How to Prevent Failure to Launch | Dr. Mark McConville

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Dr. Lisa Damour:
So sometimes people ask me if there’s a hack or a trick to connect with teenagers. And actually there is. It’s just three words, take them seriously. So you know and I know that as a culture, we tend to talk bad about teenagers and teenagers know this. And how we talk bad about teenagers, actually we have research showing it sort of changes over generations. Sometimes we talk about them like they’re buck wild and dangerous. Sometimes we talk about them like they’re fragile. But teenagers are acutely aware that however we’re doing it, a lot of adults don’t take them seriously and in fact kind of don’t expect them to be the wonderful, interesting, fascinating, complicated people that they are. So if you want to connect to a teenager, the fastest route is to really honor them, to treat them with respect and to do it just by being interested in them, being curious about them, expecting them to know things you don’t, expecting them to have a take on something that you didn’t see coming.

Given that teenagers are so aware that many adults kind of look down on them or look at them askance, teenagers are equally aware of adults who are interested in them and like them. So when we approach teenagers with respect, when we take them seriously, the odds are really good that they are going to open up to us, that they’re going to share themselves with us, that they’re going to tell us things that they might not have told us otherwise.

Our guest today is one of those people who takes teens seriously and as a result is incredibly good at getting them to open up. He is also a dear friend and colleague and someone who has mentored me over decades. I’m talking about Dr. Mark McConville. He’s a clinical psychologist and he is the author of Failure to Launch: Why Your Twentysomething Hasn’t Grown Up and What to Do About It.

Mark, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Oh, I’m honored to be here, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I love working with you.

Okay, here’s our letter. “Dear Lisa, there is a great deal of attention paid to the effects of achievement culture and specifically overachieving kids and their parents. My question relates to the other side of the spectrum. My elder child whose anxiety creates avoidance and underachieving. She has left college and is working, which is hard to accept if I’m honest, but I am supportive of her finding a path that’s right for her. We have expectations for living at home, but it always feels like a slog to get her to take action. She has ADHD and executive functioning challenges and has had every kind of support over the years, but it seems she has no confidence in her academic ability or achievement in general. It sometimes feels like living with a high schooler instead of a young adult. My son is in early high school and doing fine, but he’s not particularly lit up. I have wondered if I should have set more expectations to help them become happy, responsible, fulfilled adults. I was on the lower end of the helicoptering spectrum compared to many folks in my circle, and now I wonder if that was the wrong approach. Thanks for your help.”

Okay, Mark, author of Failure to Launch, this is a lot of the work you do.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Right, it is.
And I can tell just from the first you’re reading, this is a very thoughtful parent, right? This is someone that. I sometimes sort parents into projectors and reflectors and the projectors are looking for who to blame. My kid isn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned or hoped for.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Who messed this up?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Is it the kid’s problem? Was it the school’s problem? Maybe it was the therapist’s problem, but this parent looks at herself and says, “What could or should I have done differently?” And to me, the interesting thing is if she had in fact been more of a helicopter parent and was dealing with the same outcome, she’d be saying, “Maybe I should have been a little more laissez-faire and not so involved.” She’s looking for what’s the form of parenting that I didn’t do.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“Maybe it was my intrusiveness that has caused my child to not have-”

I love that observation. And it feels to me. I remember when I was in my training where somebody said to me, “You can’t be a clinician with 20 years experience until you’re a clinician with 20 years experience.” Now, you and I both have many more miles in clinician work, you more than me, which is you’re one of my favorite colleagues and mentors, but what you just shared feels so informed by having watched families over years and years and years.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Right.
I think most of us, when we first had children, said, “I’m going to get it right. I know what my parents were. They kind of missed the target. I’m going to do it perfectly.” And there is no better cure for perfectionism than parenting.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Nothing so humbling as actually having actual children.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Absolutely.
Parenting is by its nature, it’s imperfect.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So you’ve got reflectors who come to you, families like this one, moms, dads who are like, “Where did we go wrong?” You and I are going to tease apart what we can from the information in this letter, but to rest for a minute, what are they feeling? What are the emotions they themselves are grappling with, the adults in this picture?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah. Well, certainly disappointment. “I wanted something different for my kid.” In one sense, it’s an expression of love. When I see my kids or my grandkids thriving, excelling, doing something, I feel like that’s my reason for being on this earth. That’s what makes it all meaningful. And if we flip that over and I see my child or grandchild struggling, I think it’s just a deep ache. I think that ache is an expression of the fact that I love these children, and I think that’s what it means for this woman, that she deeply loves her children. She took the time to write you.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I know, right? I mean, to send it in like, “Help.”
Is envy ever on the table?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah, it can be, which is one of the worst hallmarks of parenting. If this were a competitive sport or using my kid’s college acceptance as somehow the grade report on what sort of a job I’ve done parenting. I think with a little more empathy, I could say, if you have a child that’s struggling and the people in your social circle, people in your work life have children that are thriving, it is hard. It’s like having that kind of rubbed in your face and I think that just can be very difficult. I certainly have many parents who will bring that point up that they feel when their friends or relatives say, “Well, how is so and so doing?” And it’s hard to say, “Well, she dropped out of college and now is working in a coffee shop.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. And it feels like it gets us into territory of feelings we don’t like to talk about or own like I’m envious of the kids who are thriving or their families or I feel embarrassed about my kid being home.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah. I think when kids struggle, it’s as if shame is intrinsic to the situation. It’s built in. And now some parents process the shame by converting it into blame. Either my spouse or the therapist or the teacher let my child down or my child is letting me down and others do more of what I think this mom is doing, which is they feel somehow this is a reflection on me not having done my job the right way and I am embarrassed. I am ashamed about it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I think it’s helpful to just say the words, to acknowledge that these are the feelings that are circulating in these moments.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, that’s the antidote for shame is to share with another person to see that you don’t look down your nose at me, that you don’t condemn me, but you’re more accepting of what I’m feeling and how I performed and that I’m not the only person in the world who has a child who’s struggling.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah.
Okay. As I was reading the letter and I could look at you, I could see your mind, the Rolodex running of all the families you’ve cared for and all of the versions of this story. So starting with the daughter who’s home from college, as that Rolodex kind of spun, what comes to the top?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah, it’s so interesting. The first thing I thought was this isn’t so bad.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay.

Dr. Mark McConville:
When kids leave college, they decide to leave or they’re put on probation or whatever, what they don’t get, and this is a counsel I give to parents so often, is that you’re going to present to your child if you’re not a student, and I’m going to guess that this child is maybe 19 or 20 or 21 years old, then what you have chosen to do or what has just come about is you are now a member of the adult world. You can’t swim backwards, you can’t go back into adolescence. So if you’re not in school preparing for adult life, then you need to be working, which is also a way of preparing for adult life. So in the letter she says that she’s working and I think, well, that already makes her ahead of probably 65 or 70% of the families that I consult with about failure to launch where the child is not doing something constructive.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. Is at home hanging out, hanging out with friends?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Is at home. “I can’t find a job. I’m doing DoorDash twice a week so that I can pay for my weed or-”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, we’re going to come back to the weed because I think that is sometimes, if not often, part of the story.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Often-

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So putting a pin in that, we will come back to that.

Okay, so this girl’s working.

I’m so curious about your take on this where the parent says, “It feels like living with a high schooler.” Talk me through where does the Rolodex take you on that?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, first of all, that feels so common because she almost is a high schooler. And while I can say when you’re 20 years old and you leave college, you are now an adult, that’s really aspirational because the research on. I’m thinking of Jeffrey Arnett’s research, how long does it take to become an adult? And he has this wonderful questionnaire that he’s given to tens of thousands of young people between the ages of 18 and 30 from around the world. And one of the questions is, “I feel like an adult,” and then he gives a five point scale, “Hardly ever, some of the time, half of the time, much of the time, most of the time.” And this is probably my favorite statistic in all of behavioral science. It’s not until 26 and a half years old that half of his subjects reported feeling like an adult half of the time.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s such a great yardstick of where your kids should be no matter what.

Dr. Mark McConville:
That’s right. So this kid’s got a lot of room to grow. I think realistically, in today’s world, very different from say when you grew up, certainly when I grew up, where at 18 you might be expected to leave home. If you didn’t go to college, you’d go maybe work in a factory or a steel mill or something and make a good, actually a living wage. So you were treated like an adult and the societal expectations were there from a very early age. When I graduated from college, the average age of marriage was 22 for men, 20 for women.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Wow.

Dr. Mark McConville:
And now it’s over 30 for men and it’s approaching 30 for women. So the process of growing up is just a much longer process and there are all kinds of reasons for that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Economic, all sorts of things.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Economic. Yeah. It takes much more education to sort of get a foothold in the adult work world.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So to go back to. I think there’s so much you’ve said already that I just want to put in neon light, but just that this isn’t that bad. This isn’t that bad. She’s home, she’s got a job and yeah, she is kind of like a high schooler.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Sure. And in fact, if your kid graduated from college cum laude and they’ve got a job, but they’re coming home maybe for a couple of weeks over Christmas or something, there’s a pretty good chance that by the end of that vacation you’re going to have a teenager again.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, okay. So one of the best things somebody ever taught me is we all regress around our parents.

Dr. Mark McConville:
That’s exactly right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m 56. I regress around my parents. There’s no getting around it. Right?

Dr. Mark McConville:
I once had a 40 year old who had three kids visits mom for Thanksgiving and says, “I walk in the door and she says, ‘Don’t forget to wipe your feet.’” And he said, “It took me 20 minutes to feel like a teenager again.” So yeah, I think-

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Get’s you right back there.

Dr. Mark McConville:
-really. That’s very true.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Gets you right back there.

Dr. Mark McConville:
But could I address the issue though of, so you’ve got this functionally a teenager living at home. The thing that I always look at when I speak with a parent like this is how is your parenting the parenting of a teenager? Because parenting evolves. You don’t parent a 24 year old the same way you parent a nine year old. And there is a kind of natural history and evolution to how we sort our relationship out. And so she moves home, comes back from school. Of course, she goes back to the old paradigm, which is I’ll put my dishes into the dishwasher every other time you remind me and only after you remind me three times because those were the functional ground rules when I was 16.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. “What’s for dinner and why is there nothing in the refrigerator?” Right? Like that kind of stuff.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Exactly. Right. So a lot of the work I do with this kind of parent is around how do we upgrade the paradigm of your relationship? How do we introduce the notion not that you’re my child and it is my obligation to care for you, whether I like it or not and however you behave, that’s the old paradigm to a new paradigm is, well, we’re housemates now.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, we live together.

Dr. Mark McConville:
We’re housemates and that means we need to do some negotiating. We need to sit down and see what do you expect from me? What do I expect from you?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What nights are you making dinner? Things like that.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Truly.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Exactly.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
There’s a line in here about executive functioning and ADHD and, “We did everything.” What comes to the top for you when you hear something like that?

Dr. Mark McConville:
When I heard that, my first though was, well, what do you mean by everything? And we can only guess that there was maybe some attention in school, maybe a learning plan at school. Maybe there was an executive function coach. I mean, I sort of wonder what are the things? ADHD is such a vast and complex terrain and it doesn’t mean just one thing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right. It looks so different across kids.

Dr. Mark McConville:
It looks different. The first question I have when I encounter an ADHD kid who is a student or is struggling with being a student is how do they feel about the whole business of learning? There are some who are, they plug away and I know I have trouble organizing and I know my time management is poor and I’m receptive to coaching and I keep a planner. There are those kids –

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“I’m doing all the things that people tell me to do.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
Those kids are heroic. I love those kids, but those are not typically the ones that come to me.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We don’t see them in our offices.

Dr. Mark McConville:
For help.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m actually going to pause just for a minute on the word heroic. I share your admiration for these kids because I think about how hard it is to do school when you like school and it comes to you easily and you’re getting rewards all around in terms of praise and grades and all that, that any child to whom this does not come easily and who is well aware that it is coming easier to everyone or lots of the kids around them, that they continue to show up and put forward effort. I’m like, “This is a daily miracle that we do not talk enough about.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
I completely agree. And I think the word heroic is very apt for those kids. But I’m thinking about the kid who maybe isn’t so heroic, and I try to put myself in that kid’s shoes. I’m seven years old, I’m eight, I’m nine, I’m 10 years old, and I’m in a classroom. If I have ADHD, it means my attending, particularly the things that are not very interesting, is difficult. My mind wanders. I get distracted by all kinds of things. So the classroom becomes, for many of those kids, kind of a dangerous place, right? So the teacher says, “Mark, would you read the next paragraph?” And I have no idea.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You don’t even know what book.

Dr. Mark McConville:
I don’t know. Yeah. So it’s an opportunity for immediate embarrassment, right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Talk about shame.

Dr. Mark McConville:
My favorite is, “All right everyone, hand in your essay.” I’m like, “Essay? When did that get assigned?” So those kids, often what they develop instead of that heroic, “I’m going to plug ahead,” is kind of a chip on their shoulder. It feels like teachers pick on me and some teachers do. These are kids that often you’ll hear, “Oh, he had such a good year in fourth grade. Fifth grade’s been a disaster.” Well, the teacher in fourth grade was open-minded and compassionate, and the teacher in fifth grade is a bit more of a stickler for playing by the book. And for that kid, then that becomes this opportunity for embarrassment and humiliation.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And they tank. And you and I have both seen it. Yeah.
Okay. So not knowing much of the details of what were the interventions, how effective were they, why did they not work the way maybe this adult, the parent was hoping? I’m going to ask you a question that’s unfair, but I think is going to be on a lot of parents’ minds in these moments. Should the parent in this situation be trying to get this girl back into college?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, the answer to that depends on where is the kid with that. If this is the kid that’s saying, “I do want to return to school. I want to find some way to do it.” Then the parent’s role is, “How do we support that? How do we help you get the requisite skills?” But if this is a kid who right now at whatever, 19, 20, 21 is saying, “I’m done with school.” In fact, this mom said, “I try to be supportive.” And I think I loved hearing that because she clearly has values as a parent, as a person about education. She’s disappointed that her daughter has left school, and yet she says, “I’m going to be supportive.” That in the parenting department deserves to be called heroic.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yes. Yes.

Dr. Mark McConville:
So it really depends on does going back to school, is it something that appeals to this child?
Is it anathema that’s something that she dreads? It’s really looking for what is this kid interested in, right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Because you and I both know in these situations, at the end of the day, the kid actually does hold all the power.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So if by some magic, the parents can override a kid who doesn’t want to go to college and get them back in there, this is not going to go well.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Right. In fact, I sometimes think of that if you take a 20 year old and you get them to develop and grow up by your agenda, the parent’s agenda, rather than their own agenda, what you may be setting up is a midlife crisis because those are the people that come to us in their late 40s to late 50s and say, “I’m waking up and looking at this one life that I have to live and why am I doing X? I didn’t even really want to do X.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“I never wanted this.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
“But I was coached to do it and I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do.” I mean, who among us did know what to do at age 20? Right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right.
I love this, right? So what you’re saying is if the girl is saying, “I want to go back,” then the next path is, okay, let’s figure out what went wrong and address it head on. If the girl is not there, there is a lot of downside to trying to be the adult who’s pushing that forward.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Absolutely. Okay. I completely agree. And you and I see the fallout from that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They come right back usually with more damage done to their record and their ability to move forward academically.

Dr. Mark McConville:
That’s right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay.
All right. Let’s talk about weed.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Let’s talk about weed.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. We could do, and maybe we will do, a whole episode on this. How and when do you bring it up? Or how do you think about it in pictures like this, in stories like this as a clinician? Where do you fit it in?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, usually in a situation like this, parents will bring that information. They may say, “Well, we’re not sure if she’s still smoking.” They may be uncertain about the picture, but typically they have some idea of what the history has been, whether that’s been part of the picture. With kids, some are willing to talk about it. This generation of pot smokers feels very self-justified. They have bought the whole kind of aura or myth that it’s medical for heaven’s sakes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s natural.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah. It grows in nature, so how could it possibly be harmful?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Right.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
One thing I remember learning from you in our conversations is that you know a kid is using weed and maybe other things, but certainly weed. If you feel like you’re on a merry-go-round, that you have the conversation, feels like you’re connected and made progress.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Nothing changes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And then nothing changes and you’re back having that same conversation again and again and again.

Dr. Mark McConville:
The other thing is, and I used to see many more teenagers than I do today, and I often thought when I would be talking with a committed pot smoker, started smoking at 13 or 14, but now is 18 or 19, I think if I were blind and I didn’t know, I would say this is a 14 year old. Just the complexity of cognition, the maturity of the emotional life would very much resemble, and I’m not saying this is true of all pot smokers. Some people tolerate better than others, but often it does put a stall on cognitive and emotional development.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. And I think we know that both from straight up neurological impact. I’m not an expert in the addiction world, but I know that there’s a sense too that if you’re always turning to substances to feel better, you don’t get the maturation that comes from working through hard things. And so there is a stalling out that isn’t good.

If the kid doesn’t bring it up, if the parent doesn’t bring it up, and with your kind of scooby sense of years of training and practice, you’re like, “I got a question about this. How do you bring it up? Where does it come in?”

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, again, with today’s generation, it’s much easier than it was say 20 or 30 years ago where you really had to be crafty. 20 or 30 years ago, I’d say something like, “So at your school, how widespread is pot use?” So I’m really saying, “Tell me what you know about pot so I can kind of read between the lines, but I ask the question in a way that doesn’t put you on the defense.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Give me a sense of your fluency on this topic, right?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah, exactly. But today I’m much more straightforward like, “Do you smoke pot? Tell me a little bit about that. Where’s that been in your life?” Kids today just seem, they’re much more willing, not all, but much more frequently they’re open or candid about it. And as I say, they tend to be self-justifying, right? They have sort of put together a story that makes it harmless and justified, and you don’t realize you adults, you don’t realize this is actually helping me.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So when you are sure it’s not, how do you know and what do you do?

Dr. Mark McConville:
You know the concept of motivational interviewing, asking. I’ve actually got a lot of things to say to you, but it’s all going to be framed as a question, right?

“Do you see any relationship between your pot smoking and what’s happened to your grades over the last two semesters? I’m just curious. But you don’t see any connection, but your parents seem to think there’s. So tell me, how do you debate with them? I’d love to hear your side of the debate.” And then this is, again, more with younger teens where I would say things like, “Look, your parents think that I can talk you out of pot smoking. You and I both know that that’s BS. I have no such power, right? You know that and I know that, that whether or not you smoke pot is going to be your decision.” So what I do is I concede the power struggle right from the beginning, right?

And then I’ll roll it into, “That doesn’t mean that you can’t tell me what you have learned, maybe websites you’ve gone to or videos you’ve seen. I mean, I would love to see them and I’d love an opportunity to tell you what I’ve learned from my standpoint as a psychologist.” And I’m sure these two viewpoints are not going to agree and they don’t need to agree, right? Because what I’m really shooting for is that when that individual leaves the conversation, there’s a wheel turning up here that was not turning before.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yep. Yep. I’ll tell you how I do it. It’s so fun to compare clinical notes. So over the years, as you have, kids end up in our practices because they got really drunk at a party and things went terribly wrong and it was very bad and they were like, “Okay, whatever else you’re going to go see somebody.” I learned years ago not to say, “How much do you drink? Under what conditions? Where…” Because I feel like it’s saying, “Lie to me on this and then also this and also this.” So I will say to the kids in those situations, “Are you worried about your drinking?” I’m surprised how often a kid will say, “Actually I am.” And then we’re in good shape. But sometimes kids will say, “No, I’m not worried about my drinking.” I’ll say, “Okay, I’m just getting to know you. Let’s keep this conversation open and if I have worries about your drinking, I’m going to tell you. I’m going to tell you.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah. So I love the difference between those two approaches, the interrogation, forget it, versus there’s an implicit respect for the kid’s agency. I’m asking you for your assessment. I’m asking you to inform me. Teenagers in particular have a lifetime of not being quite taken seriously by adults. So every interaction is implicitly hierarchical, and what you’re trying to do is sell them on a new possibility. I like to say, and now we’re talking more about teens than kids dropping out of college, that 16 year old and I are existential equals. There are many things I know about life that he or she doesn’t have a clue about, but there are an awful lot of things that he or she knows about that I frankly am clueless about. It’s really coming at it. Kids, especially in high school, high school students will tell you after two classes, which teachers treat us like grownups and which teachers treat us like children.
So their antenna are just tingling about that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think it is for exactly the reason you said we look down on them, we talk bad about them, we talk bad about them right in front of them, right in front of teenagers, people will be like, “Oh, teenagers.” You can’t be like, “Oh, women,” right in front of women. You can’t do this with any group except for we do it with teenagers. I do think you and I have shared the delight of how quickly we can establish we’re not one of those adults and how rare that is for adolescents.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Absolutely. And with people that work with teens, I think that is the cornerstone skill for everything else.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
All right. So what about this boy who’s not lit up? Early high school. What do you make of that?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Of course, my first thought was what does lit up mean? I’m going to assume it has something to do with motivation. And because she’s concerned about the daughter’s academic development, I’m going to make that assumption too, that he’s not a terribly committed student. It’s really interesting. Let me tell a story that to me displays what I think is the ideal approach. My daughter and son-in-law have four girls. And one of the girls, when she was in, I think sixth grade, sixth or seventh grade, they got the email or whatever, the notification from the advisor that said, “She’s behind on this many assignments.” And I wasn’t there to witness it, but my daughter described the conversation between the dad and the daughter. And he sat down with her, took her into his office and just showed the email from the. And said, “What’s this?” She fumbled and didn’t have much to say.

And then it was absolutely calm and said, “We don’t do this. In this family, everyone has a job. I have a job, your mom has a job. You have a job and your job is being a student and I expect you to do your job.” That kid is now a junior in high school and is an exemplary student. And what I loved about that is it’s so, like, “I’m not going to parent you about this.” This value around education is deeply embedded in the family culture, such that there aren’t even rules about it.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s just assumed.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah.

Yeah. I’ll tell you another place I learned this about parenting. I was once consulting at a Orthodox Jewish school and I was in a room with three rabbis and the problem they were presenting to me is that the kids, these were seventh and eighth graders, are becoming disrespectful and they wanted to work out a system of rules and expectations and consequences. They thought I was the guy to have them do that. I said to them at one point, “Well, tell me, what’s the consequence for a boy who refuses to wear his yamaka, his skull cap?” The three of them side eyed each other like, oh my goodness, they had no idea how ignorant I was. One of them cleared his throat and said, “Doctor, that wouldn’t happen here.” I said, “And why is that? Why is that?” “Well, it’s just not who we are.” I said, “Precisely.”

So what we’re talking about that more deeply embedded culture of school values, community values, family values. I would want to know from this mom, how is that conveyed? How is that conveyed? Is it conveyed in a way that says to this kid, “This is your job?”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“These are the expectations.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
“You don’t have to love it.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“But we’re clear.”
Yeah, no, I mean it’s the twin finding that kids need two things, warmth and structure. And I think that there’s a lot of warmth in this letter, a lot of love, and I think the question you’re calling is, what are the structures?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Where’s the structure?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What are they? How clearly are they communicated? What’s being shared?

Dr. Mark McConville:
When it’s more, the kid is really kind of actively like, “This is stupid. I don’t want to do this homework.” I think that you can set up consequences, but again, around a rational principle as opposed to punishment. The rational principle might be something like, “Look, I go to work and going to work gives me a paycheck. That’s how we can take a vacation every summer. It’s why I can stay home on the weekend and watch the football game and take you guys out to dinner. Your job is to be a student. Now you don’t get a paycheck, but you do get certain privileges. Like on the weekend, you love to use your Xbox.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. “I want you to be able to use your Xbox.”

Dr. Mark McConville:
“That’s your paycheck, buddy. I didn’t invent these rules. These are the rules of life. This isn’t me punishing you. This is me introducing you to the rules of how life works. Your job is to be a student. If you choose not to do it, I guess there’s not a lot I can do about that, but you’re not getting a paycheck at the end of the week.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Thinking about the son, you and I both can imagine that the parents’ anxieties are heightened by the daughter having come home. Is that good? Is that not so great? Is it neutral? What do you make of it?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, anxiety can be a great disruptor and it can be a great motivator. And so if this woman were sitting in my office, I would try to convert that anxiety into something constructive. How can you be supportive of this kid? How can you convey the value of education? Is he open to getting support? Would it help him to have a tutor or something of that nature? I would look to turn the anxiety into problem solving. I would also point out that look, the parenting that is just wizardry with this child is a complete disaster with the next child.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Isn’t that the truth?

Dr. Mark McConville:
So you just have to take each child as if they were just who they are. I mean, ideally. Obviously we don’t. We parent and we sometimes parent and moss. We address the whole tribe.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
But take them as they come.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
All right. As we start to wrap up and think back on this conversation, what are the big takeaways? What do you want to leave people with?

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, one of the things that just jumps out at me is the ADHD, and I have a particular interest because while that diagnosis didn’t exist when I was growing up, I’d have been ADD cum laude. I was that kind of –

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Varsity.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Profoundly distractible.

Fairly creative, but very distractible kid. So it’s something I’ve paid a lot of attention to. And I think so often when parents or the kid presents that, there is this saturation with shame. There’s something flawed and defective here. And so you’re bringing in this disability, which you may or may not be inclined to do. And so I have a riff that I give often that really addresses that. And it goes something like this. Look, some brains were made for the classroom. Your brain was made for the real world. In fact, if this were 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking. You would have just gravitated towards something that you were talented in and you would have found a way to do that and you would have been cherished and rewarded and respected for that. Unfortunately, you live in an era where everybody has to go through this formal school system.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. I love that way of speaking to them. I think a lot about school is designed for and rewards a very narrow band of skills.
Mark, thank you so much for being with me.

Dr. Mark McConville:
Well, it’s been a real pleasure. I always love spending time with you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Thank you.

So for Parenting to Go, I want to highlight something pretty remarkable from this conversation about managing teens’ behavior. Mark did two things at once that seem like they’re in opposition, but actually work well together. The first is, and I think his language was, is he seeded his power on certain things, and that is something we need to do as adults caring for teenagers. Teenagers can do all sorts of things that we cannot prevent them from doing, whether it’s messing up in school or smoking weed or whatever, we can’t control teenagers entirely. And so there’s value in seeding one’s power on that point and not getting into a power struggle. But side by side with that, Mark also talked about using consequences to respond to the choices that teenagers make. They don’t have to turn their work in at school. We can’t make them do it, but if they don’t, they won’t enjoy certain privileges such as playing video games on the weekend or whatever it is they want to do.

So it’s this beautiful tension of both honoring the teen’s autonomy. They can do as they please, they really can, while simultaneously creating structures around them, holding them to high expectations and making it clear this is how our home works, this is how the whole world works, and we’re going to keep this tension in place while you figure it out.
Join me next week for a conversation with Michelle Icard, the author of three fantastic books about middle schoolers. She and I are going to answer a question together from a parent who writes in because the parent’s daughter is being iced out of a friend group and to make things even worse, the parent is friends with the parents of the kids who are doing the icing. So this is not an easy situation.

I’ll see you next week.

Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa Podcast so you get episodes just as soon as they drop and send us your questions to [email protected]. And now a word from our lawyers.

The information provided on this podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute or substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy, medical advice, or other professional intervention. Views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dr. Lisa Damour or Ask Lisa. If you have concerns about your child’s wellbeing or your own, please consult a physician or mental health professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For additional resources, visit drlisadamour.com.