How is my child? Is my child Okay? Part 1

Part 1 of a series where we ask, Is My Child Okay?  We look at whether kids are actually okay by pairing brain development with today’s digital environment. Though progress markers offer hope we level with you about risk, influence, and what “normal” really looks like in today's changing world. 

Please share with a friend. Remember, you just have to be good enough as a parent. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be good enough.

Transcript

Welcome Back And New Series

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, Craig Nippenberg, along with my producer and mother of four, Sidney Moreau. I'm a father of four and a grandfather. Sydney's not quite there yet. And she's not looking to become one soon. Let's hope not. She's shaking her head like, no. That's funny. I've had an incredibly busy fall. So it's been a while since we've podcast, and I've had a ton of lectures. Some of those I'll I'll be sharing with you. These next four or five episodes are going to be a series based on one of my recent lectures, which I'll tell you about shortly. But I was busy with that. And on a personal level, I did pick a whole new goal this summer. I've always done climb mountains or done endurance long distance riding, swimming every summer. This summer I decided to do something completely different. And I did four months of bulking and leaning out and did my first bodybuilding contest competition on October 3rd. And I actually won for the master's division, which is 40 and over, and I'm 67. I was competing against a lot of young people and took a third and a fifth against the 20-year-olds. So it was quite an experience. It's very tedious, very disciplined, but the whole competition was worth it. It was just a very joyous day. And then I ate a lot of food and had a pie for dinner that night. It was great. Okay. So the series, the first part is based on a lecture I did in Evergreen for parents in Evergreen. And in Evergreen, Colorado, they had a school shooting there at the high school back in September. And so this question they asked me to speak about, there were two questions, was weighing heavily on parents' hearts, as you could imagine. And also the later episodes of this, this series, I've been doing some lectures and a deep dive into extremist thinking and behavior being accelerated online a lot by TikTok. So we'll be getting more into TikTok, and I'll tell you about that lecture as well. But this first part, I'm going to answer the first question. The two questions they asked me to talk about. The first title was, first question, the title was, How is my child? Is my child okay? And the second question naturally is, how do I know if my child is well? So today we're going to address how is my child, and then we'll do how do I know on the next show. And I also added a question, a third question to the lecture, and this will be the later part of the series, which is, how can my child be well in a culture that is, and we have a very ill culture right now. So we'll address that as well. Now, this first one, how's my child? This is going to be based on your child's brain development, their normal brain development of kids and teens, and presupposing that your child has a good enough environment, that you love them, you're attached to them, they have adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, safety in their neighborhoods, all those things that we often take for granted. And hopefully over Thanksgiving, you and your family got to appreciate and express gratitude for those things. So it's all based on those two factors. And we know in the research that if your child doesn't have a good enough environment, then you can really dope them down. But you just have to be a good enough parent in a good enough environment, and they're going to be who they're going to be. Now, I always like to start with the positive. And so this is these are statistics on youth today. Compared to the past, so infant mortality has dropped 93% since 1900 to 2000. So you think about our ancestors in 1900, my grandmother won, I believe she lost three of her children, two at birth and one at about age three. But that's dropped 93%. Child mortality, which is the death of a child under five years' age, has had a 99.97 decrease from 1900 to 2024. It was 18% in 1900. 18% of kids didn't make it past five. At 2024, we're at 0.006 mortality rate. Child labor, 20% of children in 1900 were working. Today it's nearly eliminated. We've eliminated child labor. There is still illegal child labor going on, but it's pretty rare, and when you think of the statistically, it's nearly eliminated. High school enrollment, only in 1900, only 11% of teens enrolled in high school. Today it's universal for all of our teens to go to high school. Childhood maltreatment, child abuse between 1990 and 23, 2020, 2013, I'm sorry, 1990 and 2013 had a 40% decrease. Violent victimization at school between 92 and 2014 dropped 67%. Now, we'll in the later episodes we'll be talking about gun violence and school shootings. But overall, in terms of children hurting other children at school, it's dropped dramatically. Students engaging in physical fights between 92 and 2014 dropped 47 percent. This next one's a huge improvement, seatbelt compliance. These are teenagers using seatbelts and children. There was a 1990 27 percent negligent rate, 2005 only 11 percent negligent rate. That's a 59 percent improvement, and I'm guessing between 20 and in the last 20 years, seatbelt use is even more compliant. Youth exposure to drunk driving. This is your teens getting in a car with a drunk driver. 1990, 40 percent of teens had ridden with drunk drivers. 2013, only 4 percent. That's a 90 percent decrease. Also, unwanted teen pregnancies are an all-time low, and cigarette smoking has just plummeted. Now, we do know that's been substituted by vaping and nicotine patches, so we'll address that as well. But in general, it's a great time to be alive in America, that this is a wonderful time in our history and for the children are doing great. Now, in terms of the question, is my child, if you would ask me, I would what I'll tell you up front is they probably are, and we'll cover that. But my I hedge a little bit now, if you would ask me that 15 years ago, it would have been a much more resounding they're well. Majority are well. But things have changed and are rapidly changing. And my my answer to that is it's a little wishy-washy compared to what it would be, and it's because of the environment our kids are in. The landscape for them is changing very fast and changing for all of us. But the brain is still the same brain it always was. So on that part, our brains, your child's brain in their development, is the same for children and preschoolers and teenagers as it was forever. So we know the most fundamental part of our brain is wired for novelty, desire, and then we seek pleasure. So our brains are wired to explore for new things, to find new things, to fulfill our desires, whether that's food, social connection. We're curious creatures. And if you've got a preschooler, you know how curious they are, especially when they stick a paperclip into a light socket, which I had happen during one of my book readings to first graders, when a young man put a paperclip in the light socket and blew himself three feet back from the wall. That was quite an experience. But they're very curious, they pursue things, we're always looking ways to survive better. And the other piece that's so important is fundamentally our brains are wired to connect socially. We survive in groups. Ancient people did not survive alone very well. So we all have the mountain, the myth of the mountain. You know, what's the actor that recently passed through? Robert Redford. He was some famous mountain, one of his films, I can't remember the name of it, but you're out there living on your own in the mountains on your own terms. That was pretty much a myth. We don't survive very well on our own, and we're group creatures. Now, all ages go through different developmental services, and all those phases serve a purpose. So I'm going to do a quick exercise. And normally in the lectures I just do a show of hands. But uh Sydney can raise her hand if she can think of one of these. But I want you as the audience to think of a time when you were in middle school or high school, maybe college, where you did something really stupid, or really dangerous, or could have been really dangerous now that you look back, something embarrassing that happened to you, or something you did that fell below your moral standard, that you grew up knowing right from wrong, and you did something that you know deep in your heart was wrong. Sydney, can you I'll raise my hand. I have more than one. Sydney? Hand up, yeah, or hands up too, right? Now the next thing I want you to think about it before I address it is what if that moment had been recorded on someone's phone and then they passed it to all your classmates, and it went live around the high school, around the college campus, and everyone knew about your moment, about your frailty. Imagine how horrible that would have been. So back in the day, teenagers always overestimate, like teenage freaking, like they think their life's over because something happened like that. And everybody knows. What they found in the actual research, not everybody knows. And teenager also, everyone's smoking pot. That's not true. Everyone's having sex. That's not true either. Sex the sexual activities really draw up to the younger generation. But they tend to overestimate their peer groups. With social media, it's not an overestimation. It's true. And you could be sitting in a class and seeing your classmates pulling out their phones and looking at you as they laugh about your moment. So, what I would tell you, as you think back to your moment, 90% of those, if you shared them with me, I would say to you, that's just normal development. That is just the teen brain, the middle school brain, the child's brain. It's just normal developmental stuff. Majority of it is. I've only had three times of my profession over 45 years, consulting for schools, where a school head of a school would call me up and say, hey, this happened with a student. Is this normal? And I'm we're tens of thousands of situations, and only at three times, and I can remember each one where I said to that person, that is not normal. That child needs immediate treatment, and they're a danger to themselves or the community. So you I really have a big, broad definition of normal. And most of the stuff you did was completely normal, and developmentally it served a purpose. So we know our preschoolers' brains, they have, they don't, they have lots of emotion, and they don't have a very good prefrontal cortex. So they don't stop their emotions very well, and it comes right out of them. And in elementary school, it all dampens, and it's the golden age of childhood as they pay attention in school. They have little frontal lobes now, and they can pay attention better and listen to the teacher and follow the rules, and they know you get what you get and you don't throw a fit, or you don't always get what you want, and they learn to handle things because if you're getting upset too much, the other kids call you a crybaby, and nobody wants that. So that's all pretty standard stuff. And then when puberty hits that brain, it's like a preschooler's again, the frontal lobe functioning drops in half. They have twice the emotionals, the emotions elementary and adults have. So if you're a parent of a teen and they say to you, you don't understand how I feel, they're right because you don't anymore. You don't, your brain can't make that much emotion anymore. Now you can reflect on when you were that age, and you can recall how intense everything felt. But as an older person, you don't feel it anymore. And that puberty brain has got the nonverbal system just explodes in growth, and they become uber social creatures, and they explore every possible way to influence others, either positively or negatively, or through taunting and bullying and manipulation. That's all part of the scene, especially in middle school. And there's different themes that come up throughout the life. Preschoolers always worried about monsters under their beds, they struggle with what's reality and what's not. They want to separate you and they want to have control and often do it in ways you would prefer they didn't. Third graders are generally, they have a huge bump in anxiety because the academic pressure is starting to go up and fourth grade's approaching, which is a big jump for kids. But they all also understand reality more and what's going on in the world. What they don't understand, though, is statistical probability. So in their mind, if they hear a story about a robber, they think that robber's coming to their house for sure. So they they need help with that. Fourth and fifth graders, oh, that sexual curiosity is just too tempting not to try to look something up online. In the old days, when I was in third, fourth grade, we went to the school library, did the big dictionary, and we looked up penis. And then we tried to find the F-word, but couldn't find it. And ironically, we wanted to figure out what a female's lower body part was called, but we had never heard the word vagina. That was not talked about when I was a kid. And so we looked up the P word for that, slang, and there was nothing. But we got caught and we got a paddling for our curiosity. But as they turn to puberty then, they are obsessed with belonging with others, being part of a group, and that is their ancient brain pushing them for survival. You had to be. They love sarcasm. You can't say almost any word to a class full of middle schoolers that they don't start laughing under the table about it. And then you find out that that word I just used has another meaning, and not the one that I thought I was meaning. So I was always learning about that. And now the current one for the elementary and the middle school kids is I have the coolest age right now because I'm 667, 6'7, which is this meme that's just gone viral, and the kids just laugh about 6'7. And it has no meaning at all. That's the funniest part. But their emotions just change on a dime. They can go from being happy and excited to pissed off or worried in the drop of a dime. Aristotle, quote, in terms of talking about teenagers, and this is about their survival, was the quote was teenagers today are as fickle in their desires or as they are vehement in expressing them, which means they flip from one thing to the next and they get really intense about it, whether with excitement or joy, or they're just super pissed off. And for our survival, we need it. Ancient people, the teenagers were the ones who stayed up late, their sleep cycles change, they're impulsive, and we needed that for survival. They were the ones guarding us at night, they were the ones going out on the hunts, they were ones fighting in battle, and you knew people who could take risks, and they loved to get the dopamine juice from taking a risk. That was fundamental to our survival. Unfortunately, that's different. But because the brain is the same, all teens are a step away from complete disaster, and it's through a friend or the friend of a friend, and one thing blows up. And what you're hoping is it's not tragic, the results. But they're all basically, and that's been teens forever. And those middle school kids, they are like ping-pong balls in a hopper, you know, the bingo balls spinning around. They just go from one thing to the next. They can be incredibly cruel to each other. We had slam books in middle school where you would carry your notebook around and people would write horrible things about you in your notebook, and then you'd write something in their notebook. And we just thought that was so fun. My wife unfortunately took her slam book home one day and her parents found it. You were supposed to leave it at school in your locker, but now it's online and it spreads really fast. All of the things they say about them, each other, and rumors and all that stuff. And when you ask graduating eighth graders how many of them felt bullied in middle school, 80% of kids report being bullied in middle school. If you ask them when they graduate high school, that number drops in half to 40% because they mature. The brain is growing and mature and maturing, but man, when they're going through, it's a tough time. Empathy for middle schoolers drops in half, so they can be really cruel. And we're not sure exactly why that is. For males, they think it's that flood of testosterone. And for both males and females, it's that desire to fit in. So if your friends are making fun of another child or another middle schooler because they're a different skin color, or they have a disability, or they're in the slow reading group like I was, then they all laugh together, and their empathy just is lost in all of that trying to belong to the group. And today, everything gets amplified. So in the old days, you left it at school, you went home, they didn't talk to you about it the next day, played with your siblings, did a little homework, not a lot, watched Leave It to Beaver, had family dinner, and played ping-pong and went to bed, and the next day somebody else was in the news. It was somebody else getting picked on or teased, and everybody forgot about yours. But that is not the case anymore because it gets amplified on social media. And I have a statistic, it'll be up in the upcoming shows. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's somewhere around 70% of kids, teens use their phone between midnight and 5 a.m. That means your kid is on their phone at night, still getting comments about what happened that day. And many times it's negative and they get obsessed with that. So when you answer that question, is my child well? Developmentally it's still the same, but there are some Higher risk. And we have seen a huge increase in youth anxiety and depression since 2010. So from the 50s to 2010, the number always hung around 20% of teens would experience, while in high school, experience anxiety or depression. The 2010s, when social media came out, that number went up to 30 to 40% were struggling with mental health. I would tell you that 2019, the year before COVID, was one of the worst of my career. I had to help out with three different teen suicides. Brutal. With COVID and after COVID, that number reached 50 to 60%, especially for females. They were up towards 60%, being isolated on social media all the time, Snapchat, TikTok. Boys were at about 50%, and they think it's because boys were still at least gaming with their buddies. So they couldn't be with their buddies, but online they could still play Fortnite or some shooting game or Halo with their buddies. So they were at least having some social contacts. Now the good news is that number is going back to pre-pandemic levels. So it is dropping, and that's been a nice steady decline, which is awesome. But it's still too high, and social media is one of the things we'll talk about in one of the episodes that it's making it worst. So that's where the kids are today. The reason to have hope is you have to remember through these phases of your kids' lives, is the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So all teens do things that horrify their parents or make them worried and upset. But years later, they're just like mom and dad. I had the joy of doing a book sale at the school I consulted for, St. Anne's, which is just a wonderful place. And they had a book fair at Barnes and Naval, and I was one of the guest authors. And I had the pleasure of seeing four, four or five of my former students who are now parents of students at St. Anne's. And as I'm standing there talking to them, looking at their kids, I'm thinking, they're just like their parents. I remember exactly how their parents were. They're the same. And the older you get, the more you realize, and it's horrifying, that you realize you're just like your mom or dad. You're a chip off the old block. We all are. And it's quite horrifying at first, and then you learn to accept it and really appreciate it. There's so many things I appreciate about my parents. But that's just human nature. And most of the kids are going to go sail through, they're going to have rough times, they're going to crash their ships a few times, but they're going to end up being like mom and dad. That's just the nature of things. I had a just a lovely email from a mom who's both her and her husband are very high-performing professionals. And they were so worried about their son who was laxadaisical, the ADD guy who really wasn't motivated, wasn't getting the work turned in, wasn't doing his assignments. And I used to say to him all the time, I said, he's going to be like the two of you. You don't need to worry so much. Like, back off. He's going to be like you. He's now a sophomore at a Big Ten, not Big Ten, Ivy League school, and he's doing wonderful. And his mother sent me an email of all the things he's doing, and she said, You were right. He is just like us. And it's the idea that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And it's apparent you have to remember that all flowers bloom in their own time. If your child's a rose, you can't make them bloom in March. It's not going to happen. Now, if your child's a crocus, they might bloom in March. You might have a flower, a daisy that comes in April, and then we see some of the irises and other flowers popping up in May and June, and finally the roses arise, and the roses stick around the longest. So they all bloom when they are. Now, on the same point of wellness, you also have to look at your wellness. And so we've covered the social, the Surgeon General's former advisory on youth mental health shows ago. That was in 2023, and then we did Parents Under Stress last year. But parent mental health and child mental health go hand in hand, both affect the other. There's the saying about you can only be as happy as your saddest child, and that works vice versa. It works the other way as well. So what I would tell you, if you're struggling with your stress and mental health, get some help for you, and it will probably pay off for your children as well. Then finally, for today, the idea that you have to accept the realities of parenting. And the number one is being a parent means anxiety. Your anxiety will never go away. And it doesn't, even as they get older, you continue to worry, and then you have anxiety about your grandchildren. That is just the nature of the beast, and you can never completely wipe that out. You have to embrace it. You don't have total control over everything that happens to your child. You don't. And parents will try to micromanage to see if they can have that control, but it's impossible. You won't know everything that's going to happen to them. You don't know, and you may not know. Now, some of those things you might learn years later at a family reunion when you're my age, and the young adults are talking about when they were teenagers and what they did, and you're like, You did what? And I had a laugh a couple months ago. We were sitting around with my wife's family, and the young adults are there, including our daughter who's 20, and the boys were talking about sneaking out and getting drunk and all this stuff. And I shared a story, my wife shared a story, and my grandmother even shared a story. And then my mother, grandmother-in-law, and then my daughter, she shared, I used to sneak out of the window. Well, no, she'd use the door because she couldn't get out the window. She said, I used the front door because mom and dad, they just fall asleep. They're always they're done at nine o'clock. And I drive up to McDonald's and I looked at her and honey, I completely agree with you sneaking out. But I told you, McDonald's will kill you. Don't eat that. Like, really? That was your big challenge in teen years was going to McDonald's and getting a Big Mac. I'm like, oh my God. But probably a better choice than the stuff we used to do. And the tragic one on this one is Sue Klebold. Her son Dylan was one of the perpetrators of Columbine High School. And she's gone and write books. She's an incredible mental health advocate, big head, because she didn't know what was going on with her child and in a very, and that one ended up tragically. But statistically, most of the time, they're going to do stuff you won't know. And they have ways around it. They know how to get around Life 360. I have all these parents that are still tracking their college kids on Life 360. As if somehow your teenager or your college student couldn't figure out how to get a buddy to take their phone to class with them so it looks like they're at class when they're sleeping off a hangover. They do it all the time. They know how to trick you with life 360, so turn it off. It's stupid. But teenagers for all generations have had their own lingo. They like to have their own words to keep the adults out. So adults don't know what they're talking about. So we had Groovy, Marvey was next, Peace Man. Every generation has their own little words they use to communicate to keep the parents out. And now in the online world, it's memes. You can look up all sorts of memes. Some of them are quite hysterical, but they're really into the whole meme thing, and that's how they communicate to keep the parents out. The ultimate reality as a parent in the research, your direct influence over your child really starts to decline at age seven. So before age seven, you have a lot more control. You don't have ultimate control over a preschooler. You can't. They're five, six-year-old, seven-year-old. But around age seven, your direct influence over them really starts to drop. And from there on out, and especially as they're teenagers, they're more influenced by their peers, mentors they have, hopefully good mentors, and the culture they're in. So what you're hoping for is your child finds wonderful coaches, wonderful teachers that take them under their wings and they find some friends who bring out the best in them. And we'll look at that in our next episode, How Do You Know If Your Child is not what is one of them is their peer groups. But I'll give you four quick tips, and I want to share a cartoon on this first part of How is My Child? Tip one I mentioned earlier, which is have a broad definition of what's normal. There are so many things the human brain's capable of doing and thoughts that we have. They're just all over the place. So you have to have a pretty broad definition of normal. I would adjust your style to a unique child. So every child's brain is different. That's covered in my first book, Wired and Connected. But a simple example of this would be the less prefrontal cortex functioning, or I call it the president, the less president your child has, the less internal control they have, the more external control they need. They need more structure and boundaries. So you have to adjust to that. For my son, I don't, I think probably sixth grade, fifth grade, I never had to ask him about his homework again. Ever. He always did it, all the way through high school. Now, I was abhorred that he would, in high school, sit in front of the TV watching mythbusters as he did his physics and chemistry and such. And I'd say, that's not really good study habits to be looking at a TV. And he'd look up at me and say, I have straight A's. Okay. Damn it, you still should turn off the TV. But he I didn't have to deal with it, I didn't have to do anything. Our daughter was a completely different story. She needed so much monitoring with her ADHD and avoidance of work. So you have to adjust your style to each child. Tip number three, never say, not my child. My child would never do that. So if the school calls or another parent calls, or you're here, a teenager talks to you, one of their friends. Don't go with that response because every child is capable, every teen is capable of something. So if you think of cheese, none of your children have cheddar cheese, nor do you, nor do I. We all have Swiss cheese. We have the good parts to us, the cheese, but we all have holes. And you may not know what your child's hole is yet until you find out that they are addicted to vaping, or that they actually cheated on a test, or they've been using AI to do their homework. The list goes on and on. You you just never say that. Never say, not my child. That is just a foolish thing to think. You're praying and hoping it won't be your child. But you never know for sure. And to be defensive is just a fool. It's a foolish endeavor. And number four, remember what your job is. What you're parenting for is your child's independence, their resiliency, their responsibility, and members of a caring community. That's what you want for them. That's what you want them to have. Now, in order to do that, you have to give them freedom. And freedom means risk. Those go hand in hand. And micromanaging your kid is not going to save you from that. You're actually disserving your child. Your kid needs as much independence as they can tolerate. With dogs, make the leash long enough so that they can't hang themselves on the fence when they try to jump over the fence and get hung up. So you make the leash just short of the fence. And that's what you do with based on each one of your kids. But they do need freedom to do that. And you just hope and pray that things will turn out, but you never know for sure. But statistically, in reality, most are going to end up being just like you. That's the way it is. Now, finally on this one, I want to share a cartoon. I actually was it was online, but it's from the New Yorker. And it's a mother standing outside the front door waving goodbye to her teen. And she says, Bye, sweetie. Have a day filled with social drama, drastically shifting friendships, and academic milestones, which you'll describe to me later as fine. How was your day, honey? Fine. They don't want you to know. They want to keep you out. And they do. And you won't know till later, even if you do find out then. There's still some things my mother never found out. We never chose to share with her. And she probably likes that. As do I as a grandparent. I don't always, and a parent of older ones. Sure, I really want to know all that stuff. Just keep it to yourself. Talk to your friends about it. Okay, for things of beauty make me cry. And if you haven't checked it out, our new podcast is called The Best of Things of Beauty Make Me Cry, and a collection of stories I've shared on this podcast that we're rolling out. And I believe Sydney told me that you can get through it through Legit Parenting, the website, the podcast Legit Parenting, that this is on, and you can access that as well. And I hope that in the near future to turn that into a third book. But this one I saw in the newspaper, it was November 21st, and it was a photo. And I actually saw this live when I was in middle school, I'm thinking eighth grade, but the picture was in 1973. And I remember watching it live. This pilot who had been held as a prisoner of war for years was released by the North Vietnam by North Vietnam. And the plane landed in California, and he stepped onto the tarmac in the plane. And you see this incredible picture of his wife, his younger son, his younger daughter, his older son, all smiling, running to greet him. And in the front of the pack, tears, looking at it, his teen daughter, whose arms are outstretched, and she's airborne. She's jumping to give him a hug. The picture was posted because that soldier passed away, and they interviewed her. She's now 68. She lives in California, and they asked her about the photo. She was 15 when that moment of her running to hug her father, that St. Patrick's Day was preserved forever. She said, just the feelings of that and the intensity of the feeling will never leave me. It is so deep in my heart. The joy and the relief they had our dad back again. It was truly a very moving union for our family. And that feeling has never left me. It's the same feeling every time I see that picture. War sucks, but that's beautiful. And that is just, ooh. That's a powerful one. Ah, I teared up, said, sorry. Okay, next time we'll talk about how do you know if your child is well and what to look for, signs of struggling that you you want to be aware of and look into as we continue this series. Until then, I hope you enjoyed the show today. If you did, please share with a friend. And as always, remember you just have to be good enough as a parent. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be good enough. And if you want to send in me your embarrassing moment, feel free to email it to me. Sind me, do you want to share yours online right now? No, I'm not going to share them. I have a lot. But I'm a male. Male's from a low functioning. We don't tap out till 28, so we do a lot of stupid stuff. And it's only by the dumb luck that I didn't experience. It didn't have more consequences of all of that. But anyway, thank you very much for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.