I've heard from listeners that what they call "The Dark Horse Episode," the interview with Dr. Todd Rose, that this is one of their favorite conversations on the podcast, and for this reason I'm doing something I've never done before: reissuing that episode.  Dr. Rose and I discussed ways to personalize children's learning to help them truly discover and live their full potential - both academically and personally (and even getting rid of that distinction entirely...).   Check out what listeners who subsequently joined the Learning Membership said in our private community before the membership had even officially started:     The enrollment for the Learning Membership will open soon to new members, and Megan, Heidi, and Denise are already inside (with me!) waiting to welcome you. Click the banner to learn more - we can't wait to meet you!   Get a head start on raising your own Dark Horse -sign up for the FREE You Are Your Child's Best Teacher masterclass when doors reopen. Click the banner to learn more!           [accordion]   [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen  00:00 We've got to both commit on the one hand to a more greater focus on individuality, and to commit to something more personal, but at the same time, hold open this idea of diversity and inclusion, and a recognition that some groups of people have been profoundly poorly treated by the system we have and commit to starting our work and our innovation in those corners and working your way in rather than inside out.   Jen  00:27 Hi, I'm Jen, and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Measure Podcast. I'm actually doing something I've never done before with today's show that I see other podcasters doing all the time. And that's to rerelease a previously released episode. It seems like there are some times when an episode that you've already released just speaks so clearly to an issue of the moment, and I really feel like that's the case here. So, today's episode came to us via a bit of a different route than they often do. A friend of mine actually heard our guests Dr. Todd Rose on the Art of Manliness Podcast and said hey, you might want to listen to this because it sounds a lot like what you're trying to do with the way your daughter Carys learns, and I listened to the episode and then I did something that I'd also never done before. Actually, the message that I heard from Dr. Rose in that podcast made him feel like such a kindred spirit in terms of how we think about learning and work that I reached out to him and asked him to talk with us before I'd even read his book. And rather than go over that ground that's already been covered elsewhere, I'd really encourage you to go to this episode's page at yourparentingmojo.com/toddrose to find a link to that episode on the Art of Manliness because there's so much there to help adults discover and follow their passions if you're feeling unfulfilled in the work that you do. And if you might need some help charging a different course.   So today we're going to look at the outcomes for what Dr. Rose calls dark horses, but we'll specifically focus on how we can support children in navigating their path to becoming a dark horse, which involves identifying your skills and true motivations and harnessing those to do work that you're truly passionate about. And when I originally released this episode, I invited listeners to join a pilot program that I was running called Your Child's Learning Mojo, which helps parents to support their child's intrinsic motivation to learn. That program is now way out of the pilot stage. And I enrolled a second cohort in April when school shutdowns were starting, and parents needed to figure out how they were going to support their children's learning. And the concept has really been proven out. The parents who are enrolled in the membership are really deeply engaged in developing their children's intrinsic love of learning, but they're doing it in a way that doesn't actually take a ton of time and is really fun. So, you can find all the information about the membership at YourParentingMojo.com/LearningMojo.   If your child's in the early preschool years right now, you're probably inundated with their questions about the world. But research shows that by the early school years, children learned that their own questions aren't really valued anymore. And what counts is whether they know the answers to questions that other people have asked yet the ability to formulate questions and ask them and know how to find some initial answers, and then circle back to a deeper level of questions and explore ideas with both depth and breadth and demonstrate that learning to communities that care about the topic is going to be a foundational set of skills for life 20 years from now. And in the age of search engines, the ability to recall an answer is pretty much already obsolete.   If we're worried about our children's success when they graduate school and college, then we might be tempted to teach them a skill like coding. And while there are plenty of apps and after school clubs and summer camps that have popped up, which imply that if you aren't teaching your child to code, then you're making an error that is as fundamental as not teaching your child how to read. Developers tell us that coding isn't about getting the syntax of the code right. It's about having an idea, proposing a solution, seeing if it works, delving deeply into an issue, developing creative solutions to problems and sticking with it when it repeatedly fails while you try different approaches and improve on them each time you take another run at it. Teaching the syntax of coding doesn't teach any of those skills, but harnessing your child's natural intrinsic motivation to learn does support the kinds of skills that will be needed to learn coding and complex problem solving, and critical thinking and creativity and all of the other skills the experts know are really going to be important in the future. In the book Becoming Brilliant that we looked way back in Episode 10, psychologist Dr. Roberta Golinkoff and Dr. Kathy Hirsh basically argue that schools are doing really well preparing our children for the kinds of jobs that existed in 1953. There are some places where schools are beginning to shift their approach. But in general, being in school means mostly being tested on your ability to remember facts, rather than developing the critical skills. So, if we want our children to have these critical skills, it's really on us as parents to make it happen.   The good news is that children come out already primed to develop these skills. We know they have boundless curiosity, they want to delve deeply into topics that interest them, whether it's dinosaurs, or beading, or construction. And if we can just learn how to become the “Guide on the Side” who connects them to resources and helps them deepen the work they're already doing rather than the “Sage on the Stage” who provides all the answers, then we'll be able to help our children become the profoundly fulfilled dark horses that Dr. Rose will describe.   I took a career coaching course a few years back, and I'm still in its Facebook group. And almost without fail, the people who sign up for the course and introduce themselves give some variation of the story. I did really well in school, and I got a good job and made quite a bit of money. And now I'm approaching midlife, I realize I'm really unsatisfied, and I'm here to discover my true passion so I can live a life that feels meaningful to me. So as good as that career coaching was, and it was, of course, was really good. My goal with this episode and with the Your Child's Learning Mojo membership, is to make that course obsolete for that purpose, because instead of getting to midlife and realizing they’re incredibly unfulfilled, or children will engage in activities and learning that fulfil them from the very beginning. And as they live their lives, they'll continually reassess their passions and whether their work is in service of their passions, and have the knowledge and ability and desire to make micro adjustments as they go along so they never reach that breaking point, and instead will become dark horses who are truly connected to work that they find meaningful throughout their lives.   One of the reasons I'm rereleasing this episode is that I think we're in a period right now, where taking a different approach to children's learning and lives can make a really profound impact. There's never been a time when so many people are thinking at the same time about whether the school system is actually going to work for their child. They're looking for ways to support their child's intrinsic love of learning after the child has been on six hours of Zoom calls on material that probably could have been covered in an hour, but that didn't speak to any of the issues that are actually important in their lives. And some parents are even considering pulling their children out of school to homeschool, which I can tell you is a much less stressful way to really equip your child with the skills they'll actually need in the world, and doesn't require any monitoring your child on all these hours of online calls every day. The membership doesn't require that you be homeschooling to use it, we certainly have plenty of members whose children still are in school. But we also have quite a few who are using what they've learned in the membership to see homeschooling is something they really do have the ability to do and can feel confident in doing. And not only is their child not going to be harmed in some way by doing this, but it's actually probably pretty likely going to benefit the child. So, if you'd like to learn more about how to do this, please do go to yourparentingmojo.com/learningmojo to see how I support you and supporting your child's intrinsic love of learning.   Now I have restructured the membership a bit since the last time I opened it, I'm now offering two ways to participate. So, if you decide that you just want to get your feet wet a bit and play with the core ideas, you can do that with what I'm calling the Balanced Bike option. So, I'll teach you what's going on in children's minds when they learn and why the kinds of strewing activities that you see all over Pinterest are really just a very small part of the process and don't actually help your children to learn much that’s meaningful or connected to their own interests. We’ll begin a learning journal that you can use to identify your child's interests and passions, and then engage with these in a way that supports your child and developing the critical skills of the future. And we’ll understand how to use nature as inspiration for developing questions and ideas and a sense of wonder. You'll get access to short Q&A videos that you can watch anytime to get immediate answers to the questions that parents most often asked. And for three months, you'll be welcomed into our private online community. And you'll be able to work directly with a small group of parents to translate the big ideas into the tiny steps that you need to achieve what's important to you and your family. So that's the Balanced Bike option.   And when you're ready for a bike with pedals, in the Riding with Confidence option, you'll see there's so much more to this method of learning than the basics. You'll immediately get access to an additional two modules of content, the first on deschooling, which is the idea of moving away from the elements of the school system that might not be serving our child. There's also a module on listening to your child in a way that helps you to not just answer the surface level question that they're asking, but also how to support them in answering their underlying questions that maybe even they haven't figured out how to ask yet. And in future months, I'll add additional content on topics like documentation of children's learning, place-based learning, a deep dive into how to scaffold children's ability to engage in difficult work, and how to support them in developing critical thinking skills for a total of 12 modules of content. And so along with the Riding with Confidence option, you get a year of support in our private membership group and in the small communities as well. You also get the Pandemic Pods in-a-box course to give you everything you need to set up your own pandemic pods so you don't have to be the only one who works with your children in this way. You can actually spread the load. There are infographics with tips on how to encourage skills that will lead to reading and math abilities, as well as the Confident Homeschooler a short course, which will help you decide in an evening or two, whether officially withdrawing your child from school could be the best option for your family. Finally, there's a discount on the finding your parenting measure membership available as well, which is also open to new members. And the option to get a 33% discount on a package of private coaching calls with me. So, if you're interested in joining, please do head on over to yourparentingmojo.com/LearningMojo for all the details and to sign up.   So, to make a formal introduction to our guest today, Dr. Rose is a lecturer on education and leads the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual at Harvard University. His work is focused at the intersection of individuality and personalization applied to help people learn, work and live. He's the author of the books The End of Average, and most recently Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfilment. Welcome, Dr. Rose.   Dr. Rose  11:37 Thanks for having me.   Jen  11:38 And so, before we kind of dig into the real meat here, I wonder if you can set the stage by telling us what is a dark horse?   Dr. Rose  11:45 Hmm, yeah. So, from our work, you know, we've found that sort of the traditional definition is, really there are people who end up being successful that nobody saw coming, right. And that can be because they, you know, were viewed as failures early and then succeeded, or because they end up being successful in one domain, but then make these pivots and end up doing stuff that's completely different. And, again, nobody sees him coming.   Jen  12:10 And in some ways, this resonated with me so much when I read it, because in a way, I think of myself as a dark horse, you know, I got degrees from Berkeley and Yale, and a job at a prestigious consulting company. And I really did enjoy what I was doing for a while and sustainability consulting. But the work that I find really so fulfilling came after I got a master's in psychology, which was focused on child development, and then another in education. And it's sharing this through the podcast with other people that I mean, it just, it just keeps me going keeps me getting up in the morning. And I would never have seen that coming.   Dr. Rose  12:44 And, you know, you're hitting on something really important, which is like, you know, ever since the term dark horse was created, you know, quite a while ago to talk about, you know, things that are successful that no one sees coming. In our research in the Dark Horse Project. This is exactly what we found, right? Because we were interested in, why do these folks get off the beaten path and yet still end up surprising us and to a person, the thing that kept emerging was the way they thought about success in life. And rather than playing by sort of society's definition of success or somebody else's view, they were deeply focused on pursuing personal fulfilment. And right given that it's so personal, right, it's so individual, the things that light you up, it's not surprising in a standardized society, that it often requires getting off the beaten path to make it happen.   Jen  13:30 Yeah. And Okay, so let's talk about that. Because it I mean, this is a question that seems like it should be really simple, but of course it isn't. And it has so much to do with learning and how we think about school. And so how do children and we're thinking about children, but of course, it's applicable to all people as well. How did they learn best?   Dr. Rose  13:49 Yeah, it's funny, right? Because that seems like something that is so obvious, but in many ways it runs so counter to the way we actually educate. So, if you think about some of the basics, right, like, it won't sound like rocket science, right? Like, not surprisingly, kids that are learning in ways that are engaging to them are going to learn better, right? That sounds silly, silly, obvious, but like, it is surprising how much we neglect that. Right? So if you're engaged, if you're motivated, which I think are related, but at the same thing, if the learning is contextualized in a relevant way, right, so it's not just abstracted away from real life, but deeply embedded into it when people are more active rather than passively learning. And one of the things that's really important is the extent to which students are have more autonomy and agency in the learning. Right. And, like, it's funny, my grandma would have said, you didn't need science to tell us that right. But I feel like given how far down the rabbit hole of standardization we've gotten in our education system, it's good to remind people about just how much we know about what makes for good learning.   Jen  14:58 Mm hmm. And okay, so you said A lot of things there and you sort of skimmed over a number of things. And I want to pick those apart a little bit. You talked about how learners need to be engaged, the learning needs to be relevant, the learner needs to be autonomous. And when I think about school, I think about the way that some bureaucrats and hopefully some, hopefully, some teachers,...