Michelle Glogovac (00:01.23) Hi Cindy! Cindy Muchnick (00:02.714) Hi Michelle, it's so good to see you. Michelle Glogovac (00:05.334) It's so good to see you finally! Cindy Muchnick (00:07.726) Finally, we've been social media friends for a while. So now we're not quite in real life, but we're on screen together. So that's fun. Michelle Glogovac (00:15.03) I love it. It's not close enough, but closer. So that counts. Cindy Muchnick (00:18.106) Closer. 2025, we're going to meet in person. We're doing coffee, lunch. don't know. I don't know, something. Yes, I'm Cynthia Mutchnick. Cindy, people know me as Cindy. I'm a mother of four. I have a 26, 24, 20 and 18. So I'm almost at the end of, you know, the last child leaving, close to being an empty nest. Michelle Glogovac (00:21.51) I love it. Yes, I love it. Can you introduce yourself to everyone, please? Cindy Muchnick (00:44.218) I have been in education for the last, my gosh, 25 plus years. I started in college admissions and now, and then for a while I had a private college counseling business, working with teenagers, helping them navigate middle school and high school and the college admissions process. And I'm the author of 11 books. And today we're talking about my 11th book, which is really exciting. I wrote books randomly in my early years about marriage proposals, books about study skills. and time management, books about college essay writing. And finally, friends were bugging me, are you going to do a parenting book? And I said, I am not the sole expert in this world. But as we'll talk about, a big bomb was dropped almost literally back in 2019. And that was really the catalyst for my co-author, Jen Curtis and I, to write what we're talking about today, The Parent Compass. So that's a little bit about me. And yeah. Michelle Glogovac (01:40.363) Well, let's just start with the bomb. if you're gonna sneak around it, let's just talk about it. Cindy Muchnick (01:42.394) Yeah. So the bomb, yep. Let's talk about the bomb. So most people, they, you know, if you were living under a rock, you wouldn't have heard about this. And it might seem like a really long time ago, although there have been, you know, residual effects since the bomb was dropped. And we can talk about those, but basically in March of 2019, over 50 parents and coaches and, you know, public figures were indicted for trying to scam the college admission process in something known as Operation Varsity Blues, also known as the college admission scandal. And they were trying to kind of work through what they called a back door or a side door into the college admission process, which involved cheating, breaking the law, faking resumes, faking test scores. And they worked with a pretty crooked man who called himself a college counselor. but was making millions of dollars and defrauding the system. So anyway, parents went to jail. The day the admission scandal broke, there was a 300 page document that had come out. Clearly this was deeply researched by the Department of Justice, big sting operation, people were arrested, handcuffed. And these were all people like you and me, I guess, Michelle, although more psychotic. These were just moms and dads, mostly very affluent. But, you know, just freaking out really about where their kids might end up in college. And I picked up the phone immediately. I called my co-author Jen, who was a colleague and friend, you know, that I had known through college counseling. And the two of us, we sort of just felt a huge gut punch. We felt like we were almost watching the O.J. Simpson car chase, you know, unfold across our screen. We were glued to our computers. We read the 300-page document. Michelle Glogovac (03:25.019) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (03:29.466) couldn't get off the phone with each other. And we finally started talking and saying like, what is going on with these parents and this behavior? While we didn't see, you know, that exact extreme in our own private practices, we saw hints of, you know, intense parents who were speaking for their children, crafting the emails to us as if they were their children, freaking out about this process. And Jen and I, our goal is always to sort of calm, demystify, cheerlead for each kid at whatever level they might be academically. And so together, I said to Jen, know, I really want to write a parenting book. And I think maybe this is the topic, but I need someone who really knows their psychology because there's a whole side to this that's really, you know, about therapy and mental health or instability and mental health. And Jen reminded me that her background was in social work. So she and I really brought our skill set together and we got to work very quickly on this book and we're fortunate enough to get a great publisher to get it out, you know, in a rather quick mode. We started writing it in March 2019. It was out in September of 2020. We wanted it to come out while the college admission process was still in the headlines, which it was, although we didn't know COVID was around the corner. So that created a different snag, which is why. We did a lot of podcasts like I'm doing with you today. So thank God for social connection and Zoom and all of that. So that's a little bit of background as to the kind of origins of the parent compass and what we were trying to accomplish was to teach parents how to behave. It really began as an etiquette book and evolved into like a guidebook for how to navigate these years with two goals in mind. One, to preserve and protect the mental health of our teens. Michelle Glogovac (04:54.49) I love it. Cindy Muchnick (05:21.058) and to try to preserve and protect the relationship between parents and teens so that that was intact when these kids launched to college or wherever they were going next when they left our homes. Michelle Glogovac (05:32.944) How long was this going on or has this been going on that this was a thing, that parents are getting so involved? Because as I read the book, when I did my essays, my mom was totally clueless. Her job was to write the check for the application fee. That was it. So at what point in time in the last 20 years did this become a thing? More than 20 years. I'm not that young. Cindy Muchnick (05:49.242) Yep. send goodies to kids to try to get their yield and numbers up so that they could gain a spot on what they believed was the secret magic list called US News and World Report. And they felt that if they got themselves on this top 10 list, top 50 list, top 100 list, whatever it would be, it would draw more and more customers, namely students and their families to the campuses, but it also would allow them to turn more and more of them away, making them be more selective. Now, of course, There are 4,000 colleges in the United States and even more two-year colleges beyond that. But somehow our country got so into labeling and branding that everyone was drinking the Kool-Aid thinking this is the only place you'll find happiness is if you go to one of these magic colleges. And we all know that's really not the truth. So I would say it probably began then. And then people were hiring private college counselors, which again, I personally don't have an issue ethically. with hiring a private college counselor. It's what I believed in and what I did for 20 years working with teens. But my job is not to write for my students. It's not to write a letter of recommendation for my students. I am just someone almost like a tutor helping guide them through a pretty overwhelming process and to help be that person that can help keep the parent relationship intact. So it's not the parent harping on the kid, do this, do that. Did you meet your deadlines? Let me read your essay. I'm just the extra set of eyes and ears. so I view it as, you know, not everybody needs a private college counselor and college counselors at schools are excellent at what they do. An English teacher can be really helpful. An older sibling or, you know, a friend who's gone through the journey before you can be really helpful. But if your kid isn't super disciplined to kind of stay on track and get through all of this on top of their schoolwork, on top of maybe standardized testing and activities and all the things that the craziness of high school has begun. Cindy Muchnick (08:12.27) then people turn sometimes to somebody on the outside to help through the process. But the way that Jen and I have always done it is extremely ethically. And the families we work with understand that we are not, this is not like a side door, back door, sneaky process. So I guess it sort of began then, but I would say the frenzy obviously reached a peak probably at the college admissions scandal. And rumor has it that there were over 750 families that this man worked with. Maybe some of them were legit. But I would imagine, you know, a lot of people were shaking in their boots when those 53 people got, you know, indicted and pointed out. And, you know, maybe they just didn't have enough evidence to, you know, go back in time or kids had already graduated from those places or, know, but they really wanted to shine a spotlight on, you know, on the kinds of things that were going on that really were inappropriate. I mean, when it comes to breaking the law, you know, come on. And what it said to our kids and our teens was just to me, the most damaging. Michelle Glogovac (09:05.124) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (09:12.058) result of this. The message these parents were giving their kids were, you're not good enough. We don't think you can do this on your own. You're my trophy. You're an extension of me, a reflection on me. I believe that we need to cheat the system to help you get where you need to go. And a lot of these kids honestly didn't even know what was going on. didn't get that they were fake resumes being made about them. They didn't get that their parents were making illegal donations. Michelle Glogovac (09:30.352) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (09:41.274) to this gentleman to make it look like it was being donated to a charity, but really it was bribes and things like that. anyway, if you're interested in it, I recommend the book, Unacceptable by Melissa Korn. Yeah, Unacceptable, Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz wrote a phenomenal book, nonfiction. are Wall Street Journal reporters. In fact, we interviewed with them and have done some cross promoting with them when the book first came out. They've written a really interesting, fully fact-checked description of the whole college admissions scandal from a news writer's standpoint and interviewed all the people involved. And it's fascinating. It's kind of stories that kind of train wreck interests you. Yeah. Especially when we're not in it. Right. Michelle Glogovac (10:27.066) Yeah. we love a good train wreck, right? We can't look away. definitely when we're not in it. Yeah. I felt like as I read through the parent compass, and I think I reached out to you to tell you this, it's geared toward parents of teens, but as a mom of elementary school children, I feel like you all should read this too because the lessons, – I'm looking for a word – the things that you put in place should happen now as they're younger rather than as they get older, set in their ways. And we have routine at home where ever since they were in kindergarten, you come home, you sit down, you do your homework. This is what it is. We check it. We move on. And even this year, my daughter's in third grade and her teacher said, if you don't have a place yet to have them do their homework, they should be doing their homework where everybody is, not in their room, because when they become teenagers, you won't really be able to check on them as much. And I'm like, well, third grade, what have you all been doing? You should be doing this like years ago. Because this is, you have to set the standard for what it is. And it's like the heli, I know you mentioned the helicopter parents and you know, all of these different types of parenting things. And if you're that way as a teen, then you're probably that way when they were in elementary school. So read the book sooner than later. Cindy Muchnick (11:33.209) Yeah Cindy Muchnick (11:49.434) Yeah, well, thank you for that kind of shout out to starting sooner. would say that reading The Parent Compass, and you probably sensed this too, I mean, it's not an easy ask that we're making in the book. We are trying to set like kind of a toolbox and a structure which really involves things that are very counterintuitive to this generation of parents, which is pulling back and not micromanaging, not... You can set up, help set up systems in your home and be organized in your home of these are the way we do things and these are kind of our family rules or our family contract or whatever. the reality is that the data tells us that the less hovering, the less micromanaging, the less on top of everything we are, the more it allows our kids, especially in those tween years, to start to take accountability, learn self-advocacy skills. Make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, know how to approach their teachers, feel confident in their own skin, feel okay pushing back against something their mom or dad might suggest to them. we do want that. mean, get the worst rap. And so detweens of sort of being the pushback, the prickliness, they don't want this, they don't want that, they roll their eyes, they grunt, whatever. But to me, the reason I chose to work with teens for 20 plus years is just the fact that They are evolving into the people that they're going to become, the real people that aren't the people that you're driving everywhere and making all the choices for them. In those early years, of course, we're making the choices. We're the ones taking them places. We're the ones dressing them, feeding them, whatever it is, taking them to the doctor, taking them to activities. But they're going to start to tell you at whatever age, I don't really like. swimming back and forth in this swimming pool every day after school. It's cold and I'm unhappy. And just because you are a swimmer as a parent doesn't mean your kid has to be a swimmer. that's interesting. I didn't know you didn't like it. What don't you like about it? well, you know, but my friend, they're doing, you know, Cub Scouts. That sounds really fun. Do you think I could try that? So I'll never forget. I think I wrote about it on parent compass. A mom of a fifth grader calling me just panicked that her son wanted to quit the Boy Scouts or the Cub Scouts in fifth grade. Michelle Glogovac (13:48.71) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (14:00.174) And what, you know, he's never going to be an Eagle Scout, which means he'll never have a future and he'll never get into college. And I said, I'm sorry, ma'am, what, how old is your child again? Fifth grade, fifth grade. And I said, well, the good news is you have like seven or eight more years to let him choose some other activities that he might prefer. So why would you be pushing and fighting back, making him miserable in an activity that he doesn't enjoy? So I think it's that kind of reciprocity and give and take. And, You know, but it's hard because I do think we love them so much. They are our little hearts walking around. And oftentimes the way we show our love is by doing things for them. And the more we do, it feels good to us because we're fixing and we're helping and it's tangible. But the more we're robbing them of the opportunities to do and start to do for themselves and to feel good about what it feels like to accomplish whatever the task might be. Michelle Glogovac (14:37.658) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (14:56.63) or to hurt and feel uncomfortable by the mistake they made and tell them, okay, all right, well, I'm here. I'm right next to you. Gosh, that stinks. I feel this with you. I'm so sad. You're sad. You know, what can I do to support you? Or, you know, what do you think you might do differently next time? Or let's just sit with this feeling of being uncomfortable for a while because we will come out. You will come out the other side of it. And then you have an experience that you can look back on and go, remember that time. And you were so upset about that paper or that project or that fight you got in with your friend. And now look where we are. If we don't have enough of those, Michelle, then we have to make them up. We have to come up with a script for our kids of lies or of our own experiences, which of course they think we're ancient. So that doesn't always work, right? So anyway. Michelle Glogovac (15:30.693) Mm-hmm. Michelle Glogovac (15:34.853) Right. Michelle Glogovac (15:43.718) Very true. Yeah. I love that. My kids are now in third and fourth grade. Up until, I want to say third grade, I've been very involved. Now, fourth grade, there's been a switch because it's a teacher I don't know. I'm letting my son kind of do his own thing. I don't know where my assignment book went. I don't know what to tell you. Well, the teacher says I got to buy a new one if I can't find it. I'm like, then you get to buy it. You need more math homework? You need more math homework? I'm like, it's not my problem. I'm like, you get to do this, buddy. absolutely. I'm like, then you got some chores to do around the house to make up for those $20. He found it. It was in his messy desk. But to look at math homework and Cindy Muchnick (16:18.074) Thank you for watching. Cindy Muchnick (16:23.034) Great, that's great, you're following your parent compass then. Michelle Glogovac (16:37.262) he's not getting enough in order to study for the math test. And I told him, you need to ask your teacher then for more math homework. And he went and he asked. And then at the parent teacher conference, I said, so I just want you to know that him asking you was him advocating for himself. I did not come and ask you for that homework. He did because he knows he needs that extra practice because we proved that last year. If he practices every night, he will ace his Friday test. If he doesn't, Cindy Muchnick (16:45.37) Hooray! Michelle Glogovac (17:07.3) Womp Womp. And the teacher was like, okay, now I see where this is going. go, yeah, this is him knowing that he needs to do this. So I need you to also help me out when he asked for it, give it to him. Because if you don't... Cindy Muchnick (17:20.836) That's great. I love that story. I love that story, Michelle. No, that's, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Partnering with the teachers when they're younger and, through the early years of middle school and sometimes even through the end, because that's when you're still having those parent teacher conferences, is a great thing. And I think the way you handle that, A plus plus plus from me to you, because that does take kind of some courage and bravery. And what you did is you planted the seeds. You sprinkled the idea. You threw it out there. It's stuck. Michelle Glogovac (17:24.986) Yeah. Cindy Muchnick (17:49.644) He acted on it. And now you can say, at this, look at how you did today. You know, I bet you all, saw you practicing hard and doing that extra homework and look what you accomplished, you know? So that's great. Michelle Glogovac (17:59.27) Yeah. And that's why I think it's so important that I totally agree with your book that if we start this earlier, then you don't have to worry about teaching them these lessons because it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. We all know that. And teens, they already think we don't know anything and they know everything. you know, we've all been there. So plant those seeds earlier. Cindy Muchnick (18:12.13) out. Yeah. Cindy Muchnick (18:20.93) Yeah. yeah, Michelle, you and then my co-author, Jen, will benefit so much because when I started writing this book, my kids were older, you know, like I'd, I'd missed a lot of those years. And in the book, Jen and I talk about very frankly, mistakes we have made as parents in our journeys. And, you know, we use examples of students we've worked with and parents we've, you know, we've met along the way, but we also kind of confess to Michelle Glogovac (18:36.582) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (18:46.71) errors we made and ways that we have learned either from our kids or from each other or from some of our research that we were doing in the parent compass of how to do it differently, not necessarily better, just differently. And as you know, Michelle, have two younger kids. The way it works for one may not work for the other. So a lot of this is also just, I thought I had it. I thought I got it. I've already had three kids launched. I have so many curve balls from my fourth kid that I feel like I'm a new parent again. Michelle Glogovac (19:04.682) yes. Cindy Muchnick (19:15.034) I'm like, I thought this was going to be coasting along, you know, getting that last kid shuttled out. And by far, it's been some of the bigger challenges. So you just never know what's kind of waiting around the corner. And I think The Parent Compass is a book you can sort of come back to and remind yourself of some of these really practical skills that are all data supported, all data driven. You know, the Surgeon General report that came out a couple of months ago is telling us that parents are also under extreme pressure. and stress higher, you know, almost than any other, you know, middle-class parents, you know, higher than almost any other category right now. And a lot of it has to do with kind of the child rearing and the stressors of that and the world we live in and the news cycle and how to manage that so we can also help our kids deal with that. And so I would just give, I guess, a shout out to the Surgeon General Report. If parents haven't read that yet, it really kind of goes hand in hand. with a lot of things we're talking about in The Parent Compass. And it's also very data-driven and very easy. It's like less than 30 pages, an easy read, and it makes you feel as a parent less alone because it encourages you to find your village, to find support at your schools, to read books like The Parent Compass, to attend parent education events or ask for them at your school if they're not offering them or at your work to be sure you have the mental health support you need as a mom or a dad in this journey so that you can kind of be you know, settled and the best person you can be in order to be there for your kids as they're going through what they're going through. So there's a lot of layers to this. It's like peeling back the onion, you know. Michelle Glogovac (20:52.678) I want to ask you, and I ask you this question because we live in a relatively similar area, we're close by. Is this more our area of California or are we seeing this spread out among the 50 states? Because I imagine, I'm like, there's certain states, you're like, are their parents really paying off or doing whatever? Or is this more of like a California thing, a New York thing where you have these affluent areas and Cindy Muchnick (20:57.412) Mm-hmm. Yep. Michelle Glogovac (21:22.201) Is it? Cindy Muchnick (21:22.552) Right. That's a really good question. mean, I've actually never been asked it quite that way before. And I guess if I were to answer that question kind of from my head and from my gut, would say this definitely, I'm sure there's a correlation between like middle upper class families and the intensity of the process. But what I would say is that families with less resources also might feel that that's a ticket out for their kids. And that's oftentimes where, for example, sports might come in to hope that your kid becomes a college athlete so they get a scholarship. And we have a whole chapter on the fact that the percentages and the numbers of kids that actually make it to college athleticism, even though parents are like, they're the best on their team. They're the this and that. We have all this extra coaching and we're on the travel team. there have been, unless your kid is in a youth academy that's attached to a professional team, for example, or has been singled out by a national organization for their sport and have been selected as the top in the nation, not just the top in your region. There's a lot to unpack when it comes to a parent's dream for their kids for sports. And I can tell you, as a parent of a current and a former college athlete, the sacrifice and the time, it certainly is in there. But there's also a lot of loss that your kids have when you are completely focused on one thing in such great depth that kind of consumes their whole existence and robs them of other opportunities, birthday parties missed, or being able to play other sports, or being able to play sports at school, or whatever those things might be. So I would say the college admissions scandal problem, yes, that looked shone a light on, you know, yeah, the affluent families and how far down that goes in terms of the trickle down. Michelle Glogovac (22:55.408) Mm-hmm. Cindy Muchnick (23:15.03) it is probably hard to know. I'd imagine, yes, it's more prevalent in communities with access, but I wouldn't doubt that families just are scrambling thinking that this might be their kid's ticket and then focus so much energy kind of on that. And I mean, long gone are the days of youth sports and going to the community center to pick up the ball. And it's sad that there's that loss, I think, for kids. I'm saying that There are more and more surgeries performed on ACL replacements for 12-year-olds in the last 10 years because kids are doing repetitive motion on their small joints as they're growing from being one sport kids. And when you think of it that way in terms of physical damage that it's causing and maybe probably mental health from the intensity of it, Michelle Glogovac (24:01.829) Mm. Cindy Muchnick (24:10.266) That's a question you want to kind of discuss with your kid. And when you have that kid who's like, I don't really want to do this anymore, I would really listen. There's so many different avenues kids can take and different activities. I will say we focused on the Silicon Valley in our tech chapter of the book. I would say, you know, obviously we, know, whole books have been written on the topic. There's tons of people with much more expertise than I have on social media use and technology. all of the leaders in tech who were inventing all of these apps and inventing social media kept their kids off of it because they knew of the toxicity of it. And as we can see from the films and the documentaries out there on the teen brain, but also on the social network and the various movies that have sort of come out where it's really been studied. Michelle Glogovac (24:48.059) Right? Cindy Muchnick (25:04.196) There's definitely correlation. Australia just made a change in their laws that kids under 16 can't have social media. So maybe, who knows if the United States will follow suit and anything similar. But schools are pulling back now. There are definitely more more articles about, you know, collecting devices as school begins and unlocking them when school ends. You know, so maybe those are steps in the right direction. Also limits on age. You know, I think Med Out did put something out on that. So. Michelle Glogovac (25:18.011) Yeah. Michelle Glogovac (25:32.834) Yeah, not that that can't, you know. Cindy Muchnick (25:33.972) Anyway, that's a roundabout answer to saying, don't know, but I would venture to guess that's a good question, that it probably is more centralized on communities with access and affluence. Michelle Glogovac (25:43.992) Yeah, I just see it around here, even with our public schools and the middle schools, and you get to put in your choice, but you don't really get to go wherever you want. And just talking to counselors at the middle schools of how much pressure there is within middle school. And you do see these, are kids that we know, it's like there is something every single day of the week, nonstop on the weekends. I'm just like, that's not how I grew up. So that's not what we're going to do. Cindy Muchnick (26:11.948) I know. I know. mean, I know. And you think about all the Thanksgiving breaks and like the winter breaks and the times that are supposed to be the breaks when then they schedule these like extra sports situations or extra, you know, my, know, even in theater, like the theater kids have rehearsals on the school holidays for the show coming up, you know, whatever the things might be. Yeah, there's sacrifices to it. And it's hard to sort of be the parent that's completely hands off, right? Because you know, that laissez faire, like, well, you know, just, yeah, find your notebook and figure that stuff out and whatever it is, it's very hard when around you, what you hear is kind of the frenzy. And so I'm a very big, nod and smile. Like if people have advice, you sort of nod and smile and let it fall off a duck's back and, you know, find a couple people, that are your people that Maybe have kids a little bit older than your kids that are like-minded, that you can build your own little village, and that's where you find your support. Sometimes girlfriends in other states and other places are really helpful too because they're not right in your town and proximity, and you can kind of gain insight that way. I've made a great friend in St. Louis because my son goes to college there, and the two of us didn't know each other a year ago, but there's a lot of sharing going on. You know, it's helpful. It's really helpful. Michelle Glogovac (27:38.532) I love that. That's great advice for me, so I appreciate that. I will. Yes. I love that. We'll exchange numbers. If you've listened, you know that's a new level of friendship in my books. Cindy Muchnick (27:42.65) Michelle, I'm your friend now. Okay. No problem. I love making friends with podcast hosts for sure. Michelle Glogovac (27:55.376) Can you share with everyone where they can find you, buy the book and follow you please? Cindy Muchnick (27:58.458) Yes. Thank you so much. So please follow me on Instagram at parent compass. It's just one word, or if you're a Facebook user, the parent compass. And then I have a website called parent compass book.com, which is all about this book. And I have a personal website, Cynthia much neck, my whole name.com. And that's where all my books are listed links to everything on both, even actually your podcast that we did together will be housed permanently also on the website under the podcast tab. So yeah, in terms of locating the book, really anywhere books are sold, your independent bookstores, I love supporting them, but obviously the big box and Amazon, Barnes & Noble. And if you're an audio gal, there is an audio book of it too. It's not my voice, but if you ever wanna just listen to the book, you could audio read it. And we encourage book clubs to use The Parent Compass. We have a book club guide, which is free, that can be downloaded off the website in newer. printings of the book, the guide is already folded into the back of the book. We didn't think of it when we were writing the book because we didn't know people would use it. But then we got all these calls saying, you know, we want to use it for a book club. And do you have a guide? So we created a guide and Jen and I offer to come to your book club on Zoom. So if you invite us and you say we've picked your book, one or both of us will show up and share in your conversation. No charge. We just are so excited that people are, you know, following the parent compass movement and, you know, and trying to embrace it. Michelle Glogovac (29:27.052) I love it. Thank you so much for coming on Cindy. Cindy Muchnick (29:30.052) Thank you, Michelle, for having me and keep following your parent compass. You're doing a good job. Michelle Glogovac (29:34.118) Thank you.