Jessica Lahey on What Moms Carry: Letting Go, Alcohol & Raising Resilient Kids
What if the anxiety you feel for your kids—the urge to step in, fix it, smooth it over—is actually wired into your brain? And what if the wine you pour at the end of that exhausting day is quietly making everything worse?
In this episode, Danielle sits down with Jessica Lahey—educator, journalist, author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and a woman nearly 14 years into her own recovery—for a conversation about what the research actually tells us about raising kids who are resilient, substance-aware, and capable of handling difficulty on their own.
This isn’t a parenting lecture. It’s part science, part confession, and part permission slip, for the mother who’s quietly wondering if she’s doing it right, and reaching for something to take the edge off when she’s not sure.
In this conversation, we talk about
• Why the parental brain reads a child’s struggle as a full-blown emergency, and what to do with that impulse
• The “mommy wine culture” problem: what our kids are absorbing when every hard moment ends with “I need a drink”
• Why the European moderation myth is just that, and what the WHO data actually says
• How competence, mastery, and self-efficacy protect kids better than any single conversation about drugs
• What’s different for women and alcohol: metabolism, anxiety, and the breast cancer connection
• How to reset the rules in your house, even if you feel like you’ve already “messed it up”
Key Takeaways
• The single most consistent finding: delay first use as long as possible. The younger the first use, the higher the lifetime risk.
• When you ask parents why kids drink, they say peer pressure. When you ask kids, they say stress and anxiety.
• Kids who learn to handle hard things and feel the dopamine hit of real achievement have a genuinely lower risk.
• Women metabolize alcohol differently, and drinking to manage anxiety almost always backfires.
• It’s never too late to change the conversation.
Listen to ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture & Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New conversations every Tuesday.
Full Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.
When we ask parents why they think kids turn to drugs and alcohol, parents tend to say peer pressure. However, when you ask kids the same question why they would turn to drugs and alcohol, they say stress and anxiety. That was Jessica Lahey and this is Roar. Hi everybody. This is Danielle Davies, the host of Roar.
Today's guest is Jessica Lahey, teacher, writer, podcast host, speaker, all-around good person, and author of The Gift of Failure and the Addiction Inoculation. Her work explores resilience, failure, and what kids actually learn from the adults around them. Work that's helped so many women rethink what it actually means to show up as a parent. Because while we say we want to raise independent, capable kids, a lot of us, myself included, feel this constant pressure to step in, smooth things over, and get it right. And for parents, moms especially, that pressure can show up in ways we don't always talk about, shaping how we parent, how we cope, what our kids are quietly absorbing from all of it.
So today, we're talking about that tension and what happens when we start, if we can, to loosen our grip. Jess, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm I'm just absolutely thrilled.
I'm going to jump right in because I have a lot of questions for you. And like I preempted by saying, this almost feels like a therapy appointment for myself, but I think it probably feels like that for a lot of listeners and a lot of parents. Everybody's like, get to my question because if you're a parent, your highest stakes, your highest stakes endeavor is your kids, right? So, so a lot of your work challenges that instinct to step in and fix things and prevent struggle. That instinct is so strong for parents.
Why is it so hard to let our kids fail? It's ju I mean I talk about this from a neurological perspective, it just feels like our kid is in danger. It's I mean put really simply the way our brain deals with the information that something's going wrong with our kid is it's just like oo emergency step in do something fix it. but that trigger for when that gets turned on has so moved into a place where like oh my gosh fix it. You know my daughter I have two kids my eldest is 27 and my youngest is 22 and just starting to apply for jobs and I'm overwhelmed by how often I want to step in like there were little things just dumb.
I mean, and I can't believe I'm going to admit this kind of stuff, but let me just admit this kind of stuff so that you can hear that the person who wrote a book about the gift of failure, about letting your kids fail and learn from those mistakes how bad it is in my head sometimes because so there are a bunch of jobs. I have opinions and it's so hard to get a job right now. And she and her girlfriend are both just applying, applying, applying, interviewing, not getting hearing anything back. It's just it's a lot. And then a job came up.
I found a job listing that happened across my desk and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing. That's perfect. " You know, like all these dumb insane thoughts of like, wait, you're talking in your own head about pretending to be your daughter so that you can communicate with the that organization, find out what the start date is so that she can get a that's bananas. And you would, if you heard about that coming from someone else, you would be like, what are you doing? So having this constant like conversation with myself, I have to I have a mantra that sort of comes up which is do I want this to be done my way or the perfect way right now or do I want her to be able to do it herself next time?
And obviously she's 22. Obviously she's this is her this is even more so than college which was her thing. getting a job. Like this is not only is this about getting a job, this is about learning how to get a job. And I can't be within a thousand yards of that.
That's, you know, I'm here for advice. I'm here for proofreading a resume, but I cannot be anywhere near that. So, it's it is a constant struggle. Even when my kids are 22 and 27, I'm constantly like, you know, just churning with how I can overinsert myself and make things happen for them. It's crazy.
Yeah, I'm glad you actually said it because I' i've actually been like looking things up for myself recently where I'm like inshed like parent inshment like all this stuff because and I generally try not to talk about my kids too much but my son is in college in Hawaii and we live in New Jersey. So, that was like a really big I'm like I got this down. Like I let him go to Hawaii. Like I am I am so proud of myself, but it's actually made it so much worse because I'm like you're even driving when I'm asleep. Like there's no time that I'm not overly invested in your safety and well-being.
" But if it's anything at all negative, I'm because of the distance or that's just exacerbated it. But it's it's just interesting because you can make all these strides then just one little thing you can you can step back and be like, how can I facilitate this for you or better facilitate it? Here's here's something that happened a couple years ago. " And it turns out my eldest got in a car accident. It was minor.
It was nothing, but it was in a rental car. And he didn't realize, we hadn't had the conversation about how insurance works with rental cars. And because he thought he was still on our insurance, he didn't get insurance. And so, he had to he was asking a lot of logistical questions about how to handle this. this is like at the accident scene and I said, "We need to l loop your sister into this text thread because this could happen to her and she needs to learn from this too.
" So, yeah, we're going to talk you through some of this stuff and help you think about, you know, here's how this works. And of course, there's so much to be learned from this. So now like Ben learned, you know, yeah, you get the car insurance and you, you know, this is how rental cars work and he actually learned a ton from that experience and it was, you know, luckily no one was hurt. But my daughter, if she had missed that whole text thread, if we hadn't moved that to our group chat off of an individual chat, then she wouldn't have learned everything that her brother learned. And that was really important information for her, too, cuz in a couple years she's going to be eligible to rent cars, too.
So, why not make it, you know, a big let's learn from each other's mistakes kind of situation, too. So, there are so many times when, you know, my first thought inevitably, my daughter got stuck in our car somewhere. She I can't remember what happened. It was probably a flat tire or something. Yeah, it was a flat tire.
My first thought was, I must get in the car and drive there, you know, like I have to go now to go rescue her from this. And she ended up learning so much and being so resourceful and figuring a whole bunch of different things out. And it was great. It ended up being a great experience. The person she was going to pick up also learned some stuff about figuring out an alternate way to get home.
It was like, it was great all around. Was she really nervous and anxious at the time? And was I nervous and anxious at the time? Yeah. And sitting on my hands at home and keeping my car keys out of reach was tough.
But it was really, really important. And now she has so much more confidence around being able to handle stuff. She just That's less of a worry. It's it's crazy too because you can see it happen when they do when you do manage to step back and like how they respond and there is so much more confidence there and I'm thinking of so many instances but my son had to bought a new car bought a new to him car in Hawaii and my husband was really like don't do it I don't think it's a good idea you're going to you're going to get you don't know what you're looking for like don't do it and of course He did it. He bought the car and he needed it.
He and I'm I'm actually glad that he bought the car. But almost immediately he called me and was like, "Dad was right. " I'm like, "Well, wait. You might it might just be low. " And he was in a rush and he, you know, he didn't know his way around.
and he got and he all while on the phone with me, he managed to, you know, find a garage, drive over to the garage, get air in his hair, and he actually said he's like, I have never felt like more of an adult. And I'm like, yeah, which is so that's he, you know what, he had to go to Hawaii. He had to go to for for his own self-p protection because otherwise I'd be like, you know, circling around him. well and I want to weave in, you know, you talk about parenting and this idea of stepping back or you know, obviously letting kids learn things on their own, but you were also very you're an expert in addiction and you've written the addiction inoculation. So I want to kind of weave this in early and say you know, you talk not just about prevention and your own experiences, but also about what kids learn from the adults around them.
How did your understanding of addiction shape the way you think about parenthood? Specifically, you know, you're a mom. Yeah. And actually, I want to back up just a second and make sure your listeners know. So, I'm actually before I wrote Gift to Failure, you know, I was in the classroom for 20 years, middle school, high school, taught every grade from 6 to 12, was an education journalist at the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, had a column at the New York Times for three years on, the intersection of parenting and education.
So even though I'm telling all these anecdotal stories, that's not where my expertise is coming from. So I'm an expert in, you know, learning, education, that sort of stuff. So the what was interesting about the addiction inoculation is that in the interim between writing the gift of failure which I got the contract for in 2013 and then it came out in 2015 as soon as I got the contract for the gift of failure I had to get sober. I just it was time. my dad just confronted me and was like, you know, you're definitely an alcoholic cuz he knows cuz he was raised by one.
and I talk about substance use prevention as being like a 100piece puzzle. And that 100 piece puzzle of like dropping all these little clues into place, real information around substances and what they do to the brain and all that sort of stuff is also part of prevention. So substance use prevention plays double duty as both substance use prevention but as giving people the information they're going to need in order to get to recovery faster because you don't that when that 100th piece of the puzzle drops into place and you realize, oh, I'm in deep doodoo. I need to start I need to get better. I'm ready.
you know, it can't fall into place and lose pieces one through 99 are there and so much of substance use prevention are those pieces. So my kids because they were born to my biological children are at a higher risk of developing substance use disorder. It's just you know genetics and epigenetics are about 50 to 60% of the risk picture. And so my kid with my kids it was particularly urgent. this wasn't a like oh I don't need to worry about that.
No one needs gets to be in the boat of oh I don't need to worry about that. but I really had to get on the stick and start dealing with it. So, a ton changed when I got sober and then I looked at my kids and I'm like, crap, if I grew up with many generations of people with substance use disorder and I'm just the latest one, what does that mean for them? Like, I didn't I didn't know I couldn't find a great resource that covered both the best practices for parenting and best practices for education. So, I'm very fortunate I got to write that book.
So, I did a couple of years of research before I even started writing that book because the way non-fiction publishing works is you have to sell a proposal and that proposal is a really deep outline of a book with chapter summaries and a sample chapter and all that stuff. So, it took me about two years to research and write the proposal and sell the book. and that's been I think I'm very proud of The Gift of Failure, but I think the addiction inoculation was the book I was meant to write. That's like my that is what has become my life's work and getting to help people talk about substance use prevention even the people who don't want to talk about substance use prevention to find ways into that conversation to ease that burden to ease the that first hurdle into the conversation that's become sort of my life's work again and I absolutely love it and I absolutely adore not just talking to so when I go into like a school or community organization. I often get to talk to the kids during the day and then sometimes I'll talk to teachers in the afternoon at a school and then in the evening I talk to community and my job is to start conversations to give people the vocabulary to have conversations about these really important topics like substance use prevention and those two things go hand inand with gift of failure.
I mean there's a and sorry to mix so many metaphors but there's a dovetail between gift of failure and addiction inoculation around competence, self-efficacy, self- advocacy. the feeling that the actions you take can affect change. and having making a mistake or not being able to do something and having to struggle to learn how to do it and then mastering it. That feeling right there of mastery, competence, self building, self-efficacy is really preventative against substance use disorder and it's an amazing source of dopamine in the brain. So, when you achieve something that you didn't think you could do or that you've had to work hard to figure out, the dopamine just gets released in the brain and that's a wonderful natural source of dopamine rather than having to go look for it somewhere else.
Okay, real quick. If you're listening and thinking more women should be hearing conversations like this, the best way to support the show is just to follow or subscribe wherever you are. It really does help it reach more people. Thanks so much. Okay, back to the show.
Let me ask you a question. So, I know and and I know like and I appreciate that you have all the science background and that you're actually able to speak about it both ways, right? Because if I had an audience who is a scientific audience, you could speak about it that way. And I if I don't and I and since I'm not I imagine my listeners aren't either, you're able to talk about it anecdotally and kind of well and I mention it I mention it very specifically because I think there are a lot of people who put themselves out as experts on topics and then are absolutely willing to you know whether it's an expert who speaks outside of their expertise. and that I think is just as damaging as someone who's willing to just put themselves out there as an expert and doesn't have you know the research cred behind them.
So, I just like to make sure it's not me talking out of my butt. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I'm glad because I didn't include that and I think that's really important specifically as I ask you the next question because especially regarding addiction. Well, both of these things really.
There's real push back from just every woman that I know. You know, I know so many women who are first of all like checking their kids 60,000 grades are they did they ask this teacher that they're they're all over it and it's hard to be a parent, you know? I mean, again, this is totally anecdotal. This is no research. This is just my experience.
It is hard. It is no joke. It is a lot of work and I think any parent will say that. but the addiction part also there's push back because we are a culture that really tilts the use of alcohol and we have normalized so much things like I need a drink after today or wine mom culture. I mean I haven't drank in 8 months and just last night I said to my husband I'm like you know what I could really use right now is a really big glass of wine.
It's really complicated. It's really complicated not having an escape hatch. I've had to Yeah, I've had to learn all kinds of stuff. But we actually, it's funny you say that because I was you know, I get a lot of questions about sort of the mom mommy wine culture, all that sort of stuff. " Not just a lot of drinking, but a lot of messaging that is the obvious answer.
And so, okay, so my guilty pleasure watch lately has been the show The Madison. it's set in Montana. It's just it's light and nothing and wonderful and it's it's sad, but it's also Anyway, at every single turn when anything gets a little bit hard or complicated, someone will reach into a bag and pull out like tiny airplane like here's how I got through my divorce and she pulls like six little vodka bottles out of her purse or you know in order to go to therapy she and her therapist get drunk together. It's like and f and I have no problem with people who don't have a problem with alcohol drinking. On the other hand, it's really worrisome to me that kids are getting the message that that is the obvious first stop to managing.
You know, you go to therapist, you're going to drink with your therapist. You have problems that you got to handle a grown-up problem, you drink at it. And that's what worries me. And to step it back and sort of give it to you from a real world perspective. So whenever I speak at a school or community organization, I make a little welcome video and I give everyone my email address so that they can ask me questions ahead of time or tell me what they want me to talk about and I get tons and tons of questions.
And then when I'm doing the event, I give people my email address again. And inevitably, the most amazing questions come from the kids. Lately, I've been getting a lot of questions about is it okay that my parents give me melatonin every night to sleep and is and so that's really two separate questions. Is there a problem with taking melatonin every night to sleep? And the answer is it's not the worst thing in the world, but also your body will change its melatonin release in order because you're supplementing.
But the real the real issue for me there is when you give kids something every single night in order to have a normally normal bodily function, something that is normal and natural and something we're supposed to be able to do. what you're telling them is here's a medication for this absolute that you need to have for this absolutely normal human function. And a lot of parents are giving melatonin in lie of looking at sort of evening bedtime sleep hygiene. By the way, my very favorite book about this is by Lisa L. Lewis and it's called The Sleepd Deprived Teen.
It's fantastic. but yeah, those things worry me. And it's not just messaging about like drink at that problem. It's messaging of you're nervous on a flight, you take a Xanax. you're nervous about this, you do that.
You know, those sorts of regular, totally normalized messaging, especially around alcohol because why on earth are we talking about drugs and alcohol? Alcohol is a drug. Why aren't we just talking about drugs? Somehow alcohol gets moved out of that box because it's so normalized in our society, especially around things like sports or, you know, dating and, you know, there's all sorts of places where alcohol is just an totally accepted, totally normal, part of our human existence. And some of those things just were modeling some weird behaviors for kids, some maladaptive behaviors for kids.
Yeah. and pardon me and I have to say, you know, you're it's funny you're talking about seeing it on a show years ago when I was involved in politics. I used to love the show Scandal. Talk about taking a break from your daily Let's just continue stressing out about this. But she was famous for always pouring a humongous glass of red wine and eating popcorn.
Well, I remember I mean it was like if the show was on it was so Yeah, it was marketed so well. It seemed like this is ex and I feel like every time I watched it, I had a glass of red wine and I skipped the popcorn. Of course, that was not nearly as compelling, but I just and I'm a grown adult who sees what's happening. " Like, you know, that's that's probably well, that's surely not signaling anything good. Can I ask you a question?
I know that in other countries, this is not anything that I was planning to ask you, so bear with me. in other countries, you know, alcohol is particularly wine is like a much more universally you know where I'm going, right? You're you're dancing into one of the best most beloved questions that I get. So, and the biggest myth I love to bust. So, go ahead.
Yes. Bust it. Bust it. So, okay. People they'll say kids drink alcohol when they're 16.
drink at the pub in Ireland or have wine with their lunch in Italy. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So, if you look, so this is if anyone's going to get mad at me about anything, and keep in mind, I work very hard to push people just a little bit to think in a new way.
But if people get angry at me, they stop listening and then I'm not doing my job well, right? So, I work really hard to balance that. The thing that people get most upset with me about is the idea and I write about it in the addiction inoculation that you know a lot of people have there are two big myths in parenting and one of them around alcohol and one of them is that if you give your kids sips that they'll grow up to be moderate drinkers that somehow if you model moderation for them that it will be no big deal and they won't flip out and go nuts and drink a ton the first time it's available to them freely and I 100% bought into that and was a fan of that and you know I'm a very because I love to read I'm a very sort of I've romanticized alcohol and I talk about this in the addiction inoculation as well and in fact one of the hardest things for me is when I'm watching a show and I'm watching someone have a glass of wine to relax I don't miss the wine exactly but I miss that hatch I miss that you know I miss my ability to have that, but I can't have one glass of wine. That's just not how I work. okay.
So, the European moderation myth. Here's the problem with the European moderation myth. according to the World Health Organization, Europe, Europe has the European region as a whole has the highest rates of disease and death attributable to alcohol. So when you look at disease burden attributable to alcohol and death cause of death all cause of death alcohol they get both of those awards right if you look at the highest drinking the heaviest drinking countries in the world seven out of the top 10 are in the European region however are so then people get very heated I made a video about this I have these like 400 different videos at my website on all topics from both books so I made by the way. That's awesome.
They're really short. They're like 90 seconds. I made that video and then I had to make like six follow-up videos because people were so pissed off with me and I had to break down like every country and who's the exception. And so you brought up a couple interesting things, which is number one, yes, there are exceptions. What's fascinating about the exception countries is that they generally speaking, it's not acceptable to be really falling over drunk in public.
That's just not a thing. So, for example, Italy has one of the higher rates of daily drinking in the world in the in the European region, sorry, but one of the lower rates of disease and death attributable to alcohol. So what you're seeing there is more of a moderation culture than you know embibing until you fall over. Whereas if you look at places like the UK, when you look at places like you know Ireland, when you look at places like you know some of the other countries that have a heavier disease and death burden, you know I was in I was in Northern Ireland a bunch of years ago when I was still teaching full-time and I had like my parent and mother hat on watching these kids who have essentially alcohol poisoning laying in the street on a weekend night and I just want to scoop them all up and take them to the hospital. And I went to school in England for a couple of years.
I, you know, it's just a part of the culture to get really hammered and drinking is a big part of the social thing. So when you look at the exceptions, what we're talking about are places that have created a culture where it's just not cool to be falling over drunk. and that is sort of proof that we can build cultures on the family level, on the state level, on the school level, on the community level around alcohol, right? The other thing we have to keep in mind here is that just modeling moderation for someone like me who can't learn moderation is not going to have any effect. Like you can model moderation for me all day long and it's not going to have any effect on whether or not I can moderate alcohol.
Plus, I have this genetic predisposition and all sorts of other things. the other big myth is, by the way, is the kids are going to drink anyway, and so therefore, I might as well have them to my house, take away everyone's keys, they'll be safe, they can drink here, no one can drive. And the problem with that is that kids who do not kids who grow up in a family without any consistent messaging around drinking like the fact that it's not that you're not supposed to drink. Most people say until it's legal for you. I like to stay away from that as a reason because that's a just because answer and teenagers aren't big into just because answers.
I like to say until your brain is done developing which happens in the early to mid20s. So, no, you can't drink until we don't drink in this house until your brain is done developing. Kids who don't grow up with that message are 70% more likely to start drinking early. This is based on a study that just came out about six weeks ago from a huge data set. The other thing we know is generally speaking, kids who grow up in a me in a family with a consistent and clear message of no, not until your brain is done developing and kids have information on what's happening with their brain.
those kids just have much lower rates of alcohol use, drug and alcohol use. Whereas kids who grow up in a permissive atmosphere around drug, drugs and alcohol have much higher rates of developing substance use disorder and drinking early or using early. And the reason for that is that the younger a kid is when they first start using, the higher their lifelong risk of developing substance use disorder by big numbers, not by small amounts. So understanding that the reason I repeat constantly delay delay is not just about brain development which is super important because adolescent drinking and drug use is not the same thing as adult drinking and drug use. Once that brain is done developing it's much less dangerous for the brain to use drugs and alcohol.
But when the a adolescent cognitive development is happening, which again doesn't that door doesn't really creek shut slowly until the early to mid20s, it's much more dangerous short-term and long-term damage to the brain. We see it in lots of different substances and lots of different studies and brain studies. Anyway, lots of reasons that those two myths and when you're doing the thing with, you know, having other people's kids over to drink in the basement when you take the keys away, not only are you raising your own kids risk of developing substance use disorder over their lifetime because they're more likely to start early, you're raising their peers u risk as well because peer cohort is such an important part of the substance use prevention picture. Not just because kids are more likely to do drugs and alcohol. If their friends are more likely to do drugs and alcohol or sorry, if their friends are doing drugs and alcohol, your kids perception of how risky it is drops if they see their parents or their friends doing drugs and alcohol.
and I haven't seen these studies, but I would love to know if kids are seeing it on Scandal and the Madison and all these different places and they're seeing that's a legitimate coping mechanism. Does their perception of the dangers of alcohol and drugs drop? Probably. I mean, it's we know if they see it in their own family and in their peer group that it drops. So, you know, we want them to have a healthy understanding of the actual risk, not the anyway, we want them to understand the real risks.
Okay, this leads me to two questions. Two questions based on that. I'm going to ask you the first one first. There's I feel again this is not scientific. This is my own observation.
I feel like I see a connection and I don't tell me what you think when you look at it. e. possibly turning to drink. almost feels it feels like it feeds into it because you know and then if your kid has a bad day that pressure is even more of I think I'll have a drink because you're you're kind of coping with your own failure or theirs or your pursuit. You want the research?
Yeah, please. Okay. So, a couple years ago, we have a couple of really huge wonderful data sets. We have the monitoring the future data set that comes out of University of Michigan. Love it.
Love it. Love it. Big dork. Every time that study that survey comes out, it's comes out in a big report once a year, I'm like, "Woohoo! " And then there's a new there's a cohort that's been going for a couple years called the ABCD survey.
That one's massive. That's going to give us so much amazing research as we move through. So, we're getting data out of those. We're getting papers out of those data sets all the time. And what and just in the last year what we know is when we ask parents why they think kids turn to drugs and alcohol, parents tend to say peer pressure.
We would love to believe it's because the bad kid influenced my kid. Right. Oh, totally. Totally right. And peer cohort is definitely part of it.
It's the reason there's an entire chapter on peers in the addiction inoculation. However, when you ask kids the same question, why they would turn to drugs and alcohol, they say stress and anxiety. So, when you look at then if you start looking at what's causing the stress and anxiety for them, that feeling of needing to be perfect, needing to succeed, needing to fulfill their parents' dream hopes and dreams and wish for what they want their kids to be, all that sort of stuff, living up to and then, you know, for their own part, you know, being financially self-sufficient. That's really scary. Adultting is really scary.
You know, we're also specifically talking about a group of kids that's just come out of COVID. My 22-year-old, you know, spent a lot of high school in, you know, doing CO stuff and not being able to go on dates or see friends or do all that stuff. " But what I do know, and thank goodness for books like Lisa Deore's Under Pressure, wonderful book about helping reframe stress and anxiety for kids, is this stress is and anxiety are part of what keeps us moving forward, motivation. So I use the analogy a lot with kids like yes, sometimes like when I'm on deadline, I am stressed out because I have a deadline. But what I also know is that I'm better with a deadline.
I'm sharper. I'm more on task. So, I have a literary agent and she's wonderful and she doesn't tend to pressure me. " That's I made that deadline up. It's totally of my own making, but she's going to hold me to it.
And that's why I also have two friends. I have a rabbit behind me and we call it our accountability bunny. oh, I love that. it's accountability buddy. I have two, not only do I have two best friends who will hold me to deadlines if I ask them to, I also have a larger group of sort of colleaguey peer friend group who once a year we sort of talk about deadlines and goals and things like that and they'll hold me to them and those are all really important.
Is it stressful that I have and especially when I was hosting the podcast a lot, I was constantly talking about my goals for the year and then so I'm putting like my own personally made deadlines out into the world. It would be a lot less stressful if I would tell no one about that because then if I screw it up or if I don't make it I'm less embarrassed, I guess fewer people will hold me to it. But it's really helpful for me. So if we can model for our kids that some stress is really useful and it's very important. The other thing we need to think about is when we talk about risk factors a lot of parents say well I don't want to tell my kid that they have a genetic predisposition for substance use disorder because that'll freak them out right or they might think well it's going to be this way anyway so I might as well just do it.
we would never talk that way, by the way, about like risk for hypertension or diabetes or you know all of these other health risks that it's important that we know what our risk factors are so that we can eat well or choose to exercise or whatever that thing is. The other but the other thing is that when we I talk about this a little bit in the addiction inoculation that we moved during a really risky period of time for my daughter transitions or riskier time for developing for use starting to use substances and I was talking to Dr. Dan Seagull, one of my heroes, and I told him how worried I was about my particular child's risk factors and the fact that we moved her during this particularly risky time. " And every time you achieve something new, every time you learn a new skill, every time you go out there and become competent in something new, which is what adolescence are driven to do naturally, you not only get that wonderful hit of dopamine, but you build your sense of competence and self-efficacy and mastery, and that's really great. So you can choose to keep framing this as a negative as risk risk which you're definitely transmitting to your kid or you could choose use this as an opportunity to think about like what novel experiences can I push her toward to help her develop more competence and more mastery and more feelings of self-efficacy.
And just to define my terms self-efficacy is the feeling the understanding that something around you is not the way you want it to be. this relationship isn't working for me, my teacher doesn't like me, whatever. And feeling like if you take believing that if you take action that you can affect change. It's like a cross between like hope and competence. Self-efficacy is the belief that I that my world whatever can be better and that I have the power to change it if I take action.
And kids who ended up in my rehab classroom, I taught in a rehab for adolescence for five years. The kids in my rehab classroom all had incredibly low levels of self-efficacy. Like, why bother? Why bother staying sober? Like, nothing in my world is going to change.
I can't I can't affect change in my life. I'm stuck in this group home. I have abusive parents. I don't know where my next meal is coming from. And none of that comes down to, you know, my ability to change anything.
So, the more self-efficacy we can give kids, the better. That was a very long-winded answer to your No, no, no. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. It's I may I'm like writing notes down everywhere.
And then the other question that I wanted to pull out of that first thing that you said is, you know, you were talking about the sips and giving the sips of alcohol and it's proven to not actually be a great thing at all. And so what about the parents who've already done that? What if we're what if we're dealing with Yes. Like myself, obviously, this is why I want to know. " You know, you know, you're going to be responsible about it, though.
This is how we learn to be respons. What do you do when you feel like you've already messed the whole thing up? The entire premise of the gift of failure is that we do the best we can. This is what we want to model for kids and teach kids. We do the best we can with the information we have.
And if we learn how to do better, we say we apologize if we need to or we, you know, explain if we need to and then we move forward with the new information doing better. So yes, my eldest was allowed sips. I put some wine on his tongue. Excuse me. I pick up as a baby because it was a really nice bottle of wine and I figured, you know, he the first taste of wine should be this really nice bottle of wine.
so what I did and really who it affected was my daughter because she was still in the house. My son was off at college at the time, I think, or yeah, at college. And for my daughter, you know, it kind of she felt it was a little unfair for her because the rules changed. And I didn't just rip the carpet out from under her and say, rip the rug out from under and say, you know, hi, haha, new rules. What I did was teach her what I know about the adolescent brain and the damage and the risk factors and the statistics and said and therefore the rule in this house is no open containers in our house like sitting around because that's what my husband does for me just as a because he cares about me and he doesn't want me to have to think about an open container.
So, if he has a beer with dinner, he finishes it or pours the rest out. and no, you can't use drugs or alcohol until your brain is done developing because you know what I know and here's all this great information on that you need to have in order to make good decisions. And did it feel a little unfair? Maybe. But and then there were all kinds of things I was worried about like am I just, you know, she had a she had a friend come home for Thanksgiving from college with her one year and this friend lives in a country somewhere else where the drinking age is 18.
So we're having my husband and my dad are having a little champagne. my mom doesn't drink, I don't drink. my eldest has been drinking age for a bunch of years. " I was petrified about this. And you could see my the tension in my daughter's face.
She's like, "Is this going to be weird? Oh my god. Oh my god. " And he was like, the kid was like, "Okay, you know, it just wasn't a deal. " I don't know.
Maybe there was lots of talk back at the college once they were back there about what a freak Phoebe's mom is. But, but I don't care. That's our rule, you know. And I would love to be the fun, you know, we all want to be like the fun cool parent with the cool hangout. And wouldn't it be more likely that kids would hang out at our house if we were a little more lax about drugs and alcohol, especially since, you know, weed is legal in this state?
Yeah, maybe. But, you know, I'm sorry, the risk to my kids is just too high given their genetics and given what I know about the adolescent brain and substance use. It just is. Quick pause because if you're listening to Roar, I have a feeling you're exactly the kind of person I write for. I send out a Substack newsletter where I go a little deeper, more personal stories, behind the scenes thoughts, and honestly, some of the things we don't always say out loud here.
com. I'd love to have you there. And now, back to your regularly scheduled podcast. How do you like why am I not finding the word oh menopause the how do you find the middle ground between you know having a house where you're like I am so off topic but having a h but I need to know how do you have between you know being the house where you're like we're not going to drink until our brains are fully developed and the fact that sometimes you know I'm constantly like you will not text and drive you will not text and drive right texting and driving is you're at danger. Then I find out my kid texted and drove and I'm like, you know, I lose my mind.
So sometimes they're going to do what I don't want them to do. They're going to they're going to go against my wisdom and I always am like I'm the house. I will pick you up. I will not ask any questions. because I would rather obviously they live through their mistake.
How do you kind of find that middle ground? So taking there's I compare it to here's what we don't want to do. What we don't want to do is use like language from purity culture of like my husband grew up in Utah and he a lot of the girls he grew up with were told something to the equivalent of losing your virginity makes you like a used piece of gum. No one's going to want to chew on that used piece of gum if you've lost your virginity. So that's what we don't want.
We don't want this all or nothing for let alone that's all made up BS whatever. what we do want is for kids to understand that yeah we screw up like this is a really important message also in the recovery world because in for adolesccents who are recovering relapse is just part of it like they just do relapse. The number of kid people who get sober young and never relapse is really small. So, what we need kids to understand is that's not that's not a fatal error. A friend that I've been sort of I text back and forth with, I sort of helped them get to a place where they knew they needed to get better and stop drinking and they relapsed a lot at the beginning and they were always ashamed, but they would text me and I would say, "Okay, what' we learn?
" like you, you know, you feel like you've just lost everything, but you haven't. You learned so much in the interim, let alone you learned what it feels like when you move toward a relapse so that you can maybe now build some skills to sort of intercept those thoughts, that weird like many of us find that we were in our addicted brain way before we ever pick up that first drink to relapse or that first whatever. so for kids, it's really important for them to understand that to come at it without judgment because what we really need is to keep communication going. We do not want to shut down communication. So this is not okay, but I love you.
I support you. Thank you for making a really good decision about calling me. Like that means the world to me. I would much rather you make this mistake and yet entrust me and your safety so that we can keep having this conversation. But this is not a fatal flaw.
You're not like ruined now. It just means that we're going to try to take what we learned from this experience to try to do better next time. And you know, if they're really talking to you, which would be great. And both the gift of failure and the addiction inoculation talk a lot about keeping communication going. There's also a wonderful book by Robin Silverman called talk to kids about any how to talk to kids about anything.
and she includes a whole bunch in there about, you know, all the normal things that are really hard to talk to kids about. There's a couple of great books on that. making sure that you're preserving the communication is super important because that's their lifeline to you. And even in college, college kids report that they still trust their parents advice around health decisionmaking. And this falls under decision- making around health.
So, and my favorite part, frankly, of the gift of the addiction inoculation isn't technically one that I came up with on my own. I asked a whole bunch of young adults and adolescence to give me their favorite excuses that they use when they don't want to use or drink at a party or when they're out or when with their friends and and not feel like a big dweeb. And so there's like two and a half pages of these excuses that kids came to me with for, you know, understanding that no is a complete sentence and that's cool, but other excuses that they've used or could use that they've sort of loaded up for if they don't want to lose face, but they also just don't want to use. and it's they're really good. They're really cool.
That is awesome. I Well, first of all, I'd love to see that. " You know, I'm like, I and it's and I'm actually like thinking in my head, do I say I don't drink? Do I just not drink? Do I just It's It's interesting because it comes up no matter what your age like and especially for kids.
Yeah. It came up on threads just the other day. " and all these people had like these cryptic whatever. I'm like I just say I'm an alcoholic you know and then but I also don't want you know for me it's just I've you have to understand if you read addiction inoculation you understand that I was raised in a household with someone with substance use disorder where we were not allowed to talk about it. In fact we were gas lit.
We were told that what we were seeing was not what we were seeing. And I think that has put in me this need to be really honest. And also recovery, you have to be really honest when you're recovery. And I'm not saying that means you go out there and you make other people feel uncomfortable. But for me, every single time I've ever in public said that I'm an alcoholic or that I'm in recovery.
That has led to at least one conversation. And sometimes way down the road, someone remembers, oh that Jess Ley, that author person I saw at that thing and she gave us our email or I could find her on her website. I'm just going to reach out to her. And there are a bunch of conversations that I'm having with people right now who through text or email that just reached out. And some of them aren't ready to say why they've reached out yet, but I know why they reached out.
the person I was talking about who kept relapsing, he texted me or DM'd me through social media of someone I knew from my childhood for I don't know two years before he finally admitted that the reason he had reached out to me was that he knew he needed to stop and he just didn't know how. and then two years in he was finally ready. And that's, you know, that's an incredible honor for me. being really honest about that has been and I feel like as a white woman of privilege and you know there are so many people who can't say it's just another strike against them like if I was a single mom of color like so many people might hold that against me and it's and I feel like if I can make it easier for someone for whom saying that they have substance use disorder is a massive hurdle for them. I'm going to keep saying it until it's okay for everybody to say it.
It if it's okay for me, then I need to be saying it more and more and more so that I can pave the way for other people to be able to say it. I feel like, you know, so much of your work is obviously for the next generation. You're thinking about children and raising them and your history as an educator and as a parent and all of this. It's it's to pay it forward, right? these kids, you want to we want to do our best by them.
But it's also you're helping the original people, the parents, the generation who's could do better or worse or could, you know, learn from our mistakes. I feel like and it's it's a real thing in a family because if my kids and my nieces, let's say hypothetically none of them end up developing substance use disorder. Like it doesn't mean that it's not in their genetics or their epigenetics, but it does mean that's been interrupted, right? So I grew up with someone with substance use disorder and it was not fun. It was not a good thing.
But at least for my nieces, because my sister does not have substance use disorder, at least for my nieces and for my kids, that's been interrupted because I got better when my kids were fairly young. so they have not had to witness an alcoholic parent, right? So, and by the way, and I'm going to borrow this in the borrow it in the sense that I am so intrigued and respect it and hopefully not in a sense of cultural appropriation, but I get to learn so much when I go to these big conferences about substance use prevention and recovery. And I just came home from one of those conferences and they were talking about recovery in tribal and indigenous communities. And recovery there looks a little bit different from recovery for someone like me because what they're trying to do there is make people whole again.
And that includes returning them to their culture. And they have a real belief around they have this seven generation idea that the things we're trying to do today will affect people seven generations down. And this substance use prevention cannot be like we cannot have a short we can't have a short-term lens. That's not even how you say that. But this is something that changes slowly over time.
But look how far we've come. I mean substance you if you look at the I have all these tables of statistics around like lifetime abstaining from drugs and alcohol and past month use and all that sort of stuff for adolescence. We are we have been in a over a decade long decline in substance use among adolesccents not so much emerging adults but among adolescence and that's because we know prevention works but 10 years ago it would have been you know if we look just at each year's incremental change that's frustrating we got to look over longer periods of time whether that's seven generations and I love that idea or whether that's just interrupting it with my generation so that my kids can have a better shot at not developing substance use disorder during their lifetime. We have to be thinking ahead. This has got to be about them.
Do you think that it's helpful that there are so many I first of all there's like this whole sober curious moment going on and I think that's great but I also so my sister who won't mind that I'm sharing this is an addict and so she's been in recovery for years and she can't Okay. And I just I don't drink. Mhm. But our reasons for this are very different. So I didn't really have a problem, so to speak.
I felt like it added to my anxiety and I was like, you know what, this is just not helpful in my life. So I'm just going to knock it off. And that was that. My sister, however, had a problem with it. And so she through struggle stopped having a problem with it.
We just stopped using it. Always has a problem. but there's a lot of mocktails on the market, right? And I love a mocktail. I'm like, and I and it kind of gives you that sense of it's almost like if you're drinking a decaf coffee, you're not really you're not it's the it's the act of it.
It's the ritual of I'm going to sit down and have this warm drink. and so I love a mocktail for that feeling. Whereas my sister is like, I'm not having a mocktail because that feeling is nothing I should be near ever in my life. Do you see that in any way helping or hurting? How what do you think of that?
I'm just curious. The evidence on that is really not clear. We don't have great studies on it. It's really an individual thing. So for me, mocktails.
So I did a lot of my drinking while I was preparing dinner when before my husband was home so I could get a really good buzz on before he ever got home. So for me, drinking something fancy while making dinner is a thing for me. So now I live on I have a very very small farm slash very humongous garden. and I make a lot of like syrups, berry syrups and things like that. And I am a massive seltzer drinker.
So put something fizzy with the berry syrup. That's my fancy drink. That's really important to me. On the other hand, I also I'm a big non-alcoholic beer fan. I, you know, for me, that's I've been sober now for almost 14 years.
So far, that has not been a trigger for me. It scratches the itch of I like the taste of beer. I love the taste of a fancy sort of mixed thing. and I totally appreciate the fact that a lot of restaurants are developing mocktails. it's fantastic.
But if you a lot of people, especially people in 12step recovery are like absolutely not mocktails, non-alcoholic beer, that is the thin end of a wedge. I think there are there are a lot of fights between factions in recovery. And the reality is it really comes down to what you know about yourself and staying sober. problem is that I know that my brain is broken when it comes to using substances. So, I mean, maybe I've been tricking myself for 14 years about whether or not I can have non-alcoholic beer, but and my I also have a spouse who keeps a super close eye on me because and he's very careful and he's very conscientious about like I said about having open containers.
They just that's not a thing in our house. so it's a very individual decision with the caveat that we have to be really careful because our judgment about what is getting us in trouble and what's not getting us in trouble can be broken sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, I was just curious about that because it's it they're everywhere now which to me is a well and that leads to the second half of this which is I what's been really cool what's been really amazing is for millennials genz's it has been much more acceptable to choose sobriety and not even just not even sobriety but just not really into drinking just because it's a choice that they're allowed to make as opposed to oh I have a problem I have to stop drinking Lots and lots of kids are telling me it's just a choice that they've decided to make because they're learning more. You know, it's only been in the last generation that we've been able to look inside the human gen the human brain while it's working and know what's happening in there.
And so all this information we have about what alcohol and drugs do to the human brain and especially what they do to the adolescent brain. This is all new information. And as it trickles down to the people whose brains are concerned and the decision decisions they make around drugs and alcohol. you know if you know that using weed on a regular basis can render it can make it so that your hippocampus is smaller than it would be in for example that we know that the hippocampus which is right where the receptors are for the canabonoids. the active ingredient in weed we know that those kids tend to have smaller hippocampuses and hippocampus is the seat of memory formation and consolidation.
And there's a reason that people on weed have bad short-term memory, and it's because of that proximity to the hippocampus. So, if I tell a kid who has big goals for her future around, I don't know, going to med school and having to learn a ton of stuff, and I tell her that if she is a regular user of weed, her short-term memory just won't be as good, that can be a really important lever for helping kids understand that. And so, a lot of kids are now that they're beginning to understand that. schools are working really hard to get that information down to them. they can make more informed decisions and they are.
They are making more informed decisions. They just are. Yeah, I'm seeing it over and over and over again. And the surveys, risk surveys we see tell us the same thing. It's awesome to think of, and you're right, too.
You know, just thinking back anecdotally to being a, you know, I graduated high school in 1992. You didn't, it wasn't, if you were at a party, you drank a beer. it wasn't there was somebody who opted out. You just didn't go. So if you wanted to be in the social setting, you did what you did in the social setting.
Whereas now I do think that the kids are there they're coming so much further along. Thank goodness. Like they I feel like leaps and bounds. You know I watch my kids and I'm like my god you do so many more impressive or you handle yourself in a I mean not all the time by the way. I just want to give that caveat.
" When their frontal lobe is done developing and they've they filled in, yes, they will. I actually Yes. Go ahead. From a Since your podcast is for women, I just want to make sure that we cover a few things about women and alcohol, please. Number one, we are lacking an enzyme that allows us to break down alcohol as efficiently as it breaks down in men's bodies.
So all other things being equal, which it's really hard to make all other things being equal because our bodies are built different proportions of muscle to fat. So water more water content in men's bodies than in women's bodies. So we automatically are breaking down alcohol more slowly, but we're also missing this enzyme. So we break down more slowly. girls, women who drink in order to manage anxiety, which is very much why I drank.
because I drank in the evening because I had trouble falling asleep because of my anxiety, which, haha, jokes on me. alcohol makes anxiety worse. also, you will wake up around, let me just pipe in. Yes. Yes.
You will wake up around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, having an anxiety attack. And that's because alcohol messes with your sleep. sleep and drugs and alcohol have a birectional effect on each other. People who get too little sleep tend to use more drugs and alcohol. People who use more drugs and alcohol tend to get too little sleep.
so that's all important to know. But if women drink in order to manage their anxiety, they are more likely than not to develop substance use disorder. So, if you are drinking to manage your anxiety, not only does that not work, it feels like it works in the short term, it works so great in the short term. This is as so many things with drugs and alcohol, it works until it doesn't work anymore. And when it doesn't work anymore, it's awful.
and also you're just if you're drinking to manage anxiety, you're more likely than not to start having a problem to become a problem drinker, to have a problem with alcohol, to start misusing alcohol, to use all of the euphemisms. anecdotal story here when you just said that. So, my sister's drug of choice was heroin for a while and God, I hope that was okay to say. Anyway, the point is she actually at one point not great for anxiety either. Although no but okay.
So my sister all my when my children were very little and my sister was a young mom. This is when it all happened. She was the most she was fun aunt Michelle. She was so much fun. And my kids like they were like oh let watch us.
I mean I would come home she would have them out and they would have Sharpie written all over them. I'm like there's a million kids markers. Why would you put Sharpie? Why would you let them? You know, she just But she was so much fun.
She's making tunnels. She's making forts. She's so relaxed. And I'm like a barrel of nerves. Well, come to find out, she's on heroin.
And she's on But also, they're not her kids. That's just grand. That's why grandkids are so much more fun than your own kids because they're not your kids. You can give them back. You don't have to deal with Well, she had her kid there, too.
She had her child there, too. So, I do have to give her credit. But the point is that once she stopped using drugs and she had to contend with being a sober parent, I was like we are very act we are actually very similar. Like I didn't know all the because her addiction started so young and we didn't realize that this was part we assumed it was her personality but it wasn't. It was this addiction and so it turns out that she's actually pretty anxious also.
she's, you know, got her own set of anxieties and this was a coping mechanism. " I was like, I was just, you know, thinking possibly Zoloft, but I'm not going to jump to that. But it's just interesting because anyway that was my anecdotal but it did obviously doesn't work. These things don't work and there's and when our kids see us not coping with our anxiety in a healthy way then they're less likely to cope with their anxiety in a healthy way. And on top of all of that, you have to remember, one of the important things to remember about people who start using drugs and alcohol when they're really young is this is a bit of an overstatement, but also kind of generally true, is that their coping mechanisms and de development, their emotional development gets arrested at the age pretty much when they started using.
So in the sense that they don't continue to they don't have coping mechanisms because the drugs have been their coping me mechanism, right? So I could have learned so much more about managing my anxiety if I had gone to see a therapist and talked about my anxiety or had a regular mindfulness practice, which is why I talk about that in the addiction inoculation. You know, I tried to get my daughter to do a mindfulness practice with me and she grudgingly did it with me and then basically referred to it as dumb. She didn't like it. But then I come to find out she developed her own mindfulness practice that she continues to this day.
It's just it she needed the one that worked for her, not mine. So h help giving kids helping guide kids toward healthier outlets for whatever it is they're feeling and wanting to self-medicate is one of the most important things that we can do. And they're not going to like we don't like give them a solution. They're like, "Oh, thanks mom. " But they're at least seeing us doing some of the problem solving about how to manage our stuff or giving them ideas or giving them a starting place to think about like the mindfulness thing.
Like that wasn't her favorite way to do it, but she has a different favorite way to do a mindfulness practice. And it's become incredibly important to her and it does not resemble mine at all. But yay that she has one. Absolutely. and all of this.
Well, first I know you said you had something else to say about women. I didn't know if you if I cut you off. No, that was it. That was pretty much all of it. Oh, no.
One last thing. One last thing. So, I just finished treatment for breast cancer and we know drinking raises the risk of breast cancer. So, when I talk to my nieces about substance use prevention, you know, I talked a lot about their genetics and we talk a lot about traumatic things that have happened to them and the fact that, you know, it can be really tempting to manage those things you don't want to think about with drugs and alcohol. I don't know if my drinking caused my breast cancer.
We can't know that. But isn't it interesting that I drank and I ended up with breast cancer. And it's just if we think about the way kids make decisions, they tend to when people say adolescence don't make good don't understand the consequences of their actions. That is not true at all. What we do know about adolescent decision-m is they tend to weigh the possible positive benefits of a decision heavier than the possible negative outcomes of a decision.
So, it's on us to help them, you know, understand the actual real risks. , you know, report to the hockey rink thing, or, you know, geez, breast cancer is also one of those things floating out there. And I know that alcohol is a carcinogen and can and can increase risk for breast cancer. I don't care as long as I'm being honest about the risk factors and it's coming from a place of evidence. I'm gonna put as much out there as I can to help kids weigh, you know, really think about that possible negative outcome side.
Definitely. Because while it may not have caused your breast cancer, it certainly doesn't help, right? It's not It's a poison. We're Anyway, I'm sorry. But I think that's the other I think that's that's going to become a much bigger part of the conversation the more we understand about the damage that this drug does just from the moment it enters our mouth to our throat and the costic effect it has on our throat.
like throat cancer only happens mainly only happens in people who smoke and drink because those two things together really make the throat vulnerable to the carcinogens in both tobacco and you know all that sort of stuff. So, you know, there are we're going to look I think the next 20 years is I think we're I hope that in terms of marketing to kids, in terms of marketing alcohol, in terms of understanding the real risks of the human body around alcohol, I think we're in a bit of a big tobacco moment with alcohol. We'll see. I'm hopeful. But I just want people to have the right information.
I don't want them to look at scandal and say that's how you deal with your bad day at work. I want them to have at least a balanced understanding of the risk to a woman's body that's maybe not due to that one massive glass of by the way the glasses I had for wine towards the end of my drinking I could fit most of a bottle of wine. I don't know if you've ever seen the Amy Schumer it's a satire on Friday Night Lights and the wine glass starts out like this big, but by the end she's got a wine glass that she's kind of got to hold with both arms because that's awesome. So because the wife in that the woman the male female lead in that show drank so much alcoh so much wine. I just want a balanced view and for kids especially, I want them to be able to make good decisions.
And if marketing is shouting at them really loud about all the possible benefits of having this brand of beer, you can look like this. You can be on the beach having a bonfire and have great looking girlfriend or boyfriend and all that stuff. I at least want to give them the other side of that same coin and explain how they're being manipulated by the media, explain how they're being manipulated by brands and what their brand loyalty is worth in dollars to that company because it's a lot. all of these things I just want them to have. You know, I've spent my entire adult life working with kids and I just want them to have the best information possible to make the best decisions they can so they can make it to adulthood with their brains and their mental health intact.
And I don't think as parents there's anything we want more than that. But this is the last thing I wanted to ask you. You know, so much of what first of all, you're obviously highly educated in this field. You've done all your research. You know, all these things.
You can talk about it backwards and forwards, which is awesome. For a lot of people who aren't educated in this, it might seem there, you know, there are people in the grind of their life, whatever their life is. If they're driving a truck or they're maybe a cleaning person and this isn't necessarily what they're thinking. they're they're getting through. They're thinking about dinner and how are we going to do this and we're paying the bills or it seems like it requires a lot of self-awareness and self introspection even to say hey I don't I hate the term helicopter mom which my son always calls me and I'm like I am in New Jersey and you're in Hawaii automatically that takes that away from me like I am definitely not a helicopter mom.
but it I just think it requires some self-awareness for us as adults. Do you have any recommendations about that? And I know this isn't necessarily your area of expertise, but how you step back to even get to the point where you're like, hey, of course I want the best for my kids, but I've got, you know, I don't know, whatever your challenge is, everybody's got challenges. whatever it is to step back enough to recognize to look at yourself whether it's your the alcoholism you're bringing to the table or if it's your sense of perfection and you know fixing them over fixing and helping them. Do you have any suggestions for how you even get to that first step to even you know pick your book up because it's such valuable information and it when I you know we first hopped on the call before we recorded I was like oh I got stressed because what do I what do I want I want the best for them and any possible way that I have not provided the best for them will as an anxious person just continue to fuel my anxiety.
So I'm curious how you what your thoughts are on that as a hard I think one of the hardest parts of you know my job is to teach people about this stuff and to be to get in the room sometimes I have to be a little tricky and talk about like oh this is a talk about learning in the brain gift to failure but I'm going to sneak a little bit of substance use prevention in there because some people are just really resistant to it either because they have their own issues like I'm not go into a substance use prevention talk when I was drinking like that would make me the shame and guilt would be too much. Lots of people say they don't want to come to my in-person events because they're especially in their community because they don't what if someone sees them and thinks oh she's worried about her son Sam like what about that or you know whatever. So there's lots of hurdles to getting in the door to learn about this stuff. So I try to make it as easy as possible. So the book is out there.
I read the audiobook version. If you want to listen to it in the car, listen to it with earbuds so no one can even and you can do other stuff while you listen to it. Then a friend of mine who I really respect, she I was lamenting how hard it is to get people to come and listen to talks about substance use prevention just like it's hard to get people to come to like how to have the sex talk or how to have the talk about porn or whatever. I started she's like you don't mind doing video. " So, I made almost 400 videos about every aspect of the addiction, inoculation, gift of failure, and now I'm doing a whole series on student and parent questions.
I don't care how you get the information. I just want you to have really good evidence-based researchbacked information. And so if you have an idea about another way to get it to people, toss it to me. I think the conversation is so important and yet so scary for so many people that to ease them into it. I mean lately my entire marketing strateg str strategy has been how do I get people to come to this who wouldn't normally come to this and especially with schools who feel like they have a duty to get this information to parents and yet no one shows up if it's a straight up substance use prevention talk.
I'm fully willing to wheel in my Trojan horse like at a gift of failure talk and explain that one of the most important like when I get to that competence section and explain that competence, self-efficacy, mastery, all that stuff which is so important to gift to failure is also really important to substance use prevention. So, I do a lot more virtual gigs so that people can register and be anonymous and just listen to it while they're cooking dinner, whatever. you know, we've had to get really creative about meeting people where they're at. And sometimes that means that, you know, I have to be a little sneaky to get in the door, but I'm willing to do that only because I feel like this is so important. And I go and speak at places like I speak at a I speak at Canyon Ranch, which is a hoidy toy spa.
and I've done that for the past oh, I don't almost 10 years. And I usually get a very small group of people who are there trying to get healthy. " And because there's no alcohol at Canyon Ranch, it gives people a really great opportunity to say, "Hm, I miss wine more than I thought I would. " And there are also daily meetings at 12step meetings at Canyon Ranch because the founder of Canyon Ranch was in recovery as well. So, you know, I'll I speak at schools, I speak at conferences, I speak at, you know, Canyon Ranch if they'll have me.
And I think that's just a part of trying to find a place that's less scary for people to start listening. Well, and I think you said it right too, like going in as the Trojan horse, especially for you know, when you said you wouldn't have listened to a talk on substance abuse when you were drinking because the guilt. I mean, and I think there's so much guilt and shame in so much anything you do as a as a mom, whether you from the very beginning. Did you breastfeed? Did you not breastfeed?
Do you have guilt about that? Like, there's so many things you can think of that you can take on as I didn't do this right. I didn't do right. Somehow I have failed. How can you work your way around it?
And I love your Trojan horse metaphor because that's that's it. Just sneak it in. And it and it is good. And I especially love, by the way, the last takeaway I want to say, and it's your words, was that if you well, it's your thoughts. if you f it's not the end.
Like it like just like what you say to your kids. If you've messed this up, we're going to go forward. This isn't the end. It's okay. There's more than one day to raise a human.
It doesn't happen that one time or the that one year even hopefully. So, yeah, thank you for that. I think it's good reassurance. Absolutely. It's it's the around gift to failure stuff or around addiction inoculation stuff.
You can say, "You know what, sweetie? I'm really sorry. " And that's going to stop today. So, let's pick homework. I'm no longer going to nag or remind about your homework.
That's you. And by the way, I've already let your teacher know that I'm backing off. This is something I used to have to do when my kids were in school. I don't use the portal as a parent. So, I would get in touch with the teachers and say, "By the way, I don't use the portal.
I'd rather just have actual communication with my kids. " And you know, your first line of communication should be with my kid. So, it's not a matter of like, I'm going to stop reminding you about homework and that's it. You're on your own. There's a little bit of a you know, you're it's in education we call it scaffolding.
here. It's sort of like training wheels. You know, you're you're you're pulling back, but you're also letting people know the best way to get in touch with you. And here's I'd prefer that you talk to my kid first, but here are some ways that we could step in. And there's anyway, it's all in gift of failure.
And in addiction inoculation, the same thing. You know what, sweetie? I didn't fully understand risk factors when it comes to substance use like drinking or using weed and I learned some stuff and so we're going to change some of our house rules around substance use and here's what they are and here's why the why is so important and you know I'm sorry I got it wrong before but now I'm going to move forward with the information I have and try to do my best. That was awesome. Thank you so much for being here.
Welcome. I'm so grateful for so many reasons. It was awesome. You are the best. Thank you.
So grateful to you, too. Thank you so much. I really appreciated this conversation with Jessica Lahey, especially the way she challenged so much of what we carry as moms. That pressure to get it right, to do more, to step in before anything goes wrong. Next week, we're stepping into another tough but really important conversation.
We're talking about prevention, power, and what it actually takes to address sexual assault before it happens with Jess Lad and Kristen Hatcher of the Fund to Prevent Sexual Assault. In the meantime, if this episode made you think of another mom in your life, send it to her. That's how these conversations keep going. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week on Roar.
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