Sam Kelly describes a framework for raising kids who see what needs doing and do it, without being told.
Sam Kelly didn't set out to build a parenting framework. She was standing at the kitchen counter one Friday night, watching her kids clear out without a second thought, and something in her broke. She'd spent a year trying to teach her husband the mental load by talking him through it. That night, she realized talking wasn't the lesson. The chore chart was.
Out of that moment came Notice and Do: a framework for raising kids who see what needs doing and do it, without being told. Sam built it for her three kids, all with ADHD, and in her new book she stress-tests it against the age where most parenting advice quietly gives up: the teen years.
In this conversation, Sam and Dr. Sheryl get specific. What a ten or fifteen minute walkthrough of a shared bathroom actually sounds like with a teenager. Why screens and phone access work better as a built-in expectation than a bribe. When it's fair to pay a kid for a task, and when paying them undermines the entire point. What the "Big Three" looks like in Sam's own house, with kids aged fourteen, twelve, and nine, and how the bar moves as a kid gets older. And why Sam teaches her kids the actual vocabulary of the mental load, by name, instead of hoping they'll absorb it by osmosis.
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Good Inside’s Dr. Becky and Dr. Sheryl have a new show on YouTube - Teens & Screens, a bi-weekly video series helping parents navigate today's biggest technology questions. Watch on youtube.com/@goodinside.