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Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
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Today s guest is the brilliant developmental psychologist Elisa Pressman, author of The Five Principles of Parenting, Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans, and host of the Raising Good Humans podcast.
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Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
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On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we re here.
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Pulling the Thread is about big questions.
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Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better, and what s required to heal ourselves and our world.
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I ll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks on their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
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My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
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I think that with regulation, the funny thing is that it s either I want to control the weather around my children or I want to control my children.
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Regulation is very much
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a self thing for adults and a co-regulation thing between you and other, especially you and a young person whose brain isn t fully able to self-regulate.
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But if you re so focused on controlling all these outside things that you can t, like the weather, then you get to let yourself off the hook.
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of getting into the much harder but more possible work of self-regulation and of figuring out your own stuff.
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And all of that has
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much bigger benefits to your kids, of course, than making the weather perfect around them.
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But it just is harder.
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Even though it shouldn t be so easy to change the weather, but it does appear that is what happens, right?
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So says Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist and assistant clinical professor in the Division of Behavioral Health Department of Pediatrics at the Econ School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she is co-founding director of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center.
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Aliza is also the host of the hit podcast, Raising Good Humans, and the author of The Five Principles of Parenting, Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans.
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I love Aliza for many reasons.
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Yes, we all want friends who are developmental psychologists on speed dial, but she s also different in the way she delivers advice.
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For one, she cuts right to the point, reminding and affirming that while yes, every family has its own complicating factors, the basic tenets of raising good humans are simple.
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You don t need your own PhD in parenting to do the job, nor do you need a PhD to reparent yourself.
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You need to focus on the elements she outlines in the five principles of parenting.
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relationship, reflection, regulation, rules, and repair.
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As she explains, through practice and normalizing imperfection, along the way you ll discover the person you re ultimately raising is yourself.
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By becoming more intentional people, we become better parents.
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By becoming better parents, we become better people.
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In today s conversation, we touch on these tenets while also exploring the particular social world we find ourselves in, one in which there seems to be an expectation that we can and should control the weather for both ourselves and our kids.
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Okay, let s get to our conversation.
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You know you re one of my favorite people for all the reasons.
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One, you really make me laugh.
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But there s something just reassuring about you as a person.
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And I am not surprised that every parent I know has you on speed dial.
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How many times have you changed your number?
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That s what I really want to know.
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And how many times are you like, leave me alone?
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I don t want to know the intricacies of everyone s children s lives.
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No, I haven t gotten there yet.
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I haven t gotten there yet.
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But also, I m terrible on
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all, you know, phones and emails.
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So people have to really want to reach me because sometimes they have to send a second text and then I respond.
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I m not sick of it in any way.
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It s just like, was I looking the other way while opening my phone?
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It s more of an attention problem.
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Okay, well, that s fine.
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That s a very helpful disclaimer, because I feel like if you re the sort of hyper responsive person, and then you re on the hook, you re on the hook to answer every parent s parenting woes.
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That s a good place to talk about the book, because it s also an antidote.
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And you and I have talked about this at length, that we are swimming in a culture of over information, optimization, and this
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It seems prevailing that there s a way to do everything, that every problem needs a solution, that every moment has to be engineered for perfection, that there s an A-B way to parent so that you can assure with certainty that your child is well-adjusted and successful and solvent and sane and all of the things that we tend to care about.
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And what I love about you is that you always bring it back to,
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science that s despite the complexity of our lives simple really is true everything you just said the science is simple the complexity of our lives is not and the last thing i think any parent needs is on top of the complexity of our lives complexity in their parenting when there s just only so much that we can control and what we can control i think
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go for it, but the rest is just an exercise in figuring out how to like manage the volume.
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The volume of sound and the volume of space.
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Yeah.
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And just the idea that we can t and should not shrink wrap our children or try to ensure sort of this suffering-free experience, right?
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Which I think somehow has become this idea that you can optimize your way out of any hardship, any disappointment, any frustration, any pain, any loss.
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I do think it s really sad that all of it s so well-meaning that like the optimization doesn t come from a place of thinking that you re commodifying your kids or your parenting or anything.
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And it doesn t come from the sense that like you want better, stronger, faster for other reasons, but ultimately.
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This thing that we re trying to do for the benefit of our kids does not benefit them.
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And it doesn t benefit us.
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It just drives everybody crazy.
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And we know intuitively that if you don t learn that feelings aren t dangerous and that difficult challenges are not insurmountable in the smaller ways than when the big stuff inevitably comes.
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you re stuck in a real state of sometimes now insurmountable that didn t need to be that way.
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And I don t want to say that as like a scare tactic.
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It s more just like a way to feel a little bit better about the times that are hard.
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and that this too shall pass, and these things are seen, and this is part of a collective human experience.
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And I mean, you sort of outline it early on.
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Non-negotiables, there aren t that many.
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Take care of the mental health of the primary caregiver.
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Do not engage in physical or emotional abuse.
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Do not neglect a child.
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Commit to habits of consistent sleep and movement.
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Establish clear rules that enable emotional and physical safety.
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Be sensitive.
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which we will define, which you go into in the book, yeah, to your child s needs, which are not the same thing as their wants.
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And the book obviously goes into a lot of the complexities that we encounter and we ll get into it in our conversation.
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But that s like, just remember that, right?
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Yeah, because sometimes whenever anybody gives absolutes in this gig of parenting, I m like, what are you talking about?
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there s so few that we are certain are really a big deal to adhere to and all the other things are kind of up for grabs.
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It s kind of like, not to get weird and biblical, but it s like there are the Ten Commandments and then the surrounding Talmudic
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content that interprets all of the laws and then the surrounding ones that interpret those.
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But the purpose of every one of those was to keep people from not defying the 10 Commandments.
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Like you almost like made more rules to avoid, like when you break certain rules, you ve got like all these gazillions now to go through before you ll hit the main 10.
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That would be real bad.
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That s what this feels like.
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There s this pile of made-up rules that
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that are removing some of the validity of this whole parenting field, because it s just not... That didn t make any sense, by the way, unless you are a Talmudic scholar or something.
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No, but I think people get it.
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What we are really good at as humans is taking
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essential ideas that I think are pretty clear to most of us and then adding an incredible amount of complexity, context, conditionality.
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I don t know why.
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Like, actually, that s a good question for you.
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Do you know why we do that?
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I think it gives us a sense of control.
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I think that the more vague and more freedom there is in anything, sometimes the more we feel like there s space to screw up.
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So if you have really rigid direction, it gives everybody a better sense of how things are going to go.
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The problem is, does it or is it just what you think it is?
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Obviously, there s a book and I do this as a job.
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There are some things that are helpful.
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It s just that there s so much that s not helpful that I just want to clear away.
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And if it s good for you to have like a lot of rules around a particular subject, because you re like, look, I get all crazy when it comes to food.
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So I need very specific guidelines about feeding children so that I don t put my stuff on them.
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Okay.
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Then you are reflecting and knowing yourself and knowing what they re going to need in order to move through the world without some of the struggles you had.
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I get it.
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But.
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They re more rare than they need to be.
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Those are like specific things that you are maybe personally coming to terms with.
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So you need a little more rigidity, but I don t want that to be the general feeling about what it takes to raise good humans.
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or that there are these season-specific or episodic, obviously more age-specific ideas, too, that are really helpful.
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Like the conversation that you just had with Jessica Yellen, for example, another one of our good friends, about how to raise children who are literate around the news and what does that look like, how appropriate is it for them to even engage with The New York Times and everything that s happening in the world.
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But there s this overwhelm, right, where I think there s so much information that should be accessed for specific times, but it comes down on us as parents as like this canon that you need to commit to and memorize in order to be
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perfect in execution at every moment of the time.
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Even though, as you point out, based on sort of the essential science of developmental psychology, there are five principles, right?
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And repair is one of them.
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It s messing up and making it right.
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Yeah.
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And you can mess up a lot.
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You can mess up a lot.
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It s like the most exciting part about it is that in order to grow and have strong relationships, you have to mess up in order to have repair.
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So you couldn t be perfect or you would undermine your parent.
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You would undermine the very thing you re trying to do so well.
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I was just having this conversation with a psychologist who focuses on sort of family patterns.
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And obviously, you know, we ve had conversations about my book on your podcast, and my book is in some ways about the cultural programming that we all receive.
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When you think about as a developmental psychologist who sees families and children of all ages, and I m sure that it sort of varies based on age, when family loses less prominence and culture takes over.
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Because I also think like you can parent, but you re also parenting in a sea of other parents, a much bigger culture, right?
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So it s not like you re going to save your child from TikTok, right?
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So how do you think about that in terms of also quieting the minds of parents in terms of where our power is invariably limited?
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I really like to remind people that we can only control ourselves and we can t control our kids.
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And we certainly can t control the people around our kids.
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And if you spend all your time fixating on that, including your partner, you will be miserable and it will again, undermine you.
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So I think the focus is on the person we can control and that s it.
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That is all we can do.
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I do hope people get some relief in knowing that
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Our parenting does actually matter.
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and our values at home do actually matter.
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And culture, of course, you know more than anyone matters, but we don t need to throw our hands up and say, well, what are you gonna do?
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There s a lot you can do because what happens inside your home and having very clear values and a mission statement or some kind of North star that everybody in the household really agrees on and lives by,
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That gets in there.
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It s not going to be everything, but it gets in there, even if it gets in there in a way where your kids grow up and say, I never want anything to do with that particular value system.
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It was totally different from what I believe in.
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The fact is, it s in there and it s something they have to unlearn.
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That s why it s so big.
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So I think that there s some relief in knowing that culture is not going to take over everything, but it doesn t have a huge impact.
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You re not going to alleviate your daughters, for example.
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of the pressures of society and body image and all of that nonsense.
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But it s quite different when society is doing that and your mother is doing that to you and to herself.
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No, that makes a ton of sense.
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So it s almost like when culture and families unite to push the same values, and in some ways, maybe they should.
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And in some cases, they very much should not.
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that you can either counterbalance or, you know, it s like, I guess, navigating a ship, right?
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You have a little bit of control.
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Totally.
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Yeah.
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I like that the most powerful environmental influence on children s development is
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their parents or primary caregivers.
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And I also know that that power is still not as big as people think it is, but I like it not because it s supposed to scare parents and say like, wait, what?
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Like I m the most powerful environmental influence to me.
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It says, even though there s so much, you can t control the very nature of your relationship with your child.
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Can move the needle when it comes to the big stuff like toxic stress and it can move it to tolerable that alone to me is the most heartening.
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Wonderful information it s not meant to be translated into.
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this other stuff that we can have control over.
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It s really about just these like five R s.
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It s so specifically not to make parents think, well, I have so much control, I better get it all perfectly.
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I m Rachel Martin.
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After hosting Morning Edition for years, I know that the news can wear you down.
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So we made a new podcast called Wildcard, where a special deck of cards and a whole bunch of fascinating guests help us sort out what makes life meaningful.
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It s part game show, part existential deep dive, and it is seriously fun.
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Join me on Wildcard wherever you get your podcasts, only from NPR.
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Tell us the five R s.
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Okay.
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If you must ask.
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Relationship, reflection, regulation, rules, and repair.
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And regulation, to me, I mean, just thinking about where we were going in terms of helping your child ballast against the storm of the world or stay on some sort of course, that there s this instinct, right, of rather than learn how to regulate ourselves,
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Rather than learn how to manage our emotions and do that level of hygiene, there is this instinct right now, it s probably eternal and how it always is, of like, no, let s change the weather.
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I do not like this programming.
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I do not like what s happening.
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So like, no more.
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No more weather.
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I want smooth sailing for myself and for my child.
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And that s not life.
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And it s not even like anything any of us really would want to live in.
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It s a direction that needs to stop happening.
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I think that with regulation, the funny thing is that it s either I want to control the weather around my children.
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or I want to control my children.
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Regulation is very much a self thing for adults and a co-regulation thing between you and other, especially you and a young person whose brain isn t fully able to self-regulate.
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But if you re so focused on controlling all these outside things that you can t, like the weather, then you get to let yourself off the hook
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of getting into the much harder, but more possible work of self-regulation and of figuring out your own stuff.
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And all of that has much bigger benefits to your kids, of course, than making the weather perfect around them.
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But it just is harder.
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Even though it shouldn t be so easy to change the weather, but it does appear that is what happens.
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happens, right?
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From what snacks are in the classroom to what words are used, to who s invited to what birthday party, to who gets what trophy, to bigger things that we are not talking about today, although we can.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I see it at my kid s school, et cetera.
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It s this like, I will control the syllabus.
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I will control the words that are used.
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I will
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to the point of like, you might be able to do that at this small alternative school.
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Yeah, but I don t know that that s going to work out for you as a process for helping your child navigate the world.
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which is full of people who are going to disagree with them, have completely different visions and versions.
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And this is sort of the rub between, like, you don t want a fragile child.
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You do want the world to also evolve and become more inclusive and more loving and all of these things that we value.
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But it s not there.
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Right?
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It s not.
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And I think what s so scary is that, again, it s like all in the service, you know, raising kids who are going to be more robust, but actually they re wilting under this idea that we should be making things just so.
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And you just said fragile.
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Fragile families used to refer to it was like a term in the research.
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It used to refer to families who were vulnerable because of socioeconomic, physical and mental health differences.
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more likely poverty.
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Now, fragile is happening in every economic bracket in ways that are all about emotions.
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And it is really a frustrating thing to watch because it went from something that was
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in the control of the world.
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Poverty is not something you can do something about.
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What sort of status you were born into, even though I know we re in the United States and that is not a thing, but it is, is not something you could ever control.
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Whereas we absolutely could control how emotionally fragile we re
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setting our kids up to be.
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And I think what s confusing is all research.
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There s like no argument on this front that sensitive caregiving matters, but it somehow has gotten lost in translation to mean your kids shouldn t feel anything other than so cared for that they are not upset.
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Yes.
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Well, that it s the wider culture s responsibility to attend to or cater to your child s preferences.
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and or sensitivities or proclivities.
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And there s a line, I get that there s a line between we need an anti-racist society, we need an anti-misogynistic society, we need a society that is not anti-Semitic, etc.
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So putting all of those things in one part of this conversation
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Or that we have work as a society.
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We have work as a society to do.
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And we re not there.
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We have to be able to create not only kids that have to confront those inequities, but hopefully have the emotional durability and strength to change them, right?
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And to engage in these conversations and to be uncomfortable.
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and to know who they are.
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And you certainly don t get any sense of that when the world isn t creating any opposition to who you are, if that makes sense.
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I mean, maybe that s too metaphysical.
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No, it s super clear.
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It s not too metaphysical.
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And I think it is like the big conundrum for parents.
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And I mean, I just am thinking of the silliest example right now, which is when my daughter, it was like her fourth birthday or fifth birthday.
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And we did like a table at a really fun
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place in New York with lots of candy around.
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And I m not going to say who, but let s say my friends were bringing their two kids and one of them was running late because his nap went over.
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And so the dad texted me and said, because it was, we were doing the cake and it was ending and said, could you pretend that it just started so he doesn t have to be upset that he missed
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the cake and you can do it again.
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And I remember I just flagged it.
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I was just like, that is so upsetting because I know this dad loves his kids so much and is such an attentive, conscientious parent.
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And he s just getting in his own way because he wasn t able to imagine a world where he had to say to his child, this is going to be so disappointing, but you missed the cake.
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Let s go over there and bring a present and give a hug.
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I m really sorry.
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And see that his son was disappointed.
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And I know that s like a tiny example of when we re talking about these big ideas of the world being just so.
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But it was a tiny moment in parenting that actually is the kind of stuff that is more likely to come your way.
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Those are the challenges.
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I mean, hopefully, we don t have
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the bigger ones as often, but it s those tiny ones that we definitely don t need to make ourselves crazy fixing or calling someone else and saying, everybody pretend there wasn t a party or whatever.
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But I know that s a really random example, but I remember at the time being like, that is so interesting and sort of tragic that
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This is what s happened in parenting.
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And he was so certain that he was in the state and he was doing right by his kid.
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And I totally understood.
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But I also was like, no, this is not going to support this is not what sensitive caregiving is.
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Yeah.
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Well, let s say more about that, too.
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Because, I mean, you ve said to me, I think I asked you at lunch, like, about reparenting.
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And you said all parenting is reparenting.
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I mean, you looked at me like I was a doofus.
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Like, duh.
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I mean, it s true, though.
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But so much of this is about our own discomfort, right?
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Yeah.
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And is that born out of paths being cleared for us as children or an inability to be with our discomfort?
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Are we just sort of passing this on as an inheritance?
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I mean, I think it s a number of things.
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SPEAKER_01
One is that s why I think reflection is such an important part of these principles is like, what is it?
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We don t necessarily have the answer, but if you reflect like, why can t I stomach the idea of my child feeling upset for missing this party?
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Was it because I didn t feel like anybody cared when I was upset and so I m overcompensating?
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Or is it because everybody cared so much that I don t know that you can survive being that upset?
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SPEAKER_01
So I don t know that it s one or the other, but it s definitely worth every time you notice that you re putting yourself and your history and your mishigas, is that a scientific word or what?
2
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That you re putting it into your choices.
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Like take a moment, take a breath.
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And just reflect what the hell do I mean by this?
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
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And you can like say, I m going to unpack that later for now.
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I m just dealing with my kid and what s going on for them, but we re in a constant process.
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SPEAKER_01
And then the whole reparenting thing, the other part of it is.
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What you didn t get does matter.
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And so like taking a moment to say to yourself, I don t like that nobody cared when I was sad.
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Or I didn t ever have the benefit of learning that feelings aren t dangerous because I was allowed to have only happy feelings.
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Then you can reparent yourself and say, I m so sorry.
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That s not what you needed.
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Let me take care of you.
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But that s not on your kids.
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That s our work.
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SPEAKER_00
How much in your practice do you see, essentially, parents trying to atone for the sins that they feel like were committed against them in their own childhood, where they re sort of course correcting in potentially an extreme way, or replicating exactly what they think worked in the creation of themselves?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, most of the time.
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The only other thing I have is if I m talking to two parents together.
2
SPEAKER_01
Ooh.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like a battle of which part of each person s childhood should be replicated and which person s was, you know, like clearly was not something that
2
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is acceptable even though essentially like we all on our own in a conversation like someone s talking to me about their childhood and how they re want to parent and all that they ll be reflective and they ll have the capacity to criticize and be curious about what might have been
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wrong, right, or somewhere in between.
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But the minute you bring another person in, you defend your experience a little bit more.
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Because first of all, ultimately, what are you saying if you re saying your parents screwed up?
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You re criticizing yourself as being a screw-up.
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So there s something that makes you say, well, they did something right.
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I m not all that bad.
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SPEAKER_01
Or the opposite if you re really self-deprecating.
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SPEAKER_01
But when you bring two people into it, you re bringing two histories.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s so much more complicated than just, what do you think of your history?
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SPEAKER_01
It s like, what do you think of your history in the context of someone watching you versus just by yourself and your thoughts?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Do you think, I am obviously a big fan of therapy and psychologists, such as yourself, and have benefited greatly from therapy.
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I think.
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But I was just doing my mom s book club.
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And one of her friends was like, I ve never been in therapy.
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And I think you ve done a lot of therapy.
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And I think that s very odd, essentially, like reading between the lines, like your generation.
3
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And also, it was like more of a generational thing of like, you guys are self obsessed and narcissistic.
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And I m sure that there s something probably to that.
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But I think that there is this heightened self-consciousness as you go into therapy and you start, you do look at your family system and you look at culture.
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And I think I m someone who blamed too much on, was like trying to place everything in my family before realizing, oh my God, so much of this is cultural.
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I would catch myself sort of like blaming my mother and then being like, wait, what?
3
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But actually, my mom was the opposite of what I – you know, my mom is the most honest person I ve ever met.
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SPEAKER_01
She is not the one who was limiting my tongue.
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SPEAKER_01
But do you think that the increasing self-consciousness – because so many of us are therapized or familiar and we now are prejudging ourselves, do you think that that heightened self-consciousness is making us intolerable parents?
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SPEAKER_00
Sometimes I do think that it s like, I m so boring in the, I really am a space betweener and it s not as exciting to talk about.
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SPEAKER_00
But in this case, it s the same thing.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like a little bit of this awareness is life-changing.
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but so much of it that you then end up, to your point, intolerable.
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SPEAKER_00
You know those people where you might eat organic and be careful and give your kids things that you know are not going to be poisonous, but then you see someone who s so extreme about it and you like wanna shove Fritos and Coke in their mouth?
3
SPEAKER_00
Coca-Cola.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like it s like that, where when you take anything to such an extreme that you re hearing people talk about like, well, if I say this, my child will be codependent, or if I say that, my child will be, it s like, okay,
3
SPEAKER_00
Just be.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think that speaks to more knowing yourself enough to know where your strengths and weaknesses are.
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And if you re the kind of person who s super self-reflective, don t focus on that.
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SPEAKER_00
Focus on rules.
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You might be a better rules person.
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SPEAKER_00
Or like if you re really sensitive and loving and connected, you don t need to focus on relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
You could go into some other parts.
3
SPEAKER_01
So your advice too, within systems that you look at, do you feel like most parents need to attend to all of these five principles equally, or that some are really bad at repair, or some are really bad at their own regulation?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that typically how it works?
3
SPEAKER_00
That is typically how it works.
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SPEAKER_00
Like if I just say to you, when you talk about parenting styles and the research that s divided into four parenting styles, permissive, authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful,
3
SPEAKER_00
So we take neglectful off the table if we re having a parenting session, because you re probably not neglectful.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a little self-selecting.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now you re looking at permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, and those are measured on two dimensions, sensitivity of care and what was called demandingness in the research.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you could think of it as control or boundaries or limits or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you re listening to that, you know, OK, a permissive parent bends more on sensitivity and has a harder time with the
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demandingness and the reverse is true for authoritarian.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the balance is, you know, a little bit of both is authoritative.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, I could tell you right now, I know I m pretty good at sensitivity.
3
SPEAKER_00
I struggle more.
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I know where my struggle is.
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So I m not putting an effort into sensitivity of care because I might end up doing it all and misunderstanding it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to overthink something that I embody all the time.
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What I m going to do is I m going to overthink the thing that is so hard for me, which is to see my kids experience the emotions that come along with my setting those boundaries.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I m going to just be like, that s where I m going to pay attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
And mostly when I talk to parents, even just looking at parenting style research, which obviously has a host of issues and whatever, but for the most part, it s a quick way of like, you just know.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I bend more that way than that way.
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SPEAKER_00
And once you know that, you can focus on the thing that is a little bit harder for you and trust that that other thing that comes more naturally is just happening and you don t need to worry about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
OK, and then I know you get into this in the book, but when you re in a two-parent system, I think that the research suggests that you and your partner need to be supportive of each other.
3
SPEAKER_01
But in my instance, my husband s probably more authoritative.
3
SPEAKER_01
Can you sort of make up a whole system in two parts, or does that mean that someone gets the raw end of the deal and I need to be more rules-based in order to back Rob up?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, it really depends on what your hopes and dreams are, because it s probably better for you and Rob and your relationship to be a little bit more on the same page or accept when you re not and let it go.
3
SPEAKER_00
But in terms of the kids, it s really just about is it fair to Rob if you if you get all the sensitivity and they come to you for everything and the relationship is more connected and he s like, thanks for nothing.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what I get.
3
SPEAKER_01
I get the FFS, Elise.
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SPEAKER_01
I told them no Robux.
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SPEAKER_01
Why did you just give them Robux?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what I get.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think that s one of those things where he could be a little bit more sensitive and attuned if he trusted that you will be a little bit more conscientious about sharing the limits.
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SPEAKER_00
But it may be that that s just like not comfortable for him, just like it s not comfortable for you.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you ll each have your individual relationships and it ll be totally fine.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, kids really just need one.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is what I was hoping you would say.
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SPEAKER_00
Two is awesome, but they really just need one sensitive, loving caregiver that sort of makes them feel seen and understood with appropriate boundaries that keep them safe.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then having extra is just bonus.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
What s so interesting is that the fact that you took, for example, neglectful off the table,
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s not applicable because being a somewhat neurotic person, I don t even know if neurotic is a useful scientific word anymore or not.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know where it stands.
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SPEAKER_00
I think it still stands.
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SPEAKER_01
But I immediately go to I m a neglectful mother because I work too much.
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SPEAKER_01
My head s always in a book.
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SPEAKER_01
you know, so on and so forth.
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SPEAKER_01
My children would tell you that I m neglectful.
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SPEAKER_01
But obviously, I care deeply about these conversations.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, but is that also a tendency where we re all diagnosing ourselves as being terrible on every front?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and it s so upsetting because, first of all, the fact that your kids would say you re neglectful means they know they re safe enough to joke around and say that you re neglectful.
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SPEAKER_00
By the way, my daughter said this morning, because I ve been working a lot lately, a lot more than usual, she said, I feel like I have one of those moms who goes to the spa all day and doesn t really know her kids.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, you re working that much.
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SPEAKER_00
And I was like, wait, what?
3
SPEAKER_00
What?
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SPEAKER_00
What are you even talking about? 
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SPEAKER_00
And then she laughed.
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SPEAKER_00
And I said, are you saying that I m not showing up as much lately and working too much?
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SPEAKER_00
Is that what s going on?
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SPEAKER_00
And she said, yes, but I get that it s temporary and that you do know me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it was just like this weird thing where I said, what is this about the going to the spa all day?
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SPEAKER_00
And she said, you know, those parents that don t really pay attention to their kids.
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SPEAKER_00
Because they re just too busy tending to themselves.
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SPEAKER_00
And I just thought it was an interesting, weird comment.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because even in that information, there s something that I must do that indicates that my way of caring matters more than some other parent.
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SPEAKER_00
There s something in there that I need to think about.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was thinking there was just a judgment in there that was interesting, but I also thought, which you said as well, is that we re good because she s safe to say, like, I don t like how this is going down and I m okay saying it s temporary, but this is just the way it s going to be and we move on.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, of course, like when your kids can joke around and say that you re neglectful, it s because they know you re not.
3
SPEAKER_00
But more importantly to all of that is that benign neglect is quite different than neglect.
3
SPEAKER_00
Benign neglect is probably good for everybody who s super conscientious to just give a whirl.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the tenor under which I think I was raised.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, my parents were very involved and gave me amazing education and extracurricular activities and nature.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, they were very like, go outside, we will ring a bell when you can come back inside.
3
SPEAKER_01
you know, they weren t like intimately involved and they didn t wanna like sit with me and watch me read, let s be real.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this sort of goes to my point too about my oldest, Max, who is in the culture and, cause I recognize this in myself, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like we all want to be special.
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SPEAKER_01
We all want to have some sort of life experience, particularly now that s distinguishing or to sort of point to the ways in which I would say definitely like,
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, and I wasn t privileged in this way, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think about it with Max or whatever story he s going to tell about his own childhood, and he will have stories, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
That there s such a need.
4
SPEAKER_01
It seems very human.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not necessarily new to be like, these are the things that happened to me.
4
SPEAKER_01
These are what make me sort of interesting.
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SPEAKER_01
I worry that it s getting more pronounced, that there s nothing worse that you can be than standard issue, quote unquote, normal.
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SPEAKER_01
That it s boring and unremarkable.
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SPEAKER_01
And is that happening or is that in my own imagination?
4
SPEAKER_00
I do think that that s more happening with parents is like, how are my kids remarkable?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I do think it is bleeding into how kids are interpreting themselves because I ve heard so many times, both from parents and kids, things like, I don t have a thing and I need one.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they re like fourth graders or seventh graders.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that breaks my heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that I think has to be related to this sense of like exceptional and how do you stand out and what makes you excellent.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you re right.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s nothing more offensive than just being unremarkable.
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SPEAKER_00
Even though our kids have to feel like they re remarkable to us.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t need to feel like they re the sun, moon, and stars to the world.
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SPEAKER_00
That would actually be intolerable.
4
SPEAKER_00
But recognizing, like, they don t need to do something to be remarkable.
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SPEAKER_00
Their existence is...
4
SPEAKER_00
They have worthiness from their existence.
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SPEAKER_00
But I don t know that you get anybody to believe that when we re competing with the culture that we re competing with.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s so intense.
4
SPEAKER_01
And meanwhile, I very much believe that every single person is uniquely gifted and that we re all here for a reason.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it might not be apparent when we re in fourth grade or 12th grade or when we re 40, but that there is an essential course.
4
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different.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so that idea breaks my heart.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I do feel fortunate to be a kid from Montana.
4
SPEAKER_01
There weren t that many of us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or to be a Jew in Montana, there really weren t that many.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, you re right.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s hard, I think, when we re in a culture where it s like, yeah, as you said, what is my thing?
4
SPEAKER_01
And then there s so much for adults, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was talking to a friend who was working on a project around purpose for kids.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my pushback on that was like, purpose is a very intimidating word.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what my purpose is.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, there s podcasts of that name.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s so much emphasis on this idea of some sort of single purpose.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I very much like a shift or a reframe to contribution, because that feels like it shifts and moves and changes and you become more equipped over time to
4
SPEAKER_01
contribute in bigger ways and less equipped, maybe energetically.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I think we have to somehow help our kids get away from this idea that they have to distinguish themselves in order to have any value.
4
SPEAKER_00
that framing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, it starts with these bananas ideas about how you make yourself appealing to the school and the teachers and the applications and all of that stuff in like preschool.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not even talking about college applications, but just
4
SPEAKER_00
There is this crazy, tell me why your child is exceptional.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell me why you re exceptional.
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell me why you stand out.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I actually remember I had an essay question for one of the preschools because I was in New York city at the time, which there are actual essay questions for going to preschool.
4
SPEAKER_00
And one of them was, you know,
4
SPEAKER_00
Tell us about your child and what distinguishes her.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was thinking, she s a kid.
4
SPEAKER_00
What are you talking about?
4
SPEAKER_00
She s at the time, 18 months.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m thinking, I love this child.
4
SPEAKER_00
She s amazing.
4
SPEAKER_00
But one thing I know from listening to so many parents and having conversations is that when you talk to anybody who has a new child, especially
4
SPEAKER_00
Especially like a toddler who s just bursting with new words and new understandings of the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everybody feels like that is like, oh my God, look at my kid doing this and making connections here.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it is remarkable.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s happening to all of them.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I hear it so much and I love supporting parents in the process of getting to know their incredible kids.
4
SPEAKER_00
And also, I can t believe that a seasoned preschool would be like, tell us how this child is distinguished and exceptional because it s ridiculous.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re all incredible and exceptional and also with a certain limited range.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s also, you know, I m thinking back to sort of when my kids were that age.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I did this moms group in West Los Angeles with this woman named Tandi, who was amazing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was so fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you must have, I mean, like such a front row seat to the psychology of parents because just being with other moms inherently was fascinating too.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this prevailing idea that I think that we all had that Tandi was like firmly disabusing at every opportunity that
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SPEAKER_01
We were responsible that every input had some sort of output and that our actions would determine our child s development.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I can t remember the prompt.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think a mom was talking about anxiety that her, you know, nine month old wasn t walking.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t – it was – something hadn t happened, even though, like, you know, my kids didn t walk until they were 15 months, thank God.
4
SPEAKER_01
But Chandi, you know, had obviously had been with this child as well and, like, saw no reason to be concerned.
4
SPEAKER_01
And she was like, I promise you that, you know, John, whatever his name was, Johnny s going to walk and he s going to talk and he is also going to drive.
4
SPEAKER_01
And she just sort of, without mocking the mother, but was like, these things happen.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there are so many things, like with my kids, where I m like, I m going to have faith that they re going to grow out of this.
4
SPEAKER_01
And guess what?
4
SPEAKER_01
They did.
4
SPEAKER_00
Talk about balanced approach, because sure, you have to have an eye out for things where you might need early intervention or something that really does matter.
4
SPEAKER_00
But for the majority of kids, it all unfolds.
4
SPEAKER_00
And our job is not going to change that in a significant way other than these five principles, which I mentioned, because that really is significant.
4
SPEAKER_00
But in general, in the mom groups, that s a great example because I see them, I have them all the time, and it is such a privilege.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there is something developmentally appropriate in the early years and with your first to want to figure out the formula.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think there s also something developmentally appropriate about evolving into accepting that there is no formula.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I used to divide mom groups up by, like, if you had a first-time mom, I would not put them with second-time moms.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or, like, there were breastfeeding moms and not breastfeeding, because I just didn t want anybody feeling uncomfortable.
4
SPEAKER_00
But mostly, it was because there was such an assured sense of rightness, and I didn t want to deal with how that made other people
4
SPEAKER_00
people feel.
4
SPEAKER_00
I obviously stopped that.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was sort of along the lines of my trying to control the weather.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it was so interesting because it was early in my career and it was like, I just want everybody to feel good until I realized we re mothers.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not going to feel good.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, you just need, we need support for those moments and to believe that someone else isn t worried.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like most of the time when people check in with me on how something s going with their kids, it s to know if they should be worried or not.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when I reassure them that there is no problem, then they can move on.
4
SPEAKER_00
But if my face is like panicked because there s a nine month old not walking and I think there s a problem, that doesn t feel good.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, but it s easier for me because I can make the certain calls because of my training and experience that someone else might not be able to make.
4
SPEAKER_00
But eventually we have to be able to make those calls ourselves or know when to ask someone.
4
SPEAKER_01
But to bring it full circle to the beginning of our conversation, I think that that s one of the pitfalls of our current culture and some of the conversation around parenting, which suggests that you need a script for every moment of your child s experience and that there s a problem and solution that is present in all areas.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it creates this idea of,
4
SPEAKER_01
inadequacy or not being like fully armed and I think like a concurrent hypervigilance, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like clearly I m missing something.
4
SPEAKER_01
Clearly there s like wisdom and science here that I m missing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I m not surprised that people are coming to you just to ask these questions like, is my child normal?
4
SPEAKER_00
a lot of people try scripts and it doesn t work.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then they re like, now what?
4
SPEAKER_00
And my feeling about that is that s because what does work even mean?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like maybe you re getting sold script, but you re not getting sold that it s going to guarantee any outcomes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you are, that s a lie.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if a script makes you feel armed, because you re like, I like to
5
SPEAKER_00
memorize scripts, go for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t think they re very effective because after one or two times, you got to change your script.
5
SPEAKER_00
The gig is up.
5
SPEAKER_00
The gig is up.
5
SPEAKER_00
But also, they re all the same script.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s why this book spans across ages, even though you could focus on one age, but you re doing the same thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, like, how many different ways can you validate a feeling, connect with your body, and then set a boundary?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s all the same, whether it s an infant or a teenager.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s just changing it for your particular child and your temperament and...
5
SPEAKER_00
how you explain it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But that is too simple for people, and it s scary.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, I guess it s scary to say like, wait, that s it?
5
SPEAKER_00
But go break down all those scripts.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we could do a little exercise.
5
SPEAKER_00
We will not.
5
SPEAKER_00
I bet we could pull 100 scripts from everything from potty training to teen bullying to whatever.
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And when you break it down, I mean, I do in the book a lot of times, and I m just repeating the same thing with different examples.
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You do offer the balance script, which is essentially it s like a self-regulation exercise for yourself around breathing and assessing and locating and very useful to place yourself as you re about to respond.
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Totally.
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But then you can do the same thing, whether you have a two-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 22-year-old,
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So, it s not like you need this unique and individual thing for each interaction.
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I would like for this parenting world to be more like, okay, I m going to become fluent in this particularly simple but effective scientific way.
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And then I m going to honor my own values, figure those out, because that s none of my business or anybody else s.
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And my Elisa, we re all going to have, we re all going to define what a good human is differently.
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We re all going to define what our values are differently.
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And that is not science.
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That is just you do you, but it should be like more like a practice and a fluency in just these simple practices.
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And then they just translate and there is no outcome that is going to be here.
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You know, we can do the best.
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Yeah.
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No, I think it s so essential.
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I mean, it is why I love your book because it s a resource where regardless of what you re contending with, whether it s sleep issues or screen time or
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Bullying, there s a chapter, there s a section, there are resources, there are Q&As, but it s not something that you have to necessarily metabolize as some master grand plan.
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It s like a core set of skills or principles.
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that hopefully, I would imagine, will be very reassuring to anyone who reads them.
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And I appreciate that, you know, on the podcast, obviously, you go into in-depth conversations about all sorts of things, but that complexity isn t what you re selling.
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Look, I think it s interesting.
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I m a developmental psychologist.
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Like I could spend six months just talking about theory of mind or like how children develop morality.
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Like I obviously find that interesting.
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So I will have that researcher on the podcast and deep dive, but it doesn t mean if you don t find it interesting and you re just like, ah, this is too much.
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You don t need to worry about it.
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It s definitely like,
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You have to know what gets you excited and motivated and what makes you feel like, Oh my God, get me out of here.
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And so I only want people for the, like the podcast is a great example.
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Like.
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I love bringing wonderful researchers on and having deep conversations about things, but that doesn t mean that everything I m talking about is going to translate to you dealing in your day to day with your child or as a parent or as a person.
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It s more just, is this really interesting for you and how.
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I like to see the world.
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I think it s really interesting.
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And also like just in general developmental research is meant for exactly what the researcher was looking at and not a broader
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world.
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So a lot of times there are studies that are just not relevant to you.
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And then they get out there and people are like, no, you re supposed to chew your food and then feed it to your baby because there was a study that said that that made them digest it better.
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But the study was done on another continent in a culture that didn t have knives.
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Who knows?
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But we take it out of context and then apply it to our everyday and minutiae
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Yeah.
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Well, it s a bigger cultural trend that drives towards not only complexity, but this idea of optimization.
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If you had all the access to the information, then you would live until you re 150, and everything would be easy, and you could engineer certainty and control.
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And so I appreciate people like you who are regrounding it in, well, that s just not really true.
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And these are the things that we know.
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And the rest of it is life.
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And that s the fun part.
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And that is the fun part.
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I do worry that we don t have space for just the curious unfolding of the humans that are just so delightful in front of us.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Let it happen.
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Let it happen.
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It s more fun that way.
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It s a little scary.
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It s just real scary.
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It is.
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It s more of a little scary.
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It s terrifying.
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By the way, I am a very nervous Nelly as a person.
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I m just like really, by the way, I don t even know where that phrase came from.
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I probably should check that out.
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Speaking of words, but I understand the neurotic that you re talking about.
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Like I get it so much, but what I will say, if this makes anybody feel better is I am one of those people and developmental science is a relief to me.
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It s like having all the information when I had my babies actually helped me, not because I knew what to do, but because I knew that I didn t have to do as much as everybody thought I needed to do.
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Yeah, like, good enough is not a lie.
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No, good enough is not a lie.
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And good enough is achievable.
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As you say, like, I can t remember the statistic, but that it s not even 75%.
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It s like, if you can get it right, like 20% of the time, I can t remember.
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It s a staggering number.
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It s that the Edtronics research on repair showed that the connection between parent and child, the dance that we all think is so beautiful, happens about 33% of the time.
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And the rest of the time, we re doing rupture and repair work.
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So we could do 33% connection.
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We could do that.
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I love Aliza Pressman and she s just wise and clarifying and someone who, uh,
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cuts to it in a way that I think that, as we were discussing, we live in a culture where sometimes creating complexity pays.
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And the book, The Five Principles of Parenting, it essentially revolves around those five R s, along with this idea of balance, which is teaching you, the reader, theoretically the parent, how to co-regulate by regulating yourself first.
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And it s reassuring.
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You will find on every page something that confirms what you already feel and know to be true, but that you might be questioning.
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And you could read it straight through as I did, but you can also duck in and out as you encounter challenges on your parenting journey.
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I mean, she gets into everything from sleep to discipline to conflict
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to friends and siblings, screen time, sex, gender, and sexuality, on and on.
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It s all here.
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So highly recommend.
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I obviously, I don t do a lot of parenting on Pulling the Thread, in part because I recognize that not every listener is a parent, but also because I have a bit of an allergy to this idea of optimization and complexity in this space when it already feels
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Like a lot.
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But Raising Good Humans, the podcast, and now her book is something that I value.
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If you liked today s episode, please rate and review and tell a friend.
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You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes at EliseLoonan.com.
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While there, please sign up for my sub stack.
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I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive most Sundays.
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Or follow me on Instagram at EliseLoonan.
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And finally, if you haven t already, please consider picking up a copy of my New York Times bestselling book, On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, available wherever you
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get your books.
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It s an exploration of how women have been conditioned for goodness, men for power, and all the ways we ve been programmed to police ourselves and each other according to these cultural ideas of what it is to be a good woman.
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I d also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible.
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Please support them the way they support this podcast.
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This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio.
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If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review, and follow Pulling the Thread.
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Available now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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I want to give a shout out to Phil Svitek, Lauren Legroso, Mary-Kate McDonough, Ali Brockman, and the entire Kedans13 team for producing these episodes, and to Valero Duval for my key art.
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Take care of yourselves.
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I ll see you next time.