penalty for that. I mean there was a little bit of a penalty in that you lost time. But if you went to a semester or a year or two of college in 1982, you lost that time, in theory. But you weren't $50,000 in debt coming out to a minimum wage that had stayed the same for 30 years. Right. So I think like we're at a, I mean this is a black swan, this is a tipping point right now. It got worse in the pandemic because college then became the only option. I know that our older kid graduated from high school in 2020 and so he did, in a plastic bag, yeah. And he had wanted to do a gap year, but there was nothing open, there was nowhere for him to go and do a gap year.

Magda (00:21:02):

So I had encouraged him, ‘cause he went to high school that has a great counseling department, I had encouraged him to do the college application thing, find a college he was going to go to, and then just defer a year. So, he had been accepted to a school that he was happy with and so he didn't really have a choice. He wanted to get out of the house and he wanted to do something in the fall of 2020. And so he went to college. And I realized very soon that things were not going well because that group of kids was way more needy than previous groups of college students were because of the pandemic and that instability. And the institutions were unable to give even as much as they had given previously. So there was this enormous gap between what the kids needed and what the institutions were providing. And if, in the past, the kids had been at a certain level of need and the institutions had be able been able to match that, then I mean we could, we went along for decades like that. Right. But there was this huge gap.

Erin (00:22:09):

Well, all of socialization got thrown off and our normal processes of actually interacting with other people got thrown off in the pandemic. And I don't <laugh>. I think many of us, if not all of us, are not fully back to where we were. And maybe we're now on a different path related to that ‘cause social norms are just different. So again, starting college in the fall of 2020, you know, again, normally you go to college and you're like sharing a dorm room and you're going out to parties and being with a whole bunch of people in a tighter space and going to classes in person with the professor in person. And all of a sudden now there's many more zoom classes. You don't know how to greet people. Do you shake hands? Do you hug? Like even now sometimes I'm still like, is it okay to shake someone's hand?

Erin (00:22:50):

Like, I have to actively think about it in a way that I did not in 2019 and before. And there's this whole generation of young adults that were in this space where their social world was supposed, you know, again developmentally like the social world is supposed to be expanding over the course of the adolescent years. You get to try out new things and do this and instead their social world and their opportunities for growth and exploration really shrank. And now they're back out into the world at this point. Well, you know, or like in some form of being back out into the world. Except there's literal gaps in how things would've gone before. And I don't, it's not like I think doom and gloom in where it's impossible, but I really do think we've evolved into this new place of social life and what young adulthood is, but that no one actually fully knows what that is.

Erin (00:23:41):

And so there's all these varied expectations and a lot of room for feeling like you're not doing it right. Which you were already predisposed to think, because you feel like, again, the social narrative is it like, “well, you do this and then you do this and then you're successful.” But we don't actually, we don't know where the bumpers are. Like our guardrails are actually different for a whole bunch of people. And that, and they're hard to see. They're hard to know. And it makes everyone more anxious because when things aren't predictable we tend to feel more anxious. So we are an anxious society at this point in time.

Doug (00:24:15):

Because much of our podcast is about how we as 50-year-olds are looking around trying to see how we can counsel our 20-year-olds when life is so different than what it was when we were 20-year-olds. So when you talk about all these things we've discussed, the professional pressures, societal pressures, familial pressures, how much of that dominates your conversation with your patients and what progress are you finding in terms of helping them, you know, take the lid off the tea kettle and and release some of that pressure?

Erin (00:24:47):

Well I see it's almost always with like with a lot of my young adults, even before the pandemic, like figuring out who they are developing like a more solid sense of self, a sense of self confidence, you know, and allowing them to, you know, to be who they are because there's this whole process of individuation that happens over adolescence and young adulthood where you figure out who you are, not because it's what you've seen or what you've been told to do, but it's the path that you're choosing for yourself. And that is always hard. I think that what is really hard is even you know how we've been talking about there's these like generational differences. I think one of the things that's hard is it is I think it has literally become harder for adults to counsel and give advice to young adults because their lived experience and their reality is actually a bit different than ours.

Erin (00:25:37):

And I think that's what, where there's all this more parental anxiety because they want to help. They see that their kids might be struggling, but it is really hard to know because you haven't necessarily walked that path in the same way yourself. Because when we don't allow ourselves to take space to be thoughtful and to say “I'm not sure. What do I want to try? What do I want to discover or explore?” that's when you end up choosing a path ‘cause you think that you should. I like to say that “shoulds lead to shame.” And so I think that one way to support the young adults of today’s generation too, is to just say like, “Hey, the playing field is different. Things have changed and it's okay to feel overwhelmed. It's okay to not be sure and you can try things out.”

Erin (00:26:24):

‘cause I think the other thing that happens is sometimes when we get anxious we can get frozen, like not move. We'll avoid things. And all of that is very understandable and it's almost like, I feel like one of the tasks of this young adult generation is just letting themselves try and be okay fumbling and even failing. I would like to actually take the sting out of the word “fail” because making mistakes and failing is one of the best ways to learn. But it can be very hard to go through that process. And it can be very hard for parents to watch their kids fail. But sometimes it's only when we fail that we find where our feet are.

Doug (00:27:01):

So this is basically more like “failure to fail” syndrome more than the “failure to launch” <laugh> because there's no room for failure. You gotta hit all the right notes right away, otherwise

Erin (00:27:11):

Well, it's an impossible standard. No one can actually, I can't do that. But when I'm aware of my mistakes and then I can be more, I can thoughtfully choose how I want to act versus just reacting to the situation and ended up chasing my tail around in a way where I'm digging myself a hole by just spinning in a circle. Emotions aren't something our society is super great at, like letting it be <laugh> on the whole as well. And I actually think that the younger generations are better at this than the older generations in a lot of ways. That sometimes it's more of a learning how to walk with the young adults and collaborating with them and letting them even take the lead and you just like walking along with them or even when they're tired sitting down and letting them be tired and have their distress, but not trying to yank them back up and move them into the next thing. But it's hard because there are all of these very significant pressures that the young adults and parents of young adults are feeling. It's like, “oh my gosh, well if this is what it's like now, are they going to be living with me when they're 45?” I think it's likely that it's not. But I think what's happening is even the timelines for developmental milestones have broadened and even before the pandemic, there didn't used to be this concept of adolescence.

Magda (00:28:29):

Yeah. I mean every culture, every religion, every everything has coming of age at the age of 13.

Doug (00:28:37):

And you can watch PG 13 movies by yourself.

Erin (00:28:38):

Oh, sorry, go ahead, Doug.

Doug (00:28:40):

No <laugh>. I was just saying something dumb <laugh>. There's that level of 13 you could, you could watch PG 13 movies all by yourself, you know, and you know, maybe there's some nudity in there. That's a whole, that's a big deal.

Erin (00:28:54):

<Laugh>. Well, and I think technological advances that even how we've been changing up, how we grow and how there's different stages of growth in some ways now. There were these adolescent developmental milestones that you didn't get experienced in the same way before. And then even after that, now this idea of emerging adulthood that really only came about, you know, probably like 20 years that got studied and where research actually looked at this emerging adulthood period that did not get looked at in the early 19 hundreds. Right. So I think this is part of, and I think the other thing is that I think the pandemic accelerated this where people are thinking about it and talking, there's increased awareness, but I don't know that it is significantly, it's like a jump but not necessarily an entirely different path than what we were already emerging towards and having a different space.

Magda (00:29:45):

The pandemic has almost been a release valve for the parents who thought that they had to hit perfection. Right? Like, if you had a kid who went off to college and wiped out their first year and came back and lived at home in 2018, you probably didn't tell anybody about it. But then if you had a kid like my kid who went to college in 2020 and barely made it through that first semester where his roommate didn't show up, he was alone in this cinder block building, he could only wear a mask while interacting with the other kids. All of his classes went online. He came home and I was like, “Hey, hey, hey, he's home. He got a job.” For me it was fantastic to be able to talk about it, but every time I talk about something that he's doing in response to the system having fallen apart, I get all kinds of private messages from people who say, “oh my God, my kid wiped out” or “my kid was doing this and then they failed and now they're doing this and I don't know what to do about it” and all this stuff. They can't say it publicly. They're afraid to say it, because to them it feels like they failed instead of like their kid is trying things. To me it's,

Erin (00:31:06):

Or the world has changed. It's actually not about any individual person or family or parent. It's that the system has actually changed. 

Magda (00:31:15):

Yeah, absolutely! And I think I think of it from two angles. One is like, why the hell not go out there and just try a whole bunch of random stuff? Like, literally my child right now is breaking rocks and chainsawing things for a living. And, I mean, he was sleeping outside last night on the job. And he got his chainsaw license. How, he's 21, what else is he supposed to be doing right now? Right.

Doug (00:31:36):

Well it's the same thing when he came home from college. Yeah. He was so excited about that first semester of college he dropped out and worked in a tire store.

Erin (00:31:43):

<Laugh>.

Doug (00:31:44):

Right. I've never seen him happier. He would come home filthy and exhausted and look at me and say, “Dad, there's 17 cars out there that work now that didn't before because I helped.” But I wanted to follow up on what Magda was saying about the parents. ‘cause I do think when you say the system has changed and social media has helped us all compare ourselves to each other, and comparison, as we know, is the path to misery. This is the “indictment of social media” portion of our podcast. It's led to a lot of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. And we've also talked about how anxiety and depression in kids, it's not just kids, it's a family dynamic. So when you talk about your patients, the kids, I'm sure you involve the parents in that discussion. And there are a lot of parents who, as Magda says, they've invested so much of their own worth in what and how their parenting has worked out. So when you talk about factors that potentially build on themselves and build more anxiety as teenagers live up to their parents' expectations and the parents' expectations are all skewed because of how they need to compare themselves to everybody. How does a conversation like that go? How do you break that link and say “you are who you want to be, not what people say about you”?

Erin (00:32:58):

Bringing awareness and putting words to that and the idea that, like, you might be thinking if my kid fails then it means I was a failure and I failed my kid. Because that's something that again is, Magda was saying, people don't talk about this. It's almost like stigma. But what I often say, this may or may not be true for you, but I generally assume that every parent that I meet and every parent in the world right now is probably worried to an extent that if their kid fails it's because they have been a failure. They have actually not done something right, that is created this bad situation for their kids. 

There's a strategy called “thought diffusion” where it's just the idea that noticing that your brain is having a thought. But thoughts are not facts. Our brains are thought machines. They generate a whole bunch of thoughts and some of them need to be recycled. They actually don't hold meaning and they, we don't need to choose them or choose to follow them. Kind of like click bait. We have a lot of click bait thoughts That we don't actually have to click on. But there's a lot of pressure and it's glowing and flashing and all of that. 

Both parents are more likely to spend more time with their kids today than they did 20 and 30 years ago. This is despite the fact that there is more likely to be two parents working in the home if it is a two-parent family. But there's also just a broader range of families or single parents. There's more advice on parenting. And one thing that we don't necessarily actually need more of in society is more people telling parents what is right and what is wrong about parenting. Parenting is an art where there's, you know, there's research and evidence that you can read but in terms of applying it, it's only going to fit when it matches that parent's pattern of strengths and challenges. I have two kids, I can't parent them exactly the same because they're two different kids and the strategies literally don't work. I wish I could use the same strategy to have the same outcome with my kids. But I can't ‘cause they're different human beings.

Magda (00:34:58):

Wouldn’t it be so easy?

Erin (00:34:59):

Right?

Magda (00:35:00):

I mean because the marginal utility of everything you know goes down progressively the more kids you have. I mean when I was writing a parenting advice website, I always used to say like, “Don't read any books unless your baby has read those same books, because <laugh>, like, you can do what that book says, but if your baby hasn't read that book, you're stuck.”

Erin (00:35:21):

It's not following it. Right.

Doug (00:35:23):

Well, it's part of the same issue. The more information you have, the more anxiety there is because many bits of that information contradict each other.

Erin (00:35:31):

And there's always an area of controversy. Should you co-sleep? Should you not co-sleep? Should you use cloth diapers? Should you not use cloth diapers? Should you bottlefeed or should you breastfeed? And again, I think that there's all these shoulds, “oh, you should be doing this, you should be doing that.” And that leads to shame. And I actually think that we have almost like a tipping point where there's almost like there's not a whole lot more shame than parents can feel in the current society because it's not necessarily about should. It's about what works for you and for your kid, for the developmental stage they're at and that you're at and what resources you as a family, you can only spend the resources that you have. And I think that as a society we've also gone into resource debt both as parents and I think teen teens and young adults where we're literally like trying to do things with resources that we don't have.

Erin (00:36:15):

And we're setting our expectation for what we're supposed to achieve higher than what is actually realistically feasible given the reality of our resources and our current lives. So, I mean, really it's about a lot of normalizing like, “hey you're probably feeling shame, you're probably feeling like a failure as a parent.” Or sometimes parents will, I think on the flip, that it's hard to, because they're so afraid of taking responsibility then it's gotta be the kid's fault. And I think that there's this whole blame and shame culture that we're in right now that we don't have to buy into. Because what if it is no one's fault? What if it is that, like, there's no one that needs to be blamed or shamed but just like, hey this is what it is. You know, or maybe you've got a neurodiverse kid or you've got a kid that's anxiety and by the way you have anxiety, too, and sometimes your anxieties are talking with one another.

Erin (00:37:06):

And it's almost like your anxieties are interacting instead of you guys interacting as people. We're not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to learn, experience, and figure out how to accept ourselves. And this is why I think the number one thing the parents can do for their kids at any age is to accept their kids for the person that they are and help their kids get experience and help their kids build skills. And the only way that you can build skills is by trying things out and fumbling and failing ‘cause the parents already have these skills, or if the parents don't have the skills. 

Doug (00:37:43):

<Laugh>. Or do they? Yeah. In many cases you have to talk to parents and say very gently, “I'd like you to take stock of where you're at in terms of what forces influence you, what worries you, you know, how you judge yourself.” Have you had success working with parents to recalibrate what they value and to recognize there are certain aspects of what your child is going through that you can address in a much more tangible way without being overwhelmed by the emotions and the social pressures.

Erin (00:38:15):

I would largely say yes. I feel like I'm probably biased in approaching this, too, in terms of my answer.

Doug (00:38:20):

Please be. Absolutely.

Erin (00:38:22):

You can ask my clients. See what they say about all this, too. But I think sometimes it's even less about a recalibration versus actually identifying what is important to you. ‘cause when we think about values versus behaviors, there's a lot of different behaviors that you could do to be in line with a value or something that is important to you. And if you let yourself think about the theme of the value versus any one specific behavior, all of a sudden you have a lot more flex and wiggle room and there's fewer shoulds. And so that's where I think is it's really about like giving space to sift through and figure out what's important and then what you want to choose to do. And thinking about changing patterns versus stopping behaviors or stopping problems

Magda (00:39:07):

And culture isn't going to help you figure out what's important to you or how to prioritize because the culture says do your best all the time. 

Erin (00:39:17):

People can do their best. But for about 1 to 2% of the day, because literally that is what the best is statistically, it is a low amount of the time that you're going to be able to be your best. Most of the time we're going to be mediocre, and, like, mediocre at our own level because that is actually what is,

Doug (00:39:35):

That's our resting stasis.

Erin (00:39:37):

And yeah, there's nothing wrong with being average or mediocre. Like performing your skill or being a parent at your own average level. That is actually what's achievable. The other thing is keep in mind that even when we talk about the best statistically, we are also going to be at our worst 1 to 2% of the day <laugh>. Right? Right. And that is also part of us being human beings. We're not always going to be perfect. We're going to mess up. Sometimes I yell at my kids and even while I'm doing it I have this like I can see outside of myself and be like, “What are you doing? This is not a healthy behavior,” and it's still hard to stop myself in the moment.

Doug (00:40:16):

Well, I, for one, am happy to fully embrace my resting mediocrity.

Erin (00:40:20):

<Laugh>. Yay!

Magda (00:40:21):

You know, when I coach managers, ‘cause a lot of what I do is talking to managers about being managers and setting up systems. One of the things I say that tends to reframe things for people and sometimes they think it's bullshit and sometimes they laugh at it, is that whenever you're trying to comply with anything and do well at something, it really is the 80/20 rule, right? Like you're not trying to hit a hundred percent, you're trying to hit 80%. 80% is excellence. And you can only give about 80% of effort. You can't really give a hundred percent of effort for any sustained amount of time. So therefore 80% times 80% is 64%, which means 64% is excellence.

Erin (00:41:09):

Well, and the other thing is if you do give 100%, it's for narrow window of time. And then you're actually, you're going to be then depleted of resources. So the next thing that you had that you wanted to tackle, you're probably, you definitely won't be able to do that 80%. 

I am all about personal responsibility, and there are definitely things that we have control over that we can do. But I think we overemphasize the individuality factor and forget about all the systemic pieces and even the broader people that we are. So, if we're being like, “Oh, I'm going to be really on top of my to-do list, I'm going to get through all of my work list today.” Right? I can do that but then I'm probably not having as much time for my family, for myself, and then that piles up and then I start to feel bad about that and then I don't have as many resources to bring to my work. And I think people forget about balance.

Doug (00:42:01):

You know what I love about that discussion, that math you just declared about how 64% is excellent. I can totally see either of our sons coming home with a 64 and using that specific logic to defend how excellent that grade is. <Laugh>.

Magda (00:42:19):

Well, I mean, scofflaws raise scofflaws, right? So <laugh>, neither of the apples have fallen that far from the tree.

Doug (00:42:28):

It's like the “imbecile” story, right? With your brother.

Magda (00:42:31):

Oh, “moron.” My brother looked up in the dictionary that a moron was somebody who had the approximate intelligence of a 12-year-old. This was back in the eighties when there was a paper dictionary and it would say something like this. So whenever I'd call him a moron, he would say “thank you” because he was like seven at the time. 

Erin (00:42:46):

12-year-olds are pretty darn smart. 12 year olds are pretty, that's not doing so bad.

Doug (00:42:51):

And how old are your kids?

Erin (00:42:53):

My kids are now 11 and eight.

Doug (00:42:55):

Now that they're middle schoolers, to what extent do phones and social media impact their lives? Just because you don't want to restrict them from having the technology of the time, but you also don't want to make them overdependent on them. So, how are you introducing them to the technology that most middle schoolers crave?

Erin (00:43:12):

To be in line with our earlier conversation: Imperfectly, I'm sure, is how I'm doing it.

Doug (00:43:18):

Imperfectly, thank you for asking!

Erin (00:43:19):

It's definitely present and I feel like it would actually be near impossible for us to say like, “oh, our kids aren't going to have screen time” because we would have to be managing that or turning off all internet. I also think that like it's important for kids to learn the skills of being online. Like even in terms, again, this like skill development stuff, ‘cause I don't want them to go into high school, get to it for the first time and then not know what they're doing. Or to fall into something or, you know, whatever it might be. So I'm trying to help with that skill building and checking in with them about it. But YouTube is big and you know, you can set limits on YouTube but it still can like find things and you know, now it, my younger one doesn't even want to play the video games as much as watch the people on YouTube with their videos playing the games. And I'm like, when I was a teenager that's what I hated. I wanted to play but I had to watch my male friends play the game.

Doug (00:44:12):

And that's the way it's going now as well. Kids want to watch stuff without consequences. They'd rather not risk dying in the 

Erin (00:44:20):

It's with commentary, it's like when you watch a movie but it's got the editor commentary going along with it. I feel like that's how I think of it.

Doug (00:44:26):

How can they watch it? I think it drives me crazy. 

Magda (00:44:27):

I would like to say it's dumb, but I watch a whole lot of videos of other people knitting. So I'm not going to,

Erin (00:44:34):

It's a thing.

Doug (00:44:34):

Yeah, but you're learning a skill!

Erin (00:44:36):

Society has changed, and now it's a thing that we watch people and everybody's got their stuff. There's all, I get sucked into some things, too, where I'm like, I don't even know why I'm watching this video of someone icing a cake, but oh my God, look at how they're icing that cake. Do I really care? And would I choose to spend, but sometimes I,

Doug (00:44:52):

No it's zen therapy I guess.

Erin (00:44:54):

And it's fascinating and there's some talented people

Doug (00:44:56):

I'll watch an hour of people cleaning their rugs on Instagram. It's the most, I mean I'm out power washing the back deck. It's the same thing. It's just the most cathartic, soothing process to watch. 

Erin (00:45:07):

We have all these options. We have so many more entertainment options than what we used to. I grew up and we had a TV that got two channels and I spent a lot of time being bored. I also think that learning how to be bored

Doug (00:45:18):

Oh, God, yeah.

Erin (00:45:18):

Is this art and skillset that we are losing that is also important ‘cause it helps with creativity and just thinking differently about things. But my kids don't have cell phones yet. We've talked about 13 as an age in which they would get it. And even

Doug (00:45:32):

Another right of passage. Right. Turning 13, big deal.

Erin (00:45:36):

Cell phones and social like these things are tools, but we've got to be thoughtful about how we're using it and also thinking about boundaries and limits because it is so easy to get sucked in. For adults as well as for kids.

Magda (00:45:49):

One thing about cell phones is that I think it's cultural depending on where you live. What age do kids get cell phones?

Erin (00:45:56):

There are micro social norms. And it could be the street that you live on, it could be the school that you go to, the town that you live in. But there are some places where a hundred percent of third graders are having cell phones. And other places where they don't have them all the way through middle school.

Magda (00:46:12):

Well, when we lived in New York, the norm at the time was for kids to get a phone when they were nine, because that was the age at which they weren't going to have a parent walking them to school or taking them to school anymore. And by the time they were 13, a hundred percent they had to have a phone. Because 13 is when you start riding the subway by yourself. And that sounds actually insane to people who live in places where kids are not by themselves ever because they're driven around by parents.

Doug (00:46:38):

Oh, it is insane, it's completely insane,

Magda (00:46:39):

And so it might, if you live in a place where it's reasonable for your kid not to have a phone until they're 16, maybe that's the norm where you are.

Doug (00:46:49):

Well that's, I enjoyed that by the way. That's one of the reasons I, the idea of moving here appealed to me. Just and then you recall, remember when they would walk from my house to school and they'd have to walk past your house to get to school.  And so I would let them go. They would go off, walk to school and then I'd text you. “Tell me when they walk past your house!” You know, because

Magda (00:47:08):

Well, and I mean I would look, we

Doug (00:47:09):

New York taught us to be at the super paranoid,

Magda (00:47:12):

At the time we lived like a six-minute walk away from each other, but on two different streets that made a corner with each other. So he would look out and wait until they turned the corner and then I would be looking out until they turned the corner toward me. He'd be like, “The biscuit is in the basket. The biscuit is in the basket.”

Erin (00:47:28):

I was going to say, it does sound like, you know, “The eagle has flown.”

Magda (00:47:32):

Yes. Right. I still don't think the kids know that you weren't just, like, out for bike rides by coincidence the first five or six times that they walked themselves home from school.

Doug (00:47:43):

Well, luckily I didn't have to stalk the kids and hide behind trees like my mom did in 1970-whatsit.

Magda (00:47:49):

I also think that there's something to be said for regulating your own needs as a parent to send the message to your kids that you want to be sending. Because I think there are a lot of parents, especially parents our age who maybe felt like we were under-parented who are going in the other direction, who think that what they're saying to their kids is, “I love you so much, I don't want anything to hurt you. I'm holding onto you, I'm curating all of your experiences, et cetera, et cetera.” But what the kid receives is, “I don't trust you.” And so I've always tried to be very, very mindful of, however anxious I was about a situation, come up with a way to medicate my own anxiety about it that wasn't putting it onto the kid that was still letting the kids think, “Oh I trust you.”

Magda (00:48:47):

Because it was never that I didn't trust the kids. It's just that old, “Well it's not you I don't trust, it's the other drivers.” Well, it doesn't really matter cause the kid still hears that you don't think they can get out of a situation. And I think it was funny, Doug, and it was a good way of meeting your needs to make sure the kids were okay, that you just were out for a bike ride without the kids knowing that you were worried about them. Because they felt so, I still remember, and this was when, this was 12 years ago, I still remember how proud of themselves and how confident they felt that they were able to walk home to your house by themselves.

Erin (00:49:32):

Kids want to feel good about themselves and they want to have developmentally appropriate tasks. And again, I think, and that's part of the skill development and that's another thing where like the pandemic interrupted where kids would've been being like, “Oh, hey look, I'm doing this on my own.” But they, they just didn't have as many opportunities. And then in terms of parents feeling like they needed to be involved again, especially with the shutdown, then parents literally like “We're coming again,” the kid was like, “Mom, I can't log on to the Zoom” or like, “I can't, there's an issue. What's going on?” And then they were actually seeing what was happening in the classroom more that I think then raised parents' anxiety. I had a kindergartner when the pandemic hit. And I would be like, I mean, I felt so much for those kindergarten teachers ‘cause it's just like a bunch of five-year-olds that are like, “Let me show you my cat!” And then another one is making faces. Another one's just putting emojis in the chat. Right? And you know, and I think that, so I think that parents, even when we're talking about like the anxiety, I think that parents' anxiety increased, too, because then they got a window into things that they normally wouldn't even be able to see into at a time when things were not normal. It's important for parents to let ourselves have our feelings and to be in the space that we are so that then we're creating space for our kids to have the feelings that they're having and to be in the space that they're in.

Magda (00:50:47):

I also think it's really important for parents to, while we're having our feelings, recognize that we're in a lot of ways being put in an impossible position and we're being gaslighted. Whether it's the system or something else, right? Like, I mean I think one thing that happened a lot during the pandemic was that parents were put in the position of having to navigate technical things and all kinds of other stuff, and using our time in ways that our society has not set us up to expect. And then we were made to feel bad about resenting it. Like, are you kidding me? The parenting circles I ran in were trying to figure out like what's essential, right? And you can let yourself let these other things go. If you start to feel yourself getting in a loop of being a little bit too interested slash borderline -with something, stop and say, “Hey, is this really going to matter?” But suddenly in the pandemic, all this stuff DID matter and all these external sources were telling us, “No, no, no, no. You got to figure out how to log on.”

Erin (00:51:50):

We want to have more control. But then we're wanting more control in an environment where it is really impossible to have control.

Doug (00:51:58):

Well, I think the, the crux of the conversation then is “what can a parent do?” I mean are boundaries the answer? I mean I've had discussions with friends whose kids are in college who call them three times a day and say, ‘This didn't work, that didn't happen.” And they're having trouble setting boundaries. They'll have a call at three in the morning about something this/that. So I mean I wanted to ask about your kids because clearly you're trying to scaffold in a certain way so that when they're ready to launch they will be. And who knows what the world will be like when they do. But if there are parents right now who are having these issues, every family's individual, but if you look at some macro ideas or things that parents can keep in mind to help build a new level of autonomy and get kids used to trying and failing and maybe not overthinking the circumstances of things and realizing that they're still young enough to make mistakes where the stakes aren't as high as they will be when they're our age. What advice can you give to parents who are having this kind of issue, and what do you think they can expect?

Erin (00:53:00):

I think the advice is to first slow down and to explore within themselves, and maybe even write it out or journal or you know, do it with a friend group or whatever, and say like,

Doug makes ridiculous slowed-down speaking noises.

Magda (00:53:15):

Oh, stop.

Doug (00:53:16):

Oh, oh sorry,

Erin (00:53:18):

First I was like, wow, you're really good at that. ‘cause I thought that there was like an audio issue. What do they really value? What is most important to them in their family life? And really even try to get it to three things. Like what are your top three? ‘cause if you have more than that then again, we don't have the resources to tend to more than that at any one moment in time. Actually even in that we probably only have one. But to identify what are your top family priorities, and then even thinking about what do I feel like my job is as a parent of my kid at whatever age it is, if it's at a teen or as a young adult, what are my parenting duties? Almost, if you want to think about it in a business model, like, what is my job description for parenting at this age?

Erin (00:53:59):

And then even checking, going back and saying, wait, how old is my kid? And do these still fit or do I need to edit them based on where they are right now and where they're going to be going? And then maybe even thinking for my kid in the age that they're at right now, almost like “What is the job description of them and what are the skills that they have? What are the skills that I want that I would ideally want to help support them building?” And using that as the framework to approach things. ‘cause that will help you figure out almost like “what's your plan A, “which means that you're going to address it much more regularly. “What are the B level stuff” where it's like, oh, only if it becomes this like pattern of more problematic stuff, then I'm going to address it.

Erin (00:54:40):

And then the (plan) C-level behaviors and stuff, which means you're choosing to let those go because they're, you've said they're not as important and that even if it's annoying or bothersome or somewhat anxiety-provoking, it's just, it's not an A. And using that as a guide to help you use your resources as you can. I think the other thing, especially for parents when there's young adults that are living at home with them, I talk with families about how I want them to think about it as a roommate arrangement, kind of. So again, you're not just roommates, you have other relationships, but if you approach that more as a roommate situation, it allows you to actually figure out who's going to do chores. Like is it going to be parents? You know, what are the kids responsible for?

Erin (00:55:23):

And having clear and explicit conversations about what expectations are. And then again, maybe you can edit your parent job description or maybe you can say, “I know you're saying you do this, but let's actually look at the data and, you know, you actually haven't taken the trash out of your room for two months. And I think that there's something very smelly in there,”.  Then you can come back and then have conversations about it. But I think that what happens is these conversations don't always happen and then there's the shoulds, the shames, the resentment that builds up in miscommunication and maybe it doesn't work to have your young adult be living at home with you. This is not an ideal situation, but this is the reality that we're in right now. But even thinking about this is where we are for now and not that it's a forever because none of what's happening right now is a forever.

Doug (00:56:15):

Just like not every thought is a forever.

Erin (00:56:17):

Right! The thought might be click bait and you can, maybe you want to choose to click on it and that's cool, but you don't have to.

Doug (00:56:24):

As long as you see it for what it is. And not necessarily get sucked into why it baited your click.

Erin (00:56:31):

It's almost like, “What is your strategic plan for your family, for your role as a parent and the skills that you want your kids to develop.“ But if you're not functioning off of a plan that everybody's on the same page about, you're going to be upset.

Magda (00:56:46):

You know, to be talking more about it from a business perspective, one of the things that we said a lot when I was in business school was “You can make money in any economy.” And I think there are a lot of parents who are really, really, really despairing about the pandemic and about the limited social stuff happening and jobs and all that kind of stuff. And it doesn't mean that the entire economy is going to grow in a bad economy, but any individual, any organization can make money in any economy. Meaning any child, any human can have personal growth, can find something to do with their time that is worthwhile. And almost a blessing of this pandemic is that if you let yourself disconnect from the things that you think you should do and that you think your kids should do at a given age, you might be able to find something that you enjoy doing more, and your kids might be able to find something that they enjoy doing more. Like now while nobody's paying attention, ‘cause everybody's all wrapped up in their own trauma.

Erin (00:57:54):

Thinking about fulfillment versus achievement.

Magda (00:57:58):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Exactly.

Erin (00:58:00):

Because if you're going for fulfillment, well, that's already more balanced than just achieve. ‘cause you can achieve something and it actually makes you miserable instead of happy.

Magda (00:58:07):

Right. And I think, you know, 10 years ago everybody went from high school to college, did college in four years, came out and got a job. Now, not so many people are doing it. So it's really okay if you want to take a year or two off and go chainsaw trees or you know, whatever you want to do.

Erin (00:58:27):

And I think for parents to keep in mind, even if they don't have a kid that is going to make money in the hard economy, there's a lot of people that are in the same situation. And it's not necessarily about the individual, but society is also going to change. The game is changing. And just to come back to Gen X versus Millennial versus today or whatever, it's almost like when Nintendo first came out and you know, I was playing the original version of Mario, if you play Mario now, it's still the same game, but it has changed and you can't play it exactly the same as you used to. The controller is different. And I think that's kind of what's happening with young adulthood right now is that there's still general things, but it's very different. It might take people longer, but that even if it takes longer, it's not necessarily bad. It's just that it's different now. And again, the comparison that I think that Doug said earlier, you can compare apples and oranges, but to what end? It loses its meaning. And then when we compare our experience being young adults and current young adult experiences, you could spend a whole lot of time doing that. But to what end? I don't know that it actually gained you anything meaningful because it's just different.

Doug (00:59:38):

Yeah. The games are all different and there aren't any cheat codes.

Erin (00:59:42):

<Laugh> <laugh> There will be in like another three to five years, but then there's going to be a new game again. 

Magda (00:59:50):

<Laugh> Okay, so if people want to find out more about you and the work that you do, or just have a way of sort of orienting themselves a little bit more to the idea of like, you can let go, expectations need to be different, give yourself a little grace, that kind of stuff. Where should they look for you?

Erin (01:00:08):

We have a website which is mari.umich.edu. There's a lot of great resources that are out there, too. Even for parents, Kristen Neff is a self-compassion researcher that has a great website where you can look into it and apply self-compassion to a broad range of things. My approach is going to work for some people and it might not work for all people. So I think the other thing is just keeping in mind, notice your shoulds. So there's one takeaway, notice the shoulds that might be coming up for you and hit the pause button on the shoulds because maybe you want to choose to follow that, but you can also choose to do something else. And again, based in what is important to you and what is meaningful to you, just versus just trying to do the thing that you think you're supposed to do.

Doug (01:01:01):

I already like that as a title of this podcast: “Hit the pause button on the shoulds.”

Erin (01:01:06):

Pause the shoulds. Mediocrity! <laugh> <laugh>

Doug (01:01:10):

Mediocrity forever.

Erin (01:01:11):

And this was fun, guys. I could always talk, like, forever about everything, so thanks <laugh> for letting me.

Doug (01:01:17):

You are a skilled academic. Yes. You definitely, for real. You have been a great podcast guest. You have so much to say about a very important topic and I'm so grateful that you came along to tell us about it just because your level of expertise, I think is right in the wheelhouse of what a lot of parents need right now. So I really appreciate the time.

Erin (01:01:36):

You know, I mean, I'm in the parenting struggle with everybody else, different ages, again, not young adults, but the younger kids, but they'll get there.

Doug (01:01:45):

Yeah, just wait till they start driving. That's a whole other thing. Wait till you sit there in the passenger seat and one of your kids merges onto 23.

Erin (01:01:52):

I can't even imagine yet. And I don't yet, but I, yeah. And see this is where I do think that like, we're going to outsource as much as possible for some of that because I value my relationship with my children too much because again, we all have limited resources, right? Outsource where you can and that is actually for the good of everyone.

Doug (01:02:10):

And for the good of everyone we're going to end this podcast episode. Thank you for listening to Episode Seven of When the Flames Go Up with Magda Pecsenye and me, Doug French. Our guest has been Dr. Erin Hunter. 

Erin (01:02:22):

I'm really, I'm now regretting that I didn't do more “up in flames” jokes. Well, no, but we just could have done much more of the like, you know, “those social norms went up in flames!” I could have worked that in much more, but it's probably good that I did not have that in my mind. So.

Doug (01:02:41):

Bring up lots of “Gone With The Wind” imagery,

Erin (01:02:43):

<Laugh>. Well, okay, tomorrow is another day. It's been a delight to join you guys, so thanks for inviting me and letting me talk at length.

Doug (01:02:52):

All right, everyone, we're off next week because of Independence Day, but we will be back on Wednesday, July 12th with Episode Eight. Until then, thanks very much. Have a great holiday and we'll see you soon. Bye-Bye.