Political Differences in a Cancel Culture: Are We Helping or Hurting Our Kids and Teens? with Dr. Amy Moore & Sandy Zamalis
About this Episode
On this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast, Dr. Amy and Sandy discuss the nuanced impacts of the election and cancel culture on our youth. We raise concerns about how some colleges are responding to election results, questioning whether these reactions might be hindering the development of resilience in students. By fostering respectful debates and exposing young people to multiple perspectives, we aim to nurture essential executive function skills. This episode is a call to action for parents and educators, encouraging them to guide children through political conversations without succumbing to the divisiveness that cancel culture breeds and without making assumptions that all youth are mourning the results. Join us in exploring some ways of navigating politics and media with kids. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or simply curious about the intersection of politics and youth development, this conversation may leave you with plenty to ponder.
About Dr. Amy Moore
Dr. Amy Moore is a cognitive psychologist at LearningRx in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the headquarters of the largest network of brain training centers in the world. She specializes in cognitive training and assessment for neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, brain injury, learning disabilities and age-related cognitive decline. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed medical and psychological journals and presented at conferences around the country. She has been a child development specialist, education administrator, and teacher of teachers with a PhD in psychology and a master’s degree in early childhood education. Dr. Amy has been working with struggling learners for 30+ years in public, private, and government organizations, so she knows a little about thinking and learning. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Modern Brain Journal, a TEDx Speaker, host of the Brainy Moms podcast, and a board-certified Christian counselor. Dr. Amy is married to Jeff Moore, a retired Air Force fighter pilot now working as a surgical nurse. They have three incredible sons (ages 19, 23, and 25) and a very mischievous but soft Siberian cat. Originally from South Carolina, Dr. Amy has called Colorado home since 2006.
Website: www.AmyMoorePhD.com
Watch her TEDx talk, Lessons Learned from Training 101,000 Brains
Read her research: https://www.learningrx.com/brain-training-research/
About Sandy Zamalis
Sandy is a brainy mom of 2 who loves co-hosting our show! She’s a Board Certified Cognitive Specialist and the owner of LearningRx Staunton-Harrisonburg in VA where she spends her days improving the lives of struggling students through brain training. Her diverse background includes being a USA Swimming Coach, probation officer, homeschooling moms, and small business owner in 3-D printing and scanning. Sandy has been married for 26 years and is her passion is helping families understand learning challenges so that children can find success and confidence. Find Sandy on TikTok @TheBrainTrainerLady.
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Mentioned on this Episode
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Dr. Amy Moore:
Hi smart moms and dads. Today on the Brainy Moms podcast, sandy and I share some concerns about how the recent election may be impacting kids, teens and college students, and we give you some tips for having meaningful conversations about it all. But we also share our frustration with cancel culture, the polarization of opinions and the response that some colleges had to the election results. We share our reaction to the news report the day after the election that colleges were offering milk, cookies, hot cocoa, coloring books, Legos, and other preschool activities to their students to help them deal with their disappointment over the election results. We don’t talk politics, but question that response, we talk about the divisiveness of politics, and that we could be better neighbors to one another even when we disagree. We owe that to our kids.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So the headlines this week following the election have included what some colleges are doing in response to the election results and their attempts to support students who are disappointed in the election results, are disappointed in the election results, and so those supports include about this response from some colleges and started to struggle with it.
Because what message does it send? Number one, that there is only one outcome that should be celebrated versus mourned. And number two, I think that the right response is to help our kids develop the ability to bounce back from disappointment by learning how to handle disappointment and not by giving them the day off to sit in their dorm rooms to continue being disappointed, without having the support of some ideas for bouncing back, was one thought that I had. But I wonder if those milk and cookies and hot chocolate offerings were given in a way that said, hey, for those of you celebrating right now, here’s some cool snacks for celebrating, and for those of you struggling with the results, right now, here’s some comfort food to make you feel better, which oh, by the way, I’m not sure is a great message either. And so I just, I don’t know, I just really struggled. These were Ivy league colleges and I just kind of struggled with their, their response to automatically assume that their students needed to be coddled in such a way.
Sandy Zamalis:
I was going to say it’s kind of a an infantilizing kind of approach yeah kind of approach and not assuming that these young adults can handle really tough battles. And that’s what a presidential election is. It’s a three, four month long, sometimes longer battle where, yes, you’re trying to. You know you may have a view one way or the other of who should win. You know you may have a view one way or the other of who should win, but there’s always someone’s going to lose. So learning how to process that is really, really important.
And I don’t know, I don’t know where that comes from. I don’t know where I. Maybe you have more insight as to kind of where that comes from culturally, but I don’t remember this being a thing when I was young. I don’t remember, you know. In fact, I tell my kids all the time like it doesn’t really matter in the long run who wins, because our country will continue to run, it’ll be a new president, a few things might change, but it’s not going to be. It’s not going to change your world much at all. It’s going to be. It’s not going to change your world much at all. It’s fun to be in the process. Really put some boundaries on that and give yourself some perspective and let’s talk about the issues as a family, just so that we can keep that open conversation.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity ahead of the election to talk about the issues as a family and kind of help kids learn to think through what policies they support and why, without us telling them what they should support and why or making assumptions right Like it, just giving them an opportunity to ask questions and to problem solve. I mean that’s a great way to develop executive function skills. By the way, I think that we’ve seen a trend in our culture over the last five, six years that we are going to you said the word infantilize, which was fascinating. We’ve seen a trend in our culture in the last five or six years that we cancel people who don’t think the same way, that we think that it’s okay for us to fall apart when we don’t get our way, and then this type of response from these colleges is saying, yeah, we’re going to let you fall apart because you didn’t get your way. We didn’t get our way either. That’s why we’re canceling classes and giving you milk and cookies and hot chocolate. So I don’t know.
I just really struggled with that. And then I saw this psychiatry resident has gone through medical school and is in their residency program, which means they’re not fully independent practicing physicians, yet right when they’re residents. So a psychiatry resident got on one of the national news networks and said it’s perfectly okay to cut your family members off if they don’t believe the same thing you believe about this election. You don’t have to spend the holidays with them, just cut them off.
And I thought how irresponsible is that? This is a time where we need to be teaching people that all voices matter, that all people and their opinions matter, even if it isn’t the same as ours, that we don’t stop loving our family members because they have a different view of politics that we have. And so I was really thankful to see a fully trained psychiatrist get on the next night and say wow, was this irresponsible? Do not listen to this woman. That was the worst relationship advice I’ve ever heard, and so I did appreciate that right that there was a counter to that continuation of saying I’m going to cancel you because you don’t agree with me.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
And inside your own family. I’m going to cancel you because you don’t agree with me.
Sandy Zamalis:
I wonder if it’s just. You know, we don’t grow up debating anymore. We used to when school have to debate. You had to prepare, and you had to prepare both sides of the equation, right. There was like a whole exercise that you had to go through. You had to prepare both sides of the equation, right. There was like a whole exercise that you had to go through where you would research a topic and then you would take the pro, the other person would take the con and then you would have to be have the flexibility to flip it so that you could take the other argument.
And I just wonder if I wish I could say that that happens, but I wish that was happening more and more, just to develop those critical thinking skills. Because I think it’s less about again, about the election and I’m sure there might be people listening that think we’re definitely leaning one way or the other. But I have a very strong belief in not falling into the cult of personality of anything, whether it be politicians or rock stars or anyone. You could put anything in this category football. I just have a. That’s not my thing, because you could easily say that the world series that just happened, that so much hype would be going into the Yankees winning that when I think it was the Dodgers who won that. That could cause people to need to mourn that. Well, that yes, but the morning should be quick, like we’re constantly in a day-to-day battle of conflict where sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, so you have to be willing and able to process that you don’t win all the time.
Dr. Amy Moore:
And so you have to, you have to have skills for dealing with disappointment. When you’re in business and you’re negotiating or you’re brainstorming or you’re working with a team. You’re not always going to agree with everyone that you’re negotiating with or that you’re on a team with, and so you’re going to be disappointed sometimes if your idea isn’t the idea that’s chosen, and so be disappointed for a few minutes and then get to work. Right, because it’s your job, and the same thing with being in college right now. Right, be disappointed if the person that you wanted to get elected did not get elected, and then go to class. Because, if you look at the way the American government system works, the president is not a king or a queen, right, and so we have multiple aspects of government. That is, a built-in system of checks and balances, and so no one ruler can get away with whatever they want. We have a system of checks and balances, and so the advice that you gave your kids, the changes that you’ll see, are pretty nuanced from president to president.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah, and it takes. It just takes time. Nothing ever happens overnight like ever, which is why we as a people get frustrated, right, Because no one can ever fix whatever ill that we’re trying to fix in a short amount of time. It always takes time and it always takes cooperation and it always takes our multiple systems of government to to make things better or or to mess something up. We’re constantly growing and learning. That way, I understand what they did from that, what the Ivy league colleges did, and that they were trying to maybe focus on empathy and just really letting the students have their feelings and their moment. But let’s talk about how that kind of dodges the other part of the conversation, in that you can have empathy but you also need to focus on solutions.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, so I think that this is a bigger issue than just an election and I think that it goes to helping kids and teens and college students develop the ability to see things from multiple angles. Number one, like you were just talking about, how did have to learn debate skills? Right, we did have to learn the pros and the cons of each thing growing up, and so I don’t know if they still do that in high school, but they still ought to be doing that in colleges. But to be able to sit down with someone who doesn’t have the same opinion as you or the same beliefs as you, or the same, or they don’t support the same policies, and say I would love to know more about why you support this policy and have that conversation in a calm, respectful way, and to be able to ask additional questions about it in a calm, respectful way. Because when we adopt this mindset of curiosity and not an accusatory mindset, that just helps us all learn and we need to get along.
Right, we don’t have to agree with each other to get along with one another, but to be able to sit down and say I want to hear more about why you believe that, who knows, you may change your mind. But even if you don’t and that’s not the purpose of it the purpose of it is to be able to understand the other person and the other belief system a lot better, and I think that’s not the purpose of it. The purpose of it is to be able to understand the other person and the other belief system a lot better, and I think that’s being a good neighbor. I think that’s loving your neighbor is to say hey, I don’t have to agree with you, to respect you and to love you, but I would love to understand you more.
Sandy Zamalis:
I think the other issue is that, in trying to create a safe environment or safe space, what they probably did was trip over that a little bit, and that it relegated people to be alone, I think, instead of being in community give the kids a day off.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Maybe some of them were together and went and did something fun and I hope they did but some of them might have just stayed in their dorm room and mourned, and that that doesn’t help you heal.
Sandy Zamalis:
You need community.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, absolutely. So I was a little disappointed in that response, Um for sure, Um and disappointed in the assumption that all people were disappointed.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah, what about for those? Maybe dealing with this at home with teenagers who are a little more politically savvy, and or even young kids who’ve been watching the news that mom and dad have been watching? How should we approach this with kids, in terms of talking about politics at home, but also again trying to leave the door open for open dialogue?
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, so I think that we need to limit how much news it stays on the television in the living room. I think that to hear the continued vitriol that’s being spewed at the opposite side, hear all of the commentary and there is no commentary on the news today that is not skewed to one side or the other. That’s the point of it being commentary. There’s no longer the objective news reporting that we saw in the 70s and 80s, right, when there were very few commentators. In the 80s, and even in the 90s, right, we had a few late night commentators, but now all news is basically commentating on the national networks. And so I think we have to be really careful that we don’t leave the television on 24-7 listening to the commentating, because we’ll have the tendency to only have the common commentary that supports our beliefs.
Right, I don’t leave a different news channel on because I don’t want to hear another side, right? That is human nature that I want to hear what supports my beliefs, and so I think we have to be really careful not to let that run. And so I think we need to make sure that we are getting our news from a reliable source so that we can talk about the facts. But I think this is a great opportunity for us to have conversations with our kids about what disappointment looks like, about what it looks like to live in a society where people do believe different things. And that’s OK, and that’s the beauty of America, right, that we are allowed to vote based on what policies we think are going to create a world that we want to live in.
Sandy Zamalis:
I think I read with my kids a book by Neil Postman and I cannot remember the title of the book to save myself right at the moment.
Sandy Zamalis:
We’ll put that in the show notes.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah, it’s by Neil Postman, but it talked about this problem with just our ongoing obsession with national news, and this was an eighties book, so at the time it’s not what it is now with the internet and everything, but it was really a reminder to really focus local, that when you’re at home with your family and your kids, your biggest impact is local your local elections, volunteering locally because those are the things you can actually help with that.
It actually, you know, his argument was that it puts us into a mental lockdown space when we’re bombarded with things that are national or global because we can do nothing about those, and so we just get that deer in the headlights or driving by a, and so we just get that deer in the headlights or driving by a wreck, like we just get this voyeuristic kind of viewpoint without actually being able to have empathy and care like we should. If we were focused locally and I think in our family we moved around a lot, but that has always been a burden in the back of my mind is to really try to make it more of a local discussion, because you, we want to be good neighbors. You mentioned it a little bit ago. We want to be good neighbors. So if we are helping and volunteering locally, if we are engaged locally, we are helping to create the world we want to see.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, I love that because especially because you have to be 18 to vote, but you don’t have to be 18 to care, and so to have an opinion about what it looks like for your school board or what it looks like for one mayor versus the other, right, how is that going to impact your city? Or what can you actually be doing to help your city? There’s no age limit on just getting involved. So I just I love that. That. It goes from a bird’s eye view nationally to your backyard, and then it’s hard for younger kids, especially, to think abstractly, right, so they can’t think about, well, what does that really mean? What they hear is their friend’s parents saying something bad about the presidential candidate that they don’t want. But they can’t imagine how that would impact them day to day. But they could imagine hey, what would it look like if this new mayor made our community safer because they want to add a hundred more police officers to our force? Right, that’s something that they can quantify and imagine.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah, how can we help our kids navigate the internet and finding reputable sources? Because facts are harder and harder to decipher, I think in today’s age.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Sure, and I like to recommend that you get your information from a gov. website.
That is going to be the purest form of political information on the internet, but it’s not going to be without a little bit of skew either, and so that’s why I think it’s important then to look at both sides, because then that helps you say this makes sense, but this doesn’t.
So I wonder what’s happening here. So, even though, just recognize that gov websites will probably have a little bit of skew as well, depending on who wrote the information on the site, but to stay off sites like Wikipedia, because those are not scientific sources and so they’re a little skewed. But again, looking at both sides of the argument and encouraging your kids to form their own opinions and their own arguments, and asking you like being open to having a conversation about why you support what you support, but without saying I think you should believe this too. Yeah, the reality is we do tend to adopt our parents’ political views, and so then it isn’t until we go to college or even later that we start deconstructing that, to say, ok, is this really what I believe? And so as parents, maybe we don’t encourage the adoption of our views, just the encourage of just encouraging them to listen to our views, but to also investigate what other people believe too, in a respectful, caring, loving way.
Sandy Zamalis:
And I think for especially for listeners that Dr Amy, you and I both come from a Christian worldview just also really reiterating to your kids that if you are in a Christian home, that you believe that Jesus is in control of all things, it is not in the hands of men. So, again, falling into those cult of personalities will always lead to destruction. We really just need to keep our eye on Jesus and let it all fall where it needs to fall.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, absolutely. And to know that if you are from a Christian family, then you do know that we are told to pray for all rulers, right, not just the ones that we agree with. And so to know that we should be praying, no matter who is in charge right, that their rule is godly and God honoring. Right. That they do have clarity and wisdom and discernment in the choices that they make, even if that is not who we voted into office right, we still are called to continue to pray for them because they are the authority over our country, but Jesus is the ultimate authority and we can have hope in that, even in our moments of despair. That, then, the human that we voted into office or didn’t vote into office isn’t who we agree with or not.
Sandy Zamalis:
Yeah, I think that’s that’s what gets me through things like elections. It’s just I do my part, I participate in my civic duty and then I go about doing as much as I can to make the world a better space in the space that I occupy, and that’s all I can have control over. And I want to espouse that to my kids as well that you can only control what you can control.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Absolutely All right. So before we sign off, we do need to read a word from our sponsor.
Sandy Zamalis:
Did you know that more than 6 million children in America have been diagnosed with ADHD? Many of them struggle in school because of their condition? What if I told you that poor attention may not be the primary cause of their struggles? In this study with more than 5,000 people with ADHD, researchers found that working memory, long-term memory and processing speed skills were less efficient than attention skills, so an intervention that only targets attention might miss the opportunity to work on those other skills. We need to think and learn. Learningrx can help you identify which skills may be keeping your child from performing their best. In fact, the team at LearningRx has worked with more than 125,000 children and adults who wanted to think and perform better. Help get your child on the path to a brighter and more confident future, too. Give LearningRx a call at 866-BRAIN-01, visit LearningRxcom or head to our show notes for information and some free resources.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I love when you mentioned that ADHD study, because that’s my study and it was a fascinating finding that working memory, long-term memory and processing speed were more deficient than attention and ADHD.
Sandy Zamalis:
So I highlight it often.
Dr. Amy Moore:
It’s a great study with a great graph, so for listeners, we’ll put a link to that study in our show notes too, so you can see that. All right, that is all today. If you liked our show, we would love it If you would share it with someone else who might need the advice that we talk about or we share. We would love it if you would leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and you can find us on social media at the Brainy Moms and online at thebrainymomscom. You can find Sandy at the Brain Trainer Lady on TikTok and you can follow me on my brand new Instagram account. Dr Amy Says Grace, that’s all the smart stuff we have for you today. Catch you next time.