Episode 581: Raising Capable Kids Without Overparenting

The Whinypaluza Podcast

In this episode of The Whinypaluza Podcast, parenting expert Nicole Runyon discusses the impact of overparenting, technology use, and lack o

Key takeaways

• Children's rising mental health issues are often symptoms of toxic environments rather than inherent problems.
• Excessive screen time and social media use correlate with increased anxiety, self-harm, and eating disorders in adolescents.

Main topics

• The impact of smartphones and social media on youth mental health
• Overparenting and its effect on child independence

Notable quotes

"They are not broken. They're a message. I call them the canaries in the coal mine."

Conclusion

Nicole Runyon emphasizes that raising capable children requires shifting focus from diagnosing

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Hello, everyone. This is Rebecca Green for the Whiny Palooza podcast. And I am very excited today because I get to talk to the wonderful Nicole Runyon. Nicole, thank you so much for doing this with me today. Thank Speaker 1 (0:14) you. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate you having me. Speaker 2 (0:18) I was reading all about Nicole and we're all going to love her and we're all going to learn so much from her. So let me tell you why. Nicole is a former child psychotherapist who spent over 20 years working with children and families before making a bold career pivot. After years in private practice, she came to believe many children are being mislabeled, overtreated, and disconnected from healthy development due to technology. Oh, I lost my spot. Due to technology, over-parenting, I'm not wearing my glasses, people, and a culture that teaches kids to see themselves as broken instead of capable. Today, Nicole is a parent coach, speaker, and author of the book, Free to Fly, which if you're watching, you can see it displayed behind her, where she helps families raise confident, independent children by changing the home, not trying to fix the child. So you can't see me because my paper's not in the camera, but I have it tilted so that I can see it without my glasses. Speaker 2 (1:21) That's very smart. Oh my gosh. So forgive me for stumbling, but now everybody knows why I'm so excited to talk to you. I have so many questions. I never get to all of my questions, but we're going to start with, okay, you spent 20 years as a child therapist. You walked away, made a big career pivot. Tell us about that. Speaker 1 (1:43) Yeah. So when it was really closer to 2014, 2015, so it was quite a bit of time before I decided to make the change, that I started noticing a pattern in my practice that was very odd. I was getting quite a few adolescent girls, mostly middle school girls, who were severely mentally ill. They were coming out of the hospital after their first suicide attempt. They were self-harming. They were eating disordered. Speaker 1 (2:13) odd part about it was that there was no known trauma. There was nothing that I could really connect to it as an explanation of why I was seeing what I was seeing. And, you know, the families were relatively intact. The parents were there being supportive. Certainly there were things to work on in the family dynamic, but nothing that warranted the issues I was seeing. And so I started to kind of do in some questioning, like what is happening? What's going on? What's the change here? And what I realized was that this was highly correlated with the middle schools in my community allowing kids to have their smart devices during the school day. Speaker 2 (2:51) Oh, no. Speaker 1 (2:52) Yes. So I'm making these connections and I'm like, oh, my goodness, it's the phones. And now this was so early on before we had Gene Twenge and Jonathan Haidt and any of this correlative or causative research. But I was seeing it anecdotally, like right in front of me. And it was Speaker 2 (3:10) so crazy. It Speaker 1 (3:12) really was. OK, Speaker 2 (3:15) so we're seeing, you know. we're seeing schools ban phones. Yes. I mean, my children's schools now, the phones are banned. So you're totally for this. This is a good thing. Speaker 1 (3:29) Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The phones have no place in schools whatsoever. Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:34) So I will get on with my questions. But when the high school told us, parents, that they were banning the phones, I was like, how am I going to hear about schedule Speaker 1 (3:44) changes? Yeah. I know that's a lot of parents have that reaction, right? Because you you we've all become accustomed to this. Yes, Speaker 2 (3:53) yes. Way too addicted to the constant communication to the I'm staying after I'm not staying after. Anyways, we have worked it Speaker 1 (4:02) out. Speaker 2 (4:03) Good. Speaker 1 (4:04) I'm glad you worked it out. I will tell you, I have a high schooler too, and his school does allow the devices, but I try to have the boundary during the day. So if I need to ask him a question, I actually ended up writing it on a Post-it note and putting it in his room because I don't want him having that disruption from me. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:22) That's awesome because the teachers all told us parents that it's us who are texting their kids. It is. Speaker 1 (4:28) It's all the moms. Yes. Yes. And I get it. There's some practicality to it. Like there's sometimes where I need to ask him a question or tell him something. And I always remind myself it can wait. It doesn't have to be in the middle of his school day. Speaker 2 (4:44) It's true. It's true. I have to, I'll tell you this and then I promise I'll move on. She wants, my daughter wants me to order her costume for her play. And so she sent it to me and went to school and it's not in her size. So I'm here trying to figure out what size to get her in a different costume. And I'm like, just wait, just wait. You can do this later. But anyways, we're part of the problem. That's good that you recognize that. Okay, but go back to what you said. So you noticed that the girls had their phones during the day. Yeah. So let's talk about this. How is that leading to the mental illness? Like what is happening? Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:24) So they were getting so far down the rabbit hole on social media into this concept of their mental health, what was happening to them, how they feel, what their diagnoses are. And it almost became like any middle school situation, like a competition, like who was the most mentally ill? Oh my goodness. Yes. And it was so wild because every time, you know, I would hear something, then I would hear something more sensational and then more sensational. And every time I thought, well, I've heard it all, it would be something else. Speaker 2 (6:00) Oh Speaker 1 (6:01) my Speaker 2 (6:02) gosh. Okay. Well. This isn't good. Okay. But they have access after school. So as parents, like, what do we do with this? Yes. Speaker 1 (6:15) So that's a great question because that leads me into the next part of my transition, which. that I realized it wasn't just, it wasn't the phones actually. So for a while, I kind of spent some time on it's the phones, it's the phones. I did some speaking about it. People were like, yeah, it's the phones. Nobody was willing to make a change though. And I thought that was another like odd thing that was going on. And so what I realized was that there wasn't a willingness to make a change because the phones are a symptom of a bigger problem. And the bigger problem is that the parents, like we mentioned, like we talked a little bit about, are afraid to allow their kids that discomfort. They're afraid to, you know, challenge their kids. They don't want to be uncomfortable in themselves to have their kids maybe be the oddball out or the different one for not having a device or not being on social media. And so it became this rush to give your kids all the things, technology, because that's what everybody was doing. And so ultimately I realized that we have to stop pathologizing the kids because their reaction, their mental health issues, their behavioral issues, they're not, they shouldn't be diagnosed and treated in a mental health setting because they're a message. I call them the canaries in the coal mine. They are telling us something. And what they're telling us is that their environment is simply toxic. Speaker 2 (7:42) And who's Speaker 1 (7:44) responsible for their environment? The adult. Yeah, that's right. And that's not just the parents, right? It's first the parents, and then it's the school, and then it's the community and the village and all the things that we've really lost that has been eroded because of the adults being on social media. And so now everybody's siloed and isolated and thinking that that's the only way to stay connected when it's actually disconnecting us so much more and causing chaos. And again, it's like it started to feel unethical for me to be in a position to put a diagnosis on a child that really shouldn't have one. Because again, no known trauma, no actual like reason to be having these severe issues. And so I thought, you know, I want to be working with the parents. I want to help parents to gain the confidence and the tools to stand in their authority and really to connect back to their instincts because we know what to do. Parents know what to do. We're just questioning it. Speaker 2 (8:48) It's true. So it's more about what is happening at home than what the label is for the kid. Speaker 1 (8:55) Yes, Speaker 2 (8:55) absolutely. So we're moving from labeling the kid to how can we help at home? Yes. Yes. Speaker 1 (9:03) Okay. Well, Speaker 2 (9:04) well, Nicole, as a mother, we want to know what we can do differently. How can we help? What can we do with our kids? Give us some tools, please. Speaker 1 (9:17) Yes. So what I do in my book is I outline child development from birth all the way to 25. And don't be scared. It's not like a super long book. I do it in a concise way where it's not boring or dry. I use stories of clients and personal stories to help people kind of connect to this idea of our children grow. like in stages. And I call it the rungs of a ladder. So each stage builds on the one before it. And that stage before it is very foundational. And so what I recommend parents doing is getting some clarity around where their child is on the child development spectrum and what they need. Now, there are four parts to that. So every child needs movement. Even at birth, they have the primitive reflexes and we don't want to be strapping them down and preventing that. And that's the start of development is movement because then that scaffolds the brain for growth. And then once the brain, you know, is growing the way it needs to, the child moves into a social emotional development. And then they finally they move into what I call a connection to self. And this is three critical periods of time in childhood where they