What happens when achievement stops motivating and starts measuring worth?

In this episode, I sit down with Jennifer Wallace to talk about how achievement culture quietly shapes our kids and us based on her New York Times Best Selling Book Never Enough:When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-and What We Can Do About It. We unpack why so many high-performing kids struggle with anxiety, burnout, and a constant never-enough feeling, even when they look successful on the outside. We also preview her newest book, Mattering, which explores a simple but powerful idea: kids do better when they feel valued for who they are and when they see how they add value to others. That sense of mattering acts as a buffer against pressure, comparison, and setbacks. We also talk about the bigger picture, how economic pressure, school culture, and social media fuel comparison, and why parents are not failing for feeling stuck in this system.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why high-achieving kids are at higher risk for anxiety and burnout

• How achievement culture shapes long-term self-worth

• Clean fuel vs fear-based motivation

• Why mattering supports resilience and mental health

• How comparison takes hold and how social media adds pressure

• How parents can support healthy striving without pressure

• Why kids should not worry alone and the role of adult support

To connect with Jennifer Wallace follow her on Instagram @Jenniferbrehenywallace, check out all her resources at Jenniferbwallace.com and buy her books “Mattering” ⁠https://www.jenniferbwallace.com/preorder⁠ and “Never Enough” ⁠https://www.jenniferbwallace.com/about-never-enough⁠ . 

00:00 Why praise alone does not build self worth
00:40 Why this conversation matters for parents today
02:16 The hidden cost of achievement culture
03:37 How achievement came to define childhood
05:05 From teen pressure to adult never enough
07:14 What achievement culture looks like later in life
07:50 Dirty fuel vs clean fuel for motivation
11:13 When self worth becomes tied to success
12:08 What the research shows about high achieving kids
16:33 Why pressure feels worse now
18:18 What resilient kids have in common
39:07 Redefining achievement as mattering

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00;00;00;01 – 00;00;24;04

Jennifer Wallace

For parents, I think I believe, and the research finds this, that one of the best things we could do for our kids is to help them develop a healthy sense of self. Yeah, this that is the that is the primary task of adolescence. To have a healthy sense of self and the self becomes stronger, less by being praised, which can feel like pressure.

 

00;00;24;10 – 00;00;40;23

Jennifer Wallace

Yeah. And more by being known for who they are. That’s for getting a PhD in the matters that you see them for the full people. They are.

 

00;00;40;25 – 00;01;00;03

Dr. Mona

Hey, everyone. Doctor Mona here, pediatrician, your mom, friend. And welcome back to the PedsDocTalk Podcast. Today’s episode is one I’ve been wanting to release for a while. I recorded it back in 2025 because it just speaks to something I see every single day in my clinic, in schools and parents and honestly, a little bit of myself sometimes.

 

00;01;00;05 – 00;01;34;08

Dr. Mona

This conversation started at home. My husband is a big reader, and one day he handed me a book and said, this is our life and this is what we’re trying to undo for our kids. That book was never enough. When achievement culture becomes toxic and What We Can Do about It by Jennifer Wallace. And when that happens, when something hits that close to home, and I also happen to have this amazing podcast, I go on a mission, I reach out to the author, I get persistent, and I’m so grateful she said yes, it’s truly an honor to welcome Jennifer Wallace, New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and voice of reason in a culture that constantly

 

00;01;34;08 – 00;01;53;24

Dr. Mona

asks our kids and ourselves to do more, be more, and prove more. We recorded this conversation last year, and I’m releasing it now as Jennifer prepares to release her new book, Mattering The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. In this episode, we talk about achievement, culture and its hidden cost by so many high achieving kids.

 

00;01;53;24 – 00;02;16;19

Dr. Mona

Struggle with anxiety, burnout, substance abuse, why parents feel like they are never doing enough, why schools reward performances but often miss the human in front of them. We all want the best for our kids, but what is best? Is it grades, trophies, packed schedules, and constant pressure? Or is it helping kids feel valued for who they are, not just what they produce or how they perform?

 

00;02;16;22 – 00;02;35;26

Dr. Mona

If you’ve ever wondered whether pushing harder is actually helping or quietly hurting, this conversation is for you. And hey, before we dive in, you know what to do. Make sure you’re subscribed to the show. Don’t just listen to it and not subscribe. Download this episode. Share it on social media because this is how the show continues to grow.

 

00;02;35;29 – 00;02;44;08

Dr. Mona

Let’s get into this awesome conversation.

 

00;02;44;11 – 00;02;47;04

Dr. Mona

Thank you so much for joining me today, Jennifer.

 

00;02;47;06 – 00;02;48;17

Jennifer Wallace

So happy to be here.

 

00;02;48;19 – 00;03;04;00

Dr. Mona

And I love a little backstory on how I found you and why I wanted you on the show. My husband is a big reader. He reads a lot more than I do. I want to read more, but I’m busy with writing stuff for my platforms and mommy thing. And he read your book and he said, oh my God, Mona.

 

00;03;04;01 – 00;03;22;02

Dr. Mona

Like, this is totally our life. This is what I want to undo for our children and have this perspective. And so he told me, and I obviously found your channel. And I said, well, let’s get this woman on my show. And then just so happens that you have a new book coming out. And we’re going to be more talking about the first book that you wrote.

 

00;03;22;05 – 00;03;37;01

Dr. Mona

But I know we’ll probably be alluding to that new book that you have out now. And tell me and our listeners, what sort of inspired you in the first place to write your first book, and then even also why you thought that the second book, mattering was also useful, in this world right now?

 

00;03;37;03 – 00;03;57;26

Jennifer Wallace

Oh, well, that’s a great question. So as you mentioned, I’m a mother of three teenagers. My oldest is, Well, he’s now 20, so two teenagers and a 20 year old wife. And then I have a daughter who is 18 and another son is 15. And I was noticing over the years how different my kids childhood was from my own growing up.

 

00;03;57;28 – 00;04;38;29

Jennifer Wallace

Achievement mattered to my parents, but it didn’t seem to define my childhood the way it did for so many kids, including my own. And so I was seeing this play out, and I was wondering, why have we become so hyper competitive, as a culture in, you know, in our young people? And so that really led to this exploration and it was, you know, multi year project, traveling all around the country interviewing parents and families and experts and, and, shadowing them and meeting parents, you know, and, and hanging out with them and, and watching kids over several years, which was really exciting to watch kids in the high school process.

 

00;04;38;29 – 00;05;05;05

Jennifer Wallace

And how did they do years later once they made it to college? And the second book actually came out of the first book. So, so many parents that I was talking about, talking to for, for the first book, were talking about how much they themselves were struggling, with a lack of, of self-worth, either from messages in their childhood or working in workplaces where they felt like cogs in a wheel.

 

00;05;05;07 – 00;05;17;15

Jennifer Wallace

And so, you know, we’ll get into this deeper in the conversation, but the first book was really aimed at adolescents and that never enough feeling. And the second book is really aimed at adults and the Never enough feeling.

 

00;05;17;17 – 00;05;35;14

Dr. Mona

Which obviously is going to continue. And I was so excited to have you on because we grew up in that culture. You know, you mentioned that that wasn’t as heavy in your childhood. You know, my husband and I are both the children of immigrant parents and this is something that a lot of our immigrant peers have dealt with this achievement oriented culture.

 

00;05;35;14 – 00;05;57;11

Dr. Mona

Right. And I actually had a very good conversation with broadsheet. Gupta she wrote a book about the immigrant experience and the mental health issues that have come with that. So for anyone listening, listen to that episode, I’ll make sure to attach it to my show notes, but it gives a little bit more insight as to why immigrants had this sort of mentality of we got to achieve meaning grades mattered more than anything else.

 

00;05;57;13 – 00;06;17;21

Dr. Mona

You know, if I want to. I did sports, but grades were the epitome. You had to get good education, and it came from that sort of reality that they immigrated here. They had to prove themselves in the 70s and 80s, and if they didn’t prove themselves, they could be sent back home to where they came from. So there was this culture of, we got to be valuable in society.

 

00;06;17;21 – 00;06;39;10

Dr. Mona

And for them, value was tied to status in terms of the the grades and the careers that we could get. Which is why you see a lot of Indian-American immigrants, the children, engineers, doctors, lawyers, a lot of us ended up in those careers. And so it was all about grades, resume building, getting into the right schools and constantly performing.

 

00;06;39;10 – 00;07;04;22

Dr. Mona

And both me and my husband did not get a lot of emotional intelligence education. We didn’t learn about failure. We didn’t learn about processing those very deep feelings. And at the time, as children, it felt normal because that’s all we knew. That’s all our friends knew. But now, as parents of these two small children, five, well, six, six years old and two and a half years old, I can see how that pressure shaped our identities are stress levels and even our self-worth.

 

00;07;04;24 – 00;07;14;26

Dr. Mona

And so what does it look like when a child is growing up in an achievement culture, and how does it often manifest in adulthood, even if it’s not immediately obvious?

 

00;07;14;29 – 00;07;33;28

Jennifer Wallace

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I have the first thing that comes into my head is a quote from Gregory Elliot, who’s a sociologist, and he said, what gets in early gets in deep. And so which is right, it really hits you the messages, that you were sent either at home or in the wider culture.

 

00;07;34;00 – 00;07;48;28

Jennifer Wallace

We are absorbing these messages and it is getting in deep. You know, if you were to think about what does it look like to live in a home that might be hyper focused on achievement? I mean, to be clear, I should start by saying I’m not anti achievement.

 

00;07;48;28 – 00;07;50;21

Dr. Mona

Of course we’ll talk about that too.

 

00;07;50;21 – 00;08;22;03

Jennifer Wallace

But yeah, absolutely. Grades mattered. My performance mattered. But it, I don’t allow it to define myself because what in my mind and what I write about in the book is that to be motivated there are two types of fuel. There’s the dirty fuel, which is scarcity, fear, criticism. Something that a tired and stressed out and fearful parent might use to get a kid to study for the Spanish quiz on Thursday.

 

00;08;22;06 – 00;08;45;11

Jennifer Wallace

But that so dirty fuel can do that sort of short term motivational push that we want for our kids. But over time and the research finds this is that that dirty fuel clogs the engine and kids burn out. There’s also clean fuel. Clean fuel is a motivator. It is separating the deed from the doer. So you are not your grades.

 

00;08;45;11 – 00;09;16;15

Jennifer Wallace

You are not your successes, just like you are not your failures. This doesn’t mean as a parent to not have expectations, right? I have citations for my kids, but my expectations are specific to each individual child. I am really focused on getting a PhD in each of my kids, knowing what they are capable of, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what they already have on their plate, what they’re going through emotionally, and sort of being that barometer.

 

00;09;16;18 – 00;09;42;28

Jennifer Wallace

So again, just to underscore this, this is not an anti achievement book. Yeah. My husband’s a high achiever. I’m a high achiever. It’s just that there are healthy ways to achieve and less healthy ways to achieve. And what we want to do is raise kids who are able to achieve at high levels for life. Yeah. And the way we do this is to set them up, understanding what it is to have a kind of healthy motivation.

 

00;09;43;01 – 00;10;00;28

Dr. Mona

Oh, I love that. And that is exactly I think the issue here, and I love that you clarify that because my husband and I are often discussing that healthy balance, right? That I, I absolutely want our children to feel that motivation, that internal motivation to want to have to strive for something that makes them happy and they’re passionate about.

 

00;10;01;05 – 00;10;16;21

Dr. Mona

But of course, I don’t want that to be tied to anxiety or fear of failure, which is something that I think is really, really prominent right now. And I dealt with and I’m very transparent to my followers about that. And that was a source of a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression for me and my husband.

 

00;10;16;21 – 00;10;42;24

Dr. Mona

When expectations didn’t meet reality, when life hit right, I got my first see at UCLA, which is a very, very competitive pre-med college. I thought my life was over because I was a straight A’s kid in high school, and it broke me and I thought that everything was over. And it was that first realization and that self-discovery to failure and all of that, that really sort of reframed what this achievement culture was and how things are possible, even through all of that.

 

00;10;42;24 – 00;11;05;20

Dr. Mona

And I love that you brought up that this is an achievement book, but how can we do it in a healthy way? And I’m sure you’re going to talk about this in your book mattering. How can this manifest in adulthood? Like what sort of behaviors or what sort of like, you know, tendencies? Can people who grew up in this achievement culture have, you know, whether it’s in as an adolescent or as an adult?

 

00;11;05;22 – 00;11;13;16

Dr. Mona

Now, let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors who support helps us keep bringing you this show.

 

00;11;13;19 – 00;11;49;12

Jennifer Wallace

So as you, as you were talking about just now, unhealthy achievement is when we tangle up our self-worth so tightly that we only feel good about ourselves when we achieve and when we don’t achieve, when we have inedible, inevitable setbacks. It really becomes an indictment of our worth and that make us anxious and depressed. A part of the reason that I wrote this book was because I’m a journalist, and I was writing an article for the Washington Post, and I was covering two national policy reports, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Academies of Sciences.

 

00;11;49;12 – 00;12;08;04

Jennifer Wallace

And these are written by the country’s leading developmental experts. And they were looking at who are the kids who are most at risk for negative health outcomes. And they were as you were, you know, as you would imagine, they were kids living in poverty, children with incarcerated parents, children of recent immigrants with few resources, children living in foster care.

 

00;12;08;04 – 00;12;32;07

Jennifer Wallace

And then they named a fifth at risk group, children attending what the researchers were calling high achieving schools. Yeah, public and private schools all around the country. Those kids were 2 to 6 times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety and depression, and 2 to 3 times more likely to suffer from substance abuse disorder than the average American teen because of the excessive pressure to achieve.

 

00;12;32;09 – 00;13;05;08

Jennifer Wallace

And researchers have found this isn’t just, you know, the pressure, in high school and then it goes away once you get to college. This pressure, this mindset carries young. It carries through into the 30s. Researchers have found that the seeds of perfectionism get in early and they last. And it and it travels with you. So for parents I think I believe and the research finds this, that one of the best things we could do for our kids is to help them develop a healthy sense of self.

 

00;13;05;10 – 00;13;30;00

Jennifer Wallace

Yeah, this that is the that is the primary task of adolescence. To have a healthy sense of self. And the self becomes stronger, less by being praised, which can feel like pressure. Yeah. And more by being known for who they are. That’s for getting a PhD in the matters that you see them for the full people. They are.

 

00;13;30;02 – 00;13;55;14

Jennifer Wallace

Yes, they are achievers. Yes, they want to reach high goals, but they’re also really funny. Or they’re the friend who is able to read a room and can and can spot the person who’s feeling left out, or the empathy they have for a lonely grandparent. Or you know that the environment is an issue for them. And so they want to spend some of their time on the weekend helping to recycle or do whatever they can.

 

00;13;55;14 – 00;14;14;05

Jennifer Wallace

So we are so much more than our GPA. And when we do that, when it’s interesting because you would think it was counterintuitive, right? If you were to really want your kid to have this deep, wide, full sense of self that maybe it would distract them from achievement. But here’s what I’m here’s what I’m here to tell you.

 

00;14;14;05 – 00;14;37;23

Jennifer Wallace

And researchers on perfectionism have found this as well, is that when you have a child who has this healthy sense of self, they are not afraid to reach for high goals. Yeah, right. Perfectionists, kids who really feel that sense of self-worth tangled up. They will. They will stop achieving if they think they can’t meet it. And so it actually becomes counterintuitive.

 

00;14;37;29 – 00;14;52;01

Jennifer Wallace

So if you want your kids to keep striving, keep reaching for the high goals, give them that healthy sense of self and the coping skills to deal with setbacks which are inevitable. Yeah. Oh.

 

00;14;52;04 – 00;15;09;17

Dr. Mona

I’m like one of my favorite things about having this podcast is being able to connect with people that just inspire through their words and inspire through their writing. And obviously you are one of those people and this is all stuff that I believe so strongly about, and I hope our listeners are really taking this in because this is not hard work to do.

 

00;15;09;17 – 00;15;29;14

Dr. Mona

It can feel hard to raise children like this. But I speak about, you know, I have a kindergartner, so I’m not in that teenage years. But I do believe that we need to go upstream in how we how we approach self-worth. Right? Self-worth is not created at teenage levels. It’s how we communicate things early on. And I use the example that my kindergartner, when he started kindergarten, did not know how to read right.

 

00;15;29;14 – 00;15;49;01

Dr. Mona

And many people could be like, well, he doesn’t know how to read like my kid was reading at three and four. But what he is really good at is knowing how to ask for help, knowing who he is at. For a five year old, knowing when something doesn’t feel right in his body, which I think is such a good example of what you said, and that raising a child who knows themself.

 

00;15;49;01 – 00;16;07;21

Dr. Mona

Right. And that is actually part of a book that I’m writing, by the way. So I’ll be reaching out to you, to help, you know, obviously with, that inspiration. But that is something that’s so important to me because we can do that in those early years with foundation and obviously build that in those teenage years. But parents often think that, okay, we got to focus on the milestones.

 

00;16;07;21 – 00;16;29;03

Dr. Mona

We got to focus on, you know, now they’re in kindergarten in that comparison culture, I think gets really, really wound up. And I don’t know, you’ve been you have a 20 year old as the oldest and then teenagers. Do you feel that it’s worse than before? I know you said that from your own experience. And do you think it has to do with the school system but also social media?

 

00;16;29;03 – 00;16;33;04

Dr. Mona

Like, what do you think are the triggers of this achievement culture that are ruining us?

 

00;16;33;06 – 00;16;53;05

Jennifer Wallace

That’s a really good question. And there are lots of threads that have that have reached, you know, have gotten us to this boiling point. But the thread that I think is the most relevant is the economic thread. When I was growing up. And this sort of relates to your own childhood, when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was I’m older than you.

 

00;16;53;08 – 00;17;10;07

Jennifer Wallace

Life was generally more affordable. Yeah. Housing, health care, higher education was more affordable. There was slack in the system. Yeah. So parents like mine could be relatively assured that even with some setbacks, even with a B plus an AP calculus like I got my senior year, that most likely I’d be able to replicate.

 

00;17;10;09 – 00;17;10;19

Dr. Mona

My.

 

00;17;10;19 – 00;17;32;17

Jennifer Wallace

Own childhood as an adult, if not do even better than my own parents did. That’s the American dream. But modern parents are facing a different reality. We are seeing the first generation of millennials who, on average, are not doing as well as their parents. Seen the crash of the middle class. We have absorbed the steep inequity in our culture and parents become, in the words of researchers, social conduits.

 

00;17;32;19 – 00;18;05;22

Jennifer Wallace

And so we feel the pressures in our environment and we pass them along to our kids, not out of, you know, to hurt them, but to prepare them for a hyper competitive future that they are going into. So this is not to blame parents. Yeah. But what I found so helpful was understand in this macroeconomic story and realizing that parents are not sitting alone in their living rooms making these decisions to push their kids, this is they are responding to very real pressures.

 

00;18;05;22 – 00;18;17;05

Jennifer Wallace

I mean, it’s always been the job of a parent to prepare a child to thrive when we’re no longer around. But now the world is so uncertain. I is on the scene. What is education even going to look like in ten years?

 

00;18;17;05 – 00;18;18;15

Dr. Mona

I, I know.

 

00;18;18;18 – 00;18;40;19

Jennifer Wallace

Is that ROI really going to be there? So it’s very uncertain and so what I, what I, what I will tell parents is as a parent, I wanted to know for the book who are the kids who are doing well despite all of these pressures in the environment, what did their parents focus on at home? How did they experience school?

 

00;18;40;19 – 00;19;07;24

Jennifer Wallace

What were their relationships like with their with their peers? How did they deal with this social comparison that you asked about on social media? And I found about a dozen or so threads that these healthy strivers, as I call them in the book, had in common. But it boiled down to this that the kids who are doing well, despite the pressure, felt like being mattered for who they were, deep at their core, away from their achievements and successes.

 

00;19;07;26 – 00;19;32;26

Jennifer Wallace

And just as importantly, they were relied on to add value back at home, through chores, at school, through tasks and activities in the wider community, through volunteer work. So this this mattering, feeling valued and adding value acted like a protective shield. You know, these kids still experienced setbacks. They still didn’t make it to the party. You know, they weren’t invited the party on Friday night.

 

00;19;32;29 – 00;19;58;03

Jennifer Wallace

But these were not indictments of their worth. They knew they mattered no matter what. Do I think social media is making things worse? Yes. Yeah, I think social media is the root of the problem. I do not social media filled a need and there was a need in our environment. There was this huge gap. You know, neighborhoods are no longer cohesive.

 

00;19;58;06 – 00;20;21;11

Jennifer Wallace

Children, grown children moving away from their families, not having a sense of community, not having a support system, tech. And so this loneliness epidemic tech tried to fill that need to make money, obviously. Yeah. So I don’t believe it is the cause, but it is certainly an accelerant and a magnifier. We have evolved to be social comparison creatures.

 

00;20;21;11 – 00;20;46;21

Jennifer Wallace

We all evolved to feel envy for healthy, adaptive reasons. Right? To our earliest ancestors, envy was a sign that someone had something that we thought was critical for our survival. And so our our bodies would be hijacked, and focused on what it is. And those painful pangs were there to say, focus in on that thing. You need that to survive.

 

00;20;46;23 – 00;21;07;17

Jennifer Wallace

So we don’t have to judge ourselves to feel for feeling envy, which we all feel. But we have to hold ourselves accountable for how we act on that envy. And this is what I teach my own children, that when feelings of envy bubble up, we have two choices. We can take the benign envy. We could take the malicious and be root.

 

00;21;07;17 – 00;21;27;11

Jennifer Wallace

Let’s say that’s the this is what researchers call malicious envy, where you want to undercut someone. So you look better by comparison. So that’s gossiping about them, being rude about them. Or you could take the benign envy route, which is really a motivator. We could look at the source of our envy and say, I so admire you.

 

00;21;27;13 – 00;21;49;17

Jennifer Wallace

How did you get there? We can sort of unlock their mattering in that way. We could be saying out loud, I so value what you’ve accomplished. Oh, boy, I’d love to try to do it too. That is how we maintain and and and protect friendships so we can teach our kids these skills on how to manage envy. So many adults were not taught that.

 

00;21;49;20 – 00;22;22;02

Jennifer Wallace

So many adults were not taught and were ashamed to feel envy, give up on that shame. That’s an adaptive response that got you here. All right. Recognize it and recognize that it’s going haywire because you are not meant to be. Socially comparison comparing yourselves to tens and thousands of people online. Yeah. And just be kind to yourself and say, oh, that’s my envy talking and help your kids not feel that shame either so that they can, you know, respond to it in healthier ways.

 

00;22;22;04 – 00;22;45;16

Dr. Mona

So true. And I mean, I have the personal example of having an online educational platform. Right? And I have been creating videos and content, and social media as a creator is goes against everything that you would want to build self-worth, even if you have the metrics. Right, because you’re always thinking about what other people are doing. It’s comparison culture, it’s metrics, it’s external validation trolls.

 

00;22;45;16 – 00;23;02;26

Dr. Mona

I mean, it is the antithesis of everything that I want it to be as a human being and giving you that example, when I started, you know, when I was going, doing well and I was creating valuable content, I would see other people in my parenting space. Millions of followers, 2 million followers. And I would feel like, what is wrong with me?

 

00;23;02;27 – 00;23;30;05

Dr. Mona

Right? That lesser than feeling. And you sometimes forget your why when you’re focusing so much on that. And I told myself exactly what you said. I’m like, I can be envious of that, but I’m going to use it to get curious. So what I did instead is I got curious as to what are they doing that maybe is better for social media that I haven’t discovered yet, and being able and that’s goes back to what I, what I teach a lot of in my, you know, younger age group like younger than ten is kind of my niche here.

 

00;23;30;07 – 00;23;46;25

Dr. Mona

And I hope to continue to evolve to let it be teenagers as well, because I love teenage conversations, is whenever we take a feeling right, like my my kids frustrated, my whatever it is, how are we going to say that this feeling is okay and vs okay? Frustration is okay, and how are we now going to channel it to something else?

 

00;23;46;25 – 00;24;05;10

Dr. Mona

Whether it’s I need to release this feeling, whether it’s something productive, whether it’s something that I my body is telling me a Q and I need to rest. It’s so important that we we don’t push those feelings down. And I love how you normalize envy, because I also used to be ashamed for feeling envy. Like, oh well, why am I jealous?

 

00;24;05;10 – 00;24;31;20

Dr. Mona

Like I have everything? I shouldn’t feel jealous, like I should be grateful that whole. And I’m like, I am grateful. But I’m also obviously feeling jealous and it’s okay to feel jealous, but what am I going to do with it? And I love that example, because that is something that I think we all as adults, and I love this book that’s coming out with mattering, because I think so many of adults need to undo this to live a more fulfilling life, because I do believe that all of us have very fulfilling lives, and we let these narratives take a hold of us.

 

00;24;31;20 – 00;24;48;15

Dr. Mona

Right? This I’m don’t matter enough or I’m not good enough. And I do believe that comes from childhood, from the experiences we have. And, you know, early on, like you said, I love that quote you mentioned I got I wrote it down. So I want to, what gets in early gets in deep. I mean, that is reality.

 

00;24;48;15 – 00;25;04;13

Dr. Mona

I mean, this it’s sticky, it sticks and it makes us feel it can make us feel either amazing that we can do things and that we have potential, or it can make us feel like we’re a failure. And I see that in my husband. I see that in myself. And I think it’s so healthy that these conversations are happening.

 

00;25;04;15 – 00;25;27;00

Jennifer Wallace

Well, I’d love to tell you, one of the one what I have found to be the best way of repairing that, is that that sort of fractured sense of self-worth is to find one or 2 or 3 people in your life who you can be vulnerable with, who you can open up to, and who will open up to you.

 

00;25;27;03 – 00;26;06;20

Jennifer Wallace

What you find in the research, and this is according to decades worth of resilience research, is that the best thing you could do to raise resilient kids is to be resilient yourself. Yeah. And the way you are resilient is by having people who remind us of our worth, who we trust, who when we are feeling envious, or we are feeling less than we can call and we can have these open conversations, that there was a study out of the Mayo Clinic that was looking at busy physician mothers, that were also caregivers, and they found that meeting just one hour a week with a small group of people who let them feel seen

 

00;26;06;26 – 00;26;38;16

Jennifer Wallace

and known and cared for was enough to increase resilience, lower cortisol. And the physician mothers also, reported feeling like better parents. And so we all know that a child needs a sturdy adult to thrive, but sturdy adults need other sturdy adults to keep them sturdy. So, you know, I think there are people. And I certainly was like this who might hesitate to reach out for help, who might hesitate to open up.

 

00;26;38;19 – 00;27;01;00

Jennifer Wallace

I can tell you, because I’ve been doing this research now, and I write about this extensively in the second book. That is our way out of these feelings of a lack of self-worth. And so instead of thinking of reaching out as, as an imposition on somebody, I have to see it as a way of making the other person feel like they matter.

 

00;27;01;02 – 00;27;25;06

Jennifer Wallace

So when someone reaches out to you for help, don’t you feel like, wow, they really respect my judgment. Yes. That’s me. That is when we hold that back. That is, selfish on our part. Actually reaching out for help is a way of unlocking other mattering. And just just to underscore this visual, we are often told as caregivers to put our oxygen masks on first.

 

00;27;25;08 – 00;27;47;14

Jennifer Wallace

But what resilience research finds is it goes deeper. Friends are the oxygen. Yeah. You need people who know when we are struggling, who are close enough that they could reach over and put the oxygen mask on for us. And that is a very different level of support than we normalize in our culture today. And I’m not saying that you need to go out five nights a week with your mom friends.

 

00;27;47;21 – 00;28;07;08

Jennifer Wallace

Yeah, the research out of the Mayo Clinic and it has since been replicated. You need one hour of deliberate time a week to feel seen and heard, just like you try to be for your kids. We are the first responders to our kids struggles, and we need to replenish ourselves if we are going to be those sturdy sources of support.

 

00;28;07;11 – 00;28;30;00

Dr. Mona

I love that. It’s so, so true. And I love that you’re reminding people of the importance of community and that we cannot do anything alone. And I think, you know, a lot of my listeners are mothers. A lot of my listeners are mothers who feel like they need to do things on their own. And that includes managing these feelings alone and managing all the, the, the negative, the positive, but just not understanding that we need to rely on our community.

 

00;28;30;00 – 00;28;49;18

Dr. Mona

And I love that you also said that doesn’t take a lot of people. It doesn’t take a lot. I have that one friend that literally is my go to girl like she when I was feeling down about whatever, you know, platform stuff, business stuff. She’s the one and she’s also an entrepreneur. And we’ll chat about things about like business and life and it’s such a positive feeling to have that.

 

00;28;49;18 – 00;29;01;00

Dr. Mona

And I, our children need that too. Right? Exactly. That example. Like when they’re failing. Yeah. We all we’re human beings. We need that community. We cannot rely on going through feelings alone. I think is a big message here.

 

00;29;01;02 – 00;29;17;28

Jennifer Wallace

It’s exactly right. And we need to model that for our kids. Yeah. Going through something hard. We need to not just model it. But I talk about living my life out loud when I am going through something hard, I will say like my I lost my dad a few months ago and whenever I was having a hard feeling, I would say, you know what?

 

00;29;18;05 – 00;29;37;16

Jennifer Wallace

I’m going to go call my girlfriend and I’m going to talk to her about it, that I that they see me and I normalize reaching out for support and that that is a brave thing to do and that we are worthy of support. We are. There is a phrase that I have in the book from Ned Hallowell, who’s a psychiatrist, never Worry alone.

 

00;29;37;18 – 00;29;56;22

Jennifer Wallace

And I, I live that I want my kids. I think if we could adopt that as an idea, boy, we could really make headway with the mental health issues that we are seeing today. Never worry alone. That is what our kids need from us. That is what we need for ourselves.

 

00;29;56;24 – 00;30;17;08

Dr. Mona

Oh, so many pearls, so many quotes that I’m already like just living off of right now. Thank you so much. And you had talked about this already about this sort of balance, right? This we can create this sense of drive and desire for achievement, but also not let it define us. Right. I think that’s such a really important message that hit from home for me, both as a pediatrician and a mother.

 

00;30;17;16 – 00;30;34;16

Dr. Mona

And I use an example that, you know, my husband and I are thinking about relocating, and we want to live in an area with a very strong school system. But part of that means there’s a lot of these school systems, whether it’s public or private, are very achievement focused. Right? We see this. We see these children who are overscheduled.

 

00;30;34;16 – 00;31;00;12

Dr. Mona

We see that their parents are still valuing that. So many different activities, so many different things, they’re in AP classes, all of the stuff to get into college, like you said, to have that sort of performative ability to hopefully end up getting a good job or whatever the final goal is. But what practical strategies can parents use, especially in these communities where they’re trying to build a strong sense of self-worth that isn’t tied to grades, trophies, or performances.

 

00;31;00;14 – 00;31;17;14

Dr. Mona

But they also don’t want their children to feel like they’re left out or falling behind or not comparing to their peers. Like, how is that balance? Where is that where where they’re in a system where everyone’s doing what we’re not wanting to do?

 

00;31;17;17 – 00;31;23;12

Dr. Mona

Now let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors who support helps us keep bringing you this show.

 

00;31;23;14 – 00;31;39;00

Jennifer Wallace

Oh no. I actually asked that very question to, a researcher named Tim Kasser, who studies values and how they are well-being. And I said to him, I live in Manhattan. It’s a very hypercompetitive.

 

00;31;39;00 – 00;31;40;18

Dr. Mona

Yes.

 

00;31;40;21 – 00;31;54;26

Jennifer Wallace

Short of moving out, what can I do? And he said, I don’t buy the premise of your question. If you knew there was lead in the pipes and you could afford to leave, would you leave your kids in that environment? I remember, thank God we were on the phone because I got all red in the face.

 

00;31;54;26 – 00;32;15;04

Jennifer Wallace

And so, you know, I said I’m not to New York and yeah I know what I’m doing in my kids. And then he said but if you’re not going to leave then you need to be very extra deliberate about communicating your family’s values day in and day out, that conversations about values are not a one hour lecture a year.

 

00;32;15;07 – 00;32;38;29

Jennifer Wallace

They need to be, sprinkled into our everyday conversations, just like we do other risky behaviors. And here’s why I call values risk behaviors. Because what we know from researchers, and I’ll oversimplify this for time, is that all of us, no matter where we live in the world, have a dozen core values inside of us. Split up researchers, split them into intrinsic values.

 

00;32;39;01 – 00;33;02;29

Jennifer Wallace

Things like, wanting to be a good neighbor, spirituality, wanting to grow. Yeah, versus extrinsic values. Things, materialistic values, wanting the big house, the name, brand, college, etc. values operate like a zero sum game, so the more time and energy you spend in your life pursuing intrinsic values, the less room you have in your life or pursuing the extrinsic ones.

 

00;33;02;29 – 00;33;25;29

Jennifer Wallace

And here’s why this matters. Because extrinsic values are linked with negative mental health and substance abuse disorder, whereas intrinsic values are linked with the well-being we want for ourselves and for our kids. So what I would say to parents is if you are living in one of these communities, as am I, is to be explicit with yourself about how you define success.

 

00;33;26;01 – 00;34;02;28

Jennifer Wallace

Look at your calendar. Look at how much money you spend, in your own life. Are they? Does your time, attention, and money reflect those values? If you say your family is the most important thing, are you having family dinners you’re carving out together time on the weekends, or are you spent going in a million different directions pursuing travel, soccer, or chess tournaments, etc. so be really clear about what your values are, communicate them with your kids, and then find a couple of families that share your values.

 

00;34;03;00 – 00;34;22;06

Jennifer Wallace

What has been so impactful for my kids? I think the most impactful is who I surround myself with and the adults I point out as living the successful lives in the way I define it. Yeah, because of where they went to college, not because of, you know, what their job title is, but because they are living a life.

 

00;34;22;06 – 00;34;46;29

Jennifer Wallace

And in my mind, what is the ultimate our our sort of family value is the Jesuit motto, which is not better than others, but better for others. We achieve. We are successful not to be better than others, but to be better for others, because we know there are genuine needs in the world. Yeah, you know, it is our responsibility to fill those needs.

 

00;34;47;01 – 00;35;13;07

Jennifer Wallace

Doesn’t mean I don’t like shiny objects, doesn’t mean I don’t want to, you know, write a book that is in the hands of of lots of readers. But the point of these things is that I want to help shift the conversation. Not that I need to hit the New York Times bestseller list. So it’s it’s really about how the lens you use to view your successes and what is the fuel that is driving you?

 

00;35;13;10 – 00;35;32;21

Jennifer Wallace

Is it intrinsic? Is it extrinsic? And just get clear on it and have those friends near you so that when you feel yourself being pulled off course, when you say, why, remind me. I used to call my friend Katie when my kids were little. Remind me why we’re not doing treble soccer. Yeah. And she would say to me, because you value your time together as a family.

 

00;35;32;21 – 00;35;50;26

Jennifer Wallace

Your kids are younger, never getting this time back. You want your downtime on your weekends. That is why you’re not doing chapel soccer. I’m like, that is why I’m not doing that. Well. Soccer. So you need to surround yourself with people who will keep you on track because you are living in a culture that will constantly be pulling you away.

 

00;35;51;03 – 00;36;09;08

Dr. Mona

Yeah, very good advice and this is so helpful as people kind of think about, you know, their futures and their children and what, what they want. And I, I always talk about value driven parenting, but sometimes I can forget about the, you know, obviously when your children get older, right? We think so much about our child centric values like, what do I want my child to have?

 

00;36;09;08 – 00;36;26;22

Dr. Mona

But then we sometimes forget about will. They are going to go into the world and their peers are going to have a very big impact, right? And the cars that those kids are driving the the clothes, whatever they’re saying, you know, that can be different. And we cannot control how people parent their children, but we can only control what values we bring into our family hold.

 

00;36;26;22 – 00;36;49;03

Dr. Mona

And I think that’s that is great advice. And I think that final question I have for you, which I could talk about this forever, but, for the sake of time, is, is maybe even from your own examples or from the book, how you feel we can create that sort of balance promoting healthy work ethic, intrinsic motivation without accidentally making our kids feel like they’re not good enough.

 

00;36;49;03 – 00;36;55;14

Dr. Mona

And that balance of achievement, but also not losing themselves and their sense of worth in the process.

 

00;36;55;17 – 00;37;17;12

Jennifer Wallace

So I think, you know, there are lots of ways we could do this, but one way that has been really helpful to me is that when I find my kids are not achieving or making choices that I think are not in the best interest, like video games, instead of studying, I get curious and not curious like you talked about earlier, I assume because guess what?

 

00;37;17;18 – 00;37;35;00

Jennifer Wallace

All kids want to do well and all adults want to do well. Just you have to make that assumption. So if you have a child who is not doing well, get curious, try to figure out what’s going on. And there are lots of ways. And I get into it at length in the book on how to get curious instead of curious.

 

00;37;35;02 – 00;37;56;14

Jennifer Wallace

And I would say for yourselves as well, when you are feeling never enough feeling, don’t feel shamed. Get curious. I see this when I go and I travel and I speak with, high school kids. I say, the next time you feel like you’re never enough, think about who’s profiting off of making you feel that way. Yeah, because there’s someone behind that feeling and they all go, oh, wow.

 

00;37;56;17 – 00;38;21;06

Jennifer Wallace

They love to know that. So think about yourself as an adult who is profiting off of that. So, you know, if I were to leave you with one thing, I would say the best way you can make your kids feel like they matter. That protective shield is for you to go upstream and find a way for you to to develop your own sense of mattering, your own sense of feeling valued, and knowing how you add value to the world.

 

00;38;21;09 – 00;38;26;28

Jennifer Wallace

Honestly, if I were to have written these books, I wish I would have written. The adult one that’s coming out now.

 

00;38;26;29 – 00;38;27;27

Dr. Mona

Makes it.

 

00;38;27;29 – 00;38;53;18

Jennifer Wallace

So that parents can go into their own psychological attics. Understand where these messages are coming from. Help them connect with their mattering. I call it building up a mattering core because there’s it’s a you know, mattering is not my idea. It’s been in the literature since the 80s, but it’s been locked away in the ivory tower. So how can we really build up our sense of mattering so that we could be those sturdy sources of support and help our kids develop their own set of mattering, too?

 

00;38;53;21 – 00;39;07;07

Dr. Mona

I love it, I lied, I have another question. So I was like, I, I can’t stop there. I think it’s so, so awesome. My if you had it your way, how would you wish society would redefine the word achievement?

 

00;39;07;09 – 00;39;42;17

Jennifer Wallace

Again, if I were to, I mean, it would be achieving for others because when we when we can turn our self-focused lens outward and, and notice our strengths and notice the genuine needs in the world and meet those needs, I used to say, I want my kids to be happy. I no longer say that. Yeah, I want them to know how to matter in the world because that is the pathway to happiness, to healthy achievement, to community, to deep connection, to deep purpose is knowing how to matter.

 

00;39;42;24 – 00;40;03;15

Jennifer Wallace

And there are actionable ways to know how to matter. Mattering is the secret to life. Yeah, that’s what I have found out. And I it has changed my life in so many ways. And I will devote the rest of my life to spreading the word about mattering because it is so transformative for families, for schools, for communities, for workplaces.

 

00;40;03;15 – 00;40;15;29

Jennifer Wallace

Yeah. It’s power is so vast. So teaching our kids how to matter to their friends, to their family, to the wider community, that to me is success.

 

00;40;16;01 – 00;40;40;25

Dr. Mona

Oh, I love that. And you know, when people hear that, they may think, well, when we’re doing things for others, we’re not doing things for self. But you just made it perfectly clear in this entire episode that by doing those things and thinking about the greater good, that is true value in our life. I mean, going back to the examples of you writing this book and the work that you’re doing and the speaking engagements you do, although those are all fun, beautiful things that I can look at from the outside.

 

00;40;40;25 – 00;41;01;04

Dr. Mona

What I’m getting from Jennifer Wallace is that your impact, the fact that you hear children say the things that they do back to you, that is what is mattering, right? That value that you are bringing to somebody’s life. And I think that message is so important, right, that it’s not about although that’s for you a little bit, although that’s, you know, giving you purpose in this world.

 

00;41;01;07 – 00;41;10;17

Dr. Mona

You have changed the lives of so many people. And if we all had that, how beautiful of a world would this be? That we all cared enough to help others.

 

00;41;10;20 – 00;41;45;12

Jennifer Wallace

And we need this in our world. The rest that’s crisis today is because people don’t know how to matter. Yeah. And so anyway, the book will teach you how to find genuine needs, small needs, how to rebuild your sense of mattering. I would love to leave your listeners with something that is sometimes so helpful to me when when my kids are struggling and I’m struggling as a parent and I feel so caught up in all of it, and the achievement culture and the the traps that they, that they put us in, I think about my children 10 or 20 years from now.

 

00;41;45;15 – 00;42;05;24

Jennifer Wallace

What is the story I want them to tell about their childhood and about their relationship with me? Yeah. And then I ask myself, am I helping them tell that story? So that is that to me is, just something that is an exercise that I tap into, particularly when times are fraught.

 

00;42;05;26 – 00;42;24;26

Dr. Mona

So much wisdom. I love that we were able to do this today. I am so excited for your book. It is out now, but please tell everyone where they can get the new book. The the first book that you have, and also how to stay connected with all the amazing work that you do and the, you know, the speaking engagements you’re doing and all of that fantastic information you share with the world.

 

00;42;24;28 – 00;42;47;01

Jennifer Wallace

Oh, thank you so much. So I, you could find me on Instagram at Jennifer or Henry Wallace. You can find me on my website, Jennifer B Wallace, sign up for my newsletter. Lots of advice for how to help our kids in this achievement culture, how to help ourselves in this achievement culture. Those are sort of the two big, big ways of finding me LinkedIn.

 

00;42;47;01 – 00;42;52;14

Jennifer Wallace

If you’re if you’re active on LinkedIn, you can find me there as well. And the book is available anywhere books are sold.

 

00;42;52;16 – 00;43;17;01

Dr. Mona

I am going to be linking all of that, including obviously, where to get the book mattering as well as the book that we talked about today in more detail. Because again, I love that we focused on her first book, which was, never Enough when Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic, which is more geared towards our teenagers, younger children, but like she said, mattering matters to adults too, and we have to undo those insecurities and those reservations that block us from showing up for our children.

 

00;43;17;01 – 00;43;35;08

Dr. Mona

Which is another reason why I’m so happy to have you here, because I’m always talking about how I can’t educate you on tantrums if I can’t help you. Why you’re struggling with regulation during their dysregulation. Like what is that barrier? Why are you forcing food into your child? What insecurities do you have about their bodies or their weight?

 

00;43;35;08 – 00;43;41;08

Dr. Mona

And so all of it comes back to self-reflection. And thank you so much for sharing that.

 

00;43;41;10 – 00;43;47;29

Jennifer Wallace

Oh thank you, thank you. What a great resource for parents. I wish I had this when I was raising my kids and all you do.

 

00;43;48;01 – 00;44;12;21

Dr. Mona

Thank you. That wraps up today’s episode and I hope you’re walking away with a new lens. So much of parenting today is measured grades, test scores, milestone followers, metrics. They tell us how our kids are doing and how we are doing as parents. But metrics never tell the full story. One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation for me was this achievement without mattering is empty.

 

00;44;12;23 – 00;44;34;22

Dr. Mona

Feeling like you matter, being valued for who you are and knowing you have value to offer is not a bonus. It is a basic human need and our kids need that to. And when mattering gets replaced by constant measuring, we see the fallout, loneliness, burnout, anxiety, disconnection in kids and frankly, in us too. Jennifer’s upcoming book mattering goes deeper into this.

 

00;44;34;22 – 00;45;00;21

Dr. Mona

It explains why restoring mattering may be one of the most important antidotes to achievement culture, and why kids do better, not worse, when they feel grounded in who they are, not just what they produce. And if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe and download it. Those small actions truly helped the show grow, and if you know someone stuck in the pressure cooker of achievement, a parent, a teen, a friend, share this episode with them so they can be inspired to make some change.

 

00;45;00;23 – 00;45;21;03

Dr. Mona

You can also shared on social media and tag the PedsDocTalk podcast, PedsDocTalk, and at Jennifer, Brittany, Wallace, Brett and Y. Wallace so we can keep this conversation going. Thank you for listening. Thank you for reflecting. Thank you for doing this work. And I will see you all next time with another amazing conversation.