TPP 261: How to Motivate Kids & Build Their Stress Tolerance, with William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
48 min
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 13 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What inspired Bill and Ned to write “What Do You Say?” and how does it build on “The Self‑Driven Child”?
It's so easy to want to put on a cape and jump in and fix things for our kids to make the problem be better. And and it's not that we never do that, but it's so much better if kids can, with our help, fix the problems for themselves.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rever. Today I am excited to bring back to the show Dr. William Stixrude and Ned Johnson. Many parents in this tilt community know Bill and Ned as the authors of the fantastic, game-changing book The Self-Driven Child, the Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives. In part because, admittedly, I mention it a lot on this show. It fundamentally changed my parenting game in a very positive, tangible way. And now Bill and Ted have written a new book called What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home, which again, I just can't say enough good things about.
As you can guess, their new book is packed with scripts, dialogues, mantras, and powerful specific language for parents stemming from the most common questions Bill and Ned get from parents. Namely, What do you actually say to kids? This book covers everything from giving constructive feedback to handling anxiety, both ours and our kids, to talking about sleep, screens, and the pursuit of happiness, all based on Bill and Ned's core beliefs in autonomy, empathy, and connection. And what I love so much about this book is both Bill and Ned's compassionate approach to educating parents, and that they draw on decades of experience working with and parenting kids just like ours. We cover so much ground in this conversation, more than I could possibly list here, but I will just say that this was definitely one of my favorite interviews I've done for this show.
I had many aha moments, both reading this book and talking. with Bill and Ned, so I really hope you get a lot out of this episode. And as always, thank you so much for being a part of this Tilt Parenting Revolution. If you want to stay in the loop about important news, new classes, and special live events, sign up at TiltParenting.com. Thank you so much and now here is my conversation with Bill and Ned. Hey Bill and Ned, welcome back to the podcast.
Hey Debbie, great to be here. Yeah. Wonderful to be here.
I'm so excited. And I made a deal with myself as I was preparing that I'm not going to recap the self-driven child because I mention that book all the time. My listeners are probably like, okay, we know you like that book, but I just want to say for listeners who Haven't listened to that episode, haven't read the book, go back and listen to episode 158, where we have a rich conversation about that incredible book. Um, but today I want to just dive right into your new book because it is just incredible. So the book is called What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home. So I would love to know. a little bit about why you wrote this book. Did this stem directly from the self-driven child and kind of talk about your process in in moving forward with this?
So in in this self-driven child, do we have uh two main concerns? You know, one is that that this epidemic of mental health problems in in in kids and teenagers. And the second is that well, Ned and I see a lot of kids who have what we can call disordered motivation, where they're either they don't want to work hard or they're just obsessively driven. And we we discovered that the key to both really is a sense of control, having a sense of control. control o over your own life. And so s since we wrote the book, you know, we we've we've given hundreds of talks uh about the book and and we're just you know go to Seattle and we hear about second grade kids who are full on school refusal. We go to Dallas and and and and and the counselors say that the fifth grade boys are having panic attacks due to the pressure of middle school.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Bill and Ned to write “What Do You Say?” and how does it build on “The Self‑Driven Child”?
0:00–7:00
2
Why is a sense of control crucial for kids’ mental health and motivation?
7:00–15:08
3
How can parents use specific language to shift from fixing problems to empowering kids?
15:08–20:37
4
What’s the difference between empathy and pity, and how should parents respond to a child’s struggle?
20:37–26:04
5
How does a ‘non‑anxious presence’ help parents support anxious or ADHD children?
26:04–31:24
6
What strategies help parents balance nagging with giving kids autonomy on homework and tasks?
31:24–36:39
7
Why did the authors include a chapter on happiness, and how can parents teach kids to pursue it?
36:39–42:50
8
What lasting impact do the authors hope parents feel after reading the book?
42:50–48:39
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids