Fostering Independence in the Next Generation: Nicole Runyon on the Ben Tracy Podcast
On the most recent episode of The Ben Tracy Podcast, I sat down with Nicole Runyon. She is a psychotherapist, parent coach, and author of the new book Free to Fly: The Secret to Fostering Independence in the Next Generation. Nicole made the bold decision to leave her private practice working with kids to instead focus on helping their parents.
What We Discussed
We covered a lot in this episode, including technology’s impact on youth mental health, permissive parenting, and what each of us has observed working with kids and parents in the digital age.
Nicole On Why She Quit Working with Kids to Coach Their Parents
"I started noticing a pattern in my practice around 2014, 2015—right when smart devices started showing up for younger kids, especially in middle school. I was seeing adolescent girls coming in after their first suicide attempt, and what stood out was that most of them had no known trauma history. In my training, that didn’t make sense. But the one thing that had changed was tech. They were being exposed to social media for the first time with no boundaries, and schools were starting to allow phones during the day.
Over time, especially through COVID, I saw mental health issues increase even more, along with a rise in permissive parenting. Parents were keeping kids comfortable instead of helping them grow. The combination of tech and parenting was creating so much dysfunction that I finally decided I couldn’t just keep diagnosing kids. I needed to address what was actually happening to their development."
On Looking Beyond the Diagnosis
“Seventy percent of the kids I saw didn’t need therapy. Their parents needed coaching. What tends to happen is when a kid is reacting to their environment, and it’s really the parents who need to change, that kid internalizes that something is wrong with them.
They get attached to the diagnosis, ‘I have anxiety, I can’t go to school,’ or ‘I can’t finish my homework, ’ instead of learning how to work through those feelings. And then they ruminate. They talk about their feelings, they think about their feelings, but no action is being taken.
We will never have enough therapists. We will never have enough treatment facilities. And nor should we. I don’t want to see a mental health center on every corner like we do urgent care. The answer isn’t diagnosing more kids. It’s addressing what tech is doing to their development and what permissive parenting is doing to their resilience.”
Saying No Is Love When It Comes to Technology
“Taking the phone away will cause conflict. But it’s temporary. When we know better, we do better. Start by apologizing. Say, ‘I brought something into our home that I didn’t understand. Now I do. And we’re making a change.’
Then fill them up in the real world. Because what happened while they were on the device is they didn’t get what they needed in their development. However old they were when they got the phone, something important got disrupted. So now your job is to rebuild it. Give them more physical movement, more connection, more sunlight, more eye contact, more boundaries. And stay consistent.
Because saying no is love. It’s telling your kid, ‘I love you enough to do the hard thing. Even when you’re mad at me. Even when it’s uncomfortable. I’m doing this because I care too much not to.’”
On the Need for Parents to Lead
“Forty-two percent of Gen Z have a mental health diagnosis. And we’re still trying to make sure our kids aren’t the only ones without social media. But this is not the time to follow. It’s the time to lead.
And leaders have to do hard things. They have to be willing to make sacrifices and go against the grain for the sake of their kids’ future. I always say, if you’re the parent who’s going to say no, then you’re the parent who’s taking on the extra challenge of helping your child learn to socialize in the real world, even when everyone else is doing it online.
That’s leadership. That’s love. And no matter how uncomfortable it is in the short term, it’s what gives our kids the strength and resilience they’re missing right now.”
