How Much Risk Should Kids Take?

Dr. Camilo Ortiz, clinical psychologist and creator of Independence Therapy, joins hosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch to unpack why the instinct in modern parenting to protect kids from every risk may be backfiring. Dr. Ortiz explains how a child's Perception BoxTM starts forming almost as soon as they can speak, why parents today wildly overestimate danger despite living in the safest era on record, and how everyday tasks such as chopping vegetables, walking to the store alone can rebuild kids' confidence and resilience. Dr. Camilo Ortiz is board-certified in behavioral and cognitive therapy. He holds an MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and serves as a tenured associate psychology professor at Long Island University, bringing 20 years of clinical experience to his role. Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Chapters: 06:39 Independence With Guardrails 13:03 Freedom Versus Neglect 16:26 Getting Lost Builds Confidence 18:55 “When Then” Parenting 23:52 Why Parents Overprotect 28:27 Independence Therapy Basics 31:01 When Freedom Backfires 42:07 Independence Or Interference Join us for new episodes of Science of Perception Box every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Love Science of Perception Box? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend! Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So this is one of the biggest mistakes I think parents make is that they think the best way to teach behavior is the transfer of information through speaking as opposed to the natural consequences of kids making mistakes.

• 0:14Heather Berlin?

  Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a perception box? It's this invisible mental box that each one of us lives inside, built from the material of our beliefs, life experiences, and the meaning we've made out of those experiences. You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. This podcast explores how, although the walls of this box are always present, they can expand in moments of curiosity, awe, and wonder, or contract in response to fear, anxiety, and anger.

• 0:54Heather Berlin?

  In each episode, we invite experts to share how to create lasting shifts in our perception. I'd like to introduce our esteemed host, Heather Berlin, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Kristoff Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box. This week, our guest is Dr. Camilo Ortiz. We tend to think of childhood as a time when we're learning about the world, but it's also when our perception box is forming. Camilo's work shows us that these early beliefs, while they made sense at the time, they can become limiting as we grow older.

• 1:38Heather Berlin?

  They can hold us back from believing in ourselves, from connecting with others, and from stepping into new possibilities. Through his independence therapy, Camilo is creating a new way forward, both for adolescents and their caregivers.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Heather, you have two children, I believe. How old are they? And how do you deal with the question of their independence and their autonomy?

• 2:00Heather Berlin?

  So, yes, I have a 12-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son. And, you know, I try to give them enough independence that they can learn from their mistakes and not sort of overcontrolling them. But, you know, with the exception that they're still child brains that are not fully developed and they don't have the same kind of decision-making capacity as adults, and so there still needs to be some limits, right? So I think it's just sort of independence, but with guardrails. So to help us with this conversation, I'd like to welcome Dr. Ortiz to the show. Thank you for being here.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:36Heather Berlin?

  So how early in a child's life does their perception box start to form?

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Well, in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is the type of therapy that I practice, we think about what's called the cognitive triad. And that's how people think about themselves, think about other people, and think about the future. And from a very early age, kids start to make assumptions about those things, really soon after they can speak.

• 3:04Heather Berlin?

  So you think that it's that early? What about like influences even before they can speak? You know, safety behaviors of parents? And does that impact how the child sees the world?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Probably a little bit, but the last message I want to give parents is to be overly stressed about every interaction they have with their little kids. But there are plenty of opportunities even with toddlers to help them learn that they are capable. And I sometimes tell the story of being at a party and I saw this little girl trying to take her sweater off, and she was kind of stuck in the neck of it. And out of nowhere, this dad comes running across the room to do it. No one would think anything of other than a child psychologist and help her take her sweater off. And from my perspective, that's a lost opportunity for a child to learn that they can tolerate struggle a little bit and they can problem solve.

• 4:00Heather Berlin?

  So do you think that a parent's perception box kind of acts as a blueprint for their child?

• 4:08Speaker 00

  It can, and I think there's a couple of ways that that happens. And so one is by what parents model for children, what they permit children to do, and how they talk about risk. And so there's lots of opportunities there, even with little kids, to start modeling the types of behaviors that might be healthy for them.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Is it likely, or is it possible or even likely, that the perception box of parents has changed over the last 50 years, that they perceive the world to be a much more dangerous place for their children? And then they transmit this implicitly to their child, oh my God, I constantly have to watch out for danger, for being kidnapped, or all the other dangers.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  I think it's more than possible. I think it's likely. And that's interesting because objectively, we live in the safest time ever. But when you ask parents about risk, they tend to far overestimate the risk. So there was a recent study that came out, a survey of parents, and it asked them, if two 10-year-old boys are playing by themselves in the park, what is the likelihood that one of them will get kidnapped? And the majority of parents said that it was likely that one of the two boys would get kidnapped.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  It was likely?

• 5:19Speaker 00

  It was likely.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  I remember when my kids were trick-or-treating, this was in the mid-'90s, there was this rumor, there was a rumor that someone in America had laced an apple with cyanide.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Or with razor blades.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Both.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  And over the next three years, there was this dramatic change in kids. And I don't know whether they even still do this trick-or-treating unsupervised today. Probably not.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Well, they do, but there's a growing trend of parents putting their cars in a circle and opening all their trunks, and the kids just walk around getting candy from each car. And so for me, that's a tragedy because Halloween is the single best day for independence. There's tons of people out. Everybody's looking for each other and helping each other, and we've sort of reduced it to almost a caricature, I think.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Because of this one, I don't know whether it was ever substantiated, and even if it was substantiated, that's one incident over 330 million people.

• 6:18Heather Berlin?

  Well, this is an extreme. You know, I mean, having young kids now, like I let my kids go out trick-or-treating. I, you know, they go out and play and ride their bikes, like I did in the '80s. I mean, I was a latchkey kid. And I think having independence is really important because when you're overly protective, as you've written a lot about, you know, it causes the children to perceive the world as a dangerous place, and then they can get overly anxious. But one of my question is sort of where do you draw the line, right? Because yes, leaving them alone to play is one thing, and that can be really healthy. But like anything else, you know, when it becomes too much, because they don't have adult brains, they can't make their own, the same kinds of rational decisions as an adult with a fully formed prefrontal cortex can, when is it too dangerous? You know, where do you put the boundary in?

• 7:03Speaker 00

  So when I look at contemporary parenting behavior, we are so far from what we would consider reckless that I'm not so concerned about it. Because really, we're talking about two risks. There's obviously a risk if you allow much more independence. Kids are more likely to get hurt. There's no question about that. What I talk to parents about when we introduce independence therapy to them is that there's this other side, there's this other risk. And so I pose the question to them, what if we didn't allow any more independence until they went off to school, to college? Might there be a risk of that? And so now we're weighing two kinds of risks against each other. And I think that's a more reasonable way to approach this conversation.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  But to be more specific and answer your question, I don't mind kids getting hurt, actually, and it's in some ways good for them. But what we want to avoid is irreparable harm. And so, for example, kids who have ADHD have a well-documented, much higher rate of injury. It's 50% higher than kids who don't have.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  You mean physically injured?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Physical injury, right. And so when we design independence activities for kids who have ADHD, we avoid things like riding your bike on an unprotected street, which we might allow a kid without ADHD to do. But if they're not paying attention, there's a, could be a really serious risk of injury or death. And so that's the beauty of independence activities is there are millions of them. And there are so many that don't involve any risk of serious injury.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Can you give us some examples of what you mean?

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Chopping vegetables, baking cookies, going to a grocery store with a list of five to 10 things, with your parent in the grocery store or right outside.

• 8:48Heather Berlin?

  So there's that on the one extreme, but then there's this other extreme where it can actually be dangerous. And I think the difficulty for parents right now is finding what is that middle ground where you give them enough freedom.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Is that really true, or are parenting in general far too much involved in the, I think you've written about this, right? That parents are in some sense are far too involved in the lives of their kids, and it may not necessarily be to the benefit of their kids.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  That's right. So this is what I said before, that I think for most families, we're nowhere near being on the point where we're allowing too much independence. You know, when we look at what is actually predictive of positive outcomes in kids, these sorts of specific behaviors have such a small correlation with overall outcomes that what I tell most parents is if you're feeding your kids and you're giving them unconditional love, which does not mean being around them all the time, and you are clothing them, you're 90% of the way there. And the last 10%, if you're lucky, that will sort of be a wash. And for some kids, we're seeing that that extra effort is actually hurting them.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  To me, all my time spent driving my kids to piano and ballet and baseball and all of that wasn't really.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Probably didn't do that much. I'm sorry to say.

• 10:02Heather Berlin?

  But you also want to nurture their interests. I mean, the amount of after-school activities that parents have their kids in right now. I mean, I often also tell parents of kids, like, they're over-scheduled. Like, but at the same time, again, with the balance, you know, my daughter loves gymnastics now, and she never would have gotten that love if I didn't have her try everything, and then she found something she really is passionate about, and now I help her nurture it, and I have to drive her back. I don't, I'm not doing this because I want to be with her all the time. Like, I have to drive her to these practices. There's studies, actually, like, the time that parents spend with kids since the 1960s has doubled.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:37Heather Berlin?

  The amount of time we actually spend with our kids. So I think this prescription-

• 10:41Speaker 02

  And parents feel less adequate than ever, right?

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:44Heather Berlin?

  It's never enough.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  That's the tragedy of it. Parents feel worse than ever, but objectively, they are putting forth more effort than they ever have, and money as well.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  In fact, isn't the statistic that, that working mothers today spend more time with their children than stay-home moms 40 years ago, yet feel far worse about spending enough quality time with their children?

• 11:07Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 11:08Heather Berlin?

  You know what makes me feel better as a working mom? This study that came out, and I can't, I don't remember who did it, but it was that daughters of working mothers actually have, tend to have better outcomes, like, for a bunch of variables later in life than, so that made me feel really good. That's a valid study, correct?

• 11:29Speaker 00

  And they're, they're a good middle.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 11:32Heather Berlin?

  It is, it is, it is.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yes, it is, it is, definitely.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  I'll just say, with like, your example of driving your daughter to gymnastics, I certainly did that, my daughter was a gymnast. A nice middle ground is you don't have to stay for two hours each time.

• 11:45Heather Berlin?

  Wait, can I give you an anecdote? Because this happened this weekend. So my daughter had a gymnastics meet this weekend, it was five hours, I did stay for that, but she said to me, "Mom, all the other moms on the team, they're gymnastics moms, and you're not." And I said, "What does that mean to be a gymnastics mom?" She said, "They come and they stay for the practices," which are two hours, three days a week, okay? And they stay for the practices, and she goes, "But don't worry, Mom, they've taken me in, and so now, like, they'll do my hair for me and whatever." And I was like, "You know what? That's great, I'm never gonna be a gymnastics mom, I'm here for your meet, I take you to your practices, and that's enough." And, you know, I don't feel guilty, because there's other things that I'm showing her, you know, by, by doing and being, you know, whatever, a career woman, so-

• 12:25Speaker 00

  It's a great example. I would argue she is better off, and you now have more time.

• 12:30Heather Berlin?

  There we go. See, I think this is, we can end it here.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  So it's a win-win, well, it's what you articulated in New York Times article, right? So tell us more, it's a win-win for both sides, right?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. This is not helping parents, and it certainly is not helping kids, and this is, again, the tragedy of it. If parents can in smart ways do less, everybody benefits. It's one of the rare Goldilocks scenarios in psychology, where it's actually doing less gets you better outcomes. I think that's very clear.

• 12:57Heather Berlin?

  So I think, you know, we're talking a lot about a certain segment of society that is, is sort of, again, overdoing it, but I still want to bring it back to this idea of where is the line between freedom and letting kids be kids, and safety, and also neglect? Like, there are some people that are on the other side of the spectrum, where it can border on being neglectful. What age is it okay to leave a kid alone? At what point should you intervene? Like, when they're actually doing something that's unsafe?

• 13:24Speaker 00

  When we do independence therapy, parents always have veto power on every idea that kids come up with. And we've had kids come up with some pretty interesting ones. So we had a boy who was doing really well with his independence activities, and wanted to up the ante a little bit, and so he wanted to take an Amtrak by himself, and he started-

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Told.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  He was 12, and he started investigating state laws to see how many states away from New York he could get by himself. And his mom said, "There's no way you're doing that." And so, of course, we supported her, but I loved the initiative. So as a society, we really have taken away risky play from kids, and it is probably the most powerful anti-phobic activity that exists. And so it's not a surprise that kids are more anxious, because the number-one thing that they are shaped by natural selection to do, which is to practice risk, we don't allow them to do that anymore.

• 14:19Heather Berlin?

  Again, what about the other end of the spectrum? You're allowing too much. Let's say you have a kid with ADHD, and you're letting him, you know, play with matches, or whatever, you know?

• 14:28Speaker 00

  So this is the, the principle of irreparable harm, so we don't want to allow things where if a mistake is made, can lead to irreparable harm. As I mentioned before, I think there, we have a list of 200 independence activities, 190 of them. If you do them the worst you possibly can, don't lead to any irreparable harm.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Having my kid, my 10-year-old kid take the subway in New York City-

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  -to cite a famous example.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  What do you think about that today, if that would happen?

• 14:58Speaker 00

  So, so Lenore Skanezy is, who's the president of Let Grow, she allowed her son Izzy to take the subway by himself, and, and a bus, actually.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  This was roughly 20 years ago, right?

• 15:09Speaker 00

  About 15, so he was nine years old, and that started sort of this movement in some ways. So I'm, I'm a big fan of, of kids taking the subway. It hits on all of the anti-phobic properties, so there's uncertainty, you don't know exactly where to go if you haven't been there, you don't know when the train is coming, there's discomfort, and so those two things, intolerance of uncertainty and intolerance of discomfort, are two of the most persistently shown vehicles for child anxiety. Kids don't have practice with these two things. There is a little bit of risk, although if you look at the data, the chance of something going wrong in the subway is unbelievably low.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  So, again, these things will involve some risk, but again, it is this sort of equation of, we increase risk a little bit in the short term, does that actually decrease risk in the long term? And I would argue that it does.

• 16:04Heather Berlin?

  But how many safety measures would you put in? Let's just say, okay, you have a nine-year-old kid, you're letting them out in New York City on their own, on the subway, what if they get lost? Things like an Apple Watch, or a tracker, you know? How do they find their way back if there is a mishap?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  You could ask an adult.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Well, that's literally what happened in Lenore's case, is Izzy didn't know where to go, and he asked an adult, and the adult pointed him the way to go. So this might be kind of a, a interesting answer, but I love it when kids get lost, because that is when you get the, the biggest sort of change in their perception box. So, for example, they might learn that most people are fine to approach and ask for help, they might learn that they don't need to immediately call their parents, and they can figure it out, and those are two very powerful messages for kids to learn. And the other thing is, we're finding that when that happens, we sometimes see beneficial effects on unrelated fears.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  So we had a little girl who took the bus to school and missed her stop, and she had never slept in her own bed by herself, she was nine years old, and she, despite that, wanted to take the bus in Brooklyn to school by herself. So she missed her stop, and figured out how to get to school, it was three more blocks that she had to walk, and that night, without telling anybody, she slept in her own bed. And when I asked her during our next session, "Why did you sleep in your own bed? I thought you were scared." She said, "I just took a bus to school by myself, I don't think I need to sleep with my parents."

• 17:32Speaker 02

  So it's a mechanism that they develop, an inner, an inner locus of control? They become, they have the feeling that I can be the agent of my own life?

• 17:41Speaker 00

  We don't know exactly, but that is one of the theories, that they learn very important things about themselves, about other people, and about the world, which then translates into anxieties that they have, even without directly confronting those anxieties.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  You talk about the four Ds in this context, what are those?

• 17:58Speaker 00

  So discomfort, distress, disappointment, and danger. One way to think about what is development is mastering how to handle those four things.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Distress, danger, discomfort?

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Discomfort, and disappointment. And modern parenting, for some reason, and I really can't figure out why, there's probably lots of reasons, has, has become equated with protecting your kids from the four Ds. And again, this is a ton of work for parents, and it ends up, I think, making kids weaker. So this is another example, where doing less, you would get better outcomes, I think.

• 18:34Heather Berlin?

  What about, you know, things like getting them to do the things they're supposed to do? Like, do your homework? Do the, you know, because, again, you're giving a kid without a fully formed prefrontal cortex freedom and independence, that's great, but they might not make the kinds of decisions that are going to be the best for them. And like, where does parents, sort of advising parental structure, come in?

• 18:55Speaker 00

  So, when I talk to parents who I'm, I'm working with, I always have them do a thought experiment. And it doesn't mean that this is what I'm suggesting, but I always say, what do you think would happen if you did nothing about X? And often, that is quite instructive, because either they'll say, um, the teacher will correct it and give them a low mark, and then I'll say, does your kid even care about that? And some parents will say, yes, and so that becomes self-corrective. But there's, there's, there's fascinating tool that we use called the when-then command, which I think-

• 19:29Speaker 02

  The what command?

• 19:30Speaker 00

  The when-then command. And it's, it's my favorite parenting technique, and it gets us out of saying things to kids 20 times. This is probably the biggest complaint parents have of their kids, is I have to tell him 20 times to brush his teeth. And we have this power that we're not using. So, kids need us more than ever, actually. This is one of the side effects of having less independence. So, parents, in a way, have more power. And so, when we need kids to do something, we just link it with something they want. So, for example, Dad, can you drive me to the mall? Is, is, this is the best situation where a child asks you for something. Now, you have all the leverage. Sure, when, uh, when I can see the floor of your bedroom, then I will drive you to

• 20:15Speaker 00

  the mall. Now, only three things can happen if you make a when-then command. The kid goes, fine, because they really want to go to the mall, they clean up their room, you don't have to repeat yourself another time. Or they say, you know what, I don't feel like going to the mall. That's okay, now you have time, you, you were gonna drive them, you can go do something on your own. Number three, they escalate, they get very upset. As long as you don't give in, that escalation will tend to be temporary. We call it an extinction burst.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Why does everyone engage in this behavior? I remember this from my kids, and I see it in my grandchildren.

• 20:49Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, so as a-

• 20:50Speaker 02

  You don't do this?

• 20:51Heather Berlin?

  Well, no, as a psychologist, I do try to, you know, it's all about like rewards and, you know, incentives and, right? So, I'll give you an example. My son, who has ADHD and is defiant, so he's actually particularly difficult. And so, although I love him very much, he's wonderful, um, but he won't like get dressed in the morning, you know? And I'm just, we're late, we gotta go to school, and I could tell him five, 10 times to get dressed, it's not gonna work. He just won't follow that instruction. But then, I have to link it to something. Well, if you wanna have iPad time later, the only way you're gonna get it is if you're tra- it's up to you.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  So, the, the only caveat to that is sometimes parents will introduce a reward once a child has escalated their behavior. And if you do that, you are training them to escalate. So, as long as you are doing that beforehand, it is a standard thing.

• 21:39Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  iPad is, if you're ready at-

• 21:41Heather Berlin?

  Well, actually, the main, what it is, is if you're late to school, you don't get your iPad later. So, he knows that-

• 21:46Speaker 00

  It's a standing rule.

• 21:47Heather Berlin?

  It's a standing rule.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  So, your point is, it's not adaptive. If I don't link the reward to what I want them to do, then they start screaming, and then you say, oh, okay, I'll give you, I'll reward you with something.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  You have just exquisitely trained them to scream even more next time.

• 22:00Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Because they have learned that if I scream, I get what I want.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  That's right, that's right. So, you asked like, why do parents fall into these traps? And, and there are lots of reasons, but the, the first one is just in the moment, if you have a screaming child, you have this beautiful way to get out of this bind, which is to say, uh, all right, I'll give you a cookie if you stop.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  In the short term.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  In the short term. It works amazing, but in the long run, you are really getting yourself into trouble. And the human brain is often driven by getting out of discomfort, you know, we've talked about that. And a screaming child has also been shaped by evolution to be as uncomfortable as possible to a parent. And unfortunately, we have these easy ways of getting rid of that behavior, it just causes problems.

• 22:44Heather Berlin?

  That's the thing, is once they escalate, like, you know, you talked about this extinction burst, but they escalate, and if you give into that, then you're rewarding the escalation.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 22:52Heather Berlin?

  And so, you can, like, it's just like with sleep training, I remember. Once they start crying, and then they cry more and more and more, and then you eventually go in, after a half hour, they've learned, oh, I just have to keep crying, and you've just reinforced the, the crying. So, you really have to stay strong as a parent, which again, brings it back to parents.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  We are really in a bind here, because when we talk to parents about independence activities, they will often say, sure, I can send my kid to the park, but he's gonna be the only one there. Or, uh, sure, I can let him run around in the playground and maybe bump his head, but the other parents are gonna look at me like I'm doing something wrong. So, from my perspective, this is the single biggest thing that we have to figure out a solution to, is this collective action problem. We somehow have to make independence cool, and it's possible that if we frame it as actually making your kids stronger and more anti-fragile, that that may be meaningful to some parents, because they are stuck in the short-term benefit of over-parenting, and that's very hard to break out of.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  What are the large-scale social forces that have caused us to reassess the risk of childhood, to try to minimize them to an absolute lowest level than ever before, that may cause these rise in anxiety?

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Well, I think the main one is we have fewer children, and so, from, you know, sort of a demographic perspective, we wanna really make sure every one of them survives, and so that means, in the moment, making sure they never get hurt. And I think we can't ignore the role of the media here, and the way that our brains work is to remember the most extreme cases. There, there's no newspaper stories about planes landing safely. And so, uh, I feel for parents, they are dealing with very powerful forces that are pushing them to over-parent. And again, as we talked about, even in the short one, short run, when they over-parent, that is often reinforcing to them, and it is hard to let go. The good news is that we have found that when kids do independence activities, the

• 24:50Speaker 00

  first two or three are really difficult for parents. And they do all kinds of stuff, including tracking them, and we can talk more about whether that's a good idea. But once they see about two or three successes, they very quickly let go, and we see this virtuous cycle, where they trust their kids more, and their kids become more capable. And then we, we-

• 25:11Speaker 02

  And the kids learn to trust themselves.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Yes, they trust themselves, and then, we say that independence therapy is loudly a treatment for child anxiety and softly a treatment for parent anxiety.

• 25:21Heather Berlin?

  But there is a mismatch between, like, I felt it again as a mom, where like, so I remember my daughter, who's very independent, and, you know, but also, I think there are different kinds of kids. Like, some kids can really thrive in independence, and others, not so much. But she created sort of like a little, like, kind of like a lemonade stand, but like, you know, those cigarette girls that used to carry the things in the, like, whatever? So, she wanted to go door-to-door and sell her, like, lemonade and snacks and stuff. So, she had a friend over, I think they were like, maybe 10, and I let her go door-to-door in my neighborhood to do this with her friend. And the mom afterward found out-

• 25:56Speaker 00

  She said, are you crazy?

• 25:57Heather Berlin?

  Yes, she never let the kid play with her again.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Because she felt this was a dangerous thing.

• 26:02Heather Berlin?

  It was dangerous, yeah, it was dangerous, because for, there was a short period of time when they were around the block, where I didn't know exactly where they were, you know, because they were growing in the neighborhood.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  It's a societal problem.

• 26:11Heather Berlin?

  And it was, it was the pressure on me, and so this girl never got to play with that friend again. But I wanna ask you also the difference between emotional safety and physical safety.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:20Heather Berlin?

  You know, how much should we allow for, um, emotional, you know, kind of damage, let's say, versus physical harm?

• 26:30Speaker 00

  So, I just wanna say one thing about your, your, um, example, which is, there is, again, this beautiful middle ground, which is when kids do independence activities together, especially if they are of mixed age, we see unique benefits for the older kids, uh, in terms of, um, caring about someone else who's younger, and they have to look out for that other person. And then for the younger child, of seeing a model of how to act. And so, the, the chance of kidnapping, for example, when there are multiple children together, is basically zero. We see that those kids tend to do quite well, because they are in charge of babysitting, even babies, when they're eight or nine years old.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  And they get a ton of experience with looking out for the safety of another human being, which gets you out of that egocentric, uh, sort of eight-to-12-year-old range, particularly among boys, where they don't seem to care about anybody else but themselves.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  But no one has done a formal study linking anxiety to, uh, sibling, number of siblings?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  I would guess that they have. I haven't seen that, but you got me thinking. That's the first thing we're gonna do after our talk.

• 27:41Heather Berlin?

  But I, I think it's, what, you know, the point that you made before is like, discomfort is really important, and it's okay, especially, you know- Like you said, once you get to college and to be able to hear other people's perspectives and not be sheltered and have, you know, trigger warnings and safe spaces and all of that, right? We need to be able to have a dialogue and that requires some level of discomfort, discomfort and distress tolerance, right?

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:03Heather Berlin?

  But again, what about this idea of some children really want boundaries, they really want structure, they, they want some of that attention from their parents. And so can you describe independence therapy and also when is it also healthy to spend time with your kids and give them some attention and set some boundaries, which they often want and need and thrive on?

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Yes. All right. So independence therapy is a six session treatment. It's purposely made to be simple and easy for practically any clinician to use. Our manual is free on Let Grow's website. In the first session, it's only parents and we just talk to them about all the things we're talking about now. What are the risks of allowing independence? What gets in the way in terms of laws and other parents?

• 28:51Heather Berlin?

  But it seems that this therapy is meant for a specific kind of subpopulation, which is the anxious kids and the overprotective parents. Can you apply this therapy to things like ADHD or an oppositional defiant kid, which is a different kind of, you know, treatment? Would it be the same treatment? Do you modify the treatment in any way?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  So at this point, I would say the answer is no, we cannot transfer it to those. We don't have enough data to know. There are theories to suggest that allowing independence could be helpful to kids who are depressed, for example, or have poor social skills. We just don't know the answer. Right now, we're focused on anxious kids.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  And how old are they?

• 29:31Speaker 00

  So eight to 13 is where we have tested this so far, although it seems like we had enough information of people trying it with younger kids and older kids, that it probably is going to be helpful for those ages as well.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  And so in each lesson, so you, you said in the second lesson, you ask the kids what they want to do and then what?

• 29:49Speaker 00

  So we pull out a calendar and then we bring the parent back in and we brainstorm a whole bunch of independence activities.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Very specific activities.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yes. And we literally write them into each day. They need to do one a day. So this is a pretty big dose of independence for most kids. So then they come back for the third session.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Cooking, going to the supermarket.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Anything at all that a kid, it has to be fun. And interestingly, for many kids, doing chores is fun. This is another Goldilocks scenario of kids doing chores and them loving it and parents having less work to do. But it's really like, imagine, think about your own childhood and how you would spend the day. It's all that stuff.

• 30:29Heather Berlin?

  How does it, this therapy expand the child's perception box?

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Well, I think in a lot of ways. So it gives them direct experience with things that are challenging. And so that teaches them about their own capabilities. It teaches them about how to tolerate risk, how to tolerate uncertainty. It teaches them about other people. Generally, people are quite helpful. And if you get lost, most people are very happy to help you. And so it teaches them that the world is generally a safer place than they might have thought.

• 31:01Heather Berlin?

  So you have these kids on one end who are very anxious and, and need to be encouraged to go out and do independent things. But what about the kids on the other end of the spectrum? Who are overly independent and need to be reined in a little bit? How would you advise parents?

• 31:15Speaker 00

  I guess I would want to dig into the term overly independent more because I can see given today's parenting sort of culture, that many normative healthy activities might be viewed as overly independent. But to speak to what you were saying, there are certainly kids where allowing more independence is not a good idea. And, and as we mentioned, these are kids who are accident prone, who, who do need independence, but again, not in a way where a bad decision is really irreparable.

• 31:47Heather Berlin?

  ADHD kid who's not on their medication.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:50Heather Berlin?

  Right? You wouldn't want to give them more and more freedom, which they can actually get hurt potentially.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  Well, I would want to give them some kinds of more freedom. So I would have them whittle with a knife, for example. They might cut themselves. They're probably not going to cut a finger off. But I again, wouldn't have them ride a bike in an unprotected street to a park where if they're not looking and they veer into the lane, they can get hit by a car.

• 32:11Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  And I think for kids who have ADHD, it might even be more important for them to be out in the world because kids with ADHD tend to have poor social skills. And they tend to be intrusive sometimes in how they speak to other people. And the best way to change that is immediate feedback from the environment. So they go to the store, they order some salami, they cut someone in line and they don't realize it. And then the person says, no, actually I was first. That's really good for kids to, to have that immediate experience. You can't teach a child with words, all of the social rules that exist. They have to make mistakes. So I would argue that we just need to change the kinds of independence activities,

• 32:56Speaker 00

  not that we wouldn't do them for most kids.

• 32:59Heather Berlin?

  Right. Yeah, I think a lot of the work has to do in changing the parents' perception box as well. And that actually allowing your child to have some level of maybe emotional discomfort or whatnot is going to help them grow and be more resilient. But as a kid, again, of the eighties, I mean, I came home, no one was home, eight years old, latchkey, make your own food.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  And here you are, very successful.

• 33:22Heather Berlin?

  But I'll tell you this though, I will tell you this, I wish that my parents were around a little bit more. I miss that. I wish I had a parent who was there like, hey, do you want to do this thing together? Or whatever. So.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's different from a helicopter parent who's there all the time.

• 33:37Heather Berlin?

  I keep saying that there's two sides of the coin though. And I think that there is a level of kind of, I don't want to say neglect, but like kids also want some intervention from their parents. They want to know their parents care. I wish there was more rules and structure and they were around a little bit more. So I know that we're sort of trying to overcorrect for these parents who have become overly, you know, helicopterish, but there's still that other side of it where you want some intervention from your parents.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 34:06Heather Berlin?

  Right? You want them to just not be like, oh, go do whatever you want and I'm, you know.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  All right. But there are two against that. I hear you. Against that, I said two statistics. One is the ever increasing rate of anxiety in, in, it's been very well tracked.

• 34:19Heather Berlin?

  Subsection of society, it's not everyone.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  If you look at, no, not everyone, but if you look at, let's say freshman and sophomore college students, where it's been well documented, each year over the last 30 years, the fraction of kids that declare themselves to be anxious, concerned is now 40% or something. Right? And B, objectively, we are safer and safer. Longevity has just hit another peak in this country. Right? So objectively, we, you know, people are safer than ever. And so there's some disconnect there.

• 34:50Heather Berlin?

  I think we need to, the pendulum has swung too far in this direction. I agree. I mean, and I, you know, I did a study once with freshmen in, in college and on their, and did a survey of all the mental health issues. And it was like in the Ivy League schools, it was something like 50% of them came in already on medication for anxiety or depression. Five zero. This was the Ivy League schools. But this is, you know, we're talking upper middle class, like a certain subsection of, you know, society that is, is overprotective and, you know, and, and contributing to this over anxiety problem. I just think that the spend, we want to push it back a little bit in the other direction, but not too far where you get the other extreme. And I think that's just an important thing, that it should be a balance and it's not just

• 35:36Heather Berlin?

  do whatever you want and everything is fine, that there has to be a little bit of constraint. But we've gone too far. I agree.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  I'm just not too worried that we're anywhere near going too far in the other direction.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  50% of kids come in with medic.

• 35:49Heather Berlin?

  Back in, oh God, I mean, like probably like 20, 2006 or seven, it was early. Yes. And, and suicide rates and things, you know, it's, it's not a good situation. And I do think there is a societal problem, but it's also, you have to take each case as an individual case. I think there's no blanket statement that we can make.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 36:08Heather Berlin?

  And parents, you know, shouldn't feel guilty. I mean, parents are made to feel guilty all the time. You're doing too much, you're not doing enough, you're working too much, you're not with the kids. You're never feeling, you know, so I think we need to give parents a break and say, I think one of the most interesting kind of statistics or research was, you know, Stephen Pinker's book where it's like, they did genetic studies and they found that, you know, the biggest influence on the, what you do as a parent doesn't make that much of a difference, unless it's extreme neglect or abuse, right? But outside of that, the main thing is genetics and their friends and their peers, right? So I would often say, as a parent, the best thing you can do is make sure your kids are like in good company.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Well, we now have, I believe the latest number is 12 states that have so-called reasonable child independence laws and Connecticut was the most recent one, where we are decriminalizing well-meaning, reasonable parent decisions. So there's 38 more states to go on that.

• 37:11Heather Berlin?

  So if your kid is, say, nine years old, you can let them be alone and play.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:17Heather Berlin?

  Outside or go run errands while they're playing and that's not against the law.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Not against the law. That's not going to stop someone, a well-meaning stranger for, from calling the police. And so it doesn't stop these awful situations. But at least we know that we have the law on our side in, in 12 different states. And by the way, just as a side note, in all the time we've ever done independence activities, the only adults that have ever sort of caused problems, there has not been a single nefarious adult. They have always been well-meaning adults who say to the kids, where are your parents? And so we equip children with these little passes that, that they can flash to any adult and it says, I am allowed to be here. Here is my, my parents' name and phone number.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  It's, it's people like you that are keeping people like me safe. I'm allowed to talk to strangers. I'm talking to you. It literally says that right on the card. And our kids are almost wanting an adult to step in so they can flash their official looking badge at them.

• 38:19Heather Berlin?

  I love that.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  That's sweet.

• 38:27Heather Berlin?

  So at the end of every episode, we ask one question to open our own perception box. And I think Christoph chose this week's question. I don't know what it is. He's going to ask us both. So what's the question you have?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Is there ever something that you have not forgiven yourself for? And if so, why not? What are you afraid of? It's a challenging one.

• 38:53Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, not forgiving yourself for.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  So in cognitive behavioral therapy, we think of types of distorted thinking. And one of the most common types is to sum up a person as either their very best moment or their very worst moment. And that is just not accurate. People are way too complex. And so maybe this is a cop out, but I have really taken that to heart. And when I screw up, I know it doesn't sum me up as it doesn't my very best moment. So I tend to not think of myself as the summary of one particular behavior.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  OK, that's a perfectly valid answer.

• 39:29Heather Berlin?

  Damn, you got out of that real good. I had an instance very long ago, and I was very young and not fully formed yet, where I cheated on a partner. That was very bad, and I really had a hard time forgiving myself for that. But he forgave me, so years later. And that was very cathartic. And then in him forgiving me, I kind of was sort of able to forgive myself. I feel like I was almost like a different person at that time, you know, because I think you grow and evolve and change. That took me a very long time to forgive myself for that.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  By the way, this is not uncommon for people to not be able to forgive themselves despite the world forgiving them. We are the harshest critics of ourselves.

• 40:21Heather Berlin?

  Agreed.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Particularly if you grew up in certain types of setting. I grew up Catholic, where guilt is a big thing. And, well, yeah, it's not even if sort of even intellectually, you know, yeah, I should, after, in my case, 12 years or 15 years, should forgive myself. It's not as easy as just making this intellectual commitment because it's so deeply part of your psyche that I still feel shitty about it. And, you know, with time, you know, it goes. And then it comes in waves, you know, and with time, sort of the decimates. But I cannot take my perception box and flip it where I say, OK, I forgive myself.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Can I just add that I don't think it would be good if you felt no guilt? Because it's a signal of how to act going forward, right?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Totally. But sort of the function of guilt loses its power if it's still there many years afterwards. Because, you know, you've learned your lesson.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  But then you can't just turn it off like that and reassess your life and say, yeah, that was just what I did at the time. That's fine.

• 41:21Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. It's a very good social emotion to have at some level. But then I think we overdo it with the, sometimes it's religious belief or our own internal, like whatever you want to call it, superego, or, you know, that's telling you, you're wrong. You did a bad thing, and you can't let it go.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  It's the prefrontal cortex that I blame.

• 41:38Heather Berlin?

  Yes, it is. It is indeed.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  As Albert Ellis, a famous psychologist, used to say, just because you act like a shit doesn't mean you're a shit.

• 41:46Heather Berlin?

  Oh, that's very profound. It's like a cigar just isn't always, sometimes a cigar just isn't.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  I think John Brewer has this beautiful saying. So guilt is what is it? Your inability to give up, to give up the hope for a better past. I cannot give up the hope that I wish I would have been a better person at that time.

• 42:03Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, but you probably would have done something else wrong anyway. You can't really get out of it. But now we have time for a little game. So I'm going to share a little real life parenting scenarios with you. And I want you to tell us if it's independence or interference.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  OK.

• 42:20Heather Berlin?

  OK? Or maybe it's a little both. I don't know. So the first one is letting your eight-year-old walk to school every morning.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Independence. Love it.

• 42:30Heather Berlin?

  OK. What if it's subzero? It's freezing outside.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  Are they wearing a coat?

• 42:35Heather Berlin?

  They are not wearing a coat.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  Would they reasonably get frostbite on the way to school?

• 42:40Heather Berlin?

  Yes, they would.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Then they must wear a coat. I think they'll be fine.

• 42:44Heather Berlin?

  OK.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 42:45Heather Berlin?

  Texting your teenager to remind them to eat lunch.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  No way.

• 42:50Heather Berlin?

  No way.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  People do this?

• 42:52Heather Berlin?

  I don't know. Not me.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  That is the lowest hanging fruit of parental intervention.

• 42:56Heather Berlin?

  That's an easy one. Even I could say, no, don't.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, they'll be hungry.

• 42:58Heather Berlin?

  Let them start. I'm with you on that one. Letting your 12-year-old girl go to the mall by herself.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Like you're dropping her off and then she?

• 43:07Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, she's in the mall.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Amazing. Great.

• 43:09Heather Berlin?

  Awesome. She loves it.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:10Heather Berlin?

  OK. Stepping in when your child argues with a friend. Or maybe, I'm going to go even further to say that there's some mean girls or mean boys that are either bullying or being mean. What do you do?

• 43:23Speaker 00

  So I would not step in in the moment. But afterward, I would have a conversation with them about what they're thinking, what their approach is. We might even role play a few different things. So this is a good example of later on, where you're not interfering with the discomfort. It's great for parents to talk to their kids about difficulties they're having.

• 43:44Heather Berlin?

  What about siblings fighting, physically fighting, getting into it? Do you intervene?

• 43:48Speaker 00

  This is something I work with quite a bit, and it also draws on evolution and our understanding of mammals. Kids need to fight with each other. Siblings need to. They learn, it's a baked in, right in your home practice every day at what's too far? What can I get away with? If we look at every mammal, siblings fight all the time. And this is so hard for parents because that scream that they hear from another room is so hard to ignore. And so generally, the rule is if one child is victimizing the other child because they are different in size or in age, then we do suggest stepping in. But for the typical back and forth, he said, I'm stupid, that kind of stuff, no. No intervention.

• 44:33Heather Berlin?

  So unless there's going to be some like real physical, serious harm or something like?

• 44:37Speaker 00

  But some physical, physicality is fine. But if there's really a distinct difference in their physical power, then you do want to step in.

• 44:45Heather Berlin?

  OK. Sitting next to your child while they do their homework.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  I hate it. So.

• 44:50Heather Berlin?

  I'm all about that, too. Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  I really just, as a pretty general rule, I say to parents, this is why you pay property taxes, is so teachers can correct homework. It is not for you to do it. And it always leads to fighting. It's a reliably terrible idea.

• 45:09Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I say it to my kids. If you're going to nod your homework and fail, like, that's up to you. They learn pretty quick.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I'll give you one caveat. I sometimes say to some parents whose kids actually have trouble or have ADHD, for every problem you answer on your own, even if it's wrong, I will help you with one. And then over time, we increase that ratio so that you are less and less helping them. Because what tends to happen is this sort of feigned incompetence. Oh, I don't know. You do it. And so many parents tell me that they end up then doing almost all of the homework.

• 45:42Heather Berlin?

  Or that kids with ADHD get distracted. And you sometimes just need to keep them on track, not to help them solve it, but like, you know.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Well, the win-then command is great for that one because then they can't do the things they want to do until they're done. It really helps to focus them.

• 45:57Heather Berlin?

  OK, what about tracking your kid's location, just in case?

• 46:01Speaker 00

  So it depends. If kids have the ability to contact you, then I don't like that. Because what ends up happening is that the first sign of discomfort, they will call you. So what should I do? So there's no practice with the problem solving. With independence activities, because parents are anxious, we often say it's fine at first. But then, as they get into more challenging independence activities, we at least suggest the possibility that they not track their child.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  It's also better for the parent, right? So they can also learn that my child can actually do things independently without me constantly tracking them.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 46:37Heather Berlin?

  What about when a child is on, say, a device? Like an iPad or something? Because I think if you give them total independence with that, they would just be on that for 12 hours a day.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 46:47Heather Berlin?

  So where do you give independence and where do you intervene?

• 46:50Speaker 00

  So I think Jonathan Haidt has really sort of nailed this in as simple a way as possible. Is kids have too much freedom online and not enough freedom in the real world. So there's no space between our two positions. Social media should be delayed as long as possible. And I don't even really like anything that you can swipe. That sort of disrupts your ability to focus on anything. And so the bigger the screen, the longer, you know, like a Disney movie, far superior over TikTok.

• 47:21Heather Berlin?

  That's what Jonathan Haidt says. Longer, long form. It's not that the screen itself is a problem. It's the kind of media that's being consumed. So more long-form media that has a story that you can attend to versus the scrolling.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  There was this recent story, I think, in the Wall Street Journal, that even film students now have difficulty sitting through long classical films because they're used to every 10 seconds has a change in point of view and a new story. So it's not just books. It's all media because of the reason you mentioned. So in your own case, how long did you delay for your kids' access to social media?

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Well, so this is an interesting question, and it speaks to what you said about differences between children. So my daughter, who is older, we really didn't delay things, and it was never a problem for her. She actually has a visceral dislike of social media, despite the fact that she's a pop singer, which is weird to say, but she is.

• 48:19Heather Berlin?

  How old are your kids?

• 48:20Speaker 00

  So she's 25. And my son, totally the opposite. He'll sit scrolling forever. And so we have to be much more restrictive of his use of screens.

• 48:32Heather Berlin?

  Like, my kids are 12 and nine now, and they don't have phones. They don't, the only thing they have is an iPad with some restricted use, but no social media. So I do restrict them in that capacity. But I think that's the idea is more online kind of restriction, less restriction in the real world.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Although there's a caveat with social media, there are also many benefits from social media. And the generalized increased anxiety predates social media. I think it's more to do with autonomous play that over the last 100 years, we have lost effectively.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  Well, the beginning of it, I think you're right. But I think John Haidt makes a very strong case that around 2011, which is when

• 49:17Speaker 02

  It's gotten worse.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  the iPhone really became ubiquitous is when we saw a dramatic rise, particularly among girls and particularly among the youngest cohort of girls.

• 49:28Heather Berlin?

  And I think there are some social benefits about the technology that we have.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:31Heather Berlin?

  But like, for my kids, it'll be like being on FaceTime with their friends. You know, they can play a game together while on FaceTime with their actual, real-life friends. And that, I think, is really, I let them do that. But on that note, I want to thank you, Dr. Camilo Ortiz. You've been amazing. It's been really insightful. Thanks for being here.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  So fun to talk to you both.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you, Camilo.

• 49:52Heather Berlin?

  And if you'd like to learn more about your own perception box, spend some time this week answering the same perception box questions that we asked our guests. And check out other questions on our website at unlikelycollaborators.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the show or listen wherever you get your podcasts. This has been Science of Perception Box, created by Unlikely Collaborators in collaboration with Pod People. I am Dr. Heather Berlin.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  And I'm Dr. Christoph Koch. Thank you.