College Parent Central Podcast
You don’t stop parenting the day you drop your student off to college on Move-in Day. Your role simply changes. (Actually, it’s not simple at all, but it changes.) You’re a parent for life. Join Lynn Abrahams and Vicki Nelson, higher education professionals and former college parents, as they explore the topics that can help you be a more effective and supportive parent to your college bound student. Whether you already have a child in college, college is still a year or more away, or your student is about to step out, start now to gather the information that empowers you to be an effective college success coach to your student.
College Parent Central Podcast
#133 Rekindling Your Child's Motivation: an Interview with Ellen Braaten
What happens when bright, capable students seem completely unmotivated about their future? Dr. Ellen Braaten, author of Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less joins us to unpack this phenomenon that can leave you feeling frustrated and worried. We talked about motivation - how it's not just about "trying harder" but rather a delicate interplay between initiation (the spark), persistence (the ability to continue), and intensity (the fuel that sustains effort).Dr. Braaten shared a framework for understanding what truly motivates young adults by examining the intersection of their aptitudes (natural abilities), pleasures (what they enjoy), and practice (what they willingly spend time doing). Whether your student is currently struggling with motivation or you're planning ahead for their transition to college, this conversation offers invaluable insights for supporting their authentic development.
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Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You'll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.
Speaker 2:Welcome everybody to the College Parent Central podcast. I'm Elizabeth Hamblett, your occasional co-host and the author of Seven Steps to College Success a Pathway for Students with Disabilities. Today, I have the pleasure again of having a friend and colleague here. I am so excited to have Dr Ellen Broughton on with us today. I have known her for a number of years and I love her work. Ellen is a processing speed expert and a psychologist, and her latest book is one that I think is really, really important for parents of high school students who are thinking about college, bright kids who couldn't care less. And I'm holding it up for those of us who are watching the video. We all have our copies. Mine is very well highlighted, so I want to get us started. Ellen, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3:So I'm a child psychologist, as you said, my areas of research interest is in processing speed. I started out really researching ADHD and I'm a neuropsychologist in terms of my private practice. I'm also an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, where I do some teaching and research, and I became interested in this topic because I was seeing a lot of kids with processing speed issues who grew up and as they were growing up into high school and young adulthood, I saw that many of them didn't seem to be very motivated or didn't have the skills to stay motivated and I thought it was a processing speed issue. And then, as I kind of looked more broadly, I found that no, a lot of the kids that I'm seeing, even if they don't have processing speed issues, have trouble with motivation. And then I always have to add that as I started writing this book, the pandemic happened and motivation has been a problem for many of us, for the last five years.
Speaker 3:So it became a more timely topic that I sort of made it a little bit of a broader book than I expected it to be.
Speaker 4:Well, I'm going to jump in here and introduce myself. I'm the other co-host here today. My name is Vicki Nelson and I am a professor of communication at a small liberal arts college and also have three daughters who have gone to college. So come to this topic of college parenting at both as a as a professional and as a parent. And I am also excited to have an opportunity to talk with Ellen today, because there's so much in this book that I see in the classroom all the time too, even on the college level.
Speaker 4:So it's not just about younger children growing up. We see it all the way through that young adulthood. And I'd like to start with the basics, because I'm aware that sometimes, you know, it's wonderful to talk as professionals we all talk together but sometimes for some parents out there, you know some of the things we get involved in that may not be as clear. So your book is Bright Kids who Couldn't Care Less, but it also has a subtitle and it's how to rekindle your child's motivation. So and you talked about motivation so I want to really start on that basic level for all of us and sort of set the table and ask what do we mean by motivation? What exactly are we talking about and what's it made up of?
Speaker 3:So that's a great question. To start with, in the simplest definition of motivation, is the reason why we do the things that we do. Why do we do something? Well, because we're motivated to do it. Sometimes we're motivated from within, sometimes we're motivated from without, which is, I'm sure, we'll talk more about in a minute but it oftentimes has the idea that somehow we can just come up with motivation, like, just get motivated, just do it. It's not like that and it really has a number of different parts to it. Some of the parts really have a lot to do with executive function skills.
Speaker 3:So motivation requires initiation. You have to have a spark to get going. You have to be motivated because you've got some sort of drive, some sort of like bit of you know. Like I said, a spark to get going. You have to then persist at it and then you have to have an intensity. So I kind of think about it as, like the three things, that we need to have a fire continue, we have to have a spark, we have to have air that allows the fire to keep burning, and that we've got to have fuel for the fire so that it's intense and so it's not just a one-time thing.
Speaker 3:So you might have a child who's got a lot of motivation to get started on something, but they don't know how to persist at it or they can't sustain that intensity. Sometimes that has to do with a lack of ability. Sometimes it has to do with poor executive function skills. They don't know how to get organized. Sometimes kids are motivated at the end of something but they can't get started because they can't pick a topic. And so kids with learning disabilities, adhd, any kinds of learning differences, neurodivergent kids sometimes have more trouble with this because it requires skills and we don't think about motivation as a skill set. We think of it as you know, the sort of thing that parents tell you just start practicing. You know, keep going at it. But it's not that simple.
Speaker 4:It's really interesting to hear you separate out the kind of the spark that ignites things and the ability to persist with it. I'm thinking of a student that I had last semester and he wasn't living up to his potential and he'd be the first to admit it. And I saw him at the beginning of second semester. He said new semester, new me. He had that spark but it didn't last long. So that really resonates with what I see a lot.
Speaker 3:And yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4:Yeah, ellen, you mentioned the inside and outside, and in the book you talk about intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Again, those are terms that probably most of us know, but just to make sure we're all on the same page, can you talk about those differences?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So intrinsic motivation is really thought of. The better motivation it's the inside. We're doing it because we love it, because we want to do it. We're motivated to read a book because we love reading. We're motivated to finish a project because we really want to see the end product and we love it.
Speaker 3:Extrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from outside of us. So, just to give you an example, we probably may be all familiar with the study that was done and some of your listeners may remember this from the intro psych class that was done looking at reading and rewarding kids for reading. And what they found is that when we reward children for reading books, for example, the more books they read, the more external motivators they got I forget what it was, but prizes or money. The less kids liked to read, the less they wanted to do something for themselves, because they got the idea that reading was something that you did because you got paid to do it. And so we have to think about that as we're doing motivate, you know, as we're trying to increase motivation. And so intrinsic motivation comes from knowing yourself. It comes from knowing what you're good at. It comes from trying lots of different things and sorting through them and saying you know what you're good at. It comes from trying lots of different things and sorting through them and saying you know, yeah, I'm not so motivated to learn to knit, but I want to learn to, you know, play tennis or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:And there is a place for extrinsic motivation. It's not a dirty word. We all need extrinsic motivation in our lives. We needed to. You know, we go to work because we have a paycheck. We clean out the garage because we're going to have a beer after we finish or we're going to have, you know, get an ice cream cone or something. When we're done, that, those extrinsic motivation is very good when we have something we really don't want to do but we need to get it done. When it's sort of last minutes or like I've got to get this done, you know I'll reward myself at the end, and so there are places for extrinsic motivation. But what we're really thinking about is finding that intrinsic, helping our children find that intrinsic motivation, so a job that they're intrinsically motivated to do but they also want to get paid to do it. That's kind of our goal in life is to be in that sort of plane, and we can't always be there, but that's sort of our goal.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that helps a lot, Boy. It makes me think of grades as that extrinsic motivator that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
Speaker 3:That's a perfect example and sometimes it does work for some kids. And that's the thing. Like some kids are motivated by grades. It's tangible, they have you know, it helps them understand and other kids it doesn't mean a thing or can be demotivating too.
Speaker 4:You know, one of the things I really like about one of many, many, many, many things I really like about your book is that you end each chapter with that little bit of something to think about and something to talk about and something to do which is really tangible for parents. And right at the beginning, chapter one, you suggest that one of the things parents can do is make two lists Make a list of things that their child doesn't seem to care about and then make a list of the behaviors that show them that their child doesn't care. So I'm curious can you talk a little bit about why those two lists and what those lists help parents see or understand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it came out of my own experience working with parents that we were talking in these general terms and had no idea what the behaviors were. And you can't intervene with a behavior unless you know what you're talking about. So to say your child is unmotivated. For a while I was sort of like, well, let's work with this unmotivated child, what does that mean? What does it mean? And so we've got to identify the problem. We've got to identify well, you're saying unmotivated. Tell me what they're unmotivated about. Is it school? They may come in thinking it's everything, they just don't care about anything.
Speaker 3:And when we start to talk about it it's like, well, he's really unmotivated in chemistry and physics. Or maybe he's unmotivated in all and physics, you know and and, but. Or maybe he's unmotivated in all aspects of school, or to get to school on time. But he loves his job at Whole Foods. He's there on time all the time. So it helps us kind of sort through what it is. It also helps parents not to over-catastrophize, and then it helps us then figure out what to do and also the behaviors where we can intervene. So you know what is the behavior that you're seeing. That's the outcome of this demotivated child. Well, okay, let's start with one behavior. Let's start with getting school on time, for example. I mean, that's not the perfect example, but but you know it just helps clarify because we don't know what we're talking about. Unmotivated child just feels overwhelming to parents. It is just, it's their worst nightmare. They think their child will be depressed, live in their basement, never go to college, never be a successful adult. It feels so overwhelming to them.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's a nice lead-in to, you know, our next question. Because you know, this catastrophizing, I think, is something that happens to parents and then you know, by extension, to their kids, that this idea that college is this, you know, and I love this, this expression, you use holy grail and fire killer and how this, you know, process is so demotivating.
Speaker 3:You know, because a lot of people have a sense that it's the only way to be successful. So how do we get here? So can I share a personal story with you? So I love that Vicki mentioned she has two children. My children are now adults and my daughter was a very motivated student, the sort that was motivated by grades and all of those things.
Speaker 3:My son was not. He had some learning differences. He's a fabulous kid and super social, very interested, and at a very young age I don't remember exactly when it was my mother said to me, and my mother didn't graduate from college. And she said to me you know, not every child needs to go to college. And I was so angry at her and this is, at least I would say, 15 years ago at least, and 15 years ago there was no discussion about you can't go to college, not in any suburban school and by suburban I mean like suburban Toledo, ohio, I'm not just talking about Boston and so I was really mad at her because I thought everybody needs to go to college. That is how people succeed, and what we've learned since then is it's not necessarily the perfect place for every single child at age 18.
Speaker 3:What I find and as it turns out. My son went to college. He got through about three years as we sort of pushed him through and never finished yet, but he might. Three years as we sort of pushed him through and never finished yet, but he might. And so I see this, I saw this play out with so many other families. My perspective evolved completely over the last 10 to 15 years. I saw parents getting into debt. I saw kids coming home depressed after their freshman year and suicidal, super anxious.
Speaker 3:We created another problem because we didn't fix the first one and what happens, I find, is for a lot of students who don't feel ready for college, they show that they're not ready by just checking out, by becoming very unmotivated. Sometimes this happens as early as seventh and eighth grade, definitely by 10th and 11th grade. If you've got a child that's not showing up for class, that they are showing you they are not going to show up for their college classes at freshman year and this does not necessarily mean they're not ready for college, but maybe they're not. And I really feel like some kids get anxious about the perspective of college. They're tired, they've been working, they've been writing in journals since they were three, like seriously in preschool, and they're just tired and they don't know how to bring up the conversation of I don't know what I want to do, I don't know if I'll be successful in college, I don't have the skills that I can have to be successful in college. So what they do and I've just seen an epidemic of this is they just stop being motivated with anything. That's their way of saying I don't like the path you're setting for me and so I'm going to make sure you cannot put me on that path.
Speaker 3:And what we need in this case is to have a lot of discussions. Hey, let's talk about college. We need to talk about this in freshman year of high school, sophomore, junior. We need to really have a lot of discussions and we need to let go of our assumptions that there is one way of becoming an adult and that is really. I mean, I've had parents cry in my office who've said I don't know, I can't go to graduation if my child isn't going to college. Like I can't show up at their high school graduation, people will. What will they think of me? That's how important this or this? Not important, that's not even the right word. But stigmatizing going to college is that we are willing to send our children away just to be like everybody else and they're telling us I might need a different way or a different path, different kind of college experience.
Speaker 2:So and you know this book, as I recall is, is and I think you mentioned is an outgrowth of your last book, bright Kids who Can't Keep Up. You Are this Processing Speed Expert and you talk about slow processing speed, sapping motivation for students. So you know this is part of my audience is parents of students with learning disabilities and ADHD and autism, and you know for them, I would imagine you know this is an even bigger you know issue. So can you talk a little bit about the link between processing speed and motivation?
Speaker 3:The simplest way to say it is if you're always feeling behind, it's hard to stay motivated. It's just, it's really that simple. And so you know, and all of the things that you talked about autism spectrum, learning disabilities we found there's a high association with processing speed. It's part of the, it's part of you know, part of the symptoms that we oftentimes see. Processing speed can be a really wonderful thing.
Speaker 3:There are kids who really have a lot to offer in terms of their ability to slow the world down and their ability to sort of see things in a different way in you know the small things, but in life, in high school, it is not about that at all. And in middle school and so that's where I would see a lot of kids with processing speed weaknesses start to drop out as the workload got quicker, faster, more that it's just. It's even if they wanted to be motivated, even if they were, even if they loved the topic, they just couldn't keep up with the workload. And all of us become unmotivated when we are in jobs or situations or we just can't do it in the time allotted. It's just. There is no way to stay motivated when it's like I can't get this done and so so it's kind of that simple, and so that's why accommodations are so important. You're sort of thinking about the educational experience, and perhaps even the the path to college, as being something different or something new, and so, yeah, it's really that simple.
Speaker 2:So you do evaluations of students to see if they possibly have a learning disability or ADHD, and you talk in the book about the extremes of these parents that you see. So they either see their students as all strengths or all weakness. And you've already talked about the labeling of, you know, an unmotivated student you know. So can you talk a little bit about how, why those extremes are kind of unhelpful and also this sort of pervasive tendency to want to label stuff and how this figures into this whole college discussion too?
Speaker 3:So I think that this is this comes from a place of love and anxiety in parents. We want to see, you know, we all think our child can do absolutely anything in their life and we will love them. I think I might talk in the book like when I was pregnant with my daughter. I was like she could do anything and all of a sudden the thing that popped in my head was not an accountant. It's just sort of like I don't know why that popped in my head, but I, you know, I'm sort of a more language artsy kind of person. I appreciate the sciences, but accounting just seems so boring. I want a child.
Speaker 3:We enter into parenting thinking our child's going to be special. No, child really is. None of us are all that special. Most of us will not become president of the United States, you know. So I think that oftentimes one way that we guard against that sort of tenderness as parents is to sort of elevate our child in a way they're wonderful at this, they're great at that, I mean. So that's one way that we can just sort of you know, love them in our own you know way, the best we can.
Speaker 3:But then what happens is that sometimes I find it's this. You know this happens in the same parenting. We find that they're not perfect, they're not going to be a world class violinist or a stalker, and so then what happens is everything they do isn't right. And that also comes from a place of anxiety, I think, because parents are like I am overwhelmed, I'm so scared that nothing's going to work, and so they tend to have this black and white kind of view about their child, and of course it's not helpful either.
Speaker 3:One Kids know when they're, you know when I can. I've had many parents in my office saying like you know, I don't care if they're not doing well in school. You know, the Bill Gates didn't graduate from college either and the child is saying like I see the child later, and they're like I'm not that good at this, like they'll say this to me, like I'm not a math superstar, I'm just like everybody else. So kids know this and it's it's a source of anxiety then for the child, and of course, on the other hand, they feel terrible when their parent thinks that they're not capable.
Speaker 2:I was going to say can you talk? You know you talk about how high parental expectations can lead to anxiety, and I think you know there's some very good books about that as well, like Jennifer Braheny Wallace's Never Enough. We just talked to Bill, you know, bill Stixrota and Ned Johnson right Self-Driven. Child. They're all such good books. So, at the same time, you talk about low expectations for students and how those are demotivating. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what I find more in. I mean, I'll bring this back to my mother. Her original thing was, like not every child needs to go to college because they've got ADHD, you know. So we can sometimes have that low expectation. Our child has a learning difference, so okay, well, whatever, they don't have the potential. When that's not true, of course we know that learning differences can make you more resilient, actually, and so so and then.
Speaker 3:So if we have these sort of low expectations, especially if a child is showing real symptoms of being unmotivated, so if they're unmotivated and don't seem to care, oftentimes what happens is parents just give up. It's like, okay, well, he's not going to amount to anything. And so there's a middle ground, like when a child is being unmotivated, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not college bound. It means that they're not college bound in the way that we think they should be college bound, and so we don't have those discussions with them. No-transcript, they can catastrophize, and so it and it's. You know, they're not wrong either. So sometimes it's too hard for them to tackle the problem. They don't know how to do it, they don't know who to talk to. Too hard for them to tackle the problem.
Speaker 4:They don't know how to do it. They don't know who to talk to. So, if I can follow up on that, as you're talking about expectations, in the book you talk about the differences if I remember correctly between expectations and aspirations. What's that difference about?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, you know aspirations are big sort of ideas. You know the aspiration that my child is going to be a successful adult. I have an aspiration that, even though go to college, but the expectations are more about I mean using these very general, but it's more sort of like goals and objectives, you know, and so the expectations are the things that lead us to our aspirations. You know we don't know we aspire to do certain things in life Oftentimes we don't make them.
Speaker 3:But that's okay, it's what keeps us going. It's what keeps us. You know you might have an aspiration to write a novel someday. That doesn't mean necessarily we'll do it, but you know it's something, that it's the big picture stuff that motivates us, where the expectations are the things that we need in order to sort of keep moving towards our aspirational goals.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 4:That helps. Thanks, it helps.
Speaker 2:So you know we've now talked about how parents view their students and you talk about this difference between aptitude and ability, because I think you know there's some discussions where parents just think because a student is capable, they're going to do all of these things, or expectations are very high, but there is a difference between aptitude and ability. So can you explain that?
Speaker 3:to us. Yeah, so aptitude is really about our I'm not going to use I use these terms, I even wrote some notes about this so I can, so it makes sense. But aptitude is really our natural ability to do something. I know I'm reusing the terms, but you know like we have an aptitude, maybe towards music, for example. You know we see the child starts out, seems pretty musical, or they're, they're, they seem to be great on the soccer field. But the ability or the skills that we need to have in order to use our aptitudes, or it's the time we need set aside in our schedule in order to be able to develop our aptitude. So aptitudes is something you know we're naturally. We kind of have a natural ability to do something. But that ability requires skills, it requires that fuel, it requires being persistent at something. So that's where both of those things are kind of important for motivation.
Speaker 4:Vicki yeah, no, I'm processing that a little bit Slow processing A little slow.
Speaker 3:processing here. It's a lot of terms right now.
Speaker 4:Well, you know I'm trying to. I was sort of trying to think you use the idea of you know someone having an aptitude for music, but not necessarily. But not necessarily, I mean, I could see someone who that aptitude it's not the same as interest, but you know, there's something musical that's drawing me, but then maybe not the ability to sing, and so maybe it's some other aspect of music that can feed that aptitude exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a very, that's a very good example of, yeah, having an aptitude towards something, but there are a million ways to not. Maybe not a million dozens of ways to do that, so you can be a music critic. You can just love music as part of your, you know, free time. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So then that helps you refine, and that's so important. I mean, I work with college students all the time and they're often obsessing about career. You know, what am I going to do? What am I? You know, yes, I want to be. I teach in a communication department. I want to be a communication major, but that's so broad, so maybe I have an aptitude for that, but I haven't figured out whether it's broadcasting or film, or theater or PR or whatever. Yeah, that opens up a lot of ways of thinking about it, about it, you know. Going back to the idea of goals, you talk about the importance of setting goals for motivation, but then you also say that starting with goals can be counterproductive, because so often I think we want to go right to that tangible. Well, here's something I can check off and do. So it sort of leads me to a couple of questions, because I love to pack three questions into one here.
Speaker 3:Okay, I hope.
Speaker 2:I can remember them all. It's our brand.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know I'm sneaking them in, but I'm wondering, you know to talk a little bit about what makes a good goal, and how does starting with a goal become counterproductive, and why is it not? You say it's not the end point but the beginning of the journey. So I think those they all kind of go together in terms of thinking about goals and when to start and how they work.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to even back up one point for this too. So I had another question or topic to this, and that is I think we start with goals, because sometimes goals are just about interests. You know, especially for college students and when you're thinking about career, like I'm interested in being a pilot, for example, like studying aviation, but they've never flown a plane, you know, do you know what I mean? They don't have a skill set.
Speaker 3:So goals oftentimes start not from a real understanding of who we are. So one of the things I talk about in the book is this idea of looking at a child's aptitude, the things that give them pleasure and the things they like to do or practice. So I call it the aptitude, practice and pleasure. So I think goals really need to come from looking at sort of the if you think about this as a Venn diagram looking at the intersection of those Like what are my aptitudes, what do I tend to be good at? Now, we already talked about the fact that sometimes the things we're good at we don't really want to do because they don't give us pleasure. So I think about the child who's very good at hockey, but they're like I don't like being on the ice every day. So you know like I don't want to do that. So we've got to look at. So I have an aptitude for this, but does it give me pleasure and is it the sort of thing that I like to spend time doing, which is practice? So you know, if we have kids who aspire to do something or be something, but they've never spent any time doing it, they don't even know if it brings them pleasure. Maybe they don't have the aptitude for it. That might not be a good goal, and so that doesn't mean we can't get them towards that, but we've got to sort of analyze that. Okay, well, you've got to spend time doing this before we make that your long-term goal. The goal needs to be let's get you the skills you need. For example, let's give you some time to be able to practice this an internship or practicum or something like that and so that you have the, you know we can find out if it brings you pleasure or not. So that's where I think goals really need to start with that.
Speaker 3:And then I think the other thing that you brought up is that goals tend to be we made the goal, now we're done, and it's really just a starting point. And that's where that, when we talked about you know the persistence being part of motivation. Persistence means checking in all the time about okay, I made this goal, do I really still want this goal? Like I can change my ideas, Like this is not the career for me. And people do this late in life when they're like I've been doing this job for 10 years, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 3:So we need to teach those skills much earlier in life. We need to teach those skills much earlier in life, and we need to revisit goals because we don't always have the skills or the support systems in place to help us continue to persist at those goals. So, even if it's a perfect goal, we need that tended to. It's like, you know, a garden we need to continue. Or maybe like a fire you know, we need to keep feeding the fire. We need to keep making sure it's got enough oxygen and air to grow. So that's why it's really important to check on those goals, and I think that's the hardest thing for all of us to do. We set goals for ourselves and then all of a sudden, we don't meet them and it's because we never really looked as to whether or not we had everything. We need to keep going.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it seems to me we need to work. We need to work harder at having those conversations with students early. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about the students that I see every day and I don't think anyone has continually said to them you know, it's okay to reevaluate your goals, it's okay to change, because they just feel they're set, and especially those students who often come to college absolutely set. I know I want to be a fill in the blank. I know I want to be a police officer blank. I know I want to be a police officer, that's I'm going to be a criminal justice major, that's what I'm going to do. And then they take that first class or two in criminal justice and say this doesn't feel right. And now they're panicking because it never occurred to them that it's okay to shift.
Speaker 3:In fact it's a wonderful thing, like what a wonderful thing to know that so quickly. Like how many times in our lives as adults did we not learn that lesson? So to sort of celebrate that as opposed to saying well, you know, maybe take another class and they get tremendous pressure from parents. Parents get nervous, they're like wait a minute, you've always wanted to do this. Now, what are you going to do? It feels unstable, but it's an opportunity. I think we have to sort of reframe a lot of this. Like great, you learned this, isn't this wonderful? Now, what are we going to do? Let's take a look and oftentimes with students I'll do that Venn diagram Like, let's take another look, tell me again, what do you feel like you're really good at, what do you really love doing, what do you spend time doing? And it helps them sort of move a little bit in that direction of making new goals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as we're, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4:It's good for us to know that, but we need to keep getting that message to the kids.
Speaker 2:And what I was going to say is you know I'm thinking about the choices of college majors, because you know, as Ellen was saying, like sometimes somebody starts college thinking I want to do this, researching the requirements of majors is really, really important Because, you know, sometimes there are a lot of things you have to do that students aren't interested in, but they don't know that until they're in a program and now they're starting to look at the courses they're taking for college.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I often suggest is that all students should be looking at the general graduation requirements of any colleges on their list, because I certainly had to do a lot of things I didn't necessarily find interesting to get out of college. Aside from, you know, often students are motivated by what's in their major, but at a lot of institutions you have to meet these general ed requirements, and so you know, I have two college graduates in my house. One was an art school grad and the other was an engineering school grad, and they didn't have to take all those general ed requirements that I had to take and I think that delighted them. And so you know, if we're talking about how much motivation it takes to get through college, just generally. I really think that should be for any student part of the college search and you can find all that stuff online.
Speaker 3:I think so too. I could give you one other story yeah please.
Speaker 3:I have a niece who's now has a master's degree in counseling and she started out our first semester as an English major because she likes to read books like Harry Potter and stuff. And so she got into her first day of class and the teacher was like what's everyone's favorite books? And they were like Jane Austen and Moby Dick and all this. She's like I haven't read any of these books. You know Moby Dick and all this. She's like I haven't read any of these books. She knew immediately like, and hers was like Harry Potter, and so she you know she wasn't in English, it's not like she didn't like to read, but she wasn't an English major kind of student.
Speaker 4:You know what?
Speaker 3:I mean, she's like that's not what she likes to read, nor does she really like that kind, and it was really an incompatibility in knowing even what the major was.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I do think that we don't talk a lot about that. So, and that first semester is so important, especially if somebody goes in, it's like I want to be a criminal justice, I want to be a major and they realize that I had no idea this is what was going to. I didn't know I was going to have to read like you know, like British literature and Tolstoy, Like this is not what I signed up for. Yeah.
Speaker 4:The other thing that I often suggest to students is when they think they know a career I want to be a police officer, nurse, whatever is doing a lot of informational interviews, talking to people who have those jobs and just spending 20 minutes and saying tell me about your day, tell me what you do, what's the hardest part of your job, what's the part of your job that you love and they can really get a sense of that.
Speaker 4:I think I often tell this story. One of my three daughters, and one of them at one point wanted to be a midwife and great, and she did just that. She found some midwives and went and spent 20 minutes with them and asked them and she came back and said I don't want to be a midwife. She still loved the concept but they're self-employed much of the time. They have to be on 24-7 notice, they don't know what you know, and it was some of those aspects of the job that she learned about and that made a difference, better than after going through a whole program and graduating. So lots of ways for them to find what part of it motivates them.
Speaker 3:And I don't think we do enough of that in our high schools. We don't do enough. When I was in high school, years and years ago, I thought I wanted to be an occupational therapist because I think you know I like to help people. It seemed interesting, it seemed very specific, and we went to a high school, you know, a day at the community hospital on on like medical things, and I was like I don't want to do that, I can't like do a splint, like I'm terrible with anything. They were doing all sorts of like things, like machines, and I'm like I'm terrible with all that stuff. I knew immediately OK, it wasn't the career for me. So I think you're right, but it's oftentimes we're in the right area, kids are in the right area, but it's the specifics that really make up the job.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my daughter became a nurse.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly there you go and it fills her like I'm on a shift. When I'm done, I'm done, I can live my life. I love the work, yeah.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So just kind of rounding the bend on this, you know you have pages 162, 163, 164 talk about college readiness and this really struck me because one of the things you mention is is your student filling out the college applications themselves. And you know, as somebody who is in contact with parents of students, again, with learning disabilities, adhd, through my outreach, I will hear from parents like we are doing this and you know, we this and we that, and they're kind of it's my sense sometimes that they are dragging their students through this process and I feel this you know anxiety that you're talking about that. A lot of parents feel like, well, we just have to get through this process right and then they're going to be fine. We just have to get through this process right and then they're going to be fine.
Speaker 2:And I think, too sorry, this is not a very organized thought, but sometimes when parents have come to you, their students have already had some failures right. They're coming for an evaluation for the first time, and so I understand, as a parent myself, like you've already seen, your kids struggle to do things and if, hopefully, eventually, if a problem is identified, they can have some strategies that help them be successful. But I think, when it comes to the college stuff, that is the place where parents are saying, oh my God, like it has to get done. You know they've already had these failure experiences and now we have to make sure they get through this and it's hard for them to back off. Make sure they get through this and it's hard for them to back off. But all of these, you know, signs of a student's demotivation or not lack of motivation, feel like they're there. So you know, have you successfully convinced parents whose kids are not participating in this college application process to back off, and what would you recommend for parents who are seeing those signs?
Speaker 3:So the first thing we need to do is have conversations with our kids. We don't ask them. I didn't do that either. You know, it's just like you're going to college. Let's just find one that kind of meets your needs, that you like enough, and that's where we're going. And so one of the things that I've seen that sort of has changed my mind is the number of kids who have come back depressed, anxious, failed, and so when you're talking about a child who's already had multiple failures in their lives or what feels like failures or struggles, to go into college and then sort of have the ultimate failure to have to, you know, is just devastating, then now we have a completely different sort of situation. Now we have a young adult who now has no direction, and so so I have convinced some parents and it's a hard one, and it's the discussion that I often have with parents earlier in high school rather than later. We need to be thinking about what your child wants to do, and sometimes what I find is the parents. Their default is they'll live at home and go to community college. Well, all right. Their default is they live at home and go to community college. Well, all right, that's okay. But the things that I look for is does your child really want to go to college? It is so expensive and I have seen so many families mortgage their house, deplete their retirement savings, be in debt for $250,000. You know they're, you know working as an office administrator, you know, and it's their whole salary. And so you've got to know, first of all, does your child love learning? If that's, if the answer is yes, that's a valid reason to go to college. Even if you don't know what to do. I love learning, I can't wait to go Great. The other really good reason is you know what you want to do. I want to be a nurse. I don't love school, but I really want to be a nurse. I really want to teach preschool. I really. That's another good reason. And both of those, you know if it's the second reason, we need to have all hands on deck to figure out how do we make this child successful, how do we give them the accommodations, the support they need to be successful. But both of those reasons are great reasons to go to college.
Speaker 3:After that it gets kind of complicated because it's sometimes just the default, because they don't know what they want to do, and we get very anxious because we think, okay, if they don't go to college this year, they'll never go and so we need to have other sorts of ways of thinking. The trades apprenticeships applying to college and deferring is another way to kind of feel like, okay, we've got a plan, let's figure out some things to do this year. I oftentimes find that kids who have learning differences, who work at a job where they feel competent like working at a coffee shop, working at a hardware store, the gap all of a sudden they're like the superstar, they're really hardworking, they know what it means to work hard, they've you know. All of a sudden they're like I really like the world of work, but I want to just be a checker all day at the coffee shop. So I'm now motivated to go back to college and that deferment that I took.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's not where I want to go, maybe I want to reapply. So I think having a lot of different options is really important. And the other thing I think, too, is that we can't leave out the kids who want to go to college and can't Financial reasons they don't have the family support that helps them fill out the paperwork, like we need to be thinking not just about. You know, the privileged kids who you know aren't filling out their college applications, but the kids who aren't, who need the support to do that as well. So it's we just have to think about this as a huge process that kids need, you know, to have a lot of agency in.
Speaker 4:Wow, that's it, I think that's. I want to keep talking. Wow, I want to keep talking. I want to keep going and going, and going.
Speaker 4:Always motivated to go to college but isn't ready. It doesn't have the executive function, the organization, all of that and thinking about how to, how to deal with that. So, in terms of being ready, in terms of motivation, in terms of caring about things I'm thinking about the title of your book, kids who Couldn't Care Less what would you leave parents with? What is the bottom line if you could? Just here's what I want to leave you to think about.
Speaker 3:Oh, so this is what popped in my head when you said this.
Speaker 3:I've said this before Love the child you have, not the child you wish you had. And I think that's what gets us in trouble a lot of times is we don't look at the wonderful kid we were given, we look at the child who we dreamed about, and oftentimes, that child that we dream about, we want them to do all the things we didn't do. So the last thing I would say is, as parents, we need to figure out what we want to do, because the more that we are motivated, the more that we are doing things we love, we oftentimes forget about the things that give us pleasure. We give our kids a terrible role model for how to be motivated, how to stay motivated, how to, you know, find the pleasure in our life that helps us, you know. So I think that that's what I would leave them with. You know, make sure you're finding pleasure in your life and make sure you're loving the kid that you have. That wonderful kid who's whatever? Quirky, motivated, unmotivated, slow processors, speedy, speedy, so yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, great thoughts. So tell us one more time about both of your books. And if people, if people well, the two I have in my hand and if they, if people want to follow up, want to find out more, where can they find you?
Speaker 3:So my website is very easy, it's just ellenbroughtonphdcom, and we have some, you know, articles and things like that on there, podcasts like this we'll post on there. And then the two books. The titles are very similar. One is Bright Kids who Can't Keep Up, that's about processing speed, and then this one that we've talked about, bright Kids who Couldn't Care Less. So they're very different, even though the titles are very similar. The first one is really about kids with slower processing speed and the other one is, of course, about motivation.
Speaker 4:So, ok, great Thanks. So I'm sure we've talked enough that I can imagine everybody's going to want to go and read the book. So we are really grateful to you for spending this much time with us today and sharing those thoughts, and we hope that everybody will follow up and lots to think about. So thank you so much to Ellen Broughton for telling us about motivation. Thanks, thank you so much for having me.