How to Future-Proof Your Kids in 2026

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
How do we future proof our kids? Where is this all headed? What does AI mean for my kid? What does economic change mean for my kid? What does climate change mean for my kid? I think our job is to really be thinking ahead. What can we equip you with so that you are ready to withstand things that aren’t going the way you hope they would go?

Reena Ninan:
How the heck do you teach that to your children?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
This is an interesting one.

Reena Ninan:
Here we are, 2026.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Happy New Year.

Reena Ninan:
Happy New Year to you too. I love doing this in the New Year’s episode with you because every year you kind of get us to open up our aperture and think a little widely. And so I’m curious what you have for us to think about in 2026.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So I have this idea of how do we future proof our kids?
The term future proof actually, I didn’t make it up, but I thought it was super cool. It was in an article that I was interviewed for in the Atlantic and I was like, “That’s a great term.” And I think a lot of what families are kind of wondering about these days is like, where is this all hitded? What does AI mean for my kid? What does economic change mean for my kid? What does climate change mean for my kid? Some scary stuff in here too. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do in the here and now to help our kids get ready for the future ahead that does feel in some ways stranger.

Reena Ninan:
That’s it. I’m not like, “Happy new year everybody.” I feel like don’t say anything, don’t break anything. It just feels like everything’s a little fragile.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It does. No one wants to parent from that position.That’s not a place we want to be. Okay. So now I always like to come up with acronyms and I’ve only ever come up with one good one. Do you remember when we did the summer one and it was SUN, it was sleep, unplug in nature. Okay. I will never do a better one than that. Like that was the best one ever. Okay. But this one is ACE or ACED. You can decide. ACE or ACED, it’s up to you. So the A, in terms of what are we going to do to future proof our kids, we’re going to help them be adaptable. Adaptability is going to be a key thing that obviously all of our kids are going to do.

Reena Ninan:
How do you teach adaptability?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So how do you teach adaptability? I think number one, you model it, you model it and you also model it.
I think if we ourselves are very, very rigid, like it’s got to be this way and I can’t handle it, then it’s not so great.

Reena Ninan:
Give me an example though. I get what you’re saying, but how do I show my kid that I’m adaptable or that talk through the moment of being adaptable?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So say that you don’t have dinner.

Reena Ninan:
Common problem in my house.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. You don’t have dinner. And say that you had something you really wanted to make and you’re frustrated. Or no, here’s what I always find. I have everything but the one thing. I need a can of tomatoes and like I don’t have the can of tomatoes. So I think actually rather than just being grumpy or just getting takeout, you could be like, okay, this is so not the plan I had. The plan I had is not working. I got to come up with a new plan. All right, open the pantry. What do we got? What can we make? How can we retool this? It’s what you would have done anyway, but kind of like I say, subtitling it, like talking through like, “Okay, the plan I had is not the one we’re going to do. I’m frustrated and also time to get creative.”
And I think using that language, like let’s get creative, let’s try to figure out a solution.

Reena Ninan:
I love when you give us language too, because I implement it and I use it. Your verbed in my house. Are you Dr. Lisa-ing? Or that’s adverbing I guess is right when you add ING? Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I don’t know.

Reena Ninan:
Oh, LY is-

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think it’s a verb.

Reena Ninan:
It’s a verb

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So let’s get creative. So if a kid’s like, “Oh man, I was going to do this thing and then it fell through.” First, okay, you know what I’m going to say? Start with empathy. After that, then say, “Okay, you’re a creative kid.What’s the solution here? What can you make happen?” I also think we have to put kids in situations where they have to adapt. I mean, if you’re able to send your kid to camp, those are incredible conditions because there’s a lot of adaptation at camp. And I’m also thinking, I’ve got this friend, she’s so smart about this. She and her family, they take family trips and when her kids were little, she would always say to them, “Okay, get out your suitcase and the first thing you’re going to pack, you’re going to pack your adaptability.” And would sort of forecast? We’re going on a trip. It’s not going to be the comforts that you’re used to. I am expecting you all to be adaptable. So really putting that forward.
Okay. The other way we cultivate adaptability, and this is going to be the low hanging fruit of this, kids are going to have teachers they don’t like, classes they don’t like, classmates they don’t like. There’s no version of going to school where it goes the way you want it to go all the time. I think most kids will be adapting to their peers or to their teachers or to the work in front of them. I think when we underscore it, when we underline it, it’s really helpful. I think when we say, “You are really good at adapting. I know this teacher is not your cup of tea and yet you’re doing good work for this person. I’m so impressed at how you have adapted to this teacher.”

Reena Ninan:
So praising them when they get it right and they are adapting, so they realize they’re adapting.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And that they’re adaptable kids and they can do it. None of us wants our kid to have a teacher that’s not a great fit. I also think that’s a moment to say, “Look, it’s super easy to do good work for teachers you love. For you to do good work for an adult who rubs you the wrong way, that is a very high level of adaptation that is going to serve you very well over time.”

Reena Ninan:
That’s awesome.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So they’re doing it.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah. And working through it. So what’s the C?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
C, this is an interesting one.
Conscientiousness.

Reena Ninan:
Oh, that’s a big one.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It is a big one. When we look at what predicts to future wellbeing, it is not necessarily academic achievement, though there are benefits certainly to staying in school. It is not necessarily financial achievement. We know for sure if you get a comfortable margin above the poverty level, finances do for sure improve your wellbeing, but once you get above that level, actually making more money does not make your life, doesn’t make you happier. We know that. Conscientiousness in kids is what predicts to wellbeing in adulthood.

Reena Ninan:
What do you mean by conscientiousness?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Being honest, earnest, ethical, upright, doing the right thing even though nobody’s looking. And what we know it connects to is the things that really matter in midlife. So the first is having good relationships. You only have good relationships if you’re an honest person. If you’re dishonest, if you’re shady, you cycle through people, people get mad at you.
Conscientiousness predicts to actually doing work you find meaningful. That’s also connected to happiness in midlife is like, I care about what I do, I think that it matters. And the third thing it connects to is doing your job well. So you need those three things together for adult wellbeing. So good relationships, doing something you find meaningful and feeling that you’re good at it.

Reena Ninan:
How do I teach this in a kid though?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, you watch for conscientiousness. So I have a lot of patience for stuff like beds not getting made. I don’t make the bed. My husband makes our bed, which I appreciate, but like I just don’t do it. I think lying is a big deal.

Reena Ninan:
That really bothers me too. And if I see that, I always call it out in front of the kid, in front of the family to suddenly be like, “This is not the thing.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“This is over the line.” Have zero margin for stuff like that. I think being dishonest in any way, kids cheating. I mean, kids will sometimes engage in unconscientious behavior and I don’t think that’s a great place to be like, “Well, kids will be kids.” I don’t like it now. I also do not like what I know about where this points you as an adult in terms of your future wellbeing. Conscientiousness can also just be like taking one’s work seriously and doing a good job. So I think there’s a place, especially probably early middle school, where kids can be kind of sloppy in their work or don’t care that much or kind of dash through it. I think early, like later launch, early middle school, you want kids to know what a good job looks like, to know how to do their work really well. I think once that’s established, then you can talk about when they need to bring their A game and when they don’t have to work quite so hard because they have a lot of work and it’s not necessary to do everything to the nth degree.
Yeah, I was very fortunate. I have a nice family. The gift I was given is my family taught me how to work.

Reena Ninan:
Work ethic.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A real work ethic. And I do a good job. I do it all the way job.

Reena Ninan:
How did they teach that to you?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
My mom was on me. I remember my mom saying, she was like, “You have done 80% of what could be done here. When you do 100%, that’s going to be the kind of job I’m looking for and the job you’ll feel good about.”

Reena Ninan:
So she would push back when you’re like, “Okay, I’m done.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
She’s like, “Actually, I asked you to do carrots in this way or yeah, you cut the carrots and then you just walked away and left the cutting board and the knife and the … ” And she was great about it. She was like, “You need to do 100% job.” And family life has a lot of jobs for kids to do. And I mean, don’t you feel like it’s so easy to be like, cutting the carrots and doing that job is also washing the cutting board and also doing the knives and also getting into the worrk.

Reena Ninan:
Getting stuck with. Now I’m realizing, oh my gosh, I need to channel your inner mom.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, or like conscientiousness workshop, right? I mean, that’s really what that is, is like that’s a wonderful … And we get a billion of those, right? We get a billion of those. We’re like, you walk the dog and then the dog came in covered in mud. The walking the dog job also includes making sure that’s not what’s going on.

Reena Ninan:
I love this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So both ethics and honesty and also doing jobs well. We don’t know what’s down the road, but I do know, Reena, I just have every confidence. If your kids are adaptable and conscientious, they’re going to be well set up.

Reena Ninan:
What happens to the people, the adults you know that are not conscientious, that don’t have a moral spine, like what happened in their childhood, Lisa?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s a good question, right? I mean, what you figure actually comes back to adaptation. They were doing something that worked. And here’s the problem, and I wish this weren’t true, there are plenty of like really shady adults who do just fine. I wish that there are a way to be like, see, everybody gets it in the end. Well, no, not always. But first of all, that’s not the outcomes we want for our kids anyway. And second of all, we do have data showing the things that matter in midlife, good relationships, doing work that’s meaningful, doing it well. If you backward engineer those, what you’re seeing in kids is that these are conscientious kids.

Reena Ninan:
That is interesting. That is a parenting tip never thought of.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s good that we’re talking about it because the other thing is like, I think sometimes we worry so much about our kids’ futures and we’re thinking about their colleges or whatever.

Reena Ninan:
Totally.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And what I will tell you is like, number one is, is your kid a good person? If you’re worried about their future, focus on this question. And I think a lot of us can be like, “Yeah, they’re good people. ” Okay, well actually then you’re in great shape and your kid’s in great shape. The college thing’s going to be whatever the college thing’s going to be, but focus on your kid being a good person.

Reena Ninan:
So AC, what’s the E? Okay.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So the E, it’s actually ED now that I do think about it. Emotional Durability.

Reena Ninan:
Emotional durability, meaning that they-

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That they can withstand distress.

Reena Ninan:
I’m going to ask you the same question I asked before. How the heck do you teach that to your children?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You withstand their distress while they are distressed. Okay, so here’s the deal. So your kid has a terrible day, maybe their best friends moving away, right? Maybe like some terrible news came in. They walk in the door, they are upset. They’re having a lot of big feelings. That is a moment where you either need to be a steady presence or fake being a steady presence because if you’re like, “What? No, we’re going to find 14 ways to fix this. ” You are not demonstrating emotional durability. You are reacting really strongly to the emotion, making it seem like the emotion is bad and we got to get rid of it makes it really hard for the kid to feel like they can take it in stride. Whereas if you find yourself a way, and we may sometimes have to really buck up to do it, to be like, “Oh, I am so sorry. That is so lousy. Of course you’re upset.”
So you’re doing two things at once here. You’re saying words that are very, very attentive to what’s happening in a tone that makes it clear nobody gets knocked off their axis just by this, right? I don’t love this, I can withstand it, which also then suggests you can withstand it. So the first thing you do with emotional durability is you take good enough care of yourself that when your kid is rocked by something, you can be steady and model for them as bad as it feels, I do think this is something that can be withstood. So that’s step number one.

Reena Ninan:
With everything we’re juggling with work and life and getting kids to practice and stuff, how do I know if my kid has that emotional durability or that there’s a moment where I can … Because sometimes I feel like you have tunnel vision, we’re just trying to get to the drop off plays, trying to get through that test and trying to get through this holiday. How do I see that so I can drill down further into it because I feel like it’s like a sign that I miss and I keep on the highway and I’m going.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
The way I would think about it is not is your kid getting upset sometimes. Let’s just assume our kids are definitely getting upset.That’s a done deal. To me, emotional durability comes down to, do they know how to manage the feeling effectively? Can they find their way back to feeling good in adaptive ways, back to adaptive? So a kid who’s struggling with emotional durability might come in the door and be like, “I hate this teacher, get me out of the class.” That is basically like, “I’m not withstanding this, I can’t take it.”
Whereas a kid who’s got some emotional durability is like, “Okay, this teacher really rubs me the wrong way. I’m going to grouse to you about it. I’m going to complain about it and then I’m going to go back in and deal with it. ” Or, “Okay, this teacher’s bugging me, but they also are very good at teaching this one thing, so I’m going to focus on that.” Or, “This teacher’s bugging me and I’m going to actually be really proud of myself for being the bigger person in this and doing good work for them anyway.” I will use that pride as a way to feel better about this or I’m going to make a little calendar of how many days I have this teacher and then I’m going to cope by crossing them off and complaining to my friends about how annoying this person is.
All good coping. That’s what we’re looking for. What we don’t want to see is make it stop, get me out of it.

Reena Ninan:
I think it’s hard when you know your child is in turmoil or struggling and they can’t get off.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. It is hard. I remember when my older daughter, her start of junior year in college … So she’s in college where they’re basically housed in kind of like old apartments that are pretty worn down. And for the first three weeks, she did not have a working toilet in her suite. Every time she had to use the restroom, she had to take this rickety old elevator down to an old lobby and use the bathroom.

Reena Ninan:
In the basement?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
First floor, but like that was the toilet. Okay. So this was very unpleasant for her. I get that. She did not like it, but like you can’t come home.That can’t be the reason why you leave college. She called us and complained about it a lot. She called the housing authority and she stayed on them. Problem solving? That’s a form of coping.

Reena Ninan:
It sounds to me, it’s like, oh my gosh.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. But okay, but Reena, here’s the thing that’s really important. If we think about emotional durability as a good, right? And we think about something that future proofs our kids makes them capable of dealing with like … I mean, a broken toilet’s the least of the curveballs any of our kids are ever going to deal with. The broken toilet can actually become our friend because then we’re like, “I’m getting to watch you figure out how to deal with this. And I’m getting to watch if you can figure out how to deal with this and I’m getting you to watch you problem solve.” And then we just cheer for the coping. “You are doing the best job. This is really not that fun. I see you doing it. Good job.” So they are withstanding distress, we are not letting it knock them off course.
Anytime we celebrate those things, I think we’re doing our kids a solid.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, I love that. So as we think of the new year, Lisa, I love this. ACED, ACED.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Adaptability, conscientiousness, emotional durability. I think that’s what we can focus on the year and now to see where it gets us going forward.

Reena Ninan:
And as we look into the new year, why is this so important?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Our job as parents. I think in some ways the hardest job as parents is not to get our kids through today. I think our job is to really be thinking ahead like, what can we equip you with so that five years, 10 years down the road, you are ready to withstand and maybe even make good out of things that aren’t going the way you hope they would go, or you’d want them to go. If we focus on that, it lets us get a little distance on the annoyances of the day to day and rather not, instead of being, and I can be this way too where you’re just like, “Oh man, can we just make this annoyance go away?” Instead of being like, “How do I make this thing go away?” As often as we can be like, “How do we treat this as an opportunity to check that you are adaptable, to make sure that you are upright and ethical and see that you can just withstand it and find ways to withstand it so that you can actually plow ahead and not be knocked off course?”

Reena Ninan:
It’s also a good reminder that kids are watching how we deal with conflict and how we resolve it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think we’ve got to keep an eye on how we’re handling the same things.

Reena Ninan:
What do you have first for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So I sort of gestured at this, but I want to come back to it. All of this is hinging on our wellbeing. You cannot help a kid be adaptable if you are at the end of your rope. You cannot help a kid find their better self if you are so frustrated that you’re just mad at them for their behavior. You sure as heck can’t help a kid become emotionally durable if you are bowled over by what they’re bringing your way. So as we think about 2026 and people are making their New Year’s resolutions, if they are, I would say assess how you are doing in terms of your own sturdiness and wellbeing. Go out of your way to protect it, both because you as a parent need and deserve that. And also if you’re going to cultivate future proofed kids, you’re going to need it too.

Reena Ninan:
Future proofed kids. I love it, Lisa. This is my favorite episode always of the year because you get us to rethink how we are looking, this and the summer episode.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I like the ones where we sort of step back, think big about how do we want to approach this new time?

Reena Ninan:
But you draw parenting concepts that would never have entered my mind. So thank you. Thank you for expanding my parental brain. Wishing you the best in 2026.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Happy New Year.

Reena Ninan:
Happy new year Lisa.