How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes

A conversation with fellow parenting author Melinda Wenner Moyer

I recently had a chance to sit down with science journalist and fellow parenting author Melinda Wenner Moyer about her book “How to Raise Kids who Aren’t Assholes”. Moyer’s book is my version of the parenting trifecta: full of science, strategies, and stories, making for informative and entertaining reading. In addition to discussing our shared love of research and writing, and swapping stories about being new first-time authors, we talked about what led her to write this book, and how she aims to use research to help parents (a cause near and dear to my heart).

First, I have to ask: how did you come up with the title for your book? My husband’s background is in PR and marketing, and when he saw your book at our house, he said it was the best book title ever!

The title was actually the very first thing that came to me! I was out with my husband for dinner celebrating our anniversary. I was getting increasingly frustrated by the bad behavior I felt like I was seeing all around me. This was the time of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the Me Too movement. And I thought, “What are my kids going to learn from this? Who are they going to become?” And out of nowhere I blurted out, “I should write a book called ‘How to raise kids who aren’t assholes.’” I’d been wanting to write a book, but I just couldn’t figure out what the framework was going to be. And my husband said, “I think that’s your book!”. I started looking at the research and realized there was actually a ton of really interesting research in this area. Some of it was counterintuitive. A lot of it really hadn’t been translated to a lay audience. And I was like this, this is it. This is my book.

When I first read the title of your book, I thought it was going to be about reducing so-called “bad” behavior in children, i.e. how to raise kids who don’t throw temper tantrums at Target, who sit angelically in the pew at church. But it’s not that. Your book is about how to raise kind, compassionate children. How did you decide to focus on this area?

I wrote a parenting column for Slate for a long time. And there was an evolution in the topics that I covered, because I started realizing what I found most interesting was what can we do to help shape our kids into good humans? I did address questions like, Why do my kids have tantrums? And also questions like, What should you do if your kid has an ear infection? But I remember doing a series of columns that were around Thanksgiving on how to raise generous kids and thankful kids. And they felt really good to put out there, like, I’m like doing something that’s for the greater good of the world. It felt really rewarding to write those. And so, I think that experience over time made me realize that this is what I’m super interested in. And it feels like a really important thing to cover. Also, there wasn’t that much information out there on these topics. I felt like many of the other things, like managing tantrums, were covered by many different places, and very well, and there didn’t need to be another voice in that arena. But there’s not a ton of stuff on things like raising anti-racist kids, and sexism, and so I felt like there was a gap there that needed to be filled. And I was excited to fill it.

Your book covers a wide range of topics: resilience, bullying, lying, swearing, self-esteem, screen time, sexism, racism, pornography, and more! How did you decide what to cover in the book, and what to omit?

It was hard because I had a really long list. First, I came up with a list of the traits that we don’t want our kids to have when they grow up. And ultimately, it came down to whether there was research in these areas that was compelling and counterintuitive. There were a few areas, like whining, that I thought I should write about, but there wasn’t a lot of research out there. I really want everything that I write to be grounded in research in some way, and so it just didn’t feel right to try to tackle topics without a research base. So that helped narrow it down. That also made it very clear that my sexism and racism chapters were going to be really long because there was so much interesting research in these areas, that was both surprising and very nuanced!

In your introduction, you talk about how, as you dug into the research, you discovered that very often scientifically-supported best-parenting-practices don’t match what you thought would be best for children. Can you give an example of something you found that surprised you as you were writing the book?

One is that parents often want to rescue their kids from their feelings. This is very well intentioned. When our kids are having big negative feelings — they’re sad, they’re afraid, they’re angry — our instinct is often to say, “It’s okay, you don’t need to be sad or upset or angry” or “Calm down, this isn’t a big deal,” or “You’re okay, you’re fine.” We’re trying to make them feel better, but I was very surprised to read in the literature, and talk with researchers, who said it’s actually more constructive to let them have those feelings, to validate them, and to acknowledge them. Kind of the opposite of what we often do as parents.

I also thought it was really interesting that there was a link between talking about feelings with kids, and the development of generous behavior and helpful behavior in kids. When kids have this foundation in emotions, and they understand emotions, it makes it easier for them to develop theory of mind, which is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and you need that in order to be generous and helpful. You need to be able to say, Oh, my friend is sad — to recognize what he’s feeling, what might he need, what could help him feel better, and be able to act on it. And so, I thought that was really, really interesting: the power of letting kids have their emotions, not rescuing them from their feelings, and talking about them — talking about them when you read books, talking about your own feelings, and having them be something that becomes a big part of your vocabulary.

How has everything you learned from writing this book influenced your own parenting?

Wow, well, it has in a lot of ways! One of the big ways is that I lean into difficult conversations, and conversations about awkward, complex topics, a lot more than I used to. I look for opportunities to talk about these things with my kids. Whereas, in the past maybe they would make a passing comment about something and I would just sort of let it go. And now I’ll hear it and think, this is a way in to talk about sexism, or this comment makes me think about bullying. And then I will have a conversation with my kids about it. So, one of the themes of the book is that it’s really constructive to talk to kids about these really complex and difficult topics, the ones that we tend to lean away from, like race and gender and sexism and sex and consent and pornography — all these things that I previously might have thought maybe my kids weren’t ready to hear about, or were just going to scare them. There are age-appropriate ways to have talks about pretty much anything. And so that’s something that has really changed. I’m really tuned in to the things that my kids say, so that I can jump in and say, “Let’s talk about this”. And/or I’ll bring things up myself a lot more. So that’s a really big one.

And I think I am also more patient with my kids. Reading through a lot of the literature, I learned that parents often have expectations for kids that go beyond what they can actually do. We think they have skills they don’t necessarily have, especially with impulse control and emotional regulation. One example being, my daughter used to have meltdowns right before dinner a lot of the time and my husband would be like, “She’s doing this on purpose to ruin dinner, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.” We have this idea that our kids are doing things just to defy and annoy us. I’ve come to realize that most of the time that’s not the case. They are really struggling, and their struggles are a reflection of their lack of skills. And so, when my daughter has a meltdown before dinner, now I realize she’s really hungry, she’s really tired, she’s struggling. She’s not doing this to make our lives miserable. She’s the one who’s struggling. So I have more patience and more empathy in dealing with my kids’ misbehavior, which is interesting given the title of the book, how to raise kids aren’t assholes. I think one of the realizations I’ve had is that kids are just going to be assholes sometimes. And that’s not because you’re a bad parent. It’s because kids don’t have all the skills, and their brains are still developing in important ways.

So, what’s next for you? What are you currently working on?

I’m realizing there are a lot of things I didn’t cover in the book. There are a lot of parenting questions people have that can be answered by science that didn’t make it into the book. So, I have a newsletter, and now I’m starting to expand it. I’ve just launched a paid version. My original focus was to address challenging kid behavior and what parents can do to support kids who are exhibiting challenging behavior. Now I’m expanding it into other conversations that are related to parenting, like I had a post last week on homework and what do we know about how helpful homework is (or isn’t!). I’m also taking on journalism assignments again, for example, I just wrote a recent piece on suicide in black youth. Beyond that, I don’t know. I loved this process of writing a book. I want to write another one. I don’t have an idea, yet. But maybe something in the next year or so!

You can find more information about Melinda Wenner Moyer’s work, and subscribe to her newsletter, on her website.

Visit my website at danielledick.com for free resources, check out my new book The Child Code for parenting tips and tricks, or follow me on social media at Dr. Danielle Dick, for more information about how understanding genetics can help you in your parenting, relationships, health, and wellbeing.