414. The mattering gap: Why so many parents feel invisible, overwhelmed, and disconnected with Jennifer Wallace

Jennifer Wallace (00:00):

One of the greatest sources of mattering is being asked for advice. So if you have someone in your life and you’re going through something, ask for their advice. That is how we send a very strong signal to that person that they matter, that we trust them enough to open up and to ask for their wisdom.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:25):

Feeling like you matter might not be something you actively think about, but this often overlooked sense. It shapes nearly every part of our lives, our relationships, parenting, even our child’s sense of self in really profound ways. Hi, I’m Dr. Sara Bren, a clinical psychologist, mom of two, and the host of Securely Attached. Each week, I sit down with leading experts in psychology, neuroscience, medicine and child development to translate complex research into practical grounded insights that help you parent with more clarity and confidence. And today I’m joined by Jennifer Wallace. Jennie is an award-winning journalist and the author of Never Enough and her newest book, Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. Her work focuses on the growing pressure facing families and what actually helps people, both kids and adults, to feel valued, connected and resilient. In this conversation, we talk about what it really means to feel like we matter and why so many parents today are struggling to feel that in their own lives.

(01:34):

We explore how achievement culture, busyness and disconnection have eroded this really basic human need and why this matters so much for our mental health and our relationships and our parenting. We also talk about the powerful link between a parent’s sense of mattering and a child sense of self-worth and why it’s so hard to give our kids something we don’t fully feel ourselves. And importantly, we get into what actually helps from small everyday moments of connection to simple ways to build more meaningful adult relationships to practical strategies that help our kids not just feel valued, but learn how to add value in their families and communities. This episode is a reminder that parenting isn’t just about what we do for our kids. It’s also about how we experience ourselves in the world and how that shapes everything we pass on to them.

(02:25):

Hello, Jennie. Welcome back to Securely Attached.

(02:34):

It’s so good to see you.

Jennifer Wallace (02:36):

I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:39):

I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation because your last book, you came on the show previously to talk about your last book, Never Enough. And that book comes up in my work with teens and parents and even parents of young kids. On such a regular basis, I’ve literally told some of the teens that I work with in my practice to read it. It’s so important. And on, if you haven’t listened to the episode that I did with Jenny on her book, Never Enough, I’ll link that in the show notes so you can go back and listen to it. But this book that you’ve recently written, Mattering, it sounds like it feel like there’s a tie in and I’m curious if you wanted to talk a little bit about the evolution from writing Never Enough to the work that you’ve done that went into this book on mattering.

Jennifer Wallace (03:32):

Yeah. So Never Enough really came out of an article I wrote for the Washington Post in 2019 that named a newly at risk group and those were students attending what the researchers were calling high achieving schools. The researchers found they were two to six times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety and depression and two to three times more likely to suffer from substance abuse disorder than the average American teen. And so I was looking for that book. Who were the kids who were doing well despite the pressure? What did they have in common? And it boiled down to mattering that the kids who were doing well felt like they mattered for who they were deep at their core. And what I heard over and over again in my interviews with families was how often the parents of those young people felt like they didn’t matter, whether it was working for as a doctor in a major medical center feeling crushed by insurance companies or educators feeling like they weren’t being valued by their communities or stay-at-home parents who felt like they mattered too much, essential to everybody else’s needs but never their own and that no one else was prioritizing them.

(04:45):

And so I thought, oh wow, I should have written Mattering first because as adults we need to understand what this concept is, why it’s eroded and how to build it back into our lives because I truly believe in the research suggests that a child’s sense of feeling valued and mattering really rests on how their parents feel.

Dr. Sarah Bren (05:09):

Yeah. I mean, we could spend an entire episode just talking about that, like the intergenerational element of like how we do or don’t pass on mattering is probably very much dependent on how much our parents were able to help us feel that we mattered, how much we were able to receive that and now share that with our kids because if you want to help your kids feel like they matter, it’s really hard to do that if you don’t really have this core felt sense of what it means to matter.

Jennifer Wallace (05:42):

For who you are deep inside. I hear this often from parents. They say, “I know that mattering means loving my child for who they are deep inside away from their successes and achievements, but I have never felt that myself. My sense of worth is very much tangled up in my successes and I don’t know how to give them what I don’t know how to feel myself.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (06:09):

Yeah. I mean, I know you write in the book a lot about how our current society is kind of making mattering very challenging and we should definitely talk about that. But if we’re thinking about people who are adults now, who grew up way before all this tech stuff and all the social media and all the things that are currently challenges to mattering, what did you get a sense of what was making it hard for like people who are adults now? Was there the same level of like … I think there was … I mean, the toxic achievement stuff is even relatively new to this more younger generations. What made it harder for the older generations?

Jennifer Wallace (06:48):

So Henry Nowen was a Dutch theologian and he wrote about society’s three great lies that all of us absorb, which is, “I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what people say and think about me. ” And so that I believe parents are absorbing in our culture and those messages arguably have never been stronger than they are right now. And so that’s what I think parents are contending with the modern messages, the three great lies, they are absorbing them. And what we know from the research is that parents are social conduits, meaning they pass those messages about the future onto their kids and the way they parent. They don’t do this to harm their children. They are doing this to prepare them for this hyper competitive cold world that they are going to enter in. And so parents absorb these messages and it comes out in the way that they parent.

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:52):

Yeah. So those lies about like those social lies, those are old. Those have been around forever. I think they’ve been exponentially amplified and sped up and gotten more intense and loud with the way things move and the speed of tech, but they’re not new lies that we’ve internalized. And so if you are an adult who maybe as a child was fed that same kind of implicit or explicit communication about your value, they’re not old. And I think like even like I’m thinking about my parents, like they’re baby boomers and they grew up in a time when, I mean, there’s different generations that are going to hit with different types of that messaging, I would imagine. There’s probably pockets where people really did matter when there was some cultural crisis that brought everyone together and like World War II, the victory gardens and like all these things like people matter, that sense of like when something really terrible happens and we all come together, the sense of mattering I imagine would spike among a generation.

(08:57):

But then there’s these like dips where everyone goes back to this isolation sort of individualized, that’s our kind of counterbalance that the pendulum swings. It’s not great for us. We’re hyper in that now.

Jennifer Wallace (09:13):

We are in that now. And what I’ve come to realize is when I was growing up and maybe when your parents were growing up, mattering was baked into everyday life. So we knew our neighbors, they depended on us, we relied on them. I remember I would go on vacation and the neighbors would feed our goldfish or if the newspapers were gathering at the foot of the driveway, they would take them so a burglar wouldn’t be attracted to the house, there was a storm they’d check in. We don’t know our neighbors now. We are so busy being one family villages that we are very detached and we don’t get those signals of feeling valued. I think about the workplace. My dad worked for 50 years for the same company. He had this social contract in place where he felt valued and he knew that if he was loyal, they’d be loyal to him with a pension.

(10:08):

So these everyday messages that you are valued, you are needed, used to be baked in and they have eroded. And so I think just the everyday signals, I also think we have so much incoming every day in our lives, so many deadlines and news and it’s just relentless input and then so much output being demanded of us that just to get through life, we often have to go through it on autopilot with our heads down. And so when we do that, when we are on autopilot, we miss the signals that we matter and we miss sending those signals that other people matter too.

Dr. Sarah Bren (10:47):

Yeah, I could see that. I feel like we are moving so fast individually. Yes, as a society for sure, but like just human beings, I’m thinking about like my morning from the minute I wake up and I’m trying to be better about this, but I’ll pick up my phone and I’m like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, email, email, email. And it takes me completely out of my home, my space with my family, the trajectory of my day has been completely derailed potentially if something came in that I wasn’t ready for and like that drains my battery. And then I go downstairs and I’m like, “I got to pack lunches and I got to … ” Because of course I’m an ADHD mom who I know that doing all this the night before, I always tell people the good advice and then I don’t follow it, but I like wake up and I have to pack lunches and pack backpacks and everyone’s like, it’s chaos and by the time I drop my kids off at school, I’m like pivoting already to multitasking.

(11:48):

I’m listening to things on the way home and then I’m working all day and I don’t take a break and then I get back to home and it’s just nonstop from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed and like there’s no space to slow down and like you said, like catch the signals because they’re there. I know I matter. I know my kids know that I think they matter, but I could do a heck of a better job showing them that or receiving it if I slowed down if I did even 10% less and made some white space for that, those signals to come in because they’re there.

Jennifer Wallace (12:28):

They are there. What I found fascinating, I interviewed hundreds of people for this book and when I asked them to tell me a time when they mattered, it was never life’s big moments. It wasn’t the promotion at work or a toast at a birthday. It was the small moments. It was the everyday moments. It was a friend sending a text, “If it weren’t for you, dot, dot, dot. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have had the courage to go for that job interview. Thank you for believing in me. ” I talk about mattering to letting our kids feel like they matter by greeting them once a day the way the family dog greets you with just total joy. So much of our lives, as you just went through is getting through a to- do list that our kids don’t often get to see the delight we feel just from being their parents. So if we could at least once a day mark that in our heads to greet our kids once a day the way the family dog greets you.

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:29):

Yes.

Jennifer Wallace (13:29):

Let them see the delight.

Dr. Sarah Bren (13:31):

Delight. I’m so glad you brought up delight because that is, obviously this podcast securely attached. We talk a lot about attachment science and attachment research, but the person who developed attachment, well, one of them, Mary Ainsworth, she did all the studying on what was the factors that indicated a secure attachment and one of the most significant predictors was a parent’s ability to delight in their child. That is a massive component to secure attachment. It’s not being the perfect parent or getting it right all the time. Atunement actually was not like, yes, you need to atune to the needs of your child so they can reliably sort of internalize you as this protective soothing figure, the secure base, but in order for them to do that, you only need to be attuning accurately like some studies have shown it as low as like 35 to 50% of the time.

(14:32):

So you do have to atune, but you don’t have to get it right all the time at all. What you do have to do is delight in your child and have them feel that delight that, like you said, oh my gosh, that reuniting after a separation, I’m so happy to see you. And it’s very powerful and fortunately you don’t … I’m a busy mom. I know everyone listening, you’re all very busy parents.

(15:01):

It’s more stress to think about, oh gosh, now I have to add this to my … Oh my gosh. But really I’m a firm believer in finding the 10% or the 20% that gets you 80% of the impact. If you can pause when you reunite with your child after a separation and ask them … It depends on your kid. Some kids don’t want to be asked anything. They don’t need demands in that moment. They just want to be delighted in and just be with for a minute. Some want to share their whole world with you and like immediately. So if you’ve got a kid that really wants you to ask them questions, ask them questions about their day. Or if you have a kid who doesn’t want that at all, just be with them. But five minutes, 10 minutes, it could be just being prepared to slow down in that way, that’s so impactful.

Jennifer Wallace (15:58):

I would also say learning to delight in our friends, learning to delight in our partners, letting people see that they matter to us in eye contact, in listening, in tuning in, in asking a follow-up question. My friend Kelly Corrigan says the world could be totally changed if we just learned how to ask follow-up questions, letting people know we are interested in them because we as parents, in order for us to stay resilient, we need people in our lives, relationships that are deep and meaningful and that deliver us a sense of mattering and that needs to be reciprocal. Those deep relationships are not built in a vacuum. They are built in the everydayness of life. And again, like it’s sending a quick text, “Oh, this made me think of you. ” Or the researchers who study mattering have found that there are key ingredients to mattering that I’ve put under a framework I call SAID, S-A-I-D stands for significance. It’s just not a huge … You don’t need to throw a party for someone to feel like they’re significant. It’s in that everyday interaction, lighting up, delighting in their joys. Appreciated is I’ve come to think of as appreciating the doer behind the deed. So maybe you have a friend who’s great at gathering people up for mom’s nights out. It’s saying to them, not just thank you for a great night out and planning it, but thank you for being the kind of person that keeps us close.

(17:36):

You’re really the glue that keeps this group together. We are so lucky to have you. Invested in is knowing there are people in this world who are invested in your wellbeing and having people in your life that you’re invested in theirs too and then feeling dependent on this idea that you are relied on and that there are people in this world that you can rely on. That is what gives us the psychological safety that we’re not going through this world alone.

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:02):

It’s so interesting because when you list those things, they’re present in a parent child relationship to some degree, but I think it’s so important as parents to recognize like our parent child relationship is not bidirectional, it’s an asymmetrical relationship by design. And when you are in the throes of parenthood and you are mattering so much, I would actually say that there’s slight difference between mattering and dependency and there’s an appropriate dependency our kids have on us. And if they’re our only source of feeling like we matter because it’s not reciprocal in this way, we don’t want it to be. So sometimes the tricky part is if we’re in this relationship and it takes up all of the space in our life, we need it to be reciprocal when it can’t be. And so that doesn’t fill us up and it can really lead to burnout and/or parent child dependency, codependency issues that aren’t particularly optimal and there’s this paradox, right?

(19:10):

It’s such an intense demanding relationship that can sometimes take up all the space so it’s hard to have the energy to pick your head up and look around and say, “Oh, who else is in my life that I can put some of this time and energy and attention towards?” Again, doesn’t need to be a tremendous amount but a litle bit where there is this more of a bidirectional mutual relationship where I can show you that you matter to me and you can show me that I matter to you. Those adult relationships can sometimes take a backseat in early parenthood for sure, but sometimes it’s hard to wake those muscles back up afterwards and we can get really rusty. I know you talked to so many adults who are figuring out how to deepen these relationships.What have you learned about what’s been helpful for people who are trying to find that mutual mattering in adulthood?

Jennifer Wallace (20:13):

I think it takes just really practical work. It’s putting a get together on a calendar at least one hour a week with those relationships that are deeply meaningful. There was a study that I quote in this book and also in the last book because it was so impactful to me about researchers at the Mayo Clinic. There were a group of busy medical professionals who were also mothers and they were reporting high levels of stress and low levels of wellbeing. And so the researchers did a simple intervention that we could all do in our own lives, which is for one hour a week they had the women meet in small groups of five or six to support each other, to feel seen and heard and valued, just like we try to do with our own children. We all know that it takes one sturdy adult to really help a child thrive.

(21:09):

But what I’ve come to realize is that sturdy adults need sturdy adults too, to stay sturdy. And so what the researchers found after that 12 week intervention, again, just one hour a week, is that the women reported high levels of wellbeing. Their cortisol levels, the stress hormone had dropped and that is because these women had prioritized each other. So for one hour a week they were each other’s priority. And so I would say I did not know this when I had young children, but I instinctually knew I needed my friendships. It was a non-negotiable for me as a mother and I didn’t hide my friendships from my kids. I know a lot of parents will put their kids to bed and then sneak out of the house and things like that. I wanted my kids to know that I loved them so much and I also loved myself enough to prioritize my friendships.

(22:07):

So my kids grew up and I have to say, I think it gave them, I don’t know how to describe it, but they enjoy seeing me delighting in my friendships. I think they don’t feel pressure that they have to be good or they have to be perfect or that they have to do well in sports or that they have to do well in homework to satisfy me, that I find I get my needs satisfied in a lot of different ways and I think it has reduced any pressure on the relationship with my kids.

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:49):

Yeah. That makes me think back to what we were talking before about the intergenerational ways that this passes through or doesn’t pass through. When we approach what it sounds like, whether you intended to or not, like you’re approaching parenthood as a whole person. We were saying like, okay, there can be this like really intense dependency on us when we’re parents, which that’s just part of the package. They are dependent on us, but if we become completely available to them and do atrophy the other roles in our life, the other relationships in our life, what it shows them implicitly is you’re my everything. And while we could think that that’s such a lovely thing to send to a kid, that’s actually intensely pressuring because if I’m your everything mom, then that’s a lot of weight for me to hold when, for example, what you’re painting the picture for your child is you are important to me and I have lots of things that make me me and I am me and you are you and there’s space between us and you can rely on me, but I can rely on other people. So now we have this chain of reliance that doesn’t fall back on the child And if the pressure just lifts…

Jennifer Wallace (24:23):

I think of it like a domino that like they’re leaning on you, you’re leaning on somebody else not leaning back and there’s so much research on identity and a sense of self and when it’s overly coupled in one role, when that role disappoints or there are setbacks or I am now facing the empty nest in a couple of years. I have a daughter graduating high school, I have a son who’s in college. If my end higher identity had been coupled on my kids and that was my only role, I could see how I would really struggle through that transition. I’m not saying I’m not struggling. I’m not saying that this is easy. Transitions by their very nature are hard, but the way I think about transitions and this is true even of new parents transitions or relocating or starting a new job is that what happens to our sense of mattering is that even grief, it could collapse overnight.

(25:25):

And so when you’re going through a life transition like I am now and I’m sure there are people listening who are going through a life transition, I found and I wrote about in this book a couple of things you can do. The first one is to look for role models who are people who have come through this similar transition and made it through the other side, look to their life, invite them out for coffee and look at what they did as a kind of blueprint to help you through your tough transition. And then the other thing that I found to be very helpful is to harness the power of invitation, both accepting invitations and issuing them. So often when we’re going through a messy life transition, new parenting, relocating, losing a job, losing a loved one, divorce, we can be reluctant to accept invitations. We feel like we need to have our lives in order in order to be worthy friendship partners.

(26:22):

But what I have found in the research, and actually there’s something called the beautiful mess effect, which is the idea that we are, we often overestimate how perfect we need to be to be valuable relationship partners and underestimate how much letting people in to see a bit of our messy lives actually brings them closer to us.

(26:47):

It makes us more authentic. I think of it like if you’ve ever tried to put a Post-it note on a shiny surface that the Post-it note won’t stay, it slides off. We all need some sort of grit, a little texture to want, right? And then the last part is if you’re not getting invitations, I interviewed a woman who went through a very painful divorce and she said her social life collapsed overnight and so her therapist said to her, “Well, you have power. You can start issuing invitations, invite people into your kitchen and have dinners, invite people in that we have a lot more agency. If you are in a period of life where you feel like you don’t matter, know that you are one belief, one action away from getting back onto the path of mattering again.

Dr. Sarah Bren (27:48):

As we’re talking about how feeling like we matter shapes not just our wellbeing, but how we show up in our relationships and with our kids, I want to pause for a moment and share a little bit about the work that we do at our group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group. So many parents come to us feeling stretched thin trying to hold everything together while realizing that they might not be putting their own needs front. They’re supporting their kids, they’re managing their households, navigating relationships, and often doing it all without feeling fully supported themselves. At Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we’ve created a space where you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. We work with children, parents, couples and families offering therapy, parenting support, and comprehensive evaluations all in one place. What makes our practice unique is that everything is connected. Instead of juggling multiple providers in different locations, your care can be coordinated all under one roof.

(28:49):

Our team collaborates very closely with each other. So whether your child needs support, you’re looking for individual therapy or your family could benefit from more cohesive guidance, we’re able to look at the full picture and support you in a thoughtful, integrated way. With both in- person services in Westchester New York and virtual sessions worldwide, we offer flexible options designed to fit into busy family life. If you’d like to learn more, you can schedule a free 30 minute consultation by clicking the link in the episode description or visiting upshirbren.com. That’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E-N.com. Okay. Now let’s get back to my conversation with Jennie Wallace.

(29:36):

I also feel like I’ve talked to so many parents who are struggling with friendships because they’ve spent too much time away from them during early parenthood, or it’s always been challenging for them. And I will often ask people, or maybe they’ve had friendships, but they were really just not healthy relationships and they’ve been working to move away from them, but they’re like, “Well, now I don’t have … Who do I hang out with now?” But usually there’s one or two decent quality relationships where maybe they’re far away or maybe it’s not convenient, that that’s why those relationships aren’t the ones that they’ve been investing in previously. But maybe it’s an old childhood friend, maybe it’s a neighbor that you don’t know that well, but you’ve always connected to, right? Just one or two people that you feel safe with them, you feel good with them, that’s an entry point to starting to index that relationship or invest in that relationship.

(30:41):

I think sometimes we, to your point of it’s all or nothing or perfect or bust, right? If we start to think about just the messy relationships, the ones that aren’t perfect but feel good and could use, if I put a little bit of energy into that relationship, what could blossom, I think that’s an easy place to, not easy, it’s never easy, but it’s a starting small, it doesn’t need to be 10 friends. It could be one.

Jennifer Wallace (31:14):

And honestly, I would argue, and I say this with my children all the time, having large groups of friends is stressful. It’s stressful to keep up with them and that having one or two people that really know you intimately who are close enough to you in your life that they can hear when you are struggling and they will reach over and put that oxygen mask on for you. That is what we need. We do not need a group of 10 people having margaritas. We need one or two people that we can call when things are hard and say, “Oh my goodness, do you have 20 minutes? Or can you go with me on a quick walk?” And I will tell you one of the greatest sources of mattering is being asked for advice. So if you have someone in your life and you’re going through something, ask for their advice. That is how we send a very strong signal to that person that they matter, that we trust them enough to open up and to ask for their wisdom.

Dr. Sarah Bren (32:19):

I’m hearing a pattern too in the advice that you’ve been sharing. It’s when you are feeling like you don’t matter, showing someone they matter, it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but pushing out mattering is a way to start to feel like you matter too.

Jennifer Wallace (32:38):

Exactly. The fastest way to feel like you matter is to remind somebody else why they do.

Dr. Sarah Bren (32:44):

What is that? Why? Because I think it’s kind of like a little bit of a paradox, right? If I’m feeling like, God, I don’t matter and now I have to go tell somebody else they matter. Who’s going to tell me I matter? Why is it that we get it back tenfold?

Jennifer Wallace (32:56):

Because you’re going to feel that you’ve unlocked something in them and that is going to come back to you. I mean, a lot of our struggles are that we are overly self-focused, that we keep our heads down and we’re trying to solve our own problems alone in our rooms when actually what’s so helpful is taking that self-focused lens and putting it outwards and seeing that you are part of something bigger than yourself. And one way to do that is honestly just putting on your jacket, going to the pharmacy and thanking the woman who always hands you your prescriptions with a smile and saying, “The world can be really rough right now, but I want you to know I feel your warmth and this is like a little haven from the pressures of the world. Thank you for being that person.” That’s how small it could be. That’s helpful.

Dr. Sarah Bren (33:47):

Yeah. But the thing is, you’re building community and this is … I think sometimes people will conflate the idea of purpose and mattering, but purpose, having a purpose, yes, it’s important, but having purpose is an individual, it’s an internal experience. Mattering is a relational experience. It requires somebody to reflect back to you. It’s a communal experience. And so when you share it with someone else, you’re going to receive some element of that back and just build more.

Jennifer Wallace (34:23):

I think of purpose as purpose with a little P, not a capital P, and how to live life purposefully. And we can do this every single day. We can do this by looking for a genuine need in our community, in our apartment building. I live in New York City, in our kids’ school. Find that small need and then use what I call your three T’s, your time, your talent, or your treasure to meet that. That is how we learn how to add value to the world around us and that is half of mattering. Half of mattering is feeling valued, but the other half is adding value.

Dr. Sarah Bren (35:02):

I really love that because it’s so much more in your power, right? If you feel like you don’t matter to others, to show up for others helps you matter. You have to be in connection with.

Jennifer Wallace (35:16):

I think of it as a challenge I issue myself, which is to imagine everyone I meet wearing an invisible sign that says, “Tell me, do I matter?” And we can all answer that sign with kindness and compassion instead of judgment. And so you can be living a purposeful life. If you’re looking for purpose in your life, I could think of no better way than being an agent of mattering, an ambassador of mattering in your corner of the world. We are starved as a species for feeling like we don’t matter and that is really at the root of our loneliness and anxiety. And so just pick up the mantle and start spreading mattering in your little corner of the world and you will see the ripple, how it goes out and how it inevitably comes back to you.

Dr. Sarah Bren (36:09):

Yeah. And even in our homes, I’m thinking too, obviously you’ve shared so many really good strategies for helping adults find meaning and mattering in relationships in their adult sturdy relationships, right? But we want to raise kids who also have this skill, right? And you were talking about how we kind of can be very egocentric, very individually focused and to some degree it’s developmentally appropriate for our kids to be incredibly egocentric, but I think sometimes we’re afraid to stretch them out of that and I honestly think parents are a little confused sometimes. I myself sometimes feel confused like, “I want you to know your truth. I want you to share your truth. I want you to feel like you can say no to things or take up space.” And then there’s this flip side of that where I’m like, “But I need you to also participate in the family and I need you to do things that you don’t want to do or do things that feel uncomfortable or invite the friend to the party that you don’t want to invite because that’s how we show up for people. And so it’s like, where’s that stretch of, I want you to have your true sense of you and I want you to stretch outside of it too.

Jennifer Wallace (37:41):

I think for our kids, it does them a disservice to allow them to be overly self-focused. I think if you have a child who is struggling right now, I think one of the best things you can do is start letting them feel valued in your home, in your community, with your extended family. Dad is cooking dinner, mom’s on a deadline, I need you to set the table, or can you help me clean up this room so it looks nice when we have our guests over? Or your grandparent is sitting on the couch, can you go get them a cup of water and they’re reading glasses? Or can you get on the phone and help your grandparent with their iPad? They’re having some struggles. So showing kids that they have a role in the world beyond them, the family is the first introduction to society for a child.

(38:31):

So part of our role as parents is to teach them how to be a functioning member of the family. It’s not just about feeling valued, it’s about knowing how to add value and that actually becomes this positive upward spiral. The more we add value, the more we feel valued, the more we feel valued, the more we want to add value. It really sets our kids up to thrive.

Dr. Sarah Bren (38:53):

Yes. I think that as you’re talking, I’m realizing this distinction between our kids, the difference between our kids believing that their feelings matter, which is very important and a separate thing, which is equally and perhaps undervalued right now or underappreciated is helping our kids understand that they matter in the sense that their gifts, what they have to offer, the value that they add matters when you have something within you that could impact your grandparent if you teach them how to do their email, right? You matter, your actions matter, you have a ripple effect, you impact. I wonder about, maybe I’m thinking mattering and having an impact are somewhat similar in that way.

Jennifer Wallace (39:48):

They are. It’s knowing that you make a positive impact on the world. I mean, we’re all going through this world and making an impact. What mattering tells us is we have agency to make that impact a positive one.

Dr. Sarah Bren (40:03):

Yeah. When you were interviewing people or working on all the research, did you find things that were helpful for parents to support their kids in building these skills?

Jennifer Wallace (40:16):

Well, I think it is obviously giving chores. It’s also helping them locate needs in their family, in their extended family and asking them sort of need focused questions like, “I think grandma’s lonely since Poppy died. What can we do? How can we support her?” Or, “I noticed our neighbor just had surgery and their newspapers never delivered right to their door. I wonder if we should think about helping them every morning, bringing that newspaper until they’re over the hump of the surgery.” So really looking for small needs to fill and teaching kids how to fill them and then connecting them to their impact. Because of you, this happened, because of you, grandma feels less lonely, because of you, this neighbor feels supported in our community. So connecting people to their impact.

Dr. Sarah Bren (41:10):

Yes, that’s so important because it’s not just helping them make the plan and do the thing. It’s helping them finish that task and look back and say, “Oh wow, I did that. Look at the impact it had.” That’s how doing something for someone else, making someone else feel matter, feel that they matter, is the full circle of us feeling we matter because when we look back and log that impact, close that loop, that’s where our own sense of mattering gets solidified.

Jennifer Wallace (41:41):

And we can do that with our friends or our colleagues. We can connect them to their impact. Because of you, this happened. If it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t have happened. And then there’s a small practice that you can do at night and when you’re closing your eyes, think about what’s one small way I added value today and what’s one small way? I felt valued. We are all wired with a negativity bias and so the negative is stickier to us than the good, but thinking about our impact, connecting to our impact even in small ways is how we override that bias.

Dr. Sarah Bren (42:14):

Yes. I feel like I’m going to add that to my little bedtime cuddle chat with my kids. I like to ask them questions at nighttime because they’re the most talkative at night because they don’t want to go to sleep. So I’m like, “I’m going to slide in all my good bits there.” But I’ll definitely be adding that to my roster of things I asked them about because I like that idea of closing that loop. I think it creates a felt sense of mattering versus sometimes we can keep going and we don’t log it. We could do the thing, but if we don’t log it, we don’t feel it.

Jennifer Wallace (42:51):

Exactly. I think of it as like an impact file. We can create an internal impact file or we could even just create a file where we save our thank you notes. When we’re feeling low, a low sense of mattering, we can connect to it again and we can remind ourselves that we really do matter.

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:11):

Yeah. Oh, I love that. You know what I realized? I have a folder in my drawer that is like notes that patients of mine have written me over the years and I keep them.

Jennifer Wallace (43:22):

Isn’t that amazing?

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:24):

I don’t think I ever realized that it was because it made me feel like I matter and I always keep my kids’ birthday cards because one day I want them to have a box of all these cards that their friends wrote them that said like, “You matter to me.”

Jennifer Wallace (43:42):

Oh, I love that.

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:44):

I love that. Thank you so much. This was such an interesting conversation. I’m really excited that you keep writing these phenomenal books. Please keep writing books. They’re always so just deep and no one’s talking about this stuff and you have such an amazing take on these things.

Jennifer Wallace (44:02):

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me back.

Dr. Sarah Bren (44:05):

Yes. Well, come back anytime and everyone please go get the book Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. Thank you so much, Jennie. It’s great to talk to you again.

Jennifer Wallace (44:18):

Oh, you too.

Dr. Sarah Bren (44:25):

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