Fresh Take: Michaeleen Doucleff, DOPAMINE KIDS

21:14So what I did was before dinner, I went around and I got all the devices, even my own, for this key night of swapping in, setting this limit. And I hit them in the dryer because I was just like, you know what? I don't want her to find them. And I don't want to be digging through the dryer myself feeling crazy. And I said to her when she asked for Netflix, I said, okay, Rosie, you know what? We're going to take a break from screens tonight. I didn't say they were gone forever, even though that's what I wanted. We're going to take a break from screens tonight. I'm going to give you something better and more exciting.

21:46I'm going to teach you to do something you've been dying to do. And so what was that? That was learning to ride her bike around the neighborhood at night. This was the summertime. And I was like, you know what? Instead of the screens, I want you to play outside. And so we went on a bike ride and I slowly started to teach her to bike around by herself, to go to the market by herself. And you know what? The screens went away fast. And there was like no tears. There was no begging because this was something she had been really wanting to do. And this was exciting. It was real adventure. It was real fun.

22:19It was real pleasure. And now today she's 10 and she bikes herself to piano. She bikes herself to soccer. This is a thing she loves to do. And so when we swap around this idea of limits for like opportunities, something really magical happens. The new activity sticks and becomes a habit, right? Because kids aren't just complying. They want to do it. And you're also giving them something that they need to be a healthy, happy human being, right? So that's what I mean by like, you're not just saying no, you're not just taking things away, but you're actually helping them discover something better in their lives.

22:55Heidi Raykeil:So taking this sort of globally, you talk in the book about removing the magnets in refilling the cues. That's right. That's what we're doing here. You take away the junk food or you hide the iPad, but you don't replace it with nothing. You replace it with something that for maybe different reasons is equally as interesting. There's something that it isn't like, no, you can't have screen time. Go play. Go be in your room and be bored. Yes. Right. I'll go teach you how to ride your bike, which of course involves short term, maybe a little more involvement with us. We're going to learn how to bead together.

23:33Heidi Raykeil:You know, we're going to get this art project out. We're going to work on a puzzle every night after dinner. It might short term mean more investment for the parent and also a little more of accepting the like, no, you're not going to like go put on Bridgerton in the other room, which is what you get to do at this time. You know what I mean? Like, right. It's more short term. But then there are secondary gains, like you say, like huge. You use the example about we're not going to use phones in the car. It's a great place to start. Yeah. And I hadn't really thought about this. We're commuting and that's where we're going to put our phones away.

24:05Heidi Raykeil:And you can start with. And so then we have this cool art project that you get to do in the car. You can start there. It doesn't start with like now you have to talk to mom about your problems. It's something cool instead. Right. Like the dopamine system is motivation to work. It's motivation to do something. And so I'm saying like, take that and direct it, redirect it somewhere else. Like with the cookie example, I don't think I explained the end of that story, but like, you know, she was like begging for cookies that day. And I realized like, whoa, she's really motivated. This isn't just like, I want pleasure.

24:37This is, I want to work. It's not laziness. Yes. No, it's the opposite. They want to work. And I have a great idea for this around video games. And so I said to her, okay, Rosie, you can have cookies, but you're going to go home and you're going to get to bake them. Okay. Because this is really what the dopamine system is there to get her to work, to fulfill her needs. And she looked at me, her eyes got big because she hadn't really like used the oven at that point. And I was like, yeah, you're going to get to use the oven. You're going to get to use the mixer and then you can eat them. And she went home and she did it.

25:07It was a little bit of a mess, but we cleaned up. And the crazy thing was when she only ate like one because they were like so precious to her. You know, because I think the whole process was like much more satisfying to her than just putting the cookies in her mouth. Right. Where it's that's all wanting. She was getting more pleasure from the whole thing. And again, like today, she like bakes all the time. She makes lasagna for dinner and like. Right. So you're giving them these gifts. The car is such a great place to start because what happens is, well, number one, it's very boring. And so whatever is in front of them, they're going to do.

25:40One psychologist told me like she just always had books in the car, never screens, and they would go places. And if they had to sit anywhere, she'd pull the books out at the doctor's office, restaurants. And she said, what they learned is when I'm bored and I don't have anything to do, I read. The cue becomes the boredom. And then you've built a pathway in their brain to go read. So I think starting there is really good because it kind of resets that desire but builds these pathways, right? Starts to build up pathways so you're not just taking something away. And think about it. If a kid has only been online when they're bored or in their free time, they don't have dopamine pathways in their brain to want something else, right?

26:21Because to build that pathway, you have to experience it. So video games are really interesting and TV shows too because if you pay attention, kids love talking about them. Like you say, like, what did you do this weekend? And they'll just talk about Roblox for like an hour. You know, they just go on and on and on. And that's dopamine. That's motivation. So I say in the book, use that to start a new hobby. Hey, when you come off the game tonight, will you like draw the castle you're making on Minecraft or maybe draw a scene of it or construct it with Legos or paint it and then present it to me because I really want to learn about it.

26:55So you're taking all that motivation they have for this game and you're redirecting it for some hobby that is going to give them more pleasure, more satisfaction. And then slowly over time, you can wean them off the game.

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28:44Heidi Raykeil:Michaelene, I wanted to talk about how you start with that we are in the driver's seat and we can set our own goals. Because this is a thing where your mileage really may vary. Yes. You've gone pretty far with removing foods, including white flour, from your household. Yes. Somebody else might be like, I would be thrilled if we could just get the Skittles out, right? And that's a place to start. And all goals are good if they're your goals. So talk to us about how you decide where to start. So I think one thing to keep in mind, and this comes from like the last 15 years of behavioral psychology, is like you got to start small.

29:20Do not bite off more than you can chew. And there's a lot of talk on social media about these massive changes, like a month without ultra processed foods, you know, no video games. We're going to get rid of everything, right? Like science tells us this does not work. Life just comes back. Old habits come back. And you're kind of right where you started from, right? What works is deciding something that you really want. Like you said, like what matters to you and making it very tiny, but permanent. So for instance, yeah, get rid of all the skittles. Like pick a food that you don't want in your life anymore.

29:52One food and just be like, we're gonna get rid of this forever. It's never coming back. And as you said, it's not, we can't eat Skittles. It's that we don't eat Skittles. That's right. Our family just doesn't do this. That you're tapping into like an identity thing. This isn't a punishment. This is just who we are. It's like being a vegan. Begins don't feel like they're punishing themselves. They feel like they're strong. They have moral superiority, right? Sorry for all vegans. They're doing it because it fits with their values that's important to them. And this is the same thing. It's like, we could eat Skittles, but we don't want to eat Skittles because it doesn't make us feel good.

30:24Then what happens is it just becomes the new normal. There's no struggle. There's no fighting. It's like, look, we just don't eat Skittles. Do you want something else? How about some fruit? Or how about some other candy if you're on this path. And then fully over time, expand out. Okay, we're not going to do the Skittles. And you know what? We're just going to stop going to the 7-Eleven. For me, it was always about the 7-Eleven. Let's go to the 7-Eleven or the Quick Mart. I was always like, let's go to the Quick Mart. But one day I was like, I don't think this is the reward in life. And I want better rewards.

30:54And so you know what? We're no longer going to stop in the Quick Mart. We're just not. We're done with the Quick Mart. And then it becomes a new default, right? That We don't do that anymore. And what happens is very quickly, especially with kids, like days, weeks, you just erase that desire to go to the quick mart. You've erased the cue in your mind of, oh, quick mart, I'm going to go in there. So number one, just start really small, but permanent. This is never, never going to change. And then like I've been saying, try to swap something else in. We got rid of desserts in our house and I was like, okay, no desserts in our house unless people come over because I was trying to get us to be more social.

31:33So I was riding that wave of like us wanting to eat desserts to get us to get people over. And it actually really worked for a while. I mean, and then we just got rid of desserts and we didn't really, we didn't need that incentive. But when I did it, I said, okay, but I bought a bunch of frozen fruit. I bought a bunch of nuts. You can have as much fruit and nuts as you want. So this is not deprivation. Like a hundred years ago, kids would die for like endless fruit and nuts, you know? And they're making us feel better anyway, right? Because after you eat a little bit of fruit and nuts, you feel satisfied and you're not hungry anymore.

32:05And then that was just our new normal. There was no negotiation, no drama. And it's like, we don't eat desserts. We have sweets at other times, but not after dinner. That's another thing too.

32:14Heidi Raykeil:You say like, it isn't like your daughter or our children are never going to have Skittles again. But when you reset this dopamine cue, yes, that that tastes the most delicious. When you cut these foods out of your diet for long enough, they don't taste right when you go to have them again anyway. Oh, it's amazing. It does change. It changes. And in fact, it's like something's wrong with them. Even Rosie can notice it. If she has something that's really ultra-pressive, sometimes we call them chemical cakes. But she'll be like, oh my gosh, my stomach doesn't feel good. This is another mistake that's out there.

32:52This idea that we have to expose kids to things. Like, oh, I have to expose her to Skittles. So she'll learn to regulate Skittles.

33:00Heidi Raykeil:Or that if you don't, then she'll eat eight bags of Skittles as soon as she's exposed to them for the first time. Yeah, she'll go wild, right? There's no data to back this. This is an idea from the 50s. And some of the data that scientists were using then were based on homemade meals. No ultra-processed food, right? These foods we have are engineered for overuse. But one of the psychologists told me just a couple weeks ago, he's like, you don't need to expose your kid in your home to these things because they're going to be exposed every day to them outside their home. So for us, we don't have ultra processed foods, what we've defined and what works for our definition, right?

33:35In our home. So we really, I keep it as like a sanctuary for like whole foods. Me and my daughter are just so drawn to them that if they're there, we're going to eat them and really little else. But Rosie can have as much as she wants when she's out of the house. And so she learns about them. And I'm telling you, Amy, I kept track of it for a while almost every day. She's offered it.

33:57Heidi Raykeil:Well, yeah, because I'm thinking when you were saying before, before when you're like, she eats veggie straws and you're using those as an example of an unhealthy food. A lot of us have been taught, no, no, don't give them Doritos, give them healthy veggie straws, give them super healthy. Pirate's booty that we have been sold this bill of goods, that fruit snacks are the same as fruit. As fruit. And they're not. And we have been sold a bill of goods on that. We have. But it's okay. We can walk towards this very gradually. It's baby steps. It's not you're a bad person if your kids have snacks. It is not our fault at all.

34:29I mean, these have been health washed. Like I was really good with sugar. I cut out sugar a lot in our lives, but we were still struggling. And data are coming out that these like veggie straws, Pirate's Boudini, these are very high, dense starch that are then like fried a little bit, extruded and flash fried with a lot of salt and flavors. These are very addictive. I think that that's one of the big misconceptions out there. Like they, what they do is they get you to kind of eat every hour because they spike your blood sugar and then bring you down just like a sugar high because your body treats it basically like sugar once it gets in there, just melts.

35:06So a couple of things I've been learning recently, one, you can put the thing in a glass of water. And if it just melts very quickly within an hour, like it's super ultra processed, your body's going to treat it like sugar. That would be a good thing to do with your kids. A good experiment. We did it. And it's great for her to see like, whoa, that's really different than like a whole wheat bread, right? Like it sits there, right? Yeah, it does. It literally sits there and absorbs some water, but these things, this is going to be digested like really fast and like a sugar high. The other thing is to look at the fiber content for every 10 grams of carbs, there should be like one gram of fiber.

35:42That's kind of a signal that the plant material is intact and hasn't been just pulverated and destroyed. But I want to say one thing to people. There's this idea that we have so many picky eaters out there, right? So many kids that are so picky. Rosie was so picky, right? And I thought it was just kind of her. But when we really limited the starch snacks, crackers, Pirate's Booty, like this, when we stopped eating them during the day. I talk about on the go, like, you know, while we were moving around commuting, she started eating at dinner, like things that I never thought she'd eat before. So like now she loves like pickled cabbage and like fish and chili.

36:22And it was just, she wasn't hungry because she had been eating these things all day. And so I think a lot of the pickiness, I think parents can pretty quickly fix if you can limit some of that snacking during the day. And again, it means just not bringing it with you. Don't have it in the car. Don't have it in the backpack. Just make it not an option. Like we're just not going to buy these things and we're going to see how it goes. And the reset, it seems to me, you didn't set out

36:47Heidi Raykeil:to be like, my daughter will be a pickled cabbage eater. It was an unexpected down the road, like, wow, this is working and it takes time. But that these the invitation to do these resets is not just so you'll be a better mother, but talk a little bit more about the unexpected sort of connection and relaxation that you feel after making some of these changes. Yeah. And, you know, I think this is actually, it's the third step in the book, celebrate. This is actually making it work. Catherine probably talked about this. If it's a struggle and a fight to change, to do a reset, if you're fighting and it's stressful and it feels bad, it's not going to work.

37:25It's never going to last. Science tells us that what works is when we feel good about something. When scientists say emotional payoff, like when it feels fun and enjoyable, and this is what you're after, is this feeling, this positive feeling, right? And so it's about finding the pleasure and the joy in these things that actually make us feel good in life and that leave us satisfied. So in the car, for instance, when we stopped bringing screens in the car, it took a little bit of time for Rosie to actually talk to me. She read in the car and she does art and stuff. And so she kind of dug herself in there.

38:00But then after like a couple of weeks, she actually started talking to me and telling me about her friends and telling me about her problems at school. And like, she would have never done this if she had had a screen in her face, it would undermine any motivation. And we just started connecting more and like really, like I started to realize, oh, she wants to talk to me, but she never, her brain never had a break. And then I was saying it in the book, like we went on a car trip this summer and we didn't have screens in the car. And, you know, it took a bit, it took an hour or so. And we all started talking and we started laughing and I was laughing so hard.

38:34I was crying because it was so fun. And like, I hadn't felt that way in a decade, you know, and it was the opposite feeling of that, what we talked about at the beginning, where things were gray and gloomy, you know, because I was actually engaging in activities that made my life brighter and shinier and more colorful instead of like my work texts and my work emails, you know? And so this is absolutely about reclaiming pleasure and joy and really fulfilling those needs that we have. The screens in the Ultra Press Foods are skeletal versions of these needs. They will never fill us up. They will keep us wanting more.

39:12But once we get the real need fulfilled and our hedonic hotspots light up, life just becomes so much brighter and more colorful. That's why I wrote this book because I was like, wow, this is so good. I want every family to experience this because I think we all feel so drained and exhausted and just stressed. And we don't have to. We can push these products to the wings of our lives. We don't have to push them out, but to the wings. And we can make room for these things that really fill us up with joy and happiness.

39:47Heidi Raykeil:That's amazing. And this book, I will say, if you've been listening, it's pretty clear. It walks you through. It gives you try this, do this, now celebrate, right? It gives you a scaffolding. So if this sounds overwhelming, it's really not. And every reset that you make actually brings you closer to happiness and connection. Exactly. And it's little. I think little and easy. That's the key, you know. And it took us maybe three, four years to really reset the whole system. But it didn't feel hard because each step of the way was more joy, right? Each step of the way was, oh, this feels good. Let's do more.

40:25It wasn't like I have to do more. It was like, this feels good. We want more. And so once you get down that path, you'll love it.

40:31Heidi Raykeil:I guarantee you'll love it. Michaelene Duclef's new book is called Dopamine Kids. We're going to put the link in the show notes to buy the book on Bookshop or wherever you get books. Michaelene, tell our listeners where else they can find you and your work. So I'm not on social media because it really makes me feel bad. I just, my brain can't handle it, but I spend a lot of time making a website that has my work on it and you can contact me there. There's resources up there. So please email me there and I'm so happy to talk and I'm always happy to talk to people who want more. You know, I love talking to parents.

41:07So please reach out. MichaeleneDucleff.com. There's a contact form on there and I read everything and I try to get back. Wow, that's very generous. Even better, even better than social media. Exactly. Like I want a place where you leave feeling good. If you come to my website, there's no manipulation there. And I want the real connection. People are really kind and have beautiful hearts. And I don't always think it shows up like that on social media.

41:32Heidi Raykeil:Well said. That's so true. Well, Michaelene, we'll put the link to your website and of course the book and the show notes for this episode. This was a fascinating book. Thank you so much for talking to me today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure.