Episode 374: The Cornerstone of Resilience and Capability with Dr. Ken Ginsburg

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It's time to turn those what ifs into... With Shopify Today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash RBG. Go to Shopify.com slash RBG. That's Shopify.com slash RBG. Hey, friends. Welcome to the Raising Boys and Girls podcast. I'm Sissy Goff. And I'm David Thomas. And we're so glad you've joined us for this conversation. Let's dive in. Dr. Ken Ginsberg is a physician, adolescent medicine specialist and professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He is also the co-founder and director of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at CHOP. Dr. Ginsberg is committed to preparing adults to be the kind of people that adolescents deserve in their lives. He supports local, regional, and national organizations in developing programs and policies that strengthen families and see young people through a strength-based lens. He speaks to parent, professional, and youth audiences nationally and internationally and is the author of multiple award-winning parenting books, as well as a toolkit for youth-serving professionals. His latest book is Lighthouse Parenting, Raising Your Child with Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond. You all, you're going to want to take notes throughout this episode all the way to the end. We're going to start with Gold and we kick off with a hilarious moment as we were trying to navigate technology when we all three identified ourselves as movie stars we'd most hope to look like. So you'll enjoy the kickoff of this episode and our conversation with Dr. Ken Ginsberg. By the way, ICU is very pixelated just for you to know. Like, I do not have a clear camera of you. We look like Julia Roberts and George Cleoney. So just picture them and we got it. Oh my God, those faces. I look like Brad Pitt, so I think we're going to make movies together. We're great friends. We just didn't even know it yet. Fantastic. Well, wonderful. Well, we'll go ahead and jump in. Dr. Ginsberg, you really have informed so much of how we think about resilience in kids. And as David mentioned earlier, we quoted you in our new book. You just so respect your work. And we would love to start by hearing about how you found your way to the work that you've been doing and also something even that has surprised you in the research around resilience. Yeah, you know, my work, so I'm a pediatrician, but my focus is on adolescent health. And I also clinically work with youth experiencing homelessness. So most of my work is actually with youth who have been made very vulnerable by life circumstances. So seeing youth that don't have families while having the privilege of working in a hospital setting with youth who have wonderful families, it just began making sense to me that anything I could do with my career that would strengthen families was good work. And in terms of resilience, you know, when I entered medicine, there were a lot of don't do that in the way we counsel, don't do this, don't do that, it's bad for you. And that doesn't make humans change. What encourages humans to change is when we begin focusing on all that is good and right about them. And when we think of them thriving as the goal, and resilience is the link between pain and thriving. So resilience is never the end goal. Remember that, right? Our end goal is not to be strong. Our goal is to build a world in which all people thrive, all people have what they need to flourish, but that humans who have suffered will be strengthened in such a way that their true gifts of compassion and kindness and commitment to making a better world will show. And that's a long-winded way of saying doing this work is a blessing and supporting people through good times and bad times, but with the goal of helping them thrive makes a difference. You asked me for a surprise. Yes. Do you want one? Yes. I say that the surprise to me is that there's not a surprise. It's a little bit like at the end of Wizard of Oz, you know, when Dorothy clicks her shoes and realizes that she always knew the secret in front of her. The secret of resilience, if you take all the seven C's and you look at the cornerstone, it's connection. It's human connection. We all have within ourselves the ability to thrive. And what allows us to thrive is surrounding ourselves with loving relationships. And that's the linchpin. So the surprise to me is that there is no surprise. The work, on the other hand, is to help people know how to operationalize and optimize human connection because it's not so hard to get right if you know what to do. And that's been the privilege of my career is I haven't invented anything brilliant. There's nothing brilliant to be invented. It's about how do we show up? How do we love? How do we support? We're just guiding people to do that. Gosh, what a beautiful way to say that. Thank you. Yes. And you, in answering that question, mentioned the seven C's, which we're excited to talk about. And for parents who may be new to this part of your work, could you just walk us through what the seven C's are and why they matter so much in a child's development? Absolutely. So they are multiple different concepts that play with each other to create a whole that will allow us like almost a web of the different ingredients we can think of to build resilience and prepare people to thrive. But remember, they are related. So the original five C's was created by Richard Lerner and colleagues. And then I added two at the end to make it seven C's in my books. So where does it begin? It begins with confidence, right? And sometimes we think we know exactly how to give people confidence. We just praise them. But that backfires actually, right? If you say, Johnny, look at you coming down the sliding board, you're so brilliant, you're so wise, and you're so handsome, and you're doing it, you're doing it, but you never give credit to gravity. And what happens is you're trying to build confidence in a kid, but it actually undermines their sense of self. They feel like they're on display all the time, and they worry about pleasing you. So real confidence comes from being seen, being seen as you deserve to be seen, and having someone know all that is good and right about you, right? All that is good and right about you, and everything that makes them want to pull out their hair and choose to love you. Yes. Yes. Right? That's true confidence. The next thing is competence, right? Competence is about building the skill sets, right? So when caregivers or parents see what a young person's existing skills are, celebrate those skills, help them expand on those skills, but then help them stretch into new territory with our guidance, competence. Next is character. Think of character as, what would you do if you thought nobody was watching? Right? Building young people with the character strengths of generosity, compassion, kindness, intellectual humility, being willing to listen to people who are different and honor their differences and listen to their differences, having collaborative skills, those are the things. The fourth C is the critical one, human connection. It's what ties it together, what allows you to have the confidence to stretch because when you fall down, you never worry about not being loved. When you have these four C's, then you're ready to contribute to the world, contribution. The contribution is more than just what you give. Contribution is knowing and learning that you matter because when you learn that you matter to people around you, to your environment, everything changes, including your ability to be compassionate with yourself. Now next, those are the five C's, but now let's think about behavior and let's add two more C's. Something we worry about in human beings, in adolescence, but also in adults is about the fact that when life gets hard, the question is how are you going to cope the next C coping? Are you going to go for those easy, quick fixes? Whenever you heard the word quick in the context of behavior, you got to worry because the quick ones are the ones that are addictive and they work. They really work. Drums work, but they destroy you. What we have to do instead is build in kids and in adults for that matter, a wide repertoire of positive coping strategies. The final C, control. This is what parents have to get right. When we, and I hope we get to dive into this deeply, but when we guide our children, they learn control. When we control our children, they run from us as soon as they can. The goal is for people to learn that they control their lives. You know how earlier I shared with you that I work with young people who have been made vulnerable by circumstances? Most of what I do is try to give them a sense of control over their life again because when they, you have a really, really hard life, sometimes you learn that you don't have any control and healing comes through human connection, right? But learning that you can control your life again. And now a quick break to hear from one of our incredible sponsors who make the podcast available. Okay. My daughter and son-in-law came home this weekend. Lily was running in the Nashville Marathon. She is amazing. Yes, she is. And we put our, our place dishes to work. My wife made a pasta dinner the night before the big race. 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And so you originally talked about competence and confidence, knowing that they kind of build into each other and that where we naturally gravitate is praise in those moments. But will you talk about how competence does contribute to confidence and how we encourage kids in that intersection of the two without it being praise that only creates more pressure? Yeah. So there's not a problem with praise. The question is how you praise, right? And when you praise in a way that makes someone feel like a success or failure based on whether they can accomplish something, they will live with anxiety. When you praise and you talk about how proud you are, but the sentence has a because in it, you increase anxiety. So it's like, I'm so proud of you because of the play you were in because of your grades, because you did this. Well, you're actually communicating is I wouldn't be proud of you if that condition didn't exist. And that is a dangerous signal to send to the people we love or in your case, the people you're a therapist for, in my case, the people I doctor for. Because if I say that there's a condition on my loving presence, then they won't come to you when they need you the most. So we can praise, but when you're proud of something, share that you're proud that they are sharing with you. You are proud of your relationship. And if you want to praise on something specific, then talk about good grades, but say you won't always good grades because that's not the way life is. And what matters to me is that you're going to figure out who you are and you're going to always come to me. And then the final piece is really not attributed to me. It's all Carol Dweck's work on mindset. And when we praise, the way I would translate this, and as you all know, I'm not a very bright guy. I just teach you what the world of science says. So in the case, the way I would translate Carol Dweck's work is if you say, I am so proud of what you did or what you accomplished, then people get really anxious. But when you praise the effort, right? So when you really talk about why they accomplished something. So for example, if you say you are blank, you are smart, you are a good athlete, you are a good actress, you are anything, people get really anxious because they're like, oh, I'm not going to do anything else because I aren't good at that. But instead, you say you did blank and therefore blank happened, then that's a praise that facilitates a growth mindset. So not you are so smart in math, but you studied so hard and it came through for you. So those are all the elements we praise. So again, Ken is not saying not to praise. Ken is saying be wise with your praise because we don't want to make anxious kids. That's great words. Let's circle back to contribution for a moment. So why would you say it's so important for kids to feel useful and needed? And even what are some simple ways that parents could invite kids in the meaningful contribution at home? Yeah, so contribution, the desire to repair the world in tikkun olam in large ways and small ways. It means the world. First of all, we build a better world when we each contribute to it. Let's start there. But let's imagine we didn't care about anybody but your kid, which is not true. But let's imagine that your child needs to know that they matter in the world. And in good times, it's lovely to know that you matter. But in tough times, knowing that your existence has meaning and purpose is going to give you the strength to get through really tough times. So let's take it to the extreme. Let's imagine a human being is depressed. When that human being is depressed, that human being is not loving themselves. And they might not see themselves as worthy of feeling better. So sometimes it is tough to turn compassion on yourself. But often people who are depressed or anxious or some of the kindest and most loving and sensitive humans who still have the strength to serve others. And when you serve others, you strengthen your compassion muscles. And in time, even if you're not ready to turn it on yourself, in time, you'll be able to turn it inward and rise past what you're going through. You know, David Sissy, when you said make it easy. So like, you know, on the one hand, I think every child should build their college resume by creating like an international service agency, right? That was sarcasm, right? But we have to remember that there's opportunities everywhere. That's what community is. There's the elder across the street who just needs help getting the groceries from her car up the steps. There's the snow that needs to be shoveled so the elder doesn't slip. There might be your little brother in the home who's having trouble reading, right? There is somewhere everywhere. You don't have to go beyond your block to see someone who is worthy of your attention, right? And you're not helping them. You're supporting them. You're building a community, right? And that's what we all need to do. And that is the antidote to all the divisiveness that's happening and to all the disconnection and disconnection that's happening as we're living in a virtual world. Open your door and look who needs you. Well, one of another thing that we love that you talk about, there's so many. One is about the importance of balancing protection with preparation. And we would love to know what it looks like for parents to step back appropriately so kids can struggle, problem solve, and ultimately grow in their sense of capability. Yeah. So let's back up and acknowledge that this is hard. Let's acknowledge that I raised my own kids and if God came down and said, you know what, if you bubble wrap your kids, they'll never have any pain in their life. Like would you like a roll of bubble wrap? I would have said yes, please. Right? Yes. Like I'm not above that. But the world is not that simple. The world guarantees you that there will be challenges large and small in life. And what we want is to have relationships with our children throughout their lives, right? Not just while they're under our house, but under our roof. But when they're under our roof, we have the opportunity to shape them, to see them fall down and to see them recover. And as they get back up for their legs to be a little bit stronger. And that is an amazing opportunity as we're raising them. But it means you have to be willing to let them fall sometimes, right? So that they can get back up. So you can guide them. So you can teach them that falling is we all fall. We all fail. The measure of a human is how you rise, not how you fall. And when we guide in that way, then we are not only protecting them in the moment, but we are actually protecting them for years to come. When we prepare people with skills to manage relationships, skills to recover from adversity, skills to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are, I think it's really nice to know where you're going to stumble because it's not so bad to avoid a pothole once in a while, right? And you've got to learn where you're going to fail so that you can focus on your strengths. For parents who hover, helicopter, all those words, snow plow, understand two things. But the most important thing is you're losing the opportunity to prepare your children to live on their own when you're not watching them. So preparation is long-term protection. And now we're going to take a little break to hear from one of our sponsors who makes this podcast possible. OK, I have to tell you what happened before my nephew went soccer game last weekend. 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I'm almost 65 and I haven't figured it out. But when you're a teenager, you think you're supposed to know it all. So you try on a bunch of different hats and sometimes you wear a hat and people say that looks terrible on you. And so adolescents can be filled with people criticizing you and you're feeling bad about yourself. So what matters? We talked about this. This is where love comes in. You need a human who sees you, who understands who you are. Even Sissy, as you may know, I work deeply with Covenant House International, which is an organization that serves youth experiencing homelessness. And our goal is to love without condition and respect absolutely, absolute respect and unconditional love. And I have the audacity to have defined love. Can I tell you what I think it is? Please. Love is seeing someone as they deserve to be seen as they really are. Not based on the behavior they might be displaying in the moment and not based on a label anyone else has ever given them. When we see people, that is what gets you through identity development. Circle back to parents. Again, I work with people from the most together families and with kids who have no families. And what on earth? And when they don't, this is the role I and my staff and my colleagues try to take, which is to see kids. Because when you ask yourself, why do we love? And the answer is to make humans know that they're worthy of being loved. That's the answer. It's that simple. And when we see kids with all their strengths and all their confusion, all their power and all their complexity, and we choose to love them, that's the linchpin of resilience. That's it. Yes. Yes. That's cool. Well, thinking about these teenagers and knowing that is so much of what they're longing for too and that they are growing up in this world of constant connectivity and comparison through technology, we would love for you to talk specifically about how you feel like technology is impacting teens' abilities to build the seven C's and maybe especially confidence, connection, and control back to you talking about that idea earlier. And even to hear you say, what parents, what would you really encourage parents to pay the closest attention to with that? So I don't think you're going to be surprised if I tell you that pay the most attention to your own communication and your own connection. There was a study that looked at technology and depression. And the most important finding was not how much time you as a child spent with technology, it was how much time your parent spent on technology because it interfered with your connection. So permission to be frank and vulnerable. Yes? Please. Yes. Please. I think that technology has the opportunity to take us to a new level of human connection and acceptance. And I think it's just potentially outstanding. For young people who may have felt alone because they had a different identity or they didn't fit in in their community, nobody's alone anymore. And that is wonderful. For kids who are deeply depressed or anxious and don't know that someone could feel like that, they can understand the power of human connection even if it's virtual. That's what's good. But I would like to share with you that I am personally terrified. I am personally terrified of the divisive nature that social media and AI can also create because of the algorithmic way in which it divides us into silos. Whatever you believe, it will radicalize you by exposing you to deeper and more perverse thoughts that suggest that you are right but didn't know enough because it will then add a new level of conspiracy to your thinking. So as a human, I am terrified of that right now. I am terrified of our communities being divided. I'm terrified of some of the new hatreds that are coming up. So the solution is intellectual humility. This meaning that we understand that we will always learn from people who are different from us more than we will learn from someone who's the same. The solution is understanding that the future will be built by bridge makers, by well-worn paths between neighbors. And now what are parents' roles? Parents' roles are to help their children understand how hatred is created, how divisiveness is created, and to prepare the people to understand whose opinion to value and whose opinion not to value on the Internet. And then I'm going to get back to what you absolutely know I'm going to get to, which is stay connected yourself, right? Have screen-free, AI-free time, call it dinner, call it a walk, call it home to church or synagogue together, call it whatever you want. But the human connection, screen-free time for you and your child is the antidote. At the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, which as you know I run, we are going to begin to venture this year into preparing parents to be the guardrails, the guardrails for their children in this virtual world, right? We've always known not to let our kids put the hand on the stove, right? But stoves were something we understood. They were hot. We knew it. We don't understand this. And Sussi and Dave, it's a stove and we have to understand it to protect our children from it. It's a great analogy. No, in your mind. Really helpful analogy. We have no desire whatsoever for this conversation to end, but we are fully committed to respecting and honoring your time. We have loved talking with you and we have one last question we'd love to throw your way. So if a parent listening wanted to begin building resilience and capability in their child or teenager this week, what is one simple shift or practice you would recommend and why? All right. Can I make your question a teeny bit more complicated? Please. I am interested not just in resilience for the moment. I am interested in families being preserved for decades. So I am interested not just in parenting for the moment, but in your family staying together for decades. So the secret, the linchpin. As you know, I wrote lighthouse parenting. The secret of lighthouse parenting is to be a guide instead of a control agent. So right now, begin shifting your communication style from telling kids what to do, which will push them away because no one wants to be controlled and instead becoming a guide who listens to them, who understands them as experts in their own life. They don't know more than you, but they know the paths they're walking and you partner with them and you guide them sharing your wisdom and experience because you know what? No one ever tires of a guide. Everyone wants a guide who really knows you in your life for decades. So make the shift today from being controlling and demanding to being a guide who loves and who cares and who shapes. Thank you for that. Thank you for the way that you blend the practical and the deep and thoughtful and the intimacy of relationship and connection and take it to where take it to the impact it really does have on our hearts and on our resilience individually and as families. So grateful. Amen. And this is the most beautiful summary of what I attempt to accomplish that I've heard. So thank you. Well, we are just so grateful for your work and the world and it's such a privilege to get to meet you almost in person, at least virtually, and hope we get to maybe someday in person as well. I hope so too. Thank you so much for all you do. David, what a team we have that we get to call friends who help make this podcast possible. Chris Sterrett, our engineer. Our management team at KCH. We are thrilled to be a part of the That Sounds Fun Network. Our music was created by the insanely talented Dave Haywood of Lady A. And if this podcast felt helpful to you, please consider subscribing, liking, sharing, all the things. We are grateful for you and cheering you on always. Rural Britain, you've suffered too long. Your days of sluggish broadband are over. We're connecting rural homes to full fiber with thousands more joining every month. T-minus five. The gigaverse is expanding before my very eyes. Giga clear. Faster broadband for rural Britain from only 19 pounds per month. We have lived off. T's and C's apply. 18 months contract. Prices may rise during contract. Check availability at gigaclear.com.