Raising girls in the modern world with Madonna King

0:02 A listener production. Hey, you're listening to Crappy to Happy. I'm your host, Cas Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this show, we talk about all the things that might be making you feel crappy and give you the tools and tips to help you overcome them. In each episode, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring and intelligent people who are experts in their field. And my hope is that you take something from these conversations that helps you feel a little bit less crappy and more happy. Today I'm talking to Madonna King, who is a journalist and an author who has gifted us with such gems as being fourteen, which is on my bedside table at the moment, as well as fathers and Daughters.

0:51 And Madonna has just released a brand new book called ten Ager, which focuses on the specific challenges faced by ten year old girls. Of course, as parents, we want to know how we can best support our girls to navigate the world of social media, how to manage their changing moods, forge quality friendships, cultivate resilience, and grow into strong and free spirited and confident young women. So Madonna has pulled together lots of experts and she's got inside the heads of these ten year old girls to help us to do just that. Here's my conversation with Madonna. You previously wrote a book Being Fourteen, which I'm just going to side note I have just recently purchased because my daughter is now fourteen. It's been on my radar for a couple of years, but most recently you are now releasing a book called Tenager. So who are these ten agers? And why was it important for you that we target this age group now?

1:50 So I wrote Being Fourteen, and lots of mums contacted me after that saying, could my daughter be very advanced because I'm getting the I roles earlier than fourteen? Or this is happening, Well, that's happening, you know. Could it be that you know, a ten year old now is similar to a fourteen year old even four or five years ago? And so I said about to explore that question, and I asked five hundred ten year olds, sixteen hundred moms, one hundred year five teachers, plus a whole lot of school principles and teen psychologists and parenting experts. But my aim was to get inside the girls' heads and find out what really worried them and then take that to the experts.

2:32 Before we jump into that. You also flagged in the book this concept of the Alpha generation, which I hadn't heard before. So this ties in with these girls turning ten now, right, So the Alpha generation is the generation who was born from two thousand and ten onwards. Yes, so you know we have Gen X, Y Z, and now we've got Generation Alpha. We're starting the alphabet again. And so what are the unique challenges that have been faced by these kids or these girls turning ten now, these alphas. So many of them. I think in large part in this sounds you've heard it before. But you know that smartphone and what it does or present huge opportunities on one hand, huge challenges on the other. And so some people would say, look, I had trouble at friendship at ten, I couldn't see my own potential at ten, I had body image issues at ten. I think things are more difficult now because at ten we could turn off. At ten, we could read stuff but not necessarily understand it. At ten we might have even picked up a Dolly magazine, whereas now celebrities that our ten year olds may follow are across platforms.

3:40 They're in Dolly and Vogue, they're on this website and this Instagram site, and so there's no kind of censorship of that. I think as a result of that, cass Our girls are growing up so much older, younger, but they're not necessarily understanding what they see and hear. They see a photo and they think it's true. They don't necessarily know it's been a doocted, or they see a picture of a ten year old somewhere else and they think, look, I'm not that pretty, I'm. Not that tall, my hair's not like that. There's something wrong with me, and we did not have to deal with that. Definitely, not to the same degree. I really appreciate what you just said there about how they have access to so much information, but they don't necessarily have the cognitive skills to determine what's real and what's not. I mean, I get that even with my teenage daughter, that she will come and tell me all about the amazing, this amazing product that's going to solve all of her problems, and because she's seen it on an Instagram ad or a TikTok or something.

4:42 I mean, even little things like it's not just how someone looks on Instagram or Selena Gomez can have a picture of her new bag and it. Gets four point one million likes. It's something like you know, in stories about friendship on the screen, on movies, on what they're seeing on YouTube, there's usually the main person and a sidekick that works well in storytelling, but not necessarily in the playground. And so it's their ability to be able to decode those messages and say that's photoshopped, that's right. That's not a. Model who appears on the front page of a magazine her face. She may be genetically blessed, but there may be forty changes made to her appearance before she appears on the front page. It is hard for a girl to understand that. And what shocked me a little bit is how harsh they are in judgment of themselves. But it's understandable when they can see their friend being harsh in judgment on themselves too.

5:42 So you're saying that they're exposed to this collective sort of self criticism. Yes, I think at that age, at ten, you go from mum and daddy, your whole world, your siblings, your family to being outward looking, and the two big factors there are your friends and maybe your teachers. And so all of a sudden you see there's different rules in different households, Different moms and dads do it differently, and you're looking at and thinking what do I want. To be like? Do I want to be like my mom? Do I want to be like my friend Sophie's mom. Do I want to be like that cool person? Do I want to be like this person on Instagram? Do I want to talk like this? Do I want to wear this?

6:23 And at that. Age is the first time really that you can see the impact of them going from inward looking to outward looking, and there's so many differences, you know, whether they live in rural Australia or city Australia. Puberty happens over years. At that period, there's all these invisible stages going on from the age of five and six. So when you're ten, some kids said to me, they describe their builder bear to me. Other girls said to me, am I writing a chapter on what happens if a boy likes you and you want to like him back. So with that difference in the playground and your child's maybe that personal that person. You can see how it creates all sorts of dramas.

7:05 The iPhone came out in two thousand and seven, right, So these kids literally are the first ones who were practically born with an iPhone in their hands. Yeah. One principle said to me. They remember standing up on parade and seeing all these moms come in with children's in prams and the iPad, and the iPhone was the pacifier. Yeah, wow, so it was. And so this is that generation where they've used them in the pram, they know how to work it, they've understood color from day dot, and their world is really different from ours. But it's also really different from their big sisters. Given that, and I know that you said in the book, I don't know if it was your quote of somebody else's, that ten is the new thirteen because of the rate, the acceleration of this change.

7:54 Absolutely, the acceleration of the change, the content they have access to the fact that during cod so lots of parents gifted their child their ten year old are smartphone to keep in contact with their friends, but also their expectations. You know, now we're talking to ten year olds about what you want to do with your life, or you need to go to university and you need this atar and you need and I spoke to lots of psychologists and psychiatrists who who one of them called this a burden, and they said, you know, the level of anxiety in our ten year old girls is huge, partly because of parental expectation, may be a touch of teacher expectation, but the girls expectations. So they're looking around their class, let's say, even their group of four or five friends, and if their marks are lower than their friends, they're starting to think, I'm not as smart as my friends, I'm not as good at.

8:45 Maths or science when at ten we have no idea of their capability. But a consequence of that, and I found this the most heartbreaking thing I think is our ten year olds are putting a ceiling on their own potential. They're decided at ten, I'm not going to be a maths girl or a science girl. I might as well give up netball now because I'm not going to make the A team. Whereas I think once upon a time we were only getting into it then and there was no harm in being the C netball team. Just building on that influence of the smartphone and social media and all of that. Did anything come out Madonna in terms of the impact on our communication skills, That's something that interests me. That ability to face to face talk to people.

9:32 What a clever question. Absolutely in two ways. One is my belief is that our ten year old's, even our fourteen year olds, don't actually have the socialization skills that are required for friendship. So they described a friendship a bit like a hot chocolate, you know, fast and delicious, you know, whereas we know, one principle said to me, I met my best friend on the first day of university. We knew that it took ages. It wasn't something that happened at little lunch or morning tea. Then if someone was mean to us, our girls don't understand about forgiveness, about whether the friendship. Is bigger than the misdemeanor.

10:13 I think, you know, this friendship idea of groups of three is vexed at that age. So I think at any age, all those socialization schools are a result. Of the smartphone. But there is an added thing, and that is after COVID and think of how long schools were closed in Victoria for example, principal after principal told me that post COVID, these girls came back to school and they had no idea how. To talk to each other. Really, they had done school online, they'd talked online to their friends, and so that ability for me to look at you and say, Cas, how are you is something that they had just then lost. And I think that's kind of one of the impacts of COVID that we haven't seen play up yet.

11:01 And I know also my daughter, the school that she goes to, they were very good with setting up zoom lessons and very structured so that there was no real gap in terms of timetabling. It was much like school, but we did it at home. But the reluctance to turn on their camera, even though they see each other face to face a school, not wanting to be seen on the zoom. It was like an anxiety. Well, one educator said to me, Some declined because they didn't like the way they looked. Now on any judgment, that's sad. You know, people say, oh, well, I remember this when I was ten. I don't remember at ten being so worried about what I looked like that I didn't want to follow to someone. And I think the fact that that's happening at ten and by fourteen and fifteen that is really then ingrained, isn't it. Then you had other options where girls were wearing makeup and getting dressed up and straight in their hair because they were on zoom.

12:03 I think both of those things are an underlying issue, aren't they, in terms of a girl's confidence and her ability to perhaps have the self esteem and the confidence to be able to put herself forward. Because in COVID, I mean, I don't think there was any unifying theme, but shy girls actually did a little bit better. Girls in the middle of the class academically went up a little bit. Some girls without an audience actually really struggled and something. Yeah, and I think you know, girls on the spectrum actually really blossomed in many cases without the noise of school. I think it was really interesting that as a scientific experiment, as hard as it was, it's taught us the values of individual teaching and learning and all of that as well.

12:50 I know some kids whose parents decided after COVID to switch permanently to distance ed because their kids did so much better out of the school environment. Yeah, I think this makes it really hard for schools. You know, I have two children and they're earning an income now tutoring little kids because parents had. To look at their little kids' work. And some are saying, well, hold on, my child should know what a pyramid is. I'm getting her tutor and they're going to high school students, and I think teachers. I've spoken to so many teachers and at a school this morning where where they're struggling because as parents, we've all become an expert, and we're all saying, you know, I think you know, little samanthaness more work here to your mind. And I think that's going to make it pretty hard for some schools. Given the equity in schools too. You know, Cas, you just gave me your example of the school, and how good that was. I know another school where two teachers photocopied the whole curriculum at office works, got in their car, divided up the class, and went and delivered it to mailboxes.

13:53 So that's pretty tough on those kids, isn't it. And it really did. That's a whole other conversation, isn't about the inequities that were that were highlighted as a result of COVID. The point that you make, though, is it's such a challenging time in their development anyway, in terms of that their bodies are changing and they get so self conscious and then too, I think that's the thing with the zoom camera. We go to school, we go to work, but we're not looking at ourselves in a mirror all day, are we? But it was just that having to look at themselves on the screen was the issue. And you know, and because it can be captured, and you know, and we know in the world of selfies, everything's got to be perfect. We don't keep those photos where we've got red eyes or we don't look our best.

14:36 And I think all that fed into it. Madonna, you mentioned that the process of puberty happens long before the first period, and I read in the book you know, up to six years before the first period, girls can be going through puberty. So what are the issues that can be going on, Like what's happening under the bonnet that we are not necessarily seeing is really affecting our kids that we should be aware of. Did you know that? Did you know about those. He well, I knew that. I guess I knew my own daughter was getting a bit moody and she was having stomach pains and I thought, oh, this sounds like periods coming. But it's up to six years. I mean that puts them at what in year.

15:21 Seven year old? Yes, even less. I didn't know this, And it's Professor George Patten his work, and he's done it over ten years. It's phenomenal research. And one quote he gave me really showed this to me. He said, if you want an ash party and you put all the effort at tennis racket, all the effort into a child of three years old, you're not going to get an ash party. But at seven or eight, if you do exactly the same thing, you just might. And his argument is that's when girls are turning on, so everything in their mind, in their body, they're able to learn quicker, they understand things. He says, it's a massive age where you can change the trajectory of girls.

16:06 So he says most girls who are seeing a mental health service at fifteen or sixteen had the problem since they were seven or eight. That's when it started. So we're not actually intervening early, we're leaving it. We've missed the boat. And he said, we put all our research into infants and toddlers where we should have been doing it with these early teenagers. So everything from heart health to obesity, to mental health, to how they become the person they are. So in that re orientation away from their family, will they be a naughty girl or not? Will they work hard academically or not? What do they think of their body? Is it a true reflection of what they look like or not? And he said this invisible stage, which starts five or six early years earlier than menstruation, is when all that is happening, in his words, under the bonnet, and teachers and parents need to be more aware of that. And he said teachers often can put their finger on something that happens in year three or four, but they don't know what it is. But girls start to change a little bit, act up a little bit, do different things.

17:17 This is what it is. And then a couple of years later we see a little bit of a rise, perhaps in anxiety or attitude, maybe slamming the door or not wanting to talk to us, wanting more privacy. That too, is part of that journey towards menstruation. So is the takeaway that is, what do we need to be watching for I guess what do we need to be doing? Yeah, I think if we could tell every parent to stop thinking about periods and to think about when their daughter may be embarking on that journey. If we can engage dads so they talk about it openly and it's not this thing about don't tell dad and it paths.

18:00 Even if we can have sex education earlier so girls understand, they don't think they're freaks, they know they're perfectly normal, beautiful, developing. Gorgeous girls. Then I think information is knowledge, and the more we can have people access that information and understand it, I think our girls would benefit us. You mentioned also earlier this disparity between the rate of development and cognitively, but you know physically that socially, emotionally their development this gap that opens up across a group of friends. At around that age ten or eleven, I was reflecting that my daughter, Actually, because we moved from the city to the coast when she was in year four, she spent the last three years of her primary school in a local public school which had multiage classrooms, and I probably didn't appreciate at the time. I mean I really liked it. But I didn't appreciate just what a blessing that was because it gave them this opportunity to gravitate to their level. They were in a class where of a year four five and six for example, or year five and six or four and five or whatever, for that reason that they could find their level. Is there an argument for that? I mean, that's school's sort of based on the Montessori approach, I think, but it's a public school, but something we should be considering.

19:31 I think there's a fore and against. I think that's absolutely true. And people when where we don't judge our friends now on their age, we have tennis friends and work friends and school friends, and we don't say, oh, you're forty five, sorry, two years younger than me, We actually did you know? And back then because they're put in that years, they're kind of stuck in that, and you see a difference in ballet or in sport when they're not in exactly the same age. So it's under fourteen and they might be twelve, thirteen or fourteen, and so for those reasons, I absolutely agree with you. People who are opposed to that. Use the argument of, for example, homerooms at schools that have years from years twelve down to year eight, for example, is terrific for boys and girls developing big brothers and big sister role models and the like. But there's other issues too, When someone in grade eleven is having trouble with her boyfriend or doesn't know what dressed wear to a formal and they're talking in front of ten and eleven year olds when what they're watching on their phone is something that an eleven year old doesn't quite understand, and so I can see that as a kind of a fore and against to it.

20:43 Yeah. I hadn't thought about that really until I read in the book about you know that. I thought, yes, that's so true. There are such a gap, so Madonna, while they are going through those changes pre menstruation and some of those moodswings and door slamming, and we're seeing that in younger girls. I think parents are on the one hand, we want them to learn to express themselves. On on the other hand, we want them to learn to manage their emotions and learn to to calm down. How do we find that balance, do you think? I think by listening to them and being consistent self regulation of their emotions is one of the key indicators of success. So we've got to teach our girls not to cry at the drop of a hat, to try and resolve problems, and that's important, but put that aside, there's going to be a little bit of that in the development in their development. I think if we're consistent so that they know that we're not going to be angry or we're going to be understanding, but we're not going to accept bad behavior, and it's consistent, they then know what to expect. I'm teaching my sixteen year old to drive at the moment, and it's no different cats, and I'm hopeless at it because you know, I'm sitting there hanging on to the side of the car going, oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god, she's not learning anything, you know, And I know I'm doing I know I'm doing it wrong. And I think it's exactly the same that if where the adult and we know as mums, especially what they're going through, and to

22:18 go through that at ten when some of your friends and you're developing and your breasts are a little bit there and your mother's saying you better wear this bra, and then other kids are laughing at you because you're wearing a bra, or because you're not wearing a bra. I think you add that to how they're feeling that insecurity and who they want to be and why they don't look like someone else. And I don't think they mean to walk in and slam the door. I think they want more privacy. I think they're a little bit nervous about dad in a sense. Often the girl will step back from her dad at about that time. But I would say if we continue to listen, and we are very consistent in what we accept and we don't accept, then it provides the barometer of how much.

23:02 They can pushes. And you also give some good examples in the book of some strategies. I think that's, you know, giving them strategies to regulate their emotions. You mentioned music. How good was music? Yeah, So all this research shows that music is a really good thing for girls to learn a whole lot of stuff, for example, even the idea of timetabling or that part of the brain that allows them to organize. And I've spoke to several experts who say that music in middle school and even into high school. So even if you've got a fourteen or fifteen. Year old they'm actually learning a musical instrument can help them in a whole lot of other ways, from self regulation to planning, to organization and all of that. In many ways, self regulation comes down to a lot of things too, and some of those are environmental. Some of those are you know what kind of life the girls have?

24:00 If you look even at when a girl reaches puberty, that can be years difference, and some of the factors are environmental factors. Whether One interesting fact I found is that girls from foster children can come to puberty years before others. And I spoke to the head of a state foster care association. He's fostered one hundred and fifty children over twenty eight years, and he says he sees at nine what everyone else sees at thirteen and fourteen. It's almost like. The girls are impelled to grow up more quickly. So everything from eternal depression to the environment, to a whole lot of.

24:44 Things help that. A couple of things that stood out to me was teachers, And I spoke to one hundred teachers. Overridingly, they say parents who molly coddle their children impact on their self regulation and their resilience. Overwhelmingly people told me that kids from country areas were often more resilient because they'd seen animals live and die, they'd seen their parents worry about drought and flood's. Big picture, not little picture. And as evidence of that, sometimes you see kids from rural areas become less resilient when they move to boarding school in the city. Kids who have spent time in a cancer ward will often be a lot more resilient.

25:28 And it's almost like they get a perspective on life that you know, privileged children or not even privileged children. Hopefully most children never have to encounter. It's so challenging, isn't it, Because we are this generation where you know, to like my mother's generation, yours as well, you know my grandmother, it was children were seen and not heard, and now children are kind of front and center, and we want to give them the best, and we want to give them every opportunity, We want to give them a voice, and they listen to their opinion, and then where do you find a balance between molly coddling them and raising these entitled brands.

26:08 Well, and you say about opinions, you know, especially I learned in doing being fourteen first, but it's relevant here too, is is we send our children to school and we want them, especially girls, to stand up for themselves and to give their opinion and to be able to argue their case with conviction and clarity. Then they come home and they say, you know, I think we should have more refugees, dad, or you know, I think we should remain a monarchy, or I think I'm gay at eleven, and all of a sudden we go hold on, hold on, hold on. And we never agree with our parents on everything. And I really think it's important for us to disagree with that argument if we like, but not to take them on personally, because they may have only decided their opinion at lunchtime. They may actually even be baiting us and that not their opinion. But on that molly coddling.

26:56 Another factor there, people explain to me is when we're I had four brothers, so families were kind of horizontal and grandparents who went and visited and they said hello, and it was lovely. Now it's vertical. Grandparents have a much bigger role. Lots of schools, they actually pay the school fees. Not mum and dad. I found out. And often parents have one or two children and they're at every soccer match or every netball match, they're at every piano presentation, and so they're so invested in them that we feel as though we're ruining them if we don't give them every opportunity to be that Olympian or to be in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. And I'm you know, one principle told me this story was COVID came down. She sent a note saying, having our musical, but will send you a link. Obviously people can't be there in person. Parents snuck in under the cover of darkness to watch their child on a stage in pitch black, and when questioned they said that they were it would impact on their.

28:01 Daughter's anxiety unless they were there. Now, your mother never did that. You know, this idea of fighting over every half mark and going up and saying, look, this girl was school captain. Can you just give me the criteria. You know, so I can check it against mine, because I thought mine was going to I remember being in a tennis or wasn't even a final, probably you know, a quarterfinal or something once at about twelve and I said to Mum, are you coming to watch me? She said no, and with four brothers. It wasn't she didn't even think she would be coming and watching me. But I'm not too impacted for life. And I know that sounds harsh, because we want the best for our kids, But on every piece of advice I got is by helping them too much in the short term, we're not helping them in the long term.

28:52 And that's really a lesson for us as parents. I think I think we all need to remind ourselves of that. Notice, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, Madonna, we talked about that age of ten and onwards, that kind of pre pubescent age where they're forming their own identity and as you said, they're looking outwards and they're working out who they want to be and what they want to be like. And now, also, as you said, they've got this whole influencer culture, this whole celebrity culture, and we can't take that away. That's not changing, that's not going anywhere. How do we be supportive and I don't know, how do we help them to shape who they want to be and make sure they've got those positive role models while they're making these kind of decisions about who they want to be and how they want to be In the world.

29:41 Yes, so minor teens. Now, if I had an eight or nine or a ten year old, now, I would actually physically draw up list of people who I thought would be good examples for them. And it may be a cousin in another country town that they could contact three times a year. It's not so they've got to be mentored with every day. But I think the antidote for the influencer industry is earthy men and women who are really genuine, authentic and who are cool for what they. Do, not what they look like. And I interviewed inspector John Rowse, who runs those investigations into pedophile networks, and we're talking about all these influences.

30:26 The influencer market went from one point seven billion four years ago to ten billion last year, and he's saying, who the hell are these people? This is not what you call a role model. And so it might be a teacher, a coach. The girls often said, a big sister while they argued with them. They knew their big sister would help them. Granddad is gold. You know why he doesn't judge me, They all say, whereas Mum and dad judge, granddad never does apparently, so you know. Aunt's uncles, a neighbor. You know, your your best friend is a fantastic mentor for your daughter. And I think we've got to. Then not judge our daughter when she wants to talk to them. And I know that can be hard, because if my daughter came to me and said, look, I want to speak to my auntie about something, I don't want to tell you what it is.

31:18 It's like atch. But our goal is to grow them so they graduate as eighteen year olds as these beautiful adults who are curious and safe and kind, And that's the person we want. And the more mentors or. Influences they have that they can see in real life and talk to and contact. Is best. And every expert said that is the best antidote to the influencer they're seeing on their phone. And they want to be influencers. Some of them too, like that's a legitimate kind of career option for a lot of them. Now you know that's the world we live in, too, isn't it. Like I said, I want to be what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a YouTuber. I want to be an influencer.

32:06 But to do that, they've got to understand people's behavior, and that's not by living online. So good on them, and some of our children will grow up to be massive influencers, and hopefully for the good, because you can influence in a whole lot of good areas as well as bad. I'm not against technology. I think it is the most wonderful invention. You may not be old enough, but I remember doing primary school assignments with an Encyclopedia Britannica, which. Was next to useless. So I think the ability that they have been granted through technology is wonderful. It's not going away. Our job is to teach them how to use it, and when it becomes our fault, if you like, is if we don't know how to use it. We don't give the kids the key toor car and say take it for a run and tell us what you need to know.

32:53 So this idea that we hand them a phone and say all right, you can go on Instagram. Now go and do it. You know we need to do it too. And one dad said to me at this parent night, but who do I talk to on Instagram? You don't have to talk to anyone. You just have to know how to do it and how your daughter is doing it the parameters that she can operate in. I guess ten year olds on Instagram. Oh yeah. So of the sixteen hundred mums that whose council I sought, half of them said their children had a smartphone, and a hell of a lot of them had Instagram. I was quite surprised. Instagram and TikTok are the most common social platforms that our ten year olds are on. Many had house Party and Snapchat and a whole lot of others. But I do think there was an almighty jump in the first six months of last year because parents saw as a way of connecting during COVID.

33:48 As you say, will be seeing the flow on effects from COVID for a while. I think. So. I think so confidence and. Self esteem really takes a nosetive. I know. I remember my daughter and her friends. It is that time where they start dropping out of sport or dance or ballet. Partly they lose interest. I think partly they just don't want to be out in a leotada or a crop top because they start getting body conscious. Any advice about that. Yeah, So I didn't realize this, but teachers explained to me how girls this age are double togging. They're wearing two swimsuits. Wowing lessons.

34:28 I spoke to several girls who said, I used to dance when I was nine, but now I'm ten, I don't because all of a sudden, you can see little buds, or you feel as though you're. Fat, you know. And someone explained it to me, is you know, when you're seven or eight, our kids grab the karaoke at a family barbecue, or they're diving into a pool, and what are they yelling, Mom, Mom, look at me, Dad, watch my summersault. That all of a sudden it just stops. And what that is is that sphere of influence going from internal where the family is their world, to external and Mum and Dad's judgment is always lovely, the judgment of their peers is often much harsher. And to me, that's when you need that antidote of other mentors who think what they're doing is good, or acknowledge the work they're being put into.

35:21 Something. People say, oh, you know, it's easy, you know, they've just got to find their passion. I don't subscribe to that. I think lots of girls find it really hard to know what their passion is that will come eventually. But what they've got to do is realize that achievement brings competency, and competency gives them self confidence. So if they learn to do something that is something really worthwhile, no matter how hard it is. And in building resilience, there's two schools of thought. One say, you know, if they learn empathy and kindness, that will really help them. I'm not sure that it's true. It may help a whole lot of school principles told me that it's by service opportunities.

36:06 So them doing this and going to an old person's home and talking to them on a Tuesday afternoon as part of a school program, or them lining up to actually help serve the homeless, or even doing the groceries for the lady next door and talking over the fence. It's a sense of I can do this, I'm grown up, I can help someone. And with that, principles say they look out who's not inwards, and they're looking at other people, not themselves, and that then creates a self confidence. And in everything I saw with girls, I think that spot on. I found it interesting to what you said about that the identity formation and how the cues they pick up from even family very young about who they are and you know, she's the funny one, and she's the spot.

36:59 When I work with adult who are still carrying these stories and these limitations about what they're capable of and who they are and what they can do that they've picked up so early from those family messages. Yeah, one example for your listeners is perhaps how we label our children in friendship. So parents said to me, Mum said to me, or mind's the messenger. I hope mine's not a man girl. Or mine's the boss in the group, or mine's a goody two shoes. All these labels, and the psychologists said to me, and this makes sense that girls lean into those labels. So when I spoke to. Girls about their role in the friendship group, they could describe their role in those terms I'm the shy one, or I'm in charge, or you know, I carry a note between groups. They could actually describe themselves in terms of a role, not as a friend.

37:53 And I think we should be quite careful. We've learned over the years not to say things, not to label people in greater community. I think that needs to be brought into the playground. So kids are kids, they're not you know, necessarily she's the clever one, she's the sporty one. What does this make that one? She just feels, especially then at the age of fourteen, that she's a nobody. She's stuck in the middle of nothing. And I think girls have to learn that they're enough. Boys perhaps two, but you know, they are bright and clever and inquisitive, and they can be the person they can be without having to be the best at maths or the best at this.

38:38 I think that's massively overrated. I was just thinking back to the body confidence issue, which is obviously massive. It's always has been with girls and the feedback that they give to each other. And I know, you know, my daughter is obviously she's fourteen, so but even when she was younger, I think when you see girl, when you see what they post on Instagram. I think you mentioned this in the book, to the compliments that come through, which are all about, oh my god, you're so pretty, you're so cute, I love your outfit, you're so hot. I wish I looked like you. It's so appearance based. Still absolutely, but if you're ten or eleven, or twelve or thirteen or fourteen, and that's what you're seeing, you can see how that then builds you.

39:27 And so if everyone's saying you're pretty, or that just makes. You look hot, or you can see how they gain confidence in that. So when those messages don't come or no one's saying you're pretty, the impact then of that is phenomenal, you know, and I think I think that's pretty harsh. And they also want that response immediately. There's no instagratification. At one school, they told me how they're taking anxious girls out of class and trying to teach them to breathe, and they're saying breathe one to three and out. If girls can't master it out in two minutes, they start to panic that they've failed breathing.

40:09 For God's sake, But that's the world we're going. We've now book a holiday on Instagram, we swap a lounge, we get someone to come and fix the pool or whatever. We now no longer wait for anything. And you and I as kids, had to, and there's a sense of achievement in actually waiting, that sense, whether it's to get photos developed or to understand a particular maths problem. And if you don't have that quality that is to wait and to have patience. I think it's very hard then to see yourself as successful always.

40:50 That's a good tip, finding opportunities for them to have to wait, making them delay gratification. Well, the perfect one, and I did it in fourteen, is get a camera and say, well, just say to a fourteen year old girl, how. Do you take it? How do you think I took a picture at your age? And you see them go with the cat with a phone. Now I didn't have a phone. What did we have. We had to first of all get a camera. We had to actually do the lens because it wasn't automatically focusing. Then we took a picture, we had to put it away for twenty. Three Other pictures were thirty five before we could even get it developed, which they have no understanding what that is. We'd open the door of the. Camera and my favorite line is and then you take it to the pharmacy.

41:33 And girls are looking at you like was it sick? But we had to wait at least a week often, Well, in Dolby we did to. Go back and collect them. But we went back with two things. One money because you had to pay for the photographs. But the other thing was this enormous sense of what it meant, of expectation, and I think that's been robbed from our children. It's been stolen from them. We've got to find a way of granting that anticipation, that waiting back to them so that they can have that terrific feel of going through and not even remember that photo being taken. And when I look through my photo album now it's. Those silly ones of red eyes when you've got all funny smile and you know it's a candid photo that is so precious. There are no candid photos now. You know it's pouted. There's a pout on the face, and the perfect outfit and the perfect hair.

42:29 And you know that's kind of sad, isn't it. Casts It is, but I've been really pleased to see. It's interesting you bring this up this film. Cameras have become cool again, and disposable cameras. My daughter had a birthday party and somebody handed me a disposable camera to take a photo and she started to explain to me how to use it, and I was like, you understand, don't you, because was all I had for most of my life. She's like, you've got to wind that to wind the film. Yes, I understand, yes, yeah. They think why do they like it? I've noticed this trend and I think it's delightful. But is it because it's quaint? Yeah? Is it because they're still taking pictures on their mobile phone? Maybe you picked vintage a bit like vintage dress.

43:12 And yeah, turntables records, final records are back. Yeah? Absolutely. And I said to my parents, I said, oh, she got a film camera for Christmas. You know, she's really happy about it. I think it's great. And for those reasons that you just said, that delayed gratification. And my dad said, what, that's a ridiculous idea. Used to cost us seven hundred dollars to process the PHONEO the film's from the holiday? Yeah, and you know that is something in terms of disruption, and we've all had to face disruption all industries. I thought that when my daughter got some developed because they made her pay for them when none of them turned out, and. I thought, you can see, well, that's just not right, is it? You know?

43:52 And so that I think that industry has to probably come up with a model where if they want to sell cameras old style cameras, they've got to be able to do it for a price where children are happy to get all developed. Madonna, having spoken to all of those ten year old girls and got inside their heads, what is it that they want us to know? We as parents, what do we need to know about our ten year olds? Yeah? So I think they want to talk to mum. And this sounds a bit sexist, but that the most commonplaces was cooking together, going to a movie together, shopping together, but talking and Mum doing the listening and them doing the talking with dad. And I asked them this specific question, what do you want more from mum? What do you want more from dad?

44:40 Dad? It's doing stuff, so whether it's a bike ride or a walk or jumping in the pool. So many ten year olds are so excited that dad has been a home more often in the last year during COVID. They're probably more harsh on their mum in many ways, but that and that's a lovely silver lining the cloud of COVID. I hope it remains because that connection between. Dad and daughter is gold. So Dad doing more, Mum listening more. And they won't ask us, they won't tell us that's what they want, but there is no doubt even when they're rolling their eyes and they're slamming their door and they're walking away from us, they want us to listen to them, give them a hug and say that we understand or we're listening.

45:27 Thank you so much for the work that you have put in and the conversations that you've had to put this book together. It is a real gem, and I know that so many parents are going to be thrilled to get their hands on a copy. Thanks Cas, Because at the end of the day, we're all in it together, aren't we. Which is time we are to bring up these beautiful girls to be the best that they can possibly be, So I hope it helps. There is no doubt that kids today are living in a whole different world from the one that we grew up in, even if you are a younger parent. And just when we thought we were getting a handle on managing technology and social media, our kids were faced with carrying on their education, their friendships, and all of their activities during a global pandemic. Some Madonna's book Tenager is full of really solid wisdom, practical advice, And if, like me, your daughter is a little older now, then I would also really recommend that you grab a copy of her last book, Being fourteen. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to leave us a rating and a review.

46:28 And I also love reading your messages, so shoot me a dm over on Instagram. I'm cast Done underscore XO, where you can email me at helloat caasdone dot com. Rapy to Happy is presented by castdun produced by Davis Lenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener