This is episode four of the Raising Wildlings podcast and part two of our two-part series with Dr. Justin Coulson. Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education, stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.
SPEAKER_00Each week, we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled. We're your
SPEAKER_02hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in, and join us on this next adventure. Hello and welcome to the second part of this two-part series. I'm your host, Vicky Oliver, and today I'm continuing the conversation with Dr Justin Coulson as we delve into some common concerns about our children and their early academic success. Specifically, we'll be talking about falling behind during the current isolation schooling experience, school readiness, and we're going to talk about our expectations around homework. And we're also going to touch on the role of sibling rivalry. Now, Justin is sought after for his expertise in family life, relationships and wellbeing, and he is the founder of Happy families and as I said last week Justin not only knows a lot about parenting and positive psychology he lives it he and his wife Kylie are the parents of six daughters so he really walks the talk I know that many of you will still be beaming after last week's episode I know I'm still dwelling on the imagery he painted when looking at your children with soft eyes if you haven't had a listen yet head to episode three of the Raising Wildlings podcast to hear our conversation on emotional regulation and while you're there hit subscribe or follow and if you have a spare minute you may also wish to leave us a five-star review. But now let's dive back into the conversation. I'd like to start with this question because play is something that's really important to us at Wildlings but how important is play right now compared to say worrying about falling behind academically?
SPEAKER_01Yeah okay well I'm not big on creating lists of priorities because every family is going to be in a slightly different situation. I suspect after your great conversation with Peter Gray that you are going to know that my position on play is fairly aligned and we really want to be encouraging our children to play and explore, create, grow, push past their limits and just do those things that are a little bit scary for them so they can build their resilience. I think that that's really where we want to be focusing. But let me just address the whole home learning thing that's been happening in our schools or in our homes for the last little while because of the coronavirus pandemic. I've spoken with countless parents who are worried that their children are going to fall behind. I understand the concerns But it is essentially without foundation. Missing out on a couple of months' worth of school is not going to have any adverse impact on our children's wellbeing or their academic achievement or their life outcomes. It's simply not going to have that impact. And what I really want to emphasise, you know, I had a conversation with a mum just the other day. She said, we're doing, she had a grade five daughter. She said, we're doing, from 8.30 in the morning until 4.30 in the afternoon. I'm not getting anything done. The house is a mess. I'm an absolute wreck. I'm just so tired from trying to teach my daughter and be the school teacher. I'm not the teacher. And I said, stop. Just stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Because... It's not going to help her. When she gets back to school, there's going to be a bunch of kids that haven't kept up. But even so, when children go to school, there's this beautiful flow and rhythm that they get into. They're not learning from nine till three.
UNKNOWNNo.
SPEAKER_01What they're doing is they're showing up and they're spending some time with friends. They're engaging in social play. Then they're going into the school, having their names marked off the roll. There might be a little bit of conversation, a bit of lesson content. Then they're breaking up into groups. They're doing activities. They're doing some schoolwork. They're going for a bathroom break or for a walk to the next classroom or to the library or to their sport or PE. They're having a recess break. There's this wonderful ebb and flow to the day where there's higher and lower intensity, where there's really active active learning and then some nice, you know, younger children are sitting in reading corner and listening to them read them a story. There's all kinds of things that break up that day. And for a child to be sitting at home and doing Zoom calls and Google Hangouts and Microsoft Team meetings and, I mean, as an adult, if you've got to sit through a full day of that, it
SPEAKER_02is
SPEAKER_01exhausting. And to put our children through it. Yeah, yeah. I'm more concerned about the wellbeing impacts of that on our children than them missing a little bit of school and having a bit of extra time to play or even hang out on their favourite games online.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think there's this danger in making them really pull away from a love of learning if we're doing it in the wrong way. If you're forcing them to do it in a way that is not the nature of children, then they're not going to want to engage in more learning. That's where parents, I think, are finding a lot of resistance as well. And because you're at home with your child. There's a different relationship to a teacher-child relationship as a parent-child relationship. So there is going to be a lot of difficulty in replicating that at home.
SPEAKER_01What I would say is learning is important and we should make sure that it happens. And what I've been suggesting to parents is if you've got kids who are in primary school, about an hour to an hour and a half, maybe two at the most, is plenty of learning. Then you want to make sure that you've got lots of active outside play. Nature is fuel for the soul and they need to be out there and they need to be poking up the sun and jumping on the trampoline, riding their bike and going for walk around the neighborhood, taking the dog with them. That's the sort of stuff that they've got to be doing. Sitting in front of a screen and doing another unnecessary classroom call or working on another worksheet that's only going to be revised in a couple of weeks when school is 100% back for everybody. There's no need for it. I just don't think that it's in our children's best interest.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for that. I think that that will put a lot of parents' minds at ease because I know that it has caused a lot of stress for so many people. One of the other questions that we get asked a lot, and I'm sure you do too, is how can I ease sibling rivalry or fighting in our house, whether it's now because we've... cooped up together a little bit more or any time in general. I know that sibling rivalry is definitely a hot topic.
SPEAKER_01I love the conversation. And I think that I don't want to make people feel silly for pricking up their ears and saying, oh, yes, that's my problem too. But I think we need to really consider the foundations of the question. What do I mean by that? Well, let's look at this in an adult context. I love to bring the problems that we have with our children into the adult context just to highlight
SPEAKER_02how
SPEAKER_01we can sometimes be so unfair on our kids. So here's the situation. If you're following the typical developmental pattern of most adults you've entered adulthood you've dated and spent some time getting to know other people and then you found the one you know the one that's the answer prayers the one who's the fulfillment of your dreams the one you want to spend the rest of your life with and so you make a commitment to that person in many cases you'll marry that person and say I want to be with you for the rest of my life till death do us part this is what it's all about some people talk about being together forever because you're my soulmate and what I've found really interesting about this is that even our soulmate, even the person that we love more than anyone else in the world, the person we actually chose to be with, sometimes we have arguments, sometimes we kick them out, sometimes we make them sleep on the couch, sometimes we don't want to talk to them for three or four days, and this is the person who is our everything. Now, I don't want to make light of those situations where it really does get bad because I know that it does, but I think my point is sufficient. You get what I'm saying. Our poor kids, they didn't choose to have to share the house with this sibling that came along. They don't want to have to share a bedroom with them. They don't want to have to be cooped up with this other person that they don't like and have nothing in common with except the same biological patterns because of their parents. They didn't ask for this. And yet we're like, you kids have got to get along. It breaks my heart when you're not getting along. Ask adults this as well. How old were you before you actually started to genuinely appreciate and enjoy being around your siblings full stop?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. For me, mine was definitely as an adult. Right.
SPEAKER_01And I know some are like, well, we live in a state and even that twice a year catch up is a little bit much even as adults with our own siblings we're like but we look at our children we're like no but you need to be different you need to love you
SPEAKER_02you need to be best
SPEAKER_01friends now i know that there are some people listening and they're saying i'm my sister's best friend or i'm my brother's best friend and wonderful if that's you but it's also pretty darn unusual so i think we've just got to get our expectations right i'm i'm less interested in my kids being best friends what i'm interested in is the the way their relationships work and the way relationships work is that we're go through processes of fracturing and rupturing and restoration. Well, I want my children to learn in their relationships how to make restoration and get along with people even when they can be tricky, much more than I want them to be best friends or even to get along all the time. In fact, there's some reasonable evidence that would suggest that children in big families can sometimes end up being a little more socially flexible and socially adaptable because they've We had to learn how to get along with people that were a little bit challenging from time to time. Whereas if you're on your own or you've just got one sibling, there tends to be a little less conflict and a little less social navigation and negotiation that's required. So I actually think that sibling rivalry, sibling contests, sibling competition and frustration, so long as it doesn't turn nasty and ugly and violent or turn into bullying, it can be one of the most useful tools for our children's wellbeing. and emotional intelligence that there is.
SPEAKER_02It's sort of like a practice run, isn't it, for the real world? You get to have all the conflict resolution skills practiced on someone regularly and someone that will usually forgive you in the long run. You've got a lot of time to work out the problem, so it's a good place to practice.
SPEAKER_01And when you look at the way siblings have been, I've done a little bit of research into this and came up with a couple of examples where siblings really pushed each other to be better. So I'm thinking of Venus and Sabrina Williams.
SPEAKER_03Mmm. I'm
SPEAKER_01thinking of the Wright brothers, the guys that invented the Wright. If you read about their history, they used to argue with each other horrendously over their plans and their designs and their ideas. But what they learned to do was to argue so effectively that Orville could convince Wilbur that he was right at the same time that Wilbur convinced Orville that he was right. And Orville was arguing for Wilbur's position. And they really learned how to get along through thick and thin. And I guess what I'm getting out here is relationships are always going to go in and out of conflict and in and out of restoration that's the nature of relationships our job if i swing it all the way back to your original question our job is not to teach our kids to get along perfectly our job is also not to teach our kids to fight fair i hate that phrase because we don't really want to be fighting what our job is is to help our children to learn that other people have perspectives and viewpoints that may not always be in harmony with ours we need to learn how to have empathy for those those viewpoints, to have compassion, especially for a loved sister who's not as big and not as strong and not as versatile with used language, and then to work together to find suitable solutions that give people outcomes that work. And when we get it wrong, to know how to go and say sorry. Oh, can I talk about how to say sorry?
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. Yes, how to apologize is it. I don't think many people have that as a key skill that they're very good
SPEAKER_01at. Yeah, yeah, yes. For sure. A few years ago, I used to live across the road from a psychologist, and we had some fantastic conversations and I just loved having her as a neighbor. We had a delightful, our kids played with their kids and we really had a wonderful relationship. But there was one conversation that always stuck with me where we had a big rupture in our relationship. And that was the issue of getting kids to apologize. So her position was basically, my children need to apologize if they do the wrong thing. Well, yes, I agree with that. My children also need to apologize when they do the wrong thing, but I'm not going to force them to. And she's, oh no, no, no. My children, they don't get to have dinner They don't get to do the next thing. We don't move on until they've apologised. And my argument was essentially, what, so you're teaching your children to lie?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And she said, no, no, no, they're not lying. They're sorry. And even if they're not sorry now, they will be later. Oh, that sounds bad. Like, Vicky, you've heard it. You might have even done it with your own kids. I know I've done it with mine when I've been having a moment of weakness. They do the wrong thing. You say, you say sorry to your sister. Yeah. Fine. Sorry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's so inauthentic and insincere, and they're not actually sorry at all.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're spitting it. across the room they're not sorry I'm sorry they got caught exactly and so what I actually think instead of telling them to lie and instead of telling them to I mean the apology really matters but I want them to be sorry because they're sorry so I've taught my kids that if they're not sorry right now then when they are sorry they do need to apologize and an apology has four steps in in my book and upon there's the two words I'm sorry now that they're important words and they need to be said but they need to explain what they're sorry for yeah I'm sorry for stealing your important thing I'm sorry for hitting I'm sorry for for calling you a name. And then they need to explain step three, how they're doing that affected their sibling. I'm sorry for calling you a name. It made you feel like I hate you and it was an untrue and unkind thing to say. I'm sorry for stealing that thing that matters to you. You couldn't find it when you needed it and then you had to go out and you didn't have it. So they're
SPEAKER_03showing
SPEAKER_01they have empathy and perspective. They get how what they've done has affected the other person. And then the final step, which I think is the most important and powerful of the whole process is once they've said, I'm sorry for doing this, it made you feel like that, or it impacted you in this way. Step four is, will you forgive me? And you know, I just don't think that there are enough people in the world who know how to actually ask for forgiveness. And I teach my kids this because, you know, what's the typical response? If I said to you, oh, Vicky, I'm really sorry about that thing. Sorry. What's your typical response to that?
SPEAKER_02That's okay.
SPEAKER_01But guess what? Sometimes it's not okay. No. Sometimes people do things that are not okay. And when we say that's okay, it's almost like we're letting them off the hook. Now, I'm not saying they've got to pay a price or anything, but there's almost a dismissal of the seriousness of what's occurred when we're saying that's okay.
SPEAKER_02And they're not really taking accountability for their actions. Yeah, you're letting them off the hook.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. But when we say, will you forgive me? It's very easy for us to then say yes, while still honoring the fact that something grave may have occurred. When I say to my wife, honey, I'm so sorry that I lost my temper before. I'm so tired. I overreacted. And it left you feeling like you're not good enough and it had nothing to do with you. Will you forgive me? Now, if you say it's okay, well, it's not. But when I say, will you forgive me? She's not saying it was okay. She's just saying, yes, I forgive you for doing what you did. And that's very very different that's that's not letting me off the hook as much as it's saying what you did was wrong but because I love you, I'll forgive you. So I think that there are important things that kids can do when they've got to say sorry. And you can't fake that stuff. You've actually got to say it because you mean it.
SPEAKER_02That's right. And I think that's really great advice for people. And it's having those little things to actually teach our kids, to model to our kids as well, because I think the best way for children to learn is to actually see that in action from the adults around us. So if we can model that ourselves in situations, it's a lot easier for them to pick up the language and for them to implement themselves.
SPEAKER_01Try it with your kids tonight, because I'm sure they're But sometimes,
SPEAKER_0224
SPEAKER_01hours, you're going to do something that's not right towards your kids. That's
SPEAKER_02why. I'm always apologizing to my kids. It's actually one of the cornerstones of my parenting is that if I think that I've done the wrong thing, I'll always apologize. But I definitely think there's some room for improvement. And I really like the will you forgive me part. I'm definitely going to be adding that to my repertoire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's powerful. And watch what happens as they fall into your arms.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's excellent. Another question I'd love to get your input on is your thoughts on homework. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01really simple thoughts on homework. For children who are up to at least grade seven, homework is the, I think Alfie Kohn said, homework is the most reliable way to extinguish the love of learning in a child. I think he said something, I'm paraphrasing quite badly there. Homework, what I would suggest is that when we look at the research globally and As a general rule, homework has no meaningful, positive impact on children's academic outcomes until at least high school. And it may be the most reliable way to make them unmotivated. Reason being, if they're already across the working class, it's kind of boring reinforcement. Now, I know some kids are happy to come and do that reinforcement work. And if they are, I'm not going to say stop it. If they can already do it, they're going to be bored. If they want to do it... and let them do it because the reinforcement won't hurt. But there's no real advantage to it. But if they can't do it, they're going to just feel horrible. They're going to feel so demotivated and demoralised and they go to school the next day feeling even worse. They lose their love of learning. They lose their interest in learning because they feel so incompetent. So there's one exception to that. What I suggest is that if your kids are of school age, they should be reading every day. I don't consider that homework. I just consider readings what we do. right like reading reads fun
SPEAKER_02it should be and
SPEAKER_01that's pretty much it the data would suggest that once your kids get to about grade seven grade eight they should be doing a little bit of homework have an impact by the time they're in their senior years of school from grade nine on probably one to two hours a night is going to have a positive impact on their academic outcomes doing more than about two hours you're probably going to start to see that reverse a little bit because it's it's so draining and they're not getting enough sleep they're not having enough physical they're not having enough of a social life although on the things that are important.
SPEAKER_02What are your thoughts on the current academic pushdown? And I think probably what we're trying to get to the crux of here, what do you say to parents when they want to know if their child is ready for school or if they should delay starting school?
SPEAKER_01So I'm not big on generalizations because typically nobody's really average. We get all these average findings in psychology and in education research and nobody actually fits the average. But this is one area where I actually do tend to have a fairly blanket position. And I came to it very late. I wish I'd come to it much earlier. We didn't actually get to this position until our last daughter was ready to start school. So all six of our kids have either gone through or are currently in school. But my position- now is very, very firmly that the longer you can keep your children out of formal schooling, the better. Wow,
SPEAKER_02that's interesting.
SPEAKER_01When we look at the results from around the world, it seems that children who start school later just do better. And it's not just compared to the same grade level peers.
SPEAKER_03It's
SPEAKER_01in every way that you can look at it. They're more mature. They're more socially adept. They're more able to, you remember that conversation we started about emotional regulation? Stick a four-year-old in a classroom. They just don't have the same emotional regulation capacity as a six-year-old. And yet we've got various states around this country that are pushing children into school earlier and earlier and starting to begin that formalized learning program. And then we've got things like NAPLAN and other nationwide standardized tests that have forced younger and younger children to demonstrate their academic competence at earlier and earlier stages of their development. And frankly, it's abysmal. And the data doesn't support its usefulness, especially when you compare it to countries that aren't doing this, but the world and the education stakes. And I'm not going to be original here. I'm going to do the same thing that anyone who's read about this sort of stuff would say. And I would say, look at places like Finland and those Nordic countries. We don't send our children. Well, they send their kids to school pretty young, but they have a play-based early years program. And when I say early years, Up to the age of six or seven, they don't start formalised curricula until the kids are about seven years of age. They don't start writing in class until they're about six or seven years of age. And by the time they're 11, they're in front of the kids that started at four.
SPEAKER_02And it's so important for more parents to understand this because it's just not filtering through when it comes to policy, educational policy and education. the changes that need to be made in schools, it just keeps going the opposite way. And if more parents know and can feel confident that they're doing the right thing by their children, whatever their choices are, we get a lot of parents who are so worried about getting their children even into kindy programs or that they're going to fall behind if they've never been in some sort of formal educational program. There's heaps of different options out there for your children to be experiencing learning environments that aren't necessarily formal educational institutions and that there are lots of options. options out there for them?
SPEAKER_01There are options. And if you've got the time, capacity and resources to pursue them, then I think they're definitely what you can do. The one thing that I have made a decision with my own family because of the fact we've got six kids and I'm traveling a lot, there's a lot of the family work that needs to be done is we've actually stuck with a fairly traditional school orientation model. Our kids go to a low fee private school down the road. And I'd really do mean low fee private school. Wonderfully, wonderfully affordable. And we chose the school because their approach is that they don't do homework until senior years of school. They don't encourage NAPLAN at all. And they've got a really wonderful integration of grades. So kids go across grade levels. They're not only mixing with children their own age. And they've got a whole lot of things that fit really neatly with the way we wanted our children to experience schooling. So that's worked for us. But our big decision really in relation to your question was we looked at our youngest daughter And the preschool that she was going to, or the kindergarten, depending on which school, every state has a different name for it. While she was there, they all said, oh, look, she's advanced. She's doing great compared to the other kids. She's ready to go up. And I hear this all the time, right? Every parent, same thing. So I'm not boasting about my child. She was developmentally where she was supposed to be. She was doing really well. And they said, yeah, she's definitely ready for big school. And I said... Well, she might be ready, but she can have another year just being a kid and playing with zero curriculum and zero pressure. She can just have fun. And you know what? She had a ball playing the next year. And now this year that she started big school, she's shown up at big school and she's just got that bit of extra maturity and she loves it. You know, she's a delight. The teachers can't get enough of her. Her learning is accelerated, not because we're trying to, you know, turn her into a, I don't know, the next Nobel Prize winner.
SPEAKER_02No, but she's ready.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she was already ready, but she's had that extra year to grow up. And I
SPEAKER_03just keep on saying to parents, Vicky, six years old is still a baby.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I can pick up my six-year-old and I can squeeze her in my arms. Me too. Why are we trying to push these kids into growing up so fast? There's no reason for it. Slow it down. Let them play. And if they go to school a year later, it's okay. In fact, it's probably darn good for them.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes I think people think that we stop learning when we finish school or like that there's this finite time when learning can occur and I just keep thinking the amount of things that I have learnt post university even would rival what I learnt at school and that our entire life is a learning process and that if they do miss out on something at school it doesn't mean that we've lost that opportunity forever. We can always catch up and there are always ways in which we will learn the things that are relevant and important to us through our lifetime. And I think that's important for parents to remember. It just takes a little bit of that pressure off.
SPEAKER_01Vicky, I've done a lot of thinking about this. My sense is that the reason some people may stop learning once they finish school is because we've taught them to hate learning. We've taught them that learning is no fun. And I was that kid, by the way, I hated, I was that, I was the boy you don't want to have and just made such a mess of my, my formalized schooling years. I went back to school when I was in my late twenties and I, I stayed there for eight and a half years as a full-time student because I fell in love with learning and what I've actually done now, this is provocative and this is controversial and this will lie in the face of what a lot of parents think is important because we've got our idea of success and I'm going to suggest something that turns that on its head in some ways. success is about more than the degree on the wall, more than the kind of car you're driving in the driveway. Success is about the kind of person you become. And I think your attitude towards learning will have a huge impact on the kind of person that you become. So with my children, I've actually told them that I don't want them to go straight to university out of high school. I want them to leave high school and go and get a job somewhere a full-time job and learn what it is to go and, I don't know, and I don't say this in a derogatory way. I don't say this in any negative way. I just want them to experience the contrast and work out what matters to them. I want them to go and get a low-skill job where they earn very little money and they've got very little power and very little agency and choice in their work where they pretty much just clock on, do what the boss says and then come home eight hours later, that kind of work. And I know a lot of people may be thinking now that I'm about to step into privilege and snobbery. I promise you that's not where I'm going with this. Thing is, when I used to be a university lecturer, when I used to have literally thousands of first year uni students come through my undergraduate courses in psychology, what I saw was a whole lot of kids who had just gotten through school and just had to go to uni because that's just what they were expected to do. And P's get degrees. I want to get out of uni and get on with my life.
SPEAKER_03That
SPEAKER_01is such a dysfunctional way to learn. And when I marked their grades... Vicky, they were just passing. Many of them weren't passing. I would say to them, I want to help you get a high distinction. And if you'll talk to me, I'll help you to get it. And they didn't care. They didn't want the high distinctions. They just wanted to finish. They wanted to get through university.
SPEAKER_02And then I want to have professionals in their field who were there and they loved the learning and they wanted to know everything that they could know about their field so that they could show up in the best ways that they could for the people that they're serving.
SPEAKER_01When you're sending your kids to school, do you want them to go to school with you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. through you. If you discover that you feel like you could make a greater contribution to the world by pursuing something else, you're going to go back to university with a completely different mindset. As a uni lecturer, I saw the people who were there because they knew that they had something to do. I love the metaphor. I can't remember who it was that said it, but it was one of those ancient philosophers who said that some people look at the mind as a vessel to be filled but it's not it's a flame to be kindled and I loved it when I had somebody in one of my university classes who was there they were almost always mature age you know they'd been out of uni or they'd been at uni and tried a few things and now they'd finally found psychology and there was just such a there was such a passion, there was such an interest, such a thrill, such a desire for them to be there. They wanted to engage with the material. They wanted to understand it. They wanted to wrestle with it. They wanted to argue with me. There was such a difference in the way they approached their learning because they were actually there to learn rather than... The degree was secondary. And frankly, that's how it was for me. The degree became secondary. I was less interested in getting the piece of paper. I nearly didn't show up to my graduation. I was just so excited about everything else.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that's when you know you've inspired it. You've found that... love of learning and I do worry that so many kids have lost that and not only have they lost it they're under this pressure to feel like they've got to pick something. Like you say, like the advice you're giving your children to not go to university straight away. I hear so many stories, and I was a high school teacher in maths and science, and children feel so much, or teenagers I should say, so much pressure to choose something, to know what it is they should be doing. And for me now, I'm not sitting in the career that I decided to choose straight out of high school. I don't regret it, mind you, but... Things in life change and you're not meant to know when you're 16 or 17 what profession you might step into for the rest of your life or that you're going to dedicate years of study towards because you might find other life experiences way more valuable than the piece of paper.
SPEAKER_01So glad you said that. I know that time's probably running out, but two quick things that I'll pick up on in what you said. The first is that when I do my presentations in schools, not that I'll be doing those for a while, when I do my presentations in schools back pre-coronavirus, I will ask the students, if I was talking to year 12, or the parents, if I was talking to the adults, can you please put up your hand if either your parents or you as an adult are still doing now in your 40s or 50s, what you thought you would be doing when you left school and went to uni or left school and started a
SPEAKER_03career?
SPEAKER_01And usually about 20% of adults put their hand up. And then I make this point really clear. That means that about 80% of the people in the room, when they left school and they'd made their decision, and this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, in their mind at least once after they got their degree or after they worked in a career for a certain amount of time. And when I say that to students, you can see the pressure. Oh, wow. I don't have to worry. And the other thing that I want to just quickly do is recommend a book. So there's a book that I read last year. It was my book of the year in 2019. The book was by a Harvard Graduate School of Education professor by the name of Todd Rose. I found him because he wrote a book a couple of years ago called The End of Average, which was extraordinarily good. I loved the book. But this one I loved even more, at least the first three quarters. The last quarter was very much about the American system, wasn't quite so relevant for us in Australia. But the book is called Dark Horse, Dark Horse. And it's about all these people who really didn't know what they wanted to be when they grew up and made choices later in life that not only changed their lives, but in many cases changed the world. And again, it just highlights that we've got this education system that requires that our children sit through 13 years of formalized schooling and they check the boxes and they do the thing and we teach them to hate learning because it's all about achievement. Our education system is about achievement and achievement by definition. By definition in our education system, at least, and probably more broadly, excellence and achievement means doing better than everyone else.
SPEAKER_03Whereas
SPEAKER_01what Todd Rose in his book, Dark Horse, is arguing is that fulfillment matters more than achievement. And if our children find fulfillment, fulfillment, then they're probably going to achieve extraordinary things anyway.
SPEAKER_02That's brilliant. I'm going to look that one up. That sounds really
SPEAKER_01good. I recommend.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Well, and actually I'll wrap up with a few of our rapid fire questions. All right, really quickly. Favorite book and why?
SPEAKER_01Favorite book. You know what? I'm going to go right back to the very beginning and the thing that kicks me off on this journey. When I was a radio announcer and starting to discover that there was more to life than radio, I read a book called Punished by Rewards by Alfred
SPEAKER_02Yes, I love Alfie
SPEAKER_01Carter. And while I wouldn't actually say that it's a brilliant book because now that I've got the PhD and I understand what he's done with some of the research, he might have overshadowed some of it a little bit much and gone a little bit far with some of it. it changed my life. It put me on the track that I'm now on. And so therefore that would have to be, that would have to be near the very, very top of my list. Dark Horse last year, that was another ripper as well. And I could go on. I love books. I read about 40.
SPEAKER_02What piece of advice do you wish someone had told you as a new parent?
SPEAKER_01You know, they actually tried to tell me. But I was too stubborn and too pig-headed and too inflexible. Aren't
SPEAKER_02we
SPEAKER_01all? I remember when my little one, my firstborn, was just 18 months, maybe two years old, and she was being obstinate and defiant and oppositional. And my grandma said to me, Justin, you're being very hard on her.
UNKNOWNMm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01I wish that I'd listened. I wish I'd learned softer sooner. I wish I'd learned to be compassionate faster because that may be one of the most important things that I've learned.
SPEAKER_02That's beautiful. Thank you for that. If you're having a rough day with your kids, where's your favorite place for you and your family to go to reset, reconnect and rebalance?
SPEAKER_01We go to my bedroom. I lay down on my bed and we play push dad off the bed.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that sounds like fun.
SPEAKER_01It gets a little bit rough, but not in an arm yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sometimes a bit of rough, rough and tumble plays exactly what everyone needs. And the last one, how do you create freedom in your day or your life? Like how a bit of self-care?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's funny. Self-care is something that I actually resist a little bit, not at a personal level, but at a philosophical level. Because sometimes I've worked with some parents who see self-care as the be all and end all and their children suffer because of it. When I look at what the very best research says, and it's consistent with ancient wisdom in any the ancient wisdom literatures that you can read, not just religious traditions, but in philosophical traditions, the very best ancient wisdom is consonant with the very best modern day cutting edge psychological. Yeah. And that is that caring for yourself is doesn't bring us nearly as much well-being, joy and happiness, as much meaning or purpose as caring for others and finding ways to give yourself in service to others. When we give to others, we don't seem to need to care about ourselves nearly so much. So I think that there's just tremendous joy and delight to be found in doing what we can to serve and look after others. That's
SPEAKER_02really
SPEAKER_01nice. Of course, we've still got to make sure we get enough sleep and we've got to make sure that we the right stuff and exercise and all that kind of thing and so I certainly work hard on those things but Every single day, I love to sit down with my family and say, who'd you help today? I think those conversations, that's my answer.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much, Justin. It has been an absolute pleasure to hear all of your responses to the things I've had to ask and just the wisdom and just the permission for parents to think about things a little bit differently and to not be so hard on ourselves. I think that is really valuable for our listeners. So thank you so much. And hopefully we'll be in contact and maybe we can chat again about so many other topics. because we've only just really scratched the surface.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's been so nice to talk to you, Vicky, and thanks for having me on the podcast. It's been a real delight and pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Well, I have taken away so much from this conversation. I hope that you found some comfort in knowing that your children are going to be okay during this unprecedented time. Just remember too that you know your child best. Emotional health comes before academics and to trust your instincts. I hope that you found this conversation valuable and we are so grateful to be able to share these perspectives with you. If you'd like any further information, you can head to our show notes where we'll have links to any of the things that we've discussed today and you can access that at www.wildlingsforestschool.com Don't forget to check out our free resource, including our printable with some helpful phrases to keep in mind so that you can connect before you correct when your children are having big feelings. Before we go, we've got a huge favor to ask. We would love you to subscribe or to follow the podcast Raising Wildlings so that we can make sure more parents can learn the importance of play and how children learn. Or we love seeing videos of you listening to your favorite part. So send those through. We love sharing your posts. Thank you so much for joining me today. We absolutely love doing this journey with you. So until next time, stay wild.