Raising kids in bleak, infuriating times

5 questions for science reporter and parenting expert Melinda Wenner Moyer

My kids are out for the summer! Which means this newsletter will continue to be a lifeline to the interworkings and insights of my own brain and heart, and also I’ll have to do even more backbending, strategizing, and paying for summer camps to carve out the time to do this sacred work. Become a paid subscriber today and make it all feel a little more possible. And thank you thank you for reading, sharing, and commenting. Means the world to me.

The polycrisis we’re facing can make parenting feel like an exercise in existential dread. How do you raise kids who can manage anxiety when there are a million things that are rationally freaking them out? What do you tell them to soothe them about a warming planet that is legit in peril? How many afterschool activities do you need to enroll them in order to make sure they never have time to try hard drugs (j/k)?

I don’t have a lot of answer on any of this, other than deep breaths and age-appropriate honesty, but thank goodness

Melinda Wenner Moyer

’s got some calming ideas. In her new book, Hello Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, she looks at a wide range of research and then offers up simple, trustworthy summaries of how we might approach getting the whole family to calm down, where appropriate, and channel our rage and fear into social change, where possible. I love her clear, nuanced, calming, and socially and politically aware advice and wanted you all to have a chance to learn from her, too.

Without further ado, meet Melinda Wenner Moyer…

Courtney Martin: You write “Some strategies actually involve stepping back–not giving our kids everything they want and granting them more responsibility and independence, which can decrease our workload rather than increase it.” That made my heart rate slow down. Can you tell us a couple of the things we can do LESS of that will make our kids sturdier in the long run?

Melinda Wenner Moyer: This is one of the insights from the research that makes me so happy!

Here are three things we can do less of: hovering, rescuing, and pressuring.

Let me first give a little background. There’s a lot of concern about child mental health these days. We know from CDC data that adolescents today are struggling more with anxiety and depression than they did in the past. Because of that, parents everywhere are worried on behalf of their kids, for good reason, and trying to do what they think is best to protect their kids’ emotional well-being.

But some of the things we do to try to help our kids paradoxically put them more at risk, not less. We sometimes think we should ensure that our kids are happy and comfortable all the time. But, as the psychologist Lisa Damour has explained, mental health is not about feeling good all the time. Mental health involves having feelings that are appropriate to a situation and having the coping skills to be able to manage those feelings. And the way kids develop coping skills is through practice. They need to feel sad, frustrated, and uncomfortable in order to learn to recognize and understand those feelings and to figure out what kinds of coping skills work for them.

So when we hover over our kids and then rescue them when they are feeling uncomfortable or frustrated — when we jump in to solve their problems, or when we give into their demands or pleas — we are actually doing them a disservice, because we’re robbing them of the opportunity to practice developing those essential coping skills. It’s actually in their best interest for us to step back and let them experience hard things and hard feelings. This might look like not checking in with our kids every few minutes to see if they need anything, not helping as much with their school projects, not driving to school to bring our kids the homework they left at home, and not giving into our kids’ demands or easing up on limits to prevent meltdowns.

Another thing we could collectively stand to ease up on is academic and extracurricular pressure.

We are so worried about our kids’ futures, and again, there are good reasons for this. Elite universities are becoming harder and harder to get into. Economic inequality is rising, which makes us scared that if our children don’t succeed, they’ll have a long, long way to fall. Because we’re so afraid, we’re putting a lot of pressure on our kids to do well in school and in their activities. Last week, I was part of an event hosted by the organization SheKnows, and they had a panel of teens on stage with me. The moderator asked them what they felt was the hardest thing about being a teen today. They all said it was the unrelenting pressure on them to excel and succeed.

We know that this kind of pressure is not good for kids for a number of reasons. Their self-esteem often suffers, because kids start to equate their self-worth with their accomplishments. They start to believe that our love for them is contingent upon what they do, rather than based on who they are. Kids who feel a lot of academic pressure are also more likely than other kids to develop substance use problems and mental illnesses. Ironically, then, easing up on our kids can make them mentally healthier and more successful.

I loved the chapter on helping kids relax! What a revelation. In my own experience, this feels so related to the mindset of the kind of kid you have. I have one who is a perfectionist no matter how much I try to dissuade her of it, and another who doesn’t really give a shit. So one needs more encouragement to quit and take life less seriously, and the other needs more encouragement to stick with things and maybe take certain things a little more seriously (or at least be realistic about what it takes to get a good grade or get into college etc.). How do we balance bespoke parenting with fairness? It’s not going to feel good to the second kid if I let the first kid quit things and even celebrate her for quitting, while I’m making her stick with stuff she might otherwise wander away from.

Yeah, this is a tricky one, and I think your question underscores the fact that there is no one-size-fits all approach to parenting. We have to parent the kids we have and trust our instincts, and every child and family is different!

One question I have, though, is whether your more relaxed kid truly needs to be pushed harder. I am in a similar situation, with a type A kid and a …. Not so type A kid. The latter really embraces leisure and relaxation, and I often find myself worrying that he’s not motivated enough — but I’ve recently started wondering whether maybe he’s actually doing just fine, and my concern may be rooted in unhealthy cultural expectations more than reality. I also remind myself that it can take a while for kids to find their “thing,” and it really is okay for them to try things and quit if they aren’t a good fit. Quitting is what makes room for new things that might become true passions. That said, if your child really isn’t putting in the effort you think is necessary, then I think you can and should absolutely have conversations about the value of trying hard and learning.

As for the fairness issue: I think you can explain to your kids that you want them both to find a healthy balance between rest/leisure and academics/sports, and that this journey might look different for each of them, given their different interests and temperaments. In the end, you’re trying to get them to a similar place, which seems very fair!

I was really interested in what you wrote about the differential socialization around anger when it comes to gender. I feel like I’m only now experiencing my authentic anger at 45. How can I help my daughters learn to regulate their feelings and not blow up, but also reassure them that anger is authentic and healthy? What do we need to teach our kids about personal vs. political anger?

Girls are typically socialized to hide and suppress their anger, which we know is unfair and unhealthy.

I think there are two key things we need to teach our girls: First, that feeling anger is totally acceptable, and sometimes incredibly important. Anger is what tells us that we have been wronged, so it is often a political emotion, even when it is seemingly rooted in something personal. Second, we should help our girls understand that it’s also okay and important to express anger, but that certain forms of expression are more constructive and useful than others.

Because girls are socialized to suppress their anger, their anger often comes out in indirect, passive-aggressive ways. We should instead try to encourage our girls to be more direct: to confront people and issues head-on in ways that involve standing up for themselves without disrespecting others.

I hear you about finally experiencing authentic anger at age 45. I’m there now, too. And I think that this is actually a unique and wonderful opportunity to bring your daughters with you on your journey. I often talk to my daughter about how hard it is for me to speak up for myself, and how I’ve come to recognize that this is a product of sexism and social conditioning. I tell her about the things I’ve been doing to challenge these norms and push myself outside of my comfort zone. I think it’s very powerful for our daughters to see us learn these new skills and put them into practice, especially when we are honest about how hard it can be and they see us pushing past the challenge.

I thought this was such a perfect articulation of why we can’t shield our kids from everything and then expect them to know how to take on the real world: “Trauma occurs when an individual suffers greater emotional stress than they can tolerate. And what determines how much they can tolerate? Lots of things, including their past experiences. When we allow kids to encounter discomfort and shore up their coping skills, we can actually reduce the chance that their difficult experiences become harmful.” What does it look like to “shore up their coping skills”? Can you give some concrete examples?

The idea is to regularly and gently push your child outside of their comfort zone in ways they can manage (with support and coping skills) — and that they can learn and grow from. It’s okay — and sometimes even really good — if these experiences result in mistakes or failure.

Often, these kinds of growth opportunities arise when our kids ask us for help and we have choices in terms of how we respond. We might have the option of swooping in and rescuing them, and we might have the option to support our kids without rescuing. I’ve written in my newsletter about how I’ve handled a few situations like this, such as when my daughter called me and asked me to pick her up from a sleepover, and when my son came to me a few hours before a huge school project deadline in tears because he couldn’t finish in time. Both times, I tried not to jump in and immediately rescue them, but instead helped them come up with a plan to manage their fears on their own.

We can also help our kids learn coping skills by giving them the opportunity to do things on their own, mess up, and have to live with the consequences. A few weeks ago, my 14-year-old went on a two-night field trip with his classmates to a camp in the Catskills. I decided to let him do all of the packing himself. I handed him the packing list, told him that I was too busy with work stuff to help, and hoped for the best. I knew that if he forgot something, he’d live. The teachers and counselors were not going to let him get seriously hurt or suffer. If he forgot his sweatshirt, he might think, “Oh, no, I can’t survive without my favorite sweatshirt,” and get upset, and then he’d either problem-solve (maybe ask to borrow a friend’s) or he’d accept his fate and be cold, but survive and likely learn from the experience.

What is one thing you’ve changed about your own parenting after researching and writing this book?

I try to listen to my kids more — like really, truly, listen with curiosity. I learned a lot about the value of listening while reporting Hello, Cruel World!. We know that kids are much more likely to listen to us when we listen to them. And when we listen to our kids, we communicate that we respect them and their ideas, which helps to build self-esteem. There’s also fascinating research that suggests that when people feel truly heard, they become more open-minded and intellectually humble and willing to acknowledge their own limitations. One question I address in my book is how we can raise kids who won’t grow up to be polarized, and it turns out that regularly listening to them is one powerful way to do this. When people feel heard, they feel safe, and that helps their brains relax and open up and become more willing to consider other perspectives.

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Thank you to Melinda Wenner Moyer for all of her wise, clear, and freeing advice. Unlike so many parenting experts, it feels like she does a beautiful job of getting to the intuitive simplicity on the other side of researched complexity; it really does it for me.

Buy the book here. Subscribe to her newsletter here. And by all means, tell us what you think about teaching kids about anger, parenting easier, and all the rest!