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Hello and welcome to the questions and answers edition of Thriving Kids, a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children with mental health and learning disorders. I'm Dr. Dave Anderson, clinical psychologist and your host. Last week we had a wonderful conversation with Busy Phillips about parenting, mental health, technology, and what it means to stay actively involved in our kids lives. Busy talked about watching the content her kids were watching, having real time conversations with them about what they're seeing online, and helping them make sense of social media without simply pretending parents can keep everything out. That conversation sparked a lot of questions from our community. Anytime this topic comes up, it really does. And how parents can stay connected to what kids are seeing online, how to talk about mental health content on social media, how ADHD can show up differently in girls and women, and how parents can take care of themselves while still showing up for their kids in a world that can feel overwhelming. Let's get into it. Question number one on this Thriving Kids podcast episode. How can parents stay involved in their kids online lives without turning every conversation about screens into a threat of punishment or coming across as, quote, Big Brother. Now, there are two reasons why I like this question. One is that it's similar to a lot of questions we get from parents in sessions. The other is I like the reference to Big Brother. Now we know this to be a reference to 1984, George Orwell's book, you know, about a kind of dystopian future where we have overlords watching our every move. But a lot of times when I say this to kids, I actually asked a patient once what they thought I meant by this and they thought I meant a reality show which has Big Brother in the name, Celebrity Big Brother, which again, just shows kind of like how some of these cultural references can call flat, can fall flat even when we make them to kids. So here's the thing. What we're coming up against a common clash of adolescents. So we don't expect, for example, younger children to engage with screens without parent oversight or parent mediation. You're approving the content, you're approving the time, you're approving the activity. That's also safe in many of those situations. We want parents to be mindful of how much time kids are spending on screens and what the balance is with other developmentally important tasks. As you get into the teenage years, you come across this clash. It's the clash between teenagers wanting independence and autonomy but not really being ready for it, and parents saying, well, I want to be able to, you know, love and support their autonomy. But also I'm really anxious about what they're experiencing and whether they're ready for these things. So that leads to more of this kind of, you know, rigidity and oversight and things like that. So what I would highlight to any teenager is that there is a social contract of adolescents. I'm going to try to give you independence where I can, but at the same time there are going to be a lot of situations, especially those that involve risky behaviors, where we're going to move through a sort of like I do, we do, you do model. And what that means, and this is kind of a phrase from behavioral science, is I'm going to tell you what some of my concerns are and you're going to tolerate me as the awkward parent. We are going to, you know, talk about or help you to navigate that world a little bit together, at least at first. And then eventually I'm going to believe that we might be able to trust and, and I'm going to let you kind of engage in some level of independence and start to function in the wild. And a lot of times we will ask parents how they move through that progression. I'll say, look, let's take a screen based activity. Let's take your kid going to parties where you think there might be alcohol or drugs present. Let's talk about your kid in romantic relationships. What are the things you want to make sure to express to your child? What are the things that you want to make sure to experience with them together? Like if they're starting to be engaged with social media, how are you going to set limits around that? How are you going to understand what they're doing on social media? How are you going to set the expectation that they're going to use this for information, entertainment or social connection and that there's going to be a balance with other things that are absolutely required for their health, like spending time on homework and staying invested in school, staying invested in extracurriculars, having moments where they see friends in person, not just online, and making sure they get enough sleep. These are all things we want parents to kind of talk about that balance up front. Then learn this world a little bit with the kids and show that they can say, like, look, this is the way you're behaving online. And because you're engaging this way, where you're focused on privacy, you're focused on moderating content the way that I've said, you're focused on communicating with people in a respectful way, these are the reasons why I can Grant you independence. And if you see your kid mess up, as everyone will do in these online spaces, you know, I say that in the sense that like not necessarily egregious mess ups, like, I don't expect every kid to be a cyber bully or something like that. But if we're seeing just general things where kids use inappropriate language, post something you don't like, might decide to move around certain boundaries that you have, might stay up late one night with a screen when you've told them no screens in the bedroom and you got to prioritize sleep, these are the moments where you say to parents it's appropriate to have short term consequences that may limit and access to that activity for a certain period of time. But you're still trying to prepare the child for the moment when they move into adulthood. You know, teenager in high school and they're independent and you can't engage in that oversight. And they've got to have that little voice inside their head that allows them to live out the famous quote, character is what you do when no one is watching. And unfortunately, you know, we don't see kids develop that unless there's this constant interplay between us expressing values and asking them to then demonstrate them. Maybe they fail, maybe they do it, and us trying to make sure we kind of navigate that together with them. So I know the big answer to our first question, but I got to tell you, a lot of the questions this episode are that complex. So our second question on this thriving kids podcast, Q and A. How can parents help kids think critically about online influencers, especially when harmful ideas are mixed in with things kids genuinely like, such as gaming cars, fitness or entrepreneurship. So this is actually a really great question because I frequently get the question phrased in a little bit more of a negative tone where people will say, how can I help kids think critically about online influencers? I mean, these are misogynistic, sexist, you know, racist, you know, awful people who I can't understand why my kid is listening to them. And that's what I often go to. And we actually did a recent spot, an NBC News with Kate Snow about how oftentimes males are finding kind of communities of belonging within certain shared interests online that can then lead to, you know, the formation of perhaps unhealthy beliefs. Because the reality is you get hooked by the stuff you're interested in. This question, asked about it, you know, gaming cars, fitness or entrepreneurship. You might be speaking to a teenage male, young adult male, something like that. It's not just males. I shouldn't I shouldn't make it just gender in that way, but any teenager where it's something that they're interested in, maybe they're not feeling that great about their bodies as most teenagers do and someone is saying they can really improve their appearance. And we know that a lot of social media and the infinite scroll and the ads we see, they figure out this is what the algorithm does, how old we are, what kinds of things we might be insecure about. You know, this is why as a middle aged male, I tend to get ads for pretty much the same things on social media, because they're expecting that I am confronting perhaps any number of middle aged male issues. But again, the algorithm figures out who you are. The algorithm then pushes ads and content toward you that align with your interests or with things that you might be insecure about. Because remember, the algorithm doesn't care if it's good for you. The algorithm cares whether you will pay attention to it. So it can prey on your interests, it can prey on your insecurities in equal measure. So that's where you know to talk to the first part of this question. If we're talking to kids about how they think critically, we're going to say, look, I know you're interested in this stuff. The issue is sometimes the people who show you content on this stuff may be talking to you about values that I would not support or I want you to really think critically about. Like, for example, you know, I'll talk about one issue we had kind of early on with our older son who's nine now, our, I should say our older child. We have an older son and a younger daughter, but our son was watching YouTube videos. He is very interested in cars, like this question asked. And there are a lot of YouTube influencers who, influencers who have really showy kind of displays of wealth. They want to show you the incredible place they live in, the incredible cars. They have all this stuff that they've gotten because they've been, you know, on YouTube and creating these videos. And my son is watching the videos because they do funny pranks and because he really likes seeing the cars and. But then I had to talk to them about what the values are that they're espousing in the videos, which sound like they're saying the only things to live for and find meaning in life are to acquire these possessions, to get rich at whatever cost. And oftentimes, you know, espousing values that don't seem to be about doing so with family and friends, but kind of being out there for yourself. So again, what we go back to is with kids, it really helps if we're trying to engender critical thinking. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You don't say to a kid, look, I saw that influencer that you were watching. I saw what they were saying about fitness, but I also heard what they're saying about women. And you're not allowed to look at this app or look at that person anymore. Oftentimes when we engage in boundary setting like that, we just drive the behavior further underground. So more often we're saying is like, look, I'm going to allow you a certain amount of time, you know, to be exposed to certain things that might be aligned with your interests. But I want us to really think about what messages you're getting and what kind of content you're being fed so that maybe if there is something you're interested in, we can find a way to get more just kind of pure content around that and not have it be kind of laced with so much other stuff. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, for example, there are courses we might not need to listen to online influencers who more often than not are not really pitching entrepreneurship, but get rich quick side gigs that only they get rich from. If you're interested in fitness, maybe we want to look at, you know, people who might be more credible fitness messengers who come from the standpoint of medical science, who talk to you about things that have many studies and decades of research behind them, as opposed to someone who might be online, for example, pitching a product that has only just recently come on the market is of dubious kind of scientific backing and regulation and is something that they are just pitching as a new miracle cure for longevity. All of those things can be really helpful discussions in helping kids to kind of, you know, pursue their interests, but also do so with a critical eye to why the person who is hawking them information might have certain motivations. Question number three on this thriving kids Q and A What should parents do when a child sees mental health content online and and starts wondering if they have adhd, depression or another diagnosis? This is a question that, honestly, it can make my blood boil at times because what we see is that there is kind of a frequent trend where someone will go to a mental health professional, they will get diagnosed with something and then they'll make videos online because they are an influencer, they have a large following or something like that about their experience of that particular diagnosis that are in no way accurate to the symptoms of that diagnosis or what the science says about it, but it's kind of like reading a horoscope. It's that you'll have a kid who goes online. And just like many kids who take Psychology 101 as one of their classes in college or a psychology class in high school, as people start hearing about diagnoses, many of the symptoms of diagnoses are behaviors that just occur in daily life. Sometimes you feel sad, sometimes you feel tired, sometimes you don't feel hungry, Sometimes you feel nervous, Sometimes you have difficulty focusing. Sometimes you might find that there were stressful events in your life that you still think about. All of these things are things that happen for all humans. But the two issues we run into are when kids come in with inaccurate ideas of what mental health disorders actually look like, or they come in with kind of an over exaggerated sense of what their symptoms might be based off of what might be typical challenges they're confronting. But they're kind of like, oh my gosh, I heard these symptoms and I must have this particular thing. And parents get very concerned about these things. And what I always go back to is, look, whether they actually have this thing or not, they are trying to come to you with some sort of concern. There's a kernel of concern in this. So let's honor that. Let's stay one step behind them. Let's say, okay, so you're telling me that this is something that you, you saw online and that you think maybe, you know, you have, or maybe you have. Can you tell me like what it is that you heard in that content or what you were thinking about before that maybe made you seek this out? That's the real in that, that's the truth. We want to understand what they were concerned about and that can often tell us a lot about where they need support. We don't need to disparage the online source. We don't, we don't need to entirely discredit what they saw, but we want to hear what that thing was and leave that channel of communication open to what they were concerned about. Because this could be a cry for help. Even if it's kind of like going on a sort of nonlinear path. Once we hear what they're concerned about, the next step is twofold. One is check for credible sources. Hey, look, if you are worried about this particular thing, I respect that you might be seeing information about this online, but let's go to national mental health organizations, national mental health authorities. You know, it could be the Child Mind Institute website, for example. It could be The American Psychological or American Psychiatric Association. It could be a mental health advocacy organization that you really respect, like, for example, the Jed foundation, another of our partners. It could be the National Council for Mental well Being. You know, there's lots of organizations that have information online on their websites that help you to really think through credible information about your mental health. And then beyond that, I think there's a real question where what I would be asking a kid, if I'm a parent, the single most important question, do you feel like whatever it is you're worried about is kind of interfering with your life? And if so, maybe we should seek out some support. Maybe it's a school counselor, if we have one at our school that, you know, can talk to us. Maybe it's somebody that, you know is within our medical insurance network. It could be a physician to start, who might be able to help make a referral. Or if there's the possibility of seeing a mental health professional, you know, we'd look at that. And if, for example, we know this is true of many communities across the country, it isn't possible to see maybe a mental health professional in person. Are there telehealth options available that might be covered by insurance? And if not that, is there someone that we trust within the community who might have experience in these areas, who we go and talk to about where they've seen other kids get help? All of those things are honoring the kernel of a kid coming to you with this. And it's really important that we don't just kind of start railing against the mental health content online, but instead follow that lead. Okay, question number four. The halfway point of our thriving Kids Q and A episode here. How can families use online mental health content as a starting point for conversation without letting AI or social media become the diagnosis? So this question is very similar to the question that we got just before. But the reason why I wanted to keep it in here was that I think that it also indicates another particular like wrinkle to this answer, which is this sense that a lot of times people already do know something that they might be suffering with. They really are suffering with depression. They really do struggle with adhd, they really do struggle with anxiety. And what I always tell, you know, kids, teens, young adults, if you're going to use social media, if you're going to ask ChatGPT or Claude or an AI chatbot or something about your mental health, think about that as a tool, but not necessarily a substitute for a person. So it is better for them to have a tool by which they can gain information. But what we're worried about in, you know, this day and age is the fact that both AI and social media have a bias toward confirmation. When you start talking to them with AI, AI is more likely to tell you that your insight is really cool. I always give people the example that when I create activities for my kids using AI, AI always thinks my ideas are much more brilliant than my wife or others might think are so brilliant. And it always tells me so. And it's very confirming. It's kind of like, oh yeah, like AI thinks I'm doing the right stuff with my kids. And so that kind of confirmation bias, it's not a substitute for a person who can really help us think critically about the ways that we can comprehensively support our own wellness. So this is where again, AI as a tool, AI as information that we bring back to those real life support people in our life. Social media, same thing. I, I tell teenagers if they want to go on social media and look for ways to help themselves with depression, or if they want to go on social media and look for ways to help themselves with anxiety and bring it back into session, or bring it back to conversation with their friends, or bring it back to conversations with their parents, I think those can be great conversation starters where otherwise sometimes with teenagers, we just see crickets. Like, we'll say, hey, you know, how did you do this week with your anxiety? And it's kind of like a, a weird thing where, like in session, if I'm asking a teenager and the teenage just kind of looking at me blankly and saying, I don't know, I didn't really do anything, and I'm thinking, do I now go into, you know, part of myself that is sort of more didactic and trying to, like, teach them certain things they might use over the course of the week? Parents might have that same tendency. And that can sometimes make a teenager completely tune us out. So a lot of times it's a lot easier to discuss common material that we've brought and say, okay, is this in line? Like, if kids with depression bring me social media content, or AI suggestions about behavioral activation, which is a major frontline treatment for adolescent depression, where the AI says, hey, part of this is understanding all kinds of different activities, some of which might take you a minute, some of which might take you 20 minutes, some which might take you an hour, that boost your mood. Some of them are alone, some of them involve some sensory stimulation, some of them involve being with friends, some of them involve cultivating hobbies, some involve might be doing service or connection with family. And it gives you all these suggestions and says which activities do you think could boost your mood? AI is actually helping me a lot. The last thing I'll just say is that there are also ways that organizations have attempted to advance technology such that it is actually digitally therapeutic. We at the Child Mind Institute have created two apps, Mirror and Cando, both of which utilize certain aspects of a kind of digital world to actually promote healing. Mirror is an app aimed at teens and young adults who are suffering from depression or mood concerns and utilizes the evidence based strategy of journaling to help them reflect on different things, apply strategies to what's going on in their life, and also monitor for crisis support if it's needed. Can do is a way of engaging kids and teenagers in brief behavioral activation for depression and trying to accelerate that work. So I always say to kids, there are also credible evidence based resources that have been built out there that if we do a little bit of digging, they may not have the same kind of promotion budget behind them, but they can also be really helpful as mental health tools, especially when we might not have as much access to in person care. Our fifth question on this thriving Kids Q and A podcast episode. What are some common ways ADHD can be missed in girls, women or high achieving kids? And how can parents know when to seek an evaluation? So this question has two main things to unpack. It's this notion that first of all ADHD might be missed and then secondly it's two populations where it might be missed but for different reasons, females and high achieving kids. So this actually relates this a great question because it's something where I recently got to do a talk tour across Alabama with the organization at Auburn focused on substance abuse prevention across Alabama. And one of the kind of main topics we were talking about was the connection between ADHD and substance use prevention. And this was one of the main points that I emphasized in the presentation. Because the best substance abuse prevention within ADHD populations is screening and catching ADHD early and treating it well. Because the real risk is kids who don't get treatment and support, who experience family rejection, school failure, peer rejection and other things that might lead them towards substance abuse experimentation in association with risky peer groups kind of later on in development. So we don't want to miss things. And the reality is that ADHD in incidence studies, you know, we, we estimate that ADHD has a prevalence of about 7 to 10% of the population. But we hypothesize that in the population there's about two times as many males that have adhd. In clinical settings, we tend to see three times as many males. And this is partly because of the way that ADHD can be overlooked in girls, because males are more likely to present with some of the hyperactive, impulsive symptoms of ADHD that cause them to blurt things out in class, not be able to sit in their chair, move around a lot, seem like they're driven by a motor, things like that. And those are things that can cause adult irritation amongst teachers and parents much more than some of the inattentive symptoms of adhd. And what research has shown is that girls may be more likely to show inattentive symptoms, which also might emerge slightly later developmentally than ADHD symptoms in boys. And because those inattentive symptoms can fly under the radar, there's a double whammy of when girls are struggling. We're more likely to consider mental health explanations that are more consistent and frequent in girls than adhd. We might be more likely to say this is anxiety or this is depression. She's worried or she's sad, that's why she's withdrawn. It's not because she can't focus or is having difficulty with her focus and, you know, follow through on tasks. So the issue is if we, if we really think about this, we want to make sure that when girls are struggling, a, we give a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation asking not just about things we expect might be able to be showing up in female populations, but other things we might expect a little bit less, like adhd. We really want to see if we can understand that from the child or teen's perspective and what they're kind of struggling with. And we want to be mindful of the fact that ADHD with an intent of presentation may fly under the radar, but more so than ADHD when it's consistent with hyperactive and impulsive symptoms. The other thing that we, you know, is inherent in this question is high achieving kids, males or females, you know, any particular kid. And this is because frequently one of the reasons why we see ADHD referrals is that the symptoms of ADHD are interfering with a child's school performance, such that the child is not performing up to what we think is their potential. But if a child is extremely intelligent, that may make it so that they're able to perform in school even as they're experiencing impairment and stress due to inattention or difficulty focusing or difficulties with kind of hyperactive, impulsive symptoms. And it also may be kind of correlated with some behavioral issues where we're saying, how is this child so capable of doing the work but also demonstrating these kinds of challenging behaviors? And that's where we want to make room for both of those things. Because all too often with high achieving kids, what we see is that because they were doing okay in school, people delayed an evaluation longer than they needed to, thinking that, well, this kid doesn't need support. And not realizing was actually like kind of pushing a car engine to that, like, red zone when you're driving where, you know, the RPMs are too high, but hey, you know, car looks like a high performance machine. And really what we're doing is we're kind of running the engine unsustainable level. So that's where we want to make sure that if you do worry that your kid might be experiencing ADHD symptoms, we hope that we can reduce the stigma enough that parents of those kids would say, you know what, before it gets too hard, or before we've been redlining the engine for as long as, you know, possible, we're going to go and make sure we can't get our kid a little bit of support on some of these underlying skills that would make it even easier for, for them not just to rely on this kind of high level of intelligence they have. Our sixth question on this thriving kids podcast, Q and A. How can parents talk with kids about politics, current events, school safety, or traumatic news without overwhelming them? This is a very timely question for me because I actually just did three talks over the last two weeks for a global organization about this very topic. And I broke that, that series into three different talks. The first talk in the series was parental self care, because what we said was, you know, this is spurred on by a group that had contacted us because they were concerned about how to talk to kids about the war in Iran, ongoing conflict in Ukraine, ongoing conflicts in the Middle east, increased prevalence of natural disasters, school violence and other violent incidents that happen across our country, increasing political discord and divides, and increasingly intense language used around those things. And this organization said, look, how would you address this? We said, first, first talk in the series needs to be parent self care because we need parents to understand that if they're not filling their cup, they can't show up as their best selves to help kids process some of the most distressing stuff that happens in this world that we live in. Then the second talk was focused on how to talk to kids about these events. And the third talk was how to support kids who may actually have been part of these events, had traumatic experiences, had Complicated grief or loss experiences, related traumatic events, and how to make sure that they get treatment and support and kind of what that looks like. But so we're right here with this question. The middle phase of those talks, which is if you're going to talk to your kids about, you know, difficult news, the first thing that I would, I would think about is the news itself, where we kind of lead parents through saying, okay, there is a difference between exposure to news such that you feel informed and exposure to news such that you reach this point of diminishing returns, often referred to as doom scrolling. We want to be informed, we want our kids to be informed at a developmentally appropriate level. But what we really want to think about is anytime we're exposing ourselves to news, how do we strike kind of that balance that, that makes it so we're not increasing our own distress in a world that has 24 hour news cycles. And also oftentimes with many of these events makes us overestimate the actual prevalence of these events, the actual occurrences of these events, and our actual risk of them happening to us. So first we start there, then we go to the actual conversation. If you have a young child, obviously you're sharing with them a little bit more kind of just basic factual information than you might be with a teenager who, who might have other sources of information they're getting from sources online or from their friends or from teachers or from, you know, coursework where they're often studying this. But to start with what's kind of, you know, most simple with kind of young kids, we often say to parents, like, you're not looking to give them all the information, just give them some information. They do better when they're not in the dark, but you don't need to kind of overwhelm them or flood them. So I often start with like two, three sentences. I say to parents, how can we describe what happened in two or three sentences? I'll give the example of some of the catastrophic floods in the hill country in Texas last year where I had some parents who had relatives out there where they might have been affected in that area of Texas. And they were asking about how to speak to their child about it. And I said, look, you know, you start with kind of a two sentence explanation. This is a late elementary school child. You might say, look, there have been some incredible rains in Texas that have led to floods which when flooding happens, it can make water levels rise really quickly where people don't realize and they either get swept into the river or they drown and they Die. And some of that has happened in Texas. And we're really sad about some of the loss of life there that might have been able to be prevented. That was kind of their shtick for their kid. And what we do is we present something simple like that and we say, I want you to know. I just wanted to, I wanted you to hear it from me. I know it can be better if you hear it from a trusted caregiver than, you know, a friend or through some sort of rumor or something that might make you more afraid. And, you know, I'm here for any questions or any feelings about this you might have, and we open up that space. Some kids have lots of questions and feelings, some kids don't. The most frequent question we get is, will it happen to me? Am I at risk? And this is commonly where we say to parents, you know, sometimes you're able to completely dissuade kids of the risk. Honey, we don't live anywhere near an area that that might happen to. You know, other things obviously can happen in nature, but not that particular thing, and not that particular thing in our area. You know, we are safe in this happening. We just feel so sad for those that this affects. Sometimes you can't fully dissuade them of the risk. You know, something like this could happen near us. But the bottom line is we've taken the following steps to make sure that we're safe, and we need you to trust that we're taking those steps to make sure that you are safe. And that illustrates the next principle, which is if a kid asks, can this happen to me or is this going to affect me? That's often the biggest question. And if we can't completely dissuade them of the idea that it could affect them, the best thing we can do is say, here are the steps that I'm taking to keep you safe. And, and you know, that's the point where we kind of pause and we tolerate the uncertainty together. Kids have to, you know, trust us that we're taking what steps we can, and then we got to go back to kind of living our lives. So the last thing I'll say when parents are talking to kids about these events is that it's not just a one time only conversation. Just because you've informed them about what's happening doesn't mean you just stop talking about it and, you know, you move on. What you then say is, look, if you have other thoughts or questions, you know, feelings you want to share, you hear other details about these things, I'M here. Feel free to bring it back up while we're in the car. You know, while we're in the midst of a transition, you know, before bedtime, but reasonably before bedtime, you know, those things and, you know, we can talk about it. And what you're modeling for kids is this idea of with any distressing event in the world, you want to inform yourself. You want to then take steps to make sure you make room for all the kinds of reactions that those close to you might have. You want to ensure that you're looking for ways to establish safety and stability. And you want to leave an open line of communication that says, if we need to come back to this, we can Question seven on this thriving kids podcast Q and A How can parents build a village with other parents so they have a clearer picture of what's happening socially, online and at school? It's a great question because more often than not, you know, whatever you're exposed to is only a sliver of what's going on in your child's peer group, socially, online, or at school. So what I think we see more and more in communities across the country is groups of parents who get together and then ask that very question where we say, like, what are you guys seeing? Like, are there things we should be concerned about? Because it's not just is someone being bullied on the playground right now or is someone saying mean things? Is someone. It's kind of getting a sense of what the baseline is. I will also say that one of the most encouraging things we see is parents who are really trying to take the information they're getting from all kinds of different sources and make collective, safe decisions for their kids. Being able to say, okay, you know what? When we look at all these different things, we're going to prioritize certain things we know to be drivers of our kids wellness. We're going to try building relationships that are close with our kids. We're going to try making sure that we have a couple family dinners each week. Quality of interaction with family dinners doesn't matter. It just matters that you're together and kids know you care about where they are. We're going to prioritize getting our kids involved in real life extracurricular activities, making sure that we create spaces where kids can focus on homework and making sure that, you know, at night we keep devices out of bedrooms and we prioritize sleep. Let's prioritize those things that drive our kids wellness. And you know, even beyond that, my ideal hope, of course, is that then Also, kids have great medical care coverage for mental health care, supportive community, people that watch out for them and check in with them and that they end up using screens in a balanced way for information, entertainment, and social connection. But, you know, a guy can dream. But what I always go back to is in this village with other parents, the questions I'd be asking myself are, how do I make sure I'm informed about what's going on with our kids? But there's also this point of diminishing returns for those, those kind of conversations other parents, where sometimes we're just sharing the worst of the worst and being thankful that maybe our kids aren't exposed to it or it's not happening to us. And really we could pivot back to. But how are we collectively, you know, promoting those things that are real drivers of wellness? How can we advocate for that? Because sometimes parent communities say, well, I want to advocate for restrictions on these things I think could be dangerous, which again, kids need nurture and structure. So I understand the push toward restrictions, but frequently what I also want to be thinking about is how do we advocate collectively for those things that we know are so promoting of kids wellness within our community. And the last thing I'll just say about this question is be the awkward parent, say two other parents in your community in the group chat at, at school events, while you're standing on the sideline at soccer practice, hey, who do you think might want to be in a conversation with us where we just kind of figure, you know, make sure we have kind of a full picture of what's going on for our kids? I can guarantee that most parents are very much wanting to be a part of that kind of explicit labeling of an effort by, you know, parents within their village. So our final question on the thriving Kids podcast Q and A episode. This also relates to something that I said on question 6. How can parents manage their own stress therapy needs and short fuse so they can show up more calmly for preteens and teenagers? This is a great question. First, I will just say, and this is not meant to be, you know, cross and self promoting, but I will just say that our conversations with. Let me say that again because I. Let me just say that for this question, our conversations with Dr. Lisa D' Amore were fantastic in kind of giving you 25 minutes of how to show up more calmly and presently for preteens and teenagers. So I'm going to do a bad job, but I'm going to try to do the job of summarizing some of the key Points that you might get from amalgamation of Dr. Lisa and my perspectives. What I will say is the first thing is be curious. This is a stage of tumultuous change in identity in all kinds of different activities and ways. We spend our time in tasks of mastery and grit and persistence in understanding who we are in relationships to our friends, to our romantic partners, to people in authority positions over us, whether they be educators or bosses or any number of folks, to pressures that we feel around what we're doing after high school and how we might be entering the working world or perhaps pursuing, you know, education afterwards. There is so much. The first thing is to be curious. You may have been through this phase, but the funny thing that I always tell people about psychologists is it's not as if the behaviors or the experiences that people tell us about are ever like, oh my God, that's so unique. I've never heard anything like that before. It's more that every single person is a snowflake esque kind of combination of things that of course occur for all of humans. And the funny thing about every person is every person thinks they are the only person to have ever experienced the world in this way. So to honor that, especially with preteens and teenagers, that belief is rampant is huge. So first it is to be curious. Secondly, it is to have respect for the fact that this is a construction zone. So I want you to imagine that you are walking through a construction zone. There are loud noises, there might be sledgehammers, there might be people calling out to each other, all kinds of different things. There'll be all kinds of materials swinging around. There might be weird smells, there might be dust clouds blowing your face, stuff like that getting all over your clothes. That's what teenagerhood feels like. It's just what it feels like. You are in the construction zone with them. So the more we can empathically look at that and say, like, all right, this is going to be messy. And that's where I also would go back to the following quote, which I think is, you know, really great, which is just kind of when we look at the process of change, this idea that change at first is hard, in the middle is messy, and at the end is glorious. So if we can think about that as a change process, you know, this is again, a period of time when it gets hard, it gets messy, but we can really see the fruits of the work that we put in and the ways that we show up. The last thing I'll say is just, you know, other ways of me thinking about how I talk to teenagers is that, like, when. When I think about teenagers who come into the office, for example, and they're hopping mad or they're angry at me about something, or they're accusing me of being a plant by their parents or telling me that, you know, they shouldn't be here and that I am a, you know, terrible person who just wants to collect their money and, you know, profit off of other people being, you know, their mental struggles. Any number of accusations that teenagers throw at me, I always picture kind of like a boxer, like Muhammad Ali, and that it's not so much about me, it's such a function of the insecurity and the upheaval of this stage that someone is throwing these insults at me. They don't know me. They don't know me from Adam. They have no idea what makes me tick or what my motivation is. So my job is just to dance right at the edge of those jabs. Now, I'm not. I'm not trying to punch anybody, but I'm just dancing on the outside of this, and I'm just trying to make it so that I do the things that help us to build relationships. I show people that I'm emotionally available and present. I show people that I'm willing to engage about shared interests or even be engaged about their interests. I show people that not every moment has to be incredibly efficient. We've got to be doing a task or something like that. But I'm willing to kind of take the time to. To connect. I make sure I appreciate the effort that they're going to. I make sure I ask and I'm curious about their goals and try to think about how the work that I'm doing with them might be in line with those goals. And lastly, I listen and I keep reframing what I've heard from them about their goals and how I think I can help them get there. The more we do that in supportive relationships, the more likely we are to see people rise to kind of meet us in some of the things that we hope for them. With that, thank you so much for joining us on this Q and A edition of Thriving Kids. We've included links, resources, and references in the show notes if you want to keep learning about any of the topics raised in today's podcast questions, thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week.