Nata Schepy

I’d like you to take a moment and imagine you’re four years old.

You’re building a tower, and you’re really proud of it. But then the next minute another child comes running along and kicks over your tower. You are outraged, and you feel all these feelings bubble up inside — hurt, panic, frustration and helplessness. Just then, an adult comes by.

They get close, get down to your level, and ask: “Honey, what happened?”

In their eyes, there’s compassion and you feel that their body is calm and regulated. And then all those feelings come bubbling out of you — frustration, anger, helplessness.

This adult says: “Tell me all about it.” They don’t try and fix it, and they don’t say to you: “Don’t worry, you can build another one.” They just let you feel all that you’re feeling. Then they open their arms and you snuggle, take another deep breath, feel better and go back to building your tower.

If you were lucky, the adults in your life gave you lots of space to express how you feel without trying to fix what was going on.

Now I’d like you to try and remember being four years old and a time when you felt angry or sad or scared or you didn’t understand what was going on.

How did the adults in your life respond to you? If you were lucky, they gave you lots of space to express how you feel and listened to your worries and hurt without trying to fix what was going on.

But many of us probably had the opposite experience. Maybe we were told “Stop being so stupid” or “You don’t need to cry.” You might have been sent to your room or to the corner or even been hit for making a mistake.

We still value IQ far more than we value EQ.

Why am I talking about children and feelings? We’ve seen a steady increase in psychological distress among adults — in Australia and around the world. And I see this increase in distress as being rooted in part in the messages we received as children around how to express feelings and emotions.

Of course, it’s easy to blame our parents for what they did or didn’t do. But the real issue is the lack of emotional literacy in our culture. We don’t teach parents how to respond to children’s feelings and emotions with empathy and compassion. We also don’t teach it in our kindergartens; we don’t teach it in our schools. We still value IQ far more than we value EQ.

My work over the last 16 years with families around attachment, trauma and connection has shown me that there are usually three ways we learn as kids to deal with feelings and emotions.

You might have been labeled as “naughty”, “too much” or “trouble” when all you were doing was responding to your environment.

The first way is repression. Perhaps as a child, you learnt that it wasn’t safe to express your feelings. You might have gotten shut down and told to stop crying. Or you were given a look that made you draw everything inside and push them down deep. The impact of repression on a child is that those feelings stay there.

And then as adults, those feelings can turn up again when life throws us a curveball. Those same feelings come up, but this time, we respond by having another glass of wine or spending hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or making ourselves so busy at work that we don’t have time to feel .

The second way is aggression. As a child if we felt really powerless or scared and we grew up in an authoritarian environment where we didn’t have a voice and couldn’t say how we felt, then those feelings would again bubble up inside us. At the point where they would tip over when we felt most frightened or threatened, then they might come out in the form of aggression, rage, loud words. You might have been labeled as “naughty”, “too much” or “trouble” when all you were doing was responding to your environment.

And then as adults, those tendencies show up in bullying behavior. Or they can turn up in harsh critical thoughts about ourselves and others. Or it can show up as violence.

The third way is expression. If we grew up with an imprint that said “Feelings are welcome. I will accept all of you — the happy bits, the sad bits, the joyous bits, the bits that are angry. I’m not going to try and fix them; I’m just going to hold you,” then as adults when things feel hard, we reach for our journal and write down our thoughts. Or we call a friend and say: “Hey, can you listen to me?” Or we might go for a run, do some yoga, speak to our therapist and find a way to lean into the feelings, we feel them and let them go.

When I was a new parent, my game plan was “I’ll just keep them happy all the time.” But that’s a ridiculous thing to do.

I am a mother to three beautiful teenagers. When I first became a parent, like many of you, I had absolutely no clue about what I was doing. When it came to understanding their feelings and emotions, my game plan was “I’ll just keep them happy all the time.” But, as anyone who has kids realizes, that’s a ridiculous thing to do. It is impossible and incredibly exhausting to try to keep people happy all the time. So I learned that I needed to find a way to help my children thrive emotionally and also create harmony for them in our home.

I’m lucky enough to understand and study trauma, and I began to see that what we need as humans is a safe place to unpack all of who we are. We need boundaries and holding, but we also need empathy and compassion for those big feelings that rise within. Instead of trying to fix their problems and trying to make them happy all the time, I just got down low and said: “Tell me all about it.”

And I just listened. Sometimes there were tears; sometimes, rage or complaining. But every time my only job was to sit there and hold space for them.

What I began to see was emotional intelligence developing in my children.

How do we expect our children to have empathy and compassion for other people if we don’t show them how?

One evening, I realized just how powerful this was. I was making dinner but I also had to go teach a class so I was doing the hustle that most parents do.

I was just about to go out the door when my youngest daughter, who was five at the time, came into the kitchen. She looked unhappy, and I could see that she’s feeling some feelings. I actually turned to her and said: “Honey, do you think you could hold onto your feelings for a few hours?” Of course, she looked at me like, “Are you kidding?”

At that moment my middle daughter, who was then 10, walked into the room. She said, “I’ll listen to your feelings”, and I’m like “OK.” So my 10-year-old took the 5-year-old into the bedroom, and I thought, I’m going to be late for work because I need to see what happens here.

I stood outside their door, and I heard my 10-year-old say: “Tell me all about it.” And the five-year-old started crying and complaining about all the things that had happened at school.

The 10-year-old was going, “Oh that’s hard. What else?” And then there was more complaining and then more tears and giggles and laughter and they came out of the room.

I saw my 10-year-old and said to her, “Honey, how was that for you?” She looked at me and said, “Well, Mama, I just did to her what you do for me.”

At that moment, I realized that children can’t be what they can’t see. How do we expect them to have empathy and compassion for other people if we don’t show them how? How can we expect them to treat others with kindness and respect if they don’t know what that feels like in their own bodies?

I wonder:

— What would it be like if we actually supported parents with the tools and understanding to listen compassionately to their children?

— What would it be like if we actually helped parents unpack their own childhood, so they don’t have to carry that baggage and put it on their children’s shoulders?

— What would it be like if we supported and encouraged boys to cry and be vulnerable and girls to rage and find their voice and speak up for what they need?

— What if instead of harsh disciplines and punishments, we replaced them with compassionate listening and loving limits and boundaries?

— What would it look like if we took all of these ideas and placed them in our education system?

About 18 months ago, a colleague and I created Woodline Primary School. It’s set in the Geelong hinterlands on a beautiful farm with abundant nature. We have horses, chickens and veggie patches, and the philosophy of our school is to foster our students’ emotional well-being in a safe learning environment.

Sir Ken Robinson said the aims of education are to understand the world around us and the world within us. But what if we prioritized the world within?

Research shows that when children feel safe to learn — which means they feel free of judgment and criticism, they’re treated with kindness and respect, they have autonomy over their bodies and their learning, and they are given much love and celebrated for their unique differences — their neurological systems become fully operational and their capacity for growth and learning increases.

Our aim at Woodline is for children to learn about the world and also develop critical life skills such as emotional intelligence, growth mindset, critical thinking and a love of failure. Every time you fail, you realize, “Ah there are so many more options I haven’t yet explored!” More than anything, we want them to learn to be compassionate citizens of the Earth.

The late great Sir Ken Robinson said that the aims of education are to understand the world around us and the world within us. But what if we prioritized the world within? Surely, the world around us would make so much more sense.

Just think: How different could the world be if we placed connection, heart and compassionate listening at the center of every one of our relationships?

This post was adapted from a TEDxDocklands Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lael Stone is an author, speaker, parenting educator and consultant that specializes in helping adults process their childhood trauma. She is the cofounder of Woodline Primary School, cohost of The Aware Parenting Podcast and a mum to 3 grown-up children.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Stocksy

Although race and racism are at the top of Americans’ public discussions, it turns out that most white parents in the US don’t talk about those issues with their kids.

Research on how white parents discuss race with their children is sparse. However, past research has shown that conversations about race, much less racism, are rare, even when these issues are highly visible — for example, during the Ferguson protests in 2014.

One study found that even though 81 percent of white mothers believed it was important to have these discussions, only 62 percent reported actually doing so. Of those who said they did, fewer than one-third of those people could actually recall a specific conversation.

Teaching generations

To examine the issue more deeply, we examined surveys of more than 2,000 adults ages 18 and older, collected from May 21 to June 14, 2020, in four major US cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York City). We wanted to understand how people’s views on race were influenced by their parents.

Our initial findings indicate that among white respondents, 65 percent said their parents had “never” or “rarely” had conversations with them about racism when they were children. In general, we found that younger white people were more likely to have parents who talked with them about about racism compared to those in older generations. Surprisingly, however, those in the youngest age group — 18- to 25-year-olds — were less likely to have parents who talked with them about racism “very often” (only 7 percent), compared to 26- to 40-year-olds (16 percent) and to those 41- to 55-years-old (12 percent).

We found that those whose parents talked with them about racism were themselves more likely to talk with their own children about it. But even during this period of unrest, 27 percent of white parents of children between 6 and 11 years old told us they “never” talked with their kids about the need for racial equality. Another 15 percent said these conversations were “rare,” and 34 percent said they happened “on occasion.”

Missing the point

Research shows that the relatively small number of white parents who do discuss race with their children often use what are called “colorblind” approaches that downplay racism’s significance in American society. These conversations usually involve emphasizing the sameness between all people and minimize or deny the idea of differences between races. Typical themes include “not seeing race” or “treating everyone the same,” which ignore or even reject the existence of white privilege and racism.

These discussions can promote a myth of meritocracy that claims anyone can succeed in the US regardless of their race, a belief shared by 57 percent of the white respondents in our survey. But the problem with this colorblindness is it ignores how racism is embedded in society — for example, in where people live and what kinds of jobs and educational opportunities people have.

Sometimes conversations can also be explicitly or implicitly racist, relying on racial stereotypes premised on the idea of inherent differences between racial groups. Seldom are such discussions anti-racist. An anti-racism conversation with children involves acknowledging racial inequalities and the historical and present-day reasons why they exist. It also includes talking about ways that a child could help actively undo racism and how not to be a bystander when they see it being perpetrated.

Changing perspectives

Our data showed that white people who were taught by their parents about opposing racism and the importance of fighting for racial equality were supportive of doing more to help racial minority groups hit harder by COVID-19. By contrast, people whose parents had never or rarely talked to them about anti-racism were more likely to feel that racial minorities are themselves at fault for their higher death rates from COVID-19.

We also found that parents’ discussions with their kids helped them grow up to have more nuanced views on other aspects of racism in the US. Three-quarters of adults who had, as children, talked with their parents “very often” about racism said that racial minorities do not have the same opportunities as whites. A similar share (69 percent) said race plays a major role in the types of social services that people receive, such as health care or daycare, and 69 percent also agreed that race plays an important role in who gets sent to prison.

Of the adults whose parents “never” or “rarely” talked with them about racism, fewer than half (47 percent) said racial minorities have different opportunities than whites. Similarly, fewer than half of these people felt that race plays a role in the types of social services people receive or in incarceration (49 percent and 48 percent, respectively).

Resisting racism, challenging racist societal structures and advocating for equity have been an uphill battle shouldered predominantly by individuals, families and communities of color. Our research indicates that the more white parents talk with their children about the realities of American racism, the more aware those kids are, as adults, of inequalities in American life.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Watch David Chae’s TEDxGrandRapids talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Chae ScD will be joining the Department of Social, Behavioral, and Population Sciences at Tulane University, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in September 2020, where he will serve as Associate Dean for Research. He is an elected fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the honorary senior scientist society for those whose research is at the interface of behavior and medicine; Associate Editor of the journal Health Education & Behavior; and on the Editorial Board of Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology. His research focuses on the social determinants of health inequities and the psychobiology of racial minority stress.

Leoandra Onnie Rogers PhD is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. Her research curiosities lie at the intersection of psychology, human development and education. She is interested in social and educational inequities and the mechanisms through which macro-level disparities are both perpetuated and disrupted at the micro-level of identities and relationships.

Tiffany Yip PhD is a Professor of Psychology at Fordham University. Her research focuses on ethnic identity, discrimination, and sleep among ethnic/racial minority adolescents and young adults. She is an Associate Editor for Developmental Psychology. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, and her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Alice Mollon

When we come thisclose to triumph, we gain potent energy that we can use to fuel later success, says business school professor Monica Wadhwa.

When we daydream about being at the Olympics or the Academy Awards, we usually picture ourselves as the winners — standing there tearfully while we’re given a gold medal or golden statuette — and not as one of the stoic, stunned also-rans.

But maybe we should imagine ourselves as a runner-up. That’s because, according to Monica Wadhwa, marketing professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia, “not winning is, in fact, more powerful than winning,”

She has spent nearly a decade researching this seemingly paradoxical idea, motivated by her childhood experiences. “When I was growing up in India, there was a time when I was addicted to lotteries,” says Wadhwa. What intrigued her were those moments in which she’d buy a ticket, get five out of six winning numbers, and find herself more fired up than ever to play again. She recalls, “I should have been giving up, but it was just the opposite.”

Well, the lottery-loving girl grew up to be a researcher, who was curious to see if this effect extended to others. Through a series of experiments, she has found that people who came close to winning gained greater motivation to succeed in their next efforts than either the winners or the clear losers.

In one experiment, participants played a cellphone game that had a grid of 16 tiles. Half of them covered diamonds; half, rocks. Clicking on a tile revealed a diamond or rock, and if they got eight diamonds without uncovering a rock, they’d win the game and receive a reward. After they played, participants were given a quick survey to evaluate how engaging the game was. They were told to bring their completed surveys to a booth down the corridor and that they’d get a thank-you gift (a chocolate bar) when they did. The researchers secretly recorded the speed of the subjects as they walked down the corridor to return the survey and receive the chocolate.

The near-winners — the people who got seven diamonds, just short of the needed eight — walked significantly faster than the winners and the clear losers. Wadhwa’s hypothesis for why this happened: “You have these non-winners [playing the game and] inching toward the reward. Their motivation is getting intensified, but then they miss it … So what happens to this motivation? It hooks on, gives you the energy for the next goal that you have.”

What about the winners? Wadhwa says, “The winners inch toward their goal, they achieve it, and their motivation is satisfied.” Which leaves them with no need for them to strive for anything else.

But Wadhwa warns, “You’ve got to use the fire in your belly wisely.” As she puts it, “You could use this motivation energy and apply it to that next big project you’re working on — or you could squander this away on another kind of reward, like a night out at a club.”

The results of another experiment by Wadhwa bear this out. She and researchers stationed themselves at a fashion-accessory store, where they gave shoppers scratch-off lottery tickets. If they scratched off six adjacent 8s, they’d get a $20 gift certificate. They were told to shop after they played; as they exited the store, they’d show their store receipt to the researchers and receive a small gift. The scratch cards were rigged so that participants ended up in one of three groups: losers (who got only three 8s), near-winners (five 8s) and winners (six 8s).

Their findings: The near-winners ended up shopping more — and spending more money — than the winners and losers. Wadhwa says, “Their activated energy moved on and hooked on to the shopping goal.”

So how can we harness this unique energy in our own lives? Wadhwa says, “When you’re setting goals for yourself, set goals that are slightly beyond your reach.”

Wadhwa, who’s worked with companies to employ these insights, urges managers to try this with their employees. Set targets just outside their grasp but “not so hard that they get demoralized and quit.” She cautions, “You need to understand the capacity of your team members” to figure out the appropriate objective.

Wadhwa has another suggestion for managers: Stop focusing so much on star performers. Instead, tap into the “motivational juice” of non-star performers. For example, with a sales team, she says, “Compare the [non-star] salesperson with the next best performer, so they know they were so close to them … This thought can get their motivation flying.”

Parents can even use this with their children, according to Wadhwa. When kids lose — whether in sports or in school — point out to them how close they came to winning.

If we can learn to tap into this energy, we’ll find, as Wadhaw puts it, that “winners really do not take it all.”

Watch her TEDxINSEAD talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniella Balarezo is a Media Fellow at TEDx. She is also a writer and comedian based in NYC.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Thoka Maer

One evening, I called my sons to come to eat — and got no response.

True confession: In anger, I marched into their room and kicked off the power button on their gaming console.

You’d have thought it was the end of the world. The boys were so mad and upset at me as their screen went blank. I brought them down to dinner, and my response to their behavior would typically have been: “You’re wasting away your life on video games.”

But that night, I chose to be curious instead of critical. I asked them: “Why is video gaming so important to you?”

I am so glad I asked. My boys were surprised, responding, “Mom, you really want to know?”

I replied: “Yes!”

They said: “Mom, everybody we know plays video games.”

They weren’t exaggerating. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 2.5 billion people on this planet are gamers. (“Gamer” simply refers to somebody that plays video games.) That’s roughly one-third of humanity.

My boys helped me discover an entire world that I knew nothing about, let alone knew how to parent. Gaming today is a connected, multiplayer, interactive entertainment experience. It’s full of competition, problem solving, puzzles, logic. Good stuff, right? It’s also full of conversations, culture, history, musical scores, art, dialogue, moral choices — stuff you actually want your kids to learn. Plus, gaming has philosophy, strategy, and amazing skill.

Imagine reading a really good book, or watching a great movie or sporting event — but this time you get to manipulate it, compete in it and interact with it. That’s modern video gaming.

The boys continued to teach me more things. For example, they told me that when I shut off the game, they get a suspension, explaining, “Mom, we have a responsibility and you keep asking us to pause the game. You can’t pause an online game. Seriously, Mom, you can’t pause a game.”

Then they said this: “You actually hurt us when you call us ‘loners’ and ‘losers’. We’re live on a headset in a multiplayer game with our friends, and we’re actually meeting new, real friends.”

That was the day I had an earth-shattering epiphany — I’m more alone in the kitchen cooking dinner than my boys are gaming upstairs. So I started embracing my kids as gamers, and this is what I yell out still to this day; “It’s almost time for dinner, where are you at in your game ?” I find out, I make the adjustment, and then we have that peaceful connected family dinner that I wanted in the first place.

One time, my oldest son Connor came to me and said “Mom, seriously, what do I need to do to get you to leave me alone after 3PM today?” I realized I could use his request to my advantage. So I made a list: Get your homework done and engage with Grandma at the table at lunch time (eye contact and all); I even added pulling weeds to the list. He got everything done. He said “Mom, this is so cool. All I really wanted to do this afternoon was rank up.”

In gaming, there are levels and leagues and rewards to be earned, so I figured if it’s important to him, it needed to be important to me too. This is exactly what Dr. Chris Haskell, associate clinical professor and esports head coach from Boise State University, says about his esport scholar-athletes. He is looking for gamers that have goals and are willing to improve in their game. In fact, many colleges now give scholarships for esports, and both the military and other industries now use video-game-type simulations in their jobs.

I started treating gaming like a sport with practices and everything. Would you go to your kid’s soccer practice or their baseball game and start yelling at the coach, “Stop everything, my kid needs to take out the trash now”? Of course not. I chose to let my kids game uninterrupted as long as they first took care of their responsibilities.

Gaming brings the entire world together with its common language and its team dynamics. Young people are watching others play video games. I used to criticize them for doing this. Well, my husband also watches other people play games — he’s a huge San Francisco 49ers fan. This past season, a game went into overtime and ended up lasting for four-and-a-half hours. Did I go lecture my husband and say, “You’re rotting your brain away and you’re wasting your life”? I chose to let him enjoy watching pro sports. When a gamer is watching another person play video games, they’re usually watching the pros and they’re trying to get tips and tricks for the games that they play.

Since I began talking to my sons about gaming, I’ve had a chance to interview some professional gamers. One of them remembered a time when he was with his extended family, and they were all going around sharing about their lives and trying to catch up with one another. When it was his turn, he started talking about video games and his love of playing. One of his aunts rudely announced to everyone: “Why don’t you tell us something that people are actually interested in?”

Everybody had a good laugh at his expense, and he’s hardly talked to his extended family since then — and that was over a decade ago. I wonder what would have happened if that aunt had chosen to be curious instead of critical?

By now you may be thinking, “Well, she didn’t bring up about any of the bad stuff about video games.” You’re right.

It’s true — there are concerns with online communication and other issues, but that’s why it’s even more important to be involved in a gamer kid’s life. In my own home, my sons and I have maintained an open dialogue about online behavior and balance. Now, years later, I know my younger son still games with his older brother, even though they’re over 300 miles apart. This melts my heart. Gaming has kept their connection close.

My advice isn’t just for parents. It’s also for grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, godparents, good friends, school administrators and other relatives: Be curious.

Here’s a simple solution. Start a conversation with your gamer kid by asking them these three questions:

What games do you play?
Why do you enjoy playing those particular games?
Can I watch you game sometime?

If we don’t embrace gaming, we might lose connection with the people that we love the most.

This piece was adapted from a TEDxIdahoFalls Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cara Lane is a trainer, a motivational speaker, communication coach and author.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Shutterstock

These days, the school bell isn’t ringing for most of our kids, and it’s up to parents to ensure that children and teens get the sleep that they need during these stressful and uncertain times.

In the time before the coronavirus pandemic, I gave a TEDx Talk, spoke around the country, and wrote about the importance of good parenting and good policies— specifically, healthy school start times— to make sure adolescents got enough sleep.

As parents, it’s important to recognize the specific sleep needs of your child based on their stage of development. According to scientific consensus, toddlers need about 11 to 14 hours of sleep, preschoolers, about 10 to 13 hours, school-aged children (ages 6-12), about 9 to 12 hours, and teenagers, 8 to 10 hours. Adults need around 7-9 hours.

But it’s not just about the amount of sleep. The timing of their sleep also changes as they grow. For example, the total recommended sleep durations for infants and toddlers includes daytime napping, which is expected during those developmental periods. Teenagers also experience a developmentally-specific change in the timing of their sleep, known as a phase delay. In short, teenagers are natural night owls, going to sleep later than 6-to-12-year-olds. Although school start times before 8:30AM are a known contributor to adolescent sleep deprivation, parents play a much bigger role when school’s out in making sure that teens’ biological clocks don’t continue to drift later and later.

People of all ages sleep better when they follow consistent daily and nightly routines. This is particularly important during stressful times when many of us no longer have the usual scheduling constraints of going to school or to work. Predictable routines send a message to people’s brains that the world is safe and secure— a critical step to reduce anxiety, which can keep children up at night.

Now’s also a good time to set limits on technology use, particularly at bedtime. With our children home throughout the day and with many of us trying to work from home as well, many parents may be loosening up the usual rules on technology throughout the day. That’s understandable. However, both the stimulating content and light exposure from using devices at night can disrupt children’s and teens’ sleep-wake schedules. Make it a family habit to collectively put your phones and devices to bed at least one hour before bedtime in some neutral place— that is, not a bedroom— such as the kitchen. Recharge your phones while your family is recharging itself with healthy sleep.

It’s important to look for the silver lining during challenging times such as these, and one such benefit may be that we have an opportunity to connect with our families in a way that we normally don’t have the space or time for. Feeling socially connected is absolutely critical for healthy sleep, no matter your age. There may be times when it feels like too much family time when you’re all cooped up inside.

In the evenings, try to reserve time to share a meal together and bond in a meaningful way without technology. Play a board game, do a puzzle, go for a walk, or watch a movie together. As the parent of a high school senior, I know these moments are fleeting. Being present in the moment and being grateful for the time you’re able to spend together is a great strategy to support healthy sleep and the well-being of the entire family.

Watch her TEDx Talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Troxel is a senior behavioral and social scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist, as well as an adjunct faculty member in psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

iStock

If kids don’t feel trusted — or if there isn’t anyone close to them whom they can rely on — they can really suffer. Esther Wojcicki, an educator and mother of three superstar daughters, explains why trust is essential and how to build it in the young people in our lives.

Esther Wojcicki has inspired thousands of kids through her 35-year-and-counting career as a journalism and English teacher at Palo Alto High School in California. She and her husband, Stanley, have also raised three exceptionally accomplished daughters: Susan (YouTube CEO), Janet, a Fulbright-winning anthropologist, pediatrics professor and researcher), and Anne (cofounder and CEO of 23andMe). So she knows quite a bit about helping young people grow into great grown-ups. Here, she writes about the critical importance of trust and how to cultivate it in children, starting at a very early age.

All you need is one person, just one person who trusts and believes in you, and then you feel you can do anything. Unfortunately, a lot of children — like Michael, a former student of mine — don’t have even one person. Michael was an editor-in-chief of the Campanile, Palo Alto High School’s newspaper, in 2013, and his struggles represent those of many other young people.

For Michael, the pressures started early. “I had very strict parents,” he says. “They would tell me if I didn’t do well in school, I’d be homeless.” His early teachers weren’t very supportive either, and people misinterpreting his behavior and motivations became a common theme in his life. “I would get admonished,” he says, “by peers and educators telling me if I followed the rules and paid attention, of course I’d do better. It was almost part of my core being, to be this thing that was trodden on; everything I did turned into some kind of moral shortcoming.”

By the time he made it to my class, Michael described himself as “completely burned out like a pile of ash.” The school newspaper was the only thing he derived any meaning from, and still he could barely muster the will to show up. But he did. I got to know him as a bright but disconnected kid. He’d come into class and have no idea what he wanted to do or write about.

“To hear outside confirmation that someone believed in me… helped me not to crumble.”

I’ve seen so many students like this — they’re afraid but they’re also rebellious. They’re not cooperative. They’re difficult, even aggressive, and it’s because every single one of them feels bad about themselves. They’re constantly trying to prove to themselves — and to others — that they’re better than everyone thinks, but they’re constantly scared they’ll fall short.

During one of our production nights, Michael was struggling with music theory homework. “I was exhausted, trying to figure out this assignment,” he says, “and I was half-assing it.” Other students teased him for struggling, and he thought to himself, as he often did, “That’s right, I can’t do it.” I saw what was happening, walked up to the kids, and said, “He’s taking longer because he’s smart.” I knew deep down that Michael wanted to get it right, not just rush through it.

This was the first time that Michael had heard an adult say his abilities and intelligence were seen and respected. “To hear outside confirmation that someone believed in me,” he says, “even in the presence of other students who didn’t — it was awesome. It helped me not to crumble.”

That day was a turning point for him. He started to trust himself and called on this newfound confidence during his undergraduate years whenever he encountered obstacles or someone told him he’d never make it. He went on to earn a degree in neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, where he’s now a neuropsychiatric researcher. He’d found his one person to believe in him by accident, and it made all the difference.

Parents and teachers can sometimes forget how important we are in the lives of our children. We have so much control we have in shaping their confidence and self-image. And it all starts with trust, with believing a child is capable, even through setbacks, surprises and all the complications that come with growing up.

Trust empowers kids, whether it’s in the classroom or in the world at large, and the process of developing trust starts earlier than you think. Infants who are securely attached to their parents — who feel they can trust and depend on them — avoid many behavioral, social, and psychological problems that can arise later. A child’s fundamental sense of security in the world is based on their caregiver being someone they can rely upon.

Remember, trust is mutual. The degree to which your children can trust you will become reflected in their own ability to trust. Studies show that children rated as less trustworthy by their teachers exhibit higher levels of aggression and lower levels of “prosocial behavior” such as collaborating and sharing. Distrust in children has also been associated with their social withdrawal and loneliness.

“Many parents are operating from their own insecurities or doubts: Doesn’t their child need them?”

If we don’t feel trusted when we’re kids — or if there isn’t anyone close to us we can trust — we have difficulty getting over it. We grow up thinking we’re not trustworthy, and we accept it as a character trait. Like Michael, we become what we think we are, and we can suffer for it.

So how do we go about building trust in our children? We typically think of trust as handing our teenager the car keys and permitting them to drive on their own, or letting our 12-year-old stay home alone for the first time. But trust needs to start soon after kids are born.

Babies observe our every move as they learn how to get what they need from us. They know how to make us smile. They know how to make us cry. They may be dependent on us for everything, but they’re a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. You need to respond to their needs, especially early on so they can feel you and their environment are trustworthy, but it’s also a fantastic time to start teaching your child some important lessons.

Many parents are operating from their own insecurities or doubts: Doesn’t their child need them? And if they don’t, what kind of parents are they? I firmly believe that you want your child to want to be with you, not to need to be with you.

This tension first arises with sleep. Your children can and will sleep on their own if you believe they can do it and if you teach them how. Kids learn to self-soothe, when given the opportunity, by sucking their thumbs, using pacifiers, or playing with toys. My daughters always had stuffed animals, and sometimes I’d wake up and find Susan talking to her teddy bear. Janet used to sing in bed. Because we’d built a relationship of trust, they learned they could entertain themselves and meet a lot of their own needs which meant that my husband and I got to sleep. A win-win.

As kids grow, they can be given more and more opportunities to build their own trustworthiness. The choices you make with your child will dictate the culture of your family. You always want to ask yourself whether you’re actively building trust in them or whether you’re shutting your child down. For young children, little achievements can build their trust and belief in themselves. They tie their own shoes, and it works! They put on their own clothes, and it works! They walk to school, and that works too! Through these small victories, they can see the tangible results of their efforts.

While you can’t always trust a small child to make intelligent choices, you can guide them in considering options and picking the best one. If I gave my nine-year-old grandson a lollipop and told him not to eat it, I know he still would. But if I explained why he shouldn’t eat it, that sugar isn’t healthy and might even give him cavities and that eating it before dinner will spoil his appetite, he could start to learn how to make better choices. OK, he might go ahead and eat the lollipop anyway, but as we work on these kinds of decisions over time, he would build the skills for living a healthy life and take care of himself.

“When we are fearful and hover over our children, they become afraid.”

Each age brings its own instances of trust. When my daughters were around 5, I’d ask them whether they were hungry and then I’d believe their answer. I did bring snacks with me in case they misjudged their hunger. If we were on a long car ride and they didn’t want to eat when we stopped for a meal, I’d explain we wouldn’t stop at another restaurant for several hours and I’d let them determine what to do. I trusted them with their eating decisions.

With teenagers, parents can cultivate trust in a series of steps. For instance, here is how I’d build trust with shopping, one of my favorite educational activities:

Step 1: The parent does everything, selecting and buying all items needed by a child.
Step 2: You trust your child to go with you to the store, and you allow them to make most of the purchasing decisions (giving kids a specific budget is a wonderful way to teach financial responsibility).
Step 3: You let your child gather the needed items on their own; the two of you meet at the registers at a set time and make the final purchases together.
Step 4: Once you’ve built a foundation of trust and taught your child how to be responsible with money, you can give them your credit card and let them shop on their own (many major credit cards allow you to add a minor as an authorized user). Of course, you’ll check the charges and teach them to verify the credit card statement with you at the end of the month.

Another way to gauge your teenager’s trustworthiness is by testing whether they make good on their word. They said they’d be home by 8 PM — were they? If they were late, did they call or text to tell you in advance? After they prove themselves trustworthy, increase their freedoms and responsibilities.

And if they still need to learn to come home on time, have a conversation about what went wrong and troubleshoot together for the next time. Some kids just have a hard time being on time, but don’t give up — give them more opportunities to learn. After all, time management is a skill that many adults lack, too.

If children aren’t empowered with trust and if they don’t feel trustworthy, they’ll have a very difficult time becoming independent. They won’t learn to trust and respect themselves. When we are fearful and hover over our children, they become afraid.

Excerpted from the new book How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results by Esther Wojcicki. Copyright © 2019 Esther Wojcicki. Used with permission from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Watch her TEDxBerkeley talk now: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Esther Wojcicki is an educator, journalist and mother of Anne (cofounder and CEO of 23andme), Susan (YouTube CEO), and Janet (Fulbright-winning anthropologist, pediatrics professor and researcher). A leader in blended learning and the integration of technology into education, she is the founder of the Media Arts programs at Palo Alto High School. Wojcicki serves as vice chair of Creative Commons and was instrumental in the launch of the Google Teachers Academy. She blogs regularly for Huffington Post and is coauthor of the book Moonshots in Education.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Justin Tran

You don’t need to go to a national park to help your kids fall in love with nature; a walk around the block can be enough.

Technology also doesn’t have to be the enemy. Instead, use it as a tool to enhance their awe, says science communicator Scott Sampson. Growing up, Sampson— paleontologist and CEO of Science World in Vancouver, Canada— went on annual camping trips to the Rocky Mountains with his family.

However, “this was not where I fell in love with nature,” he recalls in a TEDxLangleyED talk. “That happened close to home — looking for rocks in the backyard, playing kick-the-can in the neighborhood, bushwhacking in the local forest. I still remember my mother kicking me outside on a Saturday and telling me to come back in when the street lights came on. I’m pretty sure I remember hearing the door lock behind me as I walked away.”

Even though he knows it’s not possible for today’s children to have that freedom, he encourages parents to help kids fall in love with nature just like he did: through direct experience. He recommends three steps that we — along with the children in our lives — can take to connect with nature.

Step #1: Notice

We don’t need to invest in outdoor equipment or an expensive vacation to get started, says Sampson, author of How to Raise A Wild Child. We just need to notice what’s around us, even if we live in a city. “Too often these days, we walk right past amazing natural events,” he says. “It could be a butterfly on a branch, a hawk hunting silently overhead, it could be a beautiful evening sky. Whatever the clouds are doing at any given moment, you can rest assured that they will never be exactly the same ever again. It turns out just taking a kid for a walk around the block… can be a powerful experience.”

E.O. Wilson first stumbled upon the complex society of ants as a child when he saw them emerging near a sidewalk in Pensacola, Florida, and he went on to become the world’s foremost expert in that insect and an eminent Harvard University biologist. When Sampson himself was a kid, his mother brought him to a nearby pond because she’d heard it had tadpoles. When they got there, he saw nothing. Then, he says, “I stepped into the water and I could see these little things move away, and I realized there was thousands of tadpoles in the water.” His mother urged him to stand in the pond up to his chest.

“Kids value what we value. And if you don’t value the natural world, it’s highly unlikely the kids will.”

Sampson says, “Now I promise you this is not something that most mothers would condone today. But it was a life-changing experience for me. In that pond surrounded by thousands of tadpoles, I had this experience of oneness with the pond, like there was no difference between the pond and me, and that experience has stuck with me my whole life.”

We can start by developing our own simple habit — and one that could open up our perspectives. Sampson suggests, “When you step outside the door in the morning, pause for 10 seconds.” Ask yourself questions like, “What does the air feel like? How many different kinds of birds can I hear? What are the clouds doing?” Most important, he says, “Do these with kids, because here’s the deal: Kids value what we value. And if you don’t value the natural world and show that you care about it, it’s highly unlikely the kids will.”

Step #2: Engage

We need to allow kids to interact with the natural world so they can learn from it. For little kids, a stick and a puddle — or their feet and a puddle — are enough. As they get older, “it’s great to find activities that allow them to demonstrate increasing competence — things like fishing or skiing or hiking,” Sampson says. “Too often these days, when it comes to engaging in nature, we hear the word ‘no’ from parents. ‘No, don’t throw that rock,’ ‘No, put down that stick,’ ‘No, get out of that tree.’ By preventing them from engaging in risky play, we are preventing them from learning how to navigate risk, a skill they will desperately need as teenagers and the rest of their lives. The bigger risk is not letting them engage in this kind of play.”

So rather than being a helicopter parent, “think about being a hummingbird parent,” suggests Sampson. “Sit on the periphery. Zoom in only when necessary, which isn’t very often, and zoom back out again. And as kids get older, increase the distance between you and them to give them greater independence.”

Another way to stoke kids’ interest in the outdoors: tell them about your own encounters — the time you saw an eclipse, went apple-picking, clamming or crabbing, collected daddy long-legs spiders, or grew an avocado tree after making guacamole. Then, provide them with opportunities to start collecting their own stories. Sampson says, “Parents are often nervous about taking kids in nature because they know that those kids are going to ask questions and they’re afraid they’re not gonna know the answers. But here’s the secret: you do not need to know any answers. Questions are far more powerful.”

“If people don’t spend any time outside, why are they going to care about these places let alone live sustainably?”

For example, Sampson and his daughter Jade, then 7, went on a hike one day. (He cautions: “Never go on a ‘hike’ with kids; it doesn’t end well.” Instead, he advises, call it an “adventure”.) He recalls, “We were a few minutes in, and we saw one of my favorite birds, a great blue heron. Jade saw it, turned to me and said, “Daddy, what’s that bird?” And it took every ounce of my biologist training not to give her not only the common name of the bird but the scientific name, its diet, and the habitat that it lives in. But on this particular day … I said, ‘I don’t know. What do you think it is?’ And she said, ‘I think it’s a heron.’ And I said, ‘Well, what do you think it’s doing?’ She said, ‘I think it’s hunting.’ I said, ‘What do you think it’s hunting for?’ She looks up at me and said ‘Rodents.’”

Sampson told Jade they should wait and see what happened. He says, “It was almost as if it was on cue. Within two minutes, this amazing, large bird did that slow-motion, Zen-like bow until it got close to the ground” — and it emerged with a mole in its beak. After they got home, Jade looked in a nature guide and found out the bird’s exact name. Sampson says, “She still remembers it to this day, and she’s 16 years old. Let’s rewind the tape. What if when she had said, ‘Daddy, what’s that bird?’, I said, ‘Hey, that’s a great blue heron,’ and we kept right on walking? [It would have been a] missed opportunity.”

But no uncommon or photogenic animals are necessary to launch an exploration. You can do the same with the pigeons, starlings or squirrels you see on the sidewalk; the flies, bees and mosquitoes that infiltrate your home; or the crickets, cicadas and fireflies that you hear chirping, buzzing and blinking. Ask kids: What do they eat? Where do they sleep? What are their most important abilities? Which animals are their enemies?

Step #3: Wonder

When it comes to the natural world, love and wonder should go hand in hand — if we want our children to connect with it, they need to have the chance to be captivated by it. He says, “You can give them amazing experiences like harvesting and eating plants that they themselves planted and nurtured.” Growing plants that are native to your area can insects and birds to your yard, windowsill or balcony, giving children a lesson in some of the different creatures that make up an ecosystem.

And, adds Sampson, “I am not arguing that we have a back-to-nature movement where we abandon technology. I am not saying we need to take our smartphones and toss them off the nearest bridge, although I admit I am tempted to do that on a weekly basis.”

“Get outside, take your kids there, and let them connect deeply.”

Instead, you can use technology — in the form of science apps and nature apps and science websites and nature websites — as a tool to inform children’s awe. The iNaturalist app allows you to, he says, “take a picture of any plant or any animal, upload it, get some suggestions as to what it might be, and get experts to help you identify it. That data is then used by scientists to monitor changing environmental conditions, so a screen can literally turn a child into a scientist.” There are also a huge amount of cams set up in the world’s wild places that can give kids a real-time look at a variety of habitats and the creatures that live in them.

What’s more, cultivating a relationship with the natural world goes beyond enhancing your child’s immediate wellbeing. It’s crucial for their future — and our planet’s. As Sampson points out: “If people don’t spend any time outside, why are they going to care about these places let alone live sustainably and take care of them?” He says, “Get outside, take your kids there, and let them connect deeply. It is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give them, and I promise you will have a lot of fun along the way.”

Watch his TEDxLangleyED talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daryl Chen is the Ideas Editor at TED.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Justin Tran

We call young people who step outside gender lines “brave.” But if adults truly want to support them, we need to be willing to show some courage and embrace some discomfort, say Michele Yulo and Audrey Mason-Hyde.

“When we find out that someone is having a baby, what is the very first question we ask? ‘Boy or girl?’” says Michele Yulo in a talk given at TEDxUtica. Beginning with the blue or pink wallpaper and continuing to trucks or dolls, this distinction sets children on separate gender paths that can shape much of their lives.

But does it need to? Or, are there ways in which we can offer kids more freedom to discover who they are? Yulo and teenager Audrey Mason-Hyde offer their suggestions.

When Michele Yulo’s daughter Gabby first learned to walk and talk, she didn’t show any interest in so-called “girly” things. “In fact,” says Yulo, the Atlanta-based founder of kids’ clothing brand Princess Free Zone, “she didn’t want to be anything like me; she wanted to be more like my husband.”

Yulo made a conscious decision to support Gabby’s preferences, and, when possible, not restrict her from doing and wearing what she wanted. For Yulo, a turning point came when Gabby was seven.

“She already had short hair. One day she said to me, ‘Mom, if boys can have a buzz cut, why can’t girls?’” recalls Yulo. “And there was nothing I could say to that. She was absolutely right; it was her hair, it was her choice. I did say to her, ‘Gabby, if you buzz your hair, I just want you to know people might look at you funny.’” But Gabby told her mother she was fine with that, so they went out to get her a buzz cut.

The result was worth it, says Yulo. “Gabby could not have been happier, and I knew right at that moment that allowing her to walk out into the world how she wanted to walk out into the world was what mattered.”

“These stereotypes set in and attach themselves like a second skin that will follow a child all the way through adulthood.”

How can we translate this to the kids in our own lives? Adults need to learn to embrace them and their choices, according to Yulo. “Sometimes, kids who step outside gender lines are viewed as courageous, but I don’t believe that kids should have to be brave to be who they are. As parents, we have to be.”

This means standing up for them in public when they go against the stereotypes. For example, when Yulo and her family went to Disney World, a hotel employee asked Yulo: Was Gabby her little prince?

Yulo’s response: “No, and she’s not a princess either.’”

However, this doesn’t mean that children can’t enjoy the things they’re naturally drawn to. But we should think about when, where and how we may be directing them to fit the norms. Yulo recalls feeling her heart sink on seeing parents shoo their girls away from the boys’ clothing aisles where she and Gabby were browsing.

It’s easy to think, “What’s the big deal? Our kids have plenty of time to make their own choices when they’re grownups.” But childhood is when so many of our beliefs and self-conceptions are formed, work that it’s much harder to undo later. As Yulo says, “The reality is that these stereotypes set in and attach themselves like a second skin that will follow a child all the way through adulthood.”

Ultimately, this comes down to the aspirations that we hold for our children. Yulo asks, “We have the capability as parents to open up their worlds so that they truly have endless opportunities from which to choose. Isn’t that what we all want for our kids?”

And if we’re truly interested in expanding the possibilities for all children — not just the ones we know well — we need to look at how we handle our casual interactions. In a 2017 TEDxAdelaide talk, Audrey Mason-Hyde, then 12 years old, speaks openly about how strangers can unwittingly impose on one’s personal freedom. “In my experience, one of the first things people do is assume I’m a boy, or aren’t sure whether I’m a girl or a boy.”

Audrey’s distinctive style includes suits, bow ties, and flamingo socks. Exploring the world through fashion and clothing has been key to Audrey’s relationship with gender. “Until about the age of nine, when someone mistook me for a boy, I would reply comfortably that I’m a girl,” says Audrey. “But eventually, it stopped feeling right; instead of gaining confidence the more it happened, I lost it. ‘Girl’ didn’t feel right, but ‘boy’ didn’t feel correct either.”

“What my gender expression and identity is, is entirely about me and not about how other people perceive me.”

Now 14, Audrey identifies as non-binary, or just simply Audrey (and uses the pronouns they/their/them). But this comes with some unexpected complications in public spaces. “I remember one of my first days at school, and I was in the girls’ toilet when two girls I knew came near me and said, ‘Look, there’s a boy in here,’” Audrey recalls. “I looked over my shoulder, but there was no one there. So I asked them, ‘Where?’ I realized they meant me. I was really shocked, as I’d only been around people who knew and understood me. I felt upset and alienated.”

Similar incidents happened in restrooms outside school. Audrey says, “Often, I would get things like ‘Why are you in here?’ or ‘Wrong bathroom.’ This eventually led to me being hesitant and tentative about even going to the bathroom in public.”

These experiences made Audrey only more determined to be themselves. Audrey says, “I’ve realized that, for me, gender is a spectrum. What my gender expression and identity is, is entirely about me and not about how other people perceive me.”

For Audrey, having to think hard about which toilets to use and how people may respond is stressful and a bit dehumanizing. Audrey says, “Using the girls’ toilets, I never feel good, and I still have a tendency to go with someone else. Though I’m not labeled as a particular gender when I go to the disabled toilets, I don’t feel great still, because it just reminds me that there are mostly no toilets for people like me, who don’t identify within the gender binary, and that toilets are just another way we categorize people.”

So, what should we do when find ourselves in a bathroom with someone who has a gender identity that we can’t quite place? Audrey’s advice: Accept not knowing.

Audrey says, “Would it hurt you not to know someone’s gender? Despite how uncomfortable it might make you feel, you assuming my gender makes me feel uncomfortable every day. All I’m asking is for you to just sit with that little bit of uncomfortable to make someone else feel better.”

Watch Michele Yulo’s TEDxUtica talk:

Watch Audrey Mason-Hyde’s TEDxAdelaide talk:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Rose Wong

Today, it’s not enough to have one birds-and-the-bees talk; it needs to be an open, ongoing conversation. Author and activist Christa Desir explains why and how.

The first few times I talked to high school students about sexual assault, when we got to the Q & A section, I was inundated with what I call the “Does that count?” question.

“What if we’re both drinking, does that count?”

“What if she said yes but then in the middle she changes her mind, does that count?”

“What if neither of us remember the next day?”

This happened with different high school groups, and eventually, I realized that something was wrong with my presentation. I said, “You know what? Let’s reframe this. Let’s put the legality of this aside, and let’s look at this from the perspective of our own values. Do you want to have sex with someone who doesn’t remember it the next day? Do you want to not remember it the next day? Do you want to be someone’s regret? Or, would you rather be someone’s enthusiastic ‘yes’?”

With these questions, the conversation changed. It got much more open, honest, authentic and vulnerable. It turned out their questions weren’t what was wrong; I was. I was too busy pointing out all the scary and dangerous places where sex can go that I forgot to talk about the wonderful, amazing, awkward and beautiful places. And I’m not the only one.

By only talking to our kids about the dangers of sexual violence, we’re leaving girls feeling afraid and boys feeling indicted. We need to give them the chance to explore their sexual curiosity, and we need to guide them through this very complicated, modern sexual world with transparency, honesty, non-judgment and vulnerability.

Unfortunately, we put sex in the same category of risky behaviors as vaping, texting while driving, and sniffing glue, instead of as something that many of us will do throughout the course of our lifespan. Furthermore, we’re failing to give our young people a language around consent. We are not helping them develop a voice to unapologetically own their “No”s and enthusiastically declare their “Yes”s.

How do we do this? Here’s a 4-step guide to help start these important conversations:

Step 1: Teach consent

Create an understanding in children around consent. This understanding needs to start young. They should learn about good touch and bad touch and the difference between them, that their bodies are their own to make decisions about, and that we are listening to them.

This might mean when you bring your child to a big family party, you don’t insist they hug and kiss every single person in the room. In schools, if it’s not a safety issue, perhaps we don’t require that they hold hands with the person next to them in a circle. What kind of message are we sending kids if we tell them, “Your bodies are your own to make decisions about, but you have to hold the next person’s hand because that’s the nice thing to do”? This is a mixed message, and it’s not good for kids. We also need to give kids the opportunity to say “Yes.” In my house, that means I’ll say to my son, “Hey, buddy, you look kind of sad. Could you use a hug?” and he’ll tell me if he does.

Step 2: Advocate for sex education in schools

We adults need to be advocates for comprehensive sexual education in our local schools. That includes positive representations of LGBTQI youth, information about birth control, instructions on how to use birth control, and information about STI’s. If you can’t make sex ed part of the school curriculum, then make sure it’s taught elsewhere in your communities or in your places of worship. And, of course, we must always keep having these conversations in our own homes.

Step 3: Make it an ongoing conversation

We need to accept that there is not just one sex talk we have with our kids. This should be an ongoing conversation, and you should continue it every opportunity that you have. So if you’re driving to school, listening to the radio, and your 11-year-old hears the morning DJ bring up porn — as morning DJs are wont to do — and your kid asks, “Hey mom, what’s porn?”, you might turn off the radio and then distract him by finding out what he wants for dessert. Or, you could answer the question. You don’t have to give him a full treatise on sex workers’ rights, but you could answer this one question and allow him to ask another one. That’s honesty.

The nice thing about sex being an ongoing conversation is if you muddle it the first time, you’ll always get the chance to do it again. In these discussions, we just need to be as open and non-judgmental as possible and admit that we’re not the captains of the ship who know everything. In fact, we are learning as much as our kids are.

Doing this makes you a person who is safe to talk to, and that’s who you want to be with your children. If they tell you, “Oh, hey, mom, I have this crush,” you could say, “Oh really. What are they like? What do you like about them?” instead of assuming that the person is a he or she.  Similarly, if they tell you that their best friend is a “non-binary aro/ace,” you could say, “Oh really! What’s that?” If you know what that is, you could say “What do you think that means? What does that mean to you?” That’s how you open the conversation and how it keeps going.

Step 4: Embrace the discomfort

Acknowledge that it can be uncomfortable at times to talk about sex. A few months ago, I had my 14-year-old son in the car with me. It was just the two of us, and this never happens. So I thought I would take opportunity to talk, and I turned to him. I said, “Hey, buddy, I just want you to know that if you have a wet dream, it’s totally normal. It’s very common. This happens to adolescent boys all the time. Just let me know because I can make sure we get the laundry done right away so it’s not a big sticky mess for two weeks.” He said, “Yeah, Mom, I know how to do my own laundry, but can you just pull over here on the side of the road? I’ll walk the rest of the way to school.”

As you can see, sometimes it goes wrong, but that’s all right as long as we keep showing up. With these conversations, we’re building the scaffolding — however rickety it might be — beneath our children so they can lead healthy sexual lives that are rooted in open communication and enthusiasm.

This piece was adapted from Christa Desir’s TEDxOakParkWomen talk. Watch it now:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christa Desir writes contemporary fiction for young adults. She has volunteered as a rape victim activist for more than 10 years, including providing direct service as an advocate in hospital ERs. She is a founding member of the Voices and Faces Project, a nonprofit organization for rape survivors that conducts an international survivor-based writing workshop.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Rose Wong

Children could definitely give the adults in their lives some lessons in parenting. Here are a few, from writer Swati Lodha.

In 2016, author and coach Swati Lodha was on tour in her native India to promote a parenting book she’d written. At one event, an audience member asked a question — but it was for Lodha’s then-16-year-old daughter, Swaraa, who had accompanied her.

His question was perhaps every parent’s nightmare: “Do you think your mother is perfect?”

“Nobody is,” replied Swaraa.

He persisted: “Can you tell me one thing that is wrong with her?”

Her answer: “I could write a book about it.”

Ouch.

So Swati decided to collaborate with Swaraa on a book, as she recalls in her TEDxNNIMSBangalore talk. They interviewed around 200 children — aged 8 to 18 — to find out what the kids really thought about their parents, and what they wished they’d do differently.

You may wonder, “Why should we ask kids for their input?” But after all, we want — and expect — user feedback in most aspects of our lives. As one 14-year-old told them, “When a consumer product is designed, the consumers are asked: ‘What kind of aesthetic features do you want in this product? What kind of functional features would do good?’”

As Swati puts it: Asking for advice is about checking in with kids — but not putting them in charge.

Here are 4 key things that children would like to share with their mothers and fathers, according to the Lodhas’ research:

1. Disagreement is not the same thing as disrespect.

Many of the kids interviewed say that their parents usually see any deviation from their rules or even preferences as disrespectful. Swati Lodha shares a story from her own family. Her daughter, Sharaa, loves to travel with her camera and laptop, which she brings in her carry-on when the family goes on plane trips. On one trip, Sharaa’s dad noticed how long it took the family to get through airport security, so he asked his daughter if she could check her gear instead. Sharaa said no; she prefers to keep her gear with her, worried that the delicate, valuable equipment will be harmed in checked baggage.

But her dad dug in, and the disagreement has become a sore point whenever they travel together. Sharaa thinks her dad has cast her decision as an act of rebellion and willfulness. The last time it happened, her dad said, “You respect these things more than people,” recalls Swati. “My daughter was downcast; she told us, ‘You guys love obedience; you guys dislike defiance.’” Sharaa wishes that her father would respect what she sees as her informed choice to do is best.

As Swati concludes, “What children want from us is that we should recalibrate our relationship with obedience” and respect the reasons behind their behaviors and decisions.

2. Kids don’t need to be told they’re the best.

“Parents … have an emotional investment in their children, so whatever they do becomes the best, and the children also start overestimating themselves in the same way,” says Swati. But the kids she interviewed said they actually didn’t enjoy this inflated perspective. They want to be viewed more realistically and have their parents see them as who they really are — not as who they wish they were. “We should be able to face our fears and our fantasies with equal balance,” explains Swati.

3. Kids get feedback all the time; parents should get some, too.

Growing up is a period of constant assessment when everyone older than a child — parents, siblings, teachers and authority figures — freely volunteers their opinions about how that young person is doing. As one of Swati’s subjects told her, “I am labeled all the time. I am labeled by my teacher as bad at English; I am labeled by my mother as a naughty child; and I am labeled by my sister as being self-centered.” The kids surveyed for the Lodhas’ book pointed out that parents don’t receive all this feedback, and they’d like to be asked for some.

4. Mothers and fathers shouldn’t get so fixated on results.

“Parents love outcomes,” Swati says. “Not only outcomes; they love all the measurable outcomes.” The children they spoke to said they felt pressured by their parents’ emphasis on grades, prizes, medals, game scores and school admittances — especially when it’s in a sport, subject or interest the kids pursued at the parents’ request, not because of their own interest. According to Swati, kids would like their intentions and efforts to be noticed and valued, even when the outcomes aren’t noteworthy.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.