Ep. 27: What Do Kids Really Need from Us? - Part 2 (feat. Ethan Weiss, MS, LCSW)

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In Part 2 of Matti’s conversation with psychotherapist Ethan Weiss, MS, LCSW, the conversation begins with a controversial question: Should some people not be parents?

That question leads somewhere unexpected.

Rather than deciding who is or isn’t naturally suited for parenthood, Matti and Ethan explore what parents actually need in order to succeed — and why parenting was never meant to be a solitary job. They talk about the importance of community, support, and having other caring adults in a child’s life.

Then the conversation turns to one of the questions at the heart of modern parenting: How do parents know if they’re doing enough?

Ethan introduces the idea of the “good enough parent” and offers a refreshingly realistic perspective: parenting isn’t about getting everything right. Sometimes the most important thing a parent can do is slow down. Sometimes it’s okay not to have an immediate answer. And when mistakes happen—as they inevitably will—the repair can be just as important as the rupture.

Matti and Ethan also explore what it means to allow children to experience discomfort rather than constantly trying to protect them from it, why resilience is built through small challenges, and how the lessons of parenting can extend far beyond raising children.

By the end of the conversation, the question isn’t whether parents can be perfect. It’s whether we can build the support, confidence, and relationships that help us keep trying — and keep repairing when things don’t go as planned.

Referenced in this Episode

• The Wall Street Journal — “When One Nanny Isn’t Enough, CEO Parents Hire a Whole Team”
  https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/ceo-parent-nanny-assistant-teams-hiring-20d3a9c0

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TRANSCRIPT

Matti: Hey, everyone. It’s Matti. Welcome back to Part 2 of my conversation with Ethan Weiss.

If you listened to Part 1, you heard us talk about what happens when we start treating parenting like something that can be optimized—what Ethan dubbed “parent-maxing.” What we gain, what we might lose, and what all of this actually means for kids and parents.

We ended Part 1 with a question I was about to ask Ethan—one I thought was somewhat controversial.

So let’s pick up right there.

Matti: Should some people not be parents?

Ethan: Should some people not be parents…

Matti: Yeah, like, what I mean is, if you live one of those lives where you’re just whizzing around the world all the time and you don’t have the time to really be present…

Think about it this way: some people call their dogs their children. I don’t know if you’re one of those people. I don’t think you are. But people say, “I don’t have time for a dog because I travel for work and I do this and I’m very busy.”

Similarly, if you’re some royal or part of a dynasty family and you don’t have the time, should you not be a parent?

And I guess the hard part is that we know there’s a biological desire to procreate and have kids, but some people don’t always feel that. So I don’t know. I’m just wondering—should some people not do it?

I said it was controversial…

Ethan: Huh. It is controversial. I love it as a question.

I mean, the true answer is: it depends. It does.

I think there are people who struggle as parents, obviously, because it is really, really, really hard. It’s doubly hard if you’re working from a position with limited resources, or an imperfect—or straight-up traumatic—role model of a parent or caregiver from childhood.

The reason I would say I cannot answer it directly as, “There are some people who shouldn’t be parents,” is because that would automatically lead to the question: Well, who? What are the markers of someone who shouldn’t be?

And that’s just not accessible.

Instead of saying, “This is somebody who shouldn’t be a parent,” we should ask: What needs to be in place to increase the likelihood that this person will be a successful parent when they become one?

Matti: Right.

Ethan: And that is the question, because it shifts it from this individualistic thing of, like, some people are just natural parents and some people aren’t.

Again, back to Vygotsky and that idea of interdependence—parenting is a social action. It’s a community thing. And we have worked really damn hard to strip it of that and make it a solitary measurement of one person’s—historically, a mother’s—capacity to be a parent.

Is she good enough or is she not?

That’s another thing in this article. What they’re describing in taking over “the doing” are responsibilities that were traditionally considered the mother’s responsibilities. Dads have typically not been implicated in many of these things. So this fleet of support figures isn’t historically taking over his job.

He’s been doing this forever. He’s been taking late martini lunches and going to work and bringing home the bacon and getting on his plane and playing 18 rounds with the boys.

And I’m not saying that’s a modern trend. We’ve definitely seen a really remarkable—and I would say exciting—shift toward more present and active dads. Like, heck yeah.

But historically, what this is really asking is: Is it okay for moms to have support?

Because it’s so heightened in this article, it’s easy to say, “No, you shouldn’t have somebody cutting sandwiches into stars for the family. That’s insane.”

But if we catch our breath and bring it back to the center, the question being asked is much more nuanced. It’s much less comfortable, and it’s harder to just say across the board, “This is crazy.”

Because again: making dinner, helping the kids get to school, keeping schedules, transporting the kids—this is the conversation about the parental balance of responsibilities that typically falls on moms.

So what happens if, instead of saying, “These people are bonkers, and their kids are going to be having their Super Sweet 16 parties crying because their Ferrari cake has a flat tire,” or they’re going to have bottle service and The Weeknd performing at their bar mitzvah…

What if we say: Hey, the fact that people are seeking support means that support is needed. How can we make it accessible to parents, full stop?

How can we use this as a template?

Because parenting, again, was never supposed to be a solitary sport.

Matti: You know, it’s funny. A few episodes ago, I had someone on who was discussing polyamory and nontraditional relationship structures. One of the things she talked about that she loves about it is the number of caring adults in her kids’ lives.

And I thought that was fascinating. She was like, “I have so much help. Everyone chips in. Someone can cover this and that.”

It was eye-opening.

Ethan: That’s really cool. I think most everyone has the capacity to be an effective and good—heavy quotes around that—parent. A good-enough parent, with support from a community that values the practice and is willing to offer dignity first, ahead of judgment.

Matti: Very well said.

By the way, do you have time for a couple more questions?

Ethan: I love talking.

Matti: Good, because I have so many.

This is my favorite. You started hitting on some of these things that I was just going to ask you. You mentioned it even at the beginning—you were really interested in focusing on the everyday person.

How does this apply to the non-extremes?

And I guess what I’m trying to ask is: What kind of advice can we give parents to feel like they are doing enough?

Ethan: That’s great. I like how you landed on “enough.”

There’s a guy named D.W. Winnicott who has this concept called the “good-enough parent.” Originally, it was the “good-enough mother,” because again, this is what we’re talking about when we talk about child development.

I was the only guy in my class of, like, 25 brilliant people. It was always like, “What is he doing here?”

But good-enough parent means you provide what is necessary for development to unfold. There you are. Everything else is up to circumstance and chance.

So we could look at the hierarchy of needs if we wanted to and say, all right, that’s a pretty decent template.

First, we make sure that safety—physical safety, food, shelter, all that stuff—is taken care of. That needs to be accounted for. That is baseline.

Without physical safety, without knowing your physiological needs are going to be taken care of, everything else is—I’m not going to say impossible—but exponentially more challenging.

And that has nothing to do with the value of a parent or their worth or dignity. That’s a broader question we’re talking about.

So baseline: physiological needs getting met mean a lot.

The second level is social and emotional security. Like, “I know this person cares for me.”

And I’ve been on this kick lately about slowing down.

So often, when I’m trying to figure out what is actually helpful—for me and for the people I work with—there’s this idea that we need to address every issue that crops up in the exact moment it happens. That if we don’t react quickly, somehow we’re condoning it, or we’re being inadequate as a parent. We’re being wishy-washy.

I think there is incredible power—and also great satisfaction—in knowing that it is okay, almost always where physical safety isn’t on the line and there hasn’t been some egregious breach of the social contract, to say to your kid:

“Hey, that’s not cool. I’m not sure how I want to respond to that because it’s a big deal. I don’t think I can do it right now because I don’t quite have the words for it. I’m going to think about that. We’re going to talk about it, just not right now. Right now, take some space, catch a bubble, have a snack, then we’ll revisit this later.”

The power of that is that it gives me a chance to slow down and differentiate my hurt feelings from what my kid is actually going through.

Maybe they just came home from their first week of school and their cup is empty. I’m the safest person in their life—or one of the safest people in their life—and so the person who gets the short end of the stick is the person who is most likely to stay regardless.

So I’m going to get that because I’m safe.

That allows me to slow down and say, “Hey, you had a rough day. I can tell because you bit my head off. I don’t want you biting my head off. We’ve got to find a different way to communicate. And I’m glad you were able to take some time.”

Then my kid is more likely to say, “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

And then I can say, “Hey, thanks.”

So one is: slow down.

Two: Wabi-sabi parenting is all the rage in my brain right now.

Matti: Wabi-sabi.

Ethan: The concept of beauty in imperfection.

And part of that is, under that heading of wabi-sabi, kintsugi—the approach to mending ceramics where, instead of trying to repair a chipped or shattered ceramic piece to hide the breaks, gold is used to mend the cracks.

So the thing works. It’s completely functional again. But every crack, every scar, is highlighted in gold.

As if to say: It is the breaks, the chips, and the repairs that define this unique vessel. And isn’t that beautiful?

Matti: I love that.

Ethan: I love that too. And I think, more than anything, it centers us as caregivers to say: No, no, no. There are breaks that happen.

And again, I will say, there are things that happen that shatter the whole thing. We’re talking high-level trauma. People can come back from that—absolutely. Resilience is one of our defining principles as human beings. We survive, especially with support.

But there are definitely things that cause more catastrophic damage.

Far more often than that, though, the breaks we have are things that, by repairing them, create a unique and robust connection that is enhanced and defined by the mismatches and the repairs—the ruptures and the repairs.

Us doing the dance to learn each other and figure out who we are in relation to each other.

Which means that when there are mismatches, when there are mistakes, when I mess up as a parent—when I’m impatient, unfair, unreasonable, which happens all the time—instead of being like, “I suck as a parent,” and beating myself up for making the same small mistakes over and over again, I can say:

“Well, this is an opportunity for me to repair. I’m still working on it. I don’t want to do this all the time. I’m getting better in all these ways. I am really, really growing. But this one? This is an opportunity for me to repair.”

And to model for my kids how I hope they’ll repair in a relationship.

Because by me going to them and saying, “Hey, that was not how I wanted to handle that. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t about you. I was impatient, and I could have handled that differently. And I’m sorry,” what I’m doing is saying:

“When you are in a significant relationship in your future—with kids, with whoever—it is not a weakness to acknowledge when you have misstepped. It’s not a weakness to come back and repair. It is fundamental to creating a resilient and sustainable relationship across time, one that continues to grow and develop rather than one that is brittle and cracks at the first sign of disconnect or misunderstanding.”

And I also hopefully send the message that this is what one does from a position of power.

Because as much as I would like to say, “We’re a team,” there is a hierarchy in parenting, as there is in any model. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Katie and I collaborate to allow our kids a lot of opportunities to explore, take responsibility, try things, sit in discomfort, and figure out that being uncomfortable is different from being unsafe.

You can be uncomfortable, and that can be a sign that you’re about to learn something. So wait 10 more minutes and see what changes. Figure out, hey, it’s not a bear. It’s not a grizzly bear. It’s just a puppy, and it just needs attention—or time to resolve.

But as much as Katie and I do that, there are still times we need to step in to make sure that safety is established and that the social contract isn’t absolutely ruptured.

And modeling accountability from a position of leadership is really important. For somebody to take accountability for their actions—especially to people who are in their charge—that message has to come from here.

Because I feel like we’re missing it on a broader scale. I think there are not as many examples on the larger sociopolitical landscape of people in positions of leadership who are capable of acknowledging missteps and taking accountability for their actions.

Obviously, there are egregious situations where people need to be done with whatever they’re doing because there’s a huge issue. But even with a misstep, a bad leadership decision, a mistake—something that isn’t catastrophic but zigged when it should have zagged—the idea that a leader can come forward from a position of strength and say, “Well, that one didn’t work.”

Or, “I had that meeting with you with someone else nearby. That was unfair. I should not have talked to you like that in front of somebody else. And while I don’t think they heard, it doesn’t matter. In the future, I’ll be very cautious and mindful of making sure that any feedback conversations we have happen at a time and place where you can really hear me. We’ll carve out space where it can just be us, and you’ll have an opportunity to say your piece as well. I’m sorry that didn’t happen this time.”

If I do that, I set people up to become leaders in their own right. I create a team that is loyal, does better and more consistent work, and enjoys their work more than I would if I just kept saying, “No, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

So those are the three things.

It’s slowing down. It’s recognizing that in our mismatches, ruptures, and repairs, we’re actually shaping a unique and resilient relationship. And it’s being willing to model accountability when we misstep.

Then we set a very strong example for our kids.

And I think those three are spectacular. We also need to keep pushing as a community to hold each other—and people with access to resources—accountable for making sure those resources are used in ways that make parenting possible and set as many people up for success as we can.

We hold the parents so they can hold the kids. Then we get a generation of kids who are more capable of these things that lift our whole society up a level.

And if we continue this, it becomes a virtuous cycle that moves us forward.

Matti: I was going to say, you literally just answered my last question, which is always the It’s Gonna Be Fine question.

Is it gonna be fine? And how is it gonna be fine?

And you just laid it out so perfectly.

Not to say that everything’s going to be okay, but those three things you just talked about—if we can focus on those—it gives us a chance.

And that’s the other thing: a lot of what you’re saying can be applied to so many things, not just parenting.

Ethan: Where do you see it being applicable through your lens? What came into your mind?

Matti: Well, you talk about the repairing piece—specifically repairing something with gold so it’s very visible.

I think about my relationship with my parents and some of the things that maybe back in the day stung a lot, that we can still repair and have repaired as adults.

Relationships with friends.

Any sort of goal that you’re trying to achieve.

I’m not going to say looksmaxxing, but someone who’s trying to be more fit and active—that’s hard. And if they don’t do it perfectly every time, that’s okay. You can allow yourself to fall back, but then just get back up or learn from it.

So all of those things popped into my head as you were talking. I think it could really be applied to any endeavor.

Ethan: I’m glad you see that connective tissue. I feel it a lot. The closer I look at things like this, the less distance I notice.

Or maybe a better way to say that: the more overlap starts to emerge.

Matti: I have learned a lot from you today. And there’s one other thing I’m coming out of this conversation with that I want to share.

We talked about a lot, but one particular thing struck me. I think I mentioned at the beginning the whole thing about, “I want my kids to be happy.”

There are probably many reasons why this is true, but I’m the type of person who hates seeing really anyone—but absolutely kids—in any sort of environment, mood, or emotional state that isn’t happiness and joy.

If I see them sad, it just crushes me.

I was just with my nieces and nephews, and they were playing. One of them hit the other one out of nowhere, and she just started pouting. You know that little lip where they’re about to start crying?

I almost lost it. It was so—I intervened a bit. I was like, “You’re a nine-year-old. You can’t hit a two-year-old.”

And then she got back to what she was doing, and she was fine. Everything was okay.

But even now, I’m feeling it—how bad I felt for her in that experience.

But talking to you, if I think about myself as a parent one day—who knows?—I feel like when I see those things happen, I now have a much different perspective.

It’s actually not necessarily a bad thing. It’s part of their development. They need to feel those things. They need to experience them.

And as much as it pains me to see it, ultimately it’s helping.

So I think that’s a helpful perspective for me. It gives me hope and confidence that we don’t have to overprotect. It’s okay to allow them to feel what they need to feel, even though in the moment it feels so terrible.

Ethan: So terrible. So terrible.

Your instincts are so kind. And that’s not a weakness either.

Your instinct to allow a few moments—let’s see what happens. Let’s see how this kid self-soothes.

One of the first genius things we figure out as babies is how to self-soothe. We find our hand, shove it in our face, and figure it out.

And then we’re still doing that through the lifespan. It just changes what it looks like.

If we don’t have a chance to catch it…

And there are some examples where that’s not the case, and there’s a whole thing there—cultural relativism, we can talk about that later.

But in general: Let’s see what happens. Let’s see how she navigates this.

And then you pull the nine-year-old aside and say, “Yes, you can punch a two-year-old. You mustn’t punch a two-year-old. And we’re going to have a conversation about weight classes so that we can all measure up fairly.”

But I’m so glad. I’m so glad that it takes some of that pressure off—that there’s no one right way to approach this.

Being present, being supportive, but also being confident that kids with structured freedom—a system that allows them to explore—will tend to discover things in ways that we could never communicate just by talking or facilitating.

That is deeply profound. I think that’s so cool.

And hey, I think your nieces and nephews would probably share the opinion that, should you find yourself in a position where being a parent is the path you’re walking down, you’ll be a hell of a parent. You’ll be a terrific one.

And I can tell that from your curiosity and your kindness. Honestly, I think that is the secret sauce, if anything, to a foundation.

Those will be some lucky kids.

But as it is, you’ve got some really lucky nieces and nephews.

I really appreciate how thoughtful you are about all of this and how curious you are, which is the whole nature of the podcast.

Matti: Exactly.

Ethan: I’m glad you’re out here doing that. So thank you for taking the time with me today, Matti. I really appreciate it.

Matti: Of course. Thanks so much for joining. It’s been great.

I’ll just mention again, your practice is called Yes And Therapy.

Ethan: YesAndTherapySRQ.com, or you can type EthanWeissTherapy.com, and it’ll get you to the same place.

There’s associated social media that I am terrible at posting on, but I do my best.

And other than that, keep your eyes out, and we’ll just keep on trucking.

Matti: Ethan, again, thanks. And to all the listeners, we’ll see you next time.

This transcript has been edited for readability.