Episode 80: Help Kids Develop Social Connections While Overcoming Anxiety with Dr. Michael Thompson

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This week Sissy and David's guest is Michael Thompson, PhD, who has worked with thousands of kids in more than 700 schools around the world and is the author of multiple best-selling books. They discuss how parents can help kids develop social connections, while facing challenges without anxiety.

Links

MichaelThompson-PhD.com

Books mentioned:

• Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

• Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow

• Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children

• Mom, They’re Teasing Me: Helping Your Child Solve Social Problems

A special thank you to our partners of this week's episode:

• Explorer Bible for Kids - Learn more at explorerbibleforkids.com. Buy your copy today from Lifeway.com and get 50% off using code RBG.

• The Chosen Season 3 begins in theaters November 18! For more information, visit TheChosenTickets.com.

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Automated Transcript

Sissy Goff

00;00;03;14

Welcome to the Raising Boys and Girls podcast. I'm Sissy Goff.

David Thomas

00;00;07;10

I'm David Thomas.

Melissa Trevathan

00;00;08;17

And I'm Melissa Trevathan.

Sissy Goff

00;00;10;11

And we are so glad you've set aside a few minutes to spend with us today. In each episode of this podcast, we'll share some of what we're learning in the work we do with kids and families on a daily basis. At De SA Counseling in Nashville, Tennessee. Our goal is to help you care for the kids in your life with a little more understanding, a little more practical help, and a whole lot of hope. So pull up a chair and join us on this journey from our little yellow house to yours.

Sissy Goff

00;00;38;24

Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D., is a consultant, author and psychologist specializing in children and families. He's a supervising psychologist for the Belmont Hill School and has worked in more than 700 schools across the United States, as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia. He and his coauthor, Dan Quinlan, wrote The New York Times bestselling book Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Among several other books you should definitely check out. Michael Thompson has appeared on The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20, 20, 60 Minutes, The Early Show. And good morning America. He's been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report and has been a guest on NPR's Morning Edition with Susan Stamberg, Talk of the Nation with Ray Suarez, and The Diane Rehm Show. He wrote, narrated and hosted a two hour PBS documentary entitled Raising Cain that was broadcast nationally in 2006. Dr. Thompson lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. He's married to Dr. Theresa McNally, a psychotherapist and is the father of two grandchildren and the grandfather of two granddaughters, Aubrey and Brinley.

David Thomas

00;01;51;05

Dr. Thompson, it's an honor to have you on our podcast. You have written countless books that we love and have recommended to parents for decades.

Sissy Goff

00;02;00;11

Yes.

Erick Goss

00;02;01;01

So when you talk about doing that.

David Thomas

00;02;03;28

Say, will you? Easy to do. Will you just talk first about the work you do and then also how you've seen kids and parents change over the years?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;02;14;25

Okay. All of the books I've written have come to me through questions that teachers have posed to me. Problems that they faced in the classroom. Angry boys, disobedient boys, boys in disciplinary trouble in school. That led to my book with Dan Kim and Raising Cain. Best Friends, Worst Enemies. That book came out of how many middle school teachers want my help and advice in managing fourth grade girls who could be mean to each other?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;02;44;14

Sixth grade girls who could be extra mean to each other. And eighth grade boys who could be astonishingly cruel to each other. But they also wanted a lot of advice about how to manage the parents reactions to what the teachers saw as normal situations. But parents misinterpreted as potentially unresolvable or traumatic for their kids. So what made me an author was answering teachers questions.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;03;13;12

And it turned out that that was the source of book after book after book after book. And it started with Raising Cain, and it ended in the last book I wrote during the pandemic called Hopes and Fears. Managing today's independent school parent. Because private schools were just being overwhelmed by anxious parents during the pandemic. And I needed to give advice along with my coauthor, Rob Evans and other psychologists give schools advice on how to manage parents who are bringing their anxiety to their child's school.

David Thomas

00;03;46;14

Great.

Sissy Goff

00;03;47;07

How would you say you've seen kids change over the years?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;03;50;20

Kids are basically the same and their developmental progress is basically the same. Their interests, what works for them or doesn't work for them. So I just got a call from a school in Texas which has this formal kind of dance where sixth grade boys invite girls to a dress up formal dance. And I think it was a good idea developmentally.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;04;13;13

I said, no, terrible idea. The sixth grade boys are in sixth grade girls. There are few girls are starting to get interested in the boys, but that's hormonal. But the boys are clueless and dressing up and inviting a girl to a dance that's awkward and uncomfortable, but it's always been awkward and uncomfortable. I'm somebody who has a lot of memories of what it's like to be a sixth grader.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;04;38;11

It's been of help to me to be a child psychologist because it keeps my own sense. Memories and feelings refresh, and what I think is that kids mostly feel what kids mostly have felt, and kids mostly embark on the same developmental phases at the time they have. What's different is technology, and they're more sophisticated and they're seeing more of the world and they're being introduced to a raw form of sexuality earlier.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;05;09;06

And their parents are having a hell of a challenge, keeping them off their smartphones at 2 a.m. in the morning.

Sissy Goff

00;05;15;29

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;05;16;17

So the biggest challenge for parents is managing tech because the parents themselves are still in love with technology. All of our labs are run. Look what we're doing right now. See?

Sissy Goff

00;05;28;02

Right and right. Exac. So, yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;05;32;04

It's technology that makes this possible and it makes so much possible. But how to help kids to manage technology is, from my point of view, the number one change in childhood. Now, now I have to say another. The second biggest change in childhood is the loss of free, undirected play. The loss of neighborhood American plants don't feel safe, so they're constantly dragging their kids to town sports.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;06;01;08

90% of American children are in town. Sports and time sports are no replacement for free play, especially mixed age free play, where kids invent their own game, develop their own games. Now they're all in things that are adult run and they're competitive oriented, which worked for kids who are great athletes. But as I remind parents all the time, 50% of boys are of below average athletic ability.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;06;30;13

Wow. How about that? Half allow and half of the girls do.

Sissy Goff

00;06;35;01

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;06;35;24

And all these town sports don't work that well for these kids. They'd rather be playing. Parents think that playing on a soccer team is equally pleasurable for kids, and it's not actually okay.

Sissy Goff

00;06;50;25

I'm already wanting to take a million notes from things you're saying. Dr. Thompson, this is so good. I need to take issue with the fact that I think you said the last book, and I just need to go on record already saying we don't want anything to be the last book. We need you to have lots more conversations with you.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;07;05;19

Do we have to take my age into account? 50?

Sissy Goff

00;07;08;08

No, no, no, no. At our little counseling practice in Nashville, one of the things we do is we have a summer retreat program for our kids called Hopetoun. And so we are huge advocates of summer camp in the laps of kids and feel like there's so much good it does. And you wrote an incredible book called Homesick and Happy.

Sissy Goff

00;07;28;02

How Time Away From Parents Can Help a Child Grow. Will you talk about some of the benefits kids experience in going away to camp and the upside of being homesick?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;07;37;12

Don't you love the subtitle of that book?

Sissy Goff

00;07;39;20

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;07;40;27

Absolutely. Love it. I came up with the title. I was pleased with it, but the subtitle that really nailed it, it's.

Sissy Goff

00;07;47;11

So.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;07;47;22

Good. Parents always think that their presence adds value. Bottom line, parents always think, if I'm there, things are better for my child. You know, if I'm watching her soccer game, the game will be better for her. I hate to break the news to parents. That's true. Little kids always want their parents there, but by middle school, kids want the experience of their own playing, their own teammates, their own coach.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;08;15;21

And if their dad or their mom is standing on the sidelines, they have to experience it through their parents eyes. How's my mother seeing this? What's my dad think of this? So we know one of the main reasons that kids drop out of town sports is they hate the debrief from their fathers in the car. Mm hmm. We've interviewed lots of kids about why they gave up sports, and it's my father reviewing the game with me.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;08;39;06

So what parents unwittingly take away from kids is the psychological ownership of their experience because it isn't fully yours. If your mother is hovering over your shoulder, even if she's being loving and supportive and caring, it isn't fully your experience. It's shared. So the reason I believe that all children should have an experience on overnight school trip, a summer camp, some kind of summer overnight program of the kind you run good for you is because when kids go on it, they know that whatever they achieved, whatever new friend they made, whatever challenge they accepted and mastered, it belongs to them.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;09;25;15

It's theirs. Yes. And that psychological ownership is central. So I speak to a lot of audiences of parents who are nervous about their children's camps, and they've all gone on the ACA website and chosen this tennis camp or the canoeing camp or the horseback riding camp and how much fun it's going to be. And I say to parents, the most important thing about camp is that, you are not there.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;09;55;01

Right. That is the thing that makes camp. Camp.

Sissy Goff

00;09;59;09

I grew so much when I went to camp for that very reason. I mean, it was so formative for me.

David Thomas

00;10;04;16

Me, too.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;10;05;14

Because it's your place. I've had many kids say this is like my other home to me.

Sissy Goff

00;10;10;25

Yes. Right. Exactly.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;10;12;25

Even if it's only a weeklong camp, because it's where I feel grown up, I get to be fully myself unmonitored and nobody has to ask me. You know, I went to China. The Chinese were very interested in American summer camps and the fun and the benefits to growth for them. But they said it was almost impossible to get Chinese banks to send their children to summer camp because they want to interview a child at the end of every day about what they learned that day.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;10;41;11

A very hard habit for them to break. But they're American brands, right?

David Thomas

00;10;46;06

Agree.

Sissy Goff

00;10;46;19

Yes. Especially today.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;10;48;12

Yeah.

Sissy Goff

00;10;48;20

David, do you remember the very first grown up Bible you ever had?

David Thomas

00;10;57;01

You mean the one with all the words and no pictures? I sure do. I thought it was so cool to have a Bible like my mom and dad. Although I have to admit, I did miss all the pictures.

Sissy Goff

00;11;08;15

Me too. That is one thing I love about the Explorer Bible for kids. It's a full text Bible that has so many cool pictures and interactive elements.

David Thomas

00;11;18;00

We definitely didn't have interactive things in our Bibles growing up.

Sissy Goff

00;11;21;21

Right with the Explorer Bible, kids will no longer think the Bible is just a big book full of big words they can't understand.

David Thomas

00;11;29;22

With the clear language of the Christian standard Bible translation and engaging full color designs. Kids of all ages can explore and understand the Bible for themselves.

Sissy Goff

00;11;39;26

We talk all the time about how important it is for kids to read and learn the Bible in their growing up years. The Explorer Bible is such a great tool to encourage kids to do that.

David Thomas

00;11;50;07

Yes. And I'm so glad we can offer our readers this special discount from our friends at Lifeway. Buy your copy today at Lifeway.com and get 50% off using code rb g.

David Thomas

00;12;07;17

Dr. Thompson Another one of our favorite books of yours is Best Friends, Worst Enemies Understanding the Social Lives of Children and a great read called Mom, they're teasing me. Helping Your Child Solve Social Problems. We love the way you help parents talk with kids about the difference between friendships and popularity and how boys and girls deal uniquely with intimacy and commitment.

David Thomas

00;12;32;11

What are a few things you'd want parents to understand about those differences?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;12;37;03

You know, I wish all parents could just hear the assembly I did at a boys school in Memphis this week because I had the fourth, fifth and sixth graders and they'll tell parents everything the parents need to know, which is I asked the boys to define friendship. And the fourth grader started, boom, someone you can trust, someone who is loyal, someone you like to hang out with, some money you have things in common with.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;13;02;20

I mean, they nail it for fifth and sixth graders. Absolutely know what true friendship is. And then I said, well, what's popularity? Long pause and they're stuck. Well, it's like if you're really good at stuff like sports, right? Or sometimes I go to schools and a boy stands up and says, it's if you have great hair. Favorite in sixth grade, girl in public school.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;13;31;22

New York State got up in front of 500 middle schoolers and said, What's popularity? And she said, Well, it's confidence and some girls have it. But I don't oh, I don't know if they really have it, but I know I really don't. Oh, bless you, sweetie, for your honesty, right? Yes.

Sissy Goff

00;13;54;19

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;13;55;04

Who in middle school projects that confidence? Well, sometimes I know. And who's a top athlete? I wasn't. And I told the boys in Memphis that in school I found team sports made me so anxious. And everybody loved baseball, which I thought was extremely dangerous because they were always throwing a hard ball right at your face, which I terrified.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;14;17;22

And so now all kids are going to rank in the things that make you popular, which are sports and for boys, its size, height and humor alone, all boys are knocking themselves out to try and be funny. Many are not that funny, but they want to be. And for girls, it's things they can't influence. It's conventional beauty and a fashion sense.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;14;43;11

And this thing confidence or attitude or she's all that. It's gone on and on, whatever that is. It's actually girl charisma is what it is. It's star power. Kids have to learn, and I'm trying to help them learn that they know what a reliable, affectionate, loyal friendship is. And it's friendship to save your life. And popularity peaks for girls in sixth and seventh grade, peaks for boys in eighth to ninth grade.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;15;16;29

And then most of the kids peel off and just make their friends and ignore it. And they have let's be honest, contempt for the prom queen and king, you know, the juniors and seniors who still care about what is essentially middle school stuff. I mean, let's be clear. Those kinds of things are middle school Arrested Development. Actually, People magazine is arrested middle school development.

Sissy Goff

00;15;43;24

Yeah.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;15;44;18

It's very entertaining when you're in the dentist's office, but it isn't true friendship. I think kids need help in being able to value and celebrate true friendship because it's having a friend that gets you through. And that's what I tell nervous parents. You don't have to have a mob. You don't have to be the most popular kid. You do need a friend.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;16;06;08

I worry about children who, for one reason or another, they're on the autism spectrum, or they're too impulsive, really can't focus on a friendship, or they're brilliant and arrogant and intellectually competitive in a way that puts off other kids. There are kids who need coaching to learn some social pragmatics so they can make and maintain a friendship. That's about 15% of kids need that support.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;16;32;15

About 85% of kids need to be left alone. Their parents don't need to ask them every day. How are things with your friends?

Sissy Goff

00;16;41;26

Yes. I talked at a school about female relationships, you know, and I think they were elementary school parents. And a mom said that every day when she would pick up her daughter, she would say, who was mean to you at school today? Can you imagine?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;16;57;14

And best friends. Worst enemies. I call that interviewing for pain.

Sissy Goff

00;17;02;23

That's a great statement.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;17;04;07

They think it makes them good parents. But what they're doing is interviewing for pain and getting an out of balance story because they only ask about who is mean to you. You're not capturing all the moments when your daughter was laughing and joking, having great time with her friend.

Sissy Goff

00;17;21;22

Yeah, you're.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;17;22;09

Only going to see being bullied. And I'm the vigilant mom who's going to be on top of that. Right?

Sissy Goff

00;17;29;15

Right. Oh, that's so good. Interviewing for pain. I want to remember that. Well, one of the other things we love that you talk about, there are so many, but is that you talk about how relationships become more complex. And we obviously see kids struggle to navigate conflict and parents who overuse the term bullying often. Yes. And we want to acknowledge, obviously, there's bullying that happens at times and that in those times, kids need support.

Sissy Goff

00;17;57;25

But how can we help kids and parents differentiate between those? And can you talk about to about what conflict offers kids in adolescence? Two big questions.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;18;08;23

Human relationships are going to involve conflict. Human beings are difficult. Yes. As my own psychoanalyst said many years ago, human beings are more or less impossible. That's good. On our best days, I guess, were less impossible. Our worst days were more impossible. But yes, you're going to have conflict relationships. You're going to have conflict between brothers and sisters, between sisters and sisters.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;18;36;26

You're going to have conflict between children and parents, and then you're going to have conflicts in friendship. I've interviewed probably 50, 60,000 middle schoolers in assemblies based on best friends, worst enemies. And I always ask them to define friendship. In the fifth grade, a girl once said, Oh, friendship is when you can fight and then get over it.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;18;59;16

And I thought, Yeah, you've actually got to be able to fight with a friend and then have the skills to resolve it. And your mother's calling each other is not the solution. Yes. It often amplifies the problem, and kids know that it's one reason they keep things from their parents because they know their parents are about to bumble in and make it worse.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;19;21;28

And besides, the fifth grade girls knows that her mother's going to be on any little detail, which suggests that she's victimized by her friend. But the fact that her friend has supported her at other times or really adored her, her mother's going to miss and forget because the mother grizzly bear instincts are around. So the best way to allow children to resolve conflict is to let them resolve conflict.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;19;51;26

Not you don't do that when they're three because they'll claw each other's eyes out. They're little by firing. They have no impulse control. So you've got to step in with doing that from three year olds, but by four you're already beginning to help them, to use their words and to manage conflict. And they get better and better and better at it.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;20;14;25

As a parent, you have to watch and appreciate the fact that your child is developing new skills and that she does not need you the way she once did. Hmm.

David Thomas

00;20;28;03

Yeah. Great.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;20;29;10

I didn't get a parenting degree. I'm a parent and a grandparent, but I didn't get a degree, so I had to kind of invent my own textbooks. I boiled parenting down to four things because people always said, bottom line, what's parenting? What's the goal of parenting? And I say it's to produce a moral, loving, productive, independent, young, adult, moral, loving, productive, in-depth, adult.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;20;59;01

Your friends teach you to act more morally, and in getting along with them, you develop independence.

David Thomas

00;21;06;04

So great.

Sissy Goff

00;21;11;20

David I am so excited. We're just a few weeks away from The Chosen Season 3.

David Thomas

00;21;17;18

November 18th. The new season will start in theaters, then episodes will begin releasing for free in the chosen app before Christmas.

Sissy Goff

00;21;27;25

Perfect timing to continue the journey through Jesus life as we celebrate his arrival on Earth, right?

David Thomas

00;21;34;13

Yes. I can't wait to see how they portray this crucial moment in Bible history. Jesus teachings, his followers, his enemies. So much tension.

Sissy Goff

00;21;44;27

Yes. And a lot of tough questions that will be answered in this powerful chapter of the Bible story.

David Thomas

00;21;51;01

But this season is centered around Jesus. Gentle reminder that in the midst of those questions and tensions, he offers us peace and rest.

Sissy Goff

00;21;59;21

Yes. Matthew 11:28. “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” One of my favorite verses.

David Thomas

00;22;08;22

Mine too. Don't forget The Chosen Season 3 begins in theaters November 18th. Visit thechosentickets.com for more information.

David Thomas

00;22;23;25

We are in this season of the podcast focusing on raising emotionally strong and worry free kids based on some books we've written. And what does an emotionally strong child look like to you?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;22;36;24

Look, most children are resilient most of the time. This loving, conscientious generation of parents is parenting with trauma theory in mind. Perhaps psychology has introduced us to trauma theory because we know that kids who are sexually abused are traumatized. We know certain kinds of terrifying experiences can be traumatic, but it now has parents on the lookout for any possible traumatic moment.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;23;08;06

And I'm hearing from parents she was traumatized by her sixth grade friends. Well, I'm not sure she was angry. She cried. She had a bad day. And the next day she waited in. Was she traumatized? I don't think so. So early, we have to see the resilience of kids so they can act resilient because if you keep defining events for your child as overwhelming or traumatic, you're saying not so subtly, honey, you can't deal with this.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;23;41;01

You need somebody to bail you out. You need somebody to intervene and to stand and watch a toddler to see if after she stumbled and fallen, she looks up and looks at you. Are you going to be frightened for her or are you going to stand there and wait for her to pop back up? If your face looks terrified, she's likely to look up and see in your face that you're terrified, and she's more likely to cry and more likely to feel wounded.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;24;06;19

So my first instruction to parents is to manage your own anxiety and try not to overreact. If your child time for him or her to have their own reaction. The question you want to ask a middle schooler, for instance, who's in a socially tough situation is, sweetie, what do you think you're going to do? How are you going to handle that?

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;24;30;13

You don't start with the advice. As one sixth grade girl said to me, My mother tells me things to say. I could never say.

Sissy Goff

00;24;38;02

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;24;39;01

Because the mother's language is one sixth grade girls language. So you got to ask the child how he or she is going to handle it. And then listen. Shut up and listen.

Sissy Goff

00;24;53;00

Yes. Oh, I mean, cannot love everything you're saying more.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;24;57;12

I'm preaching to the choir here.

Sissy Goff

00;24;58;27

Well, you can tell we are 100% on the same page as you on everything. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thinking about anxiety being so prevalent among kids today, what would you say to parents of kids who are struggling with worry and anxiety? You said a beautiful thing already that managing your own anxiety is the most important thing you can do for parents.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;25;18;16

Yes. Next thing is to put children in developmentally appropriate, challenging situations and have them succeed. Nothing reduces anxiety like success. So I have a dear colleague, a licensed counselor that I work with at a school, and she said, Michael, you're not going to like this. I took my three girls and went to swimming. They'd never been on the swim team, and I kind of pushed all three of them into the pool, and she thought I would disapprove of that.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;25;52;09

And I said, Well, how do they take it? And she said they were okay, but by the end of it, two of them didn't want to do swimming, and one did. And I said, Fine, but you push them all in the pool, and one decided to become a swimmer. The other, incidentally, one became a runner and one became an ice hockey player.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;26;11;03

So they just find the right thing. Right. They had to find the right thing. But I don't think it's wrong to give you children a push into the pool. I mean, you're they're you're going to say they started to go under. But I think you have to as children to take a challenge. And this is why summer camp is so meaningful to me, because kids come up there, you know this.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;26;34;25

Yeah, kids come up there and they don't know how to swim or they do names for them, but they're very unconfident swimmers. And if their mother was standing there transmitting anxiety, I know you're going to be all right, sweetie, with your [unintelligible].

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;26;48;28

She'd completely undermine the child. But a 19 year old counselor has. You can do this. Get in the water. Come on. We're all in. Come on in. Giving a child a challenge, having them overcome it. That is an antidote for anxiety. That is what reduces anxiety, is thinking, oh, I'm good at stuff. I can do stuff. I can actually do scary stuff.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;27;14;09

Larry Cohen, you wrote a book called The Opposite of Worry. He wrote Playful Parenting also. Yes, Larry is such a brilliant, creative light touch of how to amplify a child's anxiety, but to manage it with a light touch. But every modern parent thinks they have to be a therapist and get to the bottom of it and talk in a therapeutic way.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;27;38;16

And the problem is you're unwittingly sometimes inflaming anxiety.

David Thomas

00;27;45;18

We could keep you on all day long. Yes. It's wisdom.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;27;52;00

I started as a middle school teacher 52 years ago. Did you? I mean, I come by some of for you, right?

Sissy Goff

00;27;58;11

Yes.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;27;59;07

I've seen a lot of worried parents and a lot of anxious kids. And I've also seen the vast majority of resilient kids bounce back from tough thing.

Sissy Goff

00;28;07;20

Yes.

David Thomas

00;28;08;24

No wonder teachers feel so comfortable with you and want to ask the questions they're asking. I'm thankful they did that gave birth to the great work you put out into the world. Really thankful. We like to end with something fun. Okay, we're going to move from the substantive to something a little more silly. We love tacos around here, so we'd love to ask you a two part question.

David Thomas

00;28;31;02

Okay. So or guacamole. And then also, what's your favorite taco is guacamole.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;28;37;26

So I can answer that easily. I'm not a huge taco fan, but I would tell you that I read my grandchildren over and over and over the book Dragons Love Tacos. You know.

Sissy Goff

00;28;53;06

I don't know that book I need to get.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;28;55;09

With a picture book. And the thing is, dragons, it turns out love quite mild tacos. But if you mistakenly give them an extremely spicy taco, then the flames start to come out of their mouths and they burn up the place. So the book is about having dragons over to taco parties. And I had so much pleasure reading Dragons Love Tacos.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;29;21;08

I can't remember the author's illustrator's name, but it's really fun if you're in the Taco Question business. Yes, because.

Sissy Goff

00;29;30;22

Well, we would say prioritize reading your books. Michael Thompson's books ever Dragons Love Tacos. So thank you. I mean, really, I feel like we could shut our podcast down now. I mean, I think everything you've said, we just feel so strongly and are always trying to communicate to parents. So we're just so, so grateful for your voice.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;29;49;20

I'm glad I could affirm that. Yes. And I'm glad you're in the work. Yeah. We have a mental health crisis for kids and teens in this country because we don't have enough services. And the pandemic may only in one community have increased the number of kids who needed mental health services from 15%. Let's say that's an ordinary baseline.

Michael Thompson, PhD

00;30;10;08

So in the pandemic, it wasn't an epidemic, but it may have gone up to 20%, but we wouldn't meet their needs and we need people to be willing to help children in this way. And we need communities to be willing to fund clinics that do this kind of work. Yeah. So I respect what you do.

Sissy Goff

00;30;28;09

Thank you so much. Well, we sure respect what you do.

David Thomas

00;30;30;25

Yes, we.

Sissy Goff

00;30;31;08

Do. So thank you so much.

David Thomas

00;30;37;07

Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. I'm going to have to list the whole episode again because I want to take notes.

Sissy Goff

00;30;43;02

The whole thing. I want to transcribe it.

David Thomas

00;30;44;27

I do, too. Yes. It was so rich.

Sissy Goff

00;30;47;25

So good, so many different things. And I'm sad y'all couldn't see him while he was talking. And he's just the kindest.

David Thomas

00;30;54;23

Yes. So, guys. And you are I hope it's just a taste of why we communicated on the front side that we love his work so much. So if you want to read more, we couldn't recommend his writing enough. He's so much great content out there. So if it whet your appetite today and you want to go deeper, grab a copy of Best Friends, Worst Enemies.

David Thomas

00;31;13;05

There's so much good stuff in that. What stayed with you?

Sissy Goff

00;31;16;03

I was going to say, okay, I want to say my two favorite things. One is when I told that story of the mom picking up her daughter, saying, who was mean to you today? And he said, I call that investigating for pain.

David Thomas

00;31;27;09

Wasn't that amazing?

Sissy Goff

00;31;28;18

Because I just feel like it's so easy to do that when you know your child's hurting or you feel like your child's not talking or something like that. But we are suggesting that when we go there, I think that whole idea of whatever we pay the most attention to is what's reinforced and we're reinforcing the negativity in those man so lutely.

David Thomas

00;31;47;24

I was thinking about when you talk about how anxiety distorts, it's like we're just feeding and fueling what's already a distortion. So it was incredible. I loved when we got to talk a lot about the benefits of kids going away to camp, and he told that story in a way that said, we wouldn't maybe even realize how we'd be hovering and communicating with kids that would make them fearful about swimming, where a 19 year old counselor could be cheering you on like you believe you can.

David Thomas

00;32;13;29

Yes. And that being one of so many of the benefits that I think come from those experiences for kids when they're away from parents and building that independence.

Sissy Goff

00;32;23;20

Yes.

David Thomas

00;32;24;02

What else did you love?

Sissy Goff

00;32;25;12

Other thing was because we talk about this so much about the language that people are using and trauma has become an overused word. I don't think we've ever said that directly, but we both feel it from kids and parents alike. Tell me if I got this wrong. But I think what he said is when we're stepping in and talking in that kind of language, we're really trauma theorizing with kids, which is a pop culture and psychology kind of movement right now.

Sissy Goff

00;32;51;00

And so we are laying something on them that's not necessarily true and not even giving them the opportunity to experience their own resilience without us swooping in.

David Thomas

00;32;59;25

I loved that so much. When you talked about it.

Sissy Goff

00;33;02;09

You know, and not to say there's not genuine trauma, because there certainly is. But we've gotten the equation wrong in some ways. And he did a great job of writing us the absolutely did.

David Thomas

00;33;12;24

Yeah. This is one we're going to go back and listen to over.

Sissy Goff

00;33;15;06

And over today.

David Thomas

00;33;16;23

So good.

Erick Goss

00;33;21;23

Hi, I'm Erick Goss, dad of three and CEO of Minno, a streaming platform for Christian families. As Sissy and David so often remind us it's important to balance our modern parenting with vintage values like the ones Dr. Thompson reminded us of today. But this can be tricky when navigating our fast moving lives, because we often don't have much time to do much more than react.

Erick Goss

00;33;42;28

As parents, we like binary rules. Inside is bad, outside is good, TV bad books are good. But the truth is, when it comes to life and especially technology, there's a lot of nuance at play. Our job as Christian parents is to raise humans who will one day thoughtfully navigate the digital world on their own. A screen time free for all is not a good idea and going completely old school by outlawing screens in our homes is also not the answer.

Erick Goss

00;34;10;20

As we seek to prepare our kids for the future. One of the ways we can best prepare our kids to find balance is by giving them agency, inviting them, into the process of setting boundaries around technology. There's no better time than now to collaborate with our kids, to help them cultivate healthy patterns and determine healthy ways to approach technology.

Erick Goss

00;34;30;14

I remember a conversation I had with my middle schooler. She told me, I think I'm getting too much screen time and I feel bad after I'm on. So she and I talked about appropriate limits. Having these discussions with our children now teaches them to reflect on their screen time and to develop an internal compass around what's good and bad for them.

Erick Goss

00;34;49;13

It also helps them to learn to develop convictions in self-imposed guidelines that they can share with us versus feeling like we're just placing limits on them. Remember, we're not raising kids. We're raising adults. A thoughtful, intentional approach to screen time, set them up for a more successful future.

Sissy Goff

00;35;07;17

It's our joy to bring the experience and insight we gain through our work beyond the walls of the Daystar house.

David Thomas

00;35;16;09

If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with your friends and don't forget to click the follow button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode to learn more about our parenting resources or to see if we're coming to a city near you, visit our website at RaisingBoysandGirls.com.

Sissy Goff

00;35;36;24

Join us next time for more help and hope as you continue your journey of raising boys and girls.