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Science and parenting journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer returns to discuss the importance of self-compassion and how to practice it, why conveying a growth mindset is much more helpful to kids than giving compliments about fixed qualities, misconceptions about resilience (and what the science really says), the difference between trauma and healthy distress, and her new book, HELLO, CRUEL WORLD: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times. Behind the paywall, we get into the evidence on how detrimental academic pressure is to kids, how to support and challenge children who are insatiably curious without making them feel pressured, how to teach kids media literacy and critical thinking skills, how to navigate screen time and social media with kids, and more.
Melinda Wenner Moyer is an award-winning science journalist whose work explores the intersection of science and everyday life. She’s known for her deep dives into subjects that have both scientific and societal implications, often addressing issues that are relevant to parents and families. Her writing often challenges popular beliefs and provides readers with a clearer, more informed understanding of issues in child development, parenting, and the social sciences.
Moyer is a contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and a regular contributor — and former columnist — at The New York Times. Her first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, was published in July 2021 and won a gold medal in the 2022 Living Now Book Awards. Her second book, Hello Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, was published on May 27, 2025.
Moyer was the recipient of the 2022 Excellence in Science Journalism award from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine. She has a master’s in Science, Health & Environmental Reporting from NYU and a background in cell and molecular biology. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. Learn more and subscribe to her Substack at melindawmoyer.substack.com.
Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Melinda’s new book, Hello Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times
Melinda’s first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes
Melinda’s first Rethinking Wellness episode, “Social Media and Kids' Mental Health: A Critical Look at the Evidence”
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Your new book is great. I really loved reading it and I was telling you offline, it's like one of the few that I just sort of read for fun as well as for work. And it's about how to raise kids in, as you say in the title, a cruel world. How did this book come to be?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Well, a lot of it comes from my own anxiety. I have two kids. I have a 10 year old and a 13 year old and one of the things that I think about every day is what is this world that we're bringing our kids into? How am I going to prepare them for this? Because it just feels kind of scary right now. There's just so much. And I write a Substack too, and I'm often checking in with my readers about what are you thinking about? What are you worried about right now? What should I write about?
And I felt like this was a theme that just kept coming up, like in the last few years was again, what can I do to prepare my kids for this world that they're going to inherit? And how can I help them build resilience and all the coping skills they'll need and all the other skills like financial literacy and media literacy, like, what does the science say and how do we build these? And so one day I just had this eureka moment and I was like, oh, I could write a book that's all about how do we build these skills and how do we prepare our kids? And that would help me feel better too, as a parent. Because, for me, that's basically where it came from and I've learned a lot.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I share a lot of those anxieties, for sure. And I think the book did such a good job of putting those at ease and giving a lot of data and nuance to even scary topics or things that produce a lot of anxiety. The state of the world now is really tough, right? And I woke up the morning after the 2024 election just feeling terrible, like so many people did. And I know in that state I was not really thinking straight, but I had the dark thought that since the assholes have taken over, raising my daughter to be kind and compassionate is just kind of doing her a disservice. So I should figure out how to raise her to be more of an asshole so that she can hold her own, you know?
And fortunately, thought passed. I came back to myself and my values. But I think your book gets at what was underneath that little blip for me, which is at the end of the day, the world is full of assholes and increasingly run by assholes. And we need to teach our kids how to handle it and how to change it and even thrive in it and change it for the better. So I guess the first thing I want to ask, and this is a really broad question, but how can we raise kids to handle the difficult and unkind people and difficult and unkind systems that they're going to encounter in this world?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Oh, yeah, that is a big question and there's a lot that we can do that doesn't require teaching our kids to be total assholes themselves. Although, I have shared that thought that you have had before. I think it's one of those questions where there's multiple things we can do that are all kind of addressing different parts of that. And so, one thing, and this is actually one of the first chapters in my book, I talk about the importance of self compassion because basically when we are raising kids in a difficult world, they're going to struggle, right? And they're going to encounter things that are really hard. They're going to encounter things that are really painful.
And one of the most important things I learned for kids to develop, to be able to manage those moments is self compassion. Being able to recognize that this is hard. It's not my fault necessarily that things are this hard. It's a lot of reasons and to notice that, recognize that, and know how to make yourself feel better. So I think that's one really big thing is nurturing self compassion. It's such an important skill. And I feel like it's not one that we really think about as a crucial skill.
Christy Harrison: I know it was never explicitly taught to me or really modeled very well either and I think that's true for many people growing up.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yes, absolutely. I feel like our instincts often are kind of the opposite. We criticize ourselves to ourselves and in front of other people. We kind of do the opposite and we model that a lot for our kids, which is understandable for a number of reasons. But I was actually really shocked at how powerful the research is on self compassion and how kids who have self compassion, adolescents who have self compassion do so much better. Their mental health is so much better. They're so much more resilient. They can handle so much more hardship. And really, that's kind of what you're getting at in your question is like, because the world's gonna be so hard, how do we raise kids with resilience? And so yeah, self compassion is really powerful.
I think sometimes because the world is so hard and we're so worried for our kids, we tend to overprotect. And this can come in many forms. It's not just like, oh, we don't let kids play outside alone. We try to sort of create and maintain environments for them that are really comfortable and we don't want them to be uncomfortable in any kind of situation. I'm thinking of like when I send my kid to overnight camp and I'm like, should I send them a care package every single day? Because I don't want them to be sad, I don't want them to miss me when really maybe it's okay for them to feel some discomfort and miss me. And maybe that's actually resilience building.
There's a lot of ways, and I have a very long chapter on resilience itself. There's a lot of ways that we can help kids develop coping skills by letting them have uncomfortable experiences throughout their childhood in really safe contexts and safe environments to help them build those skills and figure out what is the best way to handle this and what's the best way to make myself feel better, et cetera. I guess one other thing I would say is just helping kids develop the social skills to manage the times when they are going to encounter assholes. What are constructive conflict resolution skills? How can we engage with people who are difficult in ways where we actually kind of make progress rather than make things worse. And so that's a lot of how we engage with them on a day to day basis, how we handle their feelings, how we help them in their own relationships. And I talk a lot about that in the book too.
Christy Harrison: Thank you, that's really helpful. I feel like those are three of the things that I had noted as key points to discuss more and I want to dig in more to self compassion first. I think it is something that so many of us don't have practice with or have to learn explicitly as adults and so have to do that before even trying to model it for our kids. But how do you practice self compassion? Can you give just sort of an overview of it and then how to apply that to kids and teaching kids, because obviously at different ages, it's probably going to look different. And how you explain it might need to be tailored to the child and their capacities and stuff.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that when I interviewed experts on self compassion, they all said that if you want to teach kids self compassion, it is important that you practice self compassion for yourself, which I think we don't always do. It's really hard, right? If I make a mistake or I screw something up, my inclination is to be like, oh, my God, I'm such a jerk, I'm such an idiot, which is not constructive. And our kids obviously are watching us and learning from what we're modeling. And so we want to be outwardly displaying some self compassion in front of our kids.
And basically the way we do this and the things that we can focus on in terms of teaching our kids, one of the first steps of self compassion. It sounds so simple and obvious, but it's actually not always easy for us or our kids. It's basically noticing that you're having a hard time and taking that second to pull yourself out of the moment and say, wow, this is hard. This really is difficult for me. This is related to mindfulness. It's like pulling yourself out of the moment to recognize what you're feeling and label it. And it's actually really powerful and really an important part of self compassion. The act of just recognizing that you're in a situation that's hard or you're feeling something that's hard itself just will make you feel better, just labeling and recognizing that.
With kids, it's one of those things where they will often have big feelings and show big feelings, but they don't have the ability to pull themselves out of it and say I'm feeling frustrated or I'm feeling disappointed or I'm feeling ashamed and they won't know what feeling they're feeling. And so for us, it can be really helpful to try to help kids figure that out. And if we have an inkling as to why they're upset, try to figure out with them what are they feeling? Is it that you're embarrassed that you messed up the solo audition in choir, which may have been something my daughter was dealing with this week, and really having those conversations about, okay, you're feeling this and you're feeling that. This is a hard situation, this was a difficult moment and it's natural to feel that way.
Another big part of self compassion is recognizing your shared humanity. And that means really realizing that you are not alone in feeling what you're feeling. Other people have felt this before, that other people in your situation would feel the same way. And this is really important because I think a lot of times when we mess up, we're feeling self critical or our kids are, they often think, well, nobody else would be this dumb or like, oh my gosh, nobody else has experienced this. It's like the teenagers who say, you have no idea what I'm feeling. Nobody knows what I'm feeling except for me and you don't understand. There is often this feeling of I'm alone in having this experience and having this feeling and it can be really powerful to tell ourselves and our kids that, well, actually, you're not alone and a lot of people have felt this.
You have to be careful, of course, not to sort of frame this or say it in a dismissive way to your kids. You don't want to be like, well, everybody's had this happen. It's not a big deal. You don't want to necessarily frame it as a dismissal of their feelings or the magnitude of their feelings, but rather as, gosh, yeah, anybody who was in that situation would feel that way. And like with my daughter, with these solo auditions she had for choir solo, I remember saying things like I bet you weren't the only one who was really nervous going into that. All the other kids who auditioned were probably really scared. And I bet a lot of them aren't super happy with how their audition went either. And they might be frustrated too and trying to tap into this is a normal feeling and it's one that other people probably feel and have felt in your situation.
And then the third big part, this is the part I think everyone thinks about when they think of self compassion is really figuring out how to be compassionate with yourself, be empathetic with yourself and try to make yourself feel better. I think of it as stepping out and saying, well, what would you do for your best friend if they felt this way? What would you say to them? Because a lot of times we're very harsh to ourselves when we've done something that we're upset about and much harsher towards ourselves than we are to a friend if they'd been in that situation. And so with kids, it can be as simple as saying, okay, so if your friend had had this experience, if your friend had kind of flubbed her choir audition, what would you say to her? Probably not, oh my gosh, I'm such an idiot, my voice cracked during this audition, right? You would say, oh, gosh, that's really hard. And of course, voices crack and that happens. But it's still really hard and I understand why you're so upset about it.
So it's like, again, taking yourself out of the moment and thinking about how would you help a friend in this situation? Or would you be as harsh to your friend who had this experience as you are to yourself? So it's almost like role playing with your kids can help there. You want to do these things for yourself. And then you also, as much as possible in the moment when your kids are upset, try to help them do these three things. And again, it's taking them out of the moment, helping them recognize their feelings and then recognizing that they're not the only ones who feel this way. They're not alone.
And then third, really helping them speak to themselves in a kind way and comfort themselves in a kind way. And also, encouraging them to think of things they could do to make themselves feel better, even if it's something that they feel like they're responsible for. Like, oh my gosh, I should have practiced more so my voice wouldn't crack. If they're blaming themselves, it's still like, well, okay, you still have the right to feel better and to make yourself feel better. What would make you feel better? Would it be a hug from me or would it be doing some deep breathing? What might make you feel better because you deserve that and everybody deserves that in these difficult moments.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I so appreciate that. That's a powerful framing and I wish I had learned that as a kid instead of having to wait till I was in my late 20s or early 30s or something with a therapist. And thankfully I did and I think it has been life changing to learn self compassion and to really internalize and start practicing that. I feel like I didn't really take off in my life until I did. I think that my lack of self compassion, I mean for me, and I think for many people too, but for me personally, it was definitely pathological and it was really just so pivotal to be able to change how I talk to myself and start giving myself the support I needed to make mistakes and try things and just break out of my shell a little bit and not feel so self critical all the time.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah, I think it's especially hard for girls. A lot of perfectionism, right? We just are often overachievers. I certainly was and so mistakes just weren't an option. And when I made a mistake, I would just blame myself and beat myself up, same thing. I have looked into are there gender differences in self compassion? And the data are a little tricky to parse, but there is some research suggesting that women tend to have less self compassion overall. I mean, obviously there's individual differences, but yeah, we're tough on ourselves for sure.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. I wonder how much of that is learned and how much of that is conditioned by society.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah, I think all of it. Right? I know our kids are getting those messages, those gendered messages in society. But to the degree that we can combat that in our little ways at home, the better.
Christy Harrison: Well, one of the things that struck me about this book was your discussion of fixed mindset versus growth mindset, which I think is like another piece of this, or at least was for me in terms of being an overachiever and thinking of myself in a certain way, thinking of myself as smart or as good at certain things or whatever. And growing up, I think a lot of people in our generation were conditioned to feel that way. We got a lot of praise that was about qualities that felt fixed or things like, you're so smart, you're so pretty, you're so good at gymnastics, whatever it is. And I know our parents were coming from a good place and there was this whole self esteem movement happening at least when I was growing up. I think you're probably around the same age.
They wanted to instill self esteem but the upshot of those kinds of compliments about these fixed qualities is that when we inevitably fall short of what we think we should be able to do in an area related to that, we feel like a failure. We feel like we're no longer that thing that we were told. If I get a bad grade on a test, I'm no longer smart, or if I flub the cartwheel, then I'm no longer good at gymnastics or whatever it is. I would love if you could talk about growth mindset versus how growth mindset presents an alternative to this black and white thinking about ourselves.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yes, growth mindset is really powerful. It's something I talk about in a few different spots in the book because it kept coming up as being helpful to build different skills and in different contexts. But absolutely. I think one of the great things about, and I'll get into the nitty gritty of it in a second, but one of the great things about growth mindset is it really normalizes mistakes and failures and just screwing up. And I think so much of what we were raised to believe was that we should be good at things from the beginning and if we're not, then we're not good at that thing. And mistakes are things to be avoided at all costs. And of course, it just ends up being counterproductive for so many reasons, for resilience building reasons, and for self esteem reasons, because nobody's perfect. We're all going to make mistakes.
What growth mindset essentially does is it normalizes mistakes and it actually presents them as opportunities for growth and learning. So mistakes are good instead of mistakes are bad. I think most people probably have heard of growth mindset, fixed mindset. But as you already outlined, we often use fixed mindset language. I know I grew up with it. And that's like, oh, you're smart, you're so good at math, you're so good at gymnastics. It's really defining someone's ability as being black and white. You either have it or you don't. You're born with it or you're not. And the implication there is well, there's not a whole lot you can do if you're not a natural at soccer or natural at gymnastics.
And what that does, as you already kind of said, is when you do fail, if you've been told by your parents that you're good at math and then you get a bad grade on a math quiz, you start to think, well, maybe mom was wrong and I'm not good at math because I just got this bad grade and if I'm not good at math and if I have this fixed mindset belief about math ability, then I'm going to think, well, what's the point? Maybe I should just stop trying. I mean, I'm just not naturally good at it, and I can't get better at it. I just suck at math, end of story. And you can see how that's going to, over time, have effects on how much effort you want to put into your math and how you feel about yourself relating to numbers and math. So it's not great.
Growth mindset is instead of praising for ability or praising for intelligence, you're praising for effort. And the second part's really important. You're tying effort to outcome. So it's not just like, oh, you're trying so hard. That's great. That's what a lot of people do with growth mindset is they talk about effort, but they never tie it to outcomes. And so what we really want to be doing is when your kid does do well on something, you really tie it to the effort they put in. So, if my son scores during a soccer game, it's hard sometimes, I hear myself going into fixed mindset. But what I try to do instead of saying, like, oh, my gosh, you're such a natural, I will say that was amazing you scored that goal. It must be all the time you spent practicing out in the backyard, that's amazing. You're seeing it pay off.
And likewise, for anything really, like, oh, you got a grade on your math test. That's probably because of how much you've studied or how well you've paid attention during class. And so it's really pointing out to kids that the positive outcome is a function of the effort that they've put in. And what this does is it really helps kids recognize that ability is something that grows over time with effort and therefore that if they start trying to do something and they're not very good at it, then it just means probably they need more practice or they need a different kind of practice, maybe. And it really kind of reframes failures and mistakes as just, oh, we're just at the beginning of the learning process. One of the words I love that's a good growth mindset word is "yet," like, oh, it's not that you're not good at gymnastics. It's that you haven't done much gymnastics yet or you're not good yet. I don't know if I would say you're not good yet, but it implies you're not where you want to be.
And what we know from the research is that growth mindset language, even if kids just have a little intervention, if they take a test and the feedback is, oh, you did well on this test, it must be because you worked hard at the problems versus you did well at this test, it must be because you're smart. When kids are given that growth mindset feedback, they are then much more interested in doing hard problems and trying hard things. They aren't as bothered by the mistakes they make. It ends up just really building this confidence and this resilience, which obviously has all sorts of implications for down the road and for self esteem. It's really powerful.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I've really taken a lot from growth mindset recently and talking to my daughter about various things because she's three, and she's going through this phase of just saying she can't do it, even with things that she can, like putting on her socks, she'll just kind of be like, I can't do it, kind of like it's too hard or I don't want to. You do it for me. And so praising the effort, I feel like has helped to overcome some of that, where it's like, well, it's not easy yet because you haven't practiced a lot. But if you can practice more and take this time to just to try to do it, then that's gonna build your ability to do it, and it's gonna feel much easier down the line. And that has helped so much with my parenting and with our struggles to get ready in the morning and all of that. It's been really helpful, even at this young of an age.
But I'm also curious because there are a number of kids in my life, and we'll talk about this, I think, more in a minute, but who are very advanced and naturals at certain things, intellectually especially, come easily to them. And so I'm curious how you would use a growth mindset with a kid like that where they might not feel like they have to put in any effort and they just do well, get good grades, whatever. How do we encourage a growth mindset in somebody for whatever type of thing that is just coming easily to them?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's as simple as you could say something like, I think it's awesome that you're doing so well in whatever it is, gymnastics or Spanish, whatever. But I do wish that you were challenged, because it is through being challenged that you're going to continue to learn and get better at it. So often it's just a little bit of pointing out. It's great that this is easy for you, but I really wish that there was something that required you to put in effort and try hard and be a little challenged, because that's really how you grow your brain. I certainly had that experience with my son. There's a lot of stuff that comes easy to him, but, as they get older, I find they're inevitably going to encounter things that they want to do or wish they could do that they're not very good at.
And so then those opportunities become the time when I'm really, really focusing on growth mindset. Because sometimes he will get frustrated because he's like, other things are easy for me. Why is this not easy for me? This isn't cool. Maybe I should just give up and never try again and that's when I go really heavy on the, oh, this is my opportunity to talk about growth mindset. I remember he was on a soccer team that was doing so poorly, and he was so frustrated for so long. They weren't winning, they weren't winning, they weren't winning. But I kept talking about how you're learning every time you play and you're getting better.
And there was one morning when he came in before a soccer game, and he said, Mom, I actually don't want to win my soccer game today. And I was like, really? He said something like, yeah, because every time we lose, I know we're going to learn something. And I was just like, oh, my God, you got it! I mean, certainly, it doesn't always work out. But that was a moment where I was like, oh, my gosh. It actually sunk in a little bit. You just gotta pay attention to those opportunities when inevitably they will encounter something that's hard for them and take that moment to talk about growth mindset.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's really helpful. Well, you mentioned resilience, and this all sort of ties in with resilience. And I think it's such a buzzword, right? And you hear a lot about resilience in the parenting literature and pop psychology in general, but it's not always used or interpreted correctly. Resilience can be a loaded term and it's been critiqued in various ways and it's sometimes used to say that we have to just grin and bear it or something. So what are some misconceptions that you see about resilience and what does the science actually say?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: I feel like there is this idea of resilience as the expectation that nothing should bother you, you just shouldn't even react to hard things. Everything should be easy, and if it's not easy for you, then you're not resilient. It's almost like we shouldn't have emotions, we shouldn't experience things as being difficult. If we do, then we're not resilient. And that is absolutely not what resilience should mean and it's not a healthy concept of resilience. I think of resilience as the ability to experience hard things and have hard feelings and learn the coping skills needed to be able to deal with those hard feelings and hard experiences. And obviously, there is a line here between we don't want to be exposing our kids to trauma. The goal is not I want my kids to be able to experience terrible traumatic things and not be affected by it.
But what's really interesting is, and this is something that the psychologist Lisa Damour talks about. I highly recommend her book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, by the way, which is great even if you have tweens or school age kids. But she talks about how trauma is not defined by the experience itself. Trauma is related to the person's emotional response to an experience. Because two people might experience the same thing and one might experience it as traumatic and the other might not. Right? And so what matters is the person's emotional response to that experience.
And she talks about how, what makes it so that people can have an experience that's hard but not traumatic and one thing that does shape it is the person's coping skills, their experience with similar things and have they kind of figured out how to have that experience and cope with how difficult it is and develop the skills to deal with the difficulty of it? And so, in a way, she makes this argument that, well, exposing our kids to difficult things in safe contexts little by little builds up coping skills in a way that can actually make them less likely to experience trauma if they experience a difficult situation. And so it can build up their reserve of emotional regulation skills and coping skills so that they are better able to handle difficult experiences. It's an interesting, slightly different take. It's not about not having feelings. It's about having the feelings. The feelings are welcome, but can we help our kids develop through practice the coping skills to manage that difficulty?
Christy Harrison: Yeah. In the book, you make the distinction between, trauma and healthy distress and obviously, we don't want to be intentionally exposing our kids to difficult things to try to get them to build resilience, but intentionally exposing them to things that might provoke some healthy distress or some discomfort and nudging them outside their comfort zone and continuing to ask them to do things a certain way, even if they're having a tantrum and fighting it or whatever. But we know that it's a useful thing that we want them to be able to do.
So where do you think that line is? And how do we know? For example, a kid is in a situation where they could stick it out at a certain school or program or something, but they're being bullied, or is it bullying? Are we not sure? Where does the parent step in and say, that's enough, I'm going to talk to the teacher. I'm going to pull you out of this program or whatever it is?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: That's a great question. I think it's a really hard question to answer
