PREMIUM: "How to Raise an Awesome Kid (and be an Awesome Grown-Up)" with Dr Billy Garvey
Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps
Josh Szeps
4.5 • 905 Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's one of the most persistent, perplexing and provocative questions to plague our culture: What explains the explosion in ADHD, anxiety and autism in kids? Is it too much Instagram? Not enough Ritalin? Or are one-of-a-kind kids being failed by a one-size-fits-all model of schooling and parenting?
Dr Billy Garvey is one of Australia's leading developmental paediatricians. He's a senior specialist at one of Australia's largest university paediatric hospitals, where he works with kids struggling with behavioural issues just like he did. His clinic has a waiting list that's years-long.
Billy and Josh debate masculinity, permissive parenting, rigid schools, the over-diagnosis of mental "diseases" in kids, and whether kids are coddled these days. Josh wants to understand why the Greatest Generation was able to win WWII without the high rates of clinical anxiety and depression that supposedly afflict today's snowflakes. Billy says that's exactly the wrong way to look at it.
Billy also hosts the #1 parenting podcast in Australia, Pop Culture Parenting, and is the founder of Guiding Growing Minds, a social enterprise that helps children to live meaningful lives. His book is Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child’s Mental Health.
Josh walked out of this conversation feeling like he'd received a bracing, mind-expanding free therapy session. Unleash your inner twelve-year-old and take a seat.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. I loved this conversation. |
| 0:09.7 | It's about one of the most persistent, perplexing and provocative questions to plague our modern culture. |
| 0:17.4 | What explains the explosion in ADHD and anxiety and autism in kids? |
| 0:23.6 | Is it too much Instagram? |
| 0:25.7 | Is it not enough Ritalin? |
| 0:27.9 | Or is it that one-of-a-kind children are being failed by a one-size-fits-all idea |
| 0:35.2 | about what schools should be like and what parenting should be like. |
| 0:38.9 | Today's guest, Dr. Billy Garvey, is a repeat guest. I love the guy. He's one of Australia's |
| 0:43.1 | leading developmental pediatricians. He's a senior specialist who works in his clinic with kids |
| 0:49.2 | who struggled with behavioral issues, which he also had as a kid. And we talk about his background. |
| 0:54.0 | We talk about my background. We talk about |
| 0:54.4 | my background. He almost sort of gives me a therapy session here as if I was a 12-year-old child, |
| 0:59.0 | and I found it really, really useful. The waiting list to see him at his clinic is literally |
| 1:03.9 | years long. That's how esteemed he is. And we talk about not just what it's like to be a kid, |
| 1:09.6 | but I mean, what it means to be a man, |
| 1:11.5 | our visions of masculinity, of sucking things up, of just making do. |
| 1:16.2 | We talk about permissive parenting fads versus authoritarian parenting, about rigid schooling, |
| 1:22.7 | about the overdiagnosis of mental diseases in kids and where the children are actually coddled these days. |
| 1:29.6 | His research bumps up against some of my intuitions about parenting, which is why I love it so |
| 1:35.0 | much because we can respectfully sort of dig into the areas in which I sort of smell like |
| 1:39.3 | he must be wrong, but I know that because he's such an expert, he is right. |
| 1:44.2 | My sense, like I think a lot of people have, is, well, if the greatest generation were able to win World War II and they didn't have high rates of anxiety and depression as children, what's going on with our snowflakes today? |
... |
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