Hi, there it's episode 164. And today we're talking about late bloomer.

You are listening to the simple families podcast, the Q and A style show that brings you solutions for living well with family. Here's your host Denae Barahona. Hello.

Thank you so much for tuning in this is episode 164. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking to rich. Karlgaard the publisher of Forbes and rich recently wrote a book called late bloomers in our chat today. Rich and I are talking about the concept of late bloomers. So what it means for kids as they get older, before we get into today's episode, here's a quick word from our sponsor and a few things coming up on Simple Families. The sponsor for today's episode is Scentbird, I'll be totally honest and say that it's been years since I've worn perfume. And the main reason for this is that it's expensive. And I tended to buy bottles and leave them mostly full unused. I think I'd get tired of the sense. And then they'd just sit there and I read somewhere that perfume goes bad if you don't use it after a certain amount of time.

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So as always make sure you're on the email list to go to simplefamilies.com and leave your email address, and you can stay in touch there. You'll get all the updates. So back to today's episode in today's episode, we're talking about late bloomers, I'm chatting with rich Karlgaard. Now rich is the author of the book late bloomers, the power of patients in a world obsessed with early achievement, but he's also a lecturer, a pilot, and an author of four acclaimed previous books. He's a self-proclaimed late bloomer. He had a mediocre academic career at Stanford, which he actually got into by a fluke. And after he graduated, he worked as a dishwasher at nightwatchman and attempt before he finally found some inner motivation and drive, which ultimately led him to his current career trajectory, which is the publisher of Forbes magazine. I love this topic and I really enjoy talking with Rich. And I think you're going to enjoy this episode. If you have questions or comments, or you want links to the things that we talk about, you can go to simplefamilies.com/episode164 without further ado. Here's my chat with rich.

Denaye Barahona: Hi, Rich. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Rich: Thank you for having me.

Denaye Barahona: It's great to chat with you. So I was really excited to see your book late bloomers come up and when your PR person emailed me, I said, yes, absolutely. I want to talk to rich about this. This is a topic that I am passionate about. I have two kids, they're three and five, and one is an early bloomer and one is a late bloomer. And I've always wanted to know more about this topic. And now I feel like I've got this whole book full of great research and resources. Um, so thank you for writing this. It was this a long time in the making.

Rich: Well, in the book, I recount my own story. How at age 25, despite having a college degree from a good college, that I was still incapable of holding a job more responsible than temp type is dishwasher and security guard. And I remember one night when I was a security guard in a trucking yard and I was making my rounds, it was the graveyard shift and I heard a dog barking. So I swung my flashlight around. They were sending on the other side of the fence was a Rottweiler. And it suddenly occurred to me that at age 25, my professional peer was a dog. And a couple of months after that Steve jobs took Apple public. He was 25 also. So the golf between where I was and where Steve jobs was, and he was a college dropout, by the way, that golf was huge, it was shameful.

Rich: It was embarrassing. So I always had the idea, would it ever be useful to share that story is embarrassing as it is? And what really triggered my need need, I would call it a deep need to write this book and maybe contribute to the discussion on how we raise children, was reading about these rising rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide among teens and young adults. And so I embarked on a five-year research quest to, to figure this out, what was really going on here and out pop this late bloomers thesis that these kids who are feeling anxious and depressed and thinking about killing themselves as teens, it just didn't come upon them as teens. This was the, this was the end, um, of, uh, of a long number of years where these kids felt under extreme pressure to do very well on standardized tests and grades. And we know that many kids are simply not built to Excel in that kind of regime. Some are, and God bless them, but many perhaps most aren't

Denaye Barahona: Right.