Transcripts For CSPAN2 Parenting In A Time Of Crisis 2024071

CSPAN2 Parenting In A Time Of Crisis July 13, 2024

Environment issues during this time. Madeline levine, phd, has long been a leading voice in thinking about wellbeing and anxiety in use today and has a new book out, ready or not, preparig our kids are really uncertain future. Fn Christine Carter is also a leading voice in the science of happiness for children and its application with a wonderful new book out called the new adolescence. Thank you all for joining me and joining this conversation. This is such an extraordinary time, really transformative and transcended and i mean, everybody sees you and your ligaments and the want to take stock of her of you guys are. How is it going right now for you guys during this covid19 anthemic . Interesting how we start to look upon our life in a new way. Trysting, how about you . Its been humbling. My life has changed quite a lot and things about have been really wonderful. I have all four of my kids home and three out of the four of them were away at school, so they are back and thats wonderful but i have thought a lot about how we sort of cycle in and out of struggle with these things and it is brought a lot of humility in my life. But i have learned that the latin word of humility means grounded or from the earth, and so its been kind of an interesting thing how this experience has been really grounding for me personally. Its funny to talk to people out in the world and go on the social distancing hikes, and people are appreciating the grounding. Theyre looking at our materialistic life in a new light, feeling like time for slowing down. Its interesting. Sarah, how are you doing . I would say its very different unlike madeleines, did i have two kids and a working partner and we both had to figure out how to juggle homeschooling with two little kids. I have sixyearold and a nineyearold, so yeah, i say the grounding aspect has to do with all the things that can get cut them realizing how much can get cut. I felt all of a sudden about how to passport on forgot how to implement the practices that abide in him a book in my own life. Its something to write them down aspirationally or as advice for people who might benefit from it but thats an entirely different thing to open up the book and put those things into practice asap right now. Ive been really grateful to have have had one day a while ago. Apparels of being an author that youll be held accountable, i know. I can only imagine homeschooling. Social science or history would have been quite an adventure. I wanted to start with kind of a broad question for all of you. All three of your books take stock of where young people are today. Teenagers heading into this world, the 21st century. We know from a lot of data that many of you cite, stress has risen dramatically not only for our general public but in particular for young people. The kinds of stress they officially are transforming in changing. Its fair to say in some way its an age of anxiety. I just wanted to get your first stop, like your impressions about where our young people are, what we are as families, parents and teachers and the like. Madeline, you write a lot but anxiety and in some sense the fundamental work right now is uncertainty and you could have time to better because the covid virus, theres not a single thing we know in some sense at some level. Tell us what you learned both in thinking about this and that also in your clinical practice. I have no idea we were going to have a pandemic, and the book came out about ten days before it was declared a pandemic but it was clear that things were changing rapidly in the world, that jobs are going to be changing, training would be changing, education was going to be changing. Frankly, i was with interest, youre right, ive been doing this for 30 years. I was interested in the fact that in spite of how much is known through christians were, through seras work, through dozens, my own will, through dozens of people, that rates of anxiety were escalating, that rates of suicide were escalating, the depression was kind of Holding Steady but for a perfect complete suicide there are 100 that are not as curious about why its been so hard to take what people know and the pressure, we know the pressure and kids are not great, acceptances is just, and parents, by the way, that are just for clarity, adults rates the things i get up to the same extent that kids rates of anxiety are up. So everybody is more anxious and because we are anxious i think were treating our kids and protecting our kids from what we see as anxiety and all the wrong ways. They are afraid to go on a sleepover. We tell them they dont have to, what we dont, we dont march for less pressure in the schools which is something we should do. So are we anxious . Absolute yes. More so than we were when i wrote the price of privilege which was taught in the last century, it was in the century, yes. And i wrote it then because one of the four kids were impaired. Now we have one out of three kids who are impaired and we have a crisis. A lot of the kids who were kind of stable, not great but stable, having a very, very hard time. Im going as to all about covid 19 and i think this will impact young people in the dimensions are interested in. Christine, raising happens, your first book and then this most recent book the new adolescence, we know you keep returning to a central theme in the science of happiness which is community in connection and social connectivity and interconnectedness. How do you take stock of where our kids are right now in terms of the relationships, their friendship, youth tackle, such a relationship . What you think theyre up to and were other going in terms of community . We know theyre spent a lot of time on screens. Even before they were all on lockdown at home, right, they are spinning just a ton of time on screens and that is affecting how they relate to one another. So screen time is, despite my kids protest, its a zerosum game. The more time you spend on screen, the more time youre spending not doing things that we used to do, oldfashioned things like working for pay out from behind not yet a computer. Like i worked in Fast Food Restaurant when i was a teenager. Or we think theyre doing so much spend so much more time on homework and extracurricular. In fact, they are not spending more time on those things. They are spending more time on social media, and we know the more time is spent on their screens come the more time they spend alone which is been such an interesting finding, right . Right lecture me this is been surprising to me starting www. As a sociologist with my work in raising happiness was all about Building Community and it just surprised me to relook at the data with this generation and see, wow, this is the loneliest generation of kids we have ever seen. Of course they are depressed. Of course they are anxious. They are spending a lot more time alone, half as many today spend time every day with some of their peers. This is before lockdown of course, right, and those are just like get together with her friends every day, half as many do. They are down on average an hour a day, just like hanging out with her friends in person. This is really interesting. Were not even getting into the fact that their sexuality is now heavily influenced by their time spent online. Through pornography and also through sexting and the dating apps and things like that, this is like really a whole new world that is affecting their overall wellbeing, and the way they socialize, the way they create community and what they perceive as connection, and also what those connections do for them from a nervous system standpoint. Like whether or not what they perceive as connection actually makes them happy or improves their wellbeing is an interesting thing. Were going to dig deep into new social media. Something thats really interesting to me along these lines, christine, is for years when i met with an auditorium full of kids i have asked them to rank orders three issues of adolescence, and its always been loneliness, identity, and friendship. And for 20 years ago it was always identity, the defining issue of adolescence. It isnt anymore. So for the last five years or so, without fail, that when asked him to rank order wherever i am in the country, loneliness comes in first. Its an epidemic. I remember i was actually making almost a facetious rhetorical point with this question, i asked my class of 300 how many of you are in a longdistance relationship . And youd never senior partner in the last two years . 60 raise their hand. What kind of romance we dont see the person . Strange, right. Added to this cocktail is what sarah writes about in a field guide to climate anxiety. Madeline is talking up the enormous pressure our students feel, young people feel and i can only imagine as is spent in that unfolds and was 20 of our jobs and a lot of kinds of labor young kids moving to. I want to pressure on that, christine, and all of you, and i think its a new kind of anxiety which is the anxiety about the environment. My generation worried a bit about acid rain, nuclear stuff but this is really unprecedented. Berkeley, are college of Natural Resources is a clinical phenomenon of students who have environmental despair or apocalyptic environmental anxiety. What do you think about this, sarah . How do you approach it . Its no surprise to me. Ive been leaving Environmental Programs and teaching for quite a few years now. I noticed a change probably about six years ago whereas before it felt like students were just observing eye contact in a degree that would be taking. Reading the material, 95 and going off with a he lies. Didnt seem like the contact was fundamental shift all of their assumption and rethink about the future. About six is ago things started to change and all of a sudden students emotional despair [inaudible] which i did have worked for at the time of course. And then of course other terms like ego grief. I didnt have a background in psychology or ask the theory oriented this stuff. We have asserted to intrude ony classroom, students emotional engagement with the despair i realized i had to reckon with that and thats the part of that is a lot of changing in my approach to teaching young people. It is so intense that it has changed so much in classrooms. One of interesting of the intes about is theres a positive here. Before that i think people could imagine being an environmentalist without radical change. I think the great and exciting people are feeling is the feeling of having to change and i think thats a good thing. And at that fiction is a good thing and resilience they are building indispensably like fast forwarding through Climate Resilience right now is probably a good thing. Its not going to be great for everybody and its going to be an at and even experience because a lot of different demographic factors. Theres a potential for something good to be happening for this generation, and overwhelmingly this generation feels very strong about Climate Change. A lot of people, this will be our next generation of leaders in a really optimistic about that. Its interesting i wanted to get your reflections on covid19. Its such a dynamic time and are fascinating studies and this is largely in the studies of twitter behavior and instagram behavior and so forth, that after the onset of a trauma where theres a dramatic event like a terrorist attack or a Big Oil Spill or a pandemic, it takes us like three or four weeks as a culture collectively, people are upset, confused, grieving. A lot of my students talk about grief because they lose part of their education, uncertain. Then we start to land in the place, and thats about where we are right now, which is we wee kind of landing on our feet. We have a rough sense of what this is and where it may go. Im really curious just for you guys to reflect on what covid19 will be doing for young people through the lens with which you look at young people. Madeline, what do you think . I agree with you that we are landing in a new spot, which is i think some of us are done with hoarding or terror or watching the news 24 7, all those kinds of behaviors are stopping to some degree. And i think for everybody its really a terrific opportunity to think about values. I feel like im going back to a very oldfashioned place but that was in the book anyway, because were going to pin on community. We are going to depend on a sense of agency, which is the opposite of mourning, in morning you dont have come so you get over the morning and i think kids, its not just that they miss their graduation. They missed their prom. They missed that night. They missed a job without theyre going to have. They missed the city they planned they have missed major milestones of adolescence and young adulthood. I have a particular feeling, which is look, this is awful and i think there are things we can do to make it less awful for kids. But i also think there is the opportunity to learn to sit in uncertainty, which is what is hard for every one of us. In life, in general, you learn that kind of discomfort in small increments. You didnt get invited to the popular kids party, and then you didnt get the guy you wanted to go to the prom with. You know, its like increments. This is not incremental. This is all at once. The last talk i gave i have asked the audience how many people have never had a broken heart . I had 600 people, and one person race their hand. So one person out of 600 never had how did you all survived that . You survived it exactly because you didnt get to go to the popular kids party or the sleepover or whatever. I think thats the better way to build resilience, is incrementally. What were asking kids to do is jump in the first into learning to sit with uncertainty, the learning to be adaptable, to cultivating resilience that shouldve been done over a decade. It is being done in a short period of time. Do i think most my kids are grown, i have three millennials signs. They are working, trying to figure out with their wives how to manage it. Their cohort and personal fortune because were not worrying about on the table and were educated and we are the luckiest people in the country right now. Its a crash course in adaptability. Ive worked with young people my whole life. I in general think they are an adaptable group, especially the young people right now. And i think most of them will manage this crash course, and some wont. Kids who are vulnerable just like adults who were of probable to start with will be the ones who were vulnerable, at addd you think will have Mental Health crisis when this is over, or not even when its over. I think were having it right now. Sarah, i know in your book you really, its almost as if you arrived at a very similar inside that madeline was talking about, which is, if i middle news is really grim in many ways. These laws, collapse, et cetera. You really arrive at this point we feel like part of how we move forward especially young people with so much of the lights ahead of them is to sit with uncertainty and cut it make the most of it. Tell us about that. What christine was talking, sorry, madeline was talking about resonate with what i found in my students, which is becoming an idealistic, come in fairly not entirely protected from trauma but protected from trauma although i think is increasing with first generation of students and more Diverse Group of students, we are starting to educators are stirring to figure out how to educate trauma informed praxis. One of the things i find fascinating about environmental studies, students are young people are caught you just about the environment issues is there been thinking that the uncertainty on the horizon for some time and theyve been worried about that for some time and thats climate anxiety. In a funny way what they called me to do secures ago or so when this started happening was to rethink the skill theyre going to need to deal with this uncertain future. The skills theyre going to need to do with the were not just Technical Skills to build stuff or innovate something or leave a political or legal situation to change policies about environmental issues. The skills they would need are called geek adaptation skills. That was a real waking moment for me and women think about that in the field now for quite some time. What are the deep adaptation skills . Rather than thinking about external skills which is most Environmental Science study teaches this kind of skills, how to fix these problems out in the world looking inward and think about the interior skills we will need to grapple with this after the longterm, and this is where i started to look into thinking about how people have been looking at religion, spirituality, mindfulness as tools people would need just to engage in this for the long haul. One aspect has been to have the move against the kind of dominance American Perspective that we are supposed to be happy, that you all are experts on, and so you all know that happiness is a red herring and actually grief opens up all kinds of opportunities for all kinds of things, especially the into your work people are going to need to do. It is horrifying and theres not, hope isnt going to keep us in it for the long time. The work will have to do to cope with uncertainty, cope with that anxiety and be with okay with it is there. Ive been really encouraged by the fact that my students are suffering and exactly as madden was talking about, really suffering. Im not going to deny it but they kind of knew this was coming and he knew this is what they had been planning for and to make the connections. They know coronavirus is Climate Change, one of the ways Climate Change is going to be felt or manifested. Its fast forward for them, you know . Its interesting, its informative because of the encounters suffering it engages nurturing part of the brain. Its actually a very empowering pathway, so its good to kind of broughton are thinking about the nature of suffering today. Christine, you thought a lot about your scholarship and writing about the network of friendship that kids find themselves in an important those are. And now their children at home with their mom and dad. What could be worse . We probably all that personal stories for those who have been at home. Kids at home. I get a lot of calls, we will never be able to touch a fellow human being again. I think ill change what do you think will happen to young kids friendships and adolescent dating . Their nest and 24 hours a a day next to mom or dad. I have been asked this a lot from kids. Ive been Teaching High School classes kind to help out with all the zoom education, and the kids himself ask me, what is going to become of us in this whole thing . Because the social distancing of course goes against that every development or instinct. It goes our instinct as humans, jus

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