College Parent Central Podcast

#160 - Encore - The Addiction Inoculation: An Interview with Author Jessica Lahey

• College Parent Central • Season 7 • Episode 160

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We were honored to be able to spend some time talking with Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed,  about her new book The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence. Jessica’s new book weaves together her personal story about addiction with a tremendous amount of information about topics such as brain development, drinking culture, substance use disorder, and ways both parents and schools can approach this sensitive topic. The book contains suggestions and scripts for conversations with your kids from pre-school through elementary, middle and high school as well as college. With this book, parents will be armed with the information they need to talk to their kids about alcohol and drugs.

Thank you for listening!

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00

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, Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams, as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.

SPEAKER_03

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast, where we talk about everything connected to parenting college students. My name is Lynn Abrahams, and I am a learning disability specialist. I have been working with college students and their families for over 30 years. But I have also, I also bring to this the experience of being a mom. So I'm a mom of two sons who have been in and out and through college. So I have two, the professional hat and the personal hat that I use. And I am here with my friend and my colleague, Vicki Nelson, who will introduce herself.

SPEAKER_04

I will. I'm Vicky Nelson, and I am a college professor of communication. And I have also served as a director of academic advising, so that I look at college students from those two perspectives. And I am the mother of three daughters. So with the two boys and the three daughters, we kind of cover it. We cover it. And I don't want to talk anymore about the College Parent Central podcast. We do talk about all things parenting. And I don't want to talk about us because I want to get right away to our guest, because we have a guest with us today, and we're very excited for that. So I'm going to give her introduction just in case there's anyone out there who is not familiar with Jessica Leahy. Jessica writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is a New York Times best-selling author for her book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. And I think she is soon to become a New York Times best-selling author once again for her brand new, just published book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, which we are going to talk to her about today. Jess is also a member of the Amazon Studios Thought Leader Board and wrote the curriculum for Amazon kids, The Stinky and Dirty Show. She's been an English, Latin, and writing teacher in middle and high school, which I had to include because God bless middle school teachers. And she has she has a JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration in juvenile and education law. Jess lives in Vermont with her husband, two sons, and three of the most adorable dogs on Twitter. Jessica Leahy, welcome to the College Parents Central podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for having me. And I have my two sons. One of them is in college right now. And uh the other one is just starting to sort of wrap his brain around it and thinking about a gap here and all of that sort of stuff. So we're we're in the thick of it. It's 22 and 17.

SPEAKER_04

Okay. So we are all coming from our parent perspective and our professional perspective in what we're doing. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, one of the questions we usually start like to start with is asking people about their journey to their job of whatever they're doing now. Um, but you you know what I think I'd like to know, um, because you are a writer, is a little bit about why you decided to write this book. Why this book, why now?

SPEAKER_01

I wish I had some like amazing calculus for, you know, here's what I think will be the next big thing on the zycast. But I think for me, I honestly I have the coolest job ever. I get to read and get interested, listen to podcasts and think about new ideas and get interested in things. And I love to connect um, you know, disparate ideas together. And so every once in a while I come up, you know, these questions sort of occur to me and I go looking for answers. And if there isn't a book or an article or whatever that answers my question, then I get to write that thing. And honestly, that's what gift of failure was. Um, I, you know, was in a position where I was teaching middle school and I was annoyed with some stuff that the parents were doing, and then I had to, and then I realized I was doing the exact same thing to my own kids,

Why Jessica Wrote This Book

SPEAKER_01

and I wanted to know what impact that had on learning and becoming and maturing and all that sort of stuff. And then, you know, I wrote that book, and then there's that scary sophomore slump uh syndrome where, you know, my agent had warned me, she's like, you know, take some time, figure out what you want to do. And I spent a lot of time on the road talking about gift of failure. I get to do a lot of speaking. I love my speaking career. Um, so I didn't feel any huge rush. And then I start, you know, I started having ideas. I'd toss them to my agent and she'd be like, that's not quite it, not quite right. And then I was driving to, and you have to keep in mind that um in the meantime, I am an alcoholic and I got sober on January, or sorry, on June 7th, 2013. So right after I sold the gift of failure. So that means that, you know, has been a part of my experience. And then when I had one year sober and wasn't teaching full-time anymore, I went to start teaching part-time at a drug and alcohol rehab for adolescents. So then that becomes a part of my experience. And then my teenagers are, you know, I have given this them this genetic legacy of substance abuse. Uh, what does that mean when, you know, the powers that be and the experts out there say that substance abuse is preventable? What does that mean? What do I do as a parent? What do I do as an educator? All of that sort of stuff was swirling around in my head. And I was driving down to Boston to give a talk down there, and I had to pull off the road just after the toll booth in Concord, New Hampshire. And I texted my two best friends who are the co-hosts of the hashtag AmWriting podcast with me, also two best-selling authors. And I said, I got it. I know, I know what the title is. I got the book, and I dashed down a whole bunch of notes before I forgot stuff sitting in the breakdown lane. And that was, you know, the title of the addiction inoculation was there. And there's some, you know, narrowing down of the idea that had to happen with my agent before the proposal was done. And that proposal took about a year. But from my perspective, I wanted to know as a parent, as a teacher, as someone who's really interested in education policy and sort of what we're doing in education and those big picture what's happening in schools, how do we prevent substance abuse? If the experts say it is preventable, what does that mean? What do the studies say? And I happen to be married to a statistician, which makes um, you know, anytime I run up against the ceiling in my statistics knowledge, I go to him and I say, Does this study look good to you? What's the deal? You know, what should I be thinking about? So this has been, you know, essentially I get to write the books that I want to read and can't find. That's the short answer to the question. And that's the best job in the whole world because I'm a big research dork.

SPEAKER_03

So, so that leads me to the first question I have, which is about the title of this book. I am curious about how the word inoculation came to be part of the title. You know, we've been talking a lot about vaccines and you know, efficacy and blah, blah, blah, but for COVID. And I am curious, you know, can we really inoculate our kids against addiction?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it started, it came up because, as part of the research I was doing, reading about what does work for prevention, there's something called inoculation theory that is we they use to help inoculate people against, well, in the in the con in the context that we're talking about, if you give kids not just refusal skills, but you give kids the knowledge they need to be able to rebut the statement, everyone's doing it, or it's no big deal, or come on, uh, one puff won't kill you,

Inoculation Theory And Careful Language

SPEAKER_01

that kind of stuff. If you give kids the knowledge and the um the content they need in order to rebut that, it does a couple of things. It's really cool. It makes it more likely that a kid will refuse because they have that feeling of, oh, I have this in my, you know, it's part of my lexicon. It also is generalizes, which is really cool. So if you give, if you do some inoculation theory work with kids over one risky behavior, it actually inoculates them against other ones as well. So that word inoculation was in my head. And there happens to be, I had what was interesting is my husband was at Dartmouth at the time, and I had been reading some research by a Dartmouth professor on inoculation theory, um, as one does, I suppose. And so that was in my head. The and but you bring up the word inoculation as being a little bit problematic. What's really problematic is the word addiction, because the style guides have just been changed in the last couple of years, and our thinking about the language around substance abuse or substance use disorder has evolved, it evolves constantly. If you look at, you know, the DSMs as they go through, you know, three, four, five, the language really changes around that. And the AP style guide just last summer changed a couple of things. Um, they started, for example, capitalizing the word B for black, the letter B for black. And uh, we changed words like instead of saying someone is an addict, you're supposed to, just as you do with, for example, autism, you don't refer to someone as an autistic, you refer to them as someone with autism. So I am a woman with I could say a woman who suffers from alcoholism, although the word suffer, some people don't like that either. I could say I am a woman with substance use disorder is, but you try writing a title that's catchy with substance use disorder, and it just it gets really um, it's difficult because as someone who loves language and wants to make sure that our language is precise, it's also uh a moving target, it's evolving. And and you also have to realize, you know, if I want the popular reader out there to pick up a book and they're not aware that the language is changing, the best what I did was put it on the cover and then have an explanation inside over the person-oriented language we're sort of heading towards. Titles are hard. I mean, gift of failure probably had, I don't know, 30 titles before it was gift of failure. It was just, it's they're really hard. And you think actually the title is hard, the subtitles are what are really, really tough because in nonfiction, the trend now is for really long subtitles, including I have a book on the other side of this office that I just reviewed uh for a publish um an outfit called Airmail. And it's the book is called The Mission, but the subtitle is probably 60 words long. I mean, it's just ridiculous. And it's funny. I mean, it's it's it works really, really well, but subtitles have taken on a whole life of their own, and that's gone through many iterations too.

SPEAKER_03

Well, now I want to shift into something totally different. But you don't want to talk about just titles the entire time. Right, it's fascinating. We could do that. But I do want to talk about words and conversations and speaking. I'm I was interested in in looking at your book, how honest you are about speaking to your own children. And I felt that when I read um the um the your other book as well, Gift of Failure. Um, and I'm wondering if you have any advice to parents who don't feel so comfortable talking to their kids. Um it's it's an important thing, you know. And and if you could, you know, just speak about that for a bit.

SPEAKER_01

I think I I had there are a couple of advantages I came into parenting with. One of them was that I was raised by two people

Honest Talks That Get Easier

SPEAKER_01

who who had a lot of trust in me as an individual. Like they trusted me to make good decisions. I felt respected. Um, I felt they gave me a lot of autonomy. They gave me uh the benefit, they always gave me the benefit of the doubt. They always sort of had this faith that I would be able to figure it out on my own. So there's that. My husband was raised, my husband's an only child, and he was raised by two very cerebral people who um treated him like a small adult. I mean, they were great with little kids, but he was given a lot of trust. He was talked to as an individual with maturity and blah, blah, blah. So there's, I think the two of us are sort of predisposed to um talk to kids like they are worthy of respect. And then, of course, I come into it as someone with a lot of experience with uh middle and high school age kids. So I started teaching when I was pregnant with my now 22-year-old, but before that, I had worked, I've taught in various iterations all along the way. I taught as when I was a law school student, I taught other law students. When I before that, I taught um, I was an adaptive ski instructor at a ski school for people with disabilities. So I've and I worked mostly with the little kids, mostly with kids with uh Down syndrome. And uh so I I have I j and I also just like kids and I like teenagers a lot, and I have so much respect for teenagers, and I think we talk down to them, and I think we don't give them enough credit. And so I'm really cognizant of how I would have wanted to have been treated as a teenager. And in fact, it's funny, my younger son, the thing that drives him bananas is when he reads a book that's supposed to be for teenagers, but he but it the language is, he said, as he says, the way that adult thinks teenagers talk or think, and it's just it's doesn't it doesn't resonate. He hates it that my both of my kids hate it when I explain something to them that they already know. Like the there's something in our family definitely about the idea of being perceived as less than or like you don't already know something. And so I think all of that has sort of and and I was lied to as a kid. I mean, I had a parent who had a substance abuse problem. And when my sister and I would call this person out on their issues, the other parent would say, No, you're mistaken, that's not what you think it is, uh, you know, that blah, blah, blah. And that gaslighting, I just really grew so resentful. And what was funny, I was thinking about this recently, uh a bunch of years ago, I interviewed um Alan Alda for uh The Atlantic about science communication. And something that hit me as I was reading all of his books and his articles and stuff is that he really dislikes euphemisms. And I realized I really don't enjoy euphemisms either. I'm a big fan of direct, of honesty and direct language. And I think that comes out of the fact that um, you know, I wasn't allowed to name the things I knew I was experiencing and that uh secrecy and shame and all of that stuff. So I knew for a fact that um when I was getting a grip of my own of my own drinking and had gotten into recovery that that I was not gonna do that to my kids. And that not only did I did I not want to, I couldn't, because my kids came into this world with a 50 to 60 percent increased risk of substance abuse. So there's no time or room for me to be dancing around topics. And the advice that you asked for is actually really simple. The more you talk about stuff, the easier it gets. The first time I talked to my kids, I wanted to just throw up. Um, the, you know, the sex talks, there isn't just one sex talk, there's lots of them, and they get easier as they go along. My 17-year-old was in a biology class last semester, or maybe it was in the spring, and his teacher said, Do your parents ever talk to you about, you know, drug and alcohol use? And my my kid just laughed out loud and he said, When don't they talk to me about substance use? And it's it's something that we talk about a lot, and it's not uncomfortable at all because it's just out there. It's and because and the the thing that is so important to me, and the reason I talk about it so much is that every single time I get up on stage and talk about the fact that I'm an alcoholic, someone emails me afterwards and says, I'm scared, I'm lost, I'm alone, I don't know what to do every single time. Yeah, anytime I do an interview and talk about it. And the more I talk about it, the more okay it becomes for other people to talk about it. And it was not okay for my parent to talk about it. And therefore it wasn't okay for us to talk about it. And part of this is just me being ornery and mad about that. And part of this is, you know, the whole Brene Brown, you know, we have no room for shame and secrets. So my husband is an HIV doc, and he pointed out he does infectious diseases and he's a medical ethicist as well. And he's he showed me a study one time about they were looking at outcomes among HIV patients, and people who were in the closet about their HIV status, people who kept it a secret, had worse outcomes than people who were out there with their status. And there's a whole bunch of great articles on um and research on the damage that secrets can do to us, um, especially when there's shame attached to those secrets. And I can't, I can't do that to my kid. I don't have, I don't have time for that because they're going to end up where I was if this is something that we're ashamed to talk about.

SPEAKER_03

I think a lot of people are going to buy this book because of that very reason, because they don't know how to do it. And so they need some support on on how to do it, how to speak the truth. And so, you know, that's why I mean I really think this book um fills a gap that's been there.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I hope my editor was really, really pushed me hard to put like scripts in there. She was like, look, the harder the language is, the more guidance people need. And I think as someone who uh gets a little resentful when tells when someone tells me what to do, um, it's I was like, really? People want to be told what to do. And then I started speaking, and people come to me, they're like, Okay, I have a pen and I have paper. I'm gonna go home tonight, and you tell me exactly what to say. So I do have scripts in there, but I think the other big issue is you know, when people talk about number one, that it's hard, and number two, how you start with really little kids. And the key thing is you don't start with a conversation about shooting heroin, you start with a conversation when the kid is really, really little about, you know, why there are labels on um prescription medications and why we don't swallow the toothpaste, but we spit it out, and why we wash our hands and why we do these things as a part of our health. And then as they get older, as and that's why the book starts with preschool and goes all the way through college, because we have to be developmentally developmentally appropriate in our language all the way through. And if you plan to start, you know, in middle school, you've waited too long, frankly, because middle school, if a kid is gonna use drugs and alcohol, middle school is actually when they tend to start. So um, we have to get started much earlier.

SPEAKER_04

So I want to follow up on that um with it with a question that uh yes, I mean, all of that makes sense. And I and I realize when I when I listened to you and when I read your first book, Gift of Failure, uh, how I had done everything wrong. And I was just totally lucky that that my girls turned out fine. Um, but so you talk in your book about um, you know, talk, talk, talk, delay, delay, delay, and uh and all of that. But what if uh and you also talk about transitions being really dangerous times? So if I'm a a college parent now and I've just sent my uh kid away to college, yeah, and I didn't do all of that, uh what do I do now?

SPEAKER_01

So the college chapter was actually really fun to write because I think there's so much um there's this whole mythos about you know, the college drinking experience and the animal house thing and the but that's why there's this concept in the chapter that I found fascinating, and I only learned about it because I was researching this book of pluralistic ignorance and the idea that when we think about things like college and drinking, we overestimate the importance that that holds for other people. So, for example, if I were to ask my 22 year old son, How much do your roommates drink? He more likely than not will overestimate how much they drink. What's really interesting, and actually, this was the I talk about in the context of the research uh that happened at Princeton University when

College Drinking Myths And Real Norms

SPEAKER_01

they got rid of it. Turns out that Princeton, oh my gosh, the drinking at Princeton. So as a token sort of way of managing that, they decided to get rid of kegs on campus. So it was a really great opportunity for researchers to say to kids, the college kids, all right, how upset are you about kegs being taken away? And for the most part, they the college students said, Well, I don't care that much, but everyone else cares a lot. And looking at that, what we come to realize is that if we're overestimating other people's interest in drinking in college, then a lot of things aren't, a lot of things are happening. One of the things that happens from a gender perspective is that boys in general will shape their drinking, will escalate their drinking in order to conform with what they perceive the norm to be. Whereas girls will be a little less likely to do that and will actually withdraw from the places and spaces and communities where that drinking might be happening. And that's problematic too. But the other thing that's really interesting about what we don't do is that we don't tend to offer uh options, non-alcoholic options in colleges. We don't tend to think about, you know, and and luckily this is changing. Colleges are starting to think about, you know, healthy dorm experiences or sober dorm experiences, what can be which can be just vital to someone newly in recovery. Um, getting sober young is such a gift to them, but it's also very, very difficult. And there's a lot more relapse at play in getting sober younger. But suddenly now colleges have these wellness dorms because they're starting to realize, oh, wait, this benefits us. Because if we have these wellness dorms and we offer incentives for healthy behaviors, not only can we have these whole areas where there's just not that, you know, kids not getting as sick as much, kids are getting more sleep, kids are, you know, more studying is happening. Um, we just don't have the public health and safety stuff that we have to deal with in, you know, the other dorms. Um, so that balance is starting to happen, but we tend not to offer those things as often if our understanding is that everyone wants there to be alcohol as part of the uh as part of the situation. So the reason I say that is that we do know that even if our kids are already off at college, we do have and they what we say to them and what the way we act around them does have an impact on their behavior. And kids do continue to get information about health, especially from us. They may not listen to it all the time, but they are definitely, they view their parents as a big source of their um their information. And if we're able to come back to them, explain this crazy concept of pluralistic ignorance, this overestimation, if we're able to counter, you know, if the feeling is that everybody drinks, and it turns out that's not the case. If you look at the numbers, the drinking is very much centralized. So the the amount of alcohol that's that's consumed on campus is consumed by a very small percentage of the students. And the way kids tend to drink in college is through binge drinking, which is not only dangerous, um, it tends it it accounts for this like top-heavy sort of consumption model. Um, and so I think there are a lot of ways to counter perception with actual evidence that are really constructive for kids. And then on lay on top of that, the fact that um there are all these great books right out right now about drug use in adults. Uh, Dr. Carl Hart has a new book called uh Drug Use for Grown-Ups. There's a book of Michael Pollan just wrote a wonderful book about psychedelic use among adults and about the research that's being done around psychedelics for PTSD and end-of-life care. And he's gonna write another one about that. And, you know, that's all well and good in the adult brain, but college students do not have adult brains yet. Their brains are not finished developing until they're early to mid-20s. So, what we're talking about is a brain that is uniquely plastic, which means it's uniquely sensitive to the positive and negative effects from the outside world, including chemicals and stresses and things like that. So, giving kids the benefit of understanding the real numbers about who's drinking and how much, understanding this concept of pluralistic ignorance, understanding how they're being marketed to. I mean, the one really great thing about adolescents and young adults is that they hate being manipulated. If you tell them how they're being manipulated by marketers, it really pisses them off. And that is fantastic knowledge to have. Also, understanding what's happening in their brain. And at a time when they're supposed to be consuming a lot of and processing a lot of material, um, some of the most common substances that that people consume on campuses mess with the hippocampus, which is the center of our memory consolidation, memory, uh, emotional memories, and memory formation. And then on the other hand, it's great if we know our kids well because there are certain kinds of drinkers and people who drink for certain reasons. And overlaying all of this, I just want to reassure parents of two things. Number one, you said that, you know, after reading Gift of Failure in this book, you're like, oh my gosh, all the things I did wrong. My goal with these books is to empower parents. The last thing I want is for someone to write a book where I'm like, oh, great, all the stupid things I didn't do and I can't do now. And and I've I'm already doing everything I can do. I don't know how I can add one more thing. That's what I don't want. So my goal is always to regard knowledge about our kids and their risk factors as power, and then to arm parents with the things they need in order to outweigh that risk, right? So when we have this information about our college students, when we know our college students best and we know why kids drink, we can also sort of relax a little and understand that for 90% of the young adults out there, they can drink, they can have some drugs. And sure, it may not be great for their brain, but they're probably not going to have a substance use disorder coming out of that. But for 10% of us, me included, I can't. I can't just have a couple of drinks. My body deals with alcohol differently, my brain goes bananas, and I have to drink all of it, however much there is. I need all of it. So understanding that for about 10% of kids, it's a problem. Understanding that um we can kind of get an idea of who might be drinking for the wrong reasons, sort of ahead of time, all of that is really important to arm us with the power we need. And I'm gonna apologize right off the bat because my um my pug is snoring and you can probably hear it.

SPEAKER_03

I can't hear it. Well, as long as you do it.

SPEAKER_01

I have I have a very elderly pug. She has very few teeth, but she does snore very loudly. So she's down there snoring.

SPEAKER_04

Well, as long as she doesn't start barking, because we have had we have had a dog bark, and then Lynn's dog, who is my dog is right here. Oh no, started barking at the other dog.

SPEAKER_01

No, I have a strategy actually. I tire them out. Um, they're all three of them are in here with me because uh they're best behaved when they're near me and all my shades are down, so they can't see the squirrels. Oh, I shouldn't have even said that word. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I have a big golden retriever under here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um and I I'm here by myself. I'm I'm sorry, Vicky. I apologize. Um, I I you know a couple of things in what you said, and and and first is I get a second chance in terms of having missed all my opportunities because I gave gift of failure to my daughter for my grandchildren. So I will have a second chance, you know.

SPEAKER_01

It is a tricky book to give as a gift because people are like, oh, you think I'm a failure, huh? It's it's a hard one to give as a gift.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and at the time I gave it to her, I think her my grandchild was three, four, something like that. So I said, get started now. Yes. Um, but the other thing as as you're talking is I'm I'm realizing how much that knowledge that you're talking about would have helped me relax when I sent my kids away from to college because I did worry a lot. And so um that's helpful. And also, I love that you talk about in the book um talk talk to your kids about their hopes and dreams because that helps you understand the I I'm going to mess it up. No, no, no, it's fine. Right. It helps you understand how they think and make decisions.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, in gift of failure, there's a whole chapter. Um, it's the grades chapter, but it's really not, it's a goals chapter. Because um, if we're focused on the process and less on the product, but with the exception being goals, and we help kids, we help them sort of not only help build their executive function by, you know, talking to them about what their goals are and helping them come up with the short-term goals in order to get to their bigger goals, that's you know, sort of help shore up that executive function stuff. But at the same time, it's also our leverage, you know, if a kid it wants to be able to play sports, but their grades aren't high enough, well, that's an obvious leverage point, right? Um, if I happen to know that my kid wants to get into a certain college and, you know, I have very we can have a very clear understanding about what it's going to take from a grades and from a points uh uh score perspective in order to get into that school, that's leverage, right? Um, you know, it's what's really hard is when we're not able to reach our kids because we don't know what matters to them. So that's why, you know, these open lines of communication for me have from the beginning have been really, really important. Like, and I talked about this. The hardest question I get the hardest question I get it when at talks for gift of failure is about um when parents should let their kid quit something, and it's most often it's piano. And been there. Yeah, and you know, and the the reason it's hard is that the reason that question is hard is because it depends on your family's priorities. So, you know, if you're a musical family, your answer is going to be very different from the answer in our house, which was, you know, we rolled the piano down from the friend's house up the hill, whose kids had gone off to college and they didn't need it anymore. We rolled the stand the upright piano down to our house. Kids, we had a little bit of a honeymoon where kids, you know, were practicing and then and then the fighting started. And for me, the one thing I'm not willing to sacrifice, I mean, I'm certainly willing to be strict and I'm certainly willing to enforce expectations. And I think I'm a much stricter parent since getting into learning what I learned in Gift of Failure. But we got rid of that piano because we realized that it was getting in the way of our relationship. We were arguing about it every single day. And in terms of my hierarchy of priorities, my relationship with my kid happened to come above piano. And then, of course, joke was on me because years later, my kid picked up my kid, both of my kids picked up instruments on their own and then came back to piano on their own through those other instruments and are probably more proficient now because it was their own thing than they ever would have been if I had forced them to practice twinkle twinkle little star every day on the piano.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, yes, yeah. I think it's I love that you bring up over and over that it's the relationship we have with our kids that's more important sometimes than some of this other, you know, stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, under understanding, of course, what I'm talking about are, you know, not enmeshed, you know, healthy, not like, you know, I want my kid to view me as a friend kind of thing. I'm not my kid's friend. I want my kid to respect me, I want my kid to have empathy for my position um in the world and for what I deal with in the world, but I don't, um my kid is not my friend. He has friends for that.

SPEAKER_04

I I think Lynn, you had a question. We we were talking a little bit earlier, and you had a question about parents and students looking at colleges.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, my question was um, I, you know, I have two sons, and one of them went to one of these colleges that you listed in your book actually, as um as a very loosey-goosey, you know, very loose about drugs and alcohol.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the the lists are fascinating. You can you can find lists really about everything having to do with colleges out there. And yeah, I do list some of the ones that are sort of most known as party schools and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So um, and then there are other schools that are, you know, that are much stricter. So I had, you know, really two questions. One is how do parents find that out about colleges? And then I also wanted to know what your feeling was about that. I mean, what do you think of how how it should be should be dealt with?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think what's so in again, this really gets to a question about your kids. So, like I

Party Schools, Greek Life, And Sports

SPEAKER_01

I truly feel like I was I loved learning. I was in college to do well, I was there to learn as much as I could. I didn't really care about drinking at that time, so it wasn't really my thing. I think I probably could have gone to the biggest party school in the country and still have found my way through that. Um but then there are other kids who tend to be um, I don't want to use the term followers because that's not altogether what I mean, but tend to adhere to whatever the norms and the standards are. And so I think above and beyond um, and plus there was all kinds of stuff that really surprised me. Like I didn't realize that the consumption at a given college in a given state is very much driven by the state's laws. So you can look at consumption in a state. But on the other hand, like I my son has friends at some of the biggest party schools in the country, but they chose those schools for very specific reasons, not because they were party schools. So if your kid is looking at, you know, a certain school because it is a party school, or your kid is really interested in the frat culture at a given school, you know, I think that uh because we know that um, and also there's certain sports uh sports is a the sports scene is a big thing. And then which sport it is is a big thing. So for example, um, you know, the biggest sports with the biggest problem with drugs and alcohol are high contact sports, um hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and wrestling. Um, whereas sports like, you know, cross-country and things like that tend to have lower, um, lower rates of substance abuse. But we know that when, you know, there's a big sports culture at a college, when there's a big um Greek culture at a college, those schools are more likely to have alcohol-heavy marketing parties. It's just going to be there. The opportunity will be there more. And but I never uh what I wanted to do is, you know, there are plenty of people have great experiences, for example, in the Greek system, and some of it has to do with alcohol and some and put the parties and that sort of allure of the animal uh, you know, animal house sort of uh, but having those conversations, like why do you want to live in a dorm? Or why do you want to live in a in a um a frat? Why do you choose to live in this dorm and not that dorm? What is what is it about your choice that is driving this? Um, and I think those conversations about not only do they help us get to know our kids better, like having lots of conversations about, you know, the motivations behind their decisions are really important. But in the back of our head, if we know that off-campus housing and frats tend to have the highest level of drinking, um, I think that's useful information for us. And, you know, for some parents, they'll say, well, I'm paying the tuition, so therefore, you know, I'm not paying for the frat part. So if that's something that's really important to you, um, you're gonna have to go out and get a job and finance your own frat experience. Um, but for other parents, it's just gonna like for me, it would really just mean a lot of conversation about the whys behind that. Just like when I talk about peers, you know, sweetie, you come home from your friend's house and you always seem kind of bummed out and anxious when you come home from that friend's house. So, what is it you're getting from that relationship? What is tell me about this relationship? What's the good, what's the bad, what is how does it feed you as a person? Um, and then by modeling those uh same things for them, um, modeling those relationships for them. So, all of this is a conversation that sort of keeps going and and is evolving as the kid is evolving.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, how do you think colleges should deal with this? I mean, from the other side, the college.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I mean, aside from the fact that there is just such an unbelievable um blind eye to underage drinking. That's just it's sort of the assumption is and the the hurdle, you know, writing a book like this is, you know, parents say that thing, you know, well, kids are gonna drink, so I might as well get a keg, a keg, and have let my kid have a party at our house that way at least I know he's safe. Which unfortunately is um is if you look at what actually works to keep kids um from having an issue with substance abuse during their lifetime, that's uh the exact wrong approach. It turns out that having an attitude in your home that no, you don't drink or do drugs until age 21, that that is the parents who have parent like that have the lowest rates. Um, and of course, there's a causation correlation

What Colleges Can Do Differently

SPEAKER_01

issue because parents who are going to have that attitude are probably people who are don't drink or do drugs themselves and it's probably not available in the home, blah, blah, blah. But you know, you end up with a chicken and egg kind of situation. But I think that that, which also comes out of pluralistic ignorance, that idea of there's nothing we can do about it. So therefore we will do nothing. I don't think that's fair to the kids who want to be there to work and to study. And, you know, I talked about my experiences in RA in a dorm that was very heavy on the partying, heavy on the drugs and alcohol. And honestly, I wouldn't have lived there as a student if I wasn't RA'cause it was so loud on the weekends. I couldn't get anything. There was, there was vomit in the bathroom. There were, you know, kids getting sick all the time. It was very distracting. But colleges now recognize that there's a place for kids who don't want that. And those are wellness dorms, places where everyone has sort of signed a contract saying, you know, we're gonna try, there's there's quiet hours and all that sort of stuff without giving up on the whole college experience. You can there can be a place for everyone there. And I think accepting that college is is a a drinking rite of passage does a huge disservice to, as it turns out, the majority of kids who are not there to have that experience. You know, the the number of kids that are there to not have that experience are actually in the majority, and the heavy drinkers are in the very small minority. We just tend to see a lot of it in the media. We see it in movies. I mean, the tailgate parties and the and the frat parties and the, you know, it's it's all around us. And so that's our understanding of the college experience, but that is not the college experience for the vast majority of people going to college.

SPEAKER_04

And it's what the kids see on Facebook or TikTok or wherever they're spending their time these days.

SPEAKER_01

And and I have to admit, I I think it's also I have to add that I also think that is coming from a place of enormous privilege because it is the kids who can afford to throw away that opportunity. It is the kids who know they're not going to get in trouble that mom and dad will save them. It is the kids who know their mom and dad's attorney will help them get out of that DUI. Those kids often are the ones who sort of are in the media the most, and that's the image we see of you know what college consumption looks like.

SPEAKER_04

Very, very different picture when you look realistically. Yeah. I know I we could go on forever. And I do have to I have to be mindful of time. I I really want to get in two other questions that I think I think can be brief. Um and one has can you just talk a little bit about your metaphor of the puzzle pieces? Because I think that's so important for thinking about, you know, what do we do with friends and kids and and people that we see that have a problem?

SPEAKER_01

It's funny because I started talking about this puzzle piece thing with um when talking about helping build kids' executive function and helping them become more um, you know, more competent and capable and all that kind of stuff at school. And and but I made the analogy to recovery simply because that's where my head has been at for the past, you know, eight years, seven and a half years. And that's that, you know, when it comes to a friend of yours who you think might have a problem um with drugs and alcohol, uh you you,

Puzzle Pieces, Blackouts, And Warning Signs

SPEAKER_01

if you're the first person to ever say something to them about it, you're probably not gonna be the person that prompts them to take action and go get some help. Number two, number three, probably not. Somewhere along the line, whatever piece of puzzle that is that last piece of puzzle is gonna fall into place, but it can't fall into place unless all the other pieces of the puzzle are there. And actually, there's a joke in um one of the other benefits of talking to my kids a lot about my recovery and you know, the things I've done in order to get better, um, is that there's a saying in recovery that, you know, drinking and drugging is never as fun once you've done a little bit of recovery because there's always that voice in the back. Your head about the damage to the brain cells, then the I'm, you know, I'm letting people down, and all that knowledge that you get from having hung around in recovery for a while just really harshes your buzz. And the other thing that really harshes the kids' buzz is data, is knowing what they're doing to their brain, knowing what they're doing to their ability to retain information, knowing what they're doing. Um, and the fact that if they know, for example, that kids who tend to black out with if you're looking at a bunch of kids and they all have the same amount of alcohol, but one is blacking out and the rest aren't, that kid who's blacking out, meaning literally that the alcohol is interfering with their not their ability to recall memories, but to actually form them in the first place, to store them in the first place, that those kids are actually probably more likely to have a substance problem going forward. And if your kid knows that and they black out, then all of a sudden there's that little voice in the back of their head that says, huh, that's that's interesting. I should maybe keep that in mind. I don't know. It's just from uh for my kids, we don't have a ton of conversations about well, most of our conversations are based around look, you are at higher risk. So here's what it looks like when use starts to slide into abuse. Here are the signs to look for, here are the big red flashing lights that you know might hit you right in the middle of the forehead that you tend to miss when you're all in your sort of in a bad headspace when it comes to substances. And I can't help but think that, you know, one of those is going to be a puzzle piece so that it'll add to the the aggregate number of puzzle pieces that have been laid out in front of them and that have been put in place. Um, but I think that's the case with a lot of things with kids. You know, as kids develop, I joke a lot that, you know, adolescent development especially is not a beautiful linear slope. It's like the stock market, it goes up and down, up and down, up and down. And all we can hope is that we end up up here and we started down here. And, you know, historically that seems to happen. Kids grow up and they get there, but it's a little messy along the way. And we talk about providing those puzzle pieces.

SPEAKER_04

Good to keep in mind and keep doing that. Well, the last one is just something we always like to ask people. And um uh you've mentioned a couple of books earlier, and besides the gift of failure and the addiction inoculation. Um, do you have books you would recommend if someone wants to pick anything else up because they have a college kid or a college kit? Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm gonna make this super easy for you. Uh, one thing you can do is go to jessicaleahy.com and under speaking, there's a big button that's if you click on the speaking link in the menu, there's a big button that says download speaking bibliography. And it is like my greatest hits on so many different topics. But I will say there is a book coming out the same day as mine. My book comes out April 6th. This book also comes out April 6th, and it is by Julie Lithcott Hames, who wrote How to Raise an Adult. And

Recommended Books And Closing Requests

SPEAKER_01

this book is called Your Turn about How to Be an Adult. And it is specifically for older teens and uh young 20s. Uh and it is uh really to put it quite simply, the inclusive uh Bible of adulting. Like Julie went so uh worked so hard to make this book completely inclusive. There are neurotypical, neuroatypical, there are cis kids, there are binary kids, there are kids with disability, there's all kinds of people with lots of experiences. And this book is a the book about becoming an adult. And I know I'm gonna be giving it to um a whole bunch of my son's friends are graduating from college this year, and I know I'm gonna be giving that book to a lot of them. So I would thrust that book into everyone's hands.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, I can't wait to read that. Oh, it's so good.

SPEAKER_01

It's so good. I'm sort of reading it little, I'm meeting it out little by little so that I can make it make it last, but it's delicious. The world needs to see. I wish I'd had it.

SPEAKER_04

Settle in with these two books.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um, great. It's just delightful.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I have to say, the book, The Gift of Failure, we uh we recommend that more than most books. I mean, thank you. Constantly recommending that to parents.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much. I also recommend um Grown and Flown's book quite a lot. Um the Grown and Flown is fantastic. They have so much great advice, Mary Dell and Lisa have so much great advice in there. Um I I have one little short section in it that was really fun to write. So yeah, I love that book too. Good.

SPEAKER_04

Well, we're gonna list all of those in the show notes. So and they're all in the bibliography I mentioned too.

SPEAKER_01

And we'll link to that as well. So and that the bibliography, when it downloads, it downloads as a PDF, and every single item in there is linked to the source or where you can get it. So perfect, perfect. Easy peasy.

SPEAKER_04

Well, we have a lot to digest, and parents have a lot to digest, and then they need to go and get some books. Get some books.

SPEAKER_01

The nice thing is, and just I have to put a little shout out to um to independent booksellers. Um, I make I'm gonna make it so easy for you to get a signed personalized copy with free shipping from an independent bookseller if you go to jessaleahy.com. Yes, Amazon is there. Yes, the bookshop is there, and the bookshop is great because they uh support independent sellers. But there's also a link to my independent bookseller. Um, and I'm gonna be traveling there to sign books and personalize them however you'd like them to be signed, and then they will ship them out for free. So if you would like to get one shipped for free with a personalized um inscription, you can go there. That's the Phoenix bookshop, but it's linked on my website.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, so we'll find out and we will listen to that. Well, Jessica Leahy, thank you so much for taking as much time with us as you have.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_04

And talking all about that new book, The Addiction Inoculation. And parents are going to be sending your bookstore all kinds of orders.

SPEAKER_01

I hope so. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_04

You sound such a pleasure. We hope that listening to this wonderful interview with Jessica Leahy about her new, brand new book, Just Out, The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, uh, encourages you to go out and get the book. It is so rich and so full of information and really will arm parents with uh information to talk to their students about. So we hope that you will find it useful and helpful. And please share the information, share this podcast with anyone you know who might be interested, who has someone coming up to go to college, has someone in college, uh, and who might be worrying or concerned or just interested about the alcohol and drug culture uh that kids are living in and overrating, evidently. So um we hope that that this will be helpful. And if you haven't already, please consider subscribing to the podcast so that you will get them downloaded when we release them and uh visit the College Parent Central website uh at CollegeParentCentral.com. We will have show notes there with a number of the books that Jessica mentioned and links to her website and to her bibliography and lots more information from there. And if you have a chance, leave us a comment wherever you listen to podcasts or on the website and let us know what you thought, whether you'd like to hear more of this kind of interview. If you have other ideas of topics, we'd love to hear that. And so thanks for joining us today, and we'll look forward to next time. Thanks. See you later. Bye bye.