The Atlas Society Asks Esther Wojicki Transcript

Her three daughters grew up to be a CEO of YouTube, a co-founder of 23andMe, and a Professor at UCSF. Esther Wojcicki joined CEO Jennifer Grossman on February 22, 2023 to discuss the educational and parenting approach she calls TRICK: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness as explored in her book, How to Raise Successful People—and broadened that advice in Moonshots in Education: Launching Blending Learning in the Classroom. Watch the entire video HERE or check the transcript below.

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JAG: Jennifer Anju Grossman

EW: Esther Wojcicki

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JAG: Hello everyone, and welcome to the 141st episode of The Atlas Society Asks, my name is Jennifer Anju Grossman. My friends call me JAG. I'm the CEO of The Atlas Society. We are the leading nonprofit, introducing young people to the ideas of Ayn Rand in fun, creative ways, like graphic novels and animated videos. We take an open Objectivist approach, which emphasizes a reasoned, nondogmatic approach to discussion, and we elevate benevolence to a major virtue. Today we are joined by Esther Wojcicki or “the Woj”, as she is known to her students and many admirers. Before I even get to introducing my guest, I want to remind all of you who are joining us on Zoom, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. You can start typing in your questions now. Just use the comment section and we'll get to as many of them as we can. My guest, Esther Wojcicki, is a journalist and educator whose three daughters grew up to become CEO of YouTube, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, and a professor at UCSF. As one might imagine, many people marvel at that amazing track record and wonder what this mom might have done differently. Esther satisfies that curiosity with her book How to Raise Successful People, which also draws on her decades of experience teaching at Palo Alto High School, which also informs her book Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom. Esther, thanks for joining us.

EW: It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for the invitation.

JAG: In your book How to Raise Successful People, you observe that when it comes to parenting, most people default to the way they themselves were raised when it comes to raising their own kids. But you share how you were determined to do things differently, though in some ways it seems that the circumstances of your childhood forced you to take on a lot of responsibilities at an early age and learn that you must think for yourself. Can you describe those early experiences and maybe how they influenced you?

My father was an artist, and...artists don't make very much money. We were always hungry. I grew up in a place where money was rare.

EW: Sure. My parents were born in the Soviet Union and Ukraine, and so I was the first generation here in the United States. My father was an artist, and as you might know, and just guess, artists don't make very much money. We were always hungry. I grew up in a place where money was rare. So what that did is it forced me to be much more creative, I think, with what I needed in life, whether it was clothing or  toys or anything. I tended to be much more creative than a person like my own kids, actually, who I made sure had a lot of toys. But then also I had some difficulties. I would describe it as when I was about 10 years old,  because of not having enough money, we didn't get adequate medical care, medical treatment, and I had a third brother who accidentally swallowed aspirin. My mother was given the wrong information about how to take care of him. As a matter of fact, they advised her to put him to bed and see what happens. You never do that to somebody that ingested a poison. But because she was an immigrant and she was a woman, she was just afraid to challenge the doctor and say, “Hey, that doesn't sound right to me.” So she didn't. She just followed the instructions and unfortunately you know the consequences, he died. I was just 10 years old when that happened. You don't know how that impacts you as a child. It's just, “Oh my God, this is terrible.” You're very upset, and so forth. But long term, looking back, I can see what it did. What it basically did is say don't trust anybody. Be willing to always ask questions and to try to find those answers out for yourself. You know, be as informed as you possibly can because if you aren't you might not make it in the world, right?

JAG: Don't blindly trust the authorities. Don't blindly trust someone who's an “expert”. You also had an experience, I think it was a little bit later, you write about it in the book, when your younger brother, not the baby, but the younger brother fainted and you started feeling woozy and your mother took the brother outside and told you to remain in the house . . .

That's what I ended up teaching my students: always ask a lot of questions. Don't be embarrassed, there's no such thing as a stupid question.

EW: “Lie down in the bed, and then I'll come and get you in a bit.” If I would have done what she told me to do—already I was attuned not to do that anymore—I wouldn't be here today because it was carbon monoxide poisoning and people die really quickly without air, with carbon monoxide poisoning. So, that followed me actually through my entire life, actually till today, for forever. That's what I ended up teaching my students: always ask a lot of questions. Don't be embarrassed, there's no such thing as a stupid question. If you didn't get the answer to that question, just ask that question again. And it made a big difference in my life. It made a huge difference in the lives of all my students because they're used to being told not to ask questions or be careful before you ask a quote: stupid question. That was not the rule of my class. You can ask what you want. That might have encouraged all the hundreds of kids who signed up for my class. I mean, I don't know, there were a lot of things that encouraged them to sign up.

JAG: And hence earned you the moniker of the “Godmother of Silicon Valley” because you've had so many successful young people pass through and graduate from your class. And I think asking questions and thinking for yourself, that also stands in stark contrast. You've had debates attended by thousands of people where you were up against proponents of the tiger-mom approach where it's extremely strict and it's very regimented and those kids might grow up to be successful in one way, but they learn to be very good at following the rules and following instructions. That's in stark contrast with what you tried to instill in your daughters.

It's not terrible to make a mistake. You need to be able to make mistakes when you learn something. The reason I say that is if you do something and you don't make any mistake, well, did you really need me to help you learn it?

EW: Yes, that is in stark contrast. And that's what I'm trying to allow all students to do everywhere, all over the world, which is why I'm giving all these talks in many different countries. I think it's really important for young people to feel confident. It's not terrible to make a mistake. You need to be able to make mistakes when you learn something. The reason I say that is if you do something and you don't make any mistake, well, did you really need me to help you learn it? You already know how to do it. So, I'm really focused on giving kids opportunities to learn something and if it doesn't go right to do it again. Grading in my classes was never an issue because all you had to do was revise. Everybody got an A but some people revised two times. Some people revised ten times. I didn't care how many times you revised, you just needed to get it right. Kids loved that. You know, nobody felt threatened. I wish the system would do that because it's just too stressful for kids with grades all the time hanging over their heads.

JAG: Yes. As they revise, they're learning.

EW: Well, you learn a lot when you revise a lot. You should see the writing in the publications that my students do. I mean, you would think it was written by somebody at the New York Times. It's all kids ages 14 to 18, and they can learn how to do it just like they learn how to speak a language better than you do, you know? After the age of 14, the kids that are younger are going to beat anybody over 14 at learning a language.

JAG: Amazing. Now, one of the things I love about your book is it has so many great stories and anecdotes, but they're all illustrating a particular point. A lot of what they illustrate is this approach, this innovative method for parenting and teaching that you dub trick: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. Could you briefly describe these elements or a couple of them at least, and share why they're so important?

EW: Yes. I came up with this acronym to try to help people remember what they read in my book, <laugh>, because I remembered myself that sometimes you read something in a book and you can't remember by the last chapter what you read in the first chapter, so you have to go back and look at everything. This way you could; it's a trigger, it's a way to remember. I started out with trust because trust is the most important as far as I'm concerned. Why is it important? Well, I think it's really important for teachers to trust the students because when somebody who's a figure of authority and respect trusts you, you suddenly feel like, gee, I should trust myself. I'm better than I thought I was. Trust makes a big difference in relationships in your family, relationships in school, relationships between partners or spouses. It's so important. If you don't trust somebody, you can feel it when someone doesn't trust you. I mean, you don't have to have them spell it out, <laugh>, you know? So, that's one of the things my students said was incredibly important to them. My children also said the same thing. It was really important to them that I always trusted them and that I respected them. By respect, I mean that I was willing to listen. That didn't mean I did exactly what they said—some of those ideas are downright wacky—but the fact that I was willing to listen and talk about it made a big difference, a huge difference to them. 

Then independence, especially in school, there's very little independence in most schools, most classes. I gave kids as much independence as I possibly could within the boundaries of the school. And it made a big difference, a huge difference.

Then independence, especially in school, there's very little independence in most schools, most classes. I gave kids as much independence as I possibly could within the boundaries of the school. And it made a big difference, a huge difference. For example, they got to pick their own story ideas. It wasn't me that picked them, it was they that picked them, and then they did the research, and then their peers edited. It just made a huge difference to them. Collaboration. I focus on collaboration a lot because when I was growing up in L.A., actually all around the country, by the way, the same rules applied: Collaboration was called cheating. All kids were responsible for doing their own homework. No, you're not supposed to get your mom or dad to help. No, your brother or sister can't help, you have to do it yourself or it's cheating. The same was true in the classroom, cheating if you didn't do it yourself. So I said, “Hey, I want you to learn this.” I really don't care how you learn this. You know, I've given you some ideas. I've taught, told you a little bit about it. I think it's really important for you to learn this. It's fine if you have a friend that's helping you. That's the collaboration. Then K for kindness. Kindness belongs in all areas of life. In all places in the world. Every single major religion talks about kindness, and we just don't have enough kindness, especially today in 2023. There is just a lack of kindness, and that makes people suspicious. It makes us all unhappy. I don't see why we can't be kinder to each other. We're all human beings, and we all have very basic needs, and that's really to be loved and respected and to be appreciated and have enough food and shelter and clothing.

JAG: Yes. And the way that you describe the importance of kindness to your students and even to your grandchildren is that it's in your self-interest. That's how we, at The Atlas Society, talk about benevolence as a self-interested value. I think there was a story, maybe it was one of your grandkids who was having trouble sharing his toys or something, and you walked him through and said, “Well if you share with them, they'll be more likely to share with you,” and helping in a very fundamental way to connect with people is why it's more productive to be that way.

EW: Yes, you are happier. You know, personally, one of the things that makes me the happiest is when I see my students succeed; their success gives me a great deal of joy. And I think that is true for parents too. When their children do well, it brings them a lot of joy. But then when you share something with somebody, no matter what it is, an idea or clothing or whatever, it brings you joy and it brings them joy. So, it's so important for everyone of us to remember, especially now in this world as it is today, what can we do to make the world a better place and to help everybody live a better life?

JAG: Now, you'd mentioned trust. It starts off the acronym because it's the most important. I like to say, “Trust is not everything. It's the only thing”. You shared two stories in your book, one in which your daughters damaged the trust that you and your husband had in them, and one in which you damaged, trying to do the right thing, but ended up damaging the trust which two of your daughters had in you. What happened? Most importantly, what did you learn and how did you rebuild that trust?

EW: Well, I think the first one that you're talking about is when my husband and I went away for the weekend. Yes. I left my three daughters at home by themselves. I think they were 16, 15, and 13. I probably should have known better, but I trusted them.

JAG: You learned <laugh>, right?

EW: Yes. We came back, never got a phone call, nothing. There was no electronic stuff back then.

JAG: The house was totally clean and vacuumed.

They all confessed finally. Then we had to rebuild the trust. It took a while because okay, nothing bad happened, right? The only bad thing that happened was they broke my trust and that was bad.

EW: The house was beautiful, cleaned, vacuumed, spotless. I was, “God, what's going on? It's so nice. We went away for the weekend and I come home to a perfect house and everything”. I actually didn't know anything was different. No other problems. The next morning I went to school as usual. Then in the class first period there was a lot of talking and giggling, and so forth. That was like a ninth grade class. They were talking about whatever literature they were reading or whatever, and I said “What is going on? I know that something's really different today.” Then I looked across the room and there was this girl wearing an outfit that looked just like mine. I was like, “Oh my God I have the same clothes, I have the same outfit.” She says, “It's yours, <laugh>. It's yours.” I said, “What?” She said, “Yes, I was at your house on Saturday night, and I spilled something on myself and your daughter said, ‘just help yourself.’” This girl just took some clothes out of my closet and put 'em on, and I just could not believe it. The rest of the day, I don't know what I said or what I did. I was just so shocked. I came home that night and said, “I heard what happened at the house. No wonder it's so clean.” They all confessed finally. Then we had to rebuild the trust. It took a while because okay, nothing bad happened, right? The only bad thing that happened was they broke my trust and that was bad. But we worked on it. They understood it would've been better to tell me, it would've been that I could have then had a chaperone there. Apparently there was a big rager, so there were like, I don't know, a hundred people there. So yes, that was a problem. Anyway, I did not go away again, <laugh>. But what was the second one?

JAG: I think it was with a car and your daughters.

EW: Oh, that, yes. That's a hilarious story also. When they got to be 16, they got a car, and Susan got the first car, which was an old Volvo. It was honestly a really old Volvo. It had 200,000 miles on it, and she was very proud of it. It was her car, an old one. Then when Janet and Anne came along I didn't have a lot of money, so I got another car. This one was a Volvo also. Janet went off to Stanford and she's like “Mom, can I keep the car on campus? You know, I need to go places.” I said, “Oh, then we have to pay for it, and you need a sticker on it and all that stuff. Why don't we just leave it at home and then if you need it you can come and get it.” In the meantime Anne finally got her driver's license. I said to Anne, “I'm going to give you the Volvo, it can be your car,” because I figured Janet was at Stanford. So she thought the car was hers for sure. She was telling everyone how she got a car. Then Janet, who would come and pick it up every night now and then would say, “hey, it's mine.” Then one day, lo and behold, they both found out that I had given the same car to both of them. Boy, were they furious and I just didn't know what to do at that point. But <laugh>, it was pretty funny. It worked for a while. Then, we finally ended up buying Janet another car, so then we had three  old cars sitting in front of our house. <laugh>

JAG: <laugh> Yes. It just goes to show that even when you think that maybe you can cut corners and tell one person one thing and another person the other thing, at the end of the day, it always comes out. Yep.

EW: Always comes out. So anyway, I think I've been at this point forgiven for the car situation.

JAG: <laugh> <laugh> All right. One of my first guests on this podcast was Lenore Skenazy. She's the author of Free Range Kids. She identified ways in which media-inspired fear was leading parents to overprotect children, and thus limit their opportunities to develop more resilience and coping skills. Would you agree with that assessment? If so, when did you, as a high school teacher with decades of experience, when did you begin to sense a shift?

I started sensing a shift in about 2001, 2002. It started to grow and get worse and worse and worse. I think as the internet grew, it was just an avalanche of parents that were just terrified that something bad was going to happen to their kid.

EW: Actually I started sensing a shift in about 2001, 2002. It started to grow and get worse and worse and worse. I think as the internet grew, it was just an avalanche of parents that were just terrified that something bad was going to happen to their kid. I live on this street at Stanford where there's an elementary school right down the street, just five houses away. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is great. My kids can just walk to school by themselves.” And they all did. Starting at the age of five, they just walked out the front door and walked down to the school, and that was it. Today, and actually starting in about 2005, no one walked to school. The parents would drive and park right in front of a path, and then you would think they would just let their kids hop out on the path and run to the school. Uh-uh, they get out of the car with the child and walk them directly into the classroom. It's unbelievable. I think also the other thing I noticed is that years ago, I would go to a big box store of some kind—I don't think it ever happened at Costco—but maybe a Target store, and you would hear on the loudspeaker: “We have a little three year old boy here at the front desk wearing a yellow sweater, and he says his name is Adam. Will his mother please come pick him up?” We never hear that ever now, never. It's gone. 

JAG: Yes. I never thought of that.

EW: We don’t leave a child out of sight.

JAG: They have them on leashes even.

EW: Yes. It's a real leash for a child. It's not a dog leash.

JAG: I know. <laugh> <laugh> Really. You writing this book is, I think, part of your effort to counteract this, but do we tell parents to turn off the news?

EW: You know, I think that as long as they're reading the news, and as long as we get one horrible story after another every single day, every day, not just once in a while I think parents' instinct is just to overprotect.

JAG: Yes.

EW: I have tried to tell parents that Target is safe and they should not worry about letting their kid walk alone on a few aisles or whatever, but I think the culture is really different.

JAG: Have your daughters been impacted? I know we talked earlier about this tendency to default in your parenting to the way you were raised. Maybe for them it's not as hard, although they're subjected to the same kind of negative news, and things like that.

EW: You know, I think that they've also been impacted by the negative news. It's been very hard for them. Although I do have another story in the book called The Target Story. I don't know if you remember that.

JAG: Yes, yes. Share that. I thought that was a great story, <laugh>, and that actually it's a good illustration of your approach and then one generation removed that it didn't necessarily stick, but it was an opportunity to revisit it.

EW: Right? It was a Saturday morning and I was over at Susan's house and all the kids were there, and then two of them, they were two nine-year-old girls, and they needed to go buy their school supplies at Target. I said, “Okay, I'll take them.” Then one of the other kids, the boy, had really long bushy hair, and so they're like, “Time for a haircut.” I decided I would take them both. I took the girls and the boy, and I thought, well, I have to go to two different places and they're nine years old, after all, who knows better what they want for school than those girls, I'm not going to tell 'em what to get. I said, “Hey guys, why don't I just drop you off at Target and you go shopping, and then you can text me or call me when you get all your stuff and I'll come back with the credit card.” Meantime, I'm going to take Adam and have him have a haircut. That's what I did. Then I drove down to this haircut place, and I said, “Why don't you go in there and tell 'em how you want your haircut? Here's the money. You just do it. You know, I don't know how to tell you how to do your haircut, just figure it out.” In the meantime, as I was driving back to Target, I got a phone call from my daughter who said, “So, how's the shopping going at Target?” I said, “Oh, it's great. You know, the kids are shopping by themselves I'm going to pick 'em up soon. I just had to take Adam to get the haircut.” There was a dead silence on the phone, first of all, then she's like, “You did what?” I said, “I dropped them at Target.” She's said, “Target? Well, you better go back there right now, because something could have happened to them.” I said, “Last time I checked Target, it was pretty safe. I've never seen anything bad at Target. It's a great store.” Anyway, this went on for a few minutes, and then, of course, I drove back to Target. I found them both there. They were having a wonderful time. Of course, they bought too much stuff. We had to do a little filtering, and then I gave them the credit card and I said, “This is how you check out and you can sign my name. Let me show you how.” I'm telling you they loved it. 

It's all fueled by social media and the stories that we read and all these terrible things that we hear about. It makes us much more overprotective. What that does is it cuts down how empowered your child feels.

This story was so important for them and for the whole family because after that everybody wanted to do the same thing, all saying, “We want freedom too.” I picked up Adam and he looked great, and I was not there telling the hairdresser how to cut the hair. He told him. He looked like a nice young man. <laugh> That's the Target Story. I do think that parents are just too overprotective. They're worried that their kid's going to be snatched. You know, they go down one aisle and the kid's in the other aisle and they think there's kid-snatchers everywhere. It's all fueled by social media and the stories that we read and all these terrible things that we hear about. It makes us much more overprotective. What that does is it cuts down how empowered your child feels. The more you do for your child or the more protection you supply, the more that you do, the less empowered they are, if you just think about it. You know? If you are always having somebody do something for you, always, you don't know how to do any of it yourself. Actually in today's world, most kids don't even know how to fry an egg, sorry to say. I think we should think about what we're doing. The world is not that dangerous, especially in your own house. Then especially walking down the street a few houses although there are those terrible stories where we all remember the kid that was snatched from their own driveway or something.

JAG: Yes. But it's so, so easy and so tempting, and we're wired really to exaggerate the likelihood of something like that happening to us. It's part of our evolutionary makeup to be focused more on threats rather than opportunity. When kids are overprotected, they're also getting the message that strangers can't be trusted -- that people are not mostly good and the world is a dangerous place. Now we are about halfway through, and I still have a lot of questions because I thoroughly enjoyed your book, and I particularly thought that was a great narrator on the audiobook, but we have a lot of questions piling up from our viewers, and I don't want to abuse their trust either. We're going to get to a few of those. I'm going to read them. If there's one that you're thinking hmm, I don't know or not for you, then we've got plenty. All right. From Instagram, MyModernGalt asks Esther, “What you said about creativity compared to your children is interesting. Do you think children need more variety of toys or stimulation or rely more on developing their own imagination?”

You don't have to teach kids to be creative. They're born creative. What we do is we sort of educate the creativity out of them.

EW: Well, I think too many of these plastic toys that you push a button and it sings a song or things like that, I think that cuts into a child's creativity. I think that if you can give them the pieces like paper and crayons to draw pictures or pieces to put a puzzle together or to put something together or to make something out of twigs or there's so many opportunities for kids to be creative. You don't have to teach kids to be creative. They're born creative. What we do is we sort of educate the creativity out of them. That's what Sir Ken Robinson, who is the number one TED speaker, said that “kids don't grow into creativity. They grow out of it because the schools tell them what's right and what's wrong all the time”. By the time they're in 12th grade, they have 5% creativity. In kindergarten, 95% of the kids are creative. I think—don't try to entertain them all the time. See what you can do to let them entertain themselves or entertain themselves and their friends. I think the best, most effective thing that I ever discovered was that if I didn't really have time to pay attention to my daughters, all I had to do was to get one friend over. That did it. No longer were they interested in me, they just wanted to play with a friend. That was perfect. So, little kids are extremely creative. One of the things that I did also, I remember we used to have sort of a jungle gym in the family room, and they would take sheets or blankets and cover up that jungle gym. It's like, what are you doing? They're making a house. Then they would do all kinds of wild things that were really incredible inside that house that they created. So that's what I think: don't over give them toys, let them develop and create with a lot of the things that are just around the house, your pots and pans, for example.

JAG: Get crates from the supermarket, let them build forts.

EW: You know, on those boxes, by the way, what you get. Let out something with those boxes.

JAG: I love it. All right. Well, I think Valerie Menez on Facebook, we may have answered this but let's see if there's more to tease out. She's asking Esther, “Do you feel American public education is focused more on test taking and regurgitating information rather than actually developing creative thinking?”

EW: The answer’s yes. Yes, a hundred percent. The whole focus of the education system is test scores. So it makes it really tough for kids that don't like to take tests or kids that are really creative or kids that are not fitting into the square-peg hole that they want 'em to. It's a test-taking society.

JAG: Also from Facebook. Alexander Stahl asks Esther, “How do you think remote learning compares to in-person? Does it matter more for certain age groups?”

EW: You know, actually remote learning is very effective if you don't do it all the time. Just little bits of it. I think it was, of course, too much in the pandemic because it was all the time. But a lot of kids were able to learn quite a bit online. It's a skill learning online, but you don't want to do it eight hours a day. Also, just so you know, the Coursera courses, the university courses, they have a very low retention rate. As a matter of fact, only about 9% of the people that sign up complete the courses. And the question is: why? My personal answer is learning is social and it's interactive, and if you're taking the course by yourself, you don't have anybody to talk to about it. So, I think it's better if you want to take one of those courses, do it with a group of friends, and then talk about what the professor said.

JAG: Yes, that's a great idea.

EW: Apply that to your own life.

JAG: Katie Voss on Instagram asks, “Esther, do you think smartphones and social media are harming kids today? Should parents restrict use until a certain age? Maturity?” I did want to ask about that because I thought you also had a lot of very interesting stories about collaboratively coming up with rules, but I see a lot of similar questions along these lines.

Under the age of five, the main skills that kids are learning are interaction skills, how to get along with the world...If they spend time on social media...then they can't spend that time learning the things that they really need to learn.

EW: Yes. I do think social media should be restricted to kids who are five years and older. Under the age of five, the main skills that kids are learning are interaction skills, how to get along with the world, just basic skills. If they spend time on social media or watching TV all the time, then they can't spend that time learning the things that they really need to learn and they can't learn at any other time. After the age of five, they can; there are a lot of programs on iPads or on computers for little kids. If you go to Common Sense Media—I would like to promote Common Sense Media—they review all the programs out there and actually all the movies out there. So, you can pick some programs that are age appropriate and I would restrict kids to an hour and that's it. And as they get older, they can spend a little more time. But if they're spending two hours at a time, that's too much. That's too much for you as an adult, that's too much for kids also. With gaming I think they should take a break also, they can game for a while. The kids that do gaming, they do learn a lot of computer skills. Parents whose kids are gaming, what they consider too much, you need to realize that you could probably never compete on those games. You know, they're really skill-based and they do offer opportunities for learning a lot of tech skills; especially Minecraft is very effective.

JAG: Esther, there was a story in your book about, I think you were on a vacation with your daughters and your grandchildren, and it came time to talk about social media and device use on the trip. I was surprised by how that turned out. So were you.

EW: I was shocked. Yes, so I'll tell you about that. We went to Napa for the weekend. I don't know if any of you've been to Napa, California, north of San Francisco. It's beautiful. I recommend it. Anyway, we went to a resort that was deluxe, very pricey and had a lot of activities for kids and for us and whatever. First thing that we saw there, the minute the kids got up, they're on their phones. It's like, what? You're on your phone and we're paying all this money for you to be at this resort. You should be playing tennis or swimming or doing something, but not on your phone. Then the idea of some of the parents was: let's just confiscate those phones. I don't think that's a very good idea. Fortunately, somehow I prevailed and I said, “Why don't we just let the kids come up with the rules for when they can use the phones themselves and then tell us what they think are the best rules, grudgingly or begrudgingly.” I should say, everybody's like, “Oh yes, well let's just see what they come up with.” Oh my God. They went into a little room in a huddle and they were there for, I don't know, about 30 minutes or so, and they came out and told us what their suggested rules were. First of all, we were all terrified of what it was going to be because we thought it was going to be bad. They came out with this rule: no phones from 9:00 AM in the morning until 9:00 PM at night; that was there. We never would've done that ourselves, ever <laugh>. Because they came up with those rules, they stuck to 'em.

JAG: Interesting. They had a buy-in.

EW: I found that was really true in my classes too. You know, I had the kids come up with the rules for the class, and so then I never had to enforce 'em because they came up with them, they knew the rules, they figured 'em out, it worked.

JAG: Esther, you talk about this change that you observed starting in 2000 or a little bit later of parents overprotecting, not letting their kids walk around Target, not letting them walk five blocks to school. Both you and others like Lenore Skenazy and in The Coddling of the American Mind make the connection to negative media. Candace Morena on Facebook is asking a question to you as a former journalist, so the parents started responding to these frightening stories. “Did something happen in journalism? Did the media become more fearmongering or sensational, or was it always that way and all of a sudden parents started paying attention?”

In colleges, they're saying, 'Protect me from the other opinions.'...I think it comes from overprotection of those kids as children and as students...They don't want to hear what the other side has to say. That is tragic.

EW: First of all, answer to the last question. No, I don't think it was always that way. I think it has become more sensational and fearmongering. The question is why? I think the answer to that is everyone wants more clicks, right? The more you get, the better off everything is. You can sell more advertising. Everything is sensational. I mean, honestly, sensational is unbelievable. So, I think that that's also had a negative impact on the students or maybe even just the communities because people don't want to hear what the other side is thinking. As a matter of fact, in colleges, they're saying, “Protect me from the other opinions. I don't want to subject myself to listening to what they have to say.” That's the coddling of the American mind. I think it comes from overprotection of those kids as children and as students and then as adults. They don't want to hear what the other side has to say. That is tragic. I mean, this is America and I went to Berkeley during the free speech movement.

JAG: I know you were right there. This was one of the biggest events in that whole generation.

EW: Right? We wanted to hear back in those days, we wanted to hear what the other side was doing and thinking and saying. You know, it was fun to have a debate or discussion or something. In today's world, it's not, it's gone the other way. People are afraid to listen to opinions that don't agree with theirs. I mean, what happened to discussion and democracy? Please, can we get back to the old style?

JAG: <laugh> I vote for that. So, you described this change and you're talking about kids on campus showing up with more anxiety, afraid of hearing other opinions that might trigger them or make them uncomfortable. Now those kids are entering the workforce. I'm wondering, you have three daughters, but one that until recently has been running YouTube and another 23andMe, are they observing this in their role as managers?

EW: Well, I’m actually just protecting them. I haven't asked them that question and so I'm not sure. But I have observed it in other companies where I've been involved.

JAG: Right?

Neither the Right nor the Left is right, they're both right and they're both wrong in many different ways. We can be better together if we can work it out and talk about it. Our goals are the same: to make America the best it can be. We can't even talk to each other anymore. That makes me very sad. I don't even know where I am anymore. I'm back in the free speech movement.

EW: The answer is yes, it has impacted people. They do not want to hear the other side. As a matter of fact, they can get so upset and so concerned about it that they'll quit. Or if they're in a position of responsibility, they'll fire the other people. I just think that's a really negative aspect because we should be able to express our opinion. There should be a discussion and I mean, neither the Right nor the Left is right, they're both right and they're both wrong in many different ways. We can be better together if we can work it out and talk about it. Our goals are the same: to make America the best it can be. We can't even talk to each other anymore. That makes me very sad. I don't even know where I am anymore. I'm back in the free speech movement. That's where I am.

JAG: <laugh>. All right. Got a question here from Robert Smith asking, “Esther, do you teach kids courses on taking responsibility and self-leadership? How early do you recommend integrating it into the curriculum?” My sense is that you don't exactly teach courses on it, but you incorporate elements of it into yours.

EW: I do. If you want responsible kids, they have to make their own breakfast, they have to clean up after the dinner. They have to be participants in the family. They're not just being served. They have to make their own bed. They do their own laundry. Do you know UC Berkeley has a course called Adulting? Go online and look it up. You know, what they teach in Adulting? How to make your bed, how to fry an egg, how to do things that all the parents have been doing for these kids who are now in college and they can't do it for themselves. Yes. You teach responsibility by giving responsibility. You give the same way with trust. You give trust and that's how they feel trusted. It's really important. You don't have a course in how to be responsible. <laugh>.

JAG: Roger P asks, “How did you discipline your kids, if ever?”

EW: Well, that was tough. I guess the main thing I did is try to have a discussion with them. Sometimes it’s a little challenging to have a discussion with a three-year-old. But that was the main thing. I tried to explain things to them on a regular basis. It was one thing after another. Then as they got older and were able to write, if they did something wrong or something I thought needed to be corrected, I would have them write an essay about it, like “why do you think that this needs to be whatever way I described” or “what are your thoughts about it?” Being an English teacher, this seemed like the perfect way to solve a problem. So that's what I did, a lot of that. As a matter of fact, I think I remember doing the same thing for that party event that they did at the house. I made them all write essays about it and why I might not have liked that, why that violated my trust. 

JAG: Yes, I saw you did that as well with your journalism: allright, so you have this opinion, write a little essay or a few paragraphs for what the counter-opinions would be or what the counter-arguments would be. I thought that was an interesting way to help teach objectivity.

EW: Well, we've always had pros and cons on controversial issues. Yes, pros and cons.

JAG: I think that's great. I mean, even if you have one opinion, you're not going to change your opinion. It's being open and being willing to debate. It's something that we find, if you can believe it, even here at The Atlas Society within Objectivism, which is a philosophy which is about objective reality. There are some Objectivists who won't even talk with us about our view of Objectivism, which differs just a little bit from their view of Objectivism, because somehow that would be sanctioning a view that they disagree with. I'm like, well, why don't we just debate it? I'll take your side and you take my side and we'll see how it goes. I just don't see how we get anywhere with that sort of unwillingness to engage with people with whom you disagree. Sometimes when we actually disagree, it’s pretty minuscule. So anyway,  we're running out of time, and  there's a couple of more questions to get to, but gratitude is a big theme of ours at The Atlas Society. On that score, you wrote an interesting blog about how instilling a sense of gratitude in your kids can help counter narcissism. You had a few tips on how to do that.

EW: Yes. That blog is online. I think that was my most recent.

JAG: We'll put the links to it on all the platforms.

I think we forget to teach the kids gratitude somehow. Maybe it's because we just think that they automatically should be thankful for what they get. But for kids, it's not an innate trait.

EW: So, I think we forget to teach the kids gratitude somehow. Maybe it's because we just think that they automatically should be thankful for what they get. But for kids, it's not an innate trait. You have to teach it. There's some ways you can teach it. First of all, you should model it yourself. Kids copy you whether you know it or not. If you say thank you to people, if you smile, and if you write thank you notes to people for something that they might have done for you, if you help willingly, kids will then copy you. If you see your child doing something that you know is not gratitude or not nice, then you might want to just think about your own behavior and see whether you're doing that, whatever it is. But I think we forget to do that. It's because it's so fast with little children. It's like one minute they want to do one thing, the next minute they're doing another. But honestly, if you just want them to remember one thing, just have them remember to say thank you. Back in the old days, people used to say prayers before they ate. I don't think that people are doing that anymore, but that was thankfulness for the food that you have on the table. I think that that would make a big difference, just that alone. Thank you for the Christmas present. You know, frequently kids get birthday presents, Christmas presents, all kinds of presents and they say nothing. You wonder, why don't they appreciate me? Well that's because you taught them not to.

JAG: Interesting. Now, we've talked about Berkeley and how incredibly you were right there smack dab in the middle of the free speech movement, but you also met your husband at Berkeley. You were raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. Your husband is Catholic. As the daughter of an interfaith marriage myself, I'm curious whether you want to share anything about how you handled it in your family or just maybe any general advice for other interfaith couples out there thinking how do we navigate this?

EW: Well, in many ways I think this is sort of a blessing because what we did is we celebrated everything. Hanukkah, Christmas, Easter. If there was an opportunity to celebrate a Jewish holiday, we did, any special Catholic holidays, we did; and that is actually what I taught my daughters: to look back to the origins of Christianity. Christianity and Judaism are very close. In fact, the first hundred years after Christ, Christianity was considered a sect or a part of Judaism. We all have very similar values. As a matter of fact, even if you look at the Muslims, the values are the same. There are 10 commandments. So we have different rituals, different ways of reaching the same goals, and we need to respect each other and our traditions. That's why it worked out for both of us. It worked out for the kids. Actually, I gave them the choice. They could do whatever, pick whatever religion they wanted or no religion, if they didn't want any religion, that was up to them. I wanted to make sure they didn't feel pressure to do any one thing or another thing. They weren't supposed to support mom or dad. It was we're all together. That's what we still do today. Everybody celebrates everything and it works out.

JAG: That's what we do in my family as well. Melanie has a comment here and I think we could probably end with it. She says, “I think having clear expectations of one’s kids is helpful to them. Also being a good role model, hardworking, reliable, kind is very important. Would you agree with that?”

If you want your children to be on time, you should model being on time. It's really important. If you don't want your kids to use the phones at dinner, don't you use the phones at dinner. You know, you're teaching them without even knowing you're teaching them because they copy everything you do.

EW: Great job, Melanie. Yes, I agree with that. Exactly. I think it's important to have expectations and very clear goals and to model that. You know, if you want your children to be on time, you should model being on time. It's really important. If you don't want your kids to use the phones at dinner, don't you use the phones at dinner. You know, you're teaching them without even knowing you're teaching them because they copy everything you do. Anyway, I just want to thank you for this opportunity to talk to your audience and to be on this program because you've had great questions and the questions from your group. The chats have been great questions and I hope this is helpful to all the parents.

JAG: It's been wonderful. Thank you so much Esther. Appreciate your taking time out, I know it's a busy day and so, thank you and thank all of you who joined us today. Thanks for all of the great questions. Always helps me as a host when you guys pitch in. And to all of you watching, if you enjoyed this video or any of our content at The Atlas Society, please consider making a tax deductible donation to support our work at atlassociety.org. Please be sure to tune in next week when we'll be joined by narrative nonfiction author Daniel James Brown to discuss his four books, which explore facets of American history ranging from the Donner Party to the heroism of Japanese American soldiers in World War II. Thanks everyone.

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