The Megyn Kelly Show - 20230830_raising-outdoor-kids-and-overcoming-toxic-achievem
Aired: 2023-08-30
Duration: 01:37:43


=== Getting Kids Outdoors (14:56) ===

[00:00:50]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:01:07]  XMHQ, and I have yet to see Howard Stern.
[00:01:11]  I know I'm looking.
[00:01:13]  I don't think he's here, but he has a beautiful studio.
[00:01:16]  I also have a nice little makeshift studio here, and I'm here with Mike Peiko, who's like the genius behind this show.
[00:01:22]  You never get to eat.
[00:01:23]  If you call in, that's who you talk to.
[00:01:25]  And we're never in the same room at the same time.
[00:01:27]  Good to see you, Peiko.
[00:01:28]  Good to see you, too.
[00:01:29]  Abigail Finan here as well.
[00:01:31]  Okay, so we are here because I am at home in Connecticut getting ready for school.
[00:01:36]  And I'm sure a lot of you can relate.
[00:01:39]  There's so much to do, isn't there?
[00:01:40]  There's such a long list.
[00:01:42]  And like, there's no one to pawn it off on.
[00:01:45]  You, as the parents, you have to make the decisions.
[00:01:48]  Abigail Finan helps me with a lot of it, but I'm just saying there's a lot.
[00:01:51]  So I'm dealing with it.
[00:01:52]  I'm sure all of you are dealing with it.
[00:01:54]  And Godspeed.
[00:01:55]  In our second hour, speaking of parental responsibilities, an old friend of mine who's an award-winning journalist, she's worked for 60 Minutes.
[00:02:04]  I knew her very well when we lived in New York.
[00:02:05]  Her name is Jenny Wallace, Jennifer Wallace.
[00:02:07]  And she's got one of the hottest books out on the market right now on parenting, on the meat grinder that we put our kids through and how you know it's causing anxiety and depression, but how to work around it while still raising kids who have ambition, kids who have life goals, kids who understand the value of hard work.
[00:02:26]  How do you thread that needle?
[00:02:28]  Right?
[00:02:29]  She took a deep, deep dive.
[00:02:30]  And Jenny's interesting because she went to Harvard.
[00:02:32]  She's married to a guy who's extremely successful.
[00:02:36]  And she found herself in the mix of these New York City private schools, which is where we met her.
[00:02:42]  You know, sort of getting on that train where you just, you know, you pressure your kid and you want the A's and you want the high achievement and little junior's got to be in all the extracurricular activities that everybody else is doing.
[00:02:52]  And then you realize, wait, what am I doing?
[00:02:54]  What am I doing?
[00:02:56]  She had that aha moment.
[00:02:57]  She's written a whole book about it.
[00:02:59]  First, it was in an article in the Washington Post that went totally viral.
[00:03:02]  And she wrote a book afterward, which is well worth your time.
[00:03:06]  She's here in our second hour.
[00:03:07]  But before that, I am joined by someone who I find absolutely fascinating.
[00:03:13]  There's so much to go over with Stephen Ranella.
[00:03:15]  He is the meat eater from Michigan.
[00:03:18]  Now, Stephen is the host of the long-running television show Meat Eater.
[00:03:22]  And he's one of the top podcast hosts in the country.
[00:03:26]  And on that show, he dives into the nuances of hunting and the art of wild game cooking.
[00:03:33]  Now, I, as a recent city slicker, past 20 years of my life, you'd think I wouldn't know anything about these things, but I know a little.
[00:03:40]  And I got a lot of questions for Stephen, who is the New York Times best-selling author of Count 10 books, including Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature, and his latest, which is called Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars: Fun Projects, Skills, and Adventures for Outdoor Kids.
[00:04:02]  He's here to discuss how to get your kids to put down the technology and embrace the great outdoors.
[00:04:10]  Steve, welcome to the show.
[00:04:12]  Hey, thank you, Megan.
[00:04:13]  I appreciate it.
[00:04:13]  That was a very nice, that was a very nice welcome from you.
[00:04:16]  Well, I really appreciate the way you live your life and the messaging behind it.
[00:04:20]  We split our time now and we spend a fair amount of the year.
[00:04:24]  I mean, for somebody who doesn't live there permanently, out in Montana, which is, I know you live in Bozeman.
[00:04:29]  That's right.
[00:04:29]  Or as Abigail Feynen calls it, Bozeman.
[00:04:32]  Bozeman.
[00:04:35]  She's taking a beating today.
[00:04:38]  And so I love the great outdoors.
[00:04:40]  And as soon as you leave the city where I know you used to live too, and you go to a place like Montana, you are reminded of how critical it is to your well-being.
[00:04:49]  So let's just start with that.
[00:04:50]  Just the overall importance for people who have gotten sucked into city life of removing oneself and reminding oneself what it's like to be under a big sky.
[00:05:00]  Well, you know, to answer that, first I want to point out that I do live in Montana now and I'd spent quite a bit of time here.
[00:05:09]  But my kids were born through circumstances of work and relationships.
[00:05:15]  My kids were born in New York.
[00:05:17]  Saw that.
[00:05:18]  My two older kids were born in New York.
[00:05:21]  So I have some familiarity with that.
[00:05:23]  And that actually plays a big part in some of the writing I've done about getting kids involved in the outdoors is that unique set of challenges in an urban environment.
[00:05:32]  But I was raised very much hunting, fishing, trapping.
[00:05:37]  We were in the outdoors all the time.
[00:05:39]  And the thing I tried to explain, and people have a hard time understanding where this would come from, is it was so important to our lives when I was a kid that I would get honest to God, like I would get a guilty conscience if I wasn't spending enough time outside.
[00:05:56]  It was, it was sort of like pushed forward as that level of importance.
[00:06:00]  I equate it to how someone might feel bad about missing church.
[00:06:03]  It was that I would feel bad to not be outside.
[00:06:08]  It was just regarded as so important in our lives.
[00:06:10]  That's good.
[00:06:11]  So when I had kids, I had a lot of, I don't want to say anxiety because it wasn't necessarily negative.
[00:06:19]  I just had a very, I put a really high priority on getting my kids engaged with nature.
[00:06:26]  And I think that the difficulty of the environment we were in for a few years really added to that because it wasn't easy and I had to make it happen.
[00:06:38]  Of course.
[00:06:38]  I mean, I think we all went through that recently, but the way we grew up, I think I read you were born in 74.
[00:06:46]  So you grew up in the 70s and 80s like I did.
[00:06:49]  What did your parents say to you every time you went to them and said, what can I do?
[00:06:53]  Mom, what can I do?
[00:06:54]  The answer was always the same.
[00:06:55]  Play outside.
[00:06:57]  Go play outside.
[00:06:58]  And, you know, I was raised in Syracuse, New York for the first 10 years, which is like nine months out of the year, there's three feet of snow outside.
[00:07:06]  But still, it was like, get out there.
[00:07:08]  Today, it's very different.
[00:07:09]  It is like they don't even ask, what can I do?
[00:07:12]  They go right to the device.
[00:07:14]  You have to interject yourself into that relationship to say, get off of that thing and go play outside.
[00:07:21]  So, it's, I mean, I think it's a bigger challenge for people in the city because you can't, like in New York, just say, go play outside.
[00:07:26]  That's not going to happen for a six-year-old in Manhattan.
[00:07:29]  Like, good luck, have fun.
[00:07:32]  But if you live in the suburbs, you maybe, maybe you have a basketball court or maybe you have a lawn or a swing set.
[00:07:37]  It makes life easier.
[00:07:38]  But that connection with the great outdoors actually is the opposite of depressing.
[00:07:43]  It's uplifting.
[00:07:44]  I think it's good for your mental wellness, good for your physical wellness.
[00:07:47]  And if you go long enough without having it, even if you're not an outdoorsy person, bad things start to happen.
[00:07:54]  Oh, I think there's huge detriments to it.
[00:07:56]  And I just want to touch on a handful of the things you said there.
[00:08:01]  When I was little, you're right.
[00:08:03]  It was always go outside.
[00:08:04]  In fact, if we got caught inside, you know, you were probably going to get a chore list because it was just, you know, if they caught you watching TV or something, my mom or dad was going to write down on a piece on a legal pad chores for you to do.
[00:08:23]  If I was outside, it was just regarded as I was up to something constructive and I would find freedom and be left alone.
[00:08:31]  That's brilliant.
[00:08:32]  In the city, it's different.
[00:08:34]  You're right.
[00:08:34]  And that's one of the things that nagged at me is I had to be a real driver to make it happen.
[00:08:42]  And you have to be an escort and accompany your kids at times.
[00:08:47]  One of the things, though, that I picked up from my parents, before I say this, I'll point out that I find so many people my age who kind of have sort of wholeheartedly rejected a lot of lessons that they might have learned from their own parents.
[00:09:05]  I threw out parts and I kept parts.
[00:09:07]  And one of the parts I kept is my parents were not afraid to exercise their role as authoritarians in the family.
[00:09:16]  Meaning, I don't put everything to my kids as a question or I don't put everything to them as doing me a favor.
[00:09:24]  I will just explicitly say that this is what we're going to do.
[00:09:27]  We're going outside.
[00:09:29]  The reason I can get away with this is they're always, they always feel better when we do.
[00:09:35]  So if I'm overcoming some amount of resistance or inertia from them, you know, that, hey, we're going to go camping this weekend and they had other plans or were hoping to go hang out at their friend's house, you know, where maybe there's more ready available access to screens.
[00:09:49]  And I just say that this, no, this is what we're doing.
[00:09:51]  Me and mommy have made up our minds.
[00:09:53]  We're all going camping.
[00:09:55]  I know that we're going to come home and they're going to feel better than they would have otherwise.
[00:10:00]  They're going to be exhausted at the end of the day.
[00:10:03]  They're going to sleep great.
[00:10:04]  They're going to feel invigorated.
[00:10:06]  They're going to be in a good mood.
[00:10:08]  So I don't mind laying down the law about how we're going to spend time because I know in the end, they are at times quite literally going to thank us for having made the plans that we made.
[00:10:23]  Can I ask you as somebody who doesn't do a lot of camping, though, it's always been a life goal to actually do more.
[00:10:30]  We used to go to my microphone fell here.
[00:10:33]  Okay.
[00:10:34]  We used to go to Selkirk.
[00:10:36]  We called it.
[00:10:36]  It was Lake Ontario in New York State when I was growing up.
[00:10:40]  And we would go to this little cabin and we would stay in this cabin, which you probably don't consider camping, but we considered camping for two weeks a year.
[00:10:46]  We'd go.
[00:10:47]  And ever since I've wanted to get back to something like that, but I don't like, what do you do?
[00:10:51]  Like if you go camping with your family for a weekend, what do you guys do during the day?
[00:10:57]  Walk me through a typical day.
[00:10:59]  Oh, well, again, there's a couple things to say here.
[00:11:03]  We, when we first had kids, we would tent camp, but it got too hard.
[00:11:10]  We have three young kids.
[00:11:12]  We caved and did something I thought I would never do.
[00:11:15]  And we bought a camper, a camper trail.
[00:11:17]  Nice.
[00:11:18]  And that has just changed everything.
[00:11:20]  It makes it so easy to go.
[00:11:22]  Everything's loaded up and ready to go.
[00:11:24]  We spend so much more time out than we would otherwise.
[00:11:27]  So that was a compromise.
[00:11:30]  We're really into, we like to do a lot of exploring.
[00:11:34]  We do a lot of fishing.
[00:11:36]  In the fall months, we hunt a lot.
[00:11:39]  So this time of year, we fish, we look for mushrooms, we hang out, we shoot 22s, just whatever.
[00:11:46]  You know, we play games.
[00:11:48]  We play a lot of scrabble and banana grams, whatever.
[00:11:52]  We just get away.
[00:11:53]  And the place we like to go, there's no cell service.
[00:11:56]  So I'll use a Garmin in reach in case there's an emergency.
[00:11:59]  But we like it because there's zero cell service where we go.
[00:12:03]  Another thing we did, and this is a luxury that not everyone can afford, but some years ago, we purchased a small inn holding in the mountains, an inn holding in the National Forest.
[00:12:17]  And that's kind of our hangout spot.
[00:12:18]  What's that?
[00:12:19]  We all know what that is.
[00:12:20]  Literally is a shack in Alaska on the coast in Southeast Alaska that I bought many years ago.
[00:12:28]  And so we hang out there.
[00:12:29]  And again, no cell service.
[00:12:31]  It's just quiet.
[00:12:33]  But if we didn't have those places and sometimes we go other places, we just make plans.
[00:12:37]  And they're usually centered around for us looking for berries, looking for mushrooms, fishing, hunting, playing, sitting in hammocks, making some oars.
[00:12:46]  We do a wider, a wide variety of things.
[00:12:48]  It's just very close time.
[00:12:51]  It's very tight-knit family time.
[00:12:53]  And we're not always going to have this.
[00:12:55]  Yeah.
[00:12:55]  You know, our oldest kid's 13.
[00:12:58]  Like, this is going to change soon.
[00:13:00]  But I like to maximize it now.
[00:13:03]  I'm in the same boat as you are.
[00:13:04]  Oldest is 13, about to be 14.
[00:13:07]  And absolutely love the camping experiences I've had, though.
[00:13:11]  The glamping is not bad either.
[00:13:13]  I'm not going to lie.
[00:13:14]  It's not terrible to have the guide who's going to like put the tent up for you and make the breakfast.
[00:13:21]  Though I know you're more of a, you know, old school camper, as is Abigail Feynen.
[00:13:26]  She was raised on her dad's back when she was a baby, climbing up the mountain.
[00:13:30]  She's gotten safety vests and headlamps for all of the Kelly Brunt family.
[00:13:35]  But all of it, like getting outside, it does make you feel better.
[00:13:38]  And the family connection time with no cell service, so much the better.
[00:13:41]  So, but the other piece of it for you is the hunting.
[00:13:45]  Now, this is where I can't relate.
[00:13:47]  I've never killed any sort of animal, you know, for sport or for food.
[00:13:54]  And I confess I am one of those squeamish people who's like, oh, the sweet deer.
[00:14:00]  Oh, no, he's like the little doe-eyed deer.
[00:14:02]  But I get it.
[00:14:03]  It's not that I object to anybody else doing it.
[00:14:05]  I just couldn't do it myself.
[00:14:07]  So talk to me about how that gets ingrained in you.
[00:14:11]  And because I know I've heard you say like to other people, I guarantee you, I know more about deer and care more about deer than the average person.
[00:14:18]  It's not just about deer, but like, how did you get into hunting and how do you pass that on?
[00:14:22]  Yeah.
[00:14:24]  I'll start out by saying no, no apology necessary on not hunting.
[00:14:29]  You know, if someone's not interested in it and doesn't engage in it, I never tell them that that's something that they need to do.
[00:14:39]  It's a huge part of my life, but I don't think it's the only way to find happiness and develop like a deep connection with nature.
[00:14:48]  It's a thing that some of us are drawn to and some are not drawn to.
[00:14:53]  It was a huge part of life growing up.
[00:14:57]  I began hunting well before I remember.
[00:15:02]  My dad fought in World War II.
[00:15:06]  And when he came home, he was immediately, you know, he just came home as an avid hunter.
[00:15:12]  There was one time a quote from someone who said, like, of that generation, how could you teach an entire generation of young men to shoot and camp and not expect them to become hunters or something to that effect, right?
[00:15:27]  So that was just the environment I was raised in.
[00:15:30]  And we lived in western Michigan and we did a lot of stuff around food.
[00:15:35]  I mean, we hunted and fished because we loved it and it was fun and it was, it engaged you with the outdoors, but it was also, you know, we had a lot of fish fries, ate a lot of deer meat, and it was just ingrained.

=== Complicated Bear Relationships (15:05) ===

[00:15:47]  It was very important that I introduce my kids to it for for both for them and for me.
[00:15:52]  And I think this is a thing that people often overlook.
[00:15:57]  I got my kids into the outdoors in some respects.
[00:16:01]  I did it because for selfish reasons.
[00:16:03]  That's where I like to be.
[00:16:05]  Okay.
[00:16:06]  And if I want to demonstrate to my kids a level of enthusiasm, a level of expertise, a level of passion, it would make sense that I would do it in an arena where I feel those things.
[00:16:20]  The same way that a parent who's really into sports is going to introduce their kid to sports because that enthusiasm becomes infectious.
[00:16:26]  Right.
[00:16:27]  So I did it because I love it, but also I did it for them as well because I think there's really valuable lessons to be learned there.
[00:16:35]  I like my kids.
[00:16:36]  You know, I like it that they have a pretty raw edge to them.
[00:16:39]  They're very compassionate toward animals.
[00:16:41]  Just recently, I mentioned my camper.
[00:16:44]  We had a mouse infestation in our camper.
[00:16:48]  They caught one in a live trap and kept it as a pet because they were mad at me that I was going to set a kill trap.
[00:16:54]  At the same time, they're quite comfortable hunting.
[00:16:57]  Last night we had antelope that we hunted.
[00:17:00]  We had Stingray that we spearfished for.
[00:17:03]  Oh, cool.
[00:17:03]  So they can live in these two places of being very compassionate caregivers to a wide array of pets that they own.
[00:17:10]  They tame mice.
[00:17:12]  They hunt deer.
[00:17:13]  They hunt grouse.
[00:17:15]  If you introduce it at a young age, none of this is confusing to them.
[00:17:19]  It's they have complicated relationships with wildlife.
[00:17:23]  And it doesn't cause any whiplash for them to jump back and forth between caregiver and harvest.
[00:17:30]  It's all part of this continuum with them.
[00:17:33]  I have so many thoughts on this.
[00:17:34]  I see it more like, and I realize, you know, there's a whole food industry that would provide me with meat to eat if the, you know, Steves were not out there.
[00:17:43]  But I do kind of see hunters as like a few good men, like, you want me on that wall.
[00:17:48]  You need me on that wall.
[00:17:50]  Who else is going to do it?
[00:17:51]  You, you, Lieutenant Weinberg.
[00:17:53]  That's me.
[00:17:53]  Like, I need the guys like you out there because I don't think I'm capable of killing my own food.
[00:17:59]  But when we go to Montana, I know a ton of guys just like you who they're out there.
[00:18:03]  They'll, they'll, they'll kill a bison or they'll kill an elk and then we'll eat it.
[00:18:09]  And that to me seems okay.
[00:18:11]  Like man has been hunting and killing his own food since the dawn of time.
[00:18:16]  It's a natural process.
[00:18:18]  But I feel more like Jim Brewer, who I just saw and do a stand-up in Atlantic City last weekend where he was talking about how he got brought out to hunt and he got brought out to fish.
[00:18:26]  And he's the guy in the fishing boat who, when he pulls in the trout, he's like, I'm sorry.
[00:18:31]  I'm sorry.
[00:18:32]  Yes.
[00:18:34]  The fish is looking at him.
[00:18:37]  But I love that you're getting your kids into it.
[00:18:38]  I feel for your wife.
[00:18:39]  You married a city slicker, I think.
[00:18:41]  I can't imagine her with the kids who want to keep the mouse.
[00:18:44]  Well, no, she, well, it's a little more complicated than that.
[00:18:47]  She grew up, we didn't know each other there, but she grew up in Michigan, not too terribly far from where I grew up.
[00:18:53]  We actually met later in the first time I ever came to New York is when I sold my first book to Miramax.
[00:19:02]  And she had just started working there.
[00:19:05]  So I came there and had a meeting where I met my editor and She was in that meeting.
[00:19:12]  So we knew each other for some time, but we have a common background in Michigan.
[00:19:17]  She spent 12 years in New York.
[00:19:19]  But no, she does it like you.
[00:19:25]  She does it personally.
[00:19:27]  You know, she doesn't hunt.
[00:19:28]  She loves to fish.
[00:19:29]  She loves that our kids do it because she likes our kids to be self-sufficient and she likes them to be competent in a variety of environments, right?
[00:19:36]  She wants them to feel a level of competency in a city, New York, Seattle, wherever.
[00:19:42]  And she wants them to feel competency in a swamp or on a mountain.
[00:19:47]  So she applauds it.
[00:19:49]  And even when we found out we were going to have our daughter, she was adamant that there be no different treatment for our daughter, Rosemary, than there was for her older brother, which is a somewhat novel concept in hunting families because hunting families, my own included, tend to be that it's males that do the hunting.
[00:20:16]  And so we're subverting that with this generation that I'm engaged with now.
[00:20:23]  Did your wife think at all, like maybe instead of the mouse, you get a dog, like a cat, even a hamster?
[00:20:32]  We have a dog.
[00:20:33]  We have all kinds of pets, actually.
[00:20:36]  But the mouse, I'll point out that the mouse was not allowed to come in the house.
[00:20:42]  He had to live outside.
[00:20:43]  Yes.
[00:20:43]  Okay.
[00:20:44]  And then he, the current two mice ago chewed a hole through the thing and got away.
[00:20:52]  Then they took their live trap out and caught another one.
[00:20:55]  And that one jumped out of their hands and got away.
[00:20:58]  So now they're this weekend planning on resupplying on pet mice.
[00:21:02]  God bless you.
[00:21:03]  And my boy just got a lecture from his pediatrician about hunting virus and typhus and whatnot.
[00:21:09]  Yeah.
[00:21:10]  That's where my mind would go too.
[00:21:12]  He brushed it off and said that he was going to give his mouth a bath, which his mouth a bath, which I think he thought would take care of some of the infectious disease issues.
[00:21:21]  See, even your ability to laugh about that and be sort of like, you know, it's whatever.
[00:21:25]  Like, I think as a city's liquor wife, I'd be like, no, that's a real thing.
[00:21:29]  Typhus, we can't get it.
[00:21:30]  Put the mouse down.
[00:21:31]  Don't touch it.
[00:21:32]  None of all of us are going to get sick.
[00:21:33]  That's that's that's the difference.
[00:21:35]  But you know what?
[00:21:36]  With my kids, man, and me too.
[00:21:38]  I always ask myself, is this really going to be the thing I die from?
[00:21:41]  You know, and I just have a feeling I'll die from heart disease, you know, or cancer down the road.
[00:21:49]  Like, I just can't picture a scenario in which I die and the coroner says, Has he been playing with pet mice?
[00:21:59]  It's just like, I just don't take, there's a lot of things I don't take seriously.
[00:22:02]  I think people are not, especially when it comes to the outdoors, I think people have a really hard time with risk assessment.
[00:22:09]  They're not good at risk assessment and they're not good at understanding statistics and probability when it comes to how we're going to get injured.
[00:22:19]  The amount of people I hear from that are worried about mountain lions and black bears, which are a non-issue.
[00:22:26]  It's a non-threat.
[00:22:29]  It's just, it's, I'd like, I'd say it's maddening, but that seems a little intolerant.
[00:22:34]  But people are a little high-strung about risk, I think.
[00:22:37]  Like, I understand what you're saying, but having a place in Montana, you know, as you all know, they have the grizzlies too.
[00:22:45]  And I know you've had animals.
[00:22:47]  It's a different animal.
[00:22:48]  Yeah, you've had some close encounters.
[00:22:49]  And I'll just tell you, because I want to show some videotape of one of your close encounters from your show.
[00:22:54]  But when I got to Montana, they said to us, Don't, because there have been grizzlies right outside of where we have our cabin.
[00:23:03]  And they said, don't go for a walk unless you bring the bear spray.
[00:23:07]  So I'm like, okay, well, bring it.
[00:23:08]  And then they show you how to use the bear spray.
[00:23:09]  And the lesson we got went as follows.
[00:23:12]  You have to wait to spray the bear spray until it's within like 10 feet of you.
[00:23:17]  And you got to spray it at the ground where the bear's nose is.
[00:23:22]  So basically you will wind up in the bear's jaws, but your goal is to incapacitate.
[00:23:27]  I think 10 feet.
[00:23:28]  That's a lot of restraint.
[00:23:30]  Yeah.
[00:23:31]  And then they said, then they said, no, if it's a black bear, you want to make yourself big and try to be scary.
[00:23:37]  Like, oh, he'll be afraid of you and he'll leave.
[00:23:40]  Okay.
[00:23:40]  But if it's a brown bear, don't do that at all.
[00:23:43]  Be quiet, be still.
[00:23:45]  And whatever you do, don't run.
[00:23:47]  But there's one complicating factor, which is sometimes the black bears are brown.
[00:23:52]  Like, what the fuck is that?
[00:23:56]  We're all dead.
[00:23:57]  We're dead.
[00:23:57]  Well, the grizzly has the hump.
[00:23:59]  Well, what if I can't see the hump?
[00:24:00]  What if he's coming at me from a different angle?
[00:24:02]  This is a lot to put stock in when it comes to your life and your children's life.
[00:24:06]  So I'm like, okay, I got my bear spray.
[00:24:07]  But then they told me the bit about 10 feet and then don't run and don't scream.
[00:24:10]  Don't let your kids scream.
[00:24:12]  I'm like, we're all dead.
[00:24:13]  And what I've learned after having been out there for eight years is you need a gun.
[00:24:17]  That is the only thing that will protect you from a charging grizzly bear.
[00:24:21]  Am I wrong?
[00:24:23]  Yeah, you're probably you're right and you're wrong.
[00:24:31]  Let me tell you a quick story about this, just to kind of set it up.
[00:24:37]  People make all kinds of plans, right?
[00:24:39]  And they got all these things they're going to do and not do.
[00:24:43]  And when this stuff happens, it happens so fast.
[00:24:46]  First off, the odds of it happening are so small, but then when it happens, it happens so fast.
[00:24:50]  All these rehearse plans unravel.
[00:24:53]  I was on a Fognac Island in Alaska one time, and we had an elk carcass that we had hung up in a tree and we'd gone back to retrieve it.
[00:25:02]  And a big brown bear, you know, brown bears and grizzly bears are, you know, taxonomically the same animal came in really hard on us.
[00:25:16]  And my buddy, Giannis, had his bear spray on his belt and he had his pistol sitting on his backpack next to him.
[00:25:24]  So he's got bear spray and a pistol.
[00:25:26]  And he deliberately set the pistol there for fear of a bear trying to claim this elk carcass.
[00:25:31]  And when this bear came in, you know what he did?
[00:25:35]  He didn't grab the pepper spray.
[00:25:37]  He didn't grab the pistol.
[00:25:38]  He grabbed his trekking pole and swung it like a baseball bat and smoked that bear across the muzzle.
[00:25:46]  Oh.
[00:25:48]  Which turned the bear.
[00:25:49]  Giannis is a brave man.
[00:25:51]  Oh, yeah.
[00:25:51]  But point being, here's this whole plan, pepper spray, pistol.
[00:25:55]  And then in that moment, when everything in your brain comes undone, the thing he thought to do was swing a trekking pole at.
[00:26:05]  Right.
[00:26:06]  So it's just that like I hear so many people always debating what they're going to do and not do.
[00:26:10]  And I'm a little bit incredulous having been in a couple of these situations.
[00:26:14]  I wind up being a little bit incredulous about the rehearsal process.
[00:26:19]  Yeah.
[00:26:19]  Same.
[00:26:20]  You know, but a way to look at it, like I think a general way to look at it is when you, if you read a lot about black bear attacks, black bear attacks are often predatory, meaning they're very, very rare.
[00:26:32]  Most people in America live within a couple hours drive of a black bear.
[00:26:36]  You know, we got they're all over.
[00:26:38]  They don't really mess with people.
[00:26:39]  But if they do, it's predatory.
[00:26:41]  And grizzlies.
[00:26:43]  Wait, Before you look, what do you mean it's predatory?
[00:26:47]  Oh, like when you read about the rare black bear attacks, so in the whole country, maybe, you know, you have a black bear attack or two black bear attacks every year.
[00:26:55]  When a black bear attacks a person, it's generally understood that it's acting as a predator, meaning it's trying to secure food.
[00:27:03]  It's attacking you the same way it would attack a deer fawn, right?
[00:27:07]  It's trying to get food.
[00:27:08]  Why don't I feel better?
[00:27:10]  What makes grizzly bears a different kind of animal is that they have a response to fear, which is aggressive.
[00:27:19]  So, a black bear's tendency is: there's different critters.
[00:27:22]  Like a black bear's tendency when it's spooked is to run.
[00:27:26]  A grizzly bear, sometimes when it gets startled, the switch goes in its head.
[00:27:32]  It might run, or it might try to jump on and neutralize that threat.
[00:27:36]  So, that's why you have so many more grizzly attacks than black bear attacks relative to population is because they have this habit, this strategy of countering risk by attacking the thing that scared it.
[00:27:54]  So, so many of the attacks we have with grizzly bears, it'll neutralize the threat and then leave and not and not try to eat the body.
[00:28:04]  And when you do that, when you have a grizzly bear, a victim get killed by a grizzly bear, they're not, they haven't been eaten, they'll call it a defensive attack.
[00:28:13]  Yes, yes.
[00:28:14]  And nowadays, even now, with you know, grizzly bears are federally listed in lower 48.
[00:28:20]  If there's a defensive attack on a person, there's a good chance they're not even going to kill that bear.
[00:28:25]  Yeah, if it's a predatory attack, they'll kill the wildlife officials will kill the bear.
[00:28:30]  If it's a defensive attack, that bear will now oftentimes they let the bear walk.
[00:28:37]  There was a somewhat astounding to me, but that's that's policy right now.
[00:28:41]  Yeah, because they're so strong, but we saw what we didn't see, but we were there in Montana when this guy got attacked.
[00:28:48]  I think, like you, he didn't get attacked, but he found himself in between the mama bear and her cubs, the grizzly.
[00:28:56]  And it wasn't even his fault, he was riding his bike, and unbeknownst to him, the mama had gotten separated from the cubs, which were on the other side of the road.
[00:29:06]  And him just riding his bike by was perceived as enough of a threat that she came for him.
[00:29:11]  And indeed, she did cause some serious damage to the guy, but she didn't kill him.
[00:29:15]  He lived.
[00:29:16]  And this remember that incident, and it was funny because we not funny, that's the wrong word.
[00:29:22]  There was a fatality up in the northwest part of the state where a guy, the best they could reconstruct it, a mountain biker, actually hit the bear on a trail and it and it killed him.
[00:29:33]  But again, we're kind of doing a thing that you and I right now.
[00:29:37]  I love this subject, right?
[00:29:38]  We're scaring a thing that I think is a little bit problematic where we're putting so much emphasis on a thing that's so unlikely to occur.
[00:29:48]  Well, you're helping me work out my fears.
[00:29:51]  In the same way, Rob O'Neill helped me work out my fears of sharks in the ocean.
[00:29:55]  He's a Navy SEAL, of course, and said, Have you gone swimming in the ocean?
[00:29:57]  I said, Yes.
[00:29:58]  He goes, Then you've gone swimming with sharks.
[00:29:59]  They're everywhere.
[00:30:00]  Oh, sure.
[00:30:01]  They don't attack you.
[00:30:02]  Get over it.
[00:30:02]  You're helping me with my grizzly bear problem right now.
[00:30:05]  I just learned the other day in some states, and including this state, drowning is the lead cause of death for kids up until the age of 14.
[00:30:18]  Oh, my God.
[00:30:19]  So we'll talk a lot about bears, right?
[00:30:21]  But do we talk a lot about drowning?
[00:30:24]  Yeah.
[00:30:25]  You know, hypothermia, dying of exposure, you're much more likely to die of exposure than you're likely to die from a wild animal attack.
[00:30:33]  But that's not fun to talk about.
[00:30:35]  So again, it brings up this idea of how people deal with how people deal with risk and threat in the outdoors is they kind of get off on the wrong trail because there's these things that occupy a lot of psychological space for us.

=== Self-Defense and Snakes (03:49) ===

[00:30:52]  And big predators occupy psychological space.
[00:30:57]  I like to spearfish.
[00:30:59]  You're much more likely when spearfishing to have a shallow water blackout and drown.
[00:31:06]  But where does your mind spend its time?
[00:31:08]  Your mind spends its time on sharks.
[00:31:11]  Or, you know, I've gone fly fishing quite a few times out there in Montana and caught a big snake one time.
[00:31:18]  That was freaky.
[00:31:19]  I didn't need to see that.
[00:31:22]  Yeah, it happened last summer.
[00:31:24]  And of course, everybody's like, you didn't catch a snake.
[00:31:27]  I'm like, I know what a snake looks like.
[00:31:29]  It is long, it is black, and it is swirly on the end of my line.
[00:31:34]  You know, I catch it.
[00:31:34]  Oh, it's so weird.
[00:31:36]  Yeah.
[00:31:36]  And it went into like a rocky area.
[00:31:38]  And there, it was the first time it had even occurred to me that there were snakes in there.
[00:31:42]  I had my waiters on, which I didn't need because it was warm and I'm just a paranoid person.
[00:31:46]  But I'm becoming less paranoid by the minute.
[00:31:48]  Thanks to you, Steve.
[00:31:49]  Less by the minute.
[00:31:50]  Before we leave the subject of the bears, I do want to show this clip of you on the meat eater getting charged by a mama grizzly in a crazy clip.
[00:32:01]  Saw one.
[00:32:04]  Get that bear spray.
[00:32:09]  Hey, mom.
[00:32:12]  Yeah.
[00:32:14]  Hey, mom.
[00:32:15]  Hey, mom.
[00:32:17]  Hey, hey.
[00:32:20]  Hey, mom.
[00:32:22]  Hey, come on.
[00:32:25]  Hey, mom.
[00:32:28]  Okay, what's happening there?
[00:32:29]  Why, why?
[00:32:30]  Hey, mom, hey, mom.
[00:32:32]  That's my buddy Cal.
[00:32:34]  Hey, mom, because it was a sow with cubs.
[00:32:37]  And in that situation, we knew that for quite some time, she was coming down.
[00:32:46]  We were going up a valley and she was coming down the valley.
[00:32:50]  And she was, we had already registered that she was pissed.
[00:32:54]  They'll cock their ears back and clack their jaw.
[00:32:57]  You could hear them sometimes.
[00:32:58]  You'll hear them clacking their jaw.
[00:33:00]  Oh, Lord.
[00:33:02]  So we knew he was coming.
[00:33:03]  We're just yelling at it.
[00:33:04]  Like the thing there that you want to do is if you're in a group, you cluster up, make a lot of noise, look big, look like something that shouldn't be messed with, look like something that's not going to back down.
[00:33:18]  And then my buddy shot, he's just shooting in front of the bear to try to shoot in front of the bear to try to spook it away.
[00:33:25]  I've actually done that other times where when they have one coming in and shot in front of it, and it's just surprising how little it even deterred it.
[00:33:37]  But what you have there is you would call that a, you know, you call it a false charge because it wasn't an actual charge.
[00:33:45]  And the thing that could happen is if you're jumpy, people that get too excited, like excitable people, will sometimes feel as though they're acting in self-defense.
[00:33:56]  You'll hear of people shooting bears.
[00:33:58]  They think they're shooting them in self-defense.
[00:34:02]  And again, it's an ESA species, endangered species listed.
[00:34:05]  It shouldn't be.
[00:34:06]  It should not be by any measure, but it remains an ESA species.
[00:34:11]  And they'll shoot it in self-defense, but then on an investigation, it'll be determined that they were being a little jumpy and that bear hadn't gotten close enough yet to be a real threat.
[00:34:25]  And sometimes you'll hear people get getting prosecuted for that.
[00:34:29]  So in that case, I had a visual, I had a line that I, in my mind, I had a line 15 feet out.
[00:34:38]  And if that bear hit that line, I was going to shoot the bear.

=== Veganism and Firearms (08:43) ===

[00:34:41]  Right.
[00:34:43]  But thankfully, didn't.
[00:34:44]  And had we done that, that would have, you know, could have been a legal issue to wind up in.
[00:34:48]  But that wasn't in, that was in British Columbia.
[00:34:52]  And they're not an ESA.
[00:34:53]  They're not a Canadian.
[00:34:54]  They're not, they don't have that level of protection, even though it's a different country and they don't have an ESA.
[00:35:01]  They don't have that level of protection in that particular area.
[00:35:05]  Last time we went whitewater rafting out there, you know, you always go with a guide, or at least we always go with a guide.
[00:35:09]  And he said, if in case you see a bear, form a circle immediately and make sure your guide is in the middle of it.
[00:35:21]  Pretty good advice for the guide.
[00:35:22]  All right, stand by.
[00:35:23]  So we'll squeeze in a quick break, and more with Steve straight ahead.
[00:36:10]  We'll see you next time.
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[00:36:48]  So, Steve, the Biden administration now is blocking, it's blocking funding for hunting courses at elementary and secondary schools nationwide, or schools that have an archery program.
[00:37:02]  The administration doesn't deny it.
[00:37:03]  They say, hey, that's part of our bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was passed in the wake of mass shootings, which is a very, very different problem.
[00:37:13]  Not that hunting is a problem at all, but now they're trying to stop kids.
[00:37:17]  You know, it's like they don't understand how kids live in rural America and how they're raised.
[00:37:22]  They think they put a gun in your hand and teach you how to kill a deer or a bow and arrow, and somehow you're going to turn into the next school shooter.
[00:37:31]  What do you make of this?
[00:37:33]  You know, I followed this story a fair bit, and it's one of those ones that kind of swirls around and generates a level of uncertainty.
[00:37:42]  I invite people to go do their own research on this, but my understanding of the issue is that this issue took root when they were looking into ways to use some federal funding that would have given teachers firearms training.
[00:38:02]  And for some reason, I definitely don't agree with it.
[00:38:06]  For some reason, that wound up being blocked.
[00:38:10]  And then, as that ruling got interpreted down the road, it occurred to folks that that ruling had blocked those fundings for being used in any sort of school program training.
[00:38:28]  I've heard from people who understand the issue a lot better than I do that this is something that could be easily fixed and that these funds, which it's not even clear how broadly these funds had been used, they're not tracked well on that level.
[00:38:46]  So I don't think it's that we have a lot of instances where programs that were getting federal funding have been put to rest or stopped.
[00:38:56]  But it's been explained to me by some people who have a level of subject matter expertise that it would be an easily fixed thing and might not get a lot of resistance.
[00:39:07]  So hopefully, I mean, if people contact their lawmakers and let them know that they'd like to have this cleaned up and taken care of, I do hope that it's something that could get resolved quite easily down the road.
[00:39:21]  That it will be.
[00:39:22]  But yeah, it caused a lot of it caused a lot of hand-wringing, and rightfully so.
[00:39:28]  But I think that it's more of a, it seems more of a somewhat complex legal issue than a targeted attack in this case, in this particular case.
[00:39:39]  You not only hunt, which many in this country would say, oh, that's bad.
[00:39:44]  You're not allowed to hunt.
[00:39:45]  You shouldn't use the guns, but you eat red meat.
[00:39:49]  You have a show-called meat eater, for God's sake.
[00:39:52]  What about the planet, Steve?
[00:39:54]  We've been told by the New York Times as recently as what, it was July, that eating meat is hurting the planet.
[00:40:00]  And the new sort of Gen Zers, I mean, if I have seen a million clips of them saying the way we're going to save the environment is to obviously stop eating meat.
[00:40:09]  That's a given.
[00:40:10]  That's number one.
[00:40:11]  So what do you make of this push by some on the young side to stop and the New York Times to stop eating meat?
[00:40:17]  Well, I think in that case, what they're talking about in that case is agricultural production.
[00:40:24]  So, you know, in my house, in my house, we eat wild game.
[00:40:31]  So it's just a completely, it's just a different system.
[00:40:34]  It's a completely different system.
[00:40:36]  I'll point out that it's not a lifestyle that everyone could participate if they wanted to.
[00:40:43]  They certainly don't want to.
[00:40:45]  In New Jersey, California, less than 1% of the population chooses to hunt.
[00:40:50]  So we're not at risk of doing this.
[00:40:52]  But if every American went out and killed a deer tomorrow, I think that we would have a deficit of about 250 million deer.
[00:41:02]  So it's not a lifestyle that everyone's going to engage in and they don't want to engage in it.
[00:41:09]  I'm a firm supporter of agriculture.
[00:41:16]  If you look at, in my view, as an environmentalist, when I look at the landscape, I think that farms and ranches provide a lot better wildlife habitat than do subdivisions and shopping malls.
[00:41:33]  So in my opinion, a great environmental play is to support farmers and ranchers and support ways for them to be able to keep land in production and that to warrant the ownership of land and the stewardship of land.
[00:41:52]  Because what happens when you take away the ability, the economic ability to keep land in agricultural production generally isn't good for the land.
[00:42:05]  So I don't see this as an issue.
[00:42:09]  If it somehow came to it, I'm not a vigilante, but if it somehow came to it in some dystopian future in which it was forbidden that I eat deer meat and there was plenty of deer on the landscape, I don't believe I would change my habits.
[00:42:29]  So there's a lot of noise about it all the time, but I just feel that it's one of those things that just sits outside of my personal reality.
[00:42:39]  And if a neighbor chooses to be vegan, I don't think any differently about them.
[00:42:46]  The numbers of vegans are the number of vegans is going way down.
[00:42:51]  I think it's under 1% now on a national basis.
[00:42:55]  Yeah, so there's fewer, far fewer vegans out there than there are meat eaters.
[00:43:01]  Let's talk about.
[00:43:02]  I didn't know it was going down.
[00:43:03]  I'm somehow happy to hear it's going down, but I don't, it's just not a, I don't judge, I don't view vegans as like a really, I don't view them as a threat if it's just a personal choice.
[00:43:17]  Literally, no one does.
[00:43:19]  Literally, nobody sees a vegan as a threat.
[00:43:21]  Okay.
[00:43:22]  That's funny.
[00:43:23]  You're right.
[00:43:24]  You got it.

=== Nurturing Nature Connection (06:34) ===

[00:43:25]  You got to give us some tips now for those of us who have not been as active as you have in instilling love of the outdoors in our kids.
[00:43:32]  Like, what are some fun things we can do with our kids to sort of start getting this love going, short of, you know, buying a tent and trying to figure out how to pitch it and avoid the bears?
[00:43:46]  There's a there's a term called biophilia, and it was popularized by a scientist and writer named E.O. Wilson.
[00:44:00]  Biophilia is this idea that humans have an innate desire to connect with other life forms.
[00:44:05]  I think that it's absolutely true when applied to kids.
[00:44:13]  When my kids were very, very young, I mean, before they could walk, I would make a habit of getting them in situations where they're like with creatures.
[00:44:26]  We would just go out and roll rotten logs over and roll rocks over to find the beetles and grubs and worms that were there.
[00:44:36]  Or we'd take a little net, little beach sand or a dip net and go to shorelines and creeks and ponds, anywhere, anywhere.
[00:44:44]  Anyone lives close to this stuff.
[00:44:46]  Once they learn to look for it, and we would just find things, aquatic insects, crayfish, and I'd put them in their hands.
[00:44:56]  And I'd teach them that it's nothing to be afraid of.
[00:45:00]  There's nothing gross in nature.
[00:45:03]  There's nothing icky in nature.
[00:45:05]  It's beauty.
[00:45:06]  These things are beautiful to behold.
[00:45:08]  They're beautiful and to engage with.
[00:45:11]  And that was probably looking back on it.
[00:45:13]  One of the most effective and constructive things that I did as a parent was teaching from early on to rule out this idea of grossness, that the slimy, icky stuff is actually beautiful.
[00:45:30]  And that I realize now that created in my kids a desire to go toward nature instead of be repulsed and pulled back from nature.
[00:45:44]  I'm just lamenting the fact that no one did that for me.
[00:45:48]  I wish somebody had done that.
[00:45:49]  Perhaps I would not feel that all that stuff is so disgustingly icky.
[00:45:54]  I like you.
[00:45:55]  I've read that you always fancied yourself a cowboy.
[00:45:58]  I always wanted to be a cowgirl growing up.
[00:46:00]  It was my number one dream in life.
[00:46:03]  Got the Olin Mills picture of me and my never not worn cowgirl outfit.
[00:46:09]  You can't see it in the picture, but I had my guns on the side of my little outfit.
[00:46:13]  And I know you were the same.
[00:46:16]  I guess it's too late.
[00:46:17]  Maybe it's too late.
[00:46:19]  Am I going to have to put the icky things in my own hand at this age, even though my kids are already 13?
[00:46:25]  And there's you.
[00:46:25]  Look at young Steve, so cute with it.
[00:46:28]  Is it a horse?
[00:46:29]  I can't tell from the.
[00:46:31]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:31]  It was, we were out of my older, my older brother was an outfitter.
[00:46:37]  And he was an elk guy in Colorado.
[00:46:41]  So that was out riding around with him when I was a little kid.
[00:46:44]  So fun.
[00:46:44]  Yeah.
[00:46:45]  So anyway, what you're telling me is I'm going to need to get dirty.
[00:46:48]  I think so.
[00:46:50]  You know, I think so.
[00:46:51]  It's like I said, I've been a parent for 13 years and we've done a lot.
[00:46:58]  You know, I've put my kids through quite a bit.
[00:47:01]  I've made them uncomfortable a lot.
[00:47:03]  I've taken them a lot of places.
[00:47:05]  They've had a lot of experiences dealing with risk and dealing with fear.
[00:47:10]  And that time that we spent just, you know, it sounds so funny.
[00:47:18]  And like, like I'm just saying it to make a point, but it's true.
[00:47:22]  That time we spent with worms and grubs and bugs and crayfish created in them such a such an eagerness to explore and experience nature.
[00:47:35]  And the other tip, like if I was going to give, just to reiterate one I made earlier, if you're a parent, don't be shy about exercising the authority you have in the household.
[00:47:45]  We do not, we're going camping this weekend.
[00:47:48]  We did not ask if they want to go.
[00:47:51]  We're going.
[00:47:53]  We didn't make it a family conversation.
[00:47:55]  We know that that's best.
[00:47:57]  We're in charge.
[00:47:58]  That's what we're going to do.
[00:48:00]  And we're never, it's just on Friday night, that's where we're going.
[00:48:05]  And I know that it will happen.
[00:48:07]  And I know that it's valuable that we go do it.
[00:48:09]  And I know they'll be glad we went and did it.
[00:48:11]  So don't be shy about making a plan and sticking with it and not what about people like me who don't have this life experience.
[00:48:21]  Like, I'd feel better if you could come with us.
[00:48:24]  Are you ever on the East?
[00:48:25]  I'll take you guys camping anytime.
[00:48:26]  I promise.
[00:48:27]  Maybe Abby will just come.
[00:48:29]  I feel like Abby, Abby, could you just do it with us?
[00:48:31]  You could do it.
[00:48:32]  She can do it all.
[00:48:33]  She's been doing it since she was a kid, like you and your kids.
[00:48:35]  This is so fascinating, Steve.
[00:48:36]  And it's a good reminder.
[00:48:37]  It's a good reminder just to sort of nurture that strain that's in, I believe it's biologically baked into all of us to connect with nature.
[00:48:45]  I believe that it is.
[00:48:46]  I believe that it is.
[00:48:47]  And that makes me happy to think about.
[00:48:49]  Well, thank you for spending your life trying to remind us of that lesson through your books, your TV show, your show.
[00:48:55]  It's like it's a huge success.
[00:48:56]  Everything you touch turns to gold.
[00:48:58]  And you can get his cookbook too.
[00:48:59]  So once you catch that game, Steve will actually show you how to cook it up in a tasty way.
[00:49:04]  So nice to meet you.
[00:49:05]  Thanks for coming on.
[00:49:06]  Hey, thank you.
[00:49:07]  It was great to talk about this stuff.
[00:49:09]  I appreciate it.
[00:49:09]  All right.
[00:49:09]  And don't forget the new book is called Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars.
[00:49:13]  Sounds like a lovely way to spend a Saturday, does it not?
[00:49:17]  And by the way, Steve's also said many times you can pitch a tent in your backyard.
[00:49:20]  You know, you don't actually have to go anywhere.
[00:49:22]  Maybe for people like me who are just taking baby steps into it, that's the safest way to start until I get back together with Abigail.
[00:49:30]  We both live in Connecticut now.
[00:49:31]  So you can bring the girls.
[00:49:33]  We can do it all together.
[00:49:35]  And remember, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East.
[00:49:43]  And the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
[00:49:46]  That's youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
[00:49:48]  If you prefer an audio podcast, follow, download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast for free.

=== Toxic Achievement Culture (13:21) ===

[00:50:00]  My next guest is here to share her work surrounding a hugely important topic for parents: toxic achievement culture.
[00:50:09]  She gives us an inside look at what's happening to our kids today who are under intense pressure from all corners to achieve, be a success, be a winner, not just in school, but in extracurricular activities and even now in social media, and how this is vastly, vastly impacting their mental health.
[00:50:29]  Her tips and tricks for parents to confront these challenges, hugely important for everyone to digest, happens to be a friend of mine as well.
[00:50:36]  Her name is Jennifer Wallace.
[00:50:38]  She's an award-winning journalist, and she details all of this in her new book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It.
[00:50:49]  Jenny, so great to see you.
[00:50:51]  Thanks for coming on and welcome to the show.
[00:50:53]  Oh, I'm so happy to be here.
[00:50:54]  It's nice to see you too, Megan.
[00:50:56]  I want to start with this.
[00:50:57]  I remember because our boys were at the same school together and our girls were too.
[00:51:01]  I mean, my daughter and yours.
[00:51:03]  But I remember seeing you because you have a your eldest child is a boy who's older than our little guys.
[00:51:10]  And well, whatever, than our friends who are our sons who are friends.
[00:51:14]  And your boy was sort of the pointy end of the spear going like up into the more competitive grades while our other boys were in the younger grades.
[00:51:22]  And I remember you saying one morning about like the amount of homework they were being given or the schedules that they were looking at that year.
[00:51:29]  Geez, it's not as if they're facing some sort of a national depression crisis.
[00:51:33]  Like you were, you were already noticing this six, seven year, eight years ago.
[00:51:39]  So when I heard you wrote this book, I'm like, she came by this very honestly.
[00:51:43]  I know you've been paying attention to this.
[00:51:45]  And you, like I, am in the midst.
[00:51:48]  You and I both are in the midst of this toxic culture, but it's not just people who've got a little dough or who are in the New York City privates.
[00:51:56]  Some middle class families are dealing with upper middle class.
[00:51:59]  Society's doing this to our kids.
[00:52:00]  So just outline the scope of the issue for us.
[00:52:03]  Oh, you are absolutely right.
[00:52:05]  I do come by this honestly.
[00:52:07]  I've been noticing since my kids were little.
[00:52:10]  And my oldest one is now going into his senior year of high school.
[00:52:16]  But I have been noticing over the years how different my childhoods, my child's childhood was from my own.
[00:52:24]  So I've been noticing how my weekends were fractured.
[00:52:29]  My husband was going in one direction.
[00:52:30]  I was going in another direction.
[00:52:32]  Homework felt so much heavier.
[00:52:34]  Was he going into advanced math?
[00:52:36]  Was he not going into advanced math?
[00:52:38]  What would that mean for him for his high school career, for college, life in the future?
[00:52:44]  So, you know, my parents, when I was growing up, I don't think they were sleepless or overthinking, you know, the classes I took, the activities they signed me up for.
[00:52:56]  And so I have been wondering all these years why my children's childhood is so different from my own.
[00:53:02]  And so for the last four years, I've been digging into it.
[00:53:05]  Okay, but how could your parents not have been overly involved when you wound up at Harvard?
[00:53:10]  My parents paid absolutely no attention to me and I wound up at Syracuse, which makes sense to me.
[00:53:15]  My parents, so here's, okay, here's what I would say is the difference.
[00:53:19]  For my parents, achievement was important, but it was just one facet of my life.
[00:53:25]  Just as important was my sleep, my extracurricular activities, my relationship with my family, my extended family, my relationship with my friends.
[00:53:35]  So achievement mattered, but it didn't define me and it didn't define my childhood the way it does so many kids today.
[00:53:45]  How did this happen to us?
[00:53:46]  Because I think every parent out there listening knows exactly what we're talking about.
[00:53:49]  We talk about this toxic culture of achievement.
[00:53:52]  How did we get here?
[00:53:53]  How do we get from our childhoods, which were normal and we played outside and we didn't have parents whose like every thought was of our academic achievement to today?
[00:54:01]  Yeah.
[00:54:02]  So when I was growing up and we're about the same age in the 70s and early 80s, life was generally more affordable.
[00:54:10]  Housing was more affordable.
[00:54:12]  Healthcare was more affordable.
[00:54:14]  Higher education was more affordable.
[00:54:16]  Food was more affordable.
[00:54:17]  There was slack in the system.
[00:54:19]  Parents could be relatively assured that even with some setbacks, even with mistakes and bad grades, that a child could generally replicate their upbringing, if not do even better.
[00:54:33]  I mean, the American dream, right, has always been to do better than your parents.
[00:54:37]  But parents today face a different economic reality.
[00:54:41]  We are seeing the first generation that is not doing as well as their parents.
[00:54:46]  We are feeling the deep inequity that's been ushered in over the last several decades, the crush of the middle class, the hyper competition that's been ushered in with globalization.
[00:54:59]  And we are absorbing these macroeconomic forces.
[00:55:04]  And in the words of researchers, becoming social conduits, meaning we are passing these anxiety and fears on to our kids, not to hurt them, but in the hopes that we can prepare them for a competitive and uncertain future.
[00:55:20]  I mean, think about it.
[00:55:21]  The jobs that will be available to our boys when they graduate college, like we don't know what half of those jobs are.
[00:55:28]  And now AI is on the scene.
[00:55:29]  And is that going to take, you know, what is that going to do to careers?
[00:55:32]  So parents are facing very uncertain times.
[00:55:36]  This is not to say parents should be let off the hook and anything goes.
[00:55:41]  This is just to say it's time to stop pointing the finger, blaming parents, personalizing this achievement pressure, and instead take a minute to step back and look at it in the larger context.
[00:55:53]  This is these pressures are bigger than any one family, any one school, any one community.
[00:56:00]  You write about the principle of scarcity.
[00:56:02]  And we are biologically programmed to recognize scarcity and work against it, work to protect ourselves and our children against it.
[00:56:10]  And that's baked into what you just said, as well as, let's face it, the available college spots for these high achieving kids or what you hope will be a high achieving kid, not just at the top top 10 or the Ivy Leagues, but just the whole first and even large portions of the second tier are near impossible to get into.
[00:56:30]  And we know it in a way that it wasn't even 20, 25 years ago.
[00:56:35]  Let's also talk about how expensive public schools are, education in general.
[00:56:40]  And so many of the parents that I interviewed for this book were solidly middle class and they were stressed.
[00:56:45]  They wanted their kids to get scholarships so that they could afford college for their kids.
[00:56:50]  So we're not even talking about, like you said, Harvard, Yale.
[00:56:54]  We're not even talking about the top 20 or 30 schools.
[00:56:56]  We're talking about helping our kids get an education, being able to afford it.
[00:57:01]  There's a lot of stress around that today.
[00:57:03]  But I mean, just to put people's minds at ease, your child's not getting into Harvard Yale or Princeton.
[00:57:08]  They're not getting it.
[00:57:09]  Okay.
[00:57:09]  Just know that going.
[00:57:11]  Stop ruining their childhoods.
[00:57:12]  They're not getting in.
[00:57:13]  Like you go through the numbers.
[00:57:15]  It's not, and it's not just those three.
[00:57:17]  They're not getting into any of the top tier.
[00:57:18]  Just accept it now and stop ruining your kids' upbringing.
[00:57:23]  And you know what I say to my kids?
[00:57:25]  My son, who's applying to college now this year?
[00:57:28]  I said to him, do your best, go for it, but know that it's kind of a lottery at this point.
[00:57:34]  I mean, this is not an indictment of who you are.
[00:57:37]  And I hope that that brings a little bit of ease to the situation.
[00:57:42]  Also, the idea, as Frank Bruni wrote in his book, where you go is not who you'll be.
[00:57:47]  So I think having those conversations with our kids, talking about just the numbers, it's a lottery.
[00:57:53]  I mean, and I was not willing and my husband was not willing to live our family life to get our kids into Harvard, which is now, what, a 3% or 4% acceptance rate?
[00:58:04]  I wasn't willing to do that.
[00:58:05]  They're all there.
[00:58:06]  The most generous number I saw was Georgetown, which is 12% get in.
[00:58:09]  But every other, I mean, they're all 3%, 4%, 5%.
[00:58:13]  I mean, it's just the odds of your child getting into one of these schools.
[00:58:16]  And at what cost?
[00:58:17]  You want to ruin years zero through 18 so that they can then go and face incredible anxiety and pressure from 18 to 22?
[00:58:26]  Why?
[00:58:26]  Why?
[00:58:27]  I know that I may be the exception, Jenny, but I love to remind people, I did go to Syracuse.
[00:58:33]  Then I went to Albany Law School, which to be charitable to Albany is a middling law school.
[00:58:38]  It's definitely like third tier at best.
[00:58:41]  And I didn't even go to the communications program at Syracuse, which is a great school.
[00:58:45]  I went poly side, which is fine, but I'm just saying you, and I guarantee you, I make more money than virtually anybody in my town.
[00:58:53]  It's possible.
[00:58:54]  You can get ahead.
[00:58:55]  You can have a great life.
[00:58:56]  You can have a great marriage.
[00:58:57]  You can, if money's your goal, if success, you can do it by going to a middling school.
[00:59:02]  It's just, I think, much more relates to, number one, I was a happy child.
[00:59:07]  I had a family that loved me and made me feel whole.
[00:59:10]  And number two, I spent time thinking, what personality traits do I have that will align with the potential professions in front of me?
[00:59:21]  So I chose wisely.
[00:59:23]  That was the most important.
[00:59:25]  Those two things were the two most important things.
[00:59:27]  You write about this in the book, about how you want your kid to have a successful life, whether it's financial or, you know, friendships and so on.
[00:59:36]  Spend time loving on them.
[00:59:38]  Spend time reinforcing that you see them as a whole person, not just as their GPA.
[00:59:47]  Exactly right.
[00:59:47]  As you point out with your upbringing, there's a social psychologist at Brown, Gregory Elliott, and he just says so many wise things.
[00:59:57]  And one of the things he wrote was, What gets in early gets in deep.
[01:00:04]  And that to me was so profound.
[01:00:07]  And so I wanted to make sure that, you know, achievement was not going to get into the way of my connection with my kids.
[01:00:15]  And I think what you pointed out were two really strong things.
[01:00:19]  So one is your home was a place where you felt valued unconditionally.
[01:00:25]  And what did that do?
[01:00:26]  That made you reach for things.
[01:00:27]  You weren't likely afraid of setbacks because it was not an indictment of your worth.
[01:00:32]  This was just part of the course.
[01:00:35]  And the other thing you talk about is knowing your strengths.
[01:00:39]  And I write about that a lot in the book.
[01:00:41]  That this is another great quote that I got from Rick Wiseboard, who's at Making Care in Common up in Boston.
[01:00:48]  And he says, the self becomes stronger less by being praised than by being known.
[01:00:55]  A lot of the kids that I knew that I interviewed for this book said praise by their parents was just another source of pressure.
[01:01:03]  And what he would, Rick Weisbord was telling me was that the self becomes stronger when we're known for who we are deep at our core, away from our achievements.
[01:01:14]  What are our strengths?
[01:01:15]  Are we tenacious?
[01:01:17]  Do we have a great sense of humor?
[01:01:19]  Do we have a really strong work ethic?
[01:01:21]  These are things that we can see about our kids and we can foster.
[01:01:26]  And those are the very things actually that are going to lead to their success and help them to overcome any setbacks.
[01:01:33]  So I think your two points were very astute.
[01:01:37]  I've laughed about it many times.
[01:01:38]  My parents would always say, like, you don't really see that, seem that special so far, but you know, we're open-minded to specialness if it should present itself.
[01:01:47]  And that was fine.
[01:01:48]  I was like, great, okay, perfect.
[01:01:50]  They used to insult my looks.
[01:01:51]  They didn't say you're ugly.
[01:01:52]  They just said she's going to be with us for a long time.
[01:01:56]  I wasn't offended, Jenny.
[01:01:58]  I didn't care.
[01:01:58]  I'm like, oh, I love my mom and dad.
[01:01:59]  Great.
[01:02:00]  We're going to be together.
[01:02:02]  We're the opposite of all that today.
[01:02:04]  Like, junior can do no wrong.
[01:02:05]  Junior's brilliant.
[01:02:06]  Junior's gorgeous.
[01:02:07]  Juniors.
[01:02:08]  And like all this messaging, we want, you know, positivity, I guess, but we may be inadvertently setting them up for a standard that is unattainable.
[01:02:21]  I think that's exactly right.
[01:02:23]  And I think, like you said, I think knowing our kids for who they are makes them feel so valued.
[01:02:30]  It gives them like a protective shield against setbacks.
[01:02:34]  And, you know, a lot of kids are really crumbling under setbacks today.
[01:02:38]  Now, you also, you have a lot of great quotes in the book.
[01:02:40]  And one of them is, though, about the negative voice.
[01:02:42]  You do have to be careful with criticism on the kids, especially when it comes to academics and achievement.
[01:02:48]  And this is what I highlighted.
[01:02:50]  When you criticize a child, they don't necessarily stop loving you, psychologists say.
[01:02:56]  They stop loving themselves.
[01:02:58]  Oh my God, that's such a good one.
[01:03:01]  I know.
[01:03:03]  So how do we get around it, right?
[01:03:05]  Because as parents, we do have to set standards.
[01:03:08]  That's how our kids know that we're invested in them, that we love them.
[01:03:12]  And so what the psychologists I interviewed talked about was being very clear about separating the deed from the doer.

=== Separating Deed from Doer (11:51) ===

[01:03:21]  So what does that mean?
[01:03:22]  That means, you know, your son comes home with a bad grade on his math test, and you knew he was goofing off this week and not putting in any effort.
[01:03:32]  And so you might say, I'm curious, you know, instead of getting furious, get curious.
[01:03:37]  You know, I wonder why you got that grade.
[01:03:39]  What do you think it is?
[01:03:40]  Why are you disappointed by it?
[01:03:42]  What could you do better next time?
[01:03:44]  So instead of saying to them, you're so lazy or whatever, whatever a tired parent might say, just out of frustration in the moment, to separate the deed from the doer.
[01:03:54]  It means to our, it's, it's saying to our kid, you are not the failure.
[01:03:58]  How you studied for that test wasn't the greatest, but you're still great.
[01:04:02]  Does that make sense?
[01:04:03]  Yeah, it does.
[01:04:04]  I mean, we need to pay attention to this because we've talked many times on the show about, you know, sort of these things that don't set a child up for success in life, whether it's an alcoholic parent or divorce, you know, these terrible risks that happen to young children.
[01:04:21]  This is one of them.
[01:04:23]  You went back and looked at this.
[01:04:24]  I think this is from the first chapter of the book that like high achievers, if you went to a high achieving sort of high school or had an upbringing that was focused on high achievement, that's now a risk factor for later consequences in life, including alcoholism, addiction, anxiety, depression.
[01:04:44]  That's right.
[01:04:45]  I wrote about this in 2019.
[01:04:48]  It's in many ways the basis of the book.
[01:04:50]  Two national policy reports, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Academies of Sciences.
[01:04:56]  These are two very credible reports that our government uses to make policy.
[01:05:04]  And they named these kids attending what researchers call high achieving schools.
[01:05:11]  Those are, as you said, public and private schools all around the country, not just on the coasts.
[01:05:17]  Researchers saw this everywhere.
[01:05:20]  It was the excessive pressure to achieve that was putting them at risk, meaning that they were two to six times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorder than the average American teen.
[01:05:38]  And it doesn't mean that it's just during these high school years that they are at risk.
[01:05:42]  What the researchers have done was they followed these kids over time and they saw that the patterns of coping, the patterns of thinking that what gets in early gets in deep, stayed with these kids through college and into their 30s.
[01:05:58]  These kids in their early 30s were more likely to say they were, they suffered from substance abuse disorder than their peers who attended less competitive schools.
[01:06:10]  And yet, one of the most interesting things of the book to me was you pointed out, I think it was also a Pew study, that they went and surveyed people.
[01:06:19]  I think it was 10 years after they graduated from various colleges, state universities, also the Ives.
[01:06:25]  And what did they find?
[01:06:27]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[01:06:28]  So it was Gallup and Purdue.
[01:06:30]  And they conducted the largest study.
[01:06:33]  There was also Megan Pew study there in that chapter too, but I think the one you're referencing is they studied 30,000 college graduates and they wanted to see: was it a large public university?
[01:06:44]  Was it a small private college?
[01:06:46]  Did the rank of the school matter for several factors in a kid's 20s and early 30s?
[01:06:53]  And they looked at well-being, connection.
[01:06:57]  Did they feel a sense of belonging in their community?
[01:06:59]  Did they enjoy career success?
[01:07:01]  Did they find meaning in their work?
[01:07:03]  And what the researchers found was that it didn't matter if the school was public, private, highly ranked, or not highly ranked.
[01:07:12]  It hardly mattered at all.
[01:07:15]  What mattered, though, was the experience that that student had on campus.
[01:07:21]  Did they have a professor who made learning fun, who knew them individually, who encouraged them to pursue their interests?
[01:07:30]  Did they have a multi-semester internship or project where they were able to use what they were learning and add value in that way?
[01:07:39]  Were they involved in extracurricular activities on campus?
[01:07:44]  And did they feel that sense of belonging on campus?
[01:07:47]  In other words, did they feel like they matter on that campus?
[01:07:51]  Did they feel valued?
[01:07:53]  And did they feel like they were adding value?
[01:07:56]  Those were the critical ingredients: fit over rank.
[01:08:00]  Did the child have a good fit at school?
[01:08:02]  And so, with my senior, we talk about fit and how important fit is over rank.
[01:08:09]  We don't even talk about ranks, to be honest.
[01:08:10]  We don't bring in, and I won't name the magazine that does the rankings, which I also rip apart a bit in the book.
[01:08:21]  Evil.
[01:08:22]  No one should say that.
[01:08:24]  I mean, I have to say, if there's a bad guy, that's one of the bad guys.
[01:08:28]  I mean, they are really exploiting parents' fears, students' fears.
[01:08:34]  You know, I get into how those rankings are put together, and they are, let's just say, misleading at best.
[01:08:42]  You know, 20, something like 22% of their rankings of a college are how many kids graduate.
[01:08:50]  Yes, that makes sense, right?
[01:08:51]  You want to be able to have a school where the students graduate.
[01:08:54]  But when you're looking at a school like Penn State, whose mission is to graduate as many kids, as many students as possible, they are taking in people from all different socioeconomic groups, all different backgrounds, first-gen students.
[01:09:08]  So they are naturally going to have more of a dropout rate than maybe a Harvard or a Yale, which is, you know, picking the creme de la creme.
[01:09:16]  So, um, so anyway, there are lots of other reasons why these rankings don't work.
[01:09:21]  But the most important, I think, to explain for your child is that rank has a really negligible effect.
[01:09:29]  And we should be looking at fit.
[01:09:31]  And I actually made my son read that section before we went to go look at colleges.
[01:09:35]  Well, and the other thing people need to remember is when you look at, you know, you look past high school and college, those fade into the background very quickly once you're out.
[01:09:45]  You know, it's only that first year or two out of college that people are even really asking you about your college education or where you went to school.
[01:09:52]  What will matter for the rest of your life is your EQ and your sense of self and your ability to interact with other people well and project a sense of confidence and ease.
[01:10:03]  You got to work on that stuff.
[01:10:05]  You better be working on that stuff.
[01:10:06]  That's way more important net net than the name of the school your kid winds up at.
[01:10:13]  That's exactly right.
[01:10:14]  I mean, when I look and I point out with to my children, some of my most successful friends, and I mean successful both socially with their families and their friends, but also career-wise, they went to schools that I can't even pronounce one of them.
[01:10:28]  It was in Ohio.
[01:10:29]  It was a small liberal arts school.
[01:10:31]  She was, she recently passed away, but she was one of my very most successful friends.
[01:10:37]  And it had nothing to do with the brand name of her school, but she did fit on that campus.
[01:10:43]  She had internships that were valuable to her.
[01:10:46]  She felt valued on that campus and she had the most extraordinary social skills.
[01:10:53]  Like you said, that's success.
[01:10:54]  You write about, and you're not blaming parents in this book.
[01:10:57]  It's a very honest, you know, you talk about your own parenting mistakes and getting drawn into this cauldron too.
[01:11:03]  But you do write about what, like, what's making parents do this?
[01:11:06]  And in part, it's this need for status.
[01:11:09]  And you write about how to our brains, status matters.
[01:11:14]  And it doesn't just have to be the college our kids go to.
[01:11:16]  It could be your son scoring the winner, winning soccer goal.
[01:11:20]  Like we get these dopamine hits and you have to be mindful of that so that you don't get your dopamine hit off of your kids' A's and your kids' college.
[01:11:33]  That's exactly right.
[01:11:34]  I was so fascinated to find out that when we, because we are wired for status, when we feel a status dissent, we get this neurochemical, like negative cocktail that actually causes some pain in the brain.
[01:11:50]  And what we do sometimes, if we're unaware, is that we will do things that are not ultimately to our advantage in order to just squash that feeling, like yelling at a coach or calling up a teacher and screaming at them for the grade your kid got.
[01:12:04]  That's not helpful.
[01:12:06]  And while we might be wired for status, we don't have, we're not victims of it.
[01:12:11]  We can be aware of it.
[01:12:13]  We can say to ourselves, that's my status talking.
[01:12:15]  And we can give ourselves the space to really have control over how we act on those primal impulses.
[01:12:22]  One of the examples I use in the book is a researcher from Michigan describes it as the burning bagel principle.
[01:12:30]  So when, you know, our kid doesn't get into Michigan and we see that rejection letter, you know, it feels like a fire alarm is going off in our heads.
[01:12:39]  That was something that was given to us by evolution because we are wired for a negativity bias.
[01:12:45]  When we were out, you know, unhoused, if something bad was happening in our environment, it could have meant life or death.
[01:12:53]  But that Michigan letter does not mean life or death.
[01:12:57]  It's just a bagel burning.
[01:12:59]  It doesn't mean the house is on fire.
[01:13:03]  When that fire alarm is going off, just think about the bagel burning.
[01:13:07]  And you think about the pressures that these kids are under today.
[01:13:11]  Even, I mean, this is something to worry about, even if it's not you, even if you read Jenny's book, even if you're like me, like, Syracuse is fine, you know, relax.
[01:13:19]  It's society that's doing it to them.
[01:13:21]  It's the school that's doing it.
[01:13:23]  It's their peers.
[01:13:25]  And I know you did something extraordinary where you, I think you got a researcher at Harvard to help you and surveyed thousands of parents and asked, you know, how all this is affecting them and whether they're falling prey to this.
[01:13:37]  And correct me if I'm wrong, but something like over 80% of them said, it's other parents who are doing it, like who are creating it.
[01:13:45]  And then we get stirred in.
[01:13:47]  That's exactly right.
[01:13:50]  So before I started researching this book, I wanted to make sure that this wasn't just an issue that was being felt on the coast.
[01:13:57]  I wanted to know, is this achievement pressure being felt everywhere?
[01:13:59]  So I enlisted this researcher at Harvard and we created this survey to get to, you know, the anxieties that parents might be feeling today.
[01:14:08]  And the researcher said to me, okay, we need a sample size of a thousand in order to see patterns.
[01:14:14]  But within a few days, over 6,500 parents around the country had filled it out, including parents in Alaska, who I interviewed for the book.
[01:14:22]  And what you said was 83% of parents reported that other parents in their community judge them by, judge parents by their children's academic success.
[01:14:36]  I also, I have a couple I pulled out for you.
[01:14:39]  Okay, I asked parents how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement.
[01:14:45]  I feel responsible for my children's achievement and success.
[01:14:50]  75% of parents agreed with that statement.
[01:14:54]  But then you also look at this number.
[01:14:57]  I asked them how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement.
[01:15:01]  I wish today's childhood was less stressful for my kids.
[01:15:05]  87% of parents agreed with that statement.
[01:15:09]  So parents feel caught.
[01:15:11]  We feel caught.

=== Affection Regulates Kids (03:10) ===

[01:15:12]  We want to enjoy our kids.
[01:15:14]  We want to enjoy these short 18 years.
[01:15:17]  They certainly feel short once you start sleeping through the night, but and we want to have those feelings.
[01:15:22]  We want to enjoy our kids.
[01:15:23]  We want to build these kind of connections, by the way, that will last a lifetime.
[01:15:29]  I mean, think about what the relationship you are building with your child as an adolescent and a teen is setting the blueprint for your future with your child.
[01:15:40]  Do you want your child, do you want a relationship in the long term?
[01:15:44]  If you do, then you really need to focus on that connection.
[01:15:47]  Connection over achievement.
[01:15:49]  Connection with that.
[01:15:50]  Right.
[01:15:51]  So where you write about how is something as simple as making your child feel like you are excited to see him or her when they enter the room, writing about how it's treat them like it's a new puppy at least once a day when you see your kid.
[01:16:06]  Little thing and physical touch, like affection.
[01:16:10]  That's right.
[01:16:11]  Affection.
[01:16:12]  So, you know, it's a lot of parents said to me, well, my teen doesn't want me to be affectionate with them anymore.
[01:16:18]  And I said, I understand that.
[01:16:20]  So I said, let me give you advice that I got from a couple of other parents.
[01:16:24]  One mother gives her teenage daughter manicures so that she can rub the hand with lotion.
[01:16:31]  She can sort of have that affection.
[01:16:34]  Another mother I spoke to talked about how she gives her sons, you know, helps him with his acne.
[01:16:39]  She gives them facials so that, you know, she can touch them.
[01:16:43]  There are ways, there are creative ways we can be affectionate with our kids.
[01:16:47]  And our teens actually do crave that.
[01:16:49]  Being affectionate with our kids helps to regulate them.
[01:16:52]  It's a stress response.
[01:16:54]  I think about this a lot because think about, you know, you in your marriage, right?
[01:16:58]  How often you and your husband hug or hold hands or just sit next to each other on the couch and sort of, you know, cuddle a little bit.
[01:17:05]  That is great.
[01:17:07]  I mean, that stuff's important to your well-being.
[01:17:09]  It's a, it's an endorphin.
[01:17:10]  And we give that to our children nonstop when they're babies and they're toddlers.
[01:17:15]  And then they get to be able to walk and we do it a little less.
[01:17:19]  And then as they just start aging, it just becomes less and less.
[01:17:21]  But, you know, you can like we go to church every Sunday.
[01:17:24]  I always have my arms around my kids or we hold hands and they let me do it.
[01:17:27]  Because listen, at this point, adolescents, especially, they don't have boyfriends.
[01:17:33]  They don't have girlfriends.
[01:17:33]  They only have us.
[01:17:34]  They're not holding hands with their brothers and sister.
[01:17:36]  So it's like, I think they need it.
[01:17:39]  And you can get away with it.
[01:17:40]  You know, they'll let you like put your arm around their back or hold their hand here or there, probably less so when they're 17, 18.
[01:17:47]  But so far I'm getting away with it.
[01:17:48]  I'm still getting away with it.
[01:17:50]  Not as much with my 17-year-old.
[01:17:52]  But I will say, great advice I got from a researcher who studies teens was, and I asked her this when my oldest was becoming a teenager.
[01:18:00]  I said, you know, I'm reading all this stuff about teenagers and like, oh my God, they're going to separate from me.
[01:18:05]  And do they really turn overnight against you?
[01:18:07]  And she said, no, that's a myth.
[01:18:09]  She said, teenagers are, you know, yes, they are programmed to be pulling away to building their own individual selves, but it does not mean the parent should be pulling away too.

=== Balancing Teen Independence (15:15) ===

[01:18:22]  So we have, the way we've gotten around this in our home, my husband, who you know, Megan, he now issues NOFAs and OFAs.
[01:18:32]  NOFAs are non-optional family activities.
[01:18:35]  So once a week, we issue a NOFA and he knocks on the bedroom door and he's like, it's a NOFA time.
[01:18:42]  And the NOFA time could be a family movie.
[01:18:44]  It could be, you know, they're really into chess right now.
[01:18:46]  I don't know.
[01:18:47]  All these teenagers and adolescents are super into chess right now or a board game or make baking cookies, but he creates these NOFAs.
[01:18:56]  And so that's a way of sort of knocking on that door, even when the teens might be trying to separate doesn't mean we should be separating too.
[01:19:05]  Okay, the husband, Peter Wallace, is hilarious.
[01:19:07]  He's got this big, important job, but he takes the time to do things like this.
[01:19:11]  During the pandemic, we were all at the same school.
[01:19:14]  And of course, that March in April and May, none of us knew it was going to happen.
[01:19:18]  Are we going to go back to school?
[01:19:20]  How long is this thing?
[01:19:21]  And he took the time to create a fake letter on April Fool's Day.
[01:19:26]  Do you remember this?
[01:19:27]  Telling all the kids that because they'd been out for the month of March or half of it, the school had decided they were all going to have to go to summer school to make up the time.
[01:19:37]  He put it on like the fake school letter head and then was kind enough to reach out to the other parents and say, I'm doing this to my kids.
[01:19:44]  If you want me to give it to you, here it is.
[01:19:47]  We still talk about it to this day, Jenny.
[01:19:49]  It was amazing.
[01:19:50]  Oh my God, I totally forgot about that.
[01:19:52]  I have to pull that letter out this funny.
[01:19:54]  It was legit.
[01:19:56]  And it gave us a lot of laughs after the initial tears that came when they saw the fake, fake bad news.
[01:20:03]  All right, stand by.
[01:20:04]  On that note, we'll take a quick break.
[01:20:06]  We'll come back.
[01:20:07]  Much, much more to discuss.
[01:20:08]  I find this discussion absolutely fascinating.
[01:20:10]  And Jenny's got a lot of additional helpful tips for parents out there struggling.
[01:20:17]  Jenny, when I was living in New York, they used to have these massive parental seminars for all the parents of kids who are in the independent school system, which is a nice way of saying private schools.
[01:20:28]  And I went to one of them and they had a couple of students from basically every private school in New York.
[01:20:33]  I mean, these are the most privileged kids in the United States.
[01:20:36]  And one of them, it was a kid who, I think he was maybe a sophomore in high school.
[01:20:41]  He had this crazy blonde hair and he laid it on the line.
[01:20:45]  And I remember him saying, you parents want to know why your kids are so fucked up?
[01:20:49]  He was like, it's because we have to get straight A's.
[01:20:53]  We have to join 10 clubs.
[01:20:54]  We have to be the captain of three sports in order to get into the school you went to.
[01:20:59]  And he said, that's why we're boozing on the weekends.
[01:21:02]  We're sneaking alcohol into our parties and we're getting stoned whenever you're not looking at us.
[01:21:07]  I remember being like, holy shit.
[01:21:09]  Oh my God.
[01:21:10]  Okay.
[01:21:10]  Got it.
[01:21:11]  Copy and Roger.
[01:21:12]  He was honest, right?
[01:21:13]  Because all that pressure that we put on them comes at the expense of their mental health.
[01:21:18]  And it will, it will come back to haunt them.
[01:21:21]  And to the point we were making earlier, for what?
[01:21:24]  So they can get into Ivy.
[01:21:25]  A, they're not getting in.
[01:21:26]  Only 3% of the population is getting in.
[01:21:28]  You talk about how if you just looked at, what was it, the state of Connecticut, if you took all the valedictorians, you know what I'm going for here?
[01:21:37]  I do.
[01:21:38]  It was a college college night that I attended for the book.
[01:21:42]  And it was, you know, if you take all the valedictorians and salutatorians and you add them together from all the, you know, 14,000 schools around, you can fill up the first 10, 20 schools, top schools.
[01:21:55]  So in other words, it's a lottery.
[01:21:58]  It's essentially it's a lottery is what they were saying.
[01:22:00]  So like just the just the number one and number two in the states of Connecticut could take up all the spots in all the IVs.
[01:22:07]  So, I mean, your kid can be perfect 4.0, captain of the football, all the teams, all of it.
[01:22:13]  And still, the odds are he or she's not getting in.
[01:22:15]  So, just accept that now.
[01:22:17]  And this is the Pew thing that you, it's from chapter five that I loved reading now from the book.
[01:22:21]  Pew Research conducted a study to explore this very issue, this belief that just a few colleges are good.
[01:22:27]  Researchers compared life outcomes between graduates who had attended large public universities and those who had attended the more expensive private schools.
[01:22:36]  Surprisingly, they found no statistical difference in the outcomes.
[01:22:41]  The majority of each group reported about the same levels of personal satisfaction with their family life, with their economic well-being, with their job.
[01:22:52]  That, so what did you do?
[01:22:55]  You stressed out your kid.
[01:22:56]  You drove him to booze and to drugs and God knows what else.
[01:23:00]  So he could get into a school he's not going to get into.
[01:23:04]  And for what?
[01:23:04]  If you would just let him have a nice normal childhood, he would have wound up with the same level of economic well-being, satisfaction with his job, and with his family life.
[01:23:15]  My God, no one talks about that.
[01:23:17]  Well, nobody talks about it.
[01:23:18]  And nobody talks about why parents are so fixated by the schools.
[01:23:23]  And what I found in talking with, you know, hundreds of families and experts in the field is that parents, because of this economic uncertainty that we talked about, not knowing what the future is going to, you know, be for our kids in terms of careers, what careers are available to them.
[01:23:39]  Parents are betting big that early childhood success that leads to a quote good college in their eyes will act as a safety vest, a kind of life preserver in a sea of uncertainty, that this college brand name will keep them afloat no matter what in the future.
[01:23:59]  But as you pointed out, and what I saw on the ground and what decades of research show is that that safety vest that we're hoping will protect our kid is actually working like a lead vest and drowning too many of the kids it's trying to protect.
[01:24:17]  What you were talking about with the drinking, oh, I can't tell you how many, how many seniors and college students told me about how the excessive pressure to achieve led them to drink to black out on the weekends.
[01:24:33]  This was the only way they could shut down their overprotective minds.
[01:24:38]  And so the parents of, you know, in the book, I sort of lay out the secrets of the healthy strivers that I met because I wanted to know how could I raise a healthy striver.
[01:24:50]  And what those children reported, those students reported that their parents, instead of pushing them, actually sometimes created guardrails and put limits on how many extracurricular activities they could take, how many P they could take, because those parents saw it as their job to teach their kids while they are living in their home how to build a life that the kid will not have to escape from with drugs and alcohol.
[01:25:19]  They saw their life as the balance keepers of their kids.
[01:25:24]  You picked up on a point we've talked about on the show before with Dr. Leonard Sachs, the family dinner, the family time together, like the kids who feel connected and valued for who they are, just time around the dinner table.
[01:25:36]  And the time around the dinner table should not be, what'd you get on that math test?
[01:25:40]  What did all your friends get?
[01:25:41]  What did everybody, right?
[01:25:43]  It should be, how are you?
[01:25:44]  Wouldn't it be fun to do this?
[01:25:45]  Remember that trip we took here?
[01:25:46]  You know, the actual connection with your family, feeling valued by that core, whatever number it is, is another insulating factor.
[01:25:55]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:25:56]  I mean, and I don't know that it has to be a family dinner, but it has to be intentional, consistent time together as a family.
[01:26:05]  Challenge Success, which is a great nonprofit in California affiliated with Stanford, talks about how children and teens, and I would argue adults, need something every day, this ingredient, playtime, downtime, and family time.
[01:26:20]  So, when you look at your kids' schedules, are you leaving time?
[01:26:24]  Are you insisting that they have playtime, downtime, family time?
[01:26:30]  The parents of the Healthy Strivers insisted on it and they held their kids accountable.
[01:26:36]  Right, because you don't want to completely abandon all parental responsibility of modeling and valuing, yes, hard work and being determined and holding yourself to a high standard.
[01:26:49]  It's just threading the needle between like to do that, between this overachievement culture and raising a loser, right?
[01:26:58]  That's the magical, that's the magic spot.
[01:27:00]  That's the sweet spot.
[01:27:00]  That's what you're trying to work toward.
[01:27:03]  And it's a lot bigger than parents think it is.
[01:27:05]  That sweet spot is a lot bigger.
[01:27:07]  And what I will tell you, what really shakes out in the research is that the best place a parent can put their energy if they want to raise a successful child and who doesn't.
[01:27:17]  This is not, this book, just to be clear, is not anti-achievement or anti-ambition.
[01:27:22]  I enjoy achievement.
[01:27:24]  I value it.
[01:27:25]  I get joy from it.
[01:27:26]  And I want my kids to get joy from it too.
[01:27:29]  So, this is not anti-achievement, but it is helping your kids understand the bigger picture, understanding that achievement is a slice of a good, successful life.
[01:27:39]  One of the things you touch on is, for lack of a better word, modeling.
[01:27:44]  Like you talk about how overly involved moms and dads are now versus when we were kids.
[01:27:52]  I mean, the numbers were actually really stunning.
[01:27:54]  It was like dads are something like three times more involved than they were a few decades ago.
[01:27:59]  Moms are at least double.
[01:28:01]  And 71% of moms are working now, too.
[01:28:04]  So that's why moms are completely stressed out.
[01:28:06]  Well, that matters.
[01:28:07]  It matters for two reasons at least.
[01:28:09]  It matters for, well, I'll give three.
[01:28:11]  Number one, the health of your marriage, which does matter to your family's happiness and your kids' happiness.
[01:28:16]  Number two, your own well-being.
[01:28:18]  Of course, this is in no particular order.
[01:28:21]  And number three, if your child sees only a stressed out mom or dad with no social connections who makes no time for him or herself, they're learning that.
[01:28:36]  Exactly right.
[01:28:37]  I will tell you the most surprising thing I learned in researching this book, and it stopped me in my tracks and it made me rethink a lot of my life.
[01:28:49]  The most surprising thing I learned was that the number one intervention for any child in distress is to make sure the primary caregivers, those are most often the mother and father, to make sure their well-being, their support system, their relationships are intact because a child's resilience rests on the resilience of the adults in their lives.
[01:29:15]  And adult resilience rests on the depth and support of their relationships.
[01:29:22]  So we are sold a bill of goods by the multi-billion dollar wellness industry that says to us, download this meditation app, you know, buy this bubble bath, buy this candle.
[01:29:34]  Those are all great things for reducing stress.
[01:29:37]  Who doesn't like a nice scented candle?
[01:29:39]  But that's not going to give you the resilience you need to act as the first responder to your kids' struggles.
[01:29:48]  So what does this mean?
[01:29:50]  It means that parents, yes, we are overstretched, but we need to find time in our calendars.
[01:29:57]  Research finds it just requires one hour a week of intentional time to connect with a friend or two outside of our home.
[01:30:07]  Our homes are, you know, our marriages are, according to the data, already overstretched.
[01:30:13]  We are sort of performing as these one-person villages in our home.
[01:30:17]  And so we really need to find one or two people in our life that we can be vulnerable to, that we could. be felt as as valued, that we could be seen unconditionally for who we are at our core, and that we could be that person for someone else.
[01:30:36]  It doesn't take a lot of time, just intentional time.
[01:30:39]  And in the parents that I visited in these competitive communities, it wasn't that they didn't have friends.
[01:30:45]  They had friends.
[01:30:47]  It was that they rarely had time and bandwidth to invest in those friendships so that those friends could be sources of support when that adult needed it.
[01:30:58]  So the biggest takeaway, right, is to, you don't need a lot of friends, just one or two people that you can be vulnerable to.
[01:31:08]  That is what bolsters resilience.
[01:31:12]  In the time we have left, can you tell two stories?
[01:31:15]  The first one is about someone you interviewed and the second one is about you and Caroline, your daughter.
[01:31:20]  But this story in the book was heartbreaking about this woman you sat with who made you the tea, who looked at you mother to mother with a warning about the way she had done it.
[01:31:31]  And you are incorporating this advice into your own parenting.
[01:31:34]  And I loved the story about Caroline when she was worried about the test.
[01:31:37]  So can you, can you talk about that?
[01:31:39]  So this was one of the early mother, my early interviews.
[01:31:43]  And I was sitting with this woman who talked about how when her child was in middle school, up until high school, she thought her role as a mother was to be that warm source of support.
[01:31:52]  She didn't spend so much time worrying about her kid's achievement.
[01:31:55]  Her kid was in the honors track.
[01:31:57]  But then he started hitting high school and the mothers at the school and the fathers were would be asking her and emailing her, what are you doing to enrich your son?
[01:32:06]  How are you, you know, how are the summers being spent?
[01:32:09]  Are you signing up for this academic camp?
[01:32:11]  Are you doing this Russian math on Saturdays?
[01:32:14]  And she said she, she just totally lost the plot in her parenting and she started to get overcome by this social contagion of anxiety.
[01:32:23]  And it really damaged her relationship with her child.
[01:32:26]  Her child at senior year stopped going to school, couldn't get out of bed.
[01:32:30]  With intense therapy and with medication, he was able to graduate.
[01:32:34]  But this anxiety really stayed with him for several years into his 20s.
[01:32:40]  And I said to her, I leaned in to comfort her.
[01:32:44]  I said, I understand.
[01:32:45]  We parents, we feel judged by how we parent if we're not, you know, doing everything we can for our kids.
[01:32:51]  And she warned me, she looked at me and she said, I have so many regrets.
[01:32:57]  And I shuddered because my son was about to enter high school.
[01:33:00]  And I thought, I have so much to learn here.
[01:33:03]  And I'm just so grateful that these parents opened up to me and changed my parenting.
[01:33:08]  And just the stories were extraordinary.
[01:33:11]  But the Caroline story quickly.
[01:33:13]  So she was in eighth grade and her friends were, you know, there was this social contagion in her school over grades and something that she really hadn't been talking about until it started coming up at the lunchroom table.
[01:33:27]  And she came home one night when the grades were about to post and she said, Mom, I'm really scared.
[01:33:31]  And I said, well, what are you scared about?
[01:33:33]  And she said, I'm just afraid I'm not going to get all A's.
[01:33:35]  And I said, honey, your worth does not equal your grades.

=== Worth Does Not Equal Grades (02:42) ===

[01:33:38]  Like, I will love you no matter what.
[01:33:39]  And if this report card doesn't reflect the hard work that I've seen you put in, we'll figure it out together, please.
[01:33:45]  And she just kept going on and on and on.
[01:33:47]  And I spotted this yellow sticker, these like the post-its next to her.
[01:33:51]  And I wrote on it, your worth does not equal your grades.
[01:33:55]  And I handed it to her.
[01:33:56]  And it stays on her laptop.
[01:33:59]  It's now like dog-eared and wrinkled up, but she keeps that sticky as a reminder because we have to constantly remind our kids in the environments we are raising them in that they are enough just as they are.
[01:34:12]  My gosh, it's such a good reminder.
[01:34:15]  I do feel like I'm up against it.
[01:34:17]  I mean, maybe I shouldn't be living in Connecticut.
[01:34:19]  Maybe we shouldn't have been in New York City privates.
[01:34:21]  I think about, I don't like, but I think about sometimes Jon Stewart because he, when he left the Daily Show and he had, you know, gobs of money from doing that show, he moved to upstate, you know, a little bit upstate of New York, New York City, about an hour north on like a goat farm.
[01:34:38]  And they're going to, I think, I read once to like a public school up there where the pressure cooker is probably not as bad as it is where I am or where I know you are.
[01:34:47]  And so I do wonder, do you feel like we can win this battle being in the heart of it, right?
[01:34:54]  Like being right in the belly of the beast where you're surrounded by the most competitive people on earth and the most highly achieving people on earth.
[01:35:03]  And so even if you take your foot off that gas, you know, it's there.
[01:35:08]  Like everyone else is driving the Maseratis at a 200 miles an hour around your kid.
[01:35:14]  So yes, I do believe it because I saw it in action all over the country and I see it in New York City.
[01:35:19]  I see it in Connecticut.
[01:35:21]  What we need to be, the way to do it is to make home a haven from the pressure.
[01:35:27]  Our kids are getting it from every direction.
[01:35:29]  Home needs to be a place for them to recover where their sense of self-worth is never in question.
[01:35:36]  And as parents, we need to buffer against those messages as much as we can.
[01:35:40]  Our kids know we want them to achieve.
[01:35:43]  They need to know more importantly that we love them unconditionally and they need to feel that love as unconditional.
[01:35:50]  And you've also said that like play games with your kids.
[01:35:53]  That checks the box of parental time and playing with your children and let them lose.
[01:35:58]  Yes.
[01:36:00]  Teach them that there's such a thing as healthy competition.
[01:36:03]  That, you know, beating somebody isn't a bad thing.
[01:36:06]  It's not being unkind.
[01:36:07]  It's how we act when we win that is the separator between being a good person and being a bad sport.
[01:36:15]  Jenny, it's so good to see you.
[01:36:17]  Thank you for writing this book and for coming on.

=== Removing Outside Pressures (01:23) ===

[01:36:20]  It's, I'm not surprised at all, like I said, that you wrote it.
[01:36:23]  You've been interested in it a long time and now you're going to help a lot of people, a lot of kids.
[01:36:27]  All the best.
[01:36:28]  Thank you so much, Megan.
[01:36:29]  All right.
[01:36:29]  Don't forget, guys, the name of the book is Never Enough, the aptly named Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It.
[01:36:38]  It's available now.
[01:36:39]  I downloaded the audio books.
[01:36:40]  I love getting my books via audio.
[01:36:42]  Jenny reads it.
[01:36:42]  She does a great job and is a fascinating person.
[01:36:46]  You hopefully you've already learned some of these lessons, but don't work out any of this stuff on your kids and don't let other parents goad you into ruining your own child's childhood, right?
[01:36:59]  Like it's not that hard.
[01:37:01]  It doesn't matter.
[01:37:02]  Honestly, like I look it up all the time.
[01:37:03]  Like I'm not hiring people from Harvard and Yale, these Ivies anymore.
[01:37:06]  I'm only going to hire people from the third-tier schools.
[01:37:08]  Really, you can't work for me unless you went to a third-tier school.
[01:37:11]  That's it.
[01:37:11]  More employers like me need to say that so we can start removing the outside pressures from these kids.
[01:37:16]  I'll give you a great job.
[01:37:17]  I'll pay you well if I think you're going to work hard and you're going to do well.
[01:37:21]  But if you went to Harvard, forget it.
[01:37:23]  You're out.
[01:37:25]  Yeah.
[01:37:26]  Did Lauren go to Harvard?
[01:37:27]  Lauren, you're fired.
[01:37:28]  No, just kidding.
[01:37:30]  Just kidding.
[01:37:31]  Oh, USC.
[01:37:32]  Yeah, she's fine.
[01:37:34]  We'll talk more tomorrow.
[01:37:39]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:37:41]  No BS, no agenda, and no