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That sound you're hearing is about 60 parents in one
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room on Martha's Vineyard, eating, laughing, answering nosy questions from
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a video camera, and getting celebrated. Not their kids, them.
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I'm Carol Sutton Lewis, and this is Ground Control Parenting.
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Here's where this idea started. We throw showers for almost
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every big thing that happens to a family. We throw
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one when a baby's coming. We throw one when two
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people get married. We fill a room, we bring gifts,
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we say kind things out loud, and we send people
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off with what they need for the road ahead. And
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the baby arrives, and the celebrating stops. The gift stops.
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The room empties out. And the actual job, the 20-plus
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year job, begins with almost no ceremony attached to it
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at all. I've said for years that parenting is the
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most important work most of us will ever do. And
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it's also the work we get the least support for.
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We learn it on the job. We make it up
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as we go. We call our friends at 11 at night.
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And somewhere along the way, we decided that celebration belongs
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at the beginning, before anybody has done anything, instead of
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in the middle when we're tired and in it and
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could actually use the encouragement. So we threw a shower
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for the parents. We called it the Ground Control Parenting Shower.
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About 60 people, one room, one afternoon in Martha's Vineyard.
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Parents of five-year-olds sitting next to parents of 35-year-olds. People
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who are still packing lunches next to people whose kids
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now call to check on them. We had games, we
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had prizes, we had a video booth where people answered
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questions about what they've learned along the way. And we
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taped a podcast conversation in front of a live audience.
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What I didn't expect was how quickly the room opened up.
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Within about 15 minutes, people who'd never met were comparing
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notes on middle school, on college applications, on what to
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do when your grown child stops calling as much. That's
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the whole thing. That's what Ground Control Parenting has always
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been trying to build. And the one afternoon, it was
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in a single room. instead of scattered across a feed.
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A shower is really a village showing up early. This
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one was a village showing up in the middle, which
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honestly is when we need it most. We built this
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afternoon around four things that the community keeps telling me
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it needs help with. Reading, money, the digital lives our
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children are living, and college. One of these is our
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own initiative, and the other three came from partners who
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showed up with real resources instead of a banner. In
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the second half of this episode, I want to take
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you inside the conversation we taped that afternoon with Courtney B.
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Vance and Abby Phillip. Financial literacy is a subject I've
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touched on with guests for years. And for that, we
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were joined by Morgan Stanley. Reading gets our children through
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the door. What they understand about money determines what walking
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through that door actually does for their family. Let me
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give you the number that framed the whole conversation. According
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to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, the median
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white household in this country holds about $ 285, 000 in net worth.
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For the median black household, it's about $ 45, 000. And even
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as the black wealth has grown, the gap in dollars
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has grown wider because the families who already held assets
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gained the most when those assets increased. Now, that's a
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policy problem and a history problem, and it's not one
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that any single family solves at the kitchen table. But
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there's a piece of it that is ours to work on,
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and it's this. Many of us in that room are
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the first people in our families to earn what we earned.
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We learned how to work. We did not necessarily learn
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how to make money grow, and we're not always sure
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how to teach it because nobody has taught us. So
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here's what I've learned from the experts I've talked with
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over the years. Start earlier than feels reasonable. A five-year-old
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can understand that things cost money and that money runs out.
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That's the whole foundation. Talk about what things cost out loud,
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why this thing is not in the budget, why a
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well-made thing that lasts 10 years can be worth paying for.
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Children learn value by hearing you weigh it. Secondly, say
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no on purpose. Tanya Van Court, who built the Savings
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Platform Goal Setter, told me that the first real money
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lesson is the no. When her son wanted a toy helicopter,
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she had him research what it cost. They made a
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plan for how he would earn it. That's a different
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child at the end of that process. Move past spend, save, share.
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That model's fine, but it's incomplete. Our children also need
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to hear about interest, about investing, about owning a piece
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of a company whose products they already use. Melody Hobson
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wrote a wonderful book called Priceless Facts About Money, and
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this is a great way in for younger kids. Talk
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about where money comes from and where it goes. Salaries, taxes,
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credit and what it costs, banks. ATMs are not magic
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money machines. Loans and allowance is a small laboratory for
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all of it. And one more for the parents in
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that room whose children are grown. The money conversation does
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not end when they leave the house. At some point,
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it becomes a conversation about what you have, what your
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wishes are, And who knows where the documents live? That's
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a harder talk than the allowance talk. And it's just
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as much a part of building something that lasts. Morgan
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Stanley came to the shower to put real weight behind this.
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And I was so glad to have professionals in the
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room who would answer all the financial questions. Raising Readers
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is a ground control parenting initiative. It's something I wanted
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to build for years because it's the single most common
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thing that parents ask me about and the single most
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useful thing I know how to give them. At the shower,
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Raising Readers wasn't a table with a pamphlet on it.
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It was books. Guests left with books in their hands,
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lots of them, and a set of ideas for what
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to do with them. Book lists organized by age so
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you're not standing in a store guessing. Prompts for talking
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about a book with a child who doesn't want to talk,
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which is most children over the age of nine. And
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a reminder that a two-person book club with your own
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kid is one of the easiest and most underrated things
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a busy parent can do. Let them pick the book.
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Let them lead the conversation. So here's why this matters
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so much to me and to this village in particular.
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Reading is the floor everything else stands on. A child
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who reads well can learn anything. A child who's still
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struggling to read in the fourth grade is now trying
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to learn science and history and math problems through a
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skill that's not yet working for them. The struggle stops
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being about reading and starts being about everything. And here's
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the part that really belongs to us. Black and Latino
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students who are not proficient third grade readers graduated at
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lower rates than white students with the very same reading scores.
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Same skills, different outcomes, which tells you the reading is
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necessary and the advocacy around the reading is necessary too.
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So what have I learned from years of talking with
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parents and educators about this? Three things. First, the early
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years are for learning how your child learns, not for
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hitting somebody else's milestones. Grades K through four are when
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you figure out what makes your child curious, whether they're
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a visual learner, what they pay attention to in a classroom.
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If you spend those years anxious about whether they're ahead
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or behind, you'll miss the information that would actually help
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you help them later. Second, reading at home is not homework.
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It's time together. 20 minutes with a book on the
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couch is doing more work than most enrichment you could
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pay for, and it costs nothing. Third, and this is
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the one we forget, do not stop reading with them
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once they learn to read. Middle school is when a
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lot of families go quiet about books. I started reading
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what my kids were reading in middle school and high school,
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and it gave us something to talk about that wasn't
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a report card. That's raising readers. Books in hand, a
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plan for what to do with them, and a community
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that treats literacy as everybody's business rather than the school's problem.
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If you weren't in that room, you can still do
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all of it, starting now. Our third pillar was the
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digital life our children are living, and for that we
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were joined by Metta. I've said for years we cannot
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afford to be in the dark on tech. If there's
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a platform out there, we need to know what it
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is and how it works. Not to spy on our children,
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to be literate in the place where they live. Their friendships,
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their group projects, their arguments, their heartbreaks, and a good
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bit of their identity development are all happening on those phones.
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We can be unhappy about that, and it will still
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be true. Meta brought their teen safety and family tools
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to the room, and there's more available than most parents realize.
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Teen accounts set protections automatically for users under 18, including
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private accounts by default and limits on who can contact them.
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Family Center now lets a parent manage supervision across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger,
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and Horizon in one place, instead of hunting through four
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sets of settings. There's a sleep mode that silences notifications
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overnight and daily time reminders. Parents using supervision can be
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notified if their teen repeatedly searches terms related to suicide
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or self-harm. And newer tools give a parent a view
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into the interest categories shaping what their teen is being shown,
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along with the topics their teen has been asking Meta
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AI about in the past week. A lot of parents
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in that room didn't know any of that existed, and
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several of them set it up before they left. So
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here's my honest take on all of it. These tools
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are not a parenting strategy. They're a conversation starter. Knowing
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that your daughter has been searching for something hard is
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only useful if you know how to sit down and
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talk with her about it. The technology can tell you
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where to look. It cannot do the looking, and it
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certainly cannot do the talking. Set the tools up, then
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have the conversation. That's the order. Our fourth pillar was
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college prep with the College Board. I want to be
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clear about why this mattered to this particular group of parents.
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College admissions makes families crazy. It makes teenagers anxious, and
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it makes parents competitive with people they actually like. Part
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of that is the process, but a very large part
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of it is that families are working with bad information
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or no information or information they got from one loud
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person at a cookout. The College Board activation was built
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around a simple idea. There are free tools out there,
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and most parents have never opened them. Here is what's
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available at bigfuture.org at no cost. a college search covering
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more than 4,000 colleges, universities, and career programs, a scholarship
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search covering more than 30,000 scholarship programs, net price calculations
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and financial aid quizzes, which are the tools that tell
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you what a school might actually cost your family rather
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than what the sticker says, action plans that break the
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process down into what your teen should be doing in
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ninth grade versus 11th grade versus senior fall, a parent
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community with resources in Spanish, and live sessions built for parents,
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not just for students. There's also this, which I didn't
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know until recently. Through Big Future Scholarships, students starting in
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10th grade can earn entries toward monthly $ 500 awards and $ 40, 000
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awards simply by completing planning steps. No essay, no minimum GPA,
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no test score requirement. The scholarship is a reward for
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doing the planning you should be doing anyway. If you
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have a 10th or 11th grader, that's 20 minutes of
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your evening well spent. What I told the room and
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what I'll tell you is that the most valuable thing
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you can do in this process is start early and
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keep the temperature low. Not, where are you going to
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get in? Try, what do you want your days to
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look like? Interest first, then schools that serve those interests,
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then money, then applications. When we lead with the name
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of the school, we teach our children that the name
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is the point. It is not. And for our families,
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there's a second conversation running underneath the first one about
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where our child will be supported, where they will be
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one of very few, and what they will need in
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either case. That's a real part of the decision, and
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it belongs on the table. If you want to go
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further on admissions, two episodes from the archives hold up.
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My conversation with Timothy Fields and Shereen Herndon-Brown on what
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Black families need to know about the process, and my
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conversation with David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, on
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testing and how to help a child manage test anxieties.
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Both are worth a listen. Reading, money, the digital lives
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our children are living, and college, four things this Ground
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Control Parenting Village keeps asking about, all in one room
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and one afternoon, where people could actually answer the questions.
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My thanks to Morgan Stanley, to Metta, and to College
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Board for showing up with resources instead of just a banner,
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and for understanding what we're trying to build. We'll be
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right back after these messages. I am so excited to
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share that Ground Control Parenting is working with DonorsChoose Our
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work is all about supporting black and brown children, and
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that means supporting the classrooms and teachers shaping their lives
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every day. So this season, thanks to DonorsChoose, I'm giving
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my Ground Control Parenting guests a DonorsChoose card, a gift
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card from DonorsChoose. They can head to DonorsChoose.org and they
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can choose a classroom that resonates with them. It's such
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a simple way to do so much good. And trust me,
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The thank you notes you get from the classroom are
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amazing and so worth it. Thank you, DonutsChoose. Welcome back
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to the show. And now the part of the afternoon
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I've been thinking about for months. We taped a live
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conversation with two people at very different points in the
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parenting journey. Courtney B. Vance, actor, producer, father of twins
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who are now in college, one at Yale and one
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at Harvard. and Abby Phillip, journalist, anchor, author, and mother
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of a young daughter with another baby on the way.
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I wanted to talk about something I hear constantly on
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this island and everywhere else. How do you raise a
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child who's grounded and confident and sure of who they are,
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especially when they're so often the only one that looks
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like them in the room? We started with Abby and
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with what she carried out of her own childhood as
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one of six children of Trinidadian immigrants.
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And they were very strict growing up. And I resented that,
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as we do as kids for a while. But looking
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back on it, I think what it really was was
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an expectation that said, there is no excuse for you
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not giving it your all. I mean, you can offer
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some excuses, but it's not really gonna work. And so
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I've always really carried that with me, not as an
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external pressure, but as an internal thing, where in my
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own mind, I know, Yeah, I can come up with
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all kinds of excuses why I can't do this or
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that or the other. But at the end of the day,
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there's really no excuse. The other half of that expectation
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is that whatever I wanted to do, they believed that
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I could do it. Teaching them that you believe in
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them in that way and that they should believe in
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themselves in that way is really important.
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Listen to what she does with that, though, because this
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is the part that many parents miss. High expectations just
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on their own can really crush a child. What made
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it work in Abby's house was that the expectation came
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paired with belief. Her parents expected everything of her because
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they believed she was capable of everything. Those two things
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have to travel together. And then here's my favorite small
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detail of the entire afternoon. Her father, who at one
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point was selling encyclopedias, would not settle an argument at
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the dinner table.
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When they first came up here to the U.S., I
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think my dad at some point was like selling encyclopedia Britannicas.
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So we always had the full set of Encyclopedia Britannicas.
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My dad would be like, we would ask him things
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or we would be having arguments about stuff. And he'd
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be like, stop arguing with me and go look it up.
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That is how you teach kids to learn and to
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self-advocate and to realize that you are the only thing
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standing in the way of you doing that thing.
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That ability started at the kitchen table with a big encyclopedia.
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Then Courtney took us into his house and honestly, he
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took over the room.
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For the first three years of their childhood, I didn't work.
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And Angela would say to me, Courtney, you need to
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get a job. And I said, baby, I got a job.
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I got a job. I'm with our children, and the
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nanny's not raising our children. I'm there, and when you
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come home, we fold you in to what's happened during
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the day. We were really about setting up an environment
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in our household so that they knew who they were.
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So we read to them from the time they came
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out of the womb, and then they started reading to us.
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It was a whole program. And everybody who came in
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the house was a part of the program. The village
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was a part of the program. We prayed before we
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went to bed. And if you came to our house,
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you came to our house, and you'd be, okay, everybody's
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sitting around. Are we getting ready to go to bed?
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They got to go to bed at 7.30. Our process
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of parenting was really about the rhythm of our household.
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What is the rhythm? How do you deal with discipline
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in the house, which is one of the primary things
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things that you have to make a decision with parents,
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you have to decide how are you going to, because
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they need to learn consequences. And how are you going
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to teach them consequences? And if you don't teach them,
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the world will teach them.
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He said the thing I have not been able to
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stop thinking about. He said their parenting was really about
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perfecting the rhythm of their household. The rhythm of the household.
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He's describing something very specific. Before you worry about what
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the outside is going to do to your child, you
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build an inside so consistent So predictable, so saturated with
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love and structure and expectation, the child carries it out
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the door with them. And it paid off in a
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moment that a lot of parents in that room recognized immediately. Now,
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similar with Courtney did next because it's complicated and he
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was honest about the complications.
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Slater said to me at third grade, he said, Daddy,
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every time something goes wrong in the classroom, they look
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at me. I said, okay, baby, so what are we
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going to do? Because daddy can't go up to the
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classroom and knock on the window and say, what's going on?
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You've got to get your way up back to a
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blue or green day, not a yellow or red or
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you know the last color was black. Anyway, so what
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are you going to do about it? I said, are
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you where you're supposed to be and doing what you're
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supposed to be all the time? He said, not always, daddy.
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I said, well, why don't we start there?
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His son told him something true. He was being watched
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more closely than the other boys. Courtney did not dismiss that,
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but he also didn't stop there. He asked his son
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a question. Are you doing what you're supposed to be
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doing every day, all the time? And his son said,
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not always, Daddy. And Courtney said, well, why don't we
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start there? Both things were real. The scrutiny was real,
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but there was also something inside his son's control. A
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lot of us struggle to hold both of these ideas
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at once. We either tell our children the scrutiny is
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not happening, which they know is a lie, or or
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we let the scrutiny become the entire explanation, which gives
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them nothing to do about it. Courtney handed his son
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the part he could act on without pretending the other
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part didn't exist. He was also up at his son's
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school constantly, and I really have to underline that because
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I've been preaching it for years. As a huge advocate
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for showing up at the school, if you're working, go
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in the morning, befriend a school buddy, know what's going on,
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because there's nothing better than having the teachers know that
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When at the beginning of the school, it's an alliance.
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You and the teacher are going to work together to
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make sure your child succeeds. Become known at the school
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before there is a problem. Go in the morning, say hello,
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learn names, talk to the teacher so that when something
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happens and something will happen, the teacher already sees you
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as an ally instead of somebody who's complaining. That's not
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a small thing. That is a difference between a phone
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call and a file. Then we got into the part
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I really wanted, which is what happens when your child
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grows up with far more than you had?
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We have a tennis court, and we were coming back
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from playing in the backyard, Slater and I, and he
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turned to me as we were walking back to the
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house and said, Daddy, doesn't everybody have a tennis court?
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He was working out in his mind what, and I said, no, baby,
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everyone doesn't have a tennis court, and We're very grateful
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that we have this. I mean, one of the things
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that we, you know, I knew we were, Angela and I,
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because we said, well, our world is not their world. We,
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you know, had the limo. It was a stretch back
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in the day when the stretch was a big deal.
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We were in the stretch. And the preschool where they were,
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I've got to be careful, the preschool where they were,
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they were, there for the night, was on the way
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back home. And she said, Courtney, it's on the way
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back home. Let the driver know we're going to stop
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at the preschool and pick them up and then go home.
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I said, baby, respectfully, no. We're going to go home.
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I'm going to drop you off. I'm going to thank
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the driver and say goodnight. And then I'm going to
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get in the car and I'm going to go back
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to the school and I'm going to pick them up.
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That is a parent making a decision that costs them something.
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It would have been so easy to make that one stop.
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He and Angela also said no to putting two very
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cute children in commercials. No agents, no auditions, no strangers
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telling them they weren't cute enough or light enough or
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dark enough or big enough. Let them be children. In
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a room where a lot of parents have resources, that
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really landed well. Then I asked Abby a question I've
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wanted to ask a public figure for a long time.
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She lives with praise. and criticism and sometimes real cruelty
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from strangers. I asked her, what's she building in her
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daughter to protect her from caring about any of it?
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At some point, it's going to have to be a
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conversation about the two sides of that coin. As my
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parents used to say, you live by the sword, you
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die by the sword. So you can live by all
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the praise, but sometimes what that means is that when
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the criticism comes, you also die by the criticism. I'm
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actually not, you know, thrilled with, totally thrilled with where
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I am on this because I'm probably like a little
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too even keeled to the point where like I really
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don't listen to the praise. I think there is some
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value in listening to enough of it. But I am
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very much like mindful that there is Always, if you
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get too high, you can get too low. So I
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don't really let myself get too high on my own supply.
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And to think too highly of myself. Because I feel
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like I see the other side of that, which is
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the inability to deal with the lows that inevitably come.
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I've had privately people scream at me on the phone
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and curse me out. and not return my phone calls
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and call one of my white colleagues back and then
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talk about me behind my back. I've had all of
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that happen in private. I've had the president call me
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stupid in public. And people are always like, how do
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you feel about that? And I'm like, I don't feel
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any type of way about it at all. I don't
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get my self-esteem from any of those people. Any of
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those people. That is not how I am wired. The
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most important thing is that no one else can give
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you value. And when they can't give it to you,
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they can't take it away.
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That's the whole thing right there. It's worth saying to
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your children more than once. If your sense of who
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you are comes from other people, then other people can
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take it away. If it comes from inside your own house,
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nobody can touch it. Then Abby added a piece I
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wasn't expecting about grace.
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Everything in my life is by the grace of God, period.
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And so there is another part of life that explaining
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or figuring out, because I had to figure it out.
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I don't think anybody really told me. I had to
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figure it out over many, many years that it isn't
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just all the things that I have done It is
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some hard work on my part, but it's really a
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lot of grace and a lot of blessings and a
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lot of mercy and a lot of being placed in
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the right situations. And that, to me, is about a
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degree of humility that you have to have in order
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to understand that when you rise, it's not all because
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of you. And when you fall, there might be a
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reason that you're falling and you need to learn from it.
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And so that is the other part of the sort
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of praise-criticism cycle that comes with being in the public eye,
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is that everything happens for a reason. And not every
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one of your achievements is because you are so amazing
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and you're so great. Sometimes it's because you were just
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blessed in this moment by a power that is beyond you.
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And having the humility to know that that can go
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away at any.
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Moment Humility and grace from a woman at the top
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of her profession in front of a room full of
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high-achieving parents on a Wednesday afternoon. That is not the
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answer people expected, and it's the one that stayed with everyone.
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I close by quoting one of my earliest podcast guests,
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Ken Frazier, who was raised by a single father in Philadelphia.
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Ken told me his father said one thing to him
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over and over. What other people think of you is
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none of your business. And Abby had a great addition
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to this.
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Most of the time, they're not even thinking about you.
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Exactly, exactly.
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That's the truth.
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The room lost it, and she is right. So, what
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did I take away from the GCP shower? Three things,
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and they're connected. The first is that the tools matter.
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Books in the house and reading with your child past
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the age when they technically need you to. Understanding money
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well enough to teach it. Knowing how the platforms your
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teenager lives on actually work and setting them up properly.
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opening the free college planning tools instead of relying on rumor.
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None of that's glamorous, but all of it's available to
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you starting now. The second thing is what Courtney gave us,
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the rhythm of the household. Before you can prepare a
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child for a room where they're the only one, you
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have to build in them a place where they're fully known.
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The consistency, the reading, the bedtime, the prayers, the people
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you let in. This isn't sentimental. This is infrastructure. And
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the third is what Abby gave us, Where a child's
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sense of value comes from determines everything about how they
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handle the praise and the criticism that's coming for them.
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If we hand our children their worth from the outside,
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through grades and schools and other people's approval, we've built
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something that other people can take apart. If it comes
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from within, it holds. And underneath all three, the thing
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the afternoon was actually about, parents need to be poured into.
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Not just at the baby shower, not just on Mother's
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Day and Father's Day, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon,
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12 years into the job when you're tired and you're
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not sure you're getting it right. We threw a shower
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for 60 parents and watched what happened when we told
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them out loud in the room that the work they're
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doing is worth celebrating. It was one of the best
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things we've ever done and I think it might be
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one of the most important. If you were there, thank
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you so much for being open.
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With each other.
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If you weren't, stay tuned. Thank you to Courtney B.
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Vance and Abby Phillip for such a wonderful conversation. Thank
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you to Morgan Stanley, to Meta, and to the College Board.
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And thank you to every parent that came, played the games,
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answered the questions, and let us record it. You can
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watch this special episode on the Ground Control Parenting YouTube channel.
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You'll also find video from the shower itself, and you
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can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, and
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please share this one with a parent who could use
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some celebrating. I'm Carol Sutton Lewis, and this is Ground
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Control Parenting, supporting our parents and helping our children soar.
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That sound you're hearing is about 60 parents in one
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room on Martha's Vineyard, eating, laughing, answering nosy questions from
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a video camera, and getting celebrated. Not their kids, them.
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I'm Carol Sutton Lewis, and this is Ground Control Parenting.
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Here's where this idea started. We throw showers for almost
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every big thing that happens to a family. We throw
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one when a baby's coming. We throw one when two
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people get married. We fill a room, we bring gifts,
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we say kind things out loud, and we send people
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off with what they need for the road ahead. And
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the baby arrives, and the celebrating stops. The gift stops.
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The room empties out. And the actual job, the 20-plus
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year job, begins with almost no ceremony attached to it
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at all. I've said for years that parenting is the
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most important work most of us will ever do. And
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it's also the work we get the least support for.
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We learn it on the job. We make it up
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as we go. We call our friends at 11 at night.
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And somewhere along the way, we decided that celebration belongs
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at the beginning, before anybody has done anything, instead of
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in the middle when we're tired and in it and
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could actually use the encouragement. So we threw a shower
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for the parents. We called it the Ground Control Parenting Shower.
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About 60 people, one room, one afternoon in Martha's Vineyard.
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Parents of five-year-olds sitting next to parents of 35-year-olds. People
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who are still packing lunches next to people whose kids
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now call to check on them. We had games, we
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had prizes, we had a video booth where people answered
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questions about what they've learned along the way. And we
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taped a podcast conversation in front of a live audience.
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What I didn't expect was how quickly the room opened up.
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Within about 15 minutes, people who'd never met were comparing
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notes on middle school, on college applications, on what to
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do when your grown child stops calling as much. That's
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the whole thing. That's what Ground Control Parenting has always
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been trying to build. And the one afternoon, it was
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in a single room. instead of scattered across a feed.
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A shower is really a village showing up early. This
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one was a village showing up in the middle, which
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honestly is when we need it most. We built this
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afternoon around four things that the community keeps telling me
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it needs help with. Reading, money, the digital lives our
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children are living, and college. One of these is our
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own initiative, and the other three came from partners who
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showed up with real resources instead of a banner. In
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the second half of this episode, I want to take
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you inside the conversation we taped that afternoon with Courtney B.
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Vance and Abby Phillip. Financial literacy is a subject I've
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touched on with guests for years. And for that, we
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were joined by Morgan Stanley. Reading gets our children through
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the door. What they understand about money determines what walking
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through that door actually does for their family. Let me
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give you the number that framed the whole conversation. According
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to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, the median
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white household in this country holds about $ 285, 000 in net worth.
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For the median black household, it's about $ 45, 000. And even
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as the black wealth has grown, the gap in dollars
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has grown wider because the families who already held assets
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gained the most when those assets increased. Now, that's a
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policy problem and a history problem, and it's not one
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that any single family solves at the kitchen table. But
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there's a piece of it that is ours to work on,
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and it's this. Many of us in that room are
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the first people in our families to earn what we earned.
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We learned how to work. We did not necessarily learn
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how to make money grow, and we're not always sure
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how to teach it because nobody has taught us. So
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here's what I've learned from the experts I've talked with
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over the years. Start earlier than feels reasonable. A five-year-old
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can understand that things cost money and that money runs out.
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That's the whole foundation. Talk about what things cost out loud,
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why this thing is not in the budget, why a
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well-made thing that lasts 10 years can be worth paying for.
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Children learn value by hearing you weigh it. Secondly, say
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no on purpose. Tanya Van Court, who built the Savings
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Platform Goal Setter, told me that the first real money
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lesson is the no. When her son wanted a toy helicopter,
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she had him research what it cost. They made a
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plan for how he would earn it. That's a different
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child at the end of that process. Move past spend, save, share.
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That model's fine, but it's incomplete. Our children also need
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to hear about interest, about investing, about owning a piece
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of a company whose products they already use. Melody Hobson
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wrote a wonderful book called Priceless Facts About Money, and
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this is a great way in for younger kids. Talk
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about where money comes from and where it goes. Salaries, taxes,
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credit and what it costs, banks. ATMs are not magic
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money machines. Loans and allowance is a small laboratory for
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all of it. And one more for the parents in
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that room whose children are grown. The money conversation does
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not end when they leave the house. At some point,
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it becomes a conversation about what you have, what your
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wishes are, And who knows where the documents live? That's
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a harder talk than the allowance talk. And it's just
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as much a part of building something that lasts. Morgan
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Stanley came to the shower to put real weight behind this.
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And I was so glad to have professionals in the
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room who would answer all the financial questions. Raising Readers
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is a ground control parenting initiative. It's something I wanted
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to build for years because it's the single most common
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thing that parents ask me about and the single most
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useful thing I know how to give them. At the shower,
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Raising Readers wasn't a table with a pamphlet on it.
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It was books. Guests left with books in their hands,
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lots of them, and a set of ideas for what
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to do with them. Book lists organized by age so
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you're not standing in a store guessing. Prompts for talking
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about a book with a child who doesn't want to talk,
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which is most children over the age of nine. And
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a reminder that a two-person book club with your own
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kid is one of the easiest and most underrated things
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a busy parent can do. Let them pick the book.
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Let them lead the conversation. So here's why this matters
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so much to me and to this village in particular.
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Reading is the floor everything else stands on. A child
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who reads well can learn anything. A child who's still
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struggling to read in the fourth grade is now trying
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to learn science and history and math problems through a
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skill that's not yet working for them. The struggle stops
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being about reading and starts being about everything. And here's
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the part that really belongs to us. Black and Latino
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students who are not proficient third grade readers graduated at
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lower rates than white students with the very same reading scores.
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Same skills, different outcomes, which tells you the reading is
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necessary and the advocacy around the reading is necessary too.
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So what have I learned from years of talking with
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parents and educators about this? Three things. First, the early
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years are for learning how your child learns, not for
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hitting somebody else's milestones. Grades K through four are when
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you figure out what makes your child curious, whether they're
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a visual learner, what they pay attention to in a classroom.
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If you spend those years anxious about whether they're ahead
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or behind, you'll miss the information that would actually help
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you help them later. Second, reading at home is not homework.
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It's time together. 20 minutes with a book on the
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couch is doing more work than most enrichment you could
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pay for, and it costs nothing. Third, and this is
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the one we forget, do not stop reading with them
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once they learn to read. Middle school is when a
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lot of families go quiet about books. I started reading
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what my kids were reading in middle school and high school,
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and it gave us something to talk about that wasn't
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a report card. That's raising readers. Books in hand, a
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plan for what to do with them, and a community
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that treats literacy as everybody's business rather than the school's problem.
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If you weren't in that room, you can still do
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all of it, starting now. Our third pillar was the
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digital life our children are living, and for that we
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were joined by Metta. I've said for years we cannot
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afford to be in the dark on tech. If there's
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a platform out there, we need to know what it
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is and how it works. Not to spy on our children,
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to be literate in the place where they live. Their friendships,
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their group projects, their arguments, their heartbreaks, and a good
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bit of their identity development are all happening on those phones.
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We can be unhappy about that, and it will still
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be true. Meta brought their teen safety and family tools
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to the room, and there's more available than most parents realize.
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Teen accounts set protections automatically for users under 18, including
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private accounts by default and limits on who can contact them.
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Family Center now lets a parent manage supervision across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger,
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and Horizon in one place, instead of hunting through four
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sets of settings. There's a sleep mode that silences notifications
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overnight and daily time reminders. Parents using supervision can be
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notified if their teen repeatedly searches terms related to suicide
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or self-harm. And newer tools give a parent a view
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into the interest categories shaping what their teen is being shown,
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along with the topics their teen has been asking Meta
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AI about in the past week. A lot of parents
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in that room didn't know any of that existed, and
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several of them set it up before they left. So
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here's my honest take on all of it. These tools
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are not a parenting strategy. They're a conversation starter. Knowing
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that your daughter has been searching for something hard is
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only useful if you know how to sit down and
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talk with her about it. The technology can tell you
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where to look. It cannot do the looking, and it
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certainly cannot do the talking. Set the tools up, then
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have the conversation. That's the order. Our fourth pillar was
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college prep with the College Board. I want to be
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clear about why this mattered to this particular group of parents.
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College admissions makes families crazy. It makes teenagers anxious, and
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it makes parents competitive with people they actually like. Part
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of that is the process, but a very large part
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of it is that families are working with bad information
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or no information or information they got from one loud
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person at a cookout. The College Board activation was built
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around a simple idea. There are free tools out there,
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and most parents have never opened them. Here is what's
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available at bigfuture.org at no cost. a college search covering
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more than 4,000 colleges, universities, and career programs, a scholarship
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search covering more than 30,000 scholarship programs, net price calculations
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and financial aid quizzes, which are the tools that tell
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you what a school might actually cost your family rather
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than what the sticker says, action plans that break the
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process down into what your teen should be doing in
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ninth grade versus 11th grade versus senior fall, a parent
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community with resources in Spanish, and live sessions built for parents,
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not just for students. There's also this, which I didn't
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know until recently. Through Big Future Scholarships, students starting in
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10th grade can earn entries toward monthly $ 500 awards and $ 40, 000
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awards simply by completing planning steps. No essay, no minimum GPA,
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no test score requirement. The scholarship is a reward for
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doing the planning you should be doing anyway. If you
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have a 10th or 11th grader, that's 20 minutes of
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your evening well spent. What I told the room and
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what I'll tell you is that the most valuable thing
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you can do in this process is start early and
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keep the temperature low. Not, where are you going to
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get in? Try, what do you want your days to
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look like? Interest first, then schools that serve those interests,
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then money, then applications. When we lead with the name
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of the school, we teach our children that the name
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is the point. It is not. And for our families,
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there's a second conversation running underneath the first one about
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where our child will be supported, where they will be
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one of very few, and what they will need in
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either case. That's a real part of the decision, and
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it belongs on the table. If you want to go
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further on admissions, two episodes from the archives hold up.
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My conversation with Timothy Fields and Shereen Herndon-Brown on what
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Black families need to know about the process, and my
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conversation with David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, on
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testing and how to help a child manage test anxieties.
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Both are worth a listen. Reading, money, the digital lives
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our children are living, and college, four things this Ground
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Control Parenting Village keeps asking about, all in one room
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and one afternoon, where people could actually answer the questions.
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My thanks to Morgan Stanley, to Metta, and to College
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Board for showing up with resources instead of just a banner,
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and for understanding what we're trying to build. We'll be
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right back after these messages. I am so excited to
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share that Ground Control Parenting is working with DonorsChoose Our
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work is all about supporting black and brown children, and
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that means supporting the classrooms and teachers shaping their lives
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every day. So this season, thanks to DonorsChoose, I'm giving
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my Ground Control Parenting guests a DonorsChoose card, a gift
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card from DonorsChoose. They can head to DonorsChoose.org and they
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can choose a classroom that resonates with them. It's such
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a simple way to do so much good. And trust me,
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The thank you notes you get from the classroom are
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amazing and so worth it. Thank you, DonutsChoose. Welcome back
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to the show. And now the part of the afternoon
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I've been thinking about for months. We taped a live
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conversation with two people at very different points in the
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parenting journey. Courtney B. Vance, actor, producer, father of twins
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who are now in college, one at Yale and one
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at Harvard. and Abby Phillip, journalist, anchor, author, and mother
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of a young daughter with another baby on the way.
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I wanted to talk about something I hear constantly on
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this island and everywhere else. How do you raise a
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child who's grounded and confident and sure of who they are,
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especially when they're so often the only one that looks
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like them in the room? We started with Abby and
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with what she carried out of her own childhood as
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one of six children of Trinidadian immigrants.
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And they were very strict growing up. And I resented that,
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as we do as kids for a while. But looking
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back on it, I think what it really was was
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an expectation that said, there is no excuse for you
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not giving it your all. I mean, you can offer
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some excuses, but it's not really gonna work. And so
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I've always really carried that with me, not as an
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external pressure, but as an internal thing, where in my
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own mind, I know, Yeah, I can come up with
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all kinds of excuses why I can't do this or
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that or the other. But at the end of the day,
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there's really no excuse. The other half of that expectation
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is that whatever I wanted to do, they believed that
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I could do it. Teaching them that you believe in
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them in that way and that they should believe in
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themselves in that way is really important.
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Listen to what she does with that, though, because this
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is the part that many parents miss. High expectations just
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on their own can really crush a child. What made
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it work in Abby's house was that the expectation came
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paired with belief. Her parents expected everything of her because
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they believed she was capable of everything. Those two things
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have to travel together. And then here's my favorite small
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detail of the entire afternoon. Her father, who at one
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point was selling encyclopedias, would not settle an argument at
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the dinner table.
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When they first came up here to the U.S., I
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think my dad at some point was like selling encyclopedia Britannicas.
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So we always had the full set of Encyclopedia Britannicas.
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My dad would be like, we would ask him things
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or we would be having arguments about stuff. And he'd
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be like, stop arguing with me and go look it up.
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That is how you teach kids to learn and to
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self-advocate and to realize that you are the only thing
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standing in the way of you doing that thing.
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That ability started at the kitchen table with a big encyclopedia.
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Then Courtney took us into his house and honestly, he
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took over the room.
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For the first three years of their childhood, I didn't work.
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And Angela would say to me, Courtney, you need to
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get a job. And I said, baby, I got a job.
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I got a job. I'm with our children, and the
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nanny's not raising our children. I'm there, and when you
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come home, we fold you in to what's happened during
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the day. We were really about setting up an environment
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in our household so that they knew who they were.
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So we read to them from the time they came
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out of the womb, and then they started reading to us.
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It was a whole program. And everybody who came in
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the house was a part of the program. The village
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was a part of the program. We prayed before we
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went to bed. And if you came to our house,
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you came to our house, and you'd be, okay, everybody's
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sitting around. Are we getting ready to go to bed?
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They got to go to bed at 7.30. Our process
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of parenting was really about the rhythm of our household.
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What is the rhythm? How do you deal with discipline
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in the house, which is one of the primary things
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things that you have to make a decision with parents,
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you have to decide how are you going to, because
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they need to learn consequences. And how are you going
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to teach them consequences? And if you don't teach them,
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the world will teach them.
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He said the thing I have not been able to
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stop thinking about. He said their parenting was really about
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perfecting the rhythm of their household. The rhythm of the household.
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He's describing something very specific. Before you worry about what
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the outside is going to do to your child, you
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build an inside so consistent So predictable, so saturated with
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love and structure and expectation, the child carries it out
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the door with them. And it paid off in a
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moment that a lot of parents in that room recognized immediately. Now,
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similar with Courtney did next because it's complicated and he
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was honest about the complications.
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Slater said to me at third grade, he said, Daddy,
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every time something goes wrong in the classroom, they look
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at me. I said, okay, baby, so what are we
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going to do? Because daddy can't go up to the
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classroom and knock on the window and say, what's going on?
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You've got to get your way up back to a
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blue or green day, not a yellow or red or
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you know the last color was black. Anyway, so what
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are you going to do about it? I said, are
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you where you're supposed to be and doing what you're
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supposed to be all the time? He said, not always, daddy.
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I said, well, why don't we start there?
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His son told him something true. He was being watched
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more closely than the other boys. Courtney did not dismiss that,
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but he also didn't stop there. He asked his son
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a question. Are you doing what you're supposed to be
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doing every day, all the time? And his son said,
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not always, Daddy. And Courtney said, well, why don't we
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start there? Both things were real. The scrutiny was real,
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but there was also something inside his son's control. A
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lot of us struggle to hold both of these ideas
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at once. We either tell our children the scrutiny is
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not happening, which they know is a lie, or or
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we let the scrutiny become the entire explanation, which gives
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them nothing to do about it. Courtney handed his son
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the part he could act on without pretending the other
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part didn't exist. He was also up at his son's
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school constantly, and I really have to underline that because
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I've been preaching it for years. As a huge advocate
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for showing up at the school, if you're working, go
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in the morning, befriend a school buddy, know what's going on,
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because there's nothing better than having the teachers know that
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When at the beginning of the school, it's an alliance.
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You and the teacher are going to work together to
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make sure your child succeeds. Become known at the school
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before there is a problem. Go in the morning, say hello,
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learn names, talk to the teacher so that when something
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happens and something will happen, the teacher already sees you
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as an ally instead of somebody who's complaining. That's not
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a small thing. That is a difference between a phone
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call and a file. Then we got into the part
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I really wanted, which is what happens when your child
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grows up with far more than you had?
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We have a tennis court, and we were coming back
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from playing in the backyard, Slater and I, and he
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turned to me as we were walking back to the
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house and said, Daddy, doesn't everybody have a tennis court?
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He was working out in his mind what, and I said, no, baby,
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everyone doesn't have a tennis court, and We're very grateful
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that we have this. I mean, one of the things
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that we, you know, I knew we were, Angela and I,
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because we said, well, our world is not their world. We,
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you know, had the limo. It was a stretch back
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in the day when the stretch was a big deal.
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We were in the stretch. And the preschool where they were,
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I've got to be careful, the preschool where they were,
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they were, there for the night, was on the way
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back home. And she said, Courtney, it's on the way
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back home. Let the driver know we're going to stop
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at the preschool and pick them up and then go home.
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I said, baby, respectfully, no. We're going to go home.
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I'm going to drop you off. I'm going to thank
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the driver and say goodnight. And then I'm going to
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get in the car and I'm going to go back
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to the school and I'm going to pick them up.
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That is a parent making a decision that costs them something.
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It would have been so easy to make that one stop.
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He and Angela also said no to putting two very
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cute children in commercials. No agents, no auditions, no strangers
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telling them they weren't cute enough or light enough or
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dark enough or big enough. Let them be children. In
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a room where a lot of parents have resources, that
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really landed well. Then I asked Abby a question I've
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wanted to ask a public figure for a long time.
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She lives with praise. and criticism and sometimes real cruelty
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from strangers. I asked her, what's she building in her
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daughter to protect her from caring about any of it?
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At some point, it's going to have to be a
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conversation about the two sides of that coin. As my
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parents used to say, you live by the sword, you
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die by the sword. So you can live by all
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the praise, but sometimes what that means is that when
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the criticism comes, you also die by the criticism. I'm
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actually not, you know, thrilled with, totally thrilled with where
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I am on this because I'm probably like a little
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too even keeled to the point where like I really
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don't listen to the praise. I think there is some
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value in listening to enough of it. But I am
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very much like mindful that there is Always, if you
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get too high, you can get too low. So I
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don't really let myself get too high on my own supply.
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And to think too highly of myself. Because I feel
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like I see the other side of that, which is
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the inability to deal with the lows that inevitably come.
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I've had privately people scream at me on the phone
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and curse me out. and not return my phone calls
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and call one of my white colleagues back and then
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talk about me behind my back. I've had all of
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that happen in private. I've had the president call me
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stupid in public. And people are always like, how do
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you feel about that? And I'm like, I don't feel
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any type of way about it at all. I don't
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get my self-esteem from any of those people. Any of
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those people. That is not how I am wired. The
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most important thing is that no one else can give
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you value. And when they can't give it to you,
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they can't take it away.
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That's the whole thing right there. It's worth saying to
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your children more than once. If your sense of who
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you are comes from other people, then other people can
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take it away. If it comes from inside your own house,
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nobody can touch it. Then Abby added a piece I
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wasn't expecting about grace.
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Everything in my life is by the grace of God, period.
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And so there is another part of life that explaining
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or figuring out, because I had to figure it out.
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I don't think anybody really told me. I had to
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figure it out over many, many years that it isn't
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just all the things that I have done It is
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some hard work on my part, but it's really a
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lot of grace and a lot of blessings and a
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lot of mercy and a lot of being placed in
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the right situations. And that, to me, is about a
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degree of humility that you have to have in order
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to understand that when you rise, it's not all because
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of you. And when you fall, there might be a
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reason that you're falling and you need to learn from it.
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And so that is the other part of the sort
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of praise-criticism cycle that comes with being in the public eye,
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is that everything happens for a reason. And not every
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one of your achievements is because you are so amazing
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and you're so great. Sometimes it's because you were just
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blessed in this moment by a power that is beyond you.
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And having the humility to know that that can go
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away at any.
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Moment Humility and grace from a woman at the top
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of her profession in front of a room full of
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high-achieving parents on a Wednesday afternoon. That is not the
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answer people expected, and it's the one that stayed with everyone.
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I close by quoting one of my earliest podcast guests,
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Ken Frazier, who was raised by a single father in Philadelphia.
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Ken told me his father said one thing to him
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over and over. What other people think of you is
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none of your business. And Abby had a great addition
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to this.
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Most of the time, they're not even thinking about you.
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Exactly, exactly.
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That's the truth.
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The room lost it, and she is right. So, what
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did I take away from the GCP shower? Three things,
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and they're connected. The first is that the tools matter.
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Books in the house and reading with your child past
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the age when they technically need you to. Understanding money
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well enough to teach it. Knowing how the platforms your
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teenager lives on actually work and setting them up properly.
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opening the free college planning tools instead of relying on rumor.
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None of that's glamorous, but all of it's available to
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you starting now. The second thing is what Courtney gave us,
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the rhythm of the household. Before you can prepare a
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child for a room where they're the only one, you
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have to build in them a place where they're fully known.
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The consistency, the reading, the bedtime, the prayers, the people
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you let in. This isn't sentimental. This is infrastructure. And
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the third is what Abby gave us, Where a child's
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sense of value comes from determines everything about how they
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handle the praise and the criticism that's coming for them.
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If we hand our children their worth from the outside,
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through grades and schools and other people's approval, we've built
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something that other people can take apart. If it comes
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from within, it holds. And underneath all three, the thing
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the afternoon was actually about, parents need to be poured into.
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Not just at the baby shower, not just on Mother's
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Day and Father's Day, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon,
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12 years into the job when you're tired and you're
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not sure you're getting it right. We threw a shower
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for 60 parents and watched what happened when we told
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them out loud in the room that the work they're
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doing is worth celebrating. It was one of the best
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things we've ever done and I think it might be
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one of the most important. If you were there, thank
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you so much for being open.
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With each other.
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If you weren't, stay tuned. Thank you to Courtney B.
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Vance and Abby Phillip for such a wonderful conversation. Thank
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you to Morgan Stanley, to Meta, and to the College Board.
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And thank you to every parent that came, played the games,
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answered the questions, and let us record it. You can
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watch this special episode on the Ground Control Parenting YouTube channel.
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You'll also find video from the shower itself, and you
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can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, and
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please share this one with a parent who could use
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some celebrating. I'm Carol Sutton Lewis, and this is Ground
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Control Parenting, supporting our parents and helping our children soar.
