Leonard Sax Author "The Collapse of Parenting", Physician, and Psychologist

What you need to know to improve the odds for your son or daughter

Parenting advice has too often been based on a nebulous mix of guesswork and opinion. Thanks to researchers around the world, we now have the results of numerous longitudinal cohort studies, in which children have been followed from infancy through adulthood. Following the same individuals for 30 years or longer, researchers have studied what styles of parenting are most likely to lead to good outcomes, to young people who are happy and fulfilled. Researchers have also studied what parenting styles are most likely to lead to bad outcomes: young people who are anxious, or depressed, or unemployed, or incarcerated. From this research, we can distill evidence-based guidelines to improve the odds for your daughter or your son.

In this presentation, I raise and answer questions such as:

• Why are American kids so much more likely to be anxious or depressed compared with American kids from the same demographic just twenty years ago? (hint: there are four factors in play)
• What one thing can parents do to greatly improve the odds that their child will grow up to be healthy, happy, and successful? (this isn’t a guess; it’s a robust empirical finding based on multiple longitudinal cohort studies)
• What is the most important virtue American parents must teach their children? (hint: this virtue is downright un-American)
• What is the meaning of life? (That’s not a joke – the answer comes at the end of the talk)

Helping your child to become UnFragile

This presentation begins with the question, “Why are so many kids today so fragile?” I begin with a review of evidence that American kids are indeed more fragile – about 400% (4X) more likely to be anxious or depressed, and much more likely to fall apart in response to stress – compared with American kids from the same demographic 40 or 50 years ago. I define fragility as sensitivity to volatility. If that definition is valid, then one reason that so many kids today are so fragile might be because parents shield them from volatility and uncertainty. The remedy, then, is to expose kids to more volatility, within constraints: you don’t want your child to be run over by a truck or abducted by strangers. (Becoming UnFragile is NOT the same thing as being resilient, as I explain.)

In this presentation, I suggest that many American parents today are confused about the role of the parent in the modern world. Many parents today seem to think that their job is to ensure their child’s success, to be the relentless advocate of their child’s welfare. If their daughter doesn’t get a good mark on her paper, or if their son isn’t invited to the birthday party of a classmate, then such a parent may pick up the telephone to complain to the teacher or to the principal. Such parents misunderstand their role. They undermine their own son or daughter by taking such actions. Students must come to see failure and disappointment as an opportunity for growth. But if the parent intervenes whenever the student experiences failure or disappointment, with the parent acting as the prosecuting attorney and the child as victim, then the opportunity for growth is lost – regardless of the outcome of the parent’s intervention. So the bulk this talk is devoted to new research about what works to help kids to become UnFragile and how that’s different from robustness and resilience.

Why Gender Matters - for Parents

Male/female differences in the ability to smell. Common scenario: a mother says to her son, in the son’s bedroom, “How can you stand it in here? It stinks!” The son answers, “I don’t smell anything.” Mom thinks her son is being defiant and disrespectful. The son thinks mom is being weird. Neither recognizes that they are experiencing different sensory worlds. The son really doesn’t smell anything. For more on this point, see my article on this topic for the New York Times, as well as chapter 2 of my book Why Gender Matters, 2017 edition.

Female/male differences in brain development. Girls reach full maturity in brain development by about 22 years of age. Boys, not until about 30 years of age. Female/male differences diminish as a function of age: such differences are small among adults, but large among children. (We define an “adult” as a female over 22 years, or a male over 30 years.) We explore the significance of these findings for parents.

Male/female differences in language acquisition. According to a study at Cambridge University, the vocabulary of the average 18-month-old girl is about 90 words. The vocabulary of the average 18-month-old boy is only about 40 words. Other studies have yielded similar results. Most parents don’t know about these studies. If you have an older daughter and a younger son, don’t compare your son to your daughter, especially with regard to language acquisition. You might easily conclude that your son is ‘delayed,’ when in fact . . .he is just a normal boy! What else do parents need to know about girl/boy differences in language?

Female/male differences in the visual system: We review recent research which demonstrates that the visual system is different in females compared with males – not only in our species, but in other primates as well (see the appendix at the end of Why Gender Matters, second edition, for more information and scholarly citations). Parents who understand these differences are better able to understand why most girls want to draw pictures that are different from the pictures most boys want to draw. And, why your daughter says it’s “periwinkle” when your son says it’s “blue”!

Male/female differences in the auditory system: We review recent research demonstrating that the average girl is more sensitive to mid-range sounds compared with the average boy (again, see the appendix at the end of Why Gender Matters, second edition, for more information and scholarly citations). The father who doesn’t understand this is more likely to have a daughter who says her father is always shouting at her. The lack of awareness of hardwired male/female differences can drive a family apart.

What parents need to know about the emerging worlds of social media and online video games

Recent research demonstrates that the more time a girl spends on social media such as Instagram, the more likely that girl is subsequently to become anxious or depressed. How come? And why is that effect so strong for most girls, but much weaker for most boys? What do you need to know about how girls and boys are using Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media?

Boys appear to be more vulnerable than girls to the addictive potential of online video games. The lived experience of boys has changed dramatically over the past decade. For many boys, winning at video games is now more important – and will do more to raise that boy’s status in the eyes of his peers – than getting an A instead of a B in English.

What do parents need to know? And more importantly, what do parents need to do? This presentation answers the following questions, among others:

• At what age is it OK for a child to have a smartphone?
• How much should I know about what my daughter (or son) is doing on Instagram, or TikTok?
• How much time spent playing video games is too much time, and how do we know?
• Which video games are OK, and which are not OK, and how do we know?
• How do I enforce any of these guidelines, when my son or daughter can just go to a friend’s house and do whatever they want to do?

The factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men

We begin by considering the evidence for a growing gender gap in academic achievement. From kindergarten through college, boys are now doing less well in most school subjects compared with their sisters. That gender gap is growing not primarily because girls are doing better, but because boys are doing worse. As we will see, that’s true for Black, White, and Latino boys (it is somewhat less true for Asian boys); it’s true for affluent, middle-income, and low-income boys; it’s true for boys living in the city, in the suburbs, and in rural areas. It’s a robust finding.

Being a gentleman and a scholar is no longer cool. For many Black, White and Latino boys today, academic excellence is seen as unmasculine (for more on this point see my book Boys Adrift, especially chapters 2 and 7).

We then consider the evidence which points to five separate factors driving these changes:

1. Changes in education over the past 30 years
2. Video games
3. Stimulant medications such as Adderall, Concerta, Metadate, and Vyvanse
4. Endocrine disruptors such as BPA and DEHP
5. “The revenge of the forsaken gods”(Depending on the time available, we may not be able to address all of the factors)

The focus of the presentation is on what parents need to know in order to help their son to become a confident, productive, and self-reliant young man. I share many concrete strategies, alongside stories of parents who have successfully turned their sons around, as well as answers to questions such as:

• My son isn’t motivated in school. How do I determine whether there is something wrong with my son, something wrong with the school, or some combination of the two?
• How much time spent playing video games is too much time, and how do we know? Which video games are OK, and which are not, and how do we know?
• What’s the evidence that medications such as Adderall and Vyvanse damage the motivational center of the brain? What are the alternatives?
• What’s the evidence that endocrine disruptors are responsible for the drop in male hormone levels among American men? What are the consequences of lower male hormone levels in American teenage boys and young men?