444. The connection crisis: Why kids are struggling with friendship and what parents can do with Dr. Niobe Way

Dr. Niobe Way (00:00:00):

Even being securely attached in an antisocial culture doesn’t necessarily produce healthy relationships because everybody’s just trying to get on top and nobody’s curious with each other and they’re not using their skills to connect to other people.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:00:19):

One of the most important things that we can do for our children’s mental health is help them learn how to build and maintain meaningful relationships. Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah 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. Today, I’m joined by Dr. Niobe Way. Dr. Way is a developmental psychologist and professor at NYU who has spent nearly four decades studying the social and emotional development of children and adolescents with a particular focus on friendships, relationships, and human connection. She’s the author of several books, including Deep Secrets and Rebels With a Cause, and her newest book explores our social nature and what happens when we grow up in a culture that doesn’t always support it.

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Dr. Way’s research starts with a very fascinating premise. Children are born remarkably relationally intelligent. From a very young age, they have a natural capacity for which she describes as three essential qualities, care, cooperation, and curiosity. But as children grow up, something begins to shift. In this conversation, we explore what Dr. Way has discovered from following young people over time, including why so many adolescents begin to lose the deep vulnerable friendships that came so easy when they were younger and what that disconnection may mean for their mental health. We also talk about why, while secure attachment is an important foundation, it is only one piece of their larger social world. And we look at some of the subtle ways that our culture’s emphasis on achievement, independence, and success can actually compete with the very relational skills our children need to thrive. This episode will challenge you to think differently about friendship, mental health, and even what it means to prepare our children for success. And it offers a powerful reminder that helping our kids learn how to truly connect with other people may be one of the most important things that we can do to help them thrive.

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Dr. Way, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:02:45):

Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02:48):

I actually heard you give a talk a few months ago for the Westchester County Psychological Association, and I was so moved by your presentation that I was like, “I wonder if she would be willing to come on the podcast,” because it was just so incredibly enlightening about the research that you’ve done, the work you’ve done to help, I think, the academic world, but also the parenting and the general population understand about child development and social emotional learning in a totally different way.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:03:24):

Nice.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:03:24):

I’m thrilled to get to have a chance to talk to you and pick your brain about this.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:03:29):

I’m thrilled to be on the podcast because it’s right up my alley. It’s right what my work is all about. So it’s really a pleasure.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:03:37):

Yeah. So start maybe in that vein of, if people are not familiar with your work, what would you say are some of the biggest accomplishments that you feel like gets you lit up about what you’ve done in the field of understanding development?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:03:54):

Yeah. So I would say, so I started as a doctoral student at Harvard in the field of human development and psychology, which is really understanding, which relates to how I’ll answer your question, but I’ll do it a little bit roundabout. I’m a developmental psychologist, which is important. So what I’m interested in is how children and adolescents change over time. And in my case, I’m very interested in how the context shapes how they change. So developmental psychologists have typically historically looked at development out of context rather than in context. And what John Bolby and Mary Ainsworth did back in the starting the ’40s and ’50s with their attachment theory is they introduced the idea that context, including the mother matters to how we develop. We’re not just biological cells with no context. So the idea is that context matters. So I’ve been looking at how context matters since the late ’80s in the social emotional development of children.

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And I would say now to answer your question, young people tell us a story and I talk about it as a five part story. And today I’m hoping to talk about the first two parts and the last part, but I’ll quickly walk through. The five part story that young people have been teaching us, and this is mixed method data, so survey data, interview data. We hang out in schools a lot. So observational data, talking to parents, talking to young people, talking to all sorts of people as part of our research. You learn about our, first of all, the first part of the five part story I write in my new book for Harvard called Our Social Nature in an Antisocial Culture, a five part story. The first part of the story is that we are social by nature and we know that now through social neuroscience.

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But where we originally learned that story was from attachment theory from John Balby, from Mary Ainsworth in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s, that we are social animals, meaning that what that means is that at the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy of needs is connection. We need the connection to survive. We need it. We need each other to survive.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:06:07):

It’s just as important as food, shelter.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:06:11):

Well, this is the interesting thing.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:06:13):

Yeah.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:06:13):

Now people are saying it’s actually more important because you wouldn’t get food and water if you didn’t have the connection. You get what I’m saying?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:06:18):

Yes, that infant bond.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:06:21):

Yeah. They’re saying that actually the attachment, the bond, that someone’s taking care of you, relationship is actually more important than water and food because they give you water and food. And if you don’t have that, you’re not going to get the water and food. So to me, that’s so profound. It’s a real paradigm shift in the field of human development that we’re starting to see ourselves as social animals stemming from attachment theory. But also there’s been a century of research at this point, including my research, showing the importance of human relationships, friendships in my case, and what boys and young men taught me. And certainly girls and young women taught me this as well, but we didn’t think it was true with boys and young men, which is why I get so much attention around the boys and young men. That what they’re mostly starving for, mostly if not the only thing they’re starving for, and this is now I’m going to say to all young people because I’ve been now talking to all young people of all identities rather for a long time, is friendships, is meaningful connection, meaningful connection with each other. So the first part of the story is just that simple thing that we need each other.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:07:31):

Yes.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:07:32):

I’m going to just say it that way. We need each other, we want each other, we’re starving for each other.That’s our nature. That’s our social nature. Okay. The second part of the story is what I’m calling an antisocial culture and we’ll get there in the interview, but it’s a culture that actually doesn’t value our social nature. It values the me, me, me. It values all the things that actually don’t help us connect, money over people, all that kind of stuff. So it’s an antisocial culture. The third part of the story is the health consequences of what I call a cultural nature clash. So a culture that clashes with our nature, a culture that doesn’t value our basic social nature, which means it’s an antisocial culture. So that health consequences are depression, loneliness, physical health problems, all sorts of things that Vivek Murthy talked extensively about, but he didn’t talk about it stemming from a culture that we raise our children in a culture that clashes with their and our nature.

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I’m going to repeat that a lot in this interview. The fourth part of the story is the behavioral consequences of the cultural nature clash, which is eating disorders, substance use, suicide, violence, all the things when you’re raised in a culture that doesn’t nourish your nature, it gets produced. And then the fifth part, of course, which I’m hoping to get to in the interview is the solutions to create a pro-social culture, a culture that nourishes our nature. And so what do I mean by social nature? And I think I’m going to allude to something that you want to ask me about anyway. What I mean by social nature, and I’ll end the response to your question with the definition of social nature. So what I mean by social nature is specifically three elements that I find in the developmental research, but also in my own research with children, because I also do research with young children, is the human capacity to care for and about each other, the human capacity to cooperate with each other.

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You see that in three, four, five year olds. The caring, it’s not just mothers are caring for kids or fathers, it’s caring for each other. And they’re also caring for their mothers and fathers and siblings. So I don’t mean literally babysitting. I’m saying…

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:09:39):

No, but the care, the feelings, the emotion of caring.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:09:43):

Exactly. The emotion of care. And we don’t talk about that. We just talked about how parents care. Babies care, right? Babies are caring for their mom and dads and the way they’re responding, cooperating. And then the one that has been totally left out of the conversation entirely almost, but it’s so fundamental to three, four, and five year olds is curiosity. So it’s caring, cooperation and curiosity are the three elements of what makes us social animals, our natural capacity to be caring, cooperative and curious with each other.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:10:14):

And so what I’m hearing you say is that at birth, this is part of our biological genetic makeup, our evolutionary, how we got to be who we are in this world as a species. It creates this innate capacity for care, cooperation and curiosity. And that also facilitates the bond. That helps create the context for which secure attachment can really happen.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:10:46):

Absolutely. I mean, and that’s a nice way I would have framed it that way, but that’s exactly what I mean. It’s basically we’re born that way. And I just want to say to the audience, because it’s so important, this is not what I believe, like some idea that I believe we’re born that way. This is empirical studies from developmental psychology that very few people know this. We study babies from the moment of birth. We study babies. We study what they do. We have data that one year olds prefer watching other people that help other people rather than people who don’t help. So we have data from the very first year of life that we want to be around people that help other people. We do these experiments that are fascinating, you can read about it in my new book, but these experiments where we actually watch where babies, where they feel happy, what environments they feel happy and they feel happy. Research shows that they feel happy when they are in environments where they are watching some people helping other people.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:11:47):

And that they can comprehend that.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:11:49):

Yeah. Well, we don’t really know whether they’re comprehending, but we can see that they’re enjoying it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:11:54):

But they must be able to discern because you’re showing them scenarios that they can with significant effect show a preference for.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:12:02):

Exactly. Exactly. So they must be able to process it. And in context when there’s sort of an experiment where the person doesn’t help the other person, the baby, the young child will turn away, will look distressed. I mean, it’s incredible. We are so, so, so social. I know. So the caring, you see the caring in the first year of life, you see the cooperation. We think three year olds are super uncooperative. It’s just not true. They’re cooperating all the time with their parents, with their siblings, with their peers in school when they go to pre-K, you see all these beautiful acts of cooperation. And then of course you see the thing that everybody talks about, the curiosity that starts at two, the why, why, why, wanting to know, asking unbelievably brilliant questions.

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A three-year-old says to her uncle, “Does what go on in your brain the same as mine because we’re from the same family?” I mean, that’s a brilliant question. Does your brain actually think the same things because we’re connected? I mean, that’s a three-year-old. I know. We’re in the world for three years, and that’s her question. And you have four-year-olds asking their moms, why do you. A mother was going through a divorce and she was putting on a happy face with her son because she didn’t want her son to live in a sad household, of course. And so she put on her happy face and the son said immediately, “Mommy, why do you smile when you’re feeling sad?” Ashley basically saying, “Why are you faking an emotion?” I mean, come on, that’s four or five years old. They’re asking the most profound questions to their mother, “Why are you faking an emotion?” So we’re born with this incredible curiosity, wanting to know, sense of wonder about the other person.

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And that’s the third part of the social nature that we have completely neglected in our antisocial culture. We are the most incurious society, probably in our history. And I don’t mean intellectually curious, which we are not very intellectually curious either, but what I’m talking about is interpersonal curiosity, which is what I’m trying to introduce into the field, is that interpersonal curiosity is the curiosity we naturally have about each other. And that becomes what you’ll learn about in my newest book is that becomes the secret sauce of all human connection because it’s ultimately, it’s certainly the care, it’s certainly cooperation. But honestly, Sarah, it’s the curiosity that you have about what can you teach me not only about you, but about me through you, right? Because what the children are asking…

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:14:39):

Which is such a sophisticated. It speaks to this innate connectedness because – Completely. These kids are showing this capacity in a way that in their developmental timeline definitely predates a lot of their abstract thinking that we look at in academic and more sort of reading, mathematics and that kind of cognitive development. They’re able to communicate that they’re understanding these complex social abstractions much earlier, which to me says it’s a totally different intelligence as you’re thinking.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:15:28):

Absolutely. But this is the thing. We don’t even have the thing called relational intelligence because emotional intelligence as big emotionally intelligence researchers have told me is very me focused. It’s about me regulating my emotions. It’s about me reading other people’s emotions. It’s relational intelligence, which is what we also are born with, the capacity to. Perspective taking is relational intelligence. We do have that. But the notion of relational intelligence, that perspective taking is necessary for relational intelligence. That insight is a new insight in my field. Really? Think about how profound that is, because we don’t even have the concept of relational intelligence. So we’ve never made the insight because we’ve never thought about relational intelligence. The intelligence that’s necessary for human to human connection. I’m going to say it should be the most shocking thing to your listeners. We are just now developing what I’m calling the science of human connection, which means what are the cognitive, social, and emotional skills necessary for human to human connection?

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What are not just the social emotional skills, the cognitive skills, perspective taking, for example. What are the skills necessary for both people to feel connected to another person? Believe it or not, 2026 is the beginning, basically, I’m being a little loose with the numbers and you could probably grab research back in attachment theory that was starting to suggest those things, but not just research on so your listeners understand, not just research about the importance of human connection. We’ve been doing that for a long time. We’ve been doing that almost for a century, but I’m talking about the skills necessary. We talk about skills necessary.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:17:07):

Like deconstructing it into its essential elements. What’s actually happening in the brain from a cognitive standpoint that is allowing us to have and demonstrate these relational skills and demonstrate relational intelligence? You talk about perspective taking, metacognition, theory of mind. Are there other.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:17:28):

Well, remember it’s cognitive, social, and emotional. I’m glad you came up with metacognition because I always say that. Metacognition and theory of mind is two cognitive ones. Emotional ones are of course emotional regulation because when you’re talking even right now, I’m regulating my emotion because I have a lot of emotion behind communicating something that we’re not listening to and that has huge impact. So I’m right now regulating. So emotional regulation is important to communicate, containing your emotion, meaning being able to talk coherently so you’re not consumed with emotion, but also emotional sensitivity, that’s a skill. Emotional sensitivity. I’m trying to pay attention to the fact that you have questions for me so that I’m trying to make my response, answer your questions, but also allow you space to respond. That’s emotional sensitivity that you have needs in this interview that I need to respect while we engage.

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And then social skills are obvious. Curiosity is a social skill, what your questions are. You’re curious about me and I’m curious about your questions. And if we were friends, then I’d be curious about you too, of course. But the idea is that those are cognitive, social, emotional, and we have only focused on breaking down what is academic achievement, what’s necessary for academic achievement or to be successful in life or to be all those outcomes that I call come from an antisocial culture that doesn’t care about our social nature. We’ve never looked as an outcome. I’m laughing because it’s so ridiculous. As an outcome, what are the skills necessary and how do we enhance those skills, the cognitive, social, emotional to build meaningful human connection and we naturally have these skills and then we lose them growing up in what my daughter calls an asshole culture. But it’s a perfect phrase. It’s true.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:19:18):

I know. So, I have a question for you because I’m listening. It’s funny because you’re talking about this emotional sensitivity and perspective taking. And when I’m doing interviews, I’m always both trying to connect with the person I’m interviewing, but I’m also trying to connect with the listener that’s not here while we’re recording, but I’m holding them in my mind. And so I’ve got my questions and then I have the interjecting questions that I imagine a mom listening to this podcast might have. And one that keeps popping in my mind is like, okay, if I’m a parent and I’ve been hearing for years about, “Oh, we need to teach SEL. We need to teach social emotional learning. My school might have a little lunch bunch that teaches that.” What’s the difference between the SEL programs that people are kind of like. It seems to be sort of like there in the background and it’s not totally clear what it is and it’s pretty inconsistent what the content of it is depending on what school district you’re in or if it’s even in your schools versus the research that you are doing on relational intelligence.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:20:29):

Yeah. It’s a fantastic question. It’s so important. Remember in my field and in the field of social science and the study of children, certainly, it’s all about what outcome variable you’re focused on. And by outcome variable means what’s your goal in your research? All the stuff on SEL and even the ESEL programs, which obviously I have many positive things to say, but I’m going to still say how we’re different, is it’s geared in schools, which means the outcome is academic achievement. So in the name of academic achievement, SEL has basically become what are the skills necessary to do well in the classroom? You get what I’m saying? So it’s a heavy emphasis on emotional regulation, heavy, heavy emphasis in SEL programs on emotional regulation. Also a heavy emphasis on working memory, right? I mean, all the cognitive skills that are necessary for academic achievement, because guess what?

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It’s in schools. So they’re trying to embed it in how teachers teach. My outcome is not academic achievement. My outcome is healthy human relationships. So to me, the reason why emotional sensitivity is not embedded into SEL programs, the reason why interpersonal curiosity is not embedded into SEL programs is because their outcome is academic achievement. And we don’t see emotional sensitivity, although it should be, emotional sensitivity and interpersonal curiosity as relevant to academic outcomes. Now, I’m going to criticize that because it should be, but the point is that it’s the outcome variable. So if you make the outcome variable, and I’m going to sound like a scientist because that’s how our knowledge is categorized, is what is our outcome variable? What are you trying to understand? So if your outcome variable, which is what my outcome variable is, inspired by listening to young people since 1987, where all they want to do is talk about friendships and relationships and the struggle to find meaningful friendships.

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I mean, around thousands of kids around the world at this point, I mean, I do these longitudinal studies where it’s all the same kid and you hear them more likely have it in early adolescence and then lose it, go through a crisis of connection as they get older, that my outcome variable, so to speak, is connection, human connection. So then the question is, what are we learning from young people about the skills necessary for connection? And that’s why I concluded from the research in my new book, Care, Cooperation and Curiosity are necessary for human to human connection. And I would say all. And I’m going to say something complicated, but your audience will appreciate it. Caring, cooperation and curiosity are inherently cognitive, social, and emotional skills. All three. Caring has to take perspective taking metacognition, emotional regulation, emotional sensitivity, right? Cooperation, definitely. Cooperation, perspective taking, metacognition.

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And for your listeners, just so they know, metacognition is the capacity to think about thinking and starting at about three years old, we can do that. That example with the brain of her uncle, that’s metacognition. Then curiosity is a cognitive skill, perspective taking, social and emotional skills. So all of those, our social nature is inherently cognitive, social, emotional skills that we could be teaching. So I’m going to say something surprising. When we teach higher level math, we’re teaching skills that are related to human to human connection. Can you tell me why you think that is? When we’re teaching how to think about thinking mathematically. What skill, right? There you go.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:24:05):

Metacognition because you’re thinking about. Okay. So you can tell I didn’t do a lot of higher level statistics.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:24:12):

No, because it’s not intuitive. It was intuitive to us when we were four, but we grow up and it’s no longer intuitive.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:24:18):

Well, that’s actually something I was really curious about because I want to get to your chapter five and the solutions because I think that people are going to be very hungry for that. But I also, you have talked. So you’ve done these longitudinal studies. You’ve looked at patterns in the development. You did a lot of research specifically around boys and young male adolescents, but also with girls as well. And there are these patterns that you have talked about in your research that kind of emerge across the developmental timeline that relate to, and you just mentioned one a little bit, the crisis of connection that starts to happen that’s being reported in later adolescence. But you described this developmental evolution arc of how children relate to and reflect upon their own relationships. And I thought it would be very useful to hear you describe that because I think it will help us understand what the solutions are going to be hitting because…

Dr. Niobe Way (00:25:21):

Definitely. Yeah. Okay. So let me walk through very quickly the findings. And by the way, it’s not that I focused on boys and young men, it’s that they were telling a story that we weren’t listening to. So my studies have always been all kids, regardless of their identities, are part of my studies. But it was the boys and young men that began telling me a story in the early ’90s that still nobody’s listened to. So I’ll tell you the story that that story actually led to my five part story because you’ll see a five part story in the boys’ data. Okay. So the finding is essentially there’s four primary findings that suggest this. It’s too many numbers here, but anyway, there’s four aspects of the findings. Okay. The first one is that boys talk frequently about friendships, wanting friendships, sometimes having friendships, but not just any friendships, what I call deep secret friendships.

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So especially when boys are 12, 13, 14, it’s called early adolescence. They’re talking a lot about the desire for these deep secret friendships where they can be vulnerable without being laughed at. And so they essentially say it in a blunt way. They sound just like girls in their desire for friendships in that sense of looking for that intimacy. So when we have the stereotype that boys like to play sports and girls like to talk, it’s just not the case. Boys are…

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:26:45):

When they say they want deep secret friendships, does that mean I feel so comfortable and safe with you? I could tell you my deepest secret?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:26:52):

Absolutely. But I would say something even more obvious, but we don’t pay attention to it as adults. They don’t want to be laughed at when they express something that’s vulnerable. And boys around the world talk about they don’t want to be laughed at or made something into a joke, what they said into a joke when they share something. So it’s literally, yes, they want to feel safe, but they name the behavior that gets in the way.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:27:18):

Are they saying that they crave this and they’re not finding it or they love that they have this?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:27:24):

In early adolescence, they say both. Sometimes they talk about wanting it. Sometimes they talk about having it. That’s early adolescence. Then remember I do longitudinal studies. So the very same kids I interview repeatedly for four or five years. So the next year or the next couple years in the middle adolescence, you start to hear what I call middle to late adolescence. You start to hear a crisis of connection where even the boys who said they had those friendships are starting to distance themselves saying it’s hard to sort of find a friend who you can trust in that way. You’re starting to hear a sort of checking out boys who were looking for it saying, “I no longer look anymore. I can’t find anybody like that.” You hear this crisis of connection that you also hear the depression and the sadness in their quotes in terms of talking about friendships.

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So you hear what I call the crisis of connection. And then finally, the finding that you have in sort of late adolescence is you start to hear what’s at the root of the crisis of connection, which is essentially an antisocial culture. So boys will say things like, “It might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn’t have to be emotionless.” And in that quote, what they’re showing is that a culture that thinks that emotions are girly. They also say it’s not just manhood that we equate with not being girly, so-called girly, it’s also maturity. So they’ll say, “I’m mature now. I don’t need to share my feelings.” And if you don’t think you need to share your feelings, you’re going to have a hard time having close relationships. So the third pattern we hear is that notion of the reasons for the crisis of connection, which is a culture that doesn’t nourish our social nature and our social needs, including our emotional life.

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Not just for boys, by the way, for girls now at this point. Girls are now reporting feeling the pressures to man up almost as much as boys at this point, because essentially this antisocial culture, which is a longer conversation, Sarah, is really privileging what we’ve deemed masculine over what we’ve deemed feminine. And that’s partly related to the curiosity part that we’ll get to in our intervention. But the idea is that we really only value what we deem hard over what we deem soft skills. So thinking over feeling me over we, autonomy over connection. All of those values in our society, modern society, are deeply antisocial because naturally we want autonomy and connection. We think and feel that the me and the we are equally important, but we put it on a hierarchy. And that’s what we privilege in parenting. And if I’m sounding too academic, you can immediately make it about a parent.

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Academic achievement over having friendships. A study at Harvard’s found 80% of parents report valuing. Their kids report that their parents value academic achievement over kindness. I mean, a very, very hard over soft society that I’m calling antisocial.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:30:24):

It’s interesting because I would imagine that those same parents might report the opposite, but if you’re giving parents a survey that’s like, most parents identify as prioritizing kindness over achievement. But would your kids say you prioritize the same based on do you walk the walk or talk the talk? And I feel like we’re all guilty of that because we all have our own internalized anxieties and pressures around what happens if we don’t succeed and achieve. And it’s like this very tricky thing to get out of, but…

Dr. Niobe Way (00:31:12):

No, but it shouldn’t be tricky because the reason why it’s tricky for us, because it’s tricky for me too, it’s tricky for all parents, is because we still, our starting point, so to speak, are the base of the Maslow hierarchy is still we’re thinking it’s something other than relationships. If we understood that it’s only. I always say to parents, and I’ll say it again and I’m going to give the fourth pattern in a second because it relates to what I’m about to say. But parenting should only be focused on helping your children have healthy relationships. That’s it. Everything else will fall into place. Everything else will fall into place.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:31:45):

You found my soapbox.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:31:47):

I’m just saying that’s it. That’s it. That’s the only thing we should be focused on because ultimately once you know how to have healthy relationships, that means with your teacher, that means with all sorts of people. So everything else will fall into place. You’ll be able to get the help you need if you are struggling academically. I mean, all those kinds of things, having healthy relationships. And so the fourth finding that’s as important as what I just said is that what young people teach us, but particularly boys and young men, is that the mental health is not the problem. Mental health is a symptom of the problem, of a social health problem. We are so antisocial that we don’t even have the concept of social health in our public health discussions. We just have mental health and physical health.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:32:28):

Not a phrase that I even hear people talking about.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:32:31):

Most people don’t even know what I’m talking about. They’ll say, “What is social health?” And it’s stunning. Vivek Murthy used the word loneliness, but the problem with loneliness is it sounds just like a group of people that are lonely. Social health is what we all need. And in California, I’m now on the first council for social health, statewide council initiated by the governor’s office in California. It’s the first one of its kind. We want to have it go in all states across the country to bring together the resources around social health and to integrate it into our understanding of public health across the state. I’m just saying that was taught to us by young people, the importance of our social health. And we find in our research, I’m going to give you one story that your listeners will like. We find in our research again and again and again and again that social health predicts mental health.

(00:33:18):

I’ll give a story of 10 year olds. I’m standing in a room, this is two months ago, very recently, and it’s a group of 10 year olds, about a hundred from a private school near Philadelphia. I said to them just sort of, because I always do this with kids, I always ask them a researchy kind of question because they can always answer them. People always assume they won’t be able to answer them. I said, “What’s the predictor of mental health?”That’s all I said. They hadn’t seen my findings yet. I just opened, I’m a professor at NYU. First question I’m going to ask you, what’s the predictor of mental health? So a boy, a fifth grade boy raises his hand and says, “How you’re treated by others.” I started laughing and all the teachers started laughing because they know my findings. I said, “Well, I’ve spent almost four decades getting a lot of money to have that research finding that it’s relationships that predict the quality of your relationships that predict your mental health.” The kids started laughing at that point because they got it.

(00:34:17):

Then one boy said, “But it’s just so obvious how people treat you and how your friends treat you. If they don’t treat you well, you’re not going to feel good about yourself.” I just thought, “Sarah, why are the adults not listening to that?” The reason I know that they’re not listening is because we treat mental health as go see a therapist or in some cases, in the more extreme cases, obviously we put kids on medication. But the point is I’m just saying if we understood it was a social. Social health predicts mental health. That’s the big final fourth finding. Again and again over many decades, I repeatedly find that. So if we’re going to solve for mental health that we all care about, if we’re going to solve for stress related diseases, we got to improve social health.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:35:09):

I want to pause here for a minute because I think this conversation really highlights something that so many families are experiencing right now. Just like Dr. Way is talking about, there is a growing crisis of connection, adding to the increased rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness among kids and teens. At our practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we work with families to understand what may be contributing to their child’s struggles and find the right kind of support to help them feel more connected, confident, and emotionally healthy. Sometimes that support means working directly with a child or adolescent who is struggling with excessive worries, sadness, friendship challenges, self-esteem struggles, or feelings of disconnection. Sometimes the most effective place to start is with parents. As parents, we have an incredibly important role in our children’s emotional and relational world. With parenting support, we can help you understand what’s happening underneath the behaviors you’re seeing, think through what your child may need from you, and figure out how to support them without feeling like you have to fix everything for them.

(00:36:13):

So if you’ve been worried about your child or you’ve had that nagging feeling that something just isn’t quite right, you don’t have to wait until things reach a crisis point to reach out. You can visit us at upshurbren.com to learn more about our therapy and parenting support services and schedule a free 30 minute consultation with our member of our concierge care team. That’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E-N.com or you can click the link in the episode description. Okay, let’s get back to my conversation with Dr. Niobe Way

(00:36:49):

Can I ask a question about attachment then? I’ve said similar things. You’re obviously putting this in the context of friendships as a marker of social health, but I have always sort of said to parents, if you work on the attachment security, there’s a lot of noise in parenting and if that’s the signal through the noise, if you pay attention to creating a secure attachment and creating that blueprint for safe and responsive relationships, then a lot of the rest of the things we worry about as parents kind of falls into place. And so I’m curious, the way I’ve always though about it is those initial relationships, those initial primary attachment relationships create a bit of a blueprint for these building blocks for peer relationships later on in life. Are you finding that kids who have. Is there research that looks at attachment security in early childhood with the social health, with peer relationships later?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:37:52):

Yeah, absolutely. There’s almost a century of research showing the link between early attachment and better quality relationships later in life. And I write about it a lot in my new book, so that’s definitely known. However, this is the problem. If you live in a larger culture, sort of macro level culture that’s antisocial that doesn’t value that, even if you’re securely attached, even if you’re securely attached, you’re going to do better off than when you’re not securely attached. But the reality is fighting a culture that privileges money over people, that only gives the prizes, that only pays a living wage if you’re a banker versus a social worker. The idea is all the messages we get is to be successful, you have to privilege the heart over the soft. To be taken seriously, you have to privilege the heart over the soft. So attachment, definitely it’s a protective factor.

(00:38:43):

It’s definitely a protective factor. But the point is that we have to stop, we have to push ourselves to recognize that even being attached, securely attached in an antisocial culture doesn’t necessarily produce healthy relationships because everybody’s just trying to get on top and nobody’s curious with each other and they’re not using their skills to connect to other people. I would say that my limitation of the attachment literature, even though I’m deeply grounded in it, is that it really just focuses on the relationship with parents or the primary caretakers or people who are very close to you. The reality is that when I say social health, I’m talking about dyadic relationships, group relationships, team relationships at work, at school. I’m talking about all your relationships. Are you someone who’s emotionally sensitive when you’re in the classroom so that you don’t say something that’s going to be super offensive to the person next to you and then trigger them and then make them feel defensive?

(00:39:38):

I’m not saying don’t disagree, but that you can agree in a way that doesn’t trash another person and then ultimately make them feel dehumanized. I’m not talking about just meaningful connection when I say social health. I’m talking about being able to use our caring, cooperative, curious skills to promote social health and other people too. So the idea of being socially healthy, this is the core thing. Nobody said this, by the way, I learned this from young people. If we make social health once again, just like we do mental health, only an individual level variable, we run into the same problem because then it’s like, “Well, I have social health, but you don’t.” I feel like I belong, but you don’t. Then the kid who’s been picked on in class doesn’t have social health and I have social health. You get what I’m saying? Right. You have to see social health as a relational and collective thing so that are you spending time in your life promoting social health, not only having it, but promoting it in others, and that’s social health.

(00:40:41):

Are you helping people feel heard? Are you helping people be included? Are you promoting people? I had to define it for the state of Utah. They were trying to pass a bill. It was very hard to define, but I realized you need to define it as relational, as the idea is that you are helping nourish the social health of others as well as your own. And so that’s the only way to promote social health is because you’re modeling it, right? You’re modeling how things are done. My quick answer to your question is it has to go beyond attachment. Yes, we need that secure attachment. Not all children have that, of course. But the point is that if you live in a society that fosters our social health, a pro-social culture, my guess is there’d be more children that didn’t have the luck of parents or caretakers that could nourish secure attachment, but could still have healthy relationships, more likely.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:41:41):

Right. Because those blueprints can be edited and they have definitely shown that if it doesn’t happen with the parents, it can happen with a teacher or a neighbor or a grandparent, but that rewrites, edits the blueprint.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:41:56):

But it also can happen with a peer, it can happen with a boyfriend, with a girlfriend when you’re in your 20s. I mean, the point is, but if it’s in a culture that’s promoting social health, that’s valuing our social nature. I mean, Sarah, let’s just put it bluntly, that’s valuing our social nature, not just the me, me, what can I share with about me? What can I share about me? But actually, what can I learn about you? Then the whole idea of being securely attached, secure attachment was seen as a sort of icing on the cake, not the cake. You know what I mean?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:42:27):

Right. So that’s a good segue, I think, into talking a little bit about, okay, parents have more control over their relationship with their kid. They have less control over their peer relationships and what happens outside the home. They have even less control over the social zeitgeist, but there are things that parents can do to support the social intelligence, social cognitions and relational intelligence and all of this. So what are some of the things that we can do as parents to support this in our kids and to support it in the larger society?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:43:03):

So first of all, I’m going to say something very, very obvious and parents are going to think, “Well, I knew that already,” but we don’t know this already. You have to, first of all, value it. So even though all parents may say they do, when push comes to shove of getting into the best school, even though you’re going to remove the kid from all his friends, but you’re going to put him in the best school, even though he has to. You reconsider that decision because if he’s going to leave all his friends and it’s a decent school, may not be the best, but it’s a decent school, maybe it’s better to leave him in the decent school than put him in a totally unknown space where he knows nobody and he’s leaving all his friends. So walking the walk with valuing our social nature and valuing care, cooperation and curiosity.

(00:43:48):

And you could make the whole home, your whole home life all around centered around those values. So not just caring about yourself, not just caring about your sister, but caring about the boy in class who’s being picked on and talking through about how that little kids want to talk about when they see things that are negative. So allowing kids to talk about thinking about why kids get bullied. We did that a lot when the kids were. I made a lot of mistakes, but one of the things I did right when the kids were young was about just having a lot of conversations about when people were being bullied, to have discussions with young kids about why kids get bullied and how oftentimes it’s a lonely kid who bullies, who’s looking for friends and trying to get it through being tough.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:44:35):

That’s so interesting because I actually feel like a lot of times. I mean, I’m a clinical psychologist, I work with kids. A lot of times the bullies are coming to see me and I actually get to see inside the experience of the bully and they’re in so much pain and they’re hurting and so desperately trying to connect and are failing and they know it and they’re digging deeper and deeper and deeper and actually helping. I obviously want my kids to have empathy and be an inclusive kid and to go help the kid sitting by themselves and the kid that’s getting picked on and stand up for them. But I also really do try to help my kid not alienate or vilify the bully to really think about it as a holistic, that kid’s having a really hard time being kind right now. I wonder what’s going on for them.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:45:32):

If you understand that we’re naturally caring, cooperative and curious, when kids do bad things, the question should be what happened to them? Because if we really believe, my first request for all parents is you really have to believe that we’re naturally caring, cooperative and curious. So if someone’s doing something bad, the question should be asked with your kids is why? What’s happening that makes a naturally caring boy turn into an ugly boy who’s saying mean things and doing mean things and then talking about it as a way to care, not just again for your friends but to care about everybody to different degrees. If someone’s mean to you, you don’t have to care about them, but you have to understand that basically trying to humiliate them is not going to solve the problem because they’re already feeling humiliated in their own way, which is why they’re picking on you.

(00:46:25):

So I’m not doing the sort of simplistic, “Oh, just forgive them.” I’m saying you can be angry at people who are picking on you, but understand that the question should be how do you get them to hear your anger in a way that you can also hear that they’re angry too, which is why they’re picking on you. So the idea is that care is complicated. How do you care about people that are being mean to you? Well, it’s not the same kind of care, but I want my kids to care, to care why people are mean. And then thinking about how do you help kids who are mean be less mean, be less mean with each other. And so caring, cooperating, I do this in classrooms, you could do this in the home too. Someone who’s being uncooperative in the classroom, even college students, the ones that never talk, I always check with them beforehand before I do this, but I will oftentimes put them in charge of a group where they get to be decide like the kid who never talks sits in the back of the classroom.

(00:47:24):

I will say, “Okay, I’m going to divide up the class into three groups and I want you, the kid who never talks, you lead the group.” Which is what I’m doing is I’m saying, “I already know why you’re not participating. It’s not because you’re a bad kid, you’re not a bad student. You’re feeling intimidated for whatever reason, you’re feeling like you can’t participate. So I’m going to give you the permission to take charge.” Now they can always say to me, “I don’t want to do it.” But guess what, Sarah? They never do. They never do. They always rise to the occasion once I give him. And I always check ahead of time that I’m going to do it so they don’t frozen. But the point is I’ve never said, “No, I don’t want to do it.” So cooperating, getting the kids that are being mean with each other to work together in a group and then putting the victim as in charge. You get what I’ saying?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:48:11):

Yes. Like trying to help rearrange the structure.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:48:15):

Rearrange the whole structure in the home too. Basically figure out how the young people can teach the older people things that they know. Put the five-year-old in charge of teaching about niceness, that they be the one to call out their older siblings when they’re not being nice. And then they have a family conversation about why it wasn’t nice with the five-year-old leading it. You get what I’m saying? So you’re mixing up. Curiosity is just a no-brainer, and that’s what we’ve been focusing on for 15 years. Is that basically encouraging in the home, I’m going to say this really repeatedly and loudly, is encouraging curiosity and not just about why the sun looks like it rises and et cetera, but actually about each other. I’m not talking about tell me about the details of your friends that moms ask and I ask of my children all the time and they don’t want to share.

(00:49:11):

Ask being curious about the things that your children are doing, but not judgmentally curious. So when they’re following someone on Instagram and you’re focused on getting them off Instagram, start from a different place. Start from understanding who they’re following and then why they’re following these people in a nonjudgmental way. Because what happens with curiosity is when you start to enter into what they’re curious about, what they’re about, who they are, who they are, they start to feel seen and guess what happens when they feel seen? Sarah, what would you guess? What happens with someone psychologically when they feel seen?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:49:48):

They open up and they start to be curious about you?

Dr. Niobe Way (00:49:51):

Of course. Of course. So all of a sudden you get questions from your kids about you because that’s always struck me how kids are so incurious about their parents, who their parents are. But it’s because we’re incurious with them, right? All we’re asking them is, did you do. I mean, this is what I write about, but my big error as a parent was I spent basically four years when my daughter was in high school asking her, did she do her homework and how’d she do on her test? I mean, those are my own questions essentially. And I just think of how many parents do that because we’re anxious. We want our child to do well, to get in a good college, et cetera. But the reality is that’s a form of torture because that’s not curious, that’s just judgment. Did you perform well or did you not perform well?

(00:50:33):

Did you do what you were supposed to do or did you not? But if you enter into their world and whatever they’re. I don’t care what they’re interested, but even including social media, enter into their world. Just enter in their world and try to understand. And I learned so much when I started asking questions about my daughter, she would follow people on TikTok, including people I didn’t approve of, like young women who were showing her how to put on makeup. I just though it was such a waste of time. And so I started asking her why she followed this young woman, detailed description of how you put on mascara, et cetera, et cetera. I said, “Why do you follow her all the time? I mean, you don’t even wear that much makeup, so why do you follow her?” She said, “Mom, I really like her voice.

(00:51:12):

It super soothes me. So when I feel stressed out, I listen to her because her voice just calms me down.” I just though, “How gorgeous that she had found something as a calming force of just a woman’s voice talking about something sort of simple.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:51:29):

Right. But I can imagine as a parent, we’re coming at this from. Even if our intention’s curiosity, we might be driven by some judgment, right? I don’t want you watching this influencer on TikTok. Why are you doing this? And what is so special about her?” And when they say it honestly, “Well, her voice is soothing.” I can imagine as a parent just sort of melting a little bit and being like, “Oh, now I’m curious about you.” And my judgment really did melt. And now I’m like, “I want to know more.”

Dr. Niobe Way (00:51:57):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:51:57):

There’s this bidirectional curiosity that truly comes from this dialogue of like, “Wait, tell me more. What is it about her voice that’s soothing and what else do you find soothing?” Now we’re having this really interesting conversation that’s very connected because I’m really relating to you and you’re really feeling seen authentically.

(00:52:18):

And it started by talking about the thing that most parents just by default mode shut down. There’s one other thing you were saying that I was like, “Oh man, I feel like I’ve so relate to that as a parent where I’m like,” Did you do your homework? Did you eat your lunch? “But for me, yes, of course, it’s certainly driven in part by,” Oh, I’m anxious that you need to do all these things to be successful. “But also what’s really driving that is my need of did I do my job? Is my job done? My job is to make sure you do all the things. And if I have checked off those boxes that I can relax. And so I do think some of our badgering is over identifying with our children’s movement through the world.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:53:08):

Okay. So I wouldn’t say over. I reject all pathologizing of any parent because I do think we’re all trying to do our best, even though we can make mistakes, including me. So I would say it’s rough. I’m just going to say this because I’m a mother, you’re a mother. It’s rough being a parent in an antisocial culture where all the benefits goes to privileging the heart over the soft money over people. All the benefits goes to that child who goes to Harvard, who becomes a banker, who becomes. I mean, basically it’s hard. It’s hard because we’re social by nature. And so we’re having to raise our children and go against our nature. So it’s hard. And so we do things that are a reflection of an antisocial culture, meaning we forget what we know. We forget what we know. If we actually fostered as a culture, meaning, and we’ve been doing in classrooms, fostering a project called the listening with curiosity project where we’re actually nurturing.

(00:54:05):

We have a whole 26 lesson curriculum where we’re nurturing in English classrooms, in humanities classrooms, embedded in the normal curriculum, where we’re nurturing that capacity to look at each other with wonder and learn from each other about each other, but also about the subject material, whatever it is, just engaging with each other. And it’s a practice. There’s nine practices of listening with curiosity that’s all written about in my rebels with a cause book. But the idea is that once we start that curiosity project, it makes it easier for moms too and for dads too, because all of a sudden they realize that they haven’t been curious even with their partner, even with their husband or their wife or their girlfriend or their mom, their own mom. And so it all of a sudden opens up, but you see this in my students because I teach the method in college students too.

(00:54:52):

They all of a sudden realize they don’t know anything about their parents or they don’t know anything even about their best friend, that they know where they came from, et cetera, and they know what classes they’re taking and they know which boyfriend they’re dating, but they don’t know their favorite childhood memory. They don’t know what values they have. You’re going to love this, Sarah. There’s a study we did by my doctoral student, Rachel Taft, who she asked college students at NYU what questions they wish people would ask them, parents, teachers and friends, what questions, different people, what questions you wish they would ask you. Most of the questions were things like, which is mind blowing, “What do you value? What do you care about? Why do you care about that?” I mean, such basic questions. And when we asked them, “Why do you want those people to ask you those questions?” They said, “To be seen as I see myself, not how you stereotype me to be.” So think about it.

(00:55:51):

Part of our antisocial culture is that we’re stereotyping each other all the time. Because you’re a woman, you must want to talk about relationships. Because you’re a guy, you must want to talk about sports. When in fact, none of us are stereotypes, right? We all are complicated human beings. So questions actually break down stereotypes, including the one we have of our children, and including the ones that our children have of us. So once you start to nourish curiosity, not just with your kids, but with yourself, with your partner, with your friends, with your life work, and questions are not, “Tell me about your trauma,” because at this point we’re overexposed in that way. But the idea is just simply things like, this is another favorite question of young adults too. Tell me about your first name. People will say, “Nobody ever asked me.” Even if your name is Nancy, they want to know that.

(00:56:49):

They said, “There’s actually a history to me being called Nancy.” So they say once you ask them about their first name, they all of a sudden feel like a part of their identity is seen. And nobody’s ever asked them about their first name, regardless of what it is. So I’m just saying, we are so curious that we’re not asking the most basic things to come to know each other, and mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers should start with not just with their children, but with everybody in their lives, everybody in their lives. And another…

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:57:18):

Well, what’s poignant…

Dr. Niobe Way (00:57:18):

Yeah, go ahead.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:57:19):

What’s poignant to me is that I feel like as you’re starting to practice these skills of curiosity and really connecting to the people in our lives and ourselves, our internal dialogue with more care, and the beautiful thing is it builds this web of skills. If you practice this…

Dr. Niobe Way (00:57:41):

Totally.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:57:41):

It transcends the parent-child relationship. It’s like, “Oh, great, your friendships could be healthier. Your small talk with the barista when you get your coffee could be healthier.” And all of a sudden it spreads. There’s a potential massive ripple effect of practicing these skills.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:57:59):

Empirically, just for all those people who do have the goal of academic achievement, also we find our data that these skills help with academic engagement, which is totally what you’re saying, because all of a sudden, when you start leading with curiosity, everything becomes a question. And guess what that means? Academic engagement. So we see a sharp rise after our curriculum in an English class, in an English class with academic engagement. We also see incredibly improved writing skills because one of the things you do in writing is expressive writing. Once you write with curiosity, guess what happens? You become a better writer because you start to understand that what you just said actually didn’t answer your question. So you need to figure out.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:58:45):

You also imagine the reader of your writing because you’re thinking about others. Yeah. But it’s funny because you were saying earlier that the way we’ve historically structured social emotional learning has been for the outcomes of academic achievement. And so in the function of thinking, well, the outcome variable is academic achievement in the classroom, so we’re teaching social emotional learning that is related to that skillset. But the funny thing is we omitted the core thing that would actually result in the true academic benefits.

Dr. Niobe Way (00:59:21):

Exactly. And perspective taking and metacognition. I mean, it’s not only that. I already explained that. It’s also social emotional skills, but I’m just saying perspective taking and metacognition is relevant to everything, including human-human connection. And think about it. I’m going to say one other thing. So apparently, according to nationwide data, I read this in the New Yorker magazine, one of the universities, I forget which, did a nationwide study that shows that our capacity to see the perspective of the other person is declining. It’s declining.

(00:59:56):

We’re not taking. I mean, it’s Ridiculous that I have to say this. We are not taking perspective taking seriously because we think it’s a soft skill. We think perspective taking is a soft skill. Learning math is a hard skill. But guess what? You need perspective taking to learn math because perspective taking is. I mean, it’s all perspective taking. It’s all being able to think outside of what you already know. That’s all it is. And so the idea is you need perspective taking and where you can learn higher level math is having really good relationships because that will help you with really a high level math. Because when I’m thinking, I mean, we’re doing it right now, Sarah. I always bring it to the very moment because it’s amazing. Both of us are doing heavy perspective taking right now. You’re trying to make points in response to my points. I’m trying to respond to your point. I’m thinking about what your needs. I’m even thinking about your producer’s needs.

(01:00:53):

I mean, basically I’m thinking about three people right now at the same time and you’re doing the same thing. You’re thinking also of your audience. You’re actually thinking of four people, four sets of people. So the idea is that that’s perspective taking, that’s a higher level math skill. That’s a higher level math skill. And so the idea is by doing this, you actually then are able to do more better abstraction with numbers because you’re able to do that, pull out the microscope and say, “Is what Naobi is saying now, what is she saying that’s going to be comprehendible to my audience and what’s not going to be?” And so I need to be asking her questions about it. Now you have three groups there and your mind is. And we’re born with that skill. That’s what’s amazing, Sarah.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:01:39):

And so we can strengthen this muscle and this is very hopeful and I feel like if parents are like, “Okay, I’d love to learn more about this.” Is the Listening with Curiosity Project something anybody can access? I know you have a ton of books that you’ve written. How can people get connected to learning more about these skills?

Dr. Niobe Way (01:01:59):

Yeah. I’ll give you two names of books and then we also have a new Social Health Institute, which I’ll talk about, which is now training across the country. I wrote about the Listening with Curiosity Project in detail in my book Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves and Our Culture. There’s a whole chapter about it, so you can reference that. I’m writing about it also in my new book for Harvard, Our Social Health and Our Anti-Social Culture, a five part story where I talk a lot about how to create a pro-social society. But from the Listening with Curiosity Project, we did it in schools, about a dozen schools across New York City over the past decade. And now we’ve gotten so much interest from around the country and around the world at this point, even in NGOs and all over across Asia and Europe, that we started something called the Social Health Institute, social-health.org, that we have a team of eight trainers where we’re training people in the framework, the method, and we’re also training in the coaching to bring it to your organization.

(01:03:04):

We’re also going to be training parents so that it’s all different contexts, kids, parents, leaders, CEOs, all sorts of people so that we actually start to understand it’s not just that we should promote social health. We can easily teach it because we already have the skills. We were born that way.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:03:23):

We’re just trying to connect the consciousness to it. It should connect the awareness dots.

Dr. Niobe Way (01:03:29):

Exactly. In some sense, to go back to your question that you asked me 10 minutes ago, parents need to first of all value it, but secondly, understand that we already have the skills to solve our own problems. We already have them. We simply need to nourish them. So if you start from the place that your child is as caring, cooperative, and curious as every other human, and they have those skills and all your role as a parent is to nourish those skills in the house and outside of the house, that’s all your role as a parent and to nourish it in yourself and to nourish it in your partner and to nourish it in your family, in your larger family. If you understand that that’s your function as a human to create a pro-social culture and we do it one person at a time, people always say, “What’s so overwhelming?” It’s not overwhelming.

(01:04:22):

Start today. Start today with your kids or your partner. I don’t care. Ask them about a favorite childhood memory. That’s the favorite question that everybody wants to be asked is a favorite childhood memory. Start with that. Get them to tell you the details of why it was a favorite childhood memory and then have them ask you and then ask everybody around you at your workplace.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:04:42):

So my big takeaway from what you just said is to nurture curiosity, cooperation and care. Just be curious, cooperate and care, model it and start there. If you just start there, it’s going to start to really naturally awake itself up. It’s there.

Dr. Niobe Way (01:04:59):

It is because we were born that way. We were born that way. We are born remarkably relationally intelligent, remarkably cognitively, socially and emotionally skilled, unbelievably skilled. We’re born that way. And then we lose it growing up in an antisocial culture so we can get it back and I’ve seen the process of getting it back. It doesn’t take that long because we’re all starving for it. We’re all starving for the connection.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:05:28):

Thank you so much, Dr. Way. This was amazing and so interesting. I really encourage everyone listening to please go check out her books. They are rich with details about what you can really take away from this. And this was just wonderful. Thank you so much.

Dr. Niobe Way (01:05:48):

Yeah, it was really a pleasure.Your questions were fantastic. It was so fun. It was super fun.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:05:59):

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