Ned Johnson Part 2: The Science and Sense Behind the Self-Driven Child

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Imagine the youth in your life, and maybe even yourself, being able to navigate the things in life that make us nuts. An acronym made popular by Sonia Lupin at the Center for Studies on Human Stress. It stands for novelty or newness, unpredictability, threats to our ego, and sense of control. Hello, I am Terry Novichek, and this is Element is Everything podcast, where we discuss topics associated with finding your element, that place where interests and talents collide to bring good things to yourself and others. In part one of our interview with Ned Johnson, co-author of The Self-Driven Child, he addressed the high rate of anxiety and learned helplessness and its connection to more device time and less unstructured play, time outside, sleep, and even intergenerational interactions. As the interview went on, he shared his experience with Plan B thinking. Let's hear what he had to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

When I look at kids who are not motivated, I'm constantly assessing, do they not feel confident, which because they don't want to do it because it's threatening to them? Do they do they not, or is there not a high sense of relatedness? Do they not like their teacher or their they feel like their parents are doing this to them? Do they have a low sense of autonomy? I just had this great conversation with a kid last night. She's actually your way, um, really bright, uh, ADHD. School's not going as well as her parents would like. And we were talking on and on and on. Uh, and it's at some point she said, My parents keep giving sending me all of these tutors and all these adults, all these people I'm supposed to talk to. She said, You're the only adult person who treats me like a person and who I occasionally like to meet with. Granted, she didn't say like me with all the time, and it's fair, I'm doing test prep, I get it. But what estatement, right? What estate? And and I said to her, I said, Well, I said, I appreciate that. One, you know, I I'm obviously you're a terrific human, and I'm really interested in you helping you be as successful as you want to be. But I also know that you have ADHD. And so it's hard for you to care about things that you don't, that you're not interested in. But I also know that it's easier for you to work harder, right? When you feel respected and when you feel like like you feel like the the adult on the other side of the conversation, you know, likes you and respects you and on and out goes because I could work so hard to cram all this garbage into your head. And then it's it's really which version of you shows up on the test? Are you focused or are you not focused? Because if you're focused, I have a pretty good sense of how well you can do on this. And if you're having a hard time paying attention, I know it'll be hard for you to do that. And for some reason, far too many people, especially parents, I think they just don't understand. And this girl said, like, my mom hates when people tell her what to do, drives her crazy. But yet she can turn around and constantly, constantly, constantly tell me what I'm supposed to do. And then she thinks I'm gonna be motivated for it. It's that shocking, isn't it? Your mom's a pretty bright person, too.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah. You know, another thing I I see time and time again, as far as the motivation, like it all sounds great, and you want to give kids, you know, people that you're working with autonomy. And a lot of them don't want it. And I thought, well, that's really interesting. And I've come to realize the hurdle is the personal accountability that goes with that.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

The vulnerability, you know, if I'm if I'm wrong, if I make a mistake, if I look bad. And so it is easier to, you know, just tell me what you want me to know, tell me what you want me to do, tell me how you want me to do it.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

A hundred percent. I was just Bill and I are out presented at a really good conference about self-directed learning. Um, and it one of what it was hosted in a school called Winchester, Virginia, um, which is sort of rural Virginia, so very small city conservative. Um, so it's not, this is not a loosey-deasy place. And they've worked really hard that to put in as an option for kids to have half of their day be based on project-based learning, self-directed learning, um, great stuff. And I was talking with the principal, and he said, the children who most resist any of this are the kids who are great at coloring inside the lines, checking the boxes, who are thrilled. Like, don't change the system. Are you out of your mind? I'm winning the system, right? And they're and they're terrified uh you're doing that. And you're you're you're a hundred percent, you're a hundred percent right. I was talking about I know uh uh Sarah Rosen Sweet is a really great peaceful parenting uh expert up in in Canada, and she told me about, and I've yet to listen to this, but it was a it was either the podcaster book, I've got to go back and check, where it was military base out in in San Diego, maybe I can't remember. Uh, and they had is there a marine base out there? Um and they had there we go, and they had these young recruits, you know, privates, and they were remarkably passive. Tell us what to do. And the and their the leadership is sort of like, folks, we can't tell you what to do all the time because there's gonna be a place where you're gonna have to think, right? And you can't get someone the radio, you have to think. So they gave them projects like, okay, you have to reorganize the entire 10,000 square foot storage room. Well, how do we do this? You're gonna have to figure that out. You need to be in St. Louis in 48 hours. Go. How do we get there? You're gonna have to figure that out. Because these were young people who, you know, 18, 19, 20, who basically had had almost no experience running their own lives. And so that when you talk about developing those executive functions, like what are my options? How do I pro-call this? What do I do? They had had their entire school experience, apparently, maybe home experience, responding to being told what to do. Um, and if you if you stay in line, you won't get yelled at. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

But we do need you to think.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's you know, it's a problem, right? And this is where I love that that exercise that Lonora Scanese had of um, you know, because if you're telling people that I want you to be flexible in your thinking and more courageous and take risks and blessing to the skinny and B plus and whatever else, but then they're being evaluated based on if you get an A or not. You don't want to, you don't want to be creative. You just tell me what to do. Um, and so when she was having people do this in things that are outside, again, in the passionate pursuit of a pastime, where it's not based on someone else's um evaluation of you, it it makes it a little bit easier, it makes it a little bit easier to do this. And and if you go back to to Jonathan Haidt with the play, I mean, I can remember being, I don't know, four, five, seven, whatever, was playing with Legos and building this whole thing and then screwing it up and knocking it over and like two hours of work go crashing to the floor. And I am beside myself, I am so annoyed. And what are my choices? Build it again or don't build it again, right? There's no, there's not a video game with a do over, right? Um, and what tends to happen is, you know, parents, we we tend to rush in there so sweetheart, I'll rebuild, you know, because because we don't like to see our kids upset. But if we're honest, a lot of times when kids are struggling with that, rather than saying, oh, I'm so sorry, that must be so frustrating. And we try to talk kids out of their frustration, right? Or we try to take them out of the situation that's frustrating so that they feel better. But if we're honest in parts so that we don't have to deal with their stress. And it takes when you think about, I have a dear friend who just died last year, and she was a psychologist and just ridiculous. She was at age 65, she was recruited by Marsha Lenahan to open a dialectical behavioral therapy practice and to see because there wasn't one. She's at the end of her career, and she does this until she dies at age 84 or whatever. I went to the memorial service and this beautiful service, and this this young minister, about to me young, uh, he's asking you, think about and he's lighting up the room. He said, just pause for a moment and think about the one word that defines Anne Wake. And he's like, brilliant, insightful, compassionate. He's listing all these wonderful attributes. And within a half a second, I just said, courage, courageous, courageous, because I watched and she told me about some of her work, among other things, working with childhood victims of childhood sexual assault. And she would sit there with people in the hardest possible feelings, you know, and not trying to talk them out of it, not try to move them through it until they are ready to move through it. And that's what, you know, great teacher. I mean, I I told the story, I don't think it's in the book. I had a pretty complicated family. My dad was an alcoholic, eventually drank himself to death. My mom was in and out of institutions. I spent three months in a pediatric psychiatric hospital myself. So it was not easy. And when I came back to school, came back to school, I was a little terrified. One, because, you know, who's the crazy kid who was in the hospital for three months, and two, because I hadn't done any work for three months. And I was like the top kid, you know, in all my class, school was easy for me. And what were my teachers going to say that I hadn't done any of this homework, right? And so I opened the door to Miss Green, as my seventh grade math teacher, my favorite teacher. And I'm worried like a math book is going to whizzing over my head at Mr. Johnson, where's your homework for the last three months? Or you got a lot of tests to make up. And she just looks up from gradient and her face gets as wide as a person can smile. And she just says, Ned, how are you? And I mean, it had never occurred to me that this person or these teachers, these adults, liked me. Not the fact that I made their life easy, that they didn't they saved on a lot of red ink, right? That I wasn't disruptive, that I was attentive, blah, blah, blah. There's a model for other students, whatever you could come up with for what would be a nerdy kid, how that would be make her life easier. But that she actually seemingly actually just liked me. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. And so, so this for parents and for educators, and particularly when kids aren't things aren't going well, and I suspect that a lot of kids who may come to charter schools, they have come because the schools that they've been in aren't working for them. And they need to explore other options. And oftentimes, when when a child leaves one school and goes to another, it isn't pretty. You don't leave with straight A's in every word that you can ever get trying to say, well, I've declared victory. I'm moving to a different, you know, you know, conference, right? It's a thing that's been really hard and really bumpy. And it is hard. And I watched that my kid was full school refusal for the last three months of eighth grade. And what's my undermindled? I'm a guy who helps people get into college. What's going through my head? And I have to keep telling myself and telling myself and telling myself, this kid has a brain in her head. She wants her life to work out, just like I in seventh grade had a brain in my head and I want my life to work out. And so our job, our obligation as parents and as educators is to offer all the support in the world. But in a perfect world, we're not doing this in a controlling way, because again, anxiety avoidance, and we take away from children the very opportunities that help them develop brains that are tolerant to stress, that can bounce back from adversity, can motivate for things that are meaningful, that can develop all those executive functions. And I just there's there's such an opportunity to use the school age years to do better by and for and with children. So that rather than trying to, was it Frederick Douglass who said it's easier to raise strong boys than it is to fix broken men? And we can make that, you know, all inclusive gender at this point. And we so often are whatever's being done to kids, you know, age five through 18, and then trying to find psychologists for all of them. And I'm deeply grateful to my columns who are psychologists who know stuff that I don't know. But in a perfect world, wouldn't our energy be a little bit more into preventing the development of some of these challenges that far too many young people are bedeviled by?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah. In your building blocks analogy, um, you had mentioned that you know, a parent might say, Oh, I'll build it again for you. Another thing I see with that is it's somebody's or something's fault. Yeah. Yep. That that all your blocks fell down. Yeah. And that I think we've gotten addicted to to that, you know, like something bad happened to me. Whose fault was it? And it can't be mine. And beyond that, like, why why can't it just be? Like it just happened. Life isn't always fair, you know. Um right.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

No, I mean, you know, they'll want to build, you know, and he's not the only, it it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

But it is, and acceptance is so hard. I mean, you know, when my son acquired a brain tumor and he had the good manners to choose one that was pretty treatable, so so grateful for that, because it could have been a could have been a very different story. Um, but in in insurance, they call it acts of God, right? Why did it, why did it happen, right? You know, is that it couldn't could be credibly come with a reason. I mean, and there are people who develop cancer for reasons that are, you know, you can blame it on, you know, this or that. You know, some someone, someone someplace had something to do with it, but but I read up on this. I had cancer 14 years ago, and actually the same type of cancer my son had. He just his was in his brain, and mine was a different part of my body. Um, and I look this up, and something like 50% of cancers, it's just spontaneous. It's not attributable to anything, to you know, radiation or or or whatever. No, nobody knows why. And so the same kind of thing. You're your Brooks felt Bricks Blacksfeld down. You know, you can I can imagine parents, you know, saying, Oh, well, sweetheart, you have to be more careful. You just blame the kid for for the fact that he has tears. And if only you wouldn't have done this, you wouldn't be in tears. Ah, that stinks. You you were working so hard on that, right? You know, and then you offer help. You would you would you like me to help you do it again? And if the kid says, Yes, of course you offer help, but it says, No, I do it, okay. I I'm confident you can make that just as good, even better next time if you want to. But it is, it's hard, you know, because we we start with little people who don't know how to soot themselves. And we have to. That's our job. We co-regulate. But over time, if we if a child who doesn't develop the ability to soothe himself is so poorly prepared for life, you know. And I look, I still get upset about stuff. I'm like, I clearly need a nap, I clearly need to go for a run. I clearly need some time to think about this, I clearly need to meditate because I am all spun up and I'm about ready to take someone's head off. And I'm not going to be very effective as a spouse, as a teacher, as a parent, if I'm about to take someone's head off. And I have to recognize that. And so then I assess myself what what's going on inside of me and what can I do that can make a difference. Um, but the idea that there's a blesser there's an ex explanation or blame for everything is that, as opposed to just accepting it is what it is, what it is.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Well, and what you're talking about is taking responsibility for your emotions. You're you're recognizing it and thinking, okay, these are mine. And what am I going to do about it instead of feeling like it's everybody else's responsibility to do something about it. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that your work is, and you had mentioned it, you know, getting kids prepared for getting into college. But I also know that you guys have a chapter on, you know, all three roots.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And um, we actually get a lot of we we get both. We get, you know, a lot of kids that are that straight A student that you were talking about, and even though they were doing really well in the conventional school wanted something more, and then they they've come here and they've been able to really dive deep into their passions. And then we get the the kids that just can't even get themselves to a conventional school. And so both of those ends of the spectrum, you find kids that college is not where they want to go, or you know, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

So so part part of the reason I love that, and Bill deserves all the credit for for making sure that this book this chapter is in our book, in part because he spends so much more of his time with kids where learning is really hard and they're they're falling off the academic path, or they they fail out of college, they fail out of college again, they fail, you know. Um, and so the the the the most important idea in this chapter is when we the the the the organizing principle of the self-driven child is about how stressful is a low sense of control, and how and how with a low sense of control you can't be well motivated. And Sonia Lupion, who put forward this acronym of nuts of what makes people, you know, novelty on predictability, threat to ego, low sense of control, she said the single best cognitive tool to lower your stress is plan B thinking. Plan B thinking. And so even for me as a test prep geek, when I have kids or oh my gosh, I've got to get such and such, I'll never go to this or that college, whatever. The first thing I would do is go over to there's a group called Fair Test whose work is all about reducing or eliminating the use or certainly the inappropriate use of standardized tests in American education. And they had a list for decades of all the universities and colleges in America where you can apply to college and you don't need an SAT or ACT score. Today that's almost the default setting that you don't need these scores. And even for kids who were held down and need to go to Yale, right? But they looked at all these amazing other universities that were test optional, it lowered their stress. And they did better on the SAT because it remains something that they deeply wanted, but they didn't have to have. And most mental health is changing thinking from I have to, which is crazy making, to I want to. So this alternate roots is about all these stories we know of people who started college and dropped out, who did this really cool job, you know, who skipped college altogether and worked for 10 years and then went to graduate school, who were incredibly successful in business and life in all kinds of ways. People are incarcerated and got themselves back on a path. And because of so what happens for so many children is the drip feed that they're getting is that if you want to have a successful life, you have to go to college. And not only that, you need to be like top 10% of your high school class, or if you're not an A plus student, you're you're gonna have a B minus life. And to the degree that they hold to that, again, we're back to avoidance. And to the agree that their parents hold to that, the more controlling they are, and everything goes sideways. So there's a beautiful story in there where Bill was talking with the kid, came in, and the kid's basically like, look, I've got I've got a C plus average, um, but honest to gosh, I don't do any work. I don't do anything. I basically just charm my teachers or browbeat them into giving me passing grades, and I don't do anything. And Bill looked at the kid. He said, Am I the only one who thinks that school is a complete waste of time that you go there six hours a day, not engaging with anything, just driving your teachers a little bit nuts. I mean, this is such a waste of your time. Why don't you any and it and he was on the uh he was on there's a um Bethesda Chevy Chase Rescue Squad is a really big deal here in our area. It's one of the best programs in the country. And so it's a great place for young people, anyone who wants to go into emergency services. And he said, Why don't you just drop out of high school and just do this full time? And then when you can go to the University of Maryland and do their fire services program. They said, This is great. And so he went home. Um, kid went home, and then he gets an email from the parents asking, can we talk? You know, we'd like to have a meeting. They come in, Bill realizes, learns that both of their parents are college professors. You think, oh my God, they're gonna take my head off. And he said, they looked at him and they said, Thank you. Thank you for giving our kid another path. I mean, we obviously we're both college professors, and school is just easy for us. It was easy for us to engage, right? And we've been, we've been stuck, and because he's stuck, we don't know what to do. And you've given another another option. Because Bill would also say to the said to this boy, as we say to any kid, listen, you could fail every single class you took in high school. And if you did, and the if and that by the at the end of it, you decide that wasn't such a hot idea. You can enroll to community college. You have to start with some reading remedial courses. But once you have 30 credits, you can transfer to the University of Maryland or pretty much any college in the country. And they don't give a fig about your high school grades. And he said, when I tell people, so don't tell them that and we'll drop out of school. He said, when I tell them that, it motivates them because we've taken. Fear off the table that it's, you know, it's Yale or McYou know the jail kind of thing. So had this conversation with the parents. The kid comes back a week later, said, Can I talk with Dr. Stickstreet again? He said, It turns out that in order to stay in this EMT program that I'm doing, I have to stay in high school because I'm not old enough yet. So now he has a reason to be in high school. He went from like a 2.1 GPA to a 3.2 GPA by the end of the semester because he now he had a reason to actually be there. His twin brother was so worried that he didn't have his passion, said, can he come and talk with Bill about this? And it's just like I was saying with this girl before when we talk with kids respectfully, are there advantages to going to Columbia? Sure there are. Of course there are. People know what the heck Columbia is. It's great for getting your first job. But honestly gosh, after that, it doesn't make that big of a difference because it's really the work you do when you're there. And so providing these alternate routes, both for the straight A students who are who are just perfectionistically driven, and for the kids who can't seem to find a reason. When we talk about this, these plan B these alternate routes, it's so helpful. Every time when I've been doing this work for 30 years and I have made mistakes, and every time I've made a mistake, and when I get really spun up thinking, this could be the end of my company. And you know, and I get to end up in a van down by the river, I remind myself, I was a really good waiter in high school and college. I'm kind of a peace people person. I'm I couldn't I could make a credible living as a waiter. It's a little nocturnal for me, don't get me wrong, because I'm old now. But I can make it and when I remind myself, you like doing that work net. You could you could do that. Vanessa's not likely to leave you just because your company falls apart, you know, for better, richer, poor, better for better. And then I said, well, I can always go back to waiting tables, and then I get back to doing the work of trying to fix whatever ridiculous mess I've made for myself. So, yeah, so I'm a bit, we're a big fan of plan B thinking, and that's what alternate roots really involves. And if we think about this, for most of us, very few people had a straight shot from the bluebird reading group through high school honors to the college of their dreams to graduate school to the perfect job, the perfect spouse, this perfect perfect house, the perfect second house, the perfect job. I mean, who does that, right? Everybody tends to zig and zag. And I've talked about some of my misadventures. And when we as parents or as grandparents can talk about, you know, grandpa so-and-so, you know, went bankrupt and started over and did this or whatever. And when we say, when they can see that there are these successful adults leading successful lives that they actually enjoy, despite making all kinds of remarkably bad mistakes, you know, and and screwing things up and saying there's still a path forward. Um, because we just we we come to a place where most people believe that you have to be, there's one path, and God help you if you fall off that path. There are some places in this world where if you don't go to the elite university, your choices in life are really pretty circumscribed. But that's not what happens in America, right? I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about our world and you know, second chances and all the ways that people can enter, you know, the capitalist society for better or for worse, with and without a college degree. Um, and so I'm just, you know, Bill says, I just like to give kids an accurate model of reality. Of course, there are advantages to getting a high school graduate. Of course, there are advantages to going to college. But there's also many, many, many opportunities to build a successful life if you if for whatever reason those are not things that you're able to accomplish. Well said. To borrow Bill's sticks to your line, one of the coolest things about what about working with or having teenagers is watching them do the hard, hard work of trying to figure out who it is they want to be and how they contribute to the world. Uh and it's just so cool as a parent and as an educator to get to walk with them and offer your advice and offer your support and zig and zag with them and keep the parents guessing as they figure this stuff out. So yeah, it's uh I have a I have a pretty uh I I'm pretty lucky to get to do work that I do.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

That's great. Well, and so you have agreed to uh join our book club next month. Wait, and uh yeah, we our parents are very excited to, you know, they they got a chance to meet Bill, and now we're further into the book and and more things are coming up, so they're they're very excited about that. So I love it. I will see you next month then. And thank you again for for your time and all the work that you do.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

I've really enjoyed the conversation, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

As Ned points out, whether parent or educator, we won't be able to tell our youth how to run their lives forever. Our job is to offer support, but not in a controlling way, which means embracing the zigzagging path that comes with agency. The self-driven child addresses plan B thinking, where you envision alternate futures and create a backup plan. This helps the planner know that if plan A doesn't work out, the world will not come crashing down. Plan B thinking is a skill and it takes time to develop. What's the best way to get better at something? Practice. And what is the best way to influence our children? Model the behavior we want to see. So here's your element challenge. Make the sharing of personal goals a regular part of the family or your classroom or your friend group, but make it part of your discussion and regular practice. Identify something you want to achieve. It can be as simple as pancakes for breakfast or something as ambitious as starting a business. Determine a plan B. If I can't do that, well, then I'll do that. If this doesn't play out like I thought, well, then I'll try this. Make it a habit to always have a backup plan. Even something as simple as if my friend can't meet up to play, I will shoot some baskets on my own. I will go for a run. I will play with my sibling. Sometimes you might find as you're thinking about a plan B, you'd actually prefer that the plan B be your plan A. And sometimes you might find that envisioning alternate options might actually be more in line with your element.