Make Believe Doesn't Have To Be A Lie

Just a note before we start. In this episode, we get into magic and fantasy, and we don't want to give anything away to your kids who might be listening with you. So please enjoy this one on your own.

Oliver Jeffers. I know that you know this name, just like I know this name from so many of his amazing books.

You know, with adult books, novels and whatnot, you tend to only read them once. But with picture books, they are repeat appearances. So hopefully you're not bored of me by now.

The conversation I have today with Oliver is one that I think is going to really touch you, or I can tell you, it really, really deeply touched me. And what I promise you is that by the end of this conversation, you'll.

Have new ways to connect to your kid and new ways to reconnect to yourself. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is good inside.

Maybe we can start. I don't know, we can rewind a little bit. I'd love to hear a little bit about what you were like as a kid.

I think I was short as a kid. I was, I think, yeah, sort of on the quieter side. Playful, mischievous. I was definitely much more interested in digging holes, climbing trees, playing football in the street than I was even in really in making art or. Certainly I was not a big bookworm until really. Until I went to college. And maybe a healthy disrespect for authority, but whenever you had to read a book, it felt like homework. It felt like a chore. Whereas I heard once somebody say that education is what somebody else does to you, but learning is what you do to yourself. So suddenly, whenever I wanted to read, it changed everything.

But it sounds like there was a lot of learning then and digging holes and, you know, all the other things.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, completely. A lot of learning, but just not, you know, sort of on my terms. And my dad is a teacher, and he, you know, he's always said that he's always thought that the Western education system is fundamentally broken, that we're teaching kids how to pass exams more than anything else. You know, the two most difficult things a human being ever learns to do is how to walk and how to talk. And on day one of school, you're taught to sit down and shut up. He says that you only really need to teach human beings two things, curiosity and empathy. And I think the curiosity is there naturally, and it's just a matter of supporting that, encouraging that. Oh, sorry, you know what? I'm gonna turn all my things to do not disturb.

Curiosity, empathy, and turning off notifications yes, that's exactly right. Three things. Three things. That's what he always said. Your wise father, were you always an imaginative person? Was that part of your explorations?

Yeah, I think so. The arts runs in my family, certainly in my mother's side of the family and not. My great grandfather was a published poet. One of my uncles is a doct documentary filmmaker. Another was like a sculptor, carpenter. Another was, I don't know really what he was like a kind of a true like artisan or a bum as other people called him. Never really had a job. Was always just kind of like doing weird things. In one of my books, Once upon an Alphabet is my. I work a lot with my older brother. He does the design for a lot of the books. But we dedicated it to our dad and we said, you know, to dad, thanks for never making us get a real job. So we were encouraged. We showed interest and enthusiasm in this direction and we were encouraged.

I wanna go back to those two words you said, curiosity and empathy. I mean those are two words I think about a ton also. Curiosity especially. I feel like curiosity kind of leads to empathy almost naturally because. Right, but tell me how you see it.

Well, yes and no. I mean, I think, you know, curiosity can be very self indulgent and empathy I think is remembering that you're not the only person alive. So there's like an outwardness to that. Whereas curiosity doesn't necessarily imply outwardness. You know, I think all children are curious when people ask me when started becoming an artist and I tend to answer them with a question which is, well, when did you stop? You know, because all kids make art, you know, I think at a certain point we just become self aware, you know, and. Whereas kids are making art and they don't really care what people think or feel about it. They're just. It's pure self exploration. And there's something wonderful about that. The not thinking that it has to look a certain way, you know, and the like. A lot of when I was taught art, it just, it confused me because, you know, you're given a. Especially in secondary school, you're given a grade, you're given a mark, you know, told to do an observational drawing of. I don't whatever, like a pineapple and a shoe. And then you're given a percentage on how much it looks like that. But that's not the point of art at all. And you know, that discouraged a lot of people. The point of art is not to make something look exactly like it's supposed to look. Sure, that's, you know, there's a certain skill in craft and extremely figurative work. But often the more interesting art is the things that don't really look like the thing that they're supposed to look like, but there's an energy there and it's a communication of feelings. So I can't even remember what the question is at this point.

No, we started with curiosity, but I think that, yeah, that at some point art or play. Right, yeah.

We were talking about education there as well. And in Scandinavia they don't start teaching kids how to read and write until they're much, much older because it is, it's about that learning through play and that exploration. And then those K tend to, you know, obviously at the age of 8 or 9 be way, way behind in terms of western schools. But by the time they're 12, they're way ahead. It is that, that sense of enjoyment about it and rather than the siloed effect of well, this is this discipline and this is this discipline. But in real life it's doesn't work like that. Everything is connected to everything else.

But it makes me think about in general, things that, you know, can be measured or named on the surface versus like trusting a process that's inside. Right?

And yes, absolutely. But there is a process too in learning how to we become visually literate before we become actually literate. You learn how to read a room, you learn how to read emotions in a face, you learn how to read a picture way before you learn how to recognize letterforms and words. But yet that's kind of ignored, I think an awful lot. And art, even in curriculums, in education especially as you get older, drops away. And it's sort of seen as a thing to do if you're not really good at anything else. And I think that's such a pity because I think art is probably the most important thing that can be taught.

Okay, So I want to make a leap, but maybe it's not even that much of a leap because I think about the words curiosity, even empathy, wondering. And then I think about this word, magic. How do you think about magic and do you believe in it?

Yes, in the sense that I don't think, not Harry Potter style wizardry or anything like that, but I think there is magic. And it's that sort of sense of suspension of disbelief where we're story driven creatures, we're a storytelling species. And I think, and this came up in a fine art show that I had in New York a couple of years ago, I was like, I think that people are no more than a collection of stories. The stories that you're told, the stories that you tell, and the stories that are told about you and the ones that you tell, you can control. You can't control the stories that you're told, and you can't control the stories that are told about you, but you can absolutely control the story that you tell the world and that you tell yourself. And I think that is the magic falls into there somewhere. It's this sense of belief, of feeling more than anything else. The filter that you can put on anything can change absolutely how you feel about something. The perspective that you choose to place on it ultimately can flip anything on its head. And I think I've come up with an example. I suppose I'll test it with you. Just imagine right now. Just close your eyes. Imagine right now it is Christmas Day right now. Right? Really think about that for a second. Everything feels slightly different, right? It's like it's not what it should be. It's like, you know, there's a different feeling about that. Like you're about to have your dinner or you have. Or it's about family. Christmas Day feels different because we've been brought up understanding that it's different. And if you feel like that right now for a second, imagine the power that you have. If you realize you can flip that. That perspective and that lens at any point.

To get to that feeling.

Not necessarily that feeling, but any feeling. Like you choose how you feel.

Hmm. Well, I guess I feel not in agreement personally with that. But you're saying our framework, the lens.

We have our framework and the lens that you have and the story that you tell. There's the Viktor Frankl, you know, that philosopher, he was an Auschwitz survivor, and he realized that his captors could take away his dignity, his possessions, his family, his health, even his life. But the one thing that they could not take away was how he felt about it, how he chose to react to it. And he says all the power in the world lives in between the moment of action and reaction, for sure.

Between urge and behavior. That's where we're human. You know, I'm thinking about those three stories you said. The stories we're told, the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories that are told about us.

Right.

But, you know, I think about the moments that happen with my kids, with certain books, definitely with your books. And I think there's this other category of stories. Sometimes we need to tell different stories about ourselves. I was just thinking about how I think in some ways, like your stories. Right. These books, these stories.

Yeah.

They actually activate different parts of ourselves so we can kind of expand the stories we tell about ourselves. Like your stories add such magic and wonder and curiosity.

Right.

Which I think a lot of parents in our serious lives have trouble maintaining in ourselves and therefore have trouble kind of maintaining in our kids. Right.

Without question. And, you know, I've always thought there's that very famous Oscar Wilde quote, be yourself everybody else has taken. Right. But I think somebody else said it better, which is Cher, and she said, all of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than the others. I think that the act of parenting in that sense is that we tend to sort of use parenthood as an attempt at a rewrite of our own lives by trying to ensure our kids don't make the same mistakes that we do. And almost by doing that, you embrace those mistakes all over again.

Yeah.

So it's by actively walking away from something you use that becomes a linchpin, a milestone in your life, which means it exists, as opposed to just creating this new human being as a different person than you. And that milestone might not even need to exist.

Yes. To all of that. And how do you. I don't know if the right question is, how do you feel parents can foster imagination? Or how can parents not shut down imagination if it's there to begin with in their kids?

Do you know, my older brother has got two kids that are much older than mine, and he gave me one piece of advice. He was like, listen to the small stuff. Listen to the small stuff. And if they trust you with the small stuff, they'll tell you the big stuff. And that basically means you don't have to bring imagination to your kid. You just have to make space to hear it when they have it naturally, because they will. You just gotta make time to listen to that and give them a respect to hear that.

Yeah. A lot of parents have a lot of trouble navigating make believe. Right.

Because they're trying to make it up and they've lost that curiosity and that imagination. Whereas they don't need to make it up. They just need to let the kids do it and be willing to play along. That doesn't need to be a parent driven thing. That can and should be a child driven thing. But that means being ready to move. You know, it was like, say it doesn't suit you, but your kid is kind of into a game. That means that you gotta stop and pay attention as opposed to right now, I'm gonna play with My kid. Right. What game can we play?

I like to try to make things as concrete as possible because I know our listeners as they're listening to this. I know this is reson.

Nothing is concrete.

Right.

But what would you. I mean, I know there's a parent who's thinking, yeah, like parents feel really bad often that play is hard for.

Them because they are self aware. They feel like I'm pretending. This feels fake to me. And they lost something a long time ago. And I think just in the act of doing long enough, the exposure to it, you'll remember yourself. You'll remember yourself of old and you know.

Interesting. I'm just thinking about something happened the other day with my daughter who was like barking.

She was just like, she likes to.

Play, dog play, you know, cat. She just embodies them. And I wasn't sure exactly what to do. And I kind of just paused. Even though part of me was like, I don't want to do this. So annoying. Right. But I just kind of paused and she told me, you're a big dog. I'm a little dog. You're a big dog.

Right.

And I really mean this. Even though it feels almost self conscious saying it. Like I just leaned in to barking.

Yeah, I did. You just gotta drop a gear and go for it.

Yeah, I did. And it wasn't natural. Cause I have. I mean, I have a playful side for sure still that's alive.

But I feel like I was in.

The middle of like writing an email, you know, I was like in my like adult work mode. And it was like we had this connected conversation through barking that no words could have substituted for. It was really powerful.

That's great. Cause you know, I would say that to the parents who have first that feel uncomfortable playing is that you used to do it.

Yeah.

Right.

We can't wait till we're comfortable. Don't wait till you're just. Just lean in.

Just. And. And were you as uncomfortable at the end of that play as you were at the start?

Not at all. And like my email, my email, it mattered less at the end. Like obviously I figured out how to write the email after.

Can you even remember what the email was for?

No, I've no. I have no fucking idea right now what the email was about.

But you will remember that barking conversation probably for decades to come and going.

Back to our kids and how I think about things a lot in terms of wiring. Right. I don't know if my daughter will still bark when she's 30. Right. If she wants to. I Hope she does. But what she's really learning is I can continue to have access to this playful, imaginative part of myself.

Yeah, I do think that it's difficult for parents who have busy lives, busy careers and being a parent, and I've given a lot of thought to this, we have created an unachievable expectation for ourselves. There's no saying that it takes a village to raise a child. You know why they say that? Because it does. And we've really discovered that moving back from Brooklyn to Belfast, where my family is and where my wife's family is, we're like, oh yeah, this shit doesn't need to be this hard. I think that this idea of a nuclear family who are expected to do everything, I think it's especially tough on young mothers who have ambitions because it's up to them to both, almost single handedly, no offense to dads out there, raise a family with all the important stuff and, you know, turn out and be present for work and be ambitious and remain stylish and on point and relevant. And that's kind of an impossible task for sure. Whereas years ago it was like, there's the neighbor or there's my sister, there's my mother or my grandmother. And it's like it takes abilities to raise a child. And I think this feeds into this larger conversation about the slow breakdown of community that has been happening for the last, really 70 years, ever since the end of World War II, where it's, it's, you know, it's sort of, it's all about, this is like you're all important but with that it's, it's kind of, we've forgotten the importance of community.

Yeah, well, that's deep, you know, deeply touches like honestly my mission around. You know, first of all, changing this idea of motherhood is martyrdom. Motherhood is like doing it all seamlessly, perfectly, with an Instagram photo. Taboo.

Nobody is doing that and nobody is happy about doing that, even if they seem like they are. It's, I think we've created an atmosphere where it's, it's a sign of weakness to ask for help. And I, I think that's not okay.

And yet we can't beat the right, the truth that humans, humans need each other. It's just, you can't be that we do.

So.

Okay, so I have some other thoughts at this time of year related to magic and imagination, things like the tooth fairy and Santa. I don't know if you're asked about this, but I'm asked about this often.

Right I'm not actually interesting.

Well, good. I'm the first one in. I'm gonna get Oliver Jeffers thoughts on, you know, the Tooth Fairy and Santa. Santa, you heard it here first. So how do you think about. Let's take Santa. How do you think about Santa as related to magic? That space, that belief of your feelings more than anything else.

Yeah. The inner child of me. I still remember that sense of magic about it all. That feeling that was reignited when we had kids. As a parent, I put out on Twitter once, I was like, okay, now what am I supposed to do for bribery? Leverage for the next 12 months or 11 months once Christmas is over. I think my thoughts are basically a combination of both those answers. We came to absolutely love Thanksgiving when we moved to the States and I almost prefer it now because it's. I think there's a lot of pressure around Christmas as a parent, as an adult. It's the commercialization of it. It's the buildup, it's the expected to kind of do everything and be at every party and be everywhere and keep your family happy. But there are little, you know, there's beautiful moments within that. But with Thanksgiving, it's not about buying stuff. It's not even about religion or a made up person or a made up story about a possibly once real existing person. It is just simply about. And now the origins of it are, I think, you know, don't exactly hold up to scrutiny. But the feeling of it now is get together with food and family and just be grateful. And so there's something that, there's something nice in that. But I think, you know, the Tooth Fairy, even Easter Bunny, the magic is like that sense of do you know what it is? It actually refers back to a question you were asking earlier. It's an adult involved in a child's game. Is that why I'm gonna pretend with you that this is real? And so the children really lean into it because you're actually acting like it's happening.

Ooh, I wanna slow down on that. I think that's really poignant. It's interesting. Part of the magic of Santa, of the Easter Bunny, of the Tooth Fairy for kids might be that we finally join in the magic of something that they're interested in. And so the lore, the interest, the obsession in a way. Right. It's highlighted by the fact that we're not doing that more often, you know, with more day to day topics. Interesting. I think that's really, that's a really.

Powerful framework, you know, and I'm Not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination. I kind of joke that I have three children and my work is one of them. And I'm not gonna. That oftentimes my favorite child is my work. And I'm not gonna pretend that, like, I'm too busy to do that right now, and I often am, but I think it's. I catch myself often enough to make it worthwhile. It was like, you know, this, okay, I can drop this for a minute or 10 minutes and go play football in the garden or go be the tickle monster, you know, whatever it is. And they never want it to end, but they get it that I gotta go again. But the fact that I'm willing enough to do it, I'd say half of the time, appeases them, I think.

Yeah. So I think there's nuance to my question. So it's a seemingly simple question, but I know there's nuance here. Do your kids believe in Santa? Do they believe in the tooth fairy?

Yeah, completely. Yes. Actually, our son kind of threw up an interesting moral conundrum because he was like, I don't want to put my tooth under my pillow for the money because I want to hold onto my tooth. And we're like, dude, we're going to hold onto it anyway. But I didn't want to break the spell. So we're like, why don't you write a note explaining that to the tooth fairy and see what happens? And so, you know, he did, and he got to keep the tooth and he got the money, which he went and bought candy with.

Of course he did. He's smart. Sounds like a smart kid. So for parents who might say, what's the difference between allowing a kid to maintain a magical belief and lying, how do you think about those?

Well, I think, you know, truth is a very interesting topic because a truth for you might not be the same as truth for me. I don't think there actually is such a thing as an objective truth. So it depends on how you define lying. And I think we give different versions of ourselves to different people. Does that mean that we are lying? I don't think it. I don't think it is. I think you could call it lying if you're being a super literal, you know, very didactic adult. But you could look at it as another way, is that you're playing.

Yeah.

And I guess, you know, playing is one big lie if you want to frame it like that. My books are one big lie. I actually do make a joke out of that that you Know, people ask me where I get my ideas from and I was like. And I sort of start off pretending that they're all true stories and then I say, no, I'm not a joke, and I make them up, which means I lie professionally to children.

And we're all, we're all better for it. So I appreciate, appreciate your efforts there. No, but, but I think that that matters because it's true. Like a parent who would say, okay, I'm dressing up as a construction worker and, you know, joining in my child's construction scene, I don't know if that parent struggles after being like, I really lied to my kid. I need to make sure they know I'm not a construction worker, if in fact they're not. But, but something happens where. And look, and I think, I think I appreciate this in parents, especially parents who say, like, I grew up in a family where there was such dishonesty, where I look back and I felt so gaslit my whole life that they're especially sensitive to wanting to be really direct and honest with their kid and play and thinking about Santa and Tooth Fairy and make believe and imagination. All of them is play, though, gives us that space in between truth and lying.

And I think, you know, like, maybe by the lack of play, you're trying to prepare your children for the cold, brutal world that it is. But in a way, I think that's kind of an easy way out. Because like, if you want to prepare them for the cold, brute world that it is, have a meaningful conversation with them about the things that are actually happening in the world as opposed to just going, no, life's shit, everybody's mean to each other. You're gonna get taken advantage of. You know, it's like, this is not true. I think that's an easy way out. As opposed to, why don't you play? And then also explain, well, this is why there's conflict happening right now, or this is why we're talking about equality right now. You know, it's like, if you want to do it that way, I think you gotta sort of. It's a double edged sword. I always like what Neil Gaiman kind of said about, you know, why kids embrace his books, which are sort of dark and macabre, and why kids love Roald Dahl stories. It's because the children are willing to go to frightening places because they know it's make believe and it's good, almost emotional practice for the real world. So, yeah, I think that it's more important to play and have a real conversation than it is to just sort of explain that this is not true.

I feel the same way about a lot of Robert Munsch books where kids just say offensive things and they're nasty to other kids. And my kids love those books cause it actually allows them, you know, it normalizes that and it allows them to like play around with those ideas that are on kids minds anyway. Yep. Any, any last thoughts on topics like magic, imagination, fantasy play? You know, you've so you have so much of value to share.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, magic, imagination, fantasy play, those have been real human emotions for, for tens of thousands of years. Whereas actually the idea of childhood is relatively new. You know, children's books have only really existed for the last 200 years maximum. And you know, when you look into the reasons of that, it's actually kind of sad because children just used not live long enough for parents to form relationships with them. So everything is getting better, you know, no matter how broken you feel that the world is. But leaning into that magic and that curiosity and the mysteriousness is like that's life and that. But it feeds back into the stories that you're telling yourself and that you tell the world. It doesn't have to be just limited to parenthood and childhood. It's like it's. You as a human being should embrace all of those things. It's like, you know, do we believe in ghosts? There's a fascination and a horror about those. And you know, I had a ghost book come out last Halloween. And really thinking about why people are both terrified and fascinated by ghosts is a very, very human reason that I think we're terrified because we don't like to not understand something. But we're fascinated because we also don't like the idea that something has to just. We don't understand everything. We don't have the answers for everything. That's where magic and mystery and curiosity really flourish. And I guess it's sort of understanding that it's all a story. Everything that we know is a story that we've told ourselves.

Well, I mean this. I feel like I could talk to you forever and you've so many, I think really important ideas that you share so succinctly and so powerfully. So thank you.

My pleasure.

And I appreciate this conversation. I really appreciate, you know, you, you putting so many amazing, provocative, important things into the world. So thank you.

Thank you. And I hope you enjoy the next time you play big dog with your daughter.

It will probably be later today. I will, I'll lean in Very good. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me at Podcast. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Natt and Kristin Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.