Episode 208: Empowering Children to Forge Their Own Paths with Seth Marlowe
/Welcome to another episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, I sit down with Seth Marlowe, author of Path Breaker Parenting, to discuss how to support kids, especially teens and young adults, in finding their own unique paths—not what society or culture dictates.
Here’s a summary of what we discussed:
Reevaluating the high-achieving path and prioritizing personal fulfillment for teens
Encouraging children’s self-awareness and questioning societal expectations for authentic decisions
Balancing authentic self-expression with future academic and career opportunities
Reducing pressure on teenagers by promoting a healthier, less stressful approach to academics and personal growth
Guiding parents in transitioning from a taskmaster role to a mentor role in supporting their children and balancing everyday tasks
Encouraging intrinsic motivation in children by allowing consequences and avoiding overprotection
Navigating the challenge of resisting achievement pressures while maintaining values
Understanding the uncertainty in parenting, especially regarding how lessons and values might take time to land with children
To connect with Seth, visit his website pathbreakerparenting.com. Follow him on Instagram @pathbreakerparenting and Facebook @pathbreakerparenting.
Resources:
I would love to hear from you! If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on the podcast or any takeaways or wins you’d like to share you can leave me a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/laurafroyenphd
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent podcast, we are going to be talking about how to support our kids in finding a future, a path that is right for them and not necessarily what society and culture has told us we need to be doing. So we're used to doing things a little bit differently around here. And we're going to extend this conversation into the teen years and into young adult years and to help me with this conversation, I'm bringing in Seth Marlowe, he's the author of Path Breaker Parenting, a beautiful book on kind of how to do things differently with our teens and supporting them and becoming their full selves and having rich and happy lives. So Seth, I'm so happy to have you here with us today. Will you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Seth: Yeah. Hey, it's awesome to be here. Laura, I think I reached out to you maybe in the spring or summer. So several months waiting and looking forward to this. This is cool. I'm really happy to be here.
Laura: I apologize for the way. I always take the summer off to be with my family, which is one of the reasons why I love working for myself. I get to do those things.
Seth: You get to do those things. Plus you got a popular podcast. So, you know, you got, you got, you gotta be selected. So it's great to be here. Yeah, I mean, so I live in Charlotte with my wife Donna. We raised two daughters, Lauren and Brooke. Lauren is 26 almost 27 which is just ridiculous. I can't, I can't believe that. And, the youngest Brooke is 24 she's actually getting married this Saturday. So in five days. So, thank you. So we're, we're doing a lot of, well, my wife is mostly doing a ton of prep this week and I'm just running around doing errands and doing, we're trying to do what I'm told. But yeah, we,you know, going all the way back into elementary school and really into early middle school just made a decision as parents that we, we just felt like what we were seeing in society and, and the, the, the rigid structure, the expectations that were placed on kids, the reasons for those things just made less and less sense to us. And then we started to see what all of that was causing in the behaviors of our daughter's friends and some of the stress levels and the anxiety levels in them.
And that even emboldened us further to say we're just not gonna do that. You know, we're gonna focus on some different things and try to raise them in a way that, you know, the, the go to thing I always say is that we told them as we, we have lost and we have no interest in raising high achieving teenagers. We are really focused on trying to enable you to thrive as young adults. That's what we're trying to do. And so we're focused more on the long game and we're gonna set aside all these things that you're told that you're rewarded for as a teenager and try to help you understand how to do some of the things that are gonna lead to longer term happiness and thriving. So that's what we did. And then as they became young adults, you know, about a year, a little over a year, year and a half ago, I just started to get a lot of encouragement from them and some others that you really ought to write a book. And I didn't think I'd ever do that. And then one day I just opened Google Docs and I started typing and, and now it's out there.
Laura: That's awesome. Seth, you know. Okay. So you, you said something just now that really, oh, it, it got, it brought some fields up inside me. We have no interest in raising a high achieving teenager. Oh, I feel like that's going to hit a lot of people. Partially because many of the listeners, many of the parents who are listening were high achieving teenagers. I'm a high achieving teenager and I was reflecting back on my life like that did not serve me well, I had a lot of anxiety. I had no idea who I was. I was doing things because I looked good on a resume versus being really connected to my heart and to my soul. I ended up at a school that didn't have the major that I was interested in. I wanted to be a marine biologist.
I continue to fantasize about studying whales and working as a whale conservationist. I will probably get to do that sometime someday. I won't do it by getting, you know, a phd in marine biology. I will do it in a workaround way, but I ended up at a college where they didn't even have my major. So I ended up in a career kind of by default, kind of. Okay. So what is the next best thing for me? Because the college looked good, you know, on paper anyway, I just so like, I feel very much a product of this path that you talk about in your book. And what are the, what are, can you tell me the path of like the traditional path that we are sold, that is you know what we need to do and support our kids in doing.
Seth: Yeah, it starts step one. It starts in middle school. The conversation with our daughters was in middle school when you're gonna start to be told that grades start to matter. Now. They don't, they don't count for your air quotes. Permanent record yet. You're told this is when you have to kind of learn how to make good grades because then when you get to ninth grade, that's when they count and that's when they go on your record. But grades start to become important in middle school. I think today probably it's a little earlier. I think a lot of kids are getting those speeches and that pressure in elementary school. But when our girls were that age, it really started more in middle schools. Step one of the path is, grades, there becomes this high emphasis on academic excellence. Step two of the path I'd say has, has gotten worse in the last 15 to 20 years, which is accumulate credentials or you can think of that as accumulating achievements. It's an achievement culture, it's not, it's no longer good enough just to get good grades and we could talk about why, right. But now you've got to add all of these other achievements on top of academic excellence and pursue those things. Step three is you start to get pressure probably late middle school, early high school around. What, what are you gonna be? What are you gonna do when you grow up? So, what's your career gonna be? So you start having to focus a lot on that and thinking about that and you know, when you're 15 or 16 years old with no real world experience, and so you're trying to get good grades, you're trying to achieve all these things and you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do for 40 or 50 hours of your life every week, for decades.
So that's step three, step four is then you after high school for most parents and kids, you venture straight off to college, right? You go into college because that's the best way to become successful and make good money and you enjoy the college experience, which for a lot of people is wonderful. And you get a degree. Step five out of six is you come out of college and now that thing you decided to be, you start being that right, you start doing the thing that you picked and of course you're told and you're, it's gonna be wonderful, right? You're gonna pick the right thing and you're gonna get a great job, you're gonna make good money. And then the last step of the path step six is then you will, you will achieve financial stability and security, which is going to lead to happiness and fulfillment and it kind of ends up being that, that happiness and fulfillment gets centered around that thing you decided to be, which means your life tends to get centered around your career or your job. And what you're trying to do is assemble happiness and fulfillment around that thing. So that's, that's the path that outlined the book grades, achievements, and decide what you want to be. Go to college, get a degree, get out of college, get a great job and then find your happiness and fulfillment centered on that career.
Laura: And what are you suggesting we start thinking about differently, doing, doing differently with our kids?
Seth: I'm kidding. I think the biggest thing is that we tried to sit down at a high level. What we tried to do with the girls is say, there are situations in which you could follow every step of this path and you could be amazingly happy. You could find complete and total happiness and fulfillment following this path. It's absolutely possible and some people do it. So it's not that it's wrong for everyone. So, the direction of them was we're not saying this is wrong for you. What we're saying is you and everyone else, your age is being sold that it's right for everyone. And that's what we're not really sure of. And so we think at each one of these steps, there's options to consider what might be right or wrong for you. So if you are just really into academic excellence, you love being a student, most of the coursework and subject matter you take in school you actually enjoy, then you will probably be great at academics and get good grades. That's not a bad thing.
But if you are sitting in a classroom at 14 years old with a topic or subject matter that you have absolutely zero interest in. And the only reason you are forcing yourself to memorize, this is so that you can get a grade that's gonna go in your GPA. That's gonna help you get into one of 100 or 100 and 25 colleges out of 4000, we don't think that's healthy. So for us, in those classes, we're telling you grades don't matter. We don't care what your grades are in those classes because for the rest of your life, you're never going to be forced to learn anything. You'll get to choose what you learn if you do this right? So if you take that and kind of extrapolate each of the six steps, that was more of the conversation. This step may be right for you or it might not be right for you. We just don't believe in that. It's being sold is right for everyone.
Laura: I love this invitation to engage your kids very consciously in this, like intentional questioning and internal like kind of checking in with, you know, the parents that I work with and that listen to this podcast are doing that and have been doing that from the very beginning with their kids. They are questioning like, do I need to teach my kids to say please? And thank you or will they learn that organically through practice and modeling? You know, so they're doing a lot of that questioning right from the very beginning. So this is not, I think a new practice for us, but I think we're getting at what you're getting at though is teaching our kids to do that questioning, starting to engage them early on in the process of understanding. Okay, this is what culture and society is telling us is right for you. But actually you're the person who knows what's right for you and we're going to figure that out together. Yeah. Is that right?
Seth: Yeah. No, I think it's good, it's a great read. I mean, I, I think obviously when you're 12 or 13 or 14 or 16, it's, it's hard to know what's right for you, right? I mean, your brain's going crazy. You're, you're emotional, you're a hot mess most of the time. And so, you know, you, you don't necessarily know at 15 or 16, what's long term, right? For you, right? You, you barely know what's right for you like today. You're trying to figure that out on a day to day basis when you're that age. So it was, yeah, it was just giving them a lot of freedom to explore and think and experiment and not feel so rigidly beholden to, you know, these, these standards and so a simple little example would be that I, I just, hate this class. I have, I don't like this subject matter. It's not interesting to me at all, but I have a huge exam coming up next Thursday and the direction would be to study an hour or two enough to get an C on the exam because you don't want to fail classes. And then instead of studying four or five more hours to try to get an A in something you don't care about. I'd rather you spend that time on, I don't know, emotional intelligence or how you build a growth mindset or how you talk about yourself or how you interview or how you write an email.
It's all kinds of things that I would say is better for you to spend your time on than trying to get an A in something that you have no interest in. Because really the only reason your grades in high school are ever going to matter is on a transcript. When you're trying to get into a very selective college, all adults know that once we leave high school, whatever grades we made in high school are pretty much irrelevant. We all know that. Now we oftentimes don't tell you that. But that's what it's ok for you to understand and believe is that school is compulsory so you have to go but what you choose to do while you're there and what you choose to do outside of school, we're going to give a lot of freedom for you to experiment, explore there.
Laura: Okay? I can I want to push back on you on something you just said not because I believe in the pushback, but just because I, I know that this is the push back we would receive. So, wouldn't you say that by encouraging our kids to kind of do a mediocre job, you know, and get ac on a test on a subject that they don't really care about, you might end up limiting their options going forward. So let's say they're making this decision at 15, they're freshman in high school, but by the time they are seniors, they want to go to an elite college. They've made that decision consciously through a lot of guidance, but now they're limited because they did so poorly. Do you know what I mean? Like, like did so poorly, you know, this? But what would you say to that? What would the response to that be?
Seth: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question and I've gotten that question before. I think the, like the other version of that question a little bit is if you're giving your kids that, that ability to cop out, then it's an accountability thing. I want my child to be accountable to trying hard, right, to achieving things and to learning how you put in effort and you get a result and that's important. And I completely agree with that. I think it's a matter of what it is that you hold them accountable to. So that's the first part of the question and we can talk more about what I mean by that. I think the second part is yes. If, if in ninth and 10th grade they just really weren't academically involved and engaged and they had a 2.8 GPA and then suddenly they get into junior year and they become very motivated academically and to your point that they want to try to get into an Ivy League or they want to try to get into Duke or Stanford or something like that at that point, you know, the, the question will be okay. You know, what are you had something that was important for two years in your life and now you've actually changed what's important to you and guess what that's gonna happen like 1000 times in your life. So now what you need to do is this thing that's now become important to you that wasn't previously important to you. Let's figure out how you achieve that goal.
Now, you may not be able to achieve that goal straight out of high school. You may need to do something for a year after high school or go to a certain type of university and prove yourself further and then route your way in or you may end up going to an Ivy League for graduate school. I don't know. Right. But you're not prevented from doing that. It's going to be harder for you now than if you had been academically engaged from the beginning. But it's still possible. And guess what, a year from now when you're a rising senior, you may change your mind again and now you don't want to be so academically driven. So I think that the law, it's a long answer to say I would rather, instead of air quotes, forcing them to be academically engaged from day one because they might decide they want to go to a new college that just didn't feel right. I would rather let's do this together in a way that feels more natural to you. And if something changes and clicks in for you, then let's address it at that point.
Laura: I really like that. I, and I think again, like there's this, you're bringing it, you're bringing to this conversation, this sense of I'm trying, I'm looking for the word, not detachment, but like it's going to be okay. I think that, you know, we know what's going on with our teenagers. The teenagers in this world right now are the unhappiest they've ever been. They're the most stressed they've ever been. Suicide rates are the highest they've ever been. And what you what the response you just had allows for less pressure, less stress, less kind of my life is hanging in the balance. Feeling that I think a lot of teenagers are grappling with. Wouldn't you agree?
Seth: I, yeah, 100%. I cause you know, the, I think in one of the things you said in the question again, it's a very good question. I get this question often, so what if they decided they suddenly wanted to try to get into an elite university? And so what if they can't? And so now they're limited, right? I think the other part of the conversation we had with them is getting a degree from a highly elite university, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford cal, whatever, do whatever you wanna call it, it enables it certainly can enable some doors to open that will not open without it. I will fully acknowledge that. But I think the conversation we had with them is if there are 1000 different doors that could possibly be open for you, when you enter into the real world, you start doing stuff, there might be five that are locked because you don't have a degree from an elite school or 10, maybe 20 but there's gonna be 980 others that are still going to be wide open for you, right?
And so it's a little more of giving them this understanding that you don't need to feel like if you don't do this thing then you're highly limited. It is if you don't do this thing. Yeah, that probably means that you don't get access to this, this, this and this. That's probably true. But you know what, you and I could spend an hour on, let's spend an hour on everything else that you are gonna have access to. And I'm gonna bet there's a bunch of stuff in there that you're gonna love doing and you're not gonna worry about those five things that you don't get access to because you didn't do that thing.
Laura: Oh, I really like this. So, and what you're doing is you're advocating too that parents become that coach for their kids. They become the person who is supporting them and thinking about things differently in your book, you use the terminology parenting as being a mentor as opposed to being a taskmaster. I'm kind of curious because that's really what I heard you saying there too. I'm kind of curious if you have some, some suggestions for how parents can make that shift. I think that like lots of my listeners are already attempting to be mentors as opposed to task masters. But making that shift is hard. Do you have any I don't know ideas for parents who want to make that shift, but they're finding themselves continuing to step into that taskmaster role even though they're trying not to.
Seth: Yeah, I mean, I think we were so bought in and not doing that and I would still find myself being task, mastering them. A lot of times I'd be like, you know, I would finish the conversation and walk downstairs and go, I just task, mastered the heck out of her. Literally. That's all I just did. And so it is so hard to not do it because there are certain things that you think I just gotta make her do because it's for her own good. So I think it's, it's not you, you're never gonna not do it altogether. You're just not. But I think the first thing I'd say is you really do have to get comfortable. You know, I said earlier, we're not trying to raise high achieving teenagers. You as the parent have to get comfortable with your kid, not being on, not walking up on stage all the time, not being handed trophies and awards all the time, not getting certificates, not being recognized, not being in the honor society, right? You have to get used to that if, if you're truly going to mentor them and not taskmaster them, you will have to give up that need and that desire to see them excelling at things.
Now again, the parent would say, so are you saying that kids shouldn't try to excel at anything? Absolutely not. They should be excelling at things that they truly want to excel at, for their own reasons, not because society or you is telling them it's important. So I think that's the first thing that I talked to a lot of parents about is you really do have to, you know, a lot of conversations with Brooke and Lauren and our daughters where I know, like, I know it's hard for you right now to see that a lot of your friends are getting all these achievements and they're getting all these awards and they're getting all this recognition and you're not just have to trust me that like 8 to 10 years from now, all the stuff that you're doing now it's gonna hit then I promise you. And so I think that's the first thing you have to do. And I think the second thing that I, you know, I suggest that a number of parents do is that all of us as parents, but we've been in the working world. I would say every one of us has been micromanaged by someone. We've all worked for someone or been in a situation where we were micromanaged. And so asked parents, how, how does it make you feel when you're micromanaged when someone's constantly telling you what to do because they know better than you, right? It's for your own good. This is what you need to do.
Here's how you do it. And then I asked them, I want you to think about who's the best mentor you've ever had in your life, working world or other? And what's your relationship like? And how do you feel about that mentor versus how you feel about that micromanager? And then I wanna ask you, what's your relationship with your teenager? And so when you say my teenagers shut down and my teenagers won't talk to me or they just go to their room and they, whatever. Did you want to spend time with the person who was micromanaging? Did you want to listen to them? Did you respect a lot of what they had to say or did you feel like you were constantly getting run over? And so a lot of it is done because you, you feel it's for their own good, their kids, I'm the adult. Right? I know what's for their own good. So I've got to make them do this stuff, but you really have to understand the mindset that that creates for them and what it causes in, in the dynamic of your relationship.
Laura: Okay. So I, you know, I have almost 12 years old. She turns 12 in two days.
Seth: And you're getting ready to hit it.
Laura: Oh, we've been in it. You know, this is, this is, she was three. She was, you know, she has always told us exactly who she is and what works for her. You know, whether I wanted to hear it or not, whether I was ready to kind of deconstruct my thinking on parenting and children. It was going to happen regardless because she was going to make it happen, which is such a gift to me because not everybody gets kids like that, right? So not everybody has the gift of a kid who forces you to deconstruct what you and unlearn, I think, right? So it's super like a super big blessing. And at the same time, like I do find myself slipping into that taskmaster role because it feels like we gotta get stuff done. Like she's got to unload, like unload her lunch box every day where it won't be, you know, ready to be filled up again the next morning. Like I mean, we can't have like her wet towels all over the floor, ruining the flooring, you know, like there's things that have to be done.
So what do we and I know that you, like you were talking about a much bigger picture form of mentoring, right? With when it comes to like in your book, you're talking about it from a bigger place. But what about these? I think that they're related, right? So I think how we show up in these smaller moments with our kids impacts their ability to trust us to be mentors on the bigger bigger picture things. So what do we do in those like the day to day tasks that have to get done so that we're not the task master and we're also not just the maid cleaning up after them.
Seth: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think that's why we, we kind of were saying there, there's actually things you have to make your kids do. You know? I think when I, when I say taskmaster, you're right. It's, it, it, you know, but I, I would say, and we, we were, we were good at, this is sometimes and we were not good at other times. You know, like the lunch box example, well, if she doesn't unload her lunch box, then it's not ready in the morning to be loaded. You know. We would try really hard to say great, fine. So in the morning when we're trying to get ready for school and her lunch box isn't unloaded, you know what I'd say is in the morning, if your lunch box is unloaded, I'm not making you lunch. And so if, because you didn't load your lunch box, you're not gonna have lunch that day. Then listen, you're not gonna die, you're gonna be hungry all day, but it's not gonna kill you.
And I think that probably being hungry all day, it might be the thing in your head that goes all right. I gotta start, I gotta start up to my lunch box. So there was a lot of not forcing, enabling them to suffer consequences because not eating lunch is not a huge consequence, but they gotta feel it right. And so there's certain things that, you know, I say we, our rule was basically, we're gonna, we're gonna provide a lot of freedom and then we're gonna add rules when you prove to us that you can't manage and take advantage of freedom. So if you're, if you're not old enough or mature enough or you're not in your mindset right enough to handle that type of freedom there, then we're gonna take the freedom away from you and we're gonna add a rule. But I'm not gonna start by giving you a bunch of rules and then trying to lighten up, I'm actually gonna do the opposite because I wanna see what you do with freedom because if I can see what you do with freedom, I think I can do a better job of helping you learn the areas where you need to manage that freedom better. And the rest of it, if you, if you mess that up, I don't think it's gonna kill you. And so I want you to suffer that consequence because that's how you learn. So I don't know if this is a great answer to the question.
But I mean, there's certain things and especially as they get older that they, that you, you have to make them do right? You have to make them do certain things. But I think as a parent, I would just say on a daily or weekly basis. Really, I would even say, take a list and write down, like write down the must list and write down the, not that big of a deal list. And under the must say these are the things that yes, myself, my partner, everyone in our home agrees. These are must, this is what I'm gonna make them do and everything else. You know, I'm gonna let them suffer consequences and I think if you do that and really, really honest with it, that must be a list that will be about that big and then not that big of a deal will be that big.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, I like that. I like those lists and I, I think it would be even more impactful to do, make those lists collaborative, collaboratively with the kiddos to sitting down and crafting those lists together.
Seth: I surely agree 100%. Yeah.
Laura: Well, you might not. Right. And then you have to get to have the opportunity of, you know, no, you definitely won't.You know, gosh, my kids don't agree at all with the idea that, like, okay, so once a week we clear, you know, we put things away in our bedroom so that the floors can be vacuumed or swept. You know, they don't understand the need for that. Maybe I should just let them, like, maybe I should just let them not have their rooms be vacuumed for a month or so, and just see if they like the dust bunnies that we'll be flying around. Sorry, I interrupted you.
Seth: You know, I no, you didn't. I was starting to interrupt you. I had this conversation with a good friend a couple of months ago. We were on this topic. He's got a, you've got about a 15 year old son and he said if he does not force him, his son basically doesn't bathe, his son just thinks unless he makes him bathe himself. And so we were, he and I were having this conversation, this debate and I'm like, why are you making him clean himself? He said, because I come on, man, he's like, I have to, I have to teach my kid that. And I said, I don't know. Is it working? He was no, I kept having to make it. I said, you know, what might, what I bet would work? Is that some point? Or maybe soon he'll have a crush on somebody and he'll be sitting next to that person on the bus or in a classroom or something. And he'll really want that person to, you know, go to a movie with him or do whatever and that person will choose not to because he smells at some point, it will have an impact on someone that's important to him that will cause him to think.
Oh, people, my peers, my friends, the people who I want to be close to me don't want to be close to me because I stink and when he has that realization in his head, you won't have to make him anymore. And so I wouldn't say my buddy came away, agreeing with me. We kind of agree to disagree on this thing. But in terms of, I'd say a little bit of our parenting style, that was definitely a little more of our parenting style is that there's just a number of things that I'm just not gonna force you to do it because I would rather at some point, the world is going to teach you that you really don't want to do that. And when and when you suffer that consequence is when you will yourself internalize the importance of it because I know and just growing up and being in the working world, when someone tells me I have to do something versus I own my own figure out it's important to do something. The latter tends to work better. And so that was more of the parenting philosophy is to try to find ways to, to let that happen more naturally instead of forcing it.
Laura: Oh I love that. And I mean, just to pull out what we're talking about here, we're talking about intrinsic motivation as opposed to extrinsic motivation, right? We're talking about it coming from within the child. I think that it is really scary for a lot of us parents who are kind of parenting in this helicopter parenting world to allow our kids to fail, to allow our kids to suffer those consequences. You know, I was thinking back to my own childhood days. I'm not really sure how my parents didn't know I had ADHD but I didn't and every time they didn't, I did. But every time I had wanted to take my lunch to school for like a field trip or whatever, I always forgot it always every single time because it was outside of my routine and I thrived on routines and my dad would always rescue me.
He would, you know, he was a school teacher. He had a planning period in the morning. He could always run home and grab it and bring it to me. And I just think that like if they had not done that one time, I would never have forgotten my lunch box again. On a trip, I would never have forgotten it again because I, but I never had the consequences. And of course, my dad did that out of love and care and because he could, he had a job where he was able to. And at the same time, I think it kept me from learning a powerful lesson, you know, but I think that we keep our kids from learning some of the things that they need to learn because we want to prevent their suffering. Right? How do we stop ourselves from doing that?
Seth: It's a great story. I it's a really good example and I, I think a lot of people would say, come on, it's not that important if your dad brought your lunch box to you. And I think you go maybe that one singular act. Okay. Fine. But usually for most of us as parents, it's, it's multiple acts. It's many things that we end up doing that. You know, we talked at the beginning of, we talked at the beginning about how teenagers are, have never been more stressed and anxious. I would say that was a big motivator to write the book. But honestly, the biggest motivator was, is my daughter is became young adults and I started observing young adults, more their friends or people they worked with or just natural conversations or things they observe. What actually really motivated me most to write the book was just how much young adults are struggling. I mean, it's bad with teens with stress and anxiety, but young adults right now are just getting it. You know, they are, they are very disillusioned. They are really struggling with meaning and purpose. They still are like carrying achievement pressure. They are very money driven. They've been told their whole lives to try to get a really good job and make good money and they're just so fixated on job and title and money. And so that has been the biggest motivator is that some of these things like taking your lunch box to your kid when they forget it. When they're 15, the world is so unforgiving and dynamic now that there are so many consequences they didn't suffer and so many things they didn't learn and they're entering into this world with two main issues.
Number one, they're entering into the world with this expectation that all these achievements and degrees and certifications they did are gonna be highly valued. And all of the data is telling you it's not valued anymore. It's not, they're very much struggling to find employment and the kind of money they expected to make. So they are immediately getting slapped upside the head with expectations that are really high and a reality that is really low. And when your reality is far from your expectations, you're unhappy, right? And I think the second thing is they're finding that, a generation or two ago, there was a lot of stability in employment and much more stability in the world. Right? You grew up, you got into this field, you got this job, you worked for 40 years, you retired and it doesn't work that way anymore. And it's a very volatile and very unforgiving world with a lot of change. And they're just being overwhelmed by that because they really haven't been taught to deal with a ton of change on their own. They've really been kind of task mastered and told what to do. And So I think you hear a lot of like 40-50 60 year old people saying, oh, this generation now is so entitled and they're so like, you know, all this and that and what I say, every single time someone says to me is, well, what did you expect? But what, what would you expect to happen when they're raised the way they're raised and they're not prepared to, to thrive in this world, of course, they're, they're walking around going, wait a minute. Where are my rewards? Me? Where are my rewards for? Everything I did that I was told would lead to happiness and that I'm not happy. So of course, of course, they look and feel entitled because us, you, the adults were the ones that did this to them.
Laura: We sold them a promise. We sold them a lie that was never gonna come true. Right.
Seth: Right. And then when they're pissed off that the lie isn't true. We call them entitled.
Laura: Yeah. And so I love that you're talking about being upfront with our kids and helping them understand. I think that I keep coming back to and you know, I just keep coming back to the struggle that I know we as parents have with understanding this, your argument intellectually and agreeing with it on the one hand and then that internal struggle of like, but I'm never, I'm never going to see my kid get called up, you know, and get this award. I never, you know, I'm like, don't they have to be on a sports team, like, don't, you know, like, I mean, like, it's just, you know, in this achievement, it's just doing something so radically counterculture is really hard to do. So as a parent, when you're in that place of like,okay, I am not going to make my kid learn an instrument. I am, you know, whereas like everyone around me the kids are learning five instruments in a language, you know, like I'm not going to, you know, make my kid do these things. What are some things that we can be saying to ourselves that help us feel more rooted in our convictions?
Seth: Oh, that is a good question, Laura. You're really making me think on that one. The first thing that's popping in my head is honestly like the friends and family who have read the book, one of the chapters that gets brought up most to me is the chapter titled Play The Long Game, which is I think it, yeah, it's in the growth mindset section of the book. I don't know if you remember or not, but it's, it's really a, it's the concept of a parent. It's back to that high achieving teenager versus a thriving young adult. And it's as a parent trying to continually remind yourself of, as a human being as you're the parent? Am I innately inside out driven, really, really happy? Am I happy? Are most of the people who I know best? Are they innately inside out driven? Really, really happy? And the answer for most of us a lot of times is no, right? Or you're happy sometimes and sometimes you're not. And when you really, I think when you really start to think about what is the cause of unhappiness, right? Why, am I not happy? Or why is my best friend suffering, with being happy? I think if you do that a lot of times, you will know in your heart and mind and soul the causes of it. And I think when you think about that and then you turn around and you go is forcing my kid to play three instruments, going to lead to happiness. I think you know the answer. I really do. I think in your heart, mind and soul, you know the answer. And so I think it's just just trying to center back to that as often as possible.
Play the long game, is that, do I am I? Do I really want to see them walk on stage as many times as possible and get the awards and the achievements or when they're 22, 24, 26, 28. Do I want them to just be freaking killing it? Just thriving human beings, just so happy and so content and so fulfilled, what's more important. And so the whole back half of the book is if, if you, if you intellectually agree with it, you know, but I'm just struggling with this. The whole back half of the book starts sitting down and having conversations like this, right? So, you know, you look through it. So the sub, the subtitle is new conversations to engage your team and empower, self directed, thriving. So the whole back half of the book is like literally scripted conversations to say,okay, I'm intellectually agreeing with you and I'm gonna stop caring about awards and certificates right now. I'm gonna do it, dang it. And I gotta sit down with my teenager and say it's time for us to change things up. Okay, we're not gonna worry about some of the stuff we've been worried about. So how do you have that conversation? What are some of the ways that you start to get into that dialogue? What does that look like? What do you say? What are you probably gonna hear back? And so that's what I tried to do in the book is just to give some of those scripts. And it was, obviously what was so cool about writing the book is I spent almost the whole last summer, summer of 2023 after I opened the Google Doc and started typing, having lots of conversations with Lauren and Brooke going okay. I feel like Lauren when you were like, in sixth grade we had a conversation and it went like this is how you remember it because this is the way I wrote it. But I don't know if that's exactly how it went. Right, because that was 13-14 years ago. And so that was so cool last summer trying to go back and replay all of these conversations and then say so I think what you heard was this, this and this and then she, you know, one of them would go. No, that's, that's not what I heard at all that. What hit me was this or it was that. And so it's, it's really trying to kind of help you as a parent to go. If you're intellectually looking at this, you're going, I agree, but I'm just not sure how to really start executing this weekly monthly for over a period of time. That's the goal is to try to give you some of those conversations and scripts to sit down and go, we're gonna change some things up and let's start working on this and let's see how it goes.
Laura: Yeah, I really love that in your book that you have those um kind of conversation starters and throughout the book, not just in the last part, There was one part to where i'm where you were talking about your daughter, your second daughter. And let's see, I wanna, let's see, I wanted to just see how it's how you worded it. I'm looking for the actual so she transformed her entire existence by applying much of what we had tried to instill in her. We often wondered if it had just never landed. So she wasn't someone who you attempted to do all of this and she still struggled to launch. Right. So she came, she tried a semester of college. She came back home was clearly not doing well. And so you had done all of this and it maybe just hadn't landed yet. And you mentioned that too that we can't always be sure how things are going to land with our kids. We can be attempting to have these conversations and they might not be ready for it. They might hear something different than what we intended. And so I'm just kind of curious about that process with your second daughter, your youngest daughter. What was the, like, the ultimatum that you gave her? How did you get her kind of moving? And into the place where she is now? Because I think that that's a fear. I think that that's a fear that people have. Like, if we don't keep them on this path that society tells us is the path, then what if they just end up on our couch when they're 25?
Seth: Yeah. That's where she ended up at 19. Yeah. I think she's a, she's a great example of, yeah, there's a lot of stuff you feel like they need to learn, like they need to learn, work ethic and they need to learn, you know, accountability and they need to learn responsibility and how to deal with money and how to make decisions and how to, you know, they, they need to, they need to learn to do. I need to teach them all these things before they get out in the real world. And you try to do that and, and with her older sister, a lot of that landed and yeah, up until that point, a lot of it just, I would say what she ended up telling me is that it's not that it didn't land and a lot of it was in there, it was in my head. I just had no self-confidence and I was directionless and lost and I just did not know what to do. I didn't know how to apply any of it. And she's so different from her sister. I mean, anybody who has more than one kid, you know, they're just so different. They're wired so differently that they're so different. And so what we did is yeah, she would, she, you know, our message was never like college is terrible and evil and you can't go to college. It was, listen, if you decide that you want to go to college, that's okay. And you are fortunate enough that if you go we can pay for it.
You, you have that, you have that uh privilege. If you don't go, then the money we have saved and would have spent, we're gonna give you access to with our guidance and it's a lot of money. And so the first thing we would say is that we want to sit down and help you understand how much money it is. We want to help you understand that Instead of going to college, we could give you $1000 a month for almost the entire decade of your twenties. And so I want to help you understand what $1000 a month would mean? What does that mean? Because kids don't get that and nobody tells them that. So it wasn't that college was wrong or terrible. So Lauren knew at 15, the oldest, that she didn't need to go to college. Brooke, the youngest, really decided to go to college because she just didn't know what else to do. And it's what all her friends were doing. And so I wouldn't say we tried to talk her out of it. I think what we said is, I'm not sure this is the best reason to go to college. But if that's what you built and decided to do, we've given you a lot of freedom and so you go do that. And so she went, and she just regressed terribly in that one semester. And so she did drop out and then about six months after dropping out, she was living at home, she wasn't doing anything. So the ultimatum was, my wife and I agreed and then I took her to dinner because I think my wife was like, I don't know if I can give her the ultimatum, you know, because Brooke's the sweet one and everything. So I had to go do it, had to do the heavy I had, I had to do, I had to do the deed. I had to be heavy.And, and honestly what I said to her is Brooke. I just, I feel like you have so many good qualities and traits and characteristics inside of you. You have so much value that you can create and give to the world and you're just sitting at home under the security of I. It's just, it's not, it's not enabling you, it's actually holding you back. So here's what we're gonna do.
You have 90 days to move out, you have 30 days to come up with a plan. If in 30 days, you haven't come up with a plan with how you're gonna move out in 90 days, then we're gonna give you a plan that you're gonna have to follow. So you can either create your own or you can follow ours. And then by 90 days you have to be out of the house and you have to try this for at least 3 to 6 months and if it doesn't work and you fall flat on your face, you can move back home for a couple, two or three months and then you have to go out again. But we're gonna force your hand here and get you out into the world because I think when you get out in the world, you've got a ton of stuff inside of you that's gonna start to come out, but it's just not happening here. And so I was walking back from, we were, we walked to dinner and we were walking back and I was sitting here thinking God, I hope I didn't just break this kid. You know, I really, really hope I did not just break this kid. And she just goes, hey, dad, I know what. And she goes, thanks. I really needed this. And it was just like, okay. And four or five days later, she came downstairs with her plan. She moved out in less than 30 days and she never moved back. And it was like from that moment forward the first night she got into her apartment, she told me this story last summer, we were going through this. She's like the very first night in the apartment, something clicked in my head. And just as you, you read the chapter, right? One thing leads to another. It was just one thing after another thing after another thing. And she said it wasn't that none of the stuff that you guys did with me landed. All of that was in my head when I got on my own and I was starting.
I was like, all right, what did, what did mom and dad talk to me about this? Hell, what did I learn about that? She's like, it all started to come into play. It just played out in a very different way than it did with her sister who was really starting to apply all this stuff when she was 15. Brooke really wasn't ready to apply for it until she was 19,20 21. So it just, it, it just played out in very, very different ways. And honestly, last thing I'll say is I've, I've been, I've been writing my I've been writing, she's getting married this Saturday. And so I've been writing my father the bride's speech, which nobody wants. You don't want the dad standing up there for 10 minutes throwing out, right? So I'm trying to write like this really good three minute thing and it's really focused on, I tell you, man, like Brooke more than anybody in my life showed me and inspired me and taught me that transformation is possible, you know, and that she just completely transformed herself from where she was and to where she is now. And I think for a long time in my life, I thought people don't really change. People are who they are and she really has taught me that. No, you know, anybody at any time can just completely transform their existence. If they really just decide I'm just not gonna be like this anymore.
Laura: Oh, it's, isn't it, aren't we so lucky to get to be inspired by our kids and think about, like, yeah, how rarely when your kids are adults, it's the coolest thing.
Seth: Like, when your kids become adults and like, they're, they're adults now so they're not little kids. It is, it is. It's so cool to see how it plays out and the conversations you have are so different and you don't really parent them anymore, right? You just hang out with them or whatever and it's just such a different dynamic. It's very cool.
Laura: I think it sounds amazing. I, you know, my relationship with my mom is so wonderful. So, like we're really good friends, we love spending time with each other. It's so, you know, so different than it was when I was a teenager. And I so look forward to that with my kids, although I love having them being little and at my, you know, in my home, Seth, you've given me a lot to think about and I really appreciate the conversation. I really loved your book, Path Breaker Parenting. And I hope that my listeners will check it out. Can you tell us a little bit more about where they can follow up with you, learn from you? Get the book. I wanna make sure they can get in touch. Yeah. Sure.
Seth: Yeah, the website is pathbreakerparenting.com. There's a, on the home page there's a slot to put your email address and email me. So if you got questions or you just wanna riff about anything on parenting or, or something that you're reading the book, shoot me an email. I respond to every email, that I get. I've gotten to Zoom meetings with some parents and have read the book and just said, you know, and sometimes it's, I don't agree with some of the stuff in here, which is fine.I'm not right about everything. Right. It's totally ok to disagree. But, but let's, let's try. Yeah, let's have a conversation and see, maybe there's one or two things that we end up agreeing on, that help you as a parent so that they can get in touch with me there.There's links there to, to buy it. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And then, and then we just finished the audio book about three weeks ago. And so actually broke our youngest, came into the studio and read parts of it with me. So we Brooke lives in the same city. Lauren lives a long way away in San Diego, but Brooke lives here so we were able to kind of get in the studio together and so she read parts of the book. And so that was really cool. So, the audio books at Amazon as well?
Laura: Oh, that's so exciting. You know, a lot of my listeners are, you know, audio book fans because this is how, you know.
Seth:Yes, my sister is a mama too and, you know, after I published it, she was on me right away. She's like, dude, you have to do an audio book. I'm like, it's kind of expensive. She goes, moms need audio books. She's like, we like, we don't have time to read books. We listen, we listen to books in our car and I was like, all right, I got you. I, I'll do it. So, yeah, yeah. She yeah, she definitely told me that I needed to get done.
Laura: This is actually one of the books though that I would recommend. I think it would be a great listen, but I, I do think like having a hard copy just because it has those written out conversation starters um that are, are really helpful. I will say Seth, I'm really choosy with the people who come onto this podcast. I get a lot of pitches from college prep companies, companies who are, you know, like, have good, you know, good goals, you know, they, they want to help parents make sure that their, you know, kids are happy and thriving. But they are definitely very much. I get a lot of pitches from people who are heavily invested in the path that you're talking about breaking a new book. So I was so excited to get to have you come on and talk with me about a different way of doing things. I think that for my listeners, we've been deeply invested in doing things differently with our kids from the moment they were born. And it's really helpful to have a guide for how to keep doing things differently as they age.
Seth: Well, I appreciate that. And it's, it's been awesome to be on., I'll say one really quick thing in closing. You know, you mentioned a lot of people who are coming to you with, you know, the path in college prep and all that. The last thing I'll say is the, the requirement lie, you know, very quickly is our youngest daughter, Brooke really never wanted to be in a corporate career that just wasn't her jam and she's not, she's a full time nanny and then she does some stuff, things on the side, you know, in the gig economy to make money. The oldest daughter Lauren really did. She wanted to be in a big corporate job. She wanted to live in a big metro city. She wanted to take the elevator down and walk to work and stop at Starbucks on the way. She's had this whole vision of this kind of, you know, corporate career and she is currently in a job. And the first thing on the job description says a four year college degree is required. That's her job today at a Fortune 200 Company. And she never spent a minute in the college classroom. So the whole concept of it is required in order to have these really high paying great jobs, honestly is a lie. And she was told that very early on. And so she was taught how to navigate that world and how to get interviews with the right people and how to conduct interviews. So that's never been an issue for her in a six year career. That air quote requires a college degree. So that's one of the things I'd say to your listeners is, it is worth checking out is to understand a little bit more about that requirement in life.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. I listened to a podcast episode that you and your daughter did. I'll link it in the show notes and that was really lovely to get to hear Lauren's perspective. And in that podcast, you guys talk about some of the resources that Lauren used to learn the skills that she needed in order to kind of circumvent that requirement for a four year college degree. So it was really great, that's awesome.
Seth: It's funny that we tell this story because I think we recorded that podcast about a month after she got this job, you know, that, that again, it required a college degree. So she tells that story and kind of how she did that and what the interview process is. Another story she tells in that podcast is that the job also required, um, five years of experience and she had like two years and 10 months. So it was a really funny story that when she started on her first day, she got a call from human resources and they said, hey, we're logging you in our system and we have to put in your five years of experience. So let's start five years ago. Where were you at? Five years ago? And she said, oh, well, five years ago, I was a senior in high school and the person goes, no, no, I mean, five years ago when your work is like, wait, hang on. How old are you? She said I'm 20 I'm 23 or whatever she was. So, yeah, that she said this, this conversation was so confusing for this person that five years ago she had been in high school and then, you know, where, where did you get your, I didn't go to college. Well, wait a minute, it requires a college degree and five years of experience. You're telling me that you have less than three years experience and you never went to college. I'm just so confused. So she tells that story about how, how funny it was that, that was her first day and one of the first calls she got was those questions after she had landed the job.
Laura: Yeah, I love, I love that story andI love the, the idea that these, this path is, is a lie that we don't have to buy into. And it's great if it chooses, you know, turns out to be the right path for you, but it doesn't have to be, you know. Yeah, thank you, Seth. Thank you so much for your time. It was, it was really great talking to you.
Seth: You too. Let's stay in touch.
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