#448： Your Son Isn't Lazy — How to Empower Boys to Succeed
Episode Stats
Summary
Do you have a teenage boy who struggles in school, or a younger son who you can imagine struggling in school as he gets older? He may otherwise be a capable young man, but seems apathetic and unmotivated to the point you think he s not excelling simply because he s lazy. In this episode, Dr. Adam Price argues that the real reason many young men are not only lazy, but that they feel too much pressure to do so and are scared of failing.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you have a
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teenage boy who struggles in school or do you have a younger son who you can imagine struggling
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in school as he gets older? He may otherwise be a capable young man, but seems apathetic and
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unmotivated to the point you think he's not excelling simply because he's lazy. My guest today says that's
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the wrong conclusion to draw and one that leads to the wrong parenting approach to addressing it.
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His name is Adam Price and he's the child psychologist and the author of the book,
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He's Not Lazy, Empowering Your Son to Believe in Himself. Today on the show, Dr. Price argues that
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the real reason many young men are unmotivated is not that they don't care about succeeding,
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but that they feel too much pressure to do so and are scared of failing. We discuss why nagging and
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over-parenting simply exacerbates the issue and how stepping back and giving boys more autonomy
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can help them become more self-directed and find their footing. After the show's over,
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check out the show notes at aom.is slash notlazy.
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So you're a clinical psychologist who specializes in children and teenagers and because of your work,
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you've encountered a lot of high school boys who, you know, they don't have serious mental
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issues, no severe depression, you know, no severe learning disabilities, yet they just appear
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apathetic towards school and life. So can you kind of give us a composite description of this type of
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boy who no big, you know, depressive issues, but they just are unmotivated?
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Yeah. And Brad, I think it's good that you're making that distinction because,
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you know, depression looks different. Depression certainly has a feeling of apathy and lack of
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interest in things. We have a big word for it in psychiatry, which is anhedonia, which means losing
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interest, but that's different than just not having motivation for specific things. And, you know,
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I would though include ADHD in this. We don't think about that as a learning disability,
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but, but I think it, it could be considered that. And so actually some of my interest in this area
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of motivation, the teenage boys came from working with and evaluating a lot of, a lot of boys with
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ADHD. So my thoughts, my thinking in the book is for, for parents of boys who do and don't have
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ADHD, but I would just throw that in there. And so what I see over and over again are boys who
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on the outside look like they're impervious to academic pressure. They really look like they
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don't care. They make time for video games. They may make time for sports or their friends,
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but when it comes to school, they seem to find a way of flying under the radar of serious trouble.
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Yet their parents are really worried about them. They're thinking about their future.
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And what I've, what I've learned over time is that underneath these boys really are responding
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to a pressure they feel they can't handle. And so in the face of this pressure, what they do rather
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than face the competition is they decide to opt out altogether. And they say things like school really
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is important. I'm not going to be one of those nerds who studies all the time. I'm going to do fine.
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There's a lot of avoidance and denial that you see. The denial is everything's fine. It's going to work
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out. Avoidance seems to be the go-to defense for teenage boys, which is, I just won't think about
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it. I just won't deal with it. I'll do something that's more satisfying and pleasurable to me.
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Right. So I was going to say, so your book, He's Not Lazy, right? Because I think when most parents
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see a kid who doesn't really apply themselves at school and they're just playing videos and games
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all the time, they think, well, he's such a bright kid. If you weren't so lazy, if he just applied
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himself, he'd be a success. But it's not laziness, it's avoidance.
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It's not laziness. But what's underneath the avoidance is fear, right? So I hear a lot from
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parents, he's not working up to his potential. And by the way, this is true for girls too, but
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he's not working up to his potential. And so what parents are seeing is that a young man may be bright,
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as you said. But there's two things. The first thing is that academic achievement and achievement
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in general is not based just upon talent, right? It's based upon perseverance. It's based upon
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maturity. It's based upon organizational skills. There are a lot of things that go into doing well
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in school. So just because someone's bright doesn't mean that they can nail every subject.
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But the other thing is, I fear that all this talk about potential is really a wolf in sheep's
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clothing. Because I think even though it sounds like it's all about growth and development,
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what parents are really saying is, if my son were at the top of his class, if he worked as hard as
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he could all the time, he'd be at the top of his class. And that just isn't the case. You know,
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when I was a boy, my mom came home from a parent-teacher conference in fourth grade. And she said to me,
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your teacher said two things about you. One is you're not paying attention enough in school. You're
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talking too much to your neighbors, which really is a 1970s way of diagnosing ADHD. But then my mom
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said, the teacher said, you're not working up to your potential. And I really, I thought she was
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saying I wasn't smart enough, you know? And I've given this a lot of thought because I think, well,
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you know, listeners, have you achieved your potential today? Have I achieved my potential? I hope not.
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I hope it's something we're always working towards.
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I mean, so have you, you've been doing this for, you know, 20 plus years. Have you seen an increase
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of young men disengaging from school because of this pressure?
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I have. I think that we are seeing it in many, many different ways, you know? And part of the reason
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I wrote the book about boys is that boys often handle stress differently than girls. You know,
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girls have this pressure to be perfect and to do everything without breaking a sweat,
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by being beautiful, but also by meeting everybody's expectations. Boys, as I kind of
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described, they experience the stress by shutting down more often. And we have seen a rise in anxiety
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among teenagers, depression among teenagers, you know, a lot of behavioral problems. And a lot of
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people speculate what that's about. You know, I think a lot of it has to, I mean, the world is,
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you know, there's forces out there that kids are worried about in terms of their future,
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like global warming. I mean, kids are thinking about this stuff. But also, college has become
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a whole different ballgame than certainly when I went to college. It's more competitive,
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resources are tighter, you know, it's much more expensive. So, a lot of people who might have been
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able to afford it, you know, or kids could take out loans and be able to pay them back. It's just not
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accessible for a lot of families. So, I think that there is a lot more fear out there. Kids are
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under more pressure. Yeah. I mean, I think in the book, you describe what life was like, you know,
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before this intense pressure to go to college and to be the best in college and get scholarships.
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I mean, it seemed like there were more options for young men, right? You could go to college or,
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you know, you go learn a trade or you go do this. So, there was, I don't know, it wasn't that,
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the pressure wasn't so acute as it is today. I can tell you, I went to an Ivy League college and
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if I applied today with the same, you know, SAT scores and grades, they would laugh me off the
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campus. And a lot of my peers say that as well. It just is, it is different. You know, there's
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economic shifts, you know, even the way the internet has changed our economy and changed the type of
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jobs people can get. You know, all these things I think are factors, more temporary jobs. You know,
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I think this is all part of what kids are facing either directly or indirectly. And so, the future
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just doesn't feel as bright or wide open. And I thought it was an interesting comment you made.
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You know, today we call boys who are unmotivated in school lazy, but there was a time when we called
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them, oh, they're just a late bloomer, right? You know, I, yeah, I really appreciate you say that
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because I think what's happened is that, is that yesterday's late bloomer has become today's
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underachiever. And the thing is that a late bloomer, they, they still have time to catch up,
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but underachiever, he's already behind. And boys do take longer to develop and boys develop at
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different rates. And kids who have ADHD, they're, you know, their development, and we're talking about
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a broad scope of development, but particularly, you know, the, the executive functions,
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the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that plans ahead and that does organization,
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you know, that's going through a whole reorganization for teenagers, for all teenagers.
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And if you have ADD, it's, you're going to be even 20% behind, you know, what we consider normal
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development. So we really need space for boys to feel like they can be late bloomers because many
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of them are many of them. I've seen so many kids who I saw in high school and I get feedback as they
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go into college and even the workforce, they end up doing okay.
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Yeah. I mean, I think I've read research where like, basically it's like the adult,
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like their brain doesn't really settle. Their adult brain doesn't settle until like 25, 26.
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Right. And you're, and you're, and you're expected at age 18 to like pretty much have your adult life
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Yeah. I think parents don't realize that. I think we, we, we forget how disorganized we were as,
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as teenagers and kids. We think we were, you know, more on top of it, more focused. And,
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and, you know, I think what we're trying to do is I think because parents are afraid of the future
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and because they're worried about it, you know, they're trying to take full control of it by,
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by offering tutoring and, and, and even therapy and, you know, all sorts of services. And, and
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the problem is, you know, we can't commandeer the future. And even though, you know, the,
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the natural course of development is to take your time to develop and to grow, we're trying to speed
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up the process. We're trying to raise kids who at 18 are ready to go out there and make their own
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decisions and, and, and be full functioning adults and it reach their potential. And it's just not
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possible. So you related to, related to this just a moment ago, but let's kind of get into the details
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of it. What is going on in the body and the mind of a teenage boy that exacerbates that feeling of
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pressure, that, so that intense pressure where you're, the only option is to just give up.
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You know, I, I, there's a lot there in that question because obviously there's a lot going on
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in adolescent development. There's obviously puberty. There's obviously all of the changes
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that are going on in, in a teenager's body as they mature sexually. There's the effect of hormones
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on both boys and girls, which can create a lot of moodiness and a lot of, a lot of, you know,
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ups and downs. We know all that. And, and, and so what I would focus on in terms of
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the effect of that on academic achievement on motivation is that a lot of what happens for
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teenagers is that they have a, it's almost an identity crisis, Brett, although I'm not so sure
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crisis fits because it's really an opportunity. But, you know, when, when, when, when you're a child,
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you look at the world through your parents' eyes and, you know, they're the ruler of the realm and all
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is good in the kingdom. And kids tend to look at, they tend to follow the same sports teams as their
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parents or, or, or the same political party, if they're, you know, so inclined, whatever.
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But then as they become teenagers, they realize, well, you know, I got to differentiate here. I,
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I got to, I want to, and have to become my own person. And so what they do is they try on different
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identities and some of those identities fit and some of those identities don't fit. And one day your
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teenager will come home and say, I'm a vegetarian. You know, I, I don't want to hurt animals. And
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sometimes that will stick, but often it doesn't because that they're going to then try on a different
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identity. What happens with underachievers though, is that they're scared of doing well in school.
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Or the other thing for boys is they don't get a lot of social status by doing well in school.
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Boys get social status by what they can do, how far they can throw a baseball, how far they can,
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you know, run, how fast they can run on a football field. They don't get status
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for doing well in school. So that's not going to become their identity. So they'll tend to push that
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identity down and look for other identities to promote. That's the first part of it. The second
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part of, of, of development that I think is really important is ambivalence. Teenagers don't enter,
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uh, adolescence full-fledged wanting to be adults and having their own dependence. They'll tell you
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that. They'll scream and yell when you give them a curfew, but there's a part of them that really wants
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to stay a child and be taken care of. And so you'll see them, parents will see them acting like
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babies at home, you know, expecting to be waited on, expected to be, you know, or wanting to be
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taken care of in that way. And then pushing back and saying, you know, no, I can make my own decisions
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on my own person. So, you know, I call adolescence the bridge of ambivalence. And so I think a lot of
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this gets acted out in, in academic achievement also, because there are some kids who recognize that
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if they do well in school, it means that they are growing up, that they are going to do better.
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But then there's another thing that happens, which is that for the underachiever, I call it the, the,
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uh, the, uh, the fight for false autonomy, because what they do is their parents are pressuring them.
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You got to do better in school. You got to do better in school. So they feel like I can exert my
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independence and my autonomy by making my own decisions and not do well in school. I can make
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that choice for myself. So they feel like they're being autonomous when really they're, you know,
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they're, they're closing off options for themselves. And then, then the more the parents push them,
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the more parents get a paradoxical response is it is that the kid then uses that as leverage to
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fight against the parent for their own independence. And it, it's no longer about their own conflict
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about doing well in school or worrying about it. It's about their conflict with their parents.
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All right. So the pressure, the increased pressure actually backfires. I think that's the typical
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response from parents like, well, we're going to, we're going to lay down the law. We're going to
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do these things. And then that just doesn't work. Cause it's a power struggle and then you're always
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going to lose. It's a power struggle. And you know that, yeah, I don't know if you, uh, have teenagers
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or you just remember being a teenager, but power struggle is like the, uh, epitome of, of being a
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teenager. Cause it's a battle of will and they're fighting for their autonomy and they'll usually win
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because they don't have anything to lose. Right. They don't care necessarily if they're
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disrespectful or swear or whatever. And you do, and you're not going to, hopefully a parent won't
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lose it. So, you know, the way out of that is always to offer a teenager a choice. Sometimes
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one of the, one of the choices is not something they want to do. Like you can, you know, you can
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clean up your room and then go out with your friends or you can not clean up your room and stay
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home. It's your choice. But I want to go back to something that you brought up earlier that I think
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is really important. And that's this concept of laziness. Cause I said briefly that underneath
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laziness is fear underneath this sense of apathy is really self doubt, really a question as, as we
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were talking about before, about whether a young man feels like they can handle the pressure.
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And so calling a kid lazy only serves to alienate them more to make them, you know, you're calling
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them a name and they just feel worse about themselves and then angrier at you. So that's something
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else that often backfires. And I don't really believe in laziness. I believe that there are
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things that get in the way, such as what we're, what we're touching on today.
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Yeah. I mean, these kids sometimes, oftentimes aren't lazy when they find something to interest
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them, right? They'll apply themselves heavily to sports, maybe video games, or maybe some other
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hobby that they, they enjoy music could be anything. And they're, they're not lazy there.
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That goes back to your initial point about depression, right? There, they, they, there are certain
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things that they find pleasure in and that they're motivated for not in every, not in every kid. And
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you know, it's also funny because I hear parents say a lot, you know, I want my, I want my teenager
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or even my child to find a passion. A neighbor of mine once came up to me and said, you know,
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should I push my daughter who was eight years old at swimming? And I said, I don't know, maybe if,
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you know, if she, if she wants to, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, throw her into the pool.
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And he said, but don't I have a responsibility because she's talented. And I thought, Ooh,
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that's, that's not necessarily going to go in the right direction because kids don't always have a
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passion. You know, sometimes they don't develop it until they're older. The flip side of that though,
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is I've also seen kids who have an incredible passion and have developed a business for themselves.
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One young man I worked with was failing out of school, but making all this money doing it,
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being a DJ. And he had a whole film production company. I really wasn't like, he needed to graduate
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from college, but I wasn't too worried about him being successful because a lot of the people that,
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you know, become superstars in certain fields, they started when they were young. So, you know,
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there's always a balance. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good point of how parenting has changed
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because you mentioned the kid who, you know, in high school started the successful DJ company.
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I would say maybe 70 years ago, if that was the case, you know, and he dropped out of high school,
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the parents would be like, well, okay, that's fine. As long as you're making money. Cause I remember,
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reading, you know, read the biographies of these, these people from the, like the early 20th century,
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late 19th century. And you have these like 14 year old kids who they drop out of school and they go
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off on an adventure or do something. And the parents are like, oh, okay. I mean, I think it was like,
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you know, Jack London would like, you know, when he was a teenager, just leave and he would be gone
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for months and not telling anyone where he went. And then he'd come back and, oh, hey, Jack,
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how's it going? And not a big deal. If that happened today, it would be pandemonium.
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Yeah. My grandfather grew up in New York city. And when he was a boy in the depression, he would,
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he lived in the Bronx and he would tell his parents, I'm going to, I'm going out. And he
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would walk from the Bronx down to Manhattan, which is, that's where I'm sitting right, seated right
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now, but it's quite a walk, walk around central park. It would take all day and then walk home.
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It was, it was, it was like, you know, 11, 12 years old. That wouldn't happen today. But,
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you know, back then we didn't have, you didn't need a graduate degree to do everything.
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You know, there, there are degrees now. I mean, a lot of boys are interested in sports. And so
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they go to college and they major in sports marketing or business, business sports. You
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didn't need to use to do that maybe even 10 years ago. So that's another way that kids feel pressure
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because the, you know, the entry bar has been raised by all the requirements that are needed,
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even an MBA, you didn't need that to go into business. You just, you know, so things, yeah,
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things are very different than that. No, no doubt. The other thing though, is where, where I also hear
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parents talk a lot about achievement is with athletics and sports. And, you know, it's the,
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it's the same thing that applies to school. Well, he's such a gifted athlete. Why isn't he kicking
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the soccer ball, you know, practicing his, his shots on goal, you know, when he comes home from school or,
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or, or, you know, practicing layups. And so parents expect kids to apply the same level of maturity and
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achievement to sports that they sometimes do for school, not every kid is able or willing to do
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that. And, you know, they're, they're also not necessarily headed for professional sports or even
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scholarships. Although a lot of parents, you know, hope that with, as I said before, the rise in, in,
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in a college tuition. So that's sometimes a part of it.
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So besides the intense pressure, maybe nagging, we'll call it, that parents do on a lazy son,
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what are some other responses you see parents take when they see an unmotivated teenage boy?
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Well, I, you know, I'll go back to this, these, these concepts that I talked about,
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because they're really central to what I write about in the book, the paradoxical response. So
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prodding, poking, pleading, nagging, over parenting, looking at the, whatever online grade website
00:21:54.360
school system uses, which is, boy, is that going down a rabbit hole? Because if, you know,
00:21:59.380
if, if a parent is looking at that every day or even every week, the teachers don't always put,
00:22:05.280
you know, the kids say, hey, the teacher hasn't posted the grades. Well, sometimes they haven't
00:22:08.860
because it's, you know, it's another responsibility for the teacher and you can't measure what's going
00:22:12.740
on on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, so parents will just get involved in all sorts of ways,
00:22:19.140
going, you know, walking into a kid's room and saying, you know, do you need anything when they're
00:22:23.280
really checking on their homework or making sure they're doing their homework. And kids,
00:22:27.880
don't get me wrong. Kids need structure. They need supervision. They need limits.
00:22:33.680
And I'm not an advocate of, you know, letting a teenager do whatever they want and fail if they
00:22:38.420
fail, but they do need some space to make mistakes. How else are they going to learn
00:22:43.080
to deal with anxiety? How else are they going to learn to deal with adversity if they don't make
00:22:48.220
mistakes and learn from them? That's really what autonomy is about. It's not just about making,
00:22:52.900
you know, doing whatever you want. It's about making a choice and then seeing what the consequences are.
00:22:57.400
So what I lay out in the book is a program for parents to be able to step back and set some
00:23:06.060
parameters, work with kids on some goals, figure out if they need some support, and then step back
00:23:13.120
and let their kid figure it out and maybe even not do so well. And it's really hard. You know,
00:23:19.800
parents, sometimes parents have to, one parent even told me it was so hard to keep from going in to get
00:23:24.960
their kid out of bed in the morning. They went to the gym because they knew they needed to be out
00:23:31.060
of the house and then that, and their son needed to be able to get, and that's a big one, but to be
00:23:35.880
able to get out of bed on their own or not. And, you know, and it worked. It took, it took, it took a
00:23:39.940
couple of weeks, but, but this young man did eventually after being late, after getting
00:23:44.360
detentions, he finally figured out how to do it.
00:23:47.240
I think another response, a common response parents do besides the pressuring, like they'll just
00:23:51.160
basically do everything for their kids. So their kid will, I mean, I think the idea is that they're,
00:23:55.840
if they do everything for their kid, chores and whatever, like the kid will have more time to
00:24:00.480
focus on schoolwork, but that also doesn't work as well.
00:24:04.780
Uh, it was, I think, I believe it was Madeline Levine who said, she's a psychologist who writes
00:24:11.160
about over-parenting and affluent kids. And I believe it was her, I don't want to misattribute it,
00:24:15.920
but I believe she said, don't treat your kids like royalty who are expected to bring honor to
00:24:21.820
the family, you know, make them do chores. And, and, and that's, you know, I tell parents the same
00:24:26.960
thing, make them take out the trash. It's really important. And that's the first part of it. And
00:24:32.660
the second part of it is over-parenting as we've talked about. And I, and I talk about the four or
00:24:38.780
five different types of over-parenting that we get into with kids, different, you know, the warrior,
00:24:43.040
the perfectionist to talk about that and how to deal with that. But I also tell parents to
00:24:49.600
do this experiment, get some paper and you probably need a whole pad and write down everything you do
00:24:56.700
for your kids, even the little ones, write down everything you do for them in a week and then
00:25:01.200
look at the list and then figure out what are the things they can do for themselves, cross it off the
00:25:07.560
list. Then look at the things that they can do part of, they need some help with, but, you know,
00:25:12.900
especially younger kids, we call that in, in education, scaffolding, giving them the support
00:25:17.800
for the part of the thing they can't do yet. And then letting them figure out the rest, you know,
00:25:22.520
the, the, you know, the, the, if you remember in primary school, the paper that had the,
00:25:27.240
the two dark lines and the dotted line in the middle, I don't even know if they still use that
00:25:31.140
anymore, but, you know, that was an example of, well, here's where the lowercase letter goes,
00:25:35.000
that's scaffolding, but it, but, but around the house, it's, you know, let me figure out what,
00:25:39.460
you know, maybe they can't, they can't do the laundry, although most kids can, but they can,
00:25:44.120
you know, they can get their clothes down there or whatever. And then what are the things that you
00:25:48.100
really need to do for them? They can't do for themselves. And it's usually pretty eyeopening
00:25:52.360
and it gives parents a chance to step back and let kids have more independence and do,
00:25:57.900
do more for themselves. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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00:28:10.340
And now back to the show. So going back to a more appropriate response that's more productive.
00:28:15.340
So you talked about setting boundaries. So what does that look like? So you're setting boundaries,
00:28:20.140
but allowing them autonomy within those boundaries. What would a good boundary look like that
00:28:25.880
also allows for autonomy in a teenage boy? Well, I think about limit setting as a fence you build
00:28:33.040
around your child and you build it around your child to protect them. The thing about that fence
00:28:39.200
is it can't be static. It can't be grounded in cement. It has to grow. It has to become bigger
00:28:45.780
as a child becomes bigger so that they have more opportunities to explore, to make mistakes,
00:28:53.860
to have fun. It should never also for teenagers be so high that they can't climb over it occasionally.
00:29:00.580
They're going to get into trouble, but that's where they learn and that's where they understand
00:29:05.240
their limits. For things that involve safety, limits are absolute. You know, there's no question
00:29:11.120
about letting a new driver who says, oh yeah, I want to go visit my friend at college, you know,
00:29:16.100
four hours away. I just got my license. No, I don't think so. You need a little bit more
00:29:20.700
experience with that. Drugs and alcohol, you know, when you, and that's, I'm sure that's a whole other
00:29:26.580
podcast, but when you, when you catch a kid doing something, you need to, you need to set a limit.
00:29:33.820
It could be grounding. It doesn't have to be, you know, that they can't go out of the house ever again,
00:29:38.120
but nor should it be, you know, well, they're safer if they're doing it in my house because they need
00:29:42.860
to know where the limits are. They need to know someone is watching them. It's the, it's the kids
00:29:47.640
whose parents condone that I find get into the most trouble. And the kids who know that their
00:29:51.400
parents are watching and they get into trouble, they don't necessarily stop, but they definitely
00:29:55.140
stay within a safe range. So that's, that, those are the safety issues. There's a whole set of,
00:30:00.580
of, of, of issues that probably go in a different basket. Sometimes they're important to enforce.
00:30:06.580
Sometimes they're not important to enforce. Sometimes it's really important to set a bedtime.
00:30:11.360
Other times you can be more flexible. Obviously it's related to what's going on in school.
00:30:15.600
Sometimes there's, there is less homework and there can be more, you know, more flexibility.
00:30:21.140
Other times you want to say you got to do your homework first. Again, this is for younger kids.
00:30:25.080
And then there's a basket of things that you may feel are important to you, but you can give the
00:30:33.740
kids some autonomy. Clothing, you know, is, is a, is a, is a good example of that, but that's just one
00:30:40.040
example. And, and, and, and, and different people have different, you know, sets of standards for
00:30:43.800
that. But when it comes to schoolwork though, and that's really what we're talking about,
00:30:48.860
my suggestion is to set a standard with, with kids, which is usually to get Bs. You know,
00:30:57.220
if they want to get A's, that's up to them. A lot of parents don't like to hear this, but,
00:31:00.760
but that's what I believe. They may get a C in a, in a, in a class that's difficult for them,
00:31:05.660
but basically to get Bs and then to ask them how they're going to do it and then to step back and
00:31:12.460
then to observe how they're doing. Probably not to wait for a whole semester, but also not to do
00:31:17.680
it on a daily basis. So somewhere mid-semester to see how things are going. And if they're not
00:31:22.120
achieving what you think they should or what you've agreed that they should, that's reasonable,
00:31:26.600
then it's time to say, you know what? I think you have too much free time.
00:31:30.640
I think maybe we need to cut down on or eliminate social life, computer time, whatever, so that you
00:31:40.920
have more time to do your homework. If a kid has social issues, you don't necessarily want to take
00:31:45.640
that away, but there are plenty of other things too. That is not going to force the kid to do their
00:31:50.220
homework. You can't, you can, you know, you, you can put them in front of a computer and a desk. You
00:31:54.860
can't actually make them work, but it'll make it much more, much more possible that they might.
00:31:59.660
And so, yeah, within those boundaries and you give them those choices, you have to let them
00:32:03.800
fail because they're going to flounder and you have to be okay with that.
00:32:07.480
You have to let them flounder. Yeah. I think that's really important. What's happening that
00:32:13.980
we see more and more, and Brett, I see it in my practice, even just more this year than last year
00:32:19.180
and last year than the year before, are kids that go to college and can't cut it and, and have to
00:32:25.120
take a leave. Um, I, I often have a few kids in my practice that are in that situation, but it's,
00:32:31.620
you know, it seems like I've been flooded with it, you know, uh, last spring and even this fall.
00:32:36.980
And part of the problem is that we're not letting kids figure out how to do things on their own and
00:32:44.200
manage their own anxiety. And we can talk about that in a minute, but, you know, manage the anxiety
00:32:48.760
that comes from not being sure whether you are able to do something, uh, figure out a math problem,
00:32:53.660
write a paper, master a sports, a sports skill. And so by rushing in too quickly and over parenting,
00:33:01.500
we're preventing kids from learning about themselves in ways that are really important.
00:33:06.620
We want parents to ask me all the time, you know, what, how can I give my kid coping skills?
00:33:12.100
You know, well, the way to do that is to let back and let them cope, give them something to cope with
00:33:16.700
and let them cope, you know, to let them have a little risk in their life. There's actually a,
00:33:21.340
uh, a school in, in, in, in England that decided this, this is for younger kids, but they wanted
00:33:26.480
to bring risk back to the playground. They'd made it too safe. So they, they brought in things that
00:33:31.980
had sharp edges and they brought scissors back into the classroom. And the teacher said, uh, you know,
00:33:37.360
for the first time they cut themselves, they learned to be more careful. So I don't know if I
00:33:41.200
advocate all that, but, uh, I think it's really important. And, and, you know, I hear about,
00:33:46.700
parents who, and this is the extreme, but parents, one parent who went to a college admissions
00:33:53.080
interview with the kid and had the kid sit in the waiting room. I heard this from a college
00:33:56.840
admissions officer. Well, he went in and, and told the college, college admissions officer how great
00:34:02.660
his kid was. It's kind of crazy. There's, there's been reports of parents even going to work with
00:34:07.880
their kids or calling their kid's boss as a young adult. So this is really preventing kids from being
00:34:13.880
able to trust that their, their own independence and their own future.
00:34:17.720
Yeah. I mean, it's funny that parents are like, I want my kid to be responsible,
00:34:20.380
but I'm not going to let them be responsible. It's like, it doesn't make any sense.
00:34:25.780
And it comes from a place of caring. It comes from a place of love.
00:34:29.340
It comes with the best intentions. It comes from, as we said before, a worry and a fear about the future.
00:34:35.760
You know, parents aren't doing this just because they want to make,
00:34:38.120
you know, make life more difficult for their kids. They want to make it easier,
00:34:43.060
but that's, yeah, the end result is not so good.
00:34:45.880
And then some of the consequences too, like say, like cleaning your room, you talk about this,
00:34:50.720
like, all right, can he needs to clean his room or do his, if, you know, he needs to put his laundry
00:34:54.400
in the laundry basket or do his laundry. Well, if he doesn't do that, then he's got to suffer the
00:34:59.540
consequences of wearing smelly clothes and you have to be okay with that because that's that,
00:35:04.820
that's how he's going to learn. This is, this is really true. And I have actually
00:35:08.700
heard kids tell me that they, they, they had other kids tell them your clothes smell. And that's when
00:35:14.860
they decided to do something about it. But laundry is a great example because, you know, you say
00:35:21.040
laundry day is on Wednesday or whenever it is, and your clothes have to be in the hamper on Wednesday.
00:35:26.760
And if they're not in the hamper on Wednesday, you have to do the laundry. And I'm going to show you
00:35:31.420
how I'm going to teach you now how to do the laundry, you know, make it simple, cold water
00:35:36.120
only, you know, and separate the college from the white clothes and you're all set. Good to go.
00:35:41.860
And then if they don't, then they don't do their own laundry, then they have to wear those clothes.
00:35:46.920
Yeah. So that's, that's, that's a perfect example. The room thing is a little more difficult.
00:35:51.380
Um, I think every parent has their own feelings about this. I do believe that to some extent a kid
00:35:59.340
should be able to have that as, as their own domain. It's probably not worth the power struggle
00:36:04.300
every day. There does need to be, uh, hygiene. So food in the room is not a good idea. Every,
00:36:12.380
it could be every once a week, the room needs to be, you know, picked up and clean so that it can be
00:36:17.720
vacuumed and dusted, but that, that's once a week or whatever. It doesn't have to be every day. That's,
00:36:23.260
that's how I feel about that. Different parents feel differently though.
00:36:26.320
Yeah. Here's an example of my own life. After reading your book, I was like, I want to put
00:36:29.480
this stuff into practice. I have a son, he's eight, right? So he's not a teenager yet, but I'm,
00:36:33.860
I want to inculcate these, this sense of responsibility in them. And last week he gets
00:36:38.980
like homework every night. It's like a worksheet takes like five minutes and it goes in a folder
00:36:43.740
and we're on the driving him to school and he realized he forgot his folder. And he's like, dad,
00:36:49.580
you got to go get my folder and bring it to me. I'm like, sorry, man. Like it's not my job.
00:36:54.980
And he was just like, Oh no, it's going to, it's like the end of the world. But yeah,
00:36:59.580
the consequence was he had, he had to miss like 10 minutes of recess. So he couldn't do his
00:37:03.020
worksheet. But ever since then, yeah, I didn't go get his, I didn't go get his folder ever since
00:37:07.700
then. The guy, the kid's been on top of it. Like at night, he has everything packed and ready to go.
00:37:12.600
Haven't had to worry about it since then. So it works.
00:37:16.120
That's a great example. Um, and you know, you already did some scaffolding by giving him that
00:37:21.240
notebook to put his homework in, right? You gave him that you organized that for him, but, but,
00:37:26.180
but Brett, was that easy for you or was it a little bit hard to, to, you know, to do that now
00:37:30.620
that he was going to, it was pretty, it was pretty easy. I don't know. I didn't have a problem.
00:37:36.180
It's just, it's, it's just 10 minutes of recess. You're going to be okay.
00:37:40.560
Good. Well, that's good. And that's a good attitude, but a lot of parents really have trouble
00:37:44.220
seeing their kids suffer and be uncomfortable. And you know, that's part of the root of this.
00:37:48.900
Yeah. I read an article. It's not, there's, we're seeing not just helicopter parenting,
00:37:53.260
it's lawnmower parenting. And it's because the parents mow over all the obstacles that come up
00:38:00.200
for their kids. Yeah. I've seen that too. Yeah. In, in, in, in, in Sweden, they call it
00:38:06.820
curling parenting because if you've ever watched curling on the Olympics, parents sweep all the
00:38:11.700
obstacles out of the way. So I think that's my favorite. No, that's a good one. I like that.
00:38:15.480
And so let's, how long, let's say you start working with a unmotivated boy, you start providing
00:38:21.840
him more autonomy and making choices and floundering. Like how long does it typically take? I'm sure it's
00:38:29.160
different for every boy, but how long do you start seeing the change where you start seeing them
00:38:33.200
taking on more responsibility and making and getting more motivated about say schoolwork?
00:38:37.900
You know, I have yet to be asked that question and, and it, and I'm really glad that you did
00:38:42.680
because you asked me because it takes a while. You know, sometimes it can take three years of high
00:38:49.380
school for some kids. Remember those are the late bloomers. That young man may not go to the college
00:38:58.060
that if he's college bound and college is an option, he may not go to the college
00:39:03.340
that his parents dreamed of sending him to. He may not go to the college that he wanted to go to.
00:39:10.600
He may not even go to the college that his friends are going to. But the thing is,
00:39:14.080
first of all, he will probably go to a college that will be the best fit for him.
00:39:19.860
He probably will be a kind of kid who needs to be a big fish in a little pond. And that's where he,
00:39:24.620
that's where he will blossom and grow. And the other thing is that, you know, with the competition in
00:39:29.140
colleges, these institutions, they all offer such amazing things. I mean, it's unbelievable. You
00:39:35.120
know, it doesn't have to be, have the stamp of Harvard to be a phenomenal institution. So,
00:39:39.920
so sometimes it takes that long. It depends on the kid. It usually takes a while. What I see in my
00:39:45.620
practice, you know, and, and as a therapist, I can, I, I have different ways of talking about these
00:39:51.580
things with kids that parents don't necessarily have because of the parents. And my approach is always to
00:39:57.960
try to help the, the, the teenager figure out what's in it for them, you know, to separate it out
00:40:06.460
from their parents' need. This is a little bit different, but it's an example. I saw a teenager
00:40:12.220
who started in therapy not too long ago and his parents forced him to come to the first session
00:40:16.180
and he was really unhappy about it, but he came. And so about midway through, I said, well,
00:40:21.940
or actually at the end, I said, you know, you seem to have talked a lot today. Why don't you come
00:40:26.300
back next week and come back for you, not for your parents and then see how therapy is. And you
00:40:33.340
know, he really likes being in therapy now, but that's an example from a little bit of a different
00:40:37.900
arena that comes to mind about looking into the teenager and seeing how they can, they can get
00:40:44.520
more engaged. It's frustrating for me sometime because, you know, I feel like I'm, I'm being paid
00:40:49.560
to do this. I need to produce results. And sometimes it's, it takes longer than I wanted to.
00:40:55.120
But what I do notice is along the way, the young man in therapy or the young woman too is, is getting
00:41:02.720
more confident. They're fighting less with their parents. They are, there are signs that they're
00:41:08.720
finding school a little more interesting and they're happier. So I, I can kind of monitor things
00:41:14.160
along the way that lead to, you know, improvement in school. I once gave a young man a challenge. I
00:41:21.080
said, I want you to turn in your homework every day for this marking period. I don't care if it's
00:41:30.360
incomplete. Maybe sometimes it'll just have your name on it. Maybe sometimes it'll be perfect.
00:41:36.040
I want you to commit to turning in your assignments every day, which he did. He turned in his assignments
00:41:40.460
every single day. And that was what changed, turned things around for him. He's now, he's actually now
00:41:46.060
a teacher. He got a, I got a graduate degree in teaching. Wow. So as we've been having this
00:41:51.040
conversation, you know, we, our conversation has been about what we can do for kids. And your primary
00:41:57.380
focus is counseling children, but I imagine you have to do some counseling with parents at the same
00:42:02.260
time. Unwittingly, like they don't know that the parents are getting counseled, but you have to do
00:42:06.360
that in order to help the kid. Yeah, I do. And I work with adults too in my practice. And so sometimes
00:42:12.580
I'm coaching parents. Sometimes parents come to see me about, you know, how, and that's really touching
00:42:17.980
when a parent is willing to get into therapy themselves to figure out how to help and improve
00:42:22.580
their relationship with their kid. But yeah, there is a lot of parent coaching that goes on. It is often what I
00:42:29.060
want to do is have a family session and have the parents come in with the teenager. 99% of the
00:42:35.920
time the teenager does not want to do that and refuses, but would be fine with me talking to the
00:42:41.180
parent. And, you know, it takes time for the parents too. It takes time for them to trust me, to trust the
00:42:46.760
process and mostly to trust their kids. And, you know, what I say to parents is parenting isn't a skill.
00:42:52.900
It's a relationship. It's not a skill. It's a relationship. And if you trust the relationship, things are
00:43:00.020
going to work out in the end. And I think that that's very reassuring for parents. Some, they usually,
00:43:05.920
often get the message to back off, but it's sometimes harder to put into place. And then
00:43:11.180
there's also work that I do with kids in terms of being better advocates for themselves, being
00:43:16.740
respectful, but stating their needs with their parents when parents are too demanding. And that's
00:43:22.440
also really important for kids because it gives them a voice. I often prepare the parents first and
00:43:27.740
I don't, you know, I'm not trying to incite riots here. And I have to be respectful of every
00:43:32.300
family's values. But nonetheless, it's really important to be able to have kids and parents
00:43:40.180
Right. Because I imagine, I mean, a lot of the problem, I mean, issues with the parents putting
00:43:44.160
pressure on their kids is the parents feel like their identity and their worth is tied up in how
00:43:49.360
their kids do in school. And if they're failing at school, it means they failed as a parent. And
00:43:57.380
You know, that's very insightful. If you ever get tired of being a podcast host,
00:44:00.720
you can become a therapist because that's very insightful. And I think it's true. I think that
00:44:05.920
we put everything into our kids. You know, it's the most powerful relationship there is. You know,
00:44:12.820
it's different than a relationship with your spouse. It's different than a relationship with your
00:44:16.500
parents. You know, parents hope that their kids are going to have a different life than they had,
00:44:22.680
that make different, you know, and not make the same mistakes than they made. And, you know,
00:44:28.260
I often tell parents, you can't shortcut that. They need to learn. They need to make, you know,
00:44:32.260
they need to have some pain, as I said before. So, so it's really hard. And, and some parents
00:44:37.900
over-identify with their kids. I have an exercise in my book about that because sometimes parents
00:44:43.120
feel like it's their problem. You know, they see their kid go through something and they think,
00:44:48.160
well, I went through that. It must be the same. You know, Jim must, Jimmy must,
00:44:52.680
be having the same reaction I had when I was cut from the team or whatever. And it's not always
00:44:57.260
the case. So there's also space that needs to be given. Yeah. I heard this great piece of
00:45:02.600
parental advice that I've sort of used as a guiding principle with my parenting. It's like,
00:45:07.040
your job as a parent, your primary job as a parent is to keep your kids safe physically,
00:45:11.960
right? It's not your job to make them happy. And I was like, you know what? That's good advice.
00:45:16.800
I can't, you can't make someone happy. You can provide, you know, a foundation for that,
00:45:21.420
but it's up, you know, they've got to make those choices for themselves.
00:45:24.640
I really liked that. I really liked that. And it makes me think of something a parent said to me
00:45:28.520
years ago, which is, I don't want my kid to be happy. I want them to be able to work hard because
00:45:33.460
if they work hard, they'll be happy. No, I love that. I mean, and also another issue that parents
00:45:38.700
might have, let's say there's a parent listening to the show and they've got a son who is unmotivated in
00:45:44.460
school and you're trying to talk to him about it, but he just clams up. I mean, any insights that
00:45:51.560
parents can use to, you know, get a disengaged boy to, to talk to them?
00:45:55.840
Oh yeah. And, and there's a lot to be said about that. I'll tell you the most important thing a
00:46:00.980
parent can do to get a child to talk, keep their mouth shut. Because what happens is that we want to
00:46:08.540
give advice. We want to give solutions. We want to tell them what we went through and, you know,
00:46:15.700
it's true for parents. It's true for therapists. The less you say, the more the person on the other
00:46:20.600
side of the room is going to say when they know that you're listening. So if, if, if that's the
00:46:26.580
only thing, you know, a parent can take from this, that's, that's really powerful. The second thing
00:46:32.120
is to use empathy and to validate how a child feels. And this isn't true for kids, just for
00:46:41.320
kids. It's true for adults. It's true for everybody. We want to have our feelings validated. Now that
00:46:47.420
does not mean that you have to agree with the feeling, right? They're just feelings. It doesn't
00:46:51.180
mean you have to agree with the perspective. All it means is that you understand where the person's
00:46:57.720
coming from. And you can say, I understand where you're coming from, or I get that, but, you know,
00:47:02.580
it's really important to do the work to really get it, to really understand, you know, a kid comes
00:47:07.820
home and says, my teacher hates me, you know? Well, probably not, right? Kids often say that it's rare
00:47:15.340
for a teacher really to hate a kid. And, but the first thing that you want to do is say, oh, you know,
00:47:20.620
you're perfect. How could anybody hate you? Or I'm sure they don't hate you. Well,
00:47:25.760
don't do that so quickly, you know, try to get their perspective. But how do you get their
00:47:30.420
perspective? By asking questions. So rather than first listen, but also ask questions and try to
00:47:38.920
ask questions that get at what they're feeling. Now this process is going to take some time
00:47:44.260
because the teenager is going to have to trust that you really are interested in listening and
00:47:50.080
understanding. Not trust that you love them, not trust that you're taking care of them, but trust that
00:47:54.720
their opinion counts because that's really so important for teenagers to feel as we were talking
00:47:59.960
about before with identity and autonomy and transitioning to adulthood, you know? And they
00:48:04.500
sometimes have some wacky ideas and they think they figured everything out. I love this quote. It's
00:48:09.220
Mark Twain who said, you know, my father, my father didn't, when I was 16, my father didn't know
00:48:14.120
anything. You know, he didn't understand how the world worked. I'm amazed at how smart he got by the
00:48:18.960
time I turned 23. So that's kind of how they look at things. But, but I think that listening,
00:48:25.200
asking questions, validating feelings, getting them to talk more is, is really important. And
00:48:33.320
if they're really clamming up, you can, you can say, well, you know, we'll talk about this later,
00:48:40.000
but we, but we really need to talk about it. So I want you to think about this and I will really,
00:48:44.340
I will set some ground rules and the ground rules are, I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to
00:48:48.200
give you advice. I just want to hear it from you. And sometimes a parent just has to listen
00:48:52.300
and say, great. I'm glad we had this conversation. You know, there's a joke. I just got off the phone
00:48:58.240
with my mother. She had a very good conversation. You want to, you want to try to flip that and have
00:49:03.680
that with your kid too. Sometimes you just have to listen and let it be that. And then eventually
00:49:07.140
you'll be able to talk more. Well, Dr. Price, is there some place people can go to learn more
00:49:10.840
about the book and your work? Yeah, absolutely. They can go to the he's not lazy.com. They can,
00:49:16.760
or go to my website. I have, I have a blog on psychology today called the unmotivated teen.
00:49:22.580
The book just can't, it's obviously available, you know, at quality bookstores and on Amazon and
00:49:27.240
Barnes and Noble. And it just came out in the audio version last Friday. So I'm really excited about
00:49:31.260
that. Well, fantastic. Dr. Adam Price, thanks for coming on. This has been a great conversation.
00:49:34.720
It's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
00:49:37.060
My guest today was Dr. Adam Price. He's the author of the book, He's Not Lazy. It's available on
00:49:40.780
amazon.com. You can find out more information about his work and his book at he'snotlazy.com.
00:49:45.300
Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash notlazy, where you can find links to resources,
00:50:04.660
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:50:09.160
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the show,
00:50:13.300
you got something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.
00:50:16.540
Helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with
00:50:20.000
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00:50:22.920
thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay