Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1123 ｜ Why Boys Are Failing Kindergarten ｜ Guest： Dr. Leonard Sax

00:00:00.740 Dr. Leonard Sachs is a parenting expert. He has been a physician and a psychologist for over 30 years, has written several books on the differences between parenting girls versus boys.

00:00:13.820 Also, the rise of permissive or gentle parenting that has really led to what he calls the collapse of parenting.

00:00:23.280 He's got a second edition of this New York Times bestselling book out now, The Collapse of Parenting, How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown Ups.

00:00:32.800 So we are getting lots of wisdom from him today on the rise of screen time, the toxicity of parenting culture in the United States,

00:00:43.400 how to properly build a strict but loving relationship with your kids to help them flourish and the distinctions between boys and girls and how we raise them.

00:00:56.200 Lots of good stuff here on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:59.100 It's brought to you by our friends at Life or Death Con.

00:01:01.920 I will be speaking at Life or Death Con in Washington, D.C. on January 23rd.

00:01:06.620 Get your tickets at LifeOrDeathCon.com.

00:01:08.880 Use code Allie10 for a discount.

00:01:10.580 That's LifeOrDeathCon.com, code Allie10.

00:01:23.180 Dr. Sachs, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:01:27.100 Many have heard you on various shows, but for those who may not know, can you tell them who you are and what you do?

00:01:34.980 Okay.

00:01:35.420 So my name is Leonard Sachs.

00:01:37.280 I am a family doctor, and I have written four books for parents, Why Gender Matters, Boys Adrift, Girls on the Edge, and The Collapse of Parenting.

00:01:47.380 And I travel around the country.

00:01:50.620 I lead workshops for schools, and I speak to parents.

00:01:53.940 Yes.

00:01:54.500 And I have heard much of what you've said about gender, and we will get into that.

00:01:58.920 First, I do want to talk to you about TikTok.

00:02:02.380 I'm sure that you've heard the news that TikTok is going to be banned.

00:02:06.520 I personally have never been on the app.

00:02:09.820 Maybe I'm a little old, or maybe I just feel like with three kids, I'm too busy to have another thing to be addicted to and scroll on.

00:02:17.260 But this is a big deal for a lot of young people who feel like so much of their lives is on that app.

00:02:24.080 What is your thought?

00:02:25.480 I mean, not from a political perspective, but from a parenting perspective about TikTok.

00:02:30.020 Is this going to be a net positive?

00:02:31.260 So, we have a lot of research on social media.

00:02:37.500 Researchers who study social media divide social media basically into three generations.

00:02:42.140 First generation social media is Facebook and apps like Facebook.

00:02:47.280 First generation social media is about connecting you to people you know.

00:02:51.760 So, Facebook, you can connect with your first grade classmate, find out what they're doing.

00:02:57.700 Second generation social media is Instagram.

00:03:02.320 So, Instagram, not only can you connect with your classmates from school, you can connect with celebrities and people that you'd like to follow and influencers.

00:03:14.140 TikTok is different.

00:03:16.140 TikTok is not about connecting you with your school classmates or even primarily with connecting you with celebrities.

00:03:23.160 When you sign up for TikTok, the app begins by asking you, what kind of videos do you like to watch?

00:03:31.220 Tell me a little bit about what kind of videos you'd like to watch.

00:03:33.800 And then it starts offering you some videos.

00:03:36.740 And the algorithm is crazy good.

00:03:40.060 And within minutes, it's showing you things you didn't know were out there.

00:03:45.560 And it's very common to find teenagers saying, TikTok knows me better than I know myself.

00:03:54.440 TikTok knew I was gay before I did.

00:03:57.400 TikTok knew I was trans before I did.

00:04:00.600 And four years ago, researchers reached out to TikTok and said, look, the algorithm is really toxic.

00:04:07.040 It is pulling girls, especially, down into a rabbit hole that valorizes self-harm and anorexia and suicide. 1.00

00:04:15.940 You have to change it.

00:04:17.720 And TikTok said, OK, thank you very much.

00:04:19.720 We'll change it.

00:04:21.020 And then last year, the researchers said, you didn't make it better.

00:04:24.780 You made it worse.

00:04:25.520 It is an astonishingly toxic app.

00:04:33.380 And we know this.

00:04:34.080 This is not a guess.

00:04:35.300 We know that girls, especially, who spend time on TikTok are much more likely to become anxious and depressed.

00:04:44.320 And I have corresponded with Jean Twenge, our nation's leading researcher, studying the effects of TikTok.

00:04:51.920 And she has said that the evidence supports a ban on social media for all children and teens under 18 years of age.

00:05:00.720 Now, what is happening in the courts and at the Supreme Court is not a ban on TikTok.

00:05:07.400 It is a ban on Chinese ownership of TikTok.

00:05:12.660 So kids are still going to be on social media.

00:05:17.860 And what is most likely to happen is that they'll simply move from TikTok, assuming that TikTok is not simply sold to another owner, in which case kids' experience might not change much at all.

00:05:31.120 But if it is indeed banned, first of all, kids will still be able to use it.

00:05:36.100 They just wouldn't be able to download a new kid who isn't on it, wouldn't be able to download it.

00:05:40.900 It would vanish from the App Store.

00:05:43.040 If on January 19th, TikTok has not been sold, then won't be able to download it from the App Store.

00:05:49.180 But kids will still have it on their phones and still be able to use it.

00:05:52.220 Okay.

00:05:52.540 And if indeed kids want to download a new app and they're not able to download TikTok, they'll most likely just download Instagram Reels, which is a very similar app, just less popular.

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00:07:14.400 Is your belief that people under the age of 18 should not be on social media, whether it's TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook?

00:07:29.240 It's my belief that kids in the English-speaking world should not be on Instagram or TikTok.

00:07:36.480 So John Haidt published a book last month called The Anxious Generation, and it makes a great deal of the rise in anxiety and depression among kids since roughly 2012,

00:07:49.340 and asserts that cell phones and social media are driving this rise in anxiety and depression.

00:07:57.140 But one point he doesn't mention in his book is that this rise in anxiety and depression is confined to kids in the English-speaking world,

00:08:05.400 in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia.

00:08:09.340 It's actually not seen outside the English-speaking world.

00:08:13.100 Kids in Greece, kids in Russia are just as likely to have smartphones and just as likely to be on social media.

00:08:20.360 But the rise in anxiety and depression has not been seen there.

00:08:24.340 So I think it's important for parents to understand that the smartphones and social media are the vectors.

00:08:35.440 They are spreading this toxic culture, but they are not themselves the cause.

00:08:43.580 The cause is the culture.

00:08:45.400 And parents need to understand what is toxic about American culture, about English-speaking culture that is driving this rise in anxiety and depression just in the last 15 years or so. 0.55

00:08:58.180 American culture has only recently become a culture that is toxic and harmful to children and teens. 1.00

00:09:06.000 It was not so 20 or 30 years ago.

00:09:09.220 Again, this is not a guess.

00:09:10.400 It's not nostalgia.

00:09:11.200 We have very good data on this point, which, again, is the point of my book, The Collapse of Parenting, where I show how American culture has changed and how it's become a harmful and toxic culture for children.

00:09:23.220 Yeah.

00:09:23.460 Tell us specifically what you mean by that.

00:09:25.840 What has changed in the past 20 years and what do you mean by toxic?

00:09:29.900 Okay.

00:09:30.880 So, again, my brand, if you like, is evidence-based.

00:09:34.880 When I make a claim, I'm always going to show you a scholarly study, a peer-reviewed study that's going to support the claim I'm making.

00:09:42.560 So, again, it's a book, The Collapse of Parenting, that has over 400 studies.

00:09:48.020 But let me just share with you one or two that makes this point.

00:09:52.460 One of the studies I cite is from UCLA.

00:09:55.000 They looked at the most popular TV shows marketed to children and teens every 10 years, starting in 1967.

00:10:02.360 And they analyzed these TV shows based on what is the show teaching kids about what's important.

00:10:11.480 So, most popular TV show in 1967, The Andy Griffith Show.

00:10:15.220 Andy Griffith Show.

00:10:16.500 1977, Happy Days.

00:10:19.320 1987, Family Ties.

00:10:21.020 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

00:10:23.560 Those are very different shows.

00:10:25.100 But the researchers found that each of those shows, 1967 through 1997, was communicating the same message, that the most important thing is to do the right thing, to tell the truth, even if it hurts, to be a good friend, even when that's not easy.

00:10:42.820 Being famous was number 15 out of 16, or number 14, or number 16, over those 30 years.

00:10:52.060 There was great consistency in the values that the shows were communicating, even though the themes and the production values were very different.

00:10:59.360 The values were very consistent.

00:11:00.960 But then the researchers found that between 1997 and 2007, American culture flipped upside down.

00:11:10.240 And in 2007, the most popular shows, shows like Survivor and American Idol, the most important thing, the number one thing, was winning and being famous.

00:11:26.300 Doing the right thing, that's going to get you voted off the island, doing the right thing, dropped from number one to number 13, between 1997 and 2007.

00:11:36.380 And winning and being famous, jumped from number 15 to number one.

00:11:41.640 Why did that happen?

00:11:43.160 Why did American culture flip upside down in 10 years' time?

00:11:47.100 And it's only gotten worse since 2007.

00:11:50.200 The researchers asked that question, and the answer they gave is social media.

00:11:54.400 Social media transformed American culture.

00:11:58.120 Suddenly, it became all about having likes and followers.

00:12:02.840 That's one key element.

00:12:05.280 It's not the whole story.

00:12:06.640 Right.

00:12:07.400 It's one key element of how American culture has changed in the last 20 years.

00:12:12.220 American culture changed from the culture that was the culture of American culture prior to 1997,

00:12:18.620 in which doing the right thing and being a good person and being a good friend was the most important thing.

00:12:24.400 To contemporary American culture, where winning and being famous is the most important thing.

00:12:30.280 I call it the culture of envy.

00:12:33.400 Where, so again, an example from my own practice.

00:12:38.020 Charlie D'Amelio, a name that I find a lot of old people, by which I mean people over 30, don't even know who Charlie D'Amelio is.

00:12:48.900 But basically, every American girl who speaks English knows who Charlie D'Amelio is.

00:12:55.640 She has over 11 billion likes on TikTok, which is more than any other human on the planet.

00:13:00.560 At age 15, she started posting dance videos of herself dancing on TikTok.

00:13:07.620 And she's hugely popular.

00:13:10.480 And last year, she earned over $20 million on TikTok.

00:13:13.840 But when you watch her videos on TikTok, what's really striking is that they're nothing special.

00:13:23.300 She's not that pretty. 0.83

00:13:24.420 She's not that great a dancer. 0.98

00:13:25.960 And girls look at her and they're like, wow, I'm prettier than she is. 1.00

00:13:30.260 I'm a better dancer than she is.

00:13:31.560 And this girl spent two weeks making this perfect TikTok video and posted it, but it fizzled.

00:13:40.200 Nobody saw it.

00:13:41.240 No likes.

00:13:42.340 Very few likes.

00:13:45.560 And this girl is now seething with envy and resentment.

00:13:53.880 Why her?

00:13:54.720 Why not me?

00:13:55.680 It's not fair.

00:13:56.680 The end result of this culture of envy is literally millions of girls who are like, why her? 1.00

00:14:07.200 Why not me?

00:14:07.960 It's not fair.

00:14:10.300 And parents don't understand this.

00:14:14.260 If you've got these girls immersed in this culture, where this girl, with very little effort, 0.93

00:14:22.420 as near as the other girls can see, becomes this celebrity with 50 million followers and 1.00

00:14:31.620 11 billion likes, earning tens of million dollars a year for not doing a whole lot.

00:14:38.940 You know, they recently surveyed 12-year-olds in the United States, and the girl's number,

00:14:43.940 the number one career aspiration of 12-year-old girls in the United States now is to be a social

00:14:49.360 media influencer.

00:14:50.840 It's not to be an astronaut or a teacher.

00:14:53.100 It's to be a social media influencer.

00:14:56.880 Well, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

00:14:59.740 You're setting yourself up for frustration and resentment.

00:15:02.640 Because you know what?

00:15:03.560 There's a million other girls who have the same aspiration. 0.99

00:15:09.800 And there's only room for three or four Charlie D'Amelios at most.

00:15:15.220 So that's one element, this new culture of envy and resentment.

00:15:20.740 Anybody can be a good person.

00:15:24.160 As Martin Luther King said 50 years ago, anybody can be great because anybody can serve.

00:15:30.540 Well, more than 50 years ago, 60 years ago.

00:15:35.020 That was the culture of the United States 60 years ago.

00:15:37.700 Anybody can be great because anybody can serve.

00:15:40.360 That was the culture of the Andy Griffith Show.

00:15:42.060 That was the culture that Martin Luther King was trying to teach us.

00:15:44.460 But that's no longer the culture of the United States.

00:15:47.120 The culture of the United States is now the culture of American Idol and Survivor, which

00:15:51.440 is all about winning, which is a much more toxic culture.

00:15:55.400 That's one change.

00:15:56.860 A second change I highlight in my book, The Collapse of Parenting, is the culture of disrespect.

00:16:03.960 And that's also new.

00:16:05.600 That was not characteristic of the United States 30 years ago or 50 years ago.

00:16:10.940 And so where to begin with that?

00:16:15.660 The Disney Channel.

00:16:17.200 So again, in my own practice, a mom of an eight-year-old boy says to me, I don't understand.

00:16:22.900 My eight-year-old son is so disrespectful.

00:16:25.880 I don't understand where he's learning these words.

00:16:28.120 His father and I never talk like this.

00:16:30.140 And I said to mom, does he watch Disney?

00:16:33.600 Does he watch Nickelodeon, Nick Jr.?

00:16:35.220 And she said, of course.

00:16:36.020 I said, lock it down.

00:16:37.840 No more Disney.

00:16:39.060 No more Nickelodeon.

00:16:40.060 No more Nick Jr.

00:16:41.260 And she called me three weeks later.

00:16:42.920 She said, it's stop.

00:16:44.280 He's learning this from the Disney Channel.

00:16:47.900 Jesse, Dog with a Blog, Bunked, these shows on the Disney Channel teach kids that it's

00:16:54.860 cute and funny to be defiant, to be disrespectful.

00:16:57.700 But that's just the beginning.

00:16:59.300 You look at the most popular songs, the Billboard Top 100, Lil Nas X had this incredibly popular

00:17:08.460 song, number one on the Billboard Top 100 for 12 consecutive weeks, which is an incredible

00:17:13.780 string on the Billboard Top 100, Old Town Road, where he sings, you can't tell me nothing.

00:17:22.440 Can't nobody tell me nothing.

00:17:24.120 That's the culture of disrespect in a nutshell.

00:17:30.820 You can't tell me nothing.

00:17:32.780 Can't nobody tell me nothing.

00:17:34.540 So the comedian Belmar had a big bestseller last year.

00:17:37.540 And one of the things he says in his book, he says, one of the fundamental truths of the 1.00

00:17:44.980 human experience is that young people are beautiful, but stupid. 1.00

00:17:51.200 Old people are ugly, but more likely to be wise. 1.00

00:17:56.460 So Belmar continues that any successful human culture will create strong bonds between the 1.00

00:18:03.860 beautiful, stupid young people and the wise old people. 1.00

00:18:09.360 Yeah. 1.00

00:18:09.820 You can't tell me nothing.

00:18:11.720 Can't nobody tell me nothing.

00:18:13.640 The culture of disrespect, which is now the culture that kids who speak English are immersed

00:18:19.860 in, breaks the bonds across generation.

00:18:23.320 You can't tell me nothing.

00:18:24.540 Well, you can't tell me nothing.

00:18:26.540 Why should I spend my time with you?

00:18:28.400 Why go to church?

00:18:29.300 Why hang with old people on weekends? 1.00

00:18:33.740 Kids in the United States do not hang with adults on weekends.

00:18:38.980 They used to.

00:18:40.100 We actually have data on this.

00:18:42.200 30 years ago, 50 years ago, it would not have been unusual for children to do stuff.

00:18:50.460 Actually, Robert Putnam at Harvard has documented this, that 50 years ago, you could drive around

00:18:57.760 an American community and you'd find a bunch of men working on a car, and he has photographs

00:19:05.700 documenting this, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s, of boys and men working under

00:19:13.040 the hood of a car in a street, in a neighborhood, on a Saturday afternoon.

00:19:19.900 This was a common sight in this country as recently as 30 years ago.

00:19:23.640 Not anymore.

00:19:24.920 Today, you drive in an American neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon, you might see two

00:19:28.960 old geezers working under the hood of their 65 Corvette, but the teenage boys are not with

00:19:33.600 them.

00:19:34.380 The teenage boys are more likely to be indoors playing video games.

00:19:37.160 The bonds across generations have been broken.

00:19:39.780 The culture of disrespect has broken the bonds across generations.

00:19:43.760 That's factor number two.

00:19:46.780 Factor number three, there's only three, the big changes in American culture is normophobia.

00:19:55.300 So 15 years ago, I wrote a book called Girls on the Edge, which I'm very proud, the Atlantic

00:20:01.380 Magazine, called the best book about what's going on with girls and young women in America

00:20:06.640 today.

00:20:07.220 But that was 15 years ago.

00:20:08.260 So I interviewed, this is not just girls in my practice, I interviewed girls across the

00:20:13.700 United States.

00:20:14.960 15 years ago, American girls wanted to be effortlessly perfect. 1.00

00:20:18.540 That was the thing back then.

00:20:20.920 So the publisher asked me to write an updated version, which I did.

00:20:25.820 But interviewing girls today, I find that girls today don't want to be effortlessly perfect 0.95

00:20:31.300 or any kind of perfect.

00:20:33.160 That's boring.

00:20:34.520 That's lame.

00:20:35.320 Now, you've got to have something wrong with you.

00:20:41.160 Anxious or depressed, that's good.

00:20:43.860 Trans, that's even better. 0.99

00:20:47.120 You know, 70 years ago, C.S.

00:20:50.960 Lewis wrote a book for children called The Magician's Nephew, in which he said, the problem 0.98

00:20:59.180 about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are, is that you very often succeed. 0.99

00:21:07.420 Substitute more anxious or more depressed for stupider. 0.99

00:21:10.400 The trouble about trying to make yourself more anxious than you really are, is that you very 1.00

00:21:14.020 often succeed.

00:21:15.820 So I earned my doctorate in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

00:21:20.300 Very strong program.

00:21:23.180 Same program where John Haidt earned his doctorate, Marty Seligman.

00:21:26.400 And that's the same place where Aaron Beck based.

00:21:33.600 Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive psychology.

00:21:36.980 And Aaron Beck developed this whole theory that anxiety and depression arise because you

00:21:47.560 think yourself into being anxious and depressed.

00:21:50.720 And you can think yourself out of being anxious and depressed.

00:21:55.400 And the strategies he developed that he coined the phrase cognitive behavioral therapy are

00:22:02.520 really effective.

00:22:03.560 And he showed that you can think yourself into being anxious and depressed.

00:22:07.560 You can think yourself out of being anxious and depressed.

00:22:09.580 The terms that young people now teach each other to use are, are you gender conforming?

00:22:20.720 Or are you gender non-conforming?

00:22:23.740 Are you neurotypical? 0.90

00:22:26.060 Or are you neurodivergent?

00:22:28.940 Well, who wants to be typical and conforming?

00:22:32.020 That's boring.

00:22:33.080 That's lame.

00:22:34.440 You want to be non-conforming.

00:22:36.340 You want to be divergent.

00:22:37.800 The very terms that kids teach each other to learn, to use on social media in the English

00:22:43.960 speaking world, teach kids that being normal is typical.

00:22:49.080 It's conforming.

00:22:49.900 And nobody wants to be typical and conforming.

00:22:52.840 So the very language that kids are now using one another, teaching one another to use drives

00:23:00.540 this, what Mary Harrington coined the phrase, normophobia, this fear of being normal and incentivizes

00:23:08.440 kids to convince themselves that they are anxious, that they are depressed, that they are trans. 0.57

00:23:14.420 You know, 30 years ago, the American Psychiatric Association posed the question, how common is

00:23:24.220 transgender?

00:23:24.980 And they said, well, it's so rare.

00:23:26.440 It's very hard to rise at any accurate number.

00:23:28.560 But we estimate the frequency of transgender as one in 30,000 men and one in 100,000 women.

00:23:36.700 Last year, the CDC released their latest figures, estimating that 3% of high school kids in the

00:23:48.040 United States are trans.

00:23:49.380 So we went from 1 in 30,000, 30 years ago, to 3 in 100 last year.

00:23:59.540 We could have a long talk just about trans.

00:24:02.760 And again, I devote a big chunk of my book, Why Gender Matters, second edition, to exploring that.

00:24:10.080 First edition has two sentences on transgender.

00:24:12.940 Second edition has a great deal more.

00:24:14.540 Mm-hmm.

00:24:19.380 So American popular culture transformed in the last 20 years.

00:24:25.500 It became a toxic culture.

00:24:28.780 And that's why I had to write a new edition of The Collapse of Parenting to explain to parents,

00:24:34.780 look, the culture has become radically more toxic.

00:24:38.380 You need to understand this.

00:24:40.160 Yeah, you do need to lock down the phones and block the social media,

00:24:43.040 but you also have to offer a healthier culture in your home.

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00:25:48.800 You know, as you were talking about the difference in American culture and the non-English speaking cultures

00:25:54.920 and this kind of emergence of a new value system that does not value respect of elders,

00:26:02.740 you know, something that I've noticed, I've got three kids.

00:26:06.540 And as they watch some Disney movies that I watched growing up, I've noticed a common theme in a lot of them.

00:26:14.220 Most of these movies, whether you're talking about Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or even Lion King,

00:26:21.660 that we think, okay, this was the 90s.

00:26:23.760 And so it has to be innocent or good.

00:26:26.340 Almost all of these movies, Frozen, start out with parent death and or rebellion from parents.

00:26:34.460 Same thing with Moana. 1.00

00:26:36.160 Like, all of these stories are about parents not really knowing best and kind of being like an inhibitor of their kids' happiness or freedom.

00:26:48.780 And kids going down this path of liberation at a very young age to find themselves, to chart their own path.

00:26:57.920 When you think about, like, Elsa, and now this is, you know, this is old.

00:27:01.460 I think it came out in 2013.

00:27:02.920 But Frozen is still very popular among young kids today.

00:27:06.940 The song that she sings, there's no right, there's no wrong, there's no rules for me.

00:27:11.740 I'm free.

00:27:12.900 And she talks about, you know, breaking free from people's expectations and being who she wants to be and going off on her own and all of this.

00:27:22.820 And so it does seem to be extremely ingrained, maybe even over the past 30 years, to some extent, in American culture,

00:27:31.380 this kind of not only independent spirit, but this rebellious spirit.

00:27:35.980 And the more rebellious you are, the more you reject your parents' religion, their belief systems, their authority,

00:27:44.280 the more of a hero you are and the happier you'll be.

00:27:49.120 Do you think all of that, that narrative that I'm describing, kind of plays a part in this toxic change of culture that you're talking about?

00:27:57.180 Well, we could have a lengthy discussion of the first Frozen movie.

00:28:01.480 I'm actually a huge fan of the first Frozen movie.

00:28:03.660 It's amazing.

00:28:04.340 I mean, it's amazing music, I agree.

00:28:05.900 Which I think is a great movie, because, in fact, Elsa comes to realize that she is mistaken, that there is no escape from the curse inside.

00:28:19.240 And I think there's some very profound messages in that first movie.

00:28:23.860 The second movie I thought was a great disappointment, but the first movie I thought was well-constructed.

00:28:28.500 And she comes to realize that a lot of things she said in that first song, that she was mistaken, that the moral truths go deeper than she realized.

00:28:41.900 So I'm a big fan of the first movie, but you're right, it begins with the children being orphans.

00:28:48.940 But it also shows that being orphans comes at a tremendous cost, and that you need your parents.

00:28:58.100 And when you don't have them, that's a really bad thing, as opposed to the Disney TV show, Jesse, where the parents are absent and the kids are completely liberated.

00:29:11.500 And Jesse, I think, is a very toxic show.

00:29:14.660 So the TV shows, I think, tend to be much worse than the movies from the 80s and 90s.

00:29:22.860 But, no, there's been a real shift since the 90s.

00:29:27.560 And I think, again, I don't want to make this just about the Disney studios, but I think the Disney studios have shifted since the 90s in a direction that has been harmful.

00:29:38.220 But, again, it's not just about the Disney studios.

00:29:40.560 It's about American popular culture, and I do look at what's happened, not only in television, but in the songs that kids are listening to, the videos that kids are seeing on YouTube, the social media that kids are watching.

00:29:59.220 The culture has become a toxic culture across the board in social media, in the songs that kids hear.

00:30:06.360 And parents need to understand this, and parents need to create strong bonds across generations.

00:30:13.480 You can't just say no to the bad culture.

00:30:16.200 You have to say yes to a healthier culture.

00:30:18.820 You have to offer your kids a healthier culture, your culture, the parents' culture.

00:30:25.360 Tell me about permissive parenting.

00:30:29.400 Is it the same thing as gentle parenting?

00:30:32.500 This has definitely been emergent over the past few years.

00:30:34.860 Good, bad, tell me about it.

00:30:37.260 So that was another reason that we had to have a new edition of The Collapse of Parenting,

00:30:42.200 because gentle parenting wasn't really a term 10 years ago when I wrote the first edition, but it sure is now.

00:30:50.300 And there are many different gurus of gentle parenting, and they each have their own definition.

00:30:54.040 But one thing they agree on is that gentle parenting means letting kids decide.

00:30:59.380 And I begin the new edition with a story from my own practice, where mom brought her six-year-old daughter in to be seen.

00:31:09.340 And mom explained that her daughter is sick, and you can see her daughter is sick.

00:31:13.060 She has a fever.

00:31:14.160 She has a sore throat.

00:31:15.160 So mom explains her daughter has a fever and a sore throat.

00:31:17.500 I say, okay, time to take a look.

00:31:19.560 Would you please open your mouth and say, ah?

00:31:23.080 And daughter shakes her head, no.

00:31:25.820 And I say, okay, mom, looks like I'm going to need your help here.

00:31:29.000 Would you please ask your daughter to open wide and say, ah?

00:31:32.800 And mom says, her body, her choice.

00:31:36.300 Okay, my body, my choice, long-time slogan of abortion rights activists, more recently adopted by activists opposed to COVID-19 vaccines.

00:31:47.520 Mom is adopting that slogan to defend her daughter's refusal to allow me, the examining physician, to look at her daughter's throat.

00:31:57.840 That's an extreme example of what you might call gentle parenting, that good parenting means letting kids decide.

00:32:06.300 Look, parenting works only if parents have authority.

00:32:14.680 This is really not a guess.

00:32:16.380 What is childhood for?

00:32:19.360 Literally.

00:32:21.240 Is it about biological maturation?

00:32:24.060 Well, no, actually.

00:32:26.380 A four-year-old horse is a mature adult.

00:32:29.300 The Kentucky Derby is raised with three-year-olds.

00:32:32.460 And a horse is a bigger animal than a human.

00:32:34.460 So it cannot be just about biological maturation because a horse only needs four years.

00:32:39.880 And a horse is a bigger animal than a human.

00:32:42.600 Humans are children or adolescents for more years than most animals live.

00:32:48.540 Why?

00:32:49.740 We don't have to guess.

00:32:50.780 We have scholars like Dr. Melvin Conner at Emory who's devoted his career to studying this question.

00:32:55.080 And he wrote an 800-page tome, Oxford University Press, The Evolution of Childhood, comparing development in our species with development in other species, especially other primates.

00:33:04.840 Asking the question, why does it take so long in humans?

00:33:10.000 Why is development so prolonged in our species compared to other species?

00:33:13.360 And the answer that he and the other scholars give is that it takes many years for parents and other adults to teach the kids what the kids need to know, to teach with authority what the kids need to know.

00:33:28.480 That's what human development is about.

00:33:30.400 It's about authoritative teaching of the grown-ups to the kids.

00:33:37.920 Letting kids decide is upside down.

00:33:42.180 It's not what human development is supposed to be about.

00:33:44.580 Now, that example I gave of the mom saying her body, her choice, that's an extreme example.

00:33:50.560 And that's unusual.

00:33:51.600 But what's more common, what's much more common, is the parent who's unsure, who's uncomfortable exercising authority.

00:34:01.320 So much, much more typical example, again, from my own practice.

00:34:06.900 Boy not paying attention in school.

00:34:09.440 12-year-old boy not paying attention in school.

00:34:11.400 And the teachers have filled out these Connors scales, which is a measure of inattention.

00:34:15.640 The boy's off the chart in every class, not paying attention in every class.

00:34:18.740 Parents take him to the child psychiatrist who looks at the Connors scales, he's off the chart, and the doctor says, well, let's try Vyvanse and see if it helps.

00:34:26.320 Yeah, he's got ADD.

00:34:28.700 Here's some Vyvanse, prescription for Vyvanse.

00:34:30.940 Tremendously helpful.

00:34:33.020 Huge, huge benefit.

00:34:34.920 Medication is tremendously helpful.

00:34:37.040 But now the boy develops palpitations and loss of appetite and jittery.

00:34:43.340 And the parent Googles things and finds articles I've written for the New York Times and Time magazine about the dangers of the medication.

00:34:53.260 So they bring their child to me for a second opinion.

00:34:56.080 And I do a more careful sleep history.

00:34:58.820 And I say, does your son get good night's sleep?

00:35:01.280 And mom says, oh, absolutely.

00:35:02.640 We make sure he's in bed every night at 9 and he's in the bedroom at 9 and wake him up next morning at 6.

00:35:08.400 So that's 9 hours.

00:35:09.540 That's enough, don't you think?

00:35:11.120 And I say to the boy, do you have a video game console in your bedroom?

00:35:14.200 He says, of course.

00:35:15.000 Doesn't everybody?

00:35:16.200 Is that where you were playing last night?

00:35:17.940 Of course.

00:35:18.540 Doesn't everybody?

00:35:19.660 Well, who are you playing?

00:35:21.580 RDR2.

00:35:22.600 Excellent game.

00:35:24.420 When do you finish?

00:35:25.320 He says, 1.30, 2.

00:35:27.040 And mom's like, you were playing video games at 1.30 last night?

00:35:31.540 He's playing video games until almost 2 in the morning.

00:35:34.000 He's trying to wake up at 6.

00:35:35.160 He's getting 4 hours of sleep.

00:35:36.480 He needs 8 or 9.

00:35:37.780 He is sleep-deprived.

00:35:39.980 Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics ADHD of the inattentive variety.

00:35:43.920 There is no Connors scale.

00:35:45.280 There is no Vanderbilt interview that can distinguish inattention due to sleep deprivation from inattention due to ADHD.

00:35:53.520 Vyvanse.

00:35:54.320 Immensely helpful.

00:35:55.560 Why?

00:35:56.680 What's Vyvanse?

00:35:57.520 What's Adderall?

00:35:58.880 They're amphetamines.

00:36:00.620 They're speed.

00:36:01.780 They compensate for the sleep deprivation.

00:36:03.800 But the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not Schedule 2 amphetamines.

00:36:09.440 Right.

00:36:09.740 So I said to mom, look, you got to get the video game console out of the bedroom.

00:36:13.980 No screens in the bedroom.

00:36:15.900 When he goes into his bedroom at 9 o'clock, he should be sleeping, not playing video games.

00:36:21.060 And mom says to me, oh, I couldn't do that.

00:36:24.800 He'd totally freak out.

00:36:27.120 We're talking about a 12-year-old boy.

00:36:29.200 This is a mom who's uncomfortable exercising her authority, even though her son is clearly being harmed by playing video games. 0.78

00:36:37.120 But mom is uncomfortable exercising her authority, shutting down the video games. 1.00

00:36:41.620 This is very common, and that's a good illustration of what I mean by the collapse of parenting.

00:36:49.340 Parents who are reluctant to exercise their authority and their failure to exercise their authority is harming their child.

00:36:55.700 This is a kid who is sleep deprived because mom cannot bring herself to turn off the video game so that her son can get a good night's sleep.

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00:37:51.480 Do you think most parents who are permissive in that way, uncomfortable with exercising their authority, what would you say is the most common reason is?

00:38:04.840 Is it because it's just difficult?

00:38:06.500 It takes time and effort to argue with your child or to endure their temper tantrum or whatever.

00:38:11.840 Is it because they want their child to like them and to be their buddy?

00:38:17.180 Is it because they truly are ideologically, philosophically driven to believe that their child should have full autonomy, creativity, the decision-making power to do whatever they want to do?

00:38:29.040 Are they lazy? 1.00

00:38:30.440 Are they dumb? 1.00

00:38:31.680 Like, what is going on? 1.00

00:38:33.500 Even when they see the bad effects of this kind of permissive parenting, why won't they exercise their authority?

00:38:41.640 It's a mix.

00:38:42.560 But I would say some of the most common problems are the parent wants to be the child's friend.

00:38:50.240 And they want the child to love them.

00:38:53.500 And they are terrified of the child saying, I hate you. 0.87

00:38:57.580 I hate you.

00:39:00.560 And they read the New York Times or they listen to National Public Radio, which says that you should validate your child's feelings. 0.64

00:39:07.980 Or they have succumbed to this notion of gentle parenting, which absolutely tells them that good parenting means letting kids decide and letting kids live with the consequences of their decisions.

00:39:22.280 Well, then this boy says, I want to play video games.

00:39:26.740 Well, good parenting means letting kids decide, so you let him play video games.

00:39:30.420 Gentle parenting is psychotic in the sense that it is utterly detached from reality.

00:39:40.560 Again, the researchers find that human civilization works when you have authoritative parents, when you have parents who set firm boundaries, which they enforce.

00:39:52.840 And that means that children have parents so that parents can set those guidelines because parents know better than their children.

00:40:03.120 Parents know that kids need a good night's sleep more than they need to be playing video games.

00:40:07.480 So the authoritative parent needs to limit video games, limit, govern, and guide what video games the kid is playing and how much time they spend playing those video games.

00:40:19.500 And I offer detailed guidance in answer to those questions based on the research.

00:40:27.880 And again, the motivation for writing The Collapse of Parenting is to empower parents.

00:40:32.460 It's not to berate parents or rant.

00:40:36.780 It is to empower parents and say, look, you have to do this.

00:40:40.240 You need to do this.

00:40:41.260 You can do this.

00:40:42.440 I've seen parents do this.

00:40:44.040 It's not too late.

00:40:45.740 You can do this.

00:40:47.060 Mm-hmm.

00:40:47.900 You know, as a mom of three, I've noticed so far that it's around two and a half, three years old that all of my kids have kind of started to assert their independence and their defiance to a certain extent.

00:41:04.080 And I'm curious what you would tell parents of little kids.

00:41:09.100 What is the best way that you've seen to enforce boundaries early?

00:41:14.740 Well, I always encourage parents to read or reread my chapter titled Joy in the Collapse of Parenting.

00:41:27.060 Good parenting has to be built around a loving parent-child relationship.

00:41:34.380 And parenting is easy if the love is there.

00:41:38.340 Because if the love is there, your child wants to please you.

00:41:41.780 They don't want to disappoint you.

00:41:43.520 And then it's easy because your child wants to please you.

00:41:46.640 So make the time to do fun stuff together.

00:41:51.760 That should be your priority.

00:41:53.200 I have a presentation for parents of children 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years of age titled Cancel the Play Date.

00:42:00.520 Make a family date instead.

00:42:02.000 Because, again, in my own practice, I've seen the parents of 2- and 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds, they're spending that precious Saturday driving their kids from one play date to another because they seem to think that it's really important for their 3-year-old to spend time with other 3-year-olds.

00:42:18.200 It's much more important for their 3-year-old to have good time with you.

00:42:22.400 So cancel the play date and instead take your kid to the part and do fun things with your kid.

00:42:28.500 Do fun things with your kid.

00:42:30.380 Things that you enjoy.

00:42:36.420 Spend that time with your kid, doing fun things with your kid.

00:42:39.760 And if your kid, if the most fun time that your kid has had has been doing fun things with you, then the love is there.

00:42:48.140 And then your kid will want to please you.

00:42:50.520 And then parenting is a breeze because your kid doesn't want to disappoint you.

00:42:53.900 They don't want to let you down.

00:42:54.880 So when they do disobey you or when they don't want to eat their vegetables or do something that you want them to do, like get dressed and, you know, a quick manner so that you can go out the door and they're disobeying or they're arguing.

00:43:11.700 Like what do you think is the best strategy for parents to not be permissive parents but to enact discipline?

00:43:19.060 So you'll notice I never address that ever in the class of parenting.

00:43:24.820 I never talk about punishment.

00:43:27.060 Those strategies differ from one family to the next and certainly it's important for kids to know that actions have consequences.

00:43:41.380 If a child is defiant and disrespectful, then they're going to lose privileges and parents need to enforce those punishments.

00:43:57.040 In the first edition of my book, Why Gender Matters, I did have a chapter on punishments and I addressed corporal punishment because we actually have a great deal of research.

00:44:09.440 Again, my brand is evidence-based so I cited all the research and we actually have a lot of research showing that appropriate corporal punishment to spanks on the behind is actually very helpful for four-year-old boys but not for four-year-old girls.

00:44:30.240 Spanking on the behind is appropriate for four-year-old boys but not for four-year-old girls because when you spank a girl, she thinks you don't like her.

00:44:39.440 And that can linger. 0.53

00:44:43.860 She thinks you don't like her and that gets in the way because, as I said, good parenting has to be based on love.

00:44:50.400 And if she thinks you don't love her, that can really be a problem for the parent-child relationship.

00:44:56.240 So, in the first edition of Why Gender Matters, I said, you know, limited corporal punishment, two spanks on the behind for a four-year-old boy has a place but not for girls. 1.00

00:45:10.720 Based on the research, this is not a guess.

00:45:13.440 I had lots and lots of scholarly papers that I cited in support of this.

00:45:18.100 In consultation with my editors at Doubleday, we struck that chapter from the second edition.

00:45:24.800 There's no mention of it for a number of reasons.

00:45:29.280 The American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a policy paper saying corporal punishment is absolutely unacceptable for any child in any context ever.

00:45:40.920 Now, we can talk a lot about the American Academy of Pediatrics.

00:45:43.740 Some of its guidelines are evidence-based.

00:45:46.440 Some are not.

00:45:47.540 This one was not.

00:45:50.400 Because, again, there's lots of evidence showing that corporal punishment is beneficial for young boys but not for girls.

00:45:56.440 But they absolutely did not want to go there because they had decided they don't want to honor the categories of male and female.

00:46:03.380 Yeah.

00:46:03.860 On the contrary, they absolutely want to deconstruct the categories of male and female.

00:46:07.920 We can talk about that if you want to.

00:46:09.720 Yeah.

00:46:09.900 Um, so, um, but, uh, Doubleday, uh, is my publisher and non-celebrity authors, you can't argue with your, uh, they're part of Random House.

00:46:22.500 That's a very big publisher.

00:46:24.200 Uh, so you basically do as you're told.

00:46:26.680 Uh, and, and I was fine with that.

00:46:29.240 We deleted that chapter.

00:46:30.400 Yeah.

00:46:30.880 Well, I'm interested to hear more about the differences between parenting boys and girls because it goes well beyond corporal punishment.

00:46:39.240 Um, into how you raise not just little kids, although that's what I'm most interested in since I have little kids myself, but also preteens and teens.

00:46:48.500 So can you start from the earliest years?

00:46:51.140 Like, when do we see the differences between boys and girls when it comes to how they respond to certain parenting tactics?

00:46:58.340 Well, again, beginning with that talk that I do for parents of two through seven-year-olds, uh, which is titled, uh, cancel the play date, make a family date instead.

00:47:09.940 But there's a lot more in that talk.

00:47:11.700 And the, and the key point of that talk is again, the overwhelming evidence we have from brain imaging, beginning with brain imaging of babies in their mother's womb.

00:47:21.780 And the third trimester of pregnancy is that boys mature much more slowly than girls.

00:47:29.580 And this is true all the way through girls reach full maturity and brain development by 22 years of age boys, not until 30 years of age.

00:47:38.160 And that explains a lot if you think about it.

00:47:40.420 Um, so again, a story from my own practice, uh, a mom of two children, an older daughter and a younger son said to me, you know, when my daughter was 18 months old, I could bounce her on my knee and I'd say Google Gaga.

00:47:56.300 And she'd say Google Gaga and I'd say, oh, and she'd say, oh, and we could do that for like 20 minutes.

00:48:02.220 And we just crack each other off.

00:48:03.800 We just get the biggest kick out of making nonsense noises and, and, and bouncing back and forth like that.

00:48:08.620 And I tried that with my son.

00:48:10.180 He's 18 months old now.

00:48:11.660 And I tried it with him and somebody rode their bike past the front door and he turned and looked at that and the house made a noise and he turned at that.

00:48:21.380 He's very distractible.

00:48:23.480 He's very distractible.

00:48:25.000 And I Googled that and it said, it could be a sign of autism.

00:48:29.660 What do you think, doctor?

00:48:31.380 Could he be on the spectrum?

00:48:32.640 I said, well, it, it could be a sign of autism, but it, it could also be a sign of boy.

00:48:39.500 And it, it could just be that he's a boy, but I could not reassure her.

00:48:44.040 This was many years ago, uh, many years ago.

00:48:47.560 I was less, I was less confident then than I am now.

00:48:52.380 She insisted on a referral.

00:48:55.180 She insisted on an evaluation.

00:48:57.240 I said, all right, treatment and learning centers, TLC, next to Shady Grove Hospital, Rockville, Maryland.

00:49:05.120 They're very good at play-based assessment of 18 months olds.

00:49:08.220 I shouldn't have done that.

00:49:09.420 That was a big mistake on my part.

00:49:12.120 I should have talked her out of it, but I agreed to write the referral.

00:49:17.920 Huge mistake.

00:49:19.180 So she comes back after the assessment and she's in tears.

00:49:23.300 She said, they're concerned.

00:49:24.580 She said, he said, he's significantly below average.

00:49:29.760 They estimate his vocabulary is 40 words.

00:49:31.860 They said the average 18 month old child should have a vocabulary of 65 words.

00:49:36.520 They said, he said 40 words.

00:49:39.200 Okay.

00:49:40.120 We actually have lots of research on this.

00:49:41.840 The average 18 month old girl has a vocabulary of about 90 words.

00:49:45.520 Average 18 month old boy has a vocabulary of about 40 words.

00:49:48.320 40 plus 90 is 130.

00:49:49.560 130 divided by two is 65.

00:49:50.780 The average 18 month old child does have a vocabulary of 65 words, but there's no such thing as a child.

00:49:59.420 There's only a boy or a girl.

00:50:01.720 Well, there is something called intersex, but intersex has a maximum incidence of about 2,000 and 10,000 live births.

00:50:09.120 So for all practical purposes, when we're talking about kids, we're talking about a boy or a girl.

00:50:14.800 A statement can be true. 0.96

00:50:16.980 The average 18 month old child has a vocabulary of 65 words.

00:50:21.400 That statement is both true, but it's also meaningless because you don't have a child.

00:50:25.560 You either have a boy or a girl.

00:50:27.480 For girls, it's 90.

00:50:28.680 For boys, it's 40.

00:50:29.780 Don't compare your kid to the average child.

00:50:34.060 Girls should be compared to girls. 1.00

00:50:35.460 Boys should be compared to boys.

00:50:37.040 This boy has a vocabulary of 40.

00:50:39.600 Average boy has a vocabulary of 40.

00:50:42.780 He is not below average.

00:50:45.140 He's fine.

00:50:46.040 There's nothing wrong with him.

00:50:47.300 And this was many years ago.

00:50:48.380 This boy did fine.

00:50:49.240 He is not on the spectrum.

00:50:50.780 So, yeah, what I say to parents who have both boys and girls is don't compare your son to your daughter.

00:51:00.140 That's a big mistake.

00:51:01.700 Right.

00:51:02.320 Boys, compare boys to boys, compare girls to girls. 0.64

00:51:06.160 Yeah.

00:51:06.420 They're very different.

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00:52:11.460 This seems to be an issue in school too.

00:52:16.160 And, you know, I hear a lot of people talk about how the normal school setup is harder for boys, especially young boys who are typically a lot more active, kind of what you just described.

00:52:27.220 I didn't think about it like that, that I'm not saying every school, but education in general is looking at, okay, what is the average for a child and not as what is best for boys versus what is best for girls because those two things aren't the same.

00:52:43.000 And you've talked about the change in kindergarten assessments and first grade assessments, like what is expected for a kindergartner and first grader versus what was expected 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

00:52:56.640 40 years ago.

00:52:57.560 40 years ago.

00:52:58.340 Okay, I'm curious if you can talk about that and if you see that having an impact on boys in particular in school.

00:53:07.740 So 40 years ago, a pastor named Robert Fulgham wrote a book called Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

00:53:14.540 Yes.

00:53:14.920 And he described his kindergarten experience and the experience that his kids had in kindergarten, which is every day you learn some and play some and sing some and dance.

00:53:26.120 And that was a pretty accurate description of kindergarten back in the 80s when his kids were in kindergarten, which was about duck, duck, goose and singing in rounds and arts and crafts and field trips to go to the park and splash in a pond and chase after tadpoles.

00:53:41.480 And that's actually what kids were doing in kindergarten 40 years ago.

00:53:46.680 But beginning in the 90s, there began to be an academic push to get kids to learn to read and write in kindergarten.

00:53:56.220 And as beginning 20 years ago, that academic push really took hold.

00:54:03.860 And kindergarten, what kids do at five years of age in the United States today, what kids do in kindergarten today is pretty much what kids did in first grade 30 or 40 years ago.

00:54:15.080 Kindergarten has become first grade.

00:54:17.020 Kindergarten today is about literacy and numeracy.

00:54:19.440 It's about learning to read and write and do arithmetic.

00:54:21.940 It's not at all what Pastor Fulgham had in mind when he wrote his book 40 years ago.

00:54:27.240 And that turns out to be a big problem because the language areas of the brain of the five-year-old boy, it turns out, look like the language areas of the three-year-old girl.

00:54:37.800 It is not developmentally appropriate to expect a five-year-old boy to sit and learn about phonics and diphthongs for 45 minutes. 0.86

00:54:46.020 And the result is that many five-year-old boys fail and decide that they're dumb and they decide that they hate school.

00:54:54.660 And researchers, most notably Debra Stipeck, Dean of Education for many years, Dean of Education at Stanford, found that these boys develop attitudes by the end of the kindergarten year. 0.97

00:55:06.680 They decide that they hate school and they decide that they're dumb.

00:55:10.960 And she and her students came back and tracked down these boys four years later. 0.99

00:55:15.880 And they find that they still hate school and they still believe they're dumb.

00:55:19.120 And other researchers have found that once those attitudes are formed, they are global, stable, and non-contingent. 0.98

00:55:25.900 Meaning this boy doesn't think global means he doesn't just think he's dumb in reading and writing. 0.98

00:55:30.580 He believes he's dumb in every subject. 0.96

00:55:33.820 Stable means you track him down in 10th grade. 1.00

00:55:37.680 He still believes that he's dumb and that the teacher hates him. 0.97

00:55:41.540 Non-contingent. 0.98

00:55:42.940 He doesn't think there's anything he can do about it or anything that you can do about it.

00:55:47.220 So the kindergarten year is very important.

00:55:51.340 And so I wrote a paper back in 2001 saying, don't enroll your boy in kindergarten at five years of age.

00:55:58.700 Give him the gift of an extra year of childhood.

00:56:01.940 Enroll him in kindergarten at six years of age.

00:56:05.320 Kindergarten has become first grade.

00:56:07.520 So enroll him in, quote, kindergarten at six years of age.

00:56:12.620 And I still think that's a good idea.

00:56:14.780 You know, I have noticed a change in that.

00:56:17.600 And maybe this is largely due to your paper.

00:56:20.080 But back when I was...

00:56:21.720 It's not due to the paper.

00:56:22.540 But a lot of parents have figured this out on their own.

00:56:24.680 Part of it. Maybe so.

00:56:25.660 But when I was in kindergarten, most of us were five turning six.

00:56:30.060 Well, nowadays, most kids are six.

00:56:33.340 And maybe they're five turning six.

00:56:35.760 But they're turning six really close to the beginning of the year.

00:56:38.440 And it's changed a lot for girls and boys.

00:56:41.900 Do you see this as a positive development that kids are starting kindergarten later than they were 30 years ago?

00:56:48.220 Well, unfortunately, that is true only in affluent communities.

00:56:52.360 Okay.

00:56:53.980 In affluent communities, parents have figured this out, that kids need that gift of an extra year of childhood.

00:57:00.420 And in affluent communities, they can afford an extra year of daycare or paid nursery school or whatever it is they're doing.

00:57:07.180 But in lower-income communities, it is not at all true.

00:57:11.480 Parents who cannot afford an extra year of daycare are putting their kids into public school kindergarten at the earliest opportunity.

00:57:19.280 And kids in low-income neighborhoods are starting kindergarten at five years of age.

00:57:23.680 And kindergartens in those low-income neighborhoods are still too hard for most five-year-olds, you're saying?

00:57:30.600 Yes, they're all about literacy and numeracy.

00:57:33.140 And so these kids are being set up for failure, especially in those areas, which means that we could see an even bigger education gap between the socioeconomic classes because of that.

00:57:47.040 Yes, and Richard Reeves wrote a book last year called Of Boys and Men, in which he said,

00:57:56.900 Hey, guess what?

00:57:57.520 I just came up with this incredibly brilliant idea to solve the problem of boys.

00:58:02.360 Let's start boys in kindergarten at six years of age.

00:58:04.820 He had not seen my article or read about it in the New York Times, which covered my article back in 2001.

00:58:15.240 But I'm glad he thought of it, came up with the idea independently 21 years later.

00:58:20.520 But he also has documented in his book that, indeed, boys of color in low-income neighborhoods are the ones who are suffering the most from this accelerated kindergarten curriculum.

00:58:35.220 Well, Dr. Sachs, thank you so much for all the work that you have done over the many years.

00:58:41.000 What would you say is the biggest shift that you've seen in parenting over the past 10 years?

00:58:47.000 And if you were to be as optimistic as possible, what is the shift that you hope to see in parenting over the next 10?

00:58:59.560 I would say the biggest shift is that parents, they are confused.

00:59:04.680 They think they have to choose between being either strict or loving.

00:59:10.080 I've been a family doctor for 30 years.

00:59:11.920 And 30 years ago, I would say many parents understood that the best parent is both strict and loving.

00:59:21.240 But today, I find many parents feel they have to choose between being strict or loving.

00:59:27.360 They don't understand that the best parents are both strict and loving.

00:59:31.420 And I hope that we can somehow change that, that we can.

00:59:34.900 And again, that's what I'm trying to achieve in my book The Collapse of Parenting, is to persuade parents, to show parents examples from my own practice and parents who are both, who are both strict and loving.

00:59:47.120 And I give examples from my own practice using real parents, who are both strict and loving, who've had wonderful outcomes of adult kids, who, again, who I name with their permission, who've turned out great.

01:00:03.240 Who maybe one young woman, Marlowe, wasn't happy with her parents as a teenager, thought they were too strict, and now loves her parents.

01:00:14.500 You can do this.

01:00:16.780 You can be both strict and loving.

01:00:19.340 That's really good.

01:00:20.220 Well, thank you so much, Dr. Saxon.

01:00:22.140 Your new edition, the second edition of The Collapse of Parenting, How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups, is out.

01:00:29.920 So thank you so much.

01:00:31.240 I appreciate it.

01:00:33.060 Thanks again for inviting me.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 15, 2025

Ep 1123 ｜ Why Boys Are Failing Kindergarten ｜ Guest： Dr. Leonard Sax

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