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Key insights from
The Self-Driven Child: The Science and
Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives
By
William Stixrud, Ned Johnson
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What you’ll learn
Without realizing it, countless parents are so eager to
ensure their kids' success that they rob their children of the will and
wherewithal to forge a path into the unknown. A growing number of children
feel stressed and out of control in the face of the unknown and often carry
that sense of helplessness with them into adulthood. Psychoneurologist William
Stixurd and life coach Ned Johnson lend their decades of expertise working
with children and adolescents and combine it with the latest research on
the subject to offer parents a new framework for restoring a sense of
confidence and inner motivation that their kids need to excel in life.
Read on for key insights from The Self-Driven Child.
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1. Chronic stress
is every bit as damaging to children’s brains and futures as repeated
concussions.
Whether a teenager shows up to school by walking from his
home in the projects or rolls up chauffeured by daddy’s butler in a Rolls
Royce, chronic stress threatens him. The deleterious effects of young
athletes taking hard hits to the head for years rightly provoke media
attention and concern, but so should the negatively compounding effects of
chronic stress. This more common danger harms the future of millions of
young people. Stress is potentially useful in momentary bursts, but
consistent stress over years is destructive, and young people from all
demographics are vulnerable to its pernicious effects. Among the most
common results are long-term anxiety and depression, eating disorders,
heavy drinking, chronic sleep deprivation, and self-harm.
Long-term stress is debilitating to anyone, but especially
so for young people whose brains are rapidly maturing. The brain goes
through super spurts at different times in the developmental process, and,
besides infancy, there is no period in which the growth is more dramatic
than those teenage years (roughly ages 12 to 18).
More than actually being in control, just the sense of being
in control makes all the difference for people. Since the 1960s, the locus
of control (where a person believes the power over his or her life lies)
has shifted from an internal locus (“I have power over my destiny and
wellbeing”) to external (“These people, circumstances, and factors determine
my destiny and wellbeing”). A growing majority of people feel like they are
at the mercy of external forces, and this leaves them feeling out of
control. At bottom, feeling out of control is the essence of stress. But by
restoring a sense of control to children’s lives, they have a shot at
moving forward with confidence in the world and in relationships.
There are few things more upsetting or discouraging than
feeling like you have no say or impact on your life. Parents know (at least
cerebrally) that their children’s choices matter, but we fail to convey
that when we say to kids, “You can choose,” while also monitoring their
every last whim and action and haranguing them about their homework. Our
mixed messages do them a disservice.
As a society, we need to chart a better way forward.
Choosing to affirm children’s agency could be the single most vital path to
restoring that sense of control and say in their destiny that they will
carry with them into adulthood.
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2. Think of
yourself as your children’s consultant—not their taskmaster.
Imagine you come home after a long day at the office and
your spouse begins asking about how your work is coming along, and reminds
you that if you want to succeed in your career, you need to stay motivated,
even if it’s not always enjoyable. Your spouse also goes on to express
concern that you’re slacking and aren’t taking it seriously enough. Now imagine
your spouse brings this up on a daily or weekly basis. That would probably
inspire more annoyance and resistance than motivation, right? Could it be
that our children feel the same way?
This badgering is a common modus operandi for many
well-intentioned parents. Many believe that pressuring their kids to keep
them on the academic straight and narrow is the only way forward. It’s a
virtually archetypal parent-child tension, and many chalk it up to an
unpleasant necessity, part of good parenting.
Parents often believe they are playing the long game and
seeing the big picture, but they are actually playing the short game
whenever they try to control their children. It drives a wedge between
parents and children and stunts kids’ initiative. Many spend more energy
resisting their parents’ badgering than studying, writing papers, and
planning ahead.
Parents would do well to reconsider their role and
change their parenting approach from taskmaster to consultant. What does a
consultant do? A consultant helps a client discover what matters most and
problem solve. They guide clients in a process of discovering what they
want and what they are willing to give up in order to get it. They give
their opinion, but leave decisions up to the clients, respecting their
autonomy and responsibility.
These are your children, not clients, but this is their
life—not yours. We assume we know what’s best for our kids, and, with our
infants, that’s usually the case. But in many ways, we don’t know what’s
best for them, and we injure them and overstep boundaries when we presume
to know what they need and try to fix their issues. Ultimately, your kids’
lives are their own, and if you want to give them more of a sense of
control, then you will have to relinquish some of your own.
This goes for that perennial battle over homework. Many
parents resort to military metaphors to describe the tussle with their
children, but it’s less grief for everyone and more responsible of parents
to give responsibility to their kids. Fighting about homework is a bad idea
because many parents, when they think about it, don’t even agree with what
they are telling their kids. Moreover, when parents expend all their energy
trying to get their children’s homework done, kids inevitably expend less.
The more you bear down, the more you enforce the narrative that their life
is not their own—that someone else is responsible for their homework and
life.
Life is stressful. You can’t control what happens to them at
school or after they leave the nest, but you can give them something that
even the best teachers and coaches can’t: a home environment with
unconditional love, where children experience safety. Without meaning to, a
steady stream of nagging and debating can disrupt this. Instead of shouting
matches over due dates, try out this line: “I love you too much to fight
with you about your homework.”
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3. Reward systems
work in the short term, but they fail to inculcate sustained inner
motivation that children need to succeed in life.
As much as you might believe you can, you cannot make your
children do what they do not want to do. But then what do you do when the
table needs setting and the trash has to be taken out and your kids are
unprepared for a science test tomorrow and they don’t practice piano
anymore?
There are many scenarios in which you do have to insist kids
do things whether they want to or not: Brush your teeth, buckle your seat
belt, be ready to go to school at a certain time or parents will be late to
the office. These things are crucial. Soccer practice and dance classes are
not.
The short game of rewards and incentives is one approach,
but not the best. The goal is self-motivation that a child carries into
adulthood, not simply lighting up in the presence of a reward. The research
over the past 40 years strongly indicates that using sticker charts,
consequences, and so on tends to impair self-motivation rather than build
it; they harm performance, wreck creativity, and even incentivize poor
decision making, like cheating on exams. The damage is usually not
noticeable until later. It’s a slow drip over the course of years.
So how do we give kids that inner drive? The kind that lasts
even without the carrot and the stick? The kind that doesn’t fade in the
face of setbacks—or is even strengthened by them?
It comes down to:
-the right mindset
-autonomy, competence, and relatedness
-optimal dopamine levels
-flow
Let’s look at mindset in greater depth. The right mindset is
a growth mindset. As opposed to a “fixed mindset” which sees mess-ups as
reflecting some innate, inalterable defectiveness, the growth mindset sees
mess-ups as a natural part of the learning process. Those with a growth
mindset focus on the effort they employ along the process of learning. The
fixed mindset feels pressure and vacillates between the driven need to “get
there already” and resignation to their inadequacy when they can’t.
To cultivate a growth mindset in children, psychologist
Carol Dweck (who specializes in motivation research), encourages adults to
praise efforts and attempts at troubleshooting rather than praising
children’s abilities. So instead of saying, “You’re so smart” or “You’re so
talented,” say, “I never would have thought to solve that problem that way”
or “I loved seeing the effort you put into studying for that exam.” This
focus encourages them to look for solutions (internal) rather than a reward
(external).
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4. Tell your kids,
“It’s your call” as often as you can.
Allowing your children to step increasingly into the
position of the decision makers of their lives is unnerving but vital. The
founder of a D.C. think tank recalls how empowered he felt when his mother
took him to a notary when he turned 18 and gave him the option of finishing
his senior year (or not) and relinquished the right to check his grades or
any other information. It was the vote of confidence he needed to take
ownership of his life.
It isn’t enough to say, “It’s your call.” In order to tell
kids, “It’s your call” (and mean it), you need to accept the following
premises:
“You are the expert on you.”
“You have a brain in your head.”
“You want your life to work.”
Moreover, you have to support those words with action. It’s
inevitable that some of your child’s decisions will not sit well with you.
But unless your teen is going off the rails, you have to let them stand by
their decisions. If you weigh in on every decision they make after telling
them, “It’s your call,” you end up communicating, “It is your call—until you
make a decision I disagree with or don’t prefer, in which case it becomes
my call again.” As often as you can, be with them as they make their
decisions. The parent’s job is to help them make informed decisions, to
offer wisdom and perspective that children don’t have yet, wisdom that will
equip them to decide well. Once parents have done this, their kids will get
it right most of the time—and might even outshine their parents in some
decision-making processes.
Just to be clear, “It’s your call” does not mean parents
have no say and their emotions and desires should be stuffed. “It’s your
call” also does not mean kids run the show or that setting boundaries and
limits is off the table. Boundaries must stay on the table. The goal is to
minimize stress in children’s lives and encourage a sense of control in
their world. Unlimited power and endless options would augment stress—not
reduce it. So in between “This is what we are doing, kids” and “Do whatever
you want, kids” are a few more manageable options that you can present to
them. “Would you like to come now or would you like five more minutes?”
Kids will feel more secure if they sense that their parents
will make decisions their kids aren't ready to handle yet. Basic rules are
helpful and necessary, but the ultimate goal of parenting is not to make
pliable, acquiescent children. Rather, we want to shape children who can
approach life and relationships well.
“It’s your call” cannot be a tricky back-door tactic to
incept ideas into your children’s head and watch them take them on as their
own. It’s not about getting your children to do what you want. It is about
collaboratively building trust by respecting their decisions and entrusting
more to them, piece by piece.
“It’s your call” is the parent’s acknowledgement of things
that children are capable of doing, things that parents no longer need to
do for their kids. That list of items parents need to do for their kids
will get shorter and shorter as kids grow.
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5. Part of
overcoming chronic stress is encouraging resilience-building downtime.
Part of helping children cultivate an internal locus of
control is encouraging downtime, where kids do nothing. Kids (and adults)
are so connected to their phones and social media that their brains never
experience true rest. One study found that nearly two in three men
preferred to self-administer a slight electric shock to sitting with their
thoughts for six minutes.
Kids today are often tired, and it makes sense: Their
schedules are busy and draining and contain precious little autonomy. They
go to classes they did not choose to take, that are taught by teachers they
were randomly assigned, they must sit quietly, and then they come home and
are told to get their homework done. Couple this with 24/7 connection to
electronic feeds, and you have a recipe for scattered, shallow, tired kids.
We are wired for activity, but our most creative,
thoughtful, purposive action springs from rest. We have to allow ourselves
time to recover. The research is clear that meditation, daydreaming, and,
most especially, sleep, are critical to remain resilient to stress and
setbacks. In these times of rest, the brain recuperates, the body repairs
itself, and the inflow of experience is processed and absorbed.
Creating a family culture that is characterized (or at least
punctuated) by offline time is critical. Protecting downtime for your
children and allowing them to step into practices that promote mindfulness
and rest will serve your children well. Be careful not to impose what you
think is best, but ask them if they have enough time to relax between
texting, social media, homework, and sports. If they say they don’t,
explore with them what that might look like. If you want to suggest
meditation to your kids, give it a try first yourself. You are inviting
your kids into something, but it is up to them whether they want to join
in.
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