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Forest fires are getting bigger, and yep, it’s definitely our fault.

by Emily Collins Posted on October 10, 2016

The majority of Sunday’s presidential debate involved the candidates trading blows on tax returns, Donald Trump’s so-called “locker room talk” about assaulting women, and Hillary Clinton’s email account. Just when we had given up hope, energy policy got over four minutes of stage time.

Although there was no direct question about climate change, one audience member asked how the candidate’s energy policies would meet the country’s energy needs in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

Trump declared affection for “alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar,” but added “we need much more than wind and solar.” He went on to say: “There is a thing called clean coal … Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country.”

Clinton responded that she has “a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change, because I do think that’s a serious problem.” She described making the United States a “21st century renewable energy superpower,” while also touting natural gas as a “bridge to alternative fuels.”

This is the third debate in a row (two presidential and one vice presidential) in which environmental issues have been marginalized. The conversation on climate in the first presidential debate amounted to just 82 seconds.

Update: See Grist’s detailed fact check of last night’s energy exchange.

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Forest fires are getting bigger, and yep, it’s definitely our fault.

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We fact-checked what Trump and Clinton said about energy at the debate

by gjrrkjujp Posted on October 10, 2016

Donald Trump told a few lies about energy during the debate Sunday night, while Hillary Clinton reiterated her warm feelings for natural gas.

In the last substantive question of the town hall–style debate, an audience member asked how the candidates’ energy policies would “meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?”

Trump

Trump went first, cramming an impressive number of false and nonsensical statements into his two-minute answer. (On the upside, he demonstrated that he now knows what EPA stands for, correctly referring to it as the Environmental Protection Agency instead of “Department of Environmental.”) Here are the highlights:

• Trump: “[E]nergy is under siege by the Obama administration. … We are killing, absolutely killing, our energy business in this country.”

In fact: Total U.S. energy production has increased for the last six years in a row. The oil and gas sector has been booming during the Obama presidency, as have the solar and wind industries. Coal companies have been struggling — but that is largely not the fault of President Obama, just as the oil boom is largely not something he can take credit for.

• Trump: “I will bring our energy companies back. … They will make money. They will pay off our national debt. They will pay off our tremendous budget deficits.”

In fact: There is no remotely credible economic analysis to suggest that Trump’s proposals for expanded domestic fossil fuel extraction would generate enough additional tax revenue to close the budget deficit, much less pay off the existing national debt. It’s particularly implausible when you consider Trump’s massive tax-cut plans that would make both the deficit and debt considerably larger.

• Trump: “I’m all for alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar, etc.”

In fact: Trump’s energy plan offers nothing to increase solar or wind energy production, but instead focuses on boosting fossil fuels.

• Trump: “There is a thing called clean coal.”

In fact: The hope that coal plants’ carbon emissions can be drastically reduced — either through technology that captures and sequesters the emissions or that converts coal to synthetic gas — burns eternal for the coal industry’s cheerleaders. But no one has actually significantly cut emissions at an economically viable coal plant. The promises of “clean coal” projects have not been fulfilled.

• Trump: “Foreign companies are now coming in and buying so many of our different plants, and then rejiggering the plant so they can take care of their oil.”

In fact: What is Trump trying to say with this gibberish? We have no idea.

Clinton

Clinton’s answer was, as one would expect, more cautious and tempered. She said, among other things, that she supports “moving toward more clean, renewable energy as quickly as we can, because I think we can be the 21st century clean-energy superpower and create millions of new jobs and businesses.” And her climate and energy plan would indeed promote renewable power.

But she also made some dubious statements herself:

• Clinton: “We are … producing a lot of natural gas, which serves as a bridge to more renewable fuels, and I think that’s an important transition.”

In fact: This comment surely set many climate activists’ teeth on edge — and not for the first time, as Clinton has been saying similar things for years. Many activists strongly disagree that natural gas should be part of a plan to shift to renewables and fight climate change. Multiple studies have indicated that natural gas is no better for the climate than coal when you consider the high rates of methane leakage in natural gas production and transport. 350.org, the aggressive anti–fossil fuel group, swiftly issued a statement criticizing that comment while praising the rest of Clinton’s response.

• Clinton: “[W]e are now, for the first time ever, energy independent. We are not dependent upon the Middle East. But the Middle East still controls a lot of the prices.”

In fact: Clinton was pandering to voter ignorance with her claim that the U.S. has become “energy independent.” Though U.S. oil production is up and oil imports are down, the country is still a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products. And as Clinton herself acknowledged, global oil prices are set by global supply and demand, so we will not be disentangled from the Middle East until we stop using so much oil, regardless of where it is drilled.

Climate?

Clinton, unlike Trump, did say that her energy plan includes “fighting climate change, because I think that’s a serious problem.” That was the entirety of either candidate’s nod to the “environmentally friendly” portion of the question.

Political discussion of energy still revolves mainly around how to produce more of it rather than how to produce it without burning up the planet.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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We fact-checked what Trump and Clinton said about energy at the debate

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We’re Live Blogging Round Two of the Presidential Debates

by KatheriPohlman Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few minutes ago Donald Trump appeared at an impromptu press event with three women who claim to have been abused by Bill Clinton and a fourth who was treated badly by Hillary. That sets a tone, doesn’t it?

10:37 – And that’s a wrap.

10:36 – Trump likes his children too. Trump: “She doesn’t quit, she doesn’t give up. She’s a fighter.”

10:34 – Is there anything you respect in your opponent? Trump doesn’t want to answer. Clinton says she respects Trump’s children.

10:33 – Still no questions about climate change.

10:32 – Clinton, dryly: “That was very interesting.” I have a comprehensive energy policy etc.

10:30 – How about energy? Trump: Hillary Clinton wants to put all the miners out of business. “There’s such a thing as clean coal.” Now we’re on to the steelworkers for some reason. Now back to coal. Coal, coal, coal.

10:27 – Trump: I would appoint judges like Scalia. Judges who respect the Second Amendment. Now Trump is claiming that he’s not taking money from big donors and corporations. He thinks Clinton is rich enough that she ought to be donating lots of money to her own campaign.

10:24 – How would you choose Supreme Court justices? Clinton: I’d like to appoint people with real-life experience. Overturn Citizens United. Uphold civil rights. Stick with Roe v. Wade and marriage equality.

10:22 – Trump is just all over the place now. I can’t keep up. Benghazi, 3 am, tweeting, sex tapes, etc. etc.

10:20 – Trump on Clinton: “She has tremendous hate in her heart.”

10:16 – Question to Trump: “Do you believe that you can be a devoted president to all of the people of the United States?” Weird question.

10:15 – Clinton says she’s in favor of arming the Kurds. Trump complains again that Clinton is getting too much time to speak.

10:13 – Clinton: “Donald says he knows a lot more than the generals. He doesn’t.” Big smirk from Trump.

10:12 – Clinton opposed to using American ground forces in Syria.

10:10 – Is Trump in favor of intervening in Syria? Or staying out? I can’t tell. Now Trump is ranting about not keeping our military plans secret.

10:08 – I literally don’t even know what Trump is saying about Syria. I guess Radisson doesn’t either. “Let me ask the question again.” Trump then says that he disagrees with Mike Pence about Russia.

10:03 – Raddison finally manages to shut Trump down and move on to another subject even though Trump insists that he should be able to respond yet again. Good for her.

10:02 – So far a grand total of two ordinary citizens have asked questions. This isn’t much of a town hall.

10:00 – Why didn’t Clinton change the tax code? Clinton: “Because I was a senator under a Republican president.” Trump interrupts to insist that she could have done it anyway if she really wanted to.

9:58 – Trump now basically admitting he used his $916 million operating loss to avoid paying taxes. “Of course I did.” Now ranting about how everyone does it and Clinton never tried to fix it because her rich donor pals like the tax code the way it is.

9:57 – Clinton hammering on Trump for paying no taxes for past 20 years. Obviously she’s trying to bait Trump.

9:56 – Clinton: “Everything he just said is false. I’m sorry I have to keep saying that.”

9:54 – What will you do ensure that the rich pay their fair share in taxes? Trump mentions the carried interest loophole, and that’s it. The rest of his answer is a long free association that has nothing to do with the rich.

9:52 – Trump is sniffing again. Maybe he really does do this every time he speaks?

9:51 – Trump is talking about Russia, and without a pause starts talking about how great his balance sheet is.

9:48 – How aggressive would Trump be in the debate? We have our answer. He’s just attacking without stop and now griping about not getting enough time. Bush league.

9:42 – Question about Trump’s Muslim ban. Is it still his policy? Trump: Muslim ban “somehow” morphed into “extreme vetting.” Raddison: How did it morph? Trump just repeats it: It’s. Called. Extreme. Vetting.

9:40 – Clinton: “Trump is playing into the hands of the terrorists.”

9:38 – What are you going to do about Islamaphobia? Trump: We have to say “radical Islamic terrorism” as often as possible.

9:36 – Trump is all over the map on how he’ll replace Obamacare. Mostly he’s doubling down on the notion that allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines will fix everything. Clinton is biting her lip to keep from laughing.

9:33 – Trump: Obamacare is a total disaster. Will collapse on its own in 2017. I guess there’s no real need to repeal it, then.

9:29 – Trump is now interrupting constantly. Anderson Cooper tells him to shut up. He won’t. Then he gripes that Cooper hasn’t asked about Clinton’s emails even though they just spent the last five minutes on the topic. “Great, three against one,” Trump whines. I guess “the media hates me” is going to be a big theme tonight.

9:25 – Clinton: “It’s a good thing you’re not in charge of the law in this country.” Trump: “Because you’d be in jail.” Cheering.

9:21 – Trump: Blumenthal started the birther rumors. Michelle Obama hates you. Hillary won a rigged primary against Bernie Sanders. If he wins, he is going to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her. Etc. Iguess this is how Trump is going to play things.

9:20 – Clinton quotes Michelle Obama: “When they go low, you go high.” Even bigger applause. Lotsa Trump haters out there too.

9:19 – There was applause for that? Yikes. Lotsa Bill haters still out there.

9:17 – Trump goes after Bill Clinton. He abused women, and “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women, attacked them viciously.”

9:13 – Clinton not going easy on Trump. The Pussygate tape does show who Trump is. He’s unfit to be president. And it’s not just women. Etc.

9:11 – Anderson Cooper insists that Trump tell us whether he’s ever kissed or groped women without their consent. He says he hasn’t. “No one has greater respect for women than me.”

9:09 – Trump starts out with a very low-key tone. Will it last?

9:08 – Will Hillary Clinton say that we should “move very strongly” on something or other? She should!

9:07 – Has this been an edifying campaign? Hmmm. I’m gonna say no.

9:05 – No handshake! They’re ready to rumble!

9:01 – Dana Bash says Trump’s goal is to keep the Republican Party from abandoning him completely.

8:56 – John King says the town hall format is unpredictable! Sure it is. I think we have a pretty good idea of what’s coming.

Continue reading – 

We’re Live Blogging Round Two of the Presidential Debates

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Should Hillary Clinton Endorse Legalized Pot?

by GaleDyason2 Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today’s chatter is almost exclusively about Donald Trump’s implosion over Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe of 1996, which has dragged his entire team of thrice-married surrogates into embarrassing spasms of hypocrisy and is making Trump into even more of a laughingstock than before—which is quite a feat. I can’t really bring myself to write any more about this at the moment, so instead let’s turn our attention to legal pot. Christopher Ingraham argues that this is Hillary Clinton’s best hope for attracting millennial support:

There is one thing that younger voters like a lot, and that’s legal marijuana….In April, a CBS News survey posed a question that sheds more light on this issue….Most respondents — 58 percent — said that a candidate’s support for legal marijuana “wouldn’t matter” at all. Eighteen percent said they’d be more likely to vote for a pro-weed candidate, while 21 percent said they’d be less likely.

But there were some interesting differences by respondents’ age. Among adults ages 18 to 34, 28 percent said support for legal marijuana would make them more likely to vote for a candidate….These numbers suggest that legal marijuana could give Clinton a boost among younger voters in November.

Well…maybe. My guess, however, is that millennials would instantly see this as empty pandering. It might actually make her less popular among young voters, who seem to distrust her more for being calculated than they do for her actual policy positions.

Besides, Clinton has already come out in favor of reclassifying marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 and allowing states to continue serving as “laboratories of democracy.” That means she’s basically endorsed medical marijuana, and it sets her up to endorse recreational marijuana after a suitable period of evolving. Maybe in 2020?

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Should Hillary Clinton Endorse Legalized Pot?

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Trump’s Tax Plan Reveals His Contempt for the Middle Class

by PQLZelma9382393 Posted on September 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago, NYU law professor Lily Batchelder released a paper that takes a close look at the details of Donald Trump’s tax plan. She concludes that several million middle-class families will pay more under Trump’s plan than they do now. Jim Tankersley reports the Trump campaign’s response:

The Trump campaign called the findings “pure fiction,” contending the analysis neglects a crucial benefit for low-income taxpayers….Most importantly, Miller said Trump will instruct the committees writing his plan into law to make sure that it does not raise taxes on any low- or middle-income earners. “In sending our proposal to the tax-writing committees we will include instructions to ensure all low and middle income households are protected,” Miller said.

This is obviously spin, but the funny thing is that it’s true. The details that Batchelder analyzed really won’t matter much once Trump’s proposal gets fed into the congressional sausage machine. Rather, his tax plan is essentially a statement of values. It tells the voting public what he believes in.

And that’s the problem. If Trump truly cared about the middle class, he and his team would have taken a very close look at the details to make sure his plan benefited the entire middle class. Obviously they didn’t. They treated it like a throwaway that Congress would iron out later.

Conversely, does anyone doubt that they were very careful indeed about vetting the effect of his plan on the rich? There’s surely not a single person in the top 1 percent who will accidentally end up paying higher taxes under Trump’s plan. Why? Because Trump cares about rich people. They’re winners.1 Struggling families and single mothers are losers. Why sweat the details for the likes of them?

1Also because his plan is so overwhelmingly favorable for rich people that it’s basically impossible for small details to wipe out their average gain.

Source:

Trump’s Tax Plan Reveals His Contempt for the Middle Class

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My One Wish For the First Debate

by EldonGollan Posted on September 21, 2016

Mother Jones

Don’t worry, Lester, this is nothing partisan. Feel free to grill Hillary Clinton about her emails and the Clinton Foundation and so forth. And by all means, grill Trump about the Trump Foundation and his lie about opposing the Iraq War and when he decided Obama was born in the US and all the other Trumpisms America wants to hear about.

But here’s my wish: do it in the second half-hour. Debate hosts have a habit of wanting to come out of the gate with a “tough” question that demonstrates what hard-hitting journalists they are, and that usually means some kind of edgily worded question about either a scandal or a “scandal.” Instead, let’s show that policy is what’s most important. You can still ask tough questions, probing around in the details the candidates would rather not address, but make the first half hour all about the actual, concrete plans they have for their presidency. There’s plenty of time for the zinger-fest later.

That’s it. That’s my wish list.

Originally from:

My One Wish For the First Debate

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Did the oil industry help to discover a whole new fault line in Oklahoma?

by MillardFarthing Posted on September 13, 2016

Accusations that Stein is an anti-vaxxer have followed the Green Party candidate throughout the race, even though she’s a Harvard-educated physician and not a graduate of the Jenny McCarthy school of medicine.

In a ScienceDebate.org survey of presidential candidates’ views on science, Stein gave them a somewhat modified answer on vaccines.

“Vaccines prevent serious epidemics that would cause harm to many people,” she said, adding:

To reverse the problem of declining vaccination rates, we need to increase trust in our public health authorities and all scientific agencies. We can do that by removing corporate influence from our regulatory agencies to eliminate apparent conflicts of interest and show skeptics, in this case vaccine-resistant parents, that the motive behind vaccination is protecting their children’s health, not increasing profits for pharmaceutical companies.

Stein’s been accused of pandering to anti-vaxxers before, for saying, “There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant … There were real questions that needed to be addressed.”

While she’s still hitting on her point about corporate influence, she’s sounding less loony these days.

In the same questionnaire, however, Stein didn’t budge on another topic in which she stands at odds with the scientific community: GMOs. She wants to place a moratorium on GMOs until they have been proven safe.

Of course, those persnickety scientists will tell you it’s impossible to prove anything is safe — but that’s not a reason to dismiss new plant varieties or lifesaving shots.

Taken from:  

Did the oil industry help to discover a whole new fault line in Oklahoma?

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Trump says, “Science is science and facts are facts,” and explains his “facts” on climate change.

by LillianaLlewell Posted on September 13, 2016

Accusations that Stein is an anti-vaxxer have followed the Green Party candidate throughout the race, even though she’s a Harvard-educated physician and not a graduate of the Jenny McCarthy school of medicine.

In a ScienceDebate.org survey of presidential candidates’ views on science, Stein gave them a somewhat modified answer on vaccines.

“Vaccines prevent serious epidemics that would cause harm to many people,” she said, adding:

To reverse the problem of declining vaccination rates, we need to increase trust in our public health authorities and all scientific agencies. We can do that by removing corporate influence from our regulatory agencies to eliminate apparent conflicts of interest and show skeptics, in this case vaccine-resistant parents, that the motive behind vaccination is protecting their children’s health, not increasing profits for pharmaceutical companies.

Stein’s been accused of pandering to anti-vaxxers before, for saying, “There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant … There were real questions that needed to be addressed.”

While she’s still hitting on her point about corporate influence, she’s sounding less loony these days.

In the same questionnaire, however, Stein didn’t budge on another topic in which she stands at odds with the scientific community: GMOs. She wants to place a moratorium on GMOs until they have been proven safe.

Of course, those persnickety scientists will tell you it’s impossible to prove anything is safe — but that’s not a reason to dismiss new plant varieties or lifesaving shots.

Continue reading:

Trump says, “Science is science and facts are facts,” and explains his “facts” on climate change.

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Here’s a Cautionary Tale of Pension Privatization From Chile

by PayoneerPrepaidDebitCardReview Posted on September 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Among free-market fans, Chile’s privatized pension plan has long been held up as a model for us to follow. The problem, as the Financial Times notes today, is that it’s performed pretty dismally. Daniel Gross suggests that it was all well-intentioned, but for some reason just didn’t work out:

There’s one thing Gross and I agree about: net returns of 3 percent during the booming market of the past 35 years is indeed a disaster. It’s the “just turned out” part that deserves closer scrutiny. Sadly, I can’t read Spanish and therefore can’t inspect the primary source for this debacle, but there’s no way that management fees indistinguishable from highway robbery just happened to happen. This may not be corruption in the sense of fund managers embezzling trillions of pesos for hookers and blow, but it’s certainly corruption in the more refined sense of deliberately allowing the financial sector to enrich itself at the expense of workers who are required to give them their money.

Why is this becoming a big issue now? Because for its first 35 years, when it was being hailed as a free-market miracle, not many people were actually retiring. Now they are, and it turns out their pensions are pretty paltry. If net returns had been closer to the 8 percent retirees deserved, their pensions would be three times higher. Fees like this are basically legalized theft.

This is not some obscure detail of pension investing, either. Management fees are one of the most crucial aspects of long-term fund management and everyone knows it. Normally, you’ll hear arguments about whether fees of 1 percent are larcenous compared to, say, fees of half a percent. But fees big enough to reduce returns from 8 percent to 3 percent? That’s no accident. It’s the predictable result of an unregulated free market working on behalf of unsophisticated investors. Everyone involved in this knew exactly what they were doing.

From: 

Here’s a Cautionary Tale of Pension Privatization From Chile

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A Tip for Parents as the School Year Begins: You’re Not Totally in Control, and That’s Okay

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on September 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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For more than a quarter century, psychologist and author Ross Greene specialized in the most challenging children. Last year, I wrote about how his collaborative approach to discipline is diverting the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools trained in his method reported suspensions falling by as much as 80 percent. And after implementing his model, youth prisons and an adolescent psychiatric ward saw recidivism, injuries, and the need for restraints drop by more than half.

Greene’s new book, Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership With Your Child, addresses a broader audience and articulates a discipline and parenting framework for all children. One day, after he dropped his oldest child off at college, he spoke to me about the biggest parenting challenges, raising kids in a scary world, what parents should know as they face the back-to-school season, and what truly builds grit in children.

Mother Jones: This is your first book for a general parenting audience, as opposed to focusing on behaviorally challenging kids. What is different here?

Ross Greene: For a very long time, people have been saying to me, “What if you want to do this approach with every kid?” For a behaviorally challenging kid, you’re parenting this way just to help bring the kid’s behavior under control and to greatly reduce conflict. But you want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy, appreciating how one’s behavior is affecting other people, resolving disagreements in ways that do not involve conflict, taking another’s perspective, honesty.

READ: What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? Tristan Spinski/GRAIN

MJ: What are the most common mistakes you see parents make?

RG: The biggest mistake is overdoing it on the unilateral approach. Thinking you have more control than you really do. Losing sight of the fact that you’re your kid’s partner, not the person who’s pulling all the strings. Not letting them struggle. Swooping in and fixing everything and being way too punitive when punitive really doesn’t accomplish very much.

MJ: You write that modern parents are rejecting both authoritarian and permissive parenting—you call the approaches the “Dictatorial Kingdom” and the “Pushover Provinces.” But parents report feeling lost. Why is it so hard for parents to find a new path?

RG: Reason No. 1 is because of how they themselves were raised. Reason No. 2 is we’ve been lacking the technology. A lot of parents aren’t exactly sure how to go about solving a problem with a kid in a way that’s mutually satisfactory—doing that with their child feels very foreign to a lot of people. It probably explains why so many parents tell me their kids don’t listen to them and why so many kids tell me that they don’t feel heard.

MJ: Your discipline model has three specific steps. First, reflective listening to gather information from a child about the problem; second, sharing your concerns with the kid; third, working toward mutually satisfactory solutions. This can appear complicated and time-consuming, but when we wrote about it, some readers said it seemed intuitive and plain common sense. Which is it?

RG: I like to call it uncommon common sense. There is still quite the vibe out there that as a parent you have to be completely in control and in charge. This model acknowledges that being completely in control is a fantasy. This kid was someone the minute he or she popped out, and the idea that we can take this lump of clay and mold it into a form of our choosing is absolutely ludicrous. People still look askance at a kid in the supermarket who’s pitching a fit and think the parent is not sufficiently in control or not being sufficiently punitive. That’s an issue for a lot of parents as well.

MJ: Your chapter on “Parental Angst” resonated with me. It’s one thing to read a book and decide to change your parenting—it’s another thing to stick with it. What gets in the way of parents implementing your model?

RG: It does take practice. It’s not something you do well the first time. Another huge challenge is that most parents are accustomed to dealing with problems in the heat of the moment. When people are rushed, they’re stressed and you greatly increase the likelihood of being punitive and unilateral just because you’re trying to grasp control. The vast majority of things parents and kids get in conflict over are highly predictable. We’re disagreeing about the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, every week. Because it’s predictable, we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people.

MJ: Why is it useful to shift one’s view from “this child is misbehaving” to “the child is having difficulty meeting expectations”?

RG: Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don’t like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting. Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. Everybody is talking about the behavior. Behaviors float downstream to us. We need to paddle upstream. The problems that are causing the behaviors, that’s what’s waiting for us. It’s a crucial paradigm shift. We’re moving away from carrots and sticks, and time-outs and privileges gained and lost, and suspensions and detentions in schools, none of which will actually solve the problems that are actually causing the behaviors. It’s a whole lot more productive to be in problem-solving mode than it is to be in behavior modification mode. We’re focused on what’s causing the fever.

MJ: Can you explain how compatibility informs parents’ actions?

RG: When there’s a good fit between skills and expectations, there’s what we call compatibility, and we would expect a good outcome. When there’s a poor fit between expectations and the capacity of the kid, there is incompatibility, and that’s when we see people exhibit challenging behavior. People don’t scream or swear or pout or sulk when there’s compatibility. But most growth occurs when there’s incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to pulling yourself up when you’ve fallen down, you don’t learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you’re struggling. So that’s when parents have to decide: “Am I going to swoop in and take control here to make sure that things go really well for my kid? Or am I going to do this in a collaborative fashion so that the problem ultimately does get solved but I’m involving my kid in the process so he learns how to do it for himself?” How I conduct myself when I get involved goes a long way to determining whether my kid is going to have the skills to solve the problem themselves in the long run.

MJ: What are the most common conflict areas between parents and kids?

RG: Homework. It’s so crucial to really get a good handle on what’s getting in the way of the kid completing a homework assignment. It can be so many things. Kids are overprogrammed these days. School is very demanding these days. No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There’s no breathing time, there’s no family time, there are just extracurriculars and homework and then go to bed. That’s a solution that has to involve the school as well.

Screen time is another very common one. It’s become a really important way for people to communicate with each other these days. But if we’re sitting at dinner and there’s no conversation going on because everybody’s got their head someplace else in their iPhone, that’s a family problem that needs to be solved. Solutions can’t be imposed. That just fosters resentment. If a solution isn’t mutually satisfactory, it’s not going to stick.

MJ: You write about kids who become suicidal, cut themselves, struggle to succeed in life. Parental fear is behind a lot of the controlling behavior. What can parents do to let go a bit and follow your advice to raise human beings?

RG: I just dropped my 18-year-old daughter off at college. I have fears about how she’s going to do academically. I have fears about how she’s going to do socially. I’m worried. I also have faith. Over 18 years of us solving problems together, my daughter has shown me that she’s got a good head on her shoulders, that she is pretty good at solving the problems that affect her life. If she wants my input, she gets it. If we’re being unilateral, then communication does not happen, the relationship does not happen. We never get to see that our kid is capable of solving problems on her own. We never start to build up the faith that they can actually do it.

We have forgotten that those skills on the more positive side of human nature have to be taught, have to be modeled, have to be practiced. The method of parenting described in Raising Human Beings is a perfect mechanism for teaching those skills. This is not me in sales mode, I fervently believe there’s never been a more important time for this book. It’s a scary world out there.

MJ: As we go into a new school year, what’s the one takeaway you want parents to have from your book?

RG: Be your kid’s collaborative partner, but also be a collaborative partner with the folks at school. Schools can be pretty unilateral too. Show them you know how to collaborate. Show them this is not about power. Let them know detentions and suspensions and paddling don’t solve the problems that are affecting kids’ lives. Those problems can be identified and solved but not by being punitive. My advice to educators is collaborate with parents; they know a lot about their kids.

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A Tip for Parents as the School Year Begins: You’re Not Totally in Control, and That’s Okay

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