DEEP DIVE: Janice Johnson Dias on Raising Joyful, Change-Making Kids

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0:33Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. And today we are talking to Dr. Janice Johnson-Dyas. She's a professor of sociology at John Jay College. She is the co-founder and president of the public health and social action organization Grassroots Community Foundation and its Super Camp for Girls. Her collaborative work on black girls' mental, sexual, and physical health issues earned her a special congressional recognition. Born in Jamaica, Dr. Johnson Dias moved to the United States at age 12 and now lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and dog.

1:13Her new book is Parent Like It Matters, How to Raise Joyful Change-Making Girls. Janice says this book is a blueprint to embolden our girls to be critical thinkers, fearless doers, and joyful change agents for our futures. Welcome, Janice.

1:29Janice Johnson Dias:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. We like a big bio up front. It makes people know they're going to hear something, you know? We like a big bio. Let's see if I can live up to the bio. One of the ideas in this book that really struck me, and I've heard it said by our audience members is mattering to yourself as a parent so that you can give the gift of mattering to your girls. And that's a step we sometimes skip. We can't pull from an empty bucket to feed other people. And how do we matter to ourselves? And what does that work look like before we even start the conversation about what we're going to try to give to our girls?

2:10Janice Johnson Dias:This concept of mattering is so central to everything that I write in this book and so central to the way that I think about equity, change-making, and girls in particular. And though the book is talking to all caregivers, there's a special attention I want to really draw as it relates to mothers in particular and people who do the work of mothering. It's so often that feels like martyr work, Like I should throw myself on the cross of caring for my kids. And whatever happens to me is just insignificant. And then we see the process gets replicated when the children start to date, when they start to have their own families later in life.

2:56Janice Johnson Dias:And then we're like, I don't know why she won't do this. Why won't she pay attention to herself? And all she had was the model and the models of women in her life. And so I push in this book to say that you must first matter to yourself, not in the like, simply put on your mask before you put the mask on to children, but like fundamentally matter to yourself. Know who you are. What is it that you have to offer to yourself, to your children and to the world and really get into that? For some people, the difficulty of trying to figure out if they matter comes out of pain. Mine, I discuss at length my own pain.

3:38Janice Johnson Dias:For other people, their childhoods were not as marred with abandonment and all the rest of those issues, but there's something else. But each of us have a journey to discover ourselves. And so often when we go into parenting, we devote all the energy to the children and we're at the service of the children and forget to service ourselves. both in practical ways like sleep and eating and et cetera, but in fundamental philosophical ways. Who am I? What am I passionate about? What do I care about? Because children watch us more than they listen to us. Yeah, you quote W.E.B. Du Bois, children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

4:20You have to be it so your kids can see it because otherwise I wish there was a magic box you could open in the storeroom and hand to your kids. But it's a lot of self-work, which, and also we say a lot, like it seems sometimes we present things and it's like, oh, this seems like another thing on my list. This seems hard. I'm already tired. I'm trying my best. But this work is so useful for ourselves and it actually makes parenting easier if we can find a way to do it. Can you talk a little bit about how you coach and see people into finding the entry point to doing that work so that it doesn't just feel like, I'm sorry, I don't have any more time.

4:57I'm busy burning dinner. Too busy to self-actualize.

5:01Janice Johnson Dias:I actually think that that's what most people think. I always, you know, right now I'm in the process of deciding on merch, right? Like what will be the thing? And I really want to give a 10 minute hourglass, right? And of course I can't find one. If anybody knows where I can find a 10 minute hourglass that I can monograph. Yeah, I found something on Amazon, actually. Amy's a big hourglass fan. This is a random connection because she always talks about her hourglass. Because I think that that's the entry point. The entry point is in a world where the world of work is so disruptive, the world of school systems are so disruptive.

5:37Janice Johnson Dias:Where can I start to pay attention to myself? And I'm really asking caregivers to give themselves 10 minutes each day, 10 minutes with themselves for themselves. And I'm not talking self-care, nail, massage, Peloton. I'm talking 10 minutes to ask yourself, what do I care about? What is actually the thing that makes me feel really excited? And I think that that question goes lost all the time. In the book, I detail my relationship with a woman named Lisa, right? And it's just like this idea of like, what makes you feel excited and passionate? Where can you start is that you need to have an answer to that question.

6:15Janice Johnson Dias:If you don't have an answer to that question, then I would argue that you have a journey to make. Right. And that journey is connected to the way you parent. So once you get excited about something that's exciting to you, then you can engender excitement in your children. And then the labor of parenting them becomes really different. It becomes lesser in a way. Right. I mean, it becomes lighter, I guess. Yes, it becomes lighter. The thing is, there's all this pragmatic administrative nonsense about parenting, right? Like, feed them, make sure they don't die, make sure they don't kill others, make sure they do their laundry, rooms are clean, etc.

6:55Janice Johnson Dias:But then there's this other piece of relating to them. And I find that the administrative stuff can be largely outsourced, right? But this piece of connecting to them and helping them be real human beings in the world, that's your work. That's really the work. And that feels laborious if you feel like I'm spending all this time trying to get them to be a thing. And the whole time you don't have a jumping off point because they're passionate about wanting to play video games, this thing on TikTok that like you cannot relate to them because you don't have a touch point. And I think passion is a real touch point that caregivers can have.

7:34Janice Johnson Dias:I'm excited about this thing. What are you excited about? Why does that make you excited? But often caregivers are like people seem devoid of any passions. And that makes you irritating to a kid and probably irritating to your friends. They're not saying it. Right. But it is really central to kind of build in a full selfhood, even as you're trying to raise and contribute to other human beings. You talk in this book, Janice, about the difference between happiness and joy. And just now, when you were talking about playing video games and looking at TikTok, to things that my kids would say bring them happiness.

8:12And I suppose they do, but they don't bring them joy, it occurs to me. So talk about the difference between happiness and joy.

8:19Janice Johnson Dias:Happy is, you know, largely performative and temporary. It is for others. Happiness is so that people see your smile, right? And that you do all of those things to make people feel comfortable with who you are. Joy, on the other hand, is about a kind of peacefulness. what sometimes people might call fulfillment. And that lives there because you have been attending to yourself, not in some sporadic way, but in a way that is eternal, consistent, and sustainable. And so a joyful person can be pissed off today, right? Can be angry today, can be angry maybe even several days, but is seeking to really be in tune with who they are.

9:03Janice Johnson Dias:It is the knowing of self that engenders, right, kind of joyfulness inside. And that means that you have to attend not only to your physical health, your mental health, but the things that make you passionate. And that serenity is joyfulness. I think you also talk about something that really resonated with me as the idea that girls develop a performance self, which seems to me in this same category, that it's somehow it's not their authentic joy. It's a self. And listen, we have all done this, right? I always had a persona going on, partly because I probably came from an actory background and that worked for me.

9:43But what's the connection between that authentic joy and kind of helping our girls get beyond this idea of the performance self?

9:51Janice Johnson Dias:So I think that the structural spaces, educational spaces, community spaces, parental spaces, all invite girls to not be themselves, because complexity in girls is seen as oversensitive, unmanageable, all the rest of these things. And in a society that doesn't say it out loud enough, we've decided that girls are second-class citizens and we show them that in every way. So in order to be able to get attention as a second-class citizens, you have to develop a set of performance selves, right? So you have to either be super attentive, extra angry, you're really into it, throwing something away. And so much of what girls are taught to is to attend to the outside of themselves, right?

10:40Janice Johnson Dias:We have a whole culture that focuses on how we look, ways of scrutinizing our bodies from the minute that we were born in ways that we do not do for people who are named or considered boys. So in every corner of a girl's life, there is some sense that you should be attending to something outside of yourself. And when girls decide that they're going to tend to inside themselves, people will deem them as selfish, angry, troublesome. But it is that framework. And that's why I think in the household is the place where we can set the foundation for girls to not be performative, to in fact, take all the time they need to say that I need to understand me.

11:20Janice Johnson Dias:I need to be true to me. and it is not like performance doesn't matter. We're in a social world, right? There's some level of performance. There's a role for that. There's a role for that. Decorum, respectability, all of those things, right? We have to engage with people, but that's not all of me. Too often, if we were thinking about this in a pie chart kind of way, we end up saying to girls, 70 % should be performance. There's some 30 % that should be left for you. And that is not an appropriate condition. We have pushed girls into being performances of themselves. And that rejection, that is the principle I really want caregivers to reject.

12:01Janice Johnson Dias:I want them to see girls, know girls, and really push girls to be themselves, regardless of the fact that it may not be digestible for everyone. Wow. Let's take a break. When we come back, let's talk about how we're going to do that, how we're going to create these joyful change-making girls. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. and once it's over, well, that was terrible and it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use.

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15:14Janice Johnson Dias:Yes. So I really, this concept of volunteering, I've been having a lot of conversations over the past couple of days, because I had a mom was like, well, I give stuff and my kids don't want to come with me. And you know, like, it's just like, I don't understand how they're going to be kids who care about the world. I seem to be the only one that cares about the world. And I was like, but you make it look horrible. You make caring about the world not a thing, right? So you have marched to your children's room and you're like, get all the things that you're not using. We're giving those away, right?

15:50Janice Johnson Dias:It's 6am in the morning. We're going to pick up trash on the side of the road, right? Thanksgiving morning. I don't care that you want to watch this football game. We're going to the soup kitchen. So, so much about volunteering is this demanding, unfun experience. And that is not what I think we should be doing. We should be thinking about volunteering, especially those of us who are not economically depressed, as a part and practice of our lives. What do I have to give to those who need? What are my excesses? And that excesses also includes our talents. So much of volunteering is material, a thing I buy, I drop it off, a thing I do sporadically.

16:36Janice Johnson Dias:I want us to develop a mindset of gratitude that includes volunteering. So when we give to those who are in need, right, it is so much more rewarding to us than it is to the person we are given, because often we're filling a temporary need, right? It is emergency care most volunteering is, Right. But this sense, this feeling of having contributed is actually quite everlasting in a way that that pair of socks, that meal at that soup kitchen is not. And we don't often think about how much we get from volunteering. But when we engage in this process of not only volunteering consistently in the same places, trying to develop relationships with the people with whom we are serving, then we build a life of gratitude.

17:27Janice Johnson Dias:And that is all of those ingredients are what goes to that joyfulness, right? I love piano. I taught a kid how to play the piano, or I taught a senior how to play the piano. And you're given more than just material things. You're connecting with people, you're engaging people, and then you feel something else inside, something else. our audience can't see it but i can see your face just lighting up as you talk about it and this goes back to du bois right they see that you are taking tremendous joy from this process i find nowadays in school you know they show them these movies and they're like the beautiful seal it jumps through the water and then like it always cuts in the third act like this seal is dying from plastic and you're like oh yeah yeah now the kids are up all night worrying about the seal but it gives you that opportunity to say you know what that is upsetting let's spend saturday going out and picking stuff up the beach or as they interact with the world and they see inequities and they see you know a person holding a sign at a intersection who's looking for food it offers this commentary that like we can't fix everybody's problem but we can be part of the solution in a way that in our small way and that that helps kids find that confidence of like i I don't have to look at problems and be like, I have to sit up all night worrying about the seals.

18:49I can take some small step.

18:51Janice Johnson Dias:This is, I mean, I think that is just a perfect, and you use the word offer. It offers opportunities. And I think oftentimes things are framed as like, well, if I can't revamp all of it, then I should do nothing, right? And what we're doing is building a muscle in our kids, which is to say, here's where I am. Here's the skills and talents that I have. What can I do here? And I would argue that caregivers who children see the person at the stop sign saying that I need support is that if they choose to give, which I would encourage them to give, is that they also use it as a moment to have their children understand what homelessness is.

19:34Janice Johnson Dias:Because sometimes children will interpret that as that person at the stop sign. And they may not have any other stop sign or intersections if they see that person. And so they attribute his homelessness or her homelessness to that person. When we know as adults that these things are often in a bigger space. So it's just like, this person is here. Here's what we can do to support this person. But this thing, homelessness in general, is a part of this other thing. And you do that as children grow. Right. You don't necessarily need to give them all the stats that America has decided that some people should just be homeless.

20:11Janice Johnson Dias:Right. You don't want to depress your kids, but you do want to have them always understand things in context, because as they grow, it is you're trying to get them to the place where they really help to revamp the society. And if they only stay at the individual level, that's a little harder, right? And at what point do you let your child, girl or boy, sort of take the reins in what sort of change they want to be making? Do you expose them to different sorts of volunteering and different opportunities and let them decide they're saving the whales or whatever the case may be? At what point does that happen?

20:48Janice Johnson Dias:Yes, they should always lead. You get to volunteer and the things that you're passionate about. When your kids are young, they have to come along, right? Like they're young, they can't stay at home, they're with you. And so they're watching you volunteer, and they're beginning to understand, but they're going to have their own passions, their own things that are important to them. Now, what I've found is that caregivers are happy to drag their kids along, but they're not happy to have be dragged along, right? That's also like another situation. So a child says, I'm interested in the whales and you're interested in homelessness.

21:23Janice Johnson Dias:And they're like, well, good luck, you and your five friends, you guys go out there, see about those whales. Let me know, right? Let me know how they're doing out there in the ocean. It is not a reciprocal, but it is, they have their own and exposure to multiple things allows them to be able to decide which ones they want to give a high amount of energy to and a low amount of energy. What ends up happening with caregivers is like, they want kids to become professional, passionate people. Well, if you care about math, you should do math. If you care about the seals, you shouldn't be thinking about those horses.

21:57Janice Johnson Dias:You shouldn't be thinking about those other things. Like, stay focused on this thing that you're passionate about. This is not ideal. Instead, let your child be completely eclectic and passionate about as many things because they will drill down to a few things, but it's not going to happen overnight. It's inviting to be interested in all of the things that are happening in the world. And you can take a little part of each, but consistency does work. But at the earliest stages before 10, children are everywhere. They're interested in everything, doing everything, do it. It's fun. Let them follow it.

22:38And I think to quote, I believe Amy on an earlier podcast, we are so focused on our children being great that we forget that they need to be good they need to have the simpler interaction of being decent to people for a reason versus like this is going to help them get into college if they build an orphanage in Guatemala like not that there's you know I mean maybe some people do that in a good way but I think there's a little bit of like We forget that the basic purpose of humanity, as I see it, is being decent to other people.

23:14Janice Johnson Dias:Being connected to other people. Yeah. Sometimes you're busy chasing something. We miss that. Everything is like a professional act. Yes. Well, how is this? After 12, I see caregivers being like, what is this going to mean for the high school? What is this going to mean for the college? What does it mean for this? And I'm like, what does it mean for nothing? doing things that actually are inviting to you, doing things that enhance your connection to the world, doing things that bring you joy, that is not a resume builder. That helps to build a full human. We want full humans connected to other full humans.

23:52Janice Johnson Dias:And so we as parents have to be full humans. And it's all of you. It's all of you all the time. It's just how it works. Let's take a break. When we come back, let's talk about these girls. We've created Changemaking Girls now, right? Now we need to create a safe space in the home to help them feel like they can achieve whatever it is they set out for themselves. My favorite skincare products actually feel more like self-care, like they're so nice to put on and they smell so good that I'm actually happy when I get to that part of my day. And I swear that is how I feel about Osea's Anti-Aging Body Balm.