How to Help Kids Learn Resilience Without Anxiety | Dr. Becky Kennedy & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I believe, I just have a central belief, that we all do have some unique gifts that we're

00:00:06.860 | meant to bring to our life and to the world, and it shows up in different forms, and one

00:00:11.420 | of the worst things we can do in trying to find that and express it is trying to be really

00:00:15.540 | good at everything.

00:00:17.980 | I just think that's the most poisonous idea in the American mindset, that we're supposed

00:00:24.100 | to be really good at everything.

00:00:25.380 | On the other hand, I personally believe that we should try a variety of things so that

00:00:30.100 | we experience frustration and fail and eventually find what it is that is, you know, we're "meant

00:00:35.580 | to do."

00:00:36.580 | I do, but I feel also very fortunate that I was never really pushed to be excellent

00:00:40.420 | at everything.

00:00:41.420 | I have terrible hand-eye coordination, but I'm pretty good at sports with my feet, but

00:00:44.780 | when I say pretty good, I mean passable.

00:00:47.460 | So I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional athlete very, very young.

00:00:51.060 | So I think we have to know that we have to play games with our hands and our feet in

00:00:53.740 | order to figure that out.

00:00:54.980 | I tend not to put anyone on a pedestal.

00:00:58.260 | I feel like, and maybe part of it is, in part of my private practice for years, I saw, maybe

00:01:04.460 | I saw the Stanford grads who are then living in New York, and they weren't literally from

00:01:10.140 | Stanford, but I'd have all these late 20-year-olds and their pedigree, like all look the same.

00:01:16.060 | Top of their class, Ivy League, Goldman Sachs, this MBA.

00:01:21.580 | And like so many of them had the same insane anxiety and emptiness.

00:01:30.540 | I still remember the way one of them described how they felt, and she was brilliant with

00:01:34.980 | her words, and she said, "I walk around, and it's like when I'm with people and doing things

00:01:41.060 | and at work, it's like there's a ton of color.

00:01:43.820 | When I'm alone, I feel like I am an empty room with white walls."

00:01:48.740 | Oh, goodness.

00:01:49.740 | That's very sad.

00:01:51.180 | Very sad.

00:01:52.180 | It actually relates to my own childhood.

00:01:53.460 | I feel like I've, you know, grown a lot, had my therapy, and I feel like when I was younger,

00:02:00.380 | I was really hard-driving and really like somewhat people-pleasing.

00:02:07.260 | And me and my friend who are both like that, were like that, have kids who aren't really

00:02:12.340 | like that.

00:02:13.340 | And they're amazing kids, and they do so well, and they have this internal confidence.

00:02:16.340 | But sometimes we joke, we're like, "But there's nothing that will drive you like feeling not

00:02:21.860 | good enough.

00:02:23.140 | There's nothing that drives you like feeling like every test score defines yourself."

00:02:29.500 | And it's so sick, right?

00:02:31.340 | Because we're almost like conflicted with our kids, like they're all great kids, they're

00:02:35.740 | responsible, but they almost have a little bit more inner contentment, right?

00:02:41.340 | But I think about that young woman I saw, and how at work, she felt amazing, until,

00:02:49.780 | didn't happen until she was 28, she didn't get the promotion she thought she was getting.

00:02:55.380 | And then, I mean...

00:02:58.580 | She never failed before.

00:02:59.980 | And it's not only the never failure.

00:03:02.140 | When your internal sense of self is built outside-in, which you actually can do if you

00:03:09.740 | have a lot of accomplishments, it works for a while.

00:03:14.900 | But as soon as that stops working, if you have nothing, you feel like in an empty room

00:03:22.420 | with white walls.

00:03:23.420 | What's really compelling about the therapy over the course of a number of years is, as

00:03:28.180 | I still remember, over COVID, we were then Zooming, and she'd had her own place.

00:03:34.340 | And she actually went through this process, and she was very artistic of painting the

00:03:39.140 | walls in her actual room, talking about making something concrete, and kind of in the way

00:03:43.900 | that she was feeling a lot more lit up inside-out instead of outside-in.

00:03:48.780 | That's great.

00:03:49.780 | I certainly don't hold up these ultra performers in all domains on a pedestal.

00:03:55.100 | I think they're in a very precarious place inside and outside.

00:03:58.740 | They've essentially given up all their power and agency to one incoming failure.

00:04:03.580 | And maybe they never experience it, and they get to the end without having done it, but

00:04:06.420 | what a terrible way to live anyway.

00:04:08.380 | I've always looked up, since I was little, to people that really took a unique path.

00:04:13.380 | I've always found that they, yes, accomplished tremendous things, and they have interesting,

00:04:20.380 | sometimes painful flaws.

00:04:21.380 | Like, I'm a huge fan of the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, very incredible man,

00:04:27.500 | very complicated life, became that way and found his passion by realizing how terrible

00:04:32.060 | he was at certain things, including certain branches of medicine.

00:04:36.140 | So I think that trying many things and being really realistic about whether or not something's

00:04:41.620 | for us or not is the key.

00:04:44.340 | But then I guess the question becomes, and this must be so hard from the perspective

00:04:47.700 | of parenting, but also just in terms of guiding ourselves through life, is how much friction

00:04:52.200 | do we experience before we say, "You know what?

00:04:54.780 | I'm not a musician, and I'm cool with that.

00:04:57.580 | I love music, but I'm going to put my efforts into these other things, and this thing comes

00:05:02.380 | more easily for me."

00:05:03.740 | I do think we have a lot of natural tendencies, and I feel like, especially in the United

00:05:06.940 | States, there's been this complicated relationship with parenting and education whereby we don't

00:05:12.860 | want to push people to their own suffering and demise, but we also have to avoid not

00:05:18.100 | pushing them because then they don't ever find what they are proficient in, and they

00:05:22.380 | don't learn that overcoming friction thing.

00:05:25.660 | So it's tricky.

00:05:27.180 | So how do you know when to keep pushing your kid to even engage in something?

00:05:34.980 | Maybe they're the kid that always is picked last for the team, but you know they should

00:05:39.700 | play sports.

00:05:41.160 | So I guess my first reaction is I'm reacting to the word "pushing" because I'm not sure

00:05:46.420 | that's the verb I would think about because I think the idea of pushing your kid, even

00:05:52.700 | like how much do I push, there's a lot about us there.

00:05:57.100 | I guess I grew up in a town where a lot of kids got pushed.

00:05:59.980 | Oh, I mean, I grew up in a town where every kid got pushed.

00:06:02.580 | So maybe that's why I know something about it, right?

00:06:05.180 | I mean, I think we see this all the time, and it goes back to actually what side of

00:06:08.060 | the tennis court, like whose feelings are whose.

00:06:11.260 | Is this my unlived dreams as an athlete in my youth, or is this actually about my kid's

00:06:17.580 | soccer skills?

00:06:18.580 | You know, I think parents watching their kids playing sports is a prime example of am I

00:06:24.500 | living out my unfulfilled dreams and projecting that onto my daughter?

00:06:30.880 | Or does my daughter like soccer?

00:06:33.060 | And like, how can I really differentiate those, right?

00:06:36.460 | I think actually, though, making it back to that, a lot of this actually goes back to

00:06:39.740 | frustration tolerance and why it matters so much to me.

00:06:44.780 | Like my approach to teaching frustration tolerance, which is like a hidden gem we have here at

00:06:50.300 | Kidd Inside, I really want, I want to be in every school.

00:06:54.500 | I think it needs to be in every school, and I want to describe it to you, okay?

00:06:58.720 | So I literally have this graph, it's helpful, and I know you like to write things down too

00:07:01.620 | to make it concrete, where like point one is not knowing how to do something, okay?

00:07:07.840 | And point two, which is very far away, is let's say knowing how to do it or being very

00:07:12.660 | proficient.

00:07:13.660 | It could be soccer, I think a good example is reading, okay?

00:07:17.860 | Like you, everybody starts out not knowing how to read, and let's say, not everybody,

00:07:22.740 | but a lot of people learn how to read.

00:07:26.220 | The space between not knowing and knowing, I call the learning space.

00:07:33.060 | It has a name, and it's helpful to know where you are in a map, and the learning space has

00:07:37.900 | one feeling that you're supposed to have, frustration.

00:07:43.580 | That is the feeling you're supposed to have, and we have this idea that we jet from not

00:07:49.660 | knowing to knowing like this.

00:07:53.660 | It's because of those damn Star Wars movies, and, oh, no, actually, Star Wars incorporated

00:07:57.540 | some frustration, but it's because of movies.

00:07:59.860 | Boom, you're supposed to just have the skill because you picked up the rock or the sword

00:08:03.760 | or the pen or the wand.

00:08:06.060 | And now, it's because if you think about the circuitry that kids get used to with dopamine,

00:08:11.300 | and the space between wanting and having, in general, is low because when you don't

00:08:17.540 | know something, you want to know it.

00:08:19.980 | Here, you do know it.

00:08:22.660 | Our tolerance and our kids' tolerance for wanting and not having is so low that what's

00:08:28.900 | so sad is the learning space has gotten massively compressed, and people fear frustration.

00:08:36.020 | This image, when I've gone over this with kids and even teachers, I know teachers who

00:08:39.020 | teach us in their class, "Okay, today, we're going to learn this new thing.

00:08:41.900 | We're going to learn whatever it is, you know, how to read a short word."

00:08:46.740 | Everybody in this class is here not knowing.

00:08:49.700 | Everybody in this class is going to get here.

00:08:53.220 | And probably today, most of us, and you can actually do it now, are going to be right

00:08:57.700 | here.

00:08:58.700 | What does this say?

00:08:59.700 | The learning space.

00:09:00.700 | How are we supposed to feel when we're in the learning space?

00:09:03.860 | The class can say, "Frustrated, okay, here's an interesting assignment, different than

00:09:08.740 | you think.

00:09:09.740 | The goal today is not to tell me if you can read the letters that are in front of you.

00:09:14.640 | I want you to raise your hand when you feel frustrated," which feels like this, "Oh,

00:09:19.140 | I can't do it," because I'm going to come up to you, and I'm going to give you a high

00:09:22.140 | five, and I'm going to say, "You are in the learning space.

00:09:24.940 | You are learning.

00:09:25.940 | How amazing is that?"

00:09:26.940 | Like, "Andrea, I really believe this has the power to change learning."

00:09:31.460 | Because then when we talk about proficiency or when we talk about years from now, my kid

00:09:35.980 | is saying, this happens all the time, I get questions about this all the time, my kid

00:09:39.220 | says they want to do whatever, it could be a coding class, it could be a lacrosse class,

00:09:44.820 | and they do it once, and then they always come home, and they say, "I want to do it,

00:09:48.260 | I quit."

00:09:49.260 | Or maybe they're on a swim team, and they want to quit.

00:09:51.540 | Do I let my kid quit, right?

00:09:54.540 | To me, the question is actually, like, most likely none of our kids are going to be Olympic

00:10:00.860 | swimmers or like professional basketball players.

00:10:02.900 | I think about this a lot with these sports.

00:10:04.620 | The whole goal in my mind for most people with youth sports, not everyone, but most,

00:10:09.260 | is learning how to deal with frustration, learning how to do things you thought you

00:10:13.020 | couldn't do, character, sharing, being a good teammate, sportsmanship, right?

00:10:18.780 | All those things are hard skills to learn.

00:10:20.260 | So the reason I'm signing my kid up for basketball is actually just because it's like a good

00:10:23.500 | medium for all those things.

00:10:25.700 | And so I want to be sure that if my kid is quitting, it's not because they're escaping

00:10:31.740 | the very, very natural learning space that is so important to being in life.

00:10:38.420 | I love, love, love this concept, which I believe to be entirely true, that the learning space

00:10:47.020 | between unskilled and skilled, if you will, is characterized by the feeling of frustration

00:10:52.940 | in mind and body.

00:10:54.820 | I don't want to rattle off another experiment, but there is just oh so much data, I'll share

00:10:59.460 | this with you offline, the papers that is, showing that brain plasticity changes in neural

00:11:05.460 | circuitry only occur when the chemical milieu of the brain is different than it normally

00:11:10.340 | is.

00:11:11.340 | Otherwise, how would the brain know it should change?

00:11:13.460 | So what sets the context for massive change in our neural circuitry is when there's a

00:11:19.140 | lot of adrenaline in the body, sorry folks, it's true, adrenaline, also called epinephrine,

00:11:24.220 | and norepinephrine released in the brain.

00:11:26.140 | Now you don't want to be in a state of panic or stress to the point where you're debilitated,

00:11:31.140 | but that shift in the chemical milieu sets the stage for rewiring of connections between

00:11:39.140 | neurons.

00:11:40.140 | I mean, this is known at the molecular level, it's known at the cellular level, it's known

00:11:42.340 | at the circuit level, and I'm excited to share that literature with you because it basically

00:11:46.300 | is a bunch of nerd speak and numbers to support the fact that you're nailing it right in the

00:11:52.940 | bullseye, which is, without frustration, there is no rewiring of the neural circuits.

00:11:57.540 | And if you think about it, it had to be that way.

00:11:59.500 | Right.

00:12:00.500 | Otherwise, why would the circuits change?

00:12:02.180 | So that the error signal is what sets plasticity in motion.

00:12:06.020 | [music]

How to Help Kids Learn Resilience Without Anxiety | Dr. Becky Kennedy & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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