100!

Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one, just head on over to yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. It feels like I say this pretty often actually but we really do have a pretty special episode lined up today because this is the 100th episode of the show. It's almost unbelievable to me that we've made it to this point. So today we're going to do a little bit of revisiting, revisiting where the show came from, we're going to hear some of my favorite moments from interviews, we're going to hear from quite a few listeners about what you think about the show, including one listener who's disappointed in it so definitely stick around for that one. We're going to hear some questions that you have for me about topics related to research, as well as a story that you won't want to mess about how Carys got her name, we're going to have some fun with something that listeners have noticed about the way that guests often respond to me. And I also have a celebratory giveaway for you as well. So while we're at it, why don't we actually start there, because I met with some listeners recently when I was in Munich, and I asked them what I could do to improve the show. And we were talking about making episodes shorter and don't worry, they were on board with the rest of you when I tried that about 18 months ago, and there was this huge outcry of people saying go back to the regular length. And so these lessons, were just saying that sometimes they get kid settled for naps and turn on the show and then someone wakes up and refuses to go back to sleep and you thought you were going to have an hour to listen to a full episode, and actually, you just had to leave it wherever it was. And so we were just talking about things I could potentially do about that. And I've thought about having these little musical interludes to break up the content to give you better stopping places or kind of just mental breathing places, but it doesn't seem like those are really helping those kinds of circumstances either.

So before you get distracted by someone screaming about something, I wanted to let you know that the Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership group is actually reopening again in October. I plan to do it in July, but it seemed like everyone's schedules were just too crazy to get your head around joining something new then, so I just put it on hold for a few months and we'll reopen again on October 21st to start formally on November 1st. And so the Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership group is designed for you if you listen to the podcast, and you find yourself nodding along and agreeing with the ideas, but when it comes down to actually implementing them in your own real life with your own real children, things maybe don't go as well as you planned, maybe they're not terribly bad, but they might fall apart a little bit and you just don't quite implement the idea as you heard it and as you hope to do it. So maybe you forget the ideas or you try to do something new, like nonviolent communication and you just get stuck and you don't have any support to help you see what happened and how to adjust course and try again, and things just kind of slipped back to the way they've always been. And so maybe things are pretty good at your house right now and you're more looking to optimize or maybe things seem really hard at the moment and you don't see a path forward to making them easier. Either way, the membership is designed to really help you to clarify your family values, so that you can set this northstar for yourselves, and then feel confident that you're working towards that as a family. So I'm not saying it's like a recipe book and if you mix up just the right ingredients, and just the right quantities that your child's going to turn out exactly the way you planned but it's super easy to get caught up in those day-to-day struggles. And just you know, one example of that is jumping in and doing things for your child because it's faster and easier for you to do them, but you have a goal of raising an adult who's independent and tries new things. And so if your daily interactions with your child aren't aligned with your broader goals, then you're probably not going to achieve those goals. And so the membership helps you to decide where you're going to set these goals that are uniquely right for your family and fit your values. And then it gives you the tools that you need to help you head in that direction without all the guilt that you're somehow not doing enough and without nearly as many struggles between you and your child that you may be experiencing right now.

And then Episode two on why toddlers don't share. And I just like to call out a couple of folks who were super supportive in those early days. Firstly, Professor Tarr Hallahan of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. When I was writing that Reggio Emilia blog post that nobody read she was really kind enough to engage me in an extended email conversation with me about her work. And it was in teasing out when children understand that they can represent real objects in their art that I discovered how much I love that research process. And obviously, research went on to be a huge factor in how I run the podcast. Dr. Callahan accepted my invitation to appear on episode four of the show to discuss children's art and creativity. And now I know that she actually uses the show as an assignment for her students in psychology. They have to listen to an episode and read two of my references and then find a third reference on a related topic, and then do an in-class presentation and write a report on what they've learned. And so I know there are a lot of professors listening to the show and psychology professors specifically. So if you're looking for new ideas for assignments, you might want to consider that one.

And then for Episode 10, I reached out to Doctors Roberta Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek about their book Becoming Brilliant. I really didn't even expect to receive a response because they're all big and famous best-selling authors and I was just a newbie podcaster. But Dr. Roberta Golinkoff responded to say that they would love to do it. I was so excited! I was actually scheduled to talk with both of them but at the appointed time, Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek microphone wasn't working properly. So rather than derail it, she just dropped off and Dr. Roberta Golinkoff and I talked. And she has been such a friend to the show since then she's offered encouragement and she's even come on the show a second time to discuss the 30 million word gap. And I will say we don't always agree including on the 30 million word gap actually, but I do respect her work and what she calls the 6 C's in her book becoming brilliant. The children need to learn and their 6 C’s are collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence. And those things are really a cornerstone of how I try to support Carys learning. I did want to clear up something that comes up every now and again, which is where the heck did the name Your Parenting Mojo come from? Well, it might actually surprise you to know that I have never seen Austin Powers, which is where most people assume it comes from. Creating catchy names really isn't my forte, I have to say.

And I want to just something that conveys the idea that you, as a parent really have everything you need to be an amazing parent inside yourself. And the information that I provide is the special sauce to go on top, so that's kind of where the Mojo came from. And I also just needed a launch. It was the only thing I couldn't figure out. So I just picked something and went for it and figured I could change it down the line if I needed to. Some people definitely said that it doesn't do the sort of show justice, and maybe they're right, and maybe I will change it at some point in the future. But for right now, it's here to stay for as far as I can tell. Okay, so moving on from that, let's hear first from some listeners. If you're subscribed to the show through my website, and you get emails for me when new episodes come out, or if you're in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group, you'll know that I asked listeners just to record a little message for me to include in this episode. And perhaps it shouldn't be a huge shock that as a reasonably analytical introvert myself, a good number of my listeners are also analytical introverts who didn't want to record their voice for a podcast. So I also have some things that people emailed to me asking me to include in the show. So let's get started with a voicemail from listener, Mehan.

Hi, Jen, I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you for your podcast. As a child development professional, and mother myself, I absolutely love that it's research-based. And I also really appreciate that you hid everything from those big picture ideas, like race, religion, and gender expression, all the way down to parenting nuances and how we speak to our child every day and ways to do that in the ways that those matter. So I will definitely continue to listen to your podcast for as long as you perform and share it on my blog post as well.

Thanks so much for listening, Megan. I'm really glad that you appreciate the research-based perspective, I think podcasters often worry that someone else is going to do the same kind of show as they're doing. It'll just be more of the same old stuff getting repeated. But I actually don't worry about that at all, because nobody else is crazy enough to do the amount of research that I do for each episode. And I think I've mentioned in the past that it takes a lot of time. On the low end, it can be as little as 10 hours for an interview episode, because for those ones, I don't have to have all the answers, although it can often be considerably more than that. 40 hours is more typical for a narrated one because I do have to have all the answers for those or at least an opinion on how the research doesn't give us enough information to draw conclusions. My record so far is about 80 hours and that was for the episode on Dr. Stuart Shanker; Concept of Self-Reg. And that was tricky because there's basically no evidence supporting it, but also none refuting it. So it was like trying to draw conclusions out of thin air. Listener Denise wrote to me and said, Hi, Jen, I've been meaning to record my message for a while now and it doesn't seem like it will happen so I'm writing instead. Congratulations on your 100th episode. I'm not surprised it's reached this far. I listened to each episode as soon as it comes and I really listened to them whenever I have doubts about something. Your podcast is my go-to parenting resource. My top three episodes are the one on NVC-Nonviolent communication, how to talk so little kids will listen, and the interview with Alfie Kohn. You, your podcast, and your membership group have impacted my life in an incredible way. Thank you for all the work you do. I really appreciate it and my children do too. All the best Denise.

I think it's safe to say that Denise has definitely listened to more of my episodes than my husband. She isn't surprised that I made it to 100 episodes, but I think I am. I read the the majority of podcasts and never make it past episode seven. And more than half of the ones listed on iTunes haven't published a new episode in the last three months. I did start with weekly episodes but that schedule while I was in school was just killing me. And so I surveyed listeners at the time and ask them what I should do and most of them said, “Cut back to every other week if you want to, but please don't stop.” And every other week works pretty well for me. It's enough that I don't have to feel super stressed about it but it's often enough that it does keep me on my toes. And to this day, it's somewhat surprising to me that what topics I'm covering next is about the least planned aspect of the show. So I keep a running list of things that I'm interested in covering and I add to it regularly when people email me with questions. And that list is now longer than it was when I started the show. So I kind of figure that as long as there are researchers working on issues related to parenting and child development that I haven't talked with yet, then there's probably still another episode out there.

So I did want to offer you one piece of advice if you have a question that you'd like me to answer, then here's something to keep in mind. If you not only send me the question, but you also send me a name of a researcher or an article on the topic that really is the fastest way to get me to take action. When somebody has a question and I don't have that initial lead than I do put it on that list of topics to get around to eventually. But if you send the title of a really solid research-based book on it, then I'll order it from the library, and I'll read it and that kind of kickstarts the process. If you send an article or an audio recording, then I'll read it or listen to it. And that's often enough for me to be able to identify the expert that I need to talk with, which is really half the battle of figuring out the angle for the episode. So the recent episodes on gender-creative children and highly sensitive children came about in exactly this way. And both of them were recorded within a month of the initial request, which is pretty fast for me, given the amount of reading I need to do to make these things happen. Let's hear from listener Michelle.

Hi, Jen. My name is Michelle and I live in the northwest of Western Australia. I really appreciate your podcast, particularly your evidence-based approach. And the way you interview people who have such experience and qualifications in whatever topic they're speaking about. I also completed the Taming Your Triggers workshop, and I just found it really valuable for my own reflection on things that do to me, and how I can release some of those triggers and work through them. There's just one area that I've thought about over the months, that I wonder if you might like to cover and that's more about the parents’ relationship. Obviously, when we have families and introducing children into our lives, life becomes very different, and there are a lot of challenges that go with that. And it can be quite difficult, particularly in the early days, but I mean, I'm sure that's the challenge is just something that extends throughout the life of your children. And I wonder if that might be a topic you might consider speaking about how we can really maintain and maximize the health and love and fun within the parents’ relationships for the benefit of the whole family. Thanks again, I really love your work.

It's pretty fascinating to me that I seem to have quite a large following in Australia. I'm not sure where you all came from, but I do know one source and that's a nutritionist named Ashley Coach who used to live close to me in San Francisco, but she just moved out to Portland, Oregon. And she mentioned my show to one of the writers of an Australian design blog called the design files which apparently gets a lot of traffic over there. The writer’s name is Emma Eldridge and she started her article by saying, “Mojo is a funny word and what I would never have associated with a family life until recently when Ashley Coach put me on to a podcast my first ever yes late to the game called Your Parenting Mojo presenting research-based ideas to help kids thrive. It's both brilliant and real, just like Georgie Cleary creative director of alpha 360 and mum to rent in May, and the rest of the article is about her. So, Michelle, I agree that the relationship between parents is a challenging one. And to be completely honest, it's very much a work in progress for me. I've actually looked at it in a couple of places that you might find useful. Firstly, back in episode 35, where I read journalist Jennifer senior's book, which is called all joy and no fun. The basic premise is that well, any parent will say they love their children and their children are the light of their lives. The actual moment-to-moment experience of parenting is often not super interesting and kind of draining, and it doesn't really support a thriving marriage. The second thing you might find useful is Episode 94, the nonviolent communication which can help you to communicate more effectively not only with your children but also with your partner. And finally, another friend of the show, Dr. Laura Froyen is an expert on parenting relationships. And she actually co-teaches the third month of the finding Your Parenting Mojo membership with me. So after we spend a month calming things down at your house by reducing the incidence of tantrums, the second month is spent clarifying your goals for your family. And then in the third month, we look at how to get on the same page as your partner related to your goals as well as other issues as well.

And I think that, especially when we often Mother's not always mothers, but whoever's listening to this podcast, we are the ones doing all the research on the child development, it can be easy to think that everything needs to be done our way because we know best, right? We've done all the research, but actually, there are a lot of areas where it's perfectly fine for parents to have different approaches to interacting with your children. And so we use tools to help you understand what are the non-negotiable issues for you and where you really need to work with your partner to become better aligned and we actually help you do that. But you'll also decide for yourself which issues are gonna relax about and just that your partner or your in-laws or whoever, whoever else it is have their own relationship with your child. So hopefully some of those resources will help. Before we hear from some more listeners I would like to revisit some sections of a few of my favorite episodes, it's really hard for me to pick between them because each one of them is sort of like birthing a mini baby. But there are some moments that stand out here. There's an obvious one with Dr. Renee Engeln on the topic of raising daughters with a healthy body image, so here's that one. What happens when your daughter starts to ask, “Am I pretty?” My daughter has just started calling things like necklaces that she makes and drawings that she makes pretty. And I assume at some point, this is going to morph and she's going to ask, “Am I pretty? Do you think I'm pretty?” “What do I say?”

It's really tough, right? So when they're younger, like your daughter is now. My first impulse and maybe this is the psychologist and me again. But my first impulse is to ask a question, like, “Oh, is being pretty important?”

Gosh, I should carry that with me everywhere. It's the answer to so many things. We talked about sex educator a while back and you know, you get a difficult question about sex. And your first question supposed to be, “Why do you want to know?”

And you don't want to make your daughter feel like you're blowing her off, right? But at a really young age, girls will throw around these terms without having really thought about them. So why not be the one to help her think about them? “Oh, is it important to be pretty? What is being pretty mean to you?” Right? And see if you can start to shape some of her ideas about prettiness and maybe broaden those ideas. And you can say things like, “Oh, you know, of course, I think you're pretty but I also don't think it matters that much because here's what I think matters,” right? And sort of push in that direction. When your daughter is older. I think you'll probably have that day. And I think it's a really hard day for parents when she comes home and she does not feel pretty. And she hurts. And she wants you to help her feel better. You can tell her she's pretty or you cannot, it's not going to make a difference, right? What makes a difference in that moment is hearing her and listening, and acknowledging her pain, you can tell her that you've hurt to over those issues before that, you know, it is hard to be a woman in this culture, right? You can think with her about some ways that you can fight back some ways that you can feel better, right? When I studied this a few years ago, I had a student who was really interested in mother-daughter interactions around body image. And we asked daughters who were maybe around 18-19 At the time, you know, if you came home and said something like this to your mom, what did she say to you? And what do you wish she had said? And overall, what the girls told us is that their mother said things like, “No, no, you're beautiful,” or if the girls came home and said, “I'm so fat,” they said, “Well, let's go on a diet then,” right? They just wanted to like fix it up, patch it up. And what the girls told us is that they wanted more than that. They wanted to be asked questions. They want it to be asked, “Why are you feeling this way? What happened?” Right? What triggered this? Not just put a bandaid on it, right? But say let's really look at where it hurts and let's look at who hurt you and why.

That's a really powerful tool. As you were explaining that, it dawned on me that it's a sad day when I feel more anxious about having that kind of conversation with my daughter than about death or sex. Oh, yeah, Sex Ed, I'm fine. Yeah, we use correct body part names. I'm fine with sex ed. But the day when she comes home and says so and so called me fat or so and so said I'm ugly. Yeah, that's extremely anxiety provoking for me.

We don't want our daughters to hurt the way we've hurt. And I think it's a terrible thing to know that no matter what, at some moments, they will. But we can still give them a lot of padding, right? We can give them that secure base to come back to. I think that's one of the most important things you can do as a parent.

Gosh, that was such a profound episode for me to record. If you heard this episode already, you'll know that raising my daughter with a healthy body image is really something I feel like I can't mess up. And I was nervous to do this interview. And I was so grateful that Dr. Engeln managed to make it both insightful and really even fun. And the next thing that I really enjoyed was really the entire series of episodes on White privilege. And it was listener Malika, who challenged me to do that. And I had intended it for it to be just one episode. Until I kept reading and reading and reading some more, I realized it was going to have to be a whole lot more than that. So it was obviously a huge honor to talk with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum on the topic of talking with children about race in episode 87. But I was especially glad to talk with Dr. Allison Roda about her work on how White privilege manifests itself in the public school system. Her work focuses on New York City, but it's certainly applicable a lot of other places as well. And I'll play you a clip from that interview. In response to my previous question, she had listed out some ways that inequality manifests itself in schools in ways like having a fee to join the after school drama program, and whether the diversity of the teaching stuff matches the diversity of the students. And then here's what we talked about next. And as you're going through that list, it seemed as though so many of them fall under sort of a category of resource allocation, which is one of the things that you said. And it reminded me of the idea of opportunity hoarding that became really apparent in the process of even applying to school before you even get to school, and you're having all these drama clubs and whatever that requires money, even just in the process of applying to school. Can you talk to us a little bit about what opportunity hoarding is and what impact that has on the school application process?

Sure, so opportunity hoarding, as an individual, basically, using their privilege and the system to hoard opportunities, which takes away from other families being able to experience those same opportunities. And in my research, and Carolyn we looked at the Gifted and Talented program in New York City, so the elementary school choices, but also the high school choices, and how the policies themselves promote middle-class White parents’ behaviors to opportunity hoard.

Can you give us an example?

So well, with the Gifted and Talented program, allowing siblings a priority. That giving any type of priority in the system allows families to put their resources into that and test prepping or hiring a school choice consultant to help you with the process. I mean, White parents use their social networks, their advantages in the system to get advantages for their children only. And the system is designed to allow them to do that. So just using a single test score to for the gifted and talented admissions for this specialized high school admissions process in New York City allows families with extra resources to pay for the test prep, tutoring, or the classes that give certain children an edge when they take the exams. And another thing that is really not brought up enough is that there is a strong correlation between standardized tests and socio-economics. So when we're relying on this one measure, standardized tests that shows this very clear correlation. I don't know how we're ever going to diversify, gifted and talented programs or specialized high schools. So that's a major issue.

Yeah, for sure. And one thing that I want to point out that was clear in your research was that this is not White parents saying, “I don't want there to be any Black students in the Gifted and Talented program so I'm going to coordinate all these activities and make sure I take advantage of all these policies,” it seemed to be more of a mindset of there are limited resources in this city for education children, and it is my job as a parent to make sure that my child gets the best of those resources that I am able to procure. And it's by going through that process on an individual basis. And because all the other White parents who are doing it too, that's how you end up with this kind of White privilege baked into the system.

That's right.

And for me, this really distills what I found so interesting in her work when I read it for my master's in education, as well as the entire series on White privilege, which is that White people don't have to band together and say, We're gonna keep ourselves on top and keep everyone else down, to have that privilege and to live in ways that take advantage of it. We can do things that appear perfectly innocuous on the surface and the name of helping our child to succeed, when actually, if we're not taking active steps to dismantle systems of privilege and power, then we are complicit in maintaining them. It's definitely heavy stuff and I'm certainly not perfect in how I manage it, but I'm trying and I'm grateful for those of you who are still here and trying as well. I will say that more listeners canceled their subscriptions to the show after those episodes than after any other episode I've done. So for those of you who are still here, I see you and I acknowledge you and I thank you for doing this work along with me. I'd also like to clear up one mystery that may have flummoxed American listeners for some time. Actually, nobody has let me know at least that they figured out yet. Way back in episode 12 Dr. Dina Rose gave listener J.T. a live consult on an episode on picky eating. It was a really cool experience, It was the first time I've done that. And listeners told me afterward how they could tell it wasn't staged and J.T. was having a really real revelation about how to support her child as the episode went on. But for reasons that I never fully understood, still don't understand the audio recording completely cut out for the last five minutes or so of the conversation. And the first thing that happened when I realized that I was panicked. And I wondered how on earth I could release an imperfect episode, and there's no way I could ask them to record again. And it wouldn't, wouldn't be the same if I did anyway. And then I realized I still had a whole lot of good stuff that I could salvage. And so I ended up putting some music in the space between the interview and the piece that I recorded afterwards to explain what happened. And on the episode page, I said, I would send a copy of Dr. Rose's book to anyone you could spot the Monty Python reference in that episode. So here's how that transition went in the episode.

And I actually want to ask you a follow up question because funnily enough, like not because we were doing this as a strategy for getting him to eat, but just because he’s always been interested in food, we’d do this in the grocery store and at farmer’s markets. He actually loved grocery shopping. He loves cooking with me. Starting from when he was a very little baby. He loved us just opening spice jars and he would smell the different spaces and you know, he can tell you what, if you blindfold them and put cumin under his nose, he’ll know what it is, but he would never eat something that we’ve used those kinds of seasonings in. And it’s so interesting to me because he loves that we’d go to the grocery store and he’s like, fascinated by all the different colors and he’s like, oh, this is, eggplant is such a, such a beautiful purple, I love purple and, but you know, but would he eat eggplant if we cooked it? No. And it’s like, I feel like we’ve been doing this sensory aspect of the exercise since birth and he’s very responsive to it and very into it, but it hasn’t translated into him being more open to eating those foods.

So at this point, unfortunately, I have to step in and apologize because about 10 seconds into Dina's answer our Skype recording cut out with no warning or explanation. And we lost the last couple of minutes of our interview. So I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you what she said in response to J.T’s question. And, of course, the music was the Monty Python reference. It's played in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the story just cuts out with no explanation. It was just this random, short intermission. And I thought it was a fun way of dealing with it. And maybe my British listeners did as well, although perhaps escaped some of you in other places. One of the highlights of the show for me was when I got to interview Alfie Kohn because his book unconditional parenting is really a cornerstone of my approach to parenting. And it's research-based, yay. So I'd read journalist Melinda Wenner, Moyers piece in Slate called Go Ahead Heap Rewards on your Kid. And she argues in that piece that rewards are not harmful for children and are in fact quite useful in getting children to engage in certain behaviors that make life easier for us parents. And this directly contradicted what I'd read in Alfie Cohen's books. So it seemed like a perfect opportunity to reach out to him. But I knew that I had to be scrupulously prepared to get the most out of the half-hour that he had available. I mentioned listener Jamie on the show a few times because before she had her baby, and she got super busy, she used to send me an email every time I released an episode offering a friendly critique and suggestions for diving deeper on the topic. And I've heard bloggers say that one of the best parts of blogging is you make friends through doing it. And undoubtedly, this is more difficult for an introvert but I'm fortunate that I now do count Jamie's a real friend, and she's also a raving Alfie Kohn fan. And when I told her I was interviewing him and asked her to critique the setup that I was planning for the show, she responded with this incredibly thoughtful essay that was probably longer than what I had written myself. So here's how Mr. Kohn summed up his position on the topic of whether we should go ahead and heap rewards on our child.

I mean, this, if I had to summarize, you know, at least this chapter of my book in a sentence it would be the more you reward kids for doing something, the more they lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. But some years after writing the first edition of the book, I realized that the problem with rewards and praise goes even deeper. It's not just that intrinsic motivation is undermined, which is what Moyer is trying desperately to deny. It fed rewards and praise offer conditional affection or acceptance. The message they send children is approval, attention, acknowledgment, and love have strings attached. You have to do this to get that. You've got to put the clothes in the hamper. You've got to get good grades. You've got to be well-behaved. You've got to share your toys. You've got to try your best at sports. You've got to do something in order for me to get excited about you, and that is the opposite of what children need to flourish. What they need from us is not just acceptance or love, it's to be loved and accepted for who they are, not for what they do. And it's not just that we have to believe we love them unconditionally, that's irrelevant. It's because they have to experience it that way. So rewards lose out in two ways, because of the poverty of the behaviorist account of motivation, and the fact that we're actually killing the long-term stuff we're trying to promote, and because of what it's doing to our relationship, and their sense of being accepted.

And I actually really love how Jamie helped me to think through this as well, as I was reading a book by Professor Alan Kasden of the yale parenting center and child conduct clinic, who argues that if using rewards helps you to be a more competent parent, then this will be a far greater help to your child than ineffective parenting without rewards. And so one of the things I wanted to understand from Mr. Kohn was, is it possible that a parent-child relationship has deteriorated so far that the only tool to save it and perhaps even the best tool is rewards? And so here's how I continued in the introduction to the episode. Or is it possible that rather than using rewards, we should instead examine the relationship we have with our child, and ask ourselves what we have done to contribute to the difficulty we're having with our child? As a listener, Jamie tells us, what if we thought about our child as a close friend for a minute, not in the sense of I want to be my child's best friend, but in the sense of how do I treat people I really care about? In that case, if my relationship with my friend isn't going well, I might ask myself if it's my fault. If the answer is yes. And if I'm the parent and a parent-child relationship, then the answer is actually most of the time going to be yes, that the fault lies with me rather than with my child, which I know is kind of a revolutionary concept, then I might start thinking about how I can be a better friend, how can I listen and validate feelings more, and let the other person feel heard without feeling judged or defensive? How can I understand and be gracious enough to hopefully be understood in return? What have I been doing that's creating distance or making the other person not feel safe with me? Because if I were to not think these things, but instead think that the best way to repair the relationship with my friend is going to be to start rewarding her for good behaviors that work for me, then perhaps I'm actually a sociopath rather than a good friend. So what makes this type of relationship okay between a parent and child? And that, to me really summarizes the kind of parent that I want to be. And goodness, I certainly don't achieve it all the time. I certainly try. And I have to say that when I found out that Jamie was pregnant, my overriding feeling was, it was actually jealousy, I was jealous of the way that her baby was going to be parented and is now being parented. And by extension, I hope that I'm able to pass on these ideas that are so important to her and to me, that we believe in so much. And I hope to support you in doing this work with your own children as well. Because when we do this, we interrupt the intergenerational cycles of trauma that hurt us so much, and we give our children a better chance than we had. All right. So moving on from that, here's listener April with a question about her daughter's fear of the water.

Hi, I just had a question about how to deal with fears in children in the most respectful way to help children through a particular fear and enable them to sort of get to the other side of that fear, while still acknowledging their emotions. And my example of this at the moment is, I've got a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, who, for most of her life has just loved the beach. I'm a marine biologist so we've spent a fair bit of time there. And she's decided quite recently, she's really frightened of waves, even tiny little waves. A few centimeters high, she's really, really scared. And so we're having this interaction now where we try to go to the beach, and she's really really terrified. And I'm never really sure whether the best approach is to just keep exposing her to that so that she realizes that it's okay and there's nothing frightening about going to the beach and that she's with me and that she will be safe or whether to not expose her to that because it is causing her this real strong distress. I'd really like to get over the other side of this fear and enjoying the beach again and we can all enjoy the beach again. However, I want to do that in a way that is healthy for her and respectful of her emotions. So I would appreciate any advice you would give on how to not necessarily specifically for the beach, but I guess how to move children through sometimes these fears that they have, which might seem sort of irrational to us, but it's very real to them, and how to help them to get on the other side of that fear in the most positive way possible. Thank you.

Thanks for sending this question, April. How parents can help children cope with anxiety and fears like this is a topic that's been on my list of questions for a really long time now. I've read quite a lot of books and papers on this topic now, but the difficult part for me is that virtually all of them come back to the idea that since anxiety is really an irrational response to a stimulus, the best thing we can do is to withhold the reward of our attention when our child is anxious by not acknowledging their fear, and providing rewards in the form of praise or stickers, or whatever else you choose when they do something that helps them to overcome their anxiety is the best way to deal with this. And so I don't doubt that these methods are effective. There's decades of research on rewards that shows that they are effective at changing some kinds of behaviors, at least in the short term. But my bigger issue is that using rewards, as we just heard, fundamentally changes the relationship that we have with our children. It puts us in a position of power, and it basically makes us manipulate them. So the problem I'm having is finding an alternate approach that is actually grounded in any kind of research. There's a book that's called the opposite of worry by Dr. Lawrence Cohen and it's filled with strategies that really resonate with me as someone who practices respectful parenting, virtually all of the sources he cites are books and blogs rather than peer-reviewed research. And he openly admits in the book that he essentially compiled this list of ways that parents can support anxious children from his own clinical experience as a psychologist, but also by emailing everyone who knows, including the parents he's worked with and his sister, and asking them for techniques that have worked. So you may find some things in that book that help but I do hesitate to call it research-based. And so listener, Jamie has actually sent me a lead on another book that I'm reading right now, which seems promising. And after I've had time to dive into the references, because it has references. I'll see if that author could be a good one to talk with. But until I do that, I'm pretty hesitant to offer any recommendations because the ones based in the science are not ones I would actually want to use myself. And I haven't yet seen evidence for the ones that I would want to use. So stay tuned on that, and I will address it as soon as I can on the show. Let's hear some questions from Virginia, who is also Australian.

Hi, Jen. My name is Virginia and I listen to you from Melbourne, Australia. I have been listening to the podcast for almost six months now. And I found it to be truly life-changing. The diverse range of topics you cover means that there's always some quality information for many of the common situations we encounter as parents as well as some uncommon ones. And it challenges me to continually question my parenting approach so that I can make evidence-based decisions that are right for my family. I'm from a healthcare background where all of the decisions I make need to be evidence-based. And by nature, I think I'm quite Black and White in the way that I think. So I love that you do all the researching, reading, and collaborating for me. And for that, I'm truly grateful as there's no way I'd have time to do it on my own. I'm yet to listen to every episode that you've put out there so I don't feel like I'm in a place to ask too many questions, but I do have a few. Firstly, what is the origin of Carys’s name and why did you choose it? How is homeschooling working out for you and your family? And particularly Carys, what do you feel are the biggest pros and cons? What parenting strategies have you found supported in the literature that you have chosen not to apply to your own parenting approach? And why? And the last question is about school readiness, what factors determine success and how do I go about looking and testing for them for my child?

Thanks so much for the message, Virginia. I'm really glad you're getting so much out of the show. And thanks also for all those questions. So first one first. Where does Carys name from, Carys name is Welsh and it means one who loves and is loved. And we had a shortlist of names by the time she was born. We hadn't picked a final name. And my husband really wanted a unisex name like Bryce or Mackenzie, both of which I like. But I wasn't completely sold on it. And I was in labor with her for about 36 hours with really active heavy contractions for 18 of them. And when I talked to friends beforehand, they had said, oh, yeah, when it's time, it's time and you'll push her out you'll know, there isn't any and you will know it's the right time. And I never felt that. It never felt like it was the time and so it just seemed it seemed like it went on forever. And so when this name discussion came up, the day after she was born, I gave him this look that said, I just pushed a baby out of my vagina and I get to pick the name. And so he somewhat reluctantly agreed with that logic and so I picked Carys. Honestly, for its meaning, I know this isn't a secret. I mentioned it as long ago as Episode zero that I really truly had no parenting instinct whatsoever and no idea of what I was doing. And she was just this blob and she just cried all the time, she made my nipples hurt. I figured the best thing I could do was start by giving her a name that told her that she was loved and hoped that it would come true. And fortunately for both of us, it did. So under your second question about homeschooling, we're actually doing a sort of hybrid at the moment, because I'm still working full-time, in addition to running the podcast, so she has to be in preschool for five days a week while I'm working. She's in a really great Reggio-inspired setting and I feel good that she was engaging in the same kind of interest-led learning there that she does at home and wouldn't be at home if she was at home full time. But I also very intentionally supplement what she learns in school by following her interests. So just an example of how that kind of thing plays out. We one day we were having some kind of some random conversation. I don't even remember what started it while we were getting ready for bed. And somehow it came up that owls cough up pellets containing the bones and fern other indigestible bits of the animals they eat, and she said, I want to see that. So I as 21st-century parents do, I ordered some pellets from Amazon. And we had a lot of fun dissecting them and seeing what was inside. And we go to local animal tracking clubs somewhat regularly and not long after we had done the dissections, the club went to a location that had a barn that was obviously really well used by owls. And we were able to see where the pellets come from when they don't arrive in a box from Amazon. And we collected some and sterilize them in the oven and we dissected those as well. And we're super lucky that one of our neighbors is actually a globally renowned evolutionary biologist and mammologist, and he donated a couple of whole specimens of shrew skeletons. And that helped us to figure out how all of our pile of bones fit together to make an animal which is harder than you might think when all you have is, you know, all these things that are not bones that are not stuck together in any way or arranged in any kind of logical order and just clumped together with fur. And we have a human skeleton as well as, a model of a human skeleton. And so we got that out and we compare the shrew bones with our bones. And we saw how they were actually quite a lot of like, in a lot of ways, which helped us to figure out where some of the bones went as well. But they were also different in other ways. And we made a list of questions that Carys had about the bones like why are four four arms have two bones inside them instead of just one and why the shrews teeth are orange on one side and not on the other. And we took those to the naturalist who work in the Nature Center at the California Academy of Sciences. And they were able to answer these questions and also show her a whole bunch of other bones and eggs and other related things. So if you're curious about the answers to those questions, our forearms have two bones so that we can rotate our hands better. And I forget the name of the orange stuff, actually, and I couldn't find it immediately last night when I was writing this. But the stuff on the teeth makes them harder for annoying through a lot of fibrous foods, so that's what it's for. So when we're homeschooling, we'll be doing a lot more of these kinds of things and we'll also have a whole lot of time for hiking, hopefully, assuming she's ever hiking strike by then playing and hanging out with other people, and a whole lot of just doing nothing as well. And I have to say that I am incredibly excited for it. And in terms of what parenting approaches are supported by the literature that I've chosen not to pursue well, I guess the main ones are related to the behaviors based techniques like the ones used for anxiety that I described earlier. They're also used to help parents manage so called problem children. There's extensive research supporting the use of rewards to change children's behavior.

But as we mentioned, if the only thing we're focused on is changing the behavior, then I think we've really missed the point as parents, it's our challenge to look beyond this for the reasons behind the behavior and support the child in coping with these things better rather than just exerting our power to change the things that we don't like about our child. Your question on school readiness is probably something I could spend an entire episode covering so I can't hope to do it justice here. But in general, the skills that teachers hope children will have on entering school are things like the ability to sit still in a chair, the ability to focus on the teacher, and the ability to ignore the child and the next seat who's trying to get a rise out of them. Reading and writing and math are all nice bonuses, but all of those things can be taught if the child is willing to learn. Now, of course, there are a lot of undercurrents of unstated information here. Firstly, teachers are expecting to see skills that make their lives easier when they're trying to manage 20 to 30 children at a time, rather than skills that are necessarily critical to learning. Secondly, these skills are most likely to be seen among White middle-class children who have had the opportunity to go to preschool or kindergarten and who are “normally developing.”

It doesn't describe children who have things like autism or other conditions that we call disabilities or children who just simply aren't ready to sit in a chair for Five hours a day at age six or ready to read or children of non-dominant cultures who may arrive at school with a set of skills that looks very different from the ones that teachers seek. And finally, my biggest concern about school readiness would not be about whether my child is going to be successful in school, especially if your family is middle class and double especially if your family's White. Schools actually do quite well at getting middle-class White students to pass standardized tests. But because their goal is to improve test scores as much as possible things like maintaining children's natural love of learning tend to fall by the wayside. And this is actually why I developed a course called supporting children's learning in school, which is designed for parents of children who are in the year or two before they start school, or in the first year or two of school. And these parents want to know how to gently support developing skills like reading and math, and social, and emotional learning, as well as the interest-led learning that is much more rarely addressed in schools. I had this episode all edited and ready to go, and I was thinking about it. And I just wanted to insert something to clarify my position on the topic of schools, which I've done elsewhere, but I know not everyone is like those know, Denise and has listened to every single one of my episode. So I didn't want to come across as being too negative towards teachers, because I really don't think that teachers are the problem, in most cases. Yes, there are teachers who are experienced or burned out or maybe shouldn't have become teachers in the first place. But the vast majority of them are dedicated, and I think they genuinely want what's best for their students. The problem that I see is the system they have to work within, which essentially says to teachers, we don't trust you to make decisions about what you teach or how you teach it. And then we're going to hold you accountable using your students performance on tests that have no meaning for the child and also don't support their learning. I think that teachers are really hamstrung by a system that tries to prepare children to take their place in the corporate machine, instead of allowing teachers the freedom to truly understand their children's needs and to meet those needs in the most appropriate way. So I hope that clarifies my position on that. And I'm actually considering starting a new course or membership, I'm still trying to wrap my arms around it for parents who really want to dive deep into developing their own ability to support interest led learning from identifying an interest in nurturing it to extending it to expressing knowledge related to it. So if you or anyone else listening is interested in learning more about this or being part of a pilot group that develops this with me to meet your specific interests and needs on this topic, then do drop me a line at Jen@yourparentingmojo.com. All right, here's a voicemail from Dr. Kim Rybacki, who co-interviewed Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum with me in episode 87. On how to talk with children about race. Kim is an assistant professor on the behavioral sciences faculty at Dutchess Community College in New York. And let's hear what she has to say first.

Hi, Jen. This is Kim Rybacki. And I just wanted to share a quick message and congratulations on your 100th episode. And I'm commenting a little bit on what I love about the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. So just really briefly, I wanted to say how much I appreciate the scientific rigor that you bring to each episode. It's rare as a psychology professor to find a podcast that I both enjoy listening to and can recommend to my students, but I have total confidence in each of your episodes to do so. And even more important than the sort of scientific rigor, I'd say what are the values that each of your episodes demonstrates. I think you sort of bring a curiosity and humility to each topic that is that really, it sort of lends itself to, to deep sort of exploration and great conversation. You also have a cultural sensitivity that as a socio-cultural psychologist, I really appreciate and find lacking in a lot of places. And last but not least, sort of a dedication to social justice that really runs through each episode. So yeah, just wanted to sort of thank you for all the work that you put in to each episode and say I'm looking forward to all of the episodes to come. So thanks, and congratulations.

I have to say I love hearing from every single one of my listeners who gets in touch, but there are two kinds of emails that really get me going. The first is from people who have heard something in an episode that really profoundly touched them and shifted the way they thought about parenting or about their child. And the second kind is the ones I received from psychology professors. So as an introvert and a highly sensitive person with a well developed impostor syndrome, I have three factors that essentially ensure that I am over-prepared for every single episode I record, but there's always that nagging voice in the back of my head saying, “What if I'm getting this wrong?” And I actually have yet to hear from a professor who said, Well, this is my area of specialty and you totally screwed that one up. So maybe they just roll their eyes and they go and listen to something else. But I have a feeling that most psychology professors would want to correct the record if I seriously messed up so I'm glad that they hasn't happened yet. Of course, psychology is a field where a lot of things are really open to interpretation. And some things depend as much on your values as anything else, like the ways we choose to use or not use behaviors based methods with our children. So not everyone may agree with the exact interpretation that I bring to the evidence, but hopefully, those of you who want to understand more about how research can support us and being respectful parents who are our own children, but also help us to lift up other people's children as well feel like you found a home here. Okay, before we go on, let's have a little bit of fun.

55:32

Well, that's a very good question.

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So, it's another really good question.

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That's a good question.

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That's a good question.

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Oh, that's such a good question.

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Well, that's a good question.

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Well, I think that's a very good question, Jen. Because it's something that has occurred to me over the years.

That was Dr. Susan McHale from siblings, why they fight what we can do about it. Dr. Bernard Dreier, past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr. Allison Rhoda from White privilege in schools Dr. Stuart Brown on the importance of play Dr. Duxbury from the 30 million word gap, real episode Dr. Wendell Hanna, of how to introduce your child to music even if you can't play or sing and Dr. Mark Leather of our forest schools any better for children than regular schools. So when I met up with my listeners in Munich recently, they were laughing about how often my guests will say, “That's a good question,” and then I was talking with my friend Sarah recently, and she randomly said, “Do you know how often the people you interview say that's a great question?” We went back through my transcripts. And I have to say it doesn't happen in every episode, but there were a good number of them. So I pulled them out. And Sara thought this was doubly amusing because she had heard an ad for Terry Gross, his radio show on a streaming service recently. And for those of you who don't know, Terry Gross has been interviewed, her website says over 13,000 guests on National Public Radio over the last 40 years, and apparently the ad that Sarah heard was a compilation of her guests saying that's a great question. So I don't make any claim to be the interview with Terry Gross’s, but I still found the idea amusing. So the next two things I want to read to you are parts from two emails that I actually received back to back and the first one was from listener, Janelle. And Janelle said, Hi, Jen. I love YPM there are some episodes where I can't meet you where you're at, but I still get awesome stuff out of every episode. I love your dedication to every topic you look into. Thank you. While I know this is an incredibly charged topic, and it probably won't make it into the recording of the 100th episode. I was wondering if you could broach the topic of vaccines at all, specifically any scientific support or lack thereof on the effects of herd immunity and cocooning? I'm not asking you to pick a side or even out your own stance if you're uncomfortable with that, but I would definitely like a bit more unbiased wisdom than what I have. Thank you, Janelle.

Okay, so that was the first email. And here's the second one. I actually wasn't planning to include the second one for reasons that you'll hear in a minute. But when I realized how well it counterpoints, the one I received from Janelle, I decided to go ahead and include it. So a listener who shall remain nameless, wrote, “I'm thankful to have found your podcast because you tackle races in today's society, unlike any other resource, I found. I was so impressed with the additional resources provided by email. However, since venturing into your episodes outside that series, I've been very disappointed. Everything is so surface, it seems I'm a pretty average listener for your podcast, so we're all relatively informed already. What we need is a podcast willing to go deep on these tough issues, not just approach them. How do you sit down with a former president of the AAP and accept more politically correct jargon that is already littering their website? We don't need you for that. We need you to be our voice and to get the answers we can't get because you have access to these authorities. We need you to ask about vaccines and circumcision and bedsharing from the AAP in a way that clarifies their sources and their reasoning, not accepting that they review some imperfect science, we needed him to explain their cultural bias and vague statements. We need you to get more out of an expert on preventing sexual abuse than teaching anatomy, inviting open and loving conversation, and being wary of people who are obsessed with our kids. Your audience is already there, we got that we need more because the basics aren't enough. I realize you probably won't read this or may dismiss it, but I hope you consider it. I'd love to keep listening and learning from your podcast.” Now, when I first read this email, I thought, well, there's no way that one's going to make it into the episode because nobody likes to have their baby called ugly. And honestly, I was a bit miffed to receive such a critique of something that is essentially a halftime job for me and that I make available for free. But then I realized firstly that the two emails together nicely illustrate that my listeners come from a variety of different backgrounds.

Some of you are really ready for advanced information, while others are happy with being pushed just a little bit beyond the basics. I'm not really sure I could have gone much further with the episode on preventing sexual abuse because if the expert on this topic is telling us that these are the things we need to do to prevent it, then honestly, who are we to argue? But it was pretty interesting that both of these listeners brought up vaccines which I usually wouldn't touch with a bargepole since I'm not a doctor and this issue is really a medical decision rather than one related to parenting or child development. And I do accept the second listener’s point on the Academy of Pediatrics interview, I was a little gentle on that one, partly because the connection came to me through another listener, and I didn't want to create issues there. And we spent quite a bit of time in that episode talking about co-sleeping and I have already extensively discussed the interactions between culture and so called safe sleep recommendations and episode 53 on sleep, but I get that it would have been nice to hear this from the horse's mouth is it work, so I'm working to try and get someone else from the AAP to do a follow-up episode where we can dig more deeply into this. And I hope this inspires other listeners to get in touch. If you see things I could be doing better, although please do remember, there's a real person, on the other hand, reading the emails, who pours a whole lot of love and time, and effort into this work and just be a little bit kind in your critique. Okay, let's hear from listener, Anne.

Hello, Jen. I'm going to talk really fast because I have a lot to say. My name is Anne, and I have a one-and-a-half-year-old son Anderson. I know your show is not for babies, my son's age, but implementing everything early has really improved our relationship that has shown me he is capable of much more, much earlier than I would have thought. And I think it'll make it much easier to get to any of these practices throughout really the rest of my time raising him so. So yeah, so a little bit about my story is, you know, is part of my personality. Right after he was born, I launched into reading books on everything from I could in science-based parenting from developmental neuroscience to worldwide parenting practices, was trying to gather as much information as I could about science-based parenting. The more I read the more confused, I got trying to decipher the good from the bad facts from the fluff. Ultimately, I was so confused by conflicting information that my anxiety landed me in the emergency room with what turned out to be a $4,000 panic attack shortly after my son's first birthday. Although I'm sure the lack of sleep and basic self-care probably didn't help that either. But regardless, when I found your podcast, I was so relieved to have someone to do the work for me that looks at things through a skeptical lens, like you actually dig into the results section, you look at the methods, as opposed to just, you know, their abstract or conclusion of a study, you look at the other potential motivations of the authors or whether their sources are legit or not. I really wish there was more of this in our society and I'm so incredibly grateful that someone who is very good at this is actually creating a parenting resource. I mean, you've really created an incredible resource. It's opened my mind and improved my life in so many ways. I feel that I've grown as a person because of it, among other things, I understand my privilege better. I've grown as a parent, and capable at the very least of implementing a calm parenting practice that honors my child as a person and keeps our household you know, less dramatic, and loud. I feel as though I have peace in my parenting because of you. My relationship with my son is better because of your podcast. I'm so incredibly grateful to you, Jen. I listen to every single episode at least once. Even though I've tried, I really can't put into words how much I believe in what you're doing and how grateful I am. Thank you.

Wow. And I was so touched to hear that I think you're gonna end by saying thank you so much but you've reached the recording limit. I'm sorry that your anxiety put you in such a dark place. But I'm really glad I've been a part of what you feel is made you the kind of parent you want to be. And, of course, I have really grown as a parent alongside you, too. I said all the way back in episode zero and I said it again here today, I essentially have no parenting instinct at all. And really, for most of my life, I didn't have much of an interest in being a parent either. Carys wasn't an accident, and I wasn't coerced into it but I essentially did it because I didn't want to be responsible for the biggest disappointment in my husband's life. And of course, going into it I had no idea how much it would change my life as well. When she was just four months old I started thinking about discipline and how I was going to raise a child they actually wanted to be around without being the parent who always said no all the time, and I just didn't see a path forward until my good friends Joan and Shawna visited with their son and told me to read Magda Gerber's book yourself confident baby. That was how I found respectful parenting which is also called resources for infant educators or RIE.

And while Magda girl was books aren't evidence based per se, respect immediately felt like the tool that I'd been missing. I was always hoping to find some research showing that children raised using respectful parenting tools will come out better and children who aren't. And unfortunately, no such research exists, but in Episode 84, listener Silvana actually interviewed me and we uncovered what evidence there is to support the major tenants of RIE and I was glad to see there's actually quite a lot. So listener Cara drop me a note to say, “Hi Jen. I've actually been meaning to email you for some time now, I wanted to thank you for the work that you've done and let you know how valuable it's been to me. I also mostly follow the principles of RIE and considering home slash unschooling our two daughters who are four years old and 10 months old. Since you followed a similar path I deeply respect and value your opinions. I love that all you do is research-based and I have really enjoyed some of the more personal angles you've taken sharing yours as well as other listener stories. I did the taming your triggers workshop, and I'm grateful you offered it all to us for free. It was exactly what I needed. I had all those tools. I was only sometimes able to use effectively because my baggage was getting in my way. I especially enjoyed the NVC nonviolent communication episode, I think I've listened to it three times already. I love the variety of topics that you cover. Looking forward to episode and beyond. Best, Cara from the Catskills mountains in New York. Cara, I'm so glad you found the taming your triggers workshop helpful, I'm actually going to offer it again in October and spread it out over a long period of time to give people a chance to really dive deeply and make an impact on their relationships with their children. So if anyone listening missed the workshop the first time around and is interested in learning more about how to not feel triggered by your children's behavior so often, then this is definitely something you want to consider doing. And you can find more information about that at yourparentingmojo.com/tameyourtriggers. Listener Talie left me a voicemail about ideal family sizes,

Hi, Jen. This is Talie sending you this message from South Africa, Cape Town. And I'm really sorry for the noise around me. But I just entered right now on your website, and I saw this opportunity of leaving a voicemail. So I was like if I don't do it now I'm never going to do it. We're going back home where it's quiet and cozy. I will not dare to send you this message. So basically, here's my question for you. First, I want to thank you for the wonderful work and the podcast. It's really, it's been very helpful, a very informative, full of information that actually needs. It's really responding to what you you're really doing what you're saying you're doing. You're helping us not having to read all the research and you're giving us a lot of time, so thank you because you deliver what you say you will. So thank you for that. And I love so many subjects, especially recently the one on privileges very eye-opening, I’m an Afro-American or Afro-Caribbean, I’m from Martinique, and it's very in living in South Africa. Now. It's very, very insightful for also South Africa, the information that you're giving regarding the U.S and so it's really, it could be applied actually, there's very a lot of similarities with what we experienced here in South Africa with our family. My question for you is. I'm pregnant right now for my fourth child, I have a seven-year-old daughter’s twins, our 20 months old and a fourth one. And I'm wondering, is there any literature on what is ideal? How many children? I mean, in terms of stress, and in terms of you know, general happiness, well-being in this kind of stuff. Is there an ideal number? I know it depends for. I'm guessing it depends for each woman and for depending of your maybe socio-economic situation, and stuff. But I was wondering in terms of, you know, general well-being or how people reported to be happy in their lives and stuff like this. Is there an ideal number? Okay, this my question for you. If you find anything about this, I'd love to hear. Thank you so very much! Have a wonderful day.

So Talie, I haven't dived deeply into the research on this topic, but I did take a quick look for you. Of course, you're absolutely right that socioeconomic status is a big factor in ideal family sizes, especially in the way that this interacts with the family's expected standard of living. Researchers in China have commented that modern parents in Shanghai cite financial considerations as a major reason why they don't have more children, even though their income and standard of living are both exponentially higher than those of their parents or grandparents who had many more children. This is also a common research question in Sub-Saharan Africa as fertility patterns are shifting there and researchers have found that an increase in knowledge about contraception and a decrease in tolerance of physical abuse on the wife's part tend to predict lower birth rates. There was also a fascinating paper I found that looked at what the research called non-numerical answers to questions about ideal family size, which is where the researchers are asked participants what is the ideal family size, and the participant says they don't know or that it's up to God. These researchers found that knowledge of contraception diffused rapidly in local townships. And once women realized that other women were controlling their family size, they became aware of the idea themselves and then decided to do it too.

A paper on the differences in how families thought about family size in Switzerland and the Ukraine after the Second World War commented that “It is not only the economic and emotional costs of having children that influence individuals fertility decisions but also larger socio-cultural, ideological, institutional and political factors that shape parental responsibilities and ideas about family size. Importantly, this does not imply that each of these factors is the universal driver of any fertility decline, but rather these political, cultural, ideological, and social forces and events must be considered at the level of local communities that experience changes that are specifically relevant to them.” So in other words, the ideal family size is driven by a whole host of factors at once from whether you feel you can afford to maintain a standard of living if you add another child, or if you're willing to give up some discretionary expenditures, whether you have access to paid maternity leave or any maternity leave at all, if you're in the US, as well as good childcare options if you will go back to work whether your society encourages or discourages women from working as a factor both from the perspective of providing low-cost childcare as the UK does to whether movies and TV shows and commercials portray women as working or not. The availability and cost of contraceptives and abortion is important, as well as the ability and cost of public or private education. So if economic factors aren't an issue, and we ignore for a minute what your particular culture says about family size, I actually couldn't find any research on an absolute ideal family size. So if the family can afford to provide everything the child needs, is it better to have just one child or many children or something in between? There's I just couldn't find anything to give a concrete answer to that. My personal feeling is that economic considerations usually went out in some way. Even if it's sort of political, or socio-cultural issues, these kinds of tend to filter through economic issues eventually. And so for the vast majority of factors, I think that's the case and then other factors sort of play a supporting role.

And if everyone around you has a big family, then you're probably more likely to consider a big family is just something people do. And perhaps this is the one factor that could potentially override the economic issues. Although I would think that as parents become less inclined to do things, the way their own parents did them just because it's the way their own parents did them that this could shift either way, either towards larger families or smaller ones, depending on the individual parents preference. So I'm sorry, that probably wasn't the tight answer you were hoping for, but hopefully, it helps to at least shed some research-based light on this. So here's an email from listener Bridget. Hi, Jen. Thanks so much for your amazing podcast, I began listening around episode 35 or so. And since then, I wait impatiently for you to do your show. I don't always agree with what's being said, but I do always appreciate the information I've gotten. The ideas you talk about, and the topics you present are especially relevant to me because I'm trying to parent my children differently from how I was parented. Unfortunately, that kind of leaves me adrift in a nebulous sort of make-it-up as I go along and try not to raise sociopathic parenting sea. Listening to the podcast and engaging with other parents in the Facebook group gives me hope that we can all get through the next 18 to 20 years with minimal scarring, and maybe even enjoy each other and the process of growing up. Thank you, Jen, for everything you do. Sincerely, Bridget, and spawns. What a lovely way to sign off. Thanks, Bridget, I'm glad you don't always agree with what's being said on the show. That's the essence of critical thinking after all. And if we want to inspire that in our children, then we certainly need to practice it ourselves. And if you enjoy being around your children and raising them just a little bit more, because of the things you've heard on the show, well, then my work here is definitely worthwhile. So before we wrap up, I'd like to take just a few minutes to thank a few of the many listeners who maybe didn't record a voicemail or send an email, but they've reached out and made an impact on me or some aspect of the show over the years.

One of those is listener Carmen, who took my course on whether homeschooling is right for your family. And it turned out we realized afterwards that we live five miles apart from each other. And so we met at a cafe after she finished the course so that she could share her thoughts on it. And Carmen speaks excellent English, although her first language is German. And after we met she sent me an email saying how nice it was to meet me and that I was bigger than she had thought. And I responded that you meant taller right? And she I think she responded yes, I'm really glad we've been able to keep in touch and go on outdoor adventures with our children. Several listeners offered feedback and advice when I tried to do a rebranding a couple of years ago, which ended up not working out because the designer had no idea how to translate what the show was about into visual imagery. And several more of you have looked at specific pages more recently on my site to help me improve them. I'm thinking specifically of listeners, Emma and Emily both in the Australian contingent who spent quite a lot of time on this. But parents who are in the finding Your Parenting Mojo membership actually begin to feel like friends as well, if you participate and you join the group calls regularly, then I kind of get to know you and your children a bit and I'm such in awe of the work that you all are doing how to parent your children in line with your values. It's so gratifying that the tools that I've developed for you are working like when I posted on our private group reminding members to submit questions for an upcoming call and member Lucinda said that she realized when she started to try and think of questions how much smoother things had been going with her twins since I had sent out that month's guide on supporting sibling relationships. And as a result, she didn't really have a question to ask.

And then of course, there's Dr. Laura Froyen, who first came on Episode 45, about how parenting impacts child development. And then after the show, we got to talking about the importance of reading books and how we don't really know what it is about reading books with our children that has such a profound impact on their literacy, so she came back on episode 48 and talked about that. And it's been so great to co-teach with her on getting on the same page as your co-parent in the membership group and also see her grow and develop as a parenting and relationship coach as well. And to every single one of you who has ever written thanking me for an episode that touched you or offered a suggestion or an idea. Thank you. Even if it's just a super short thing like listener Danny who wrote to say, “Thank you, Jen, for all your hard work. It's been such a relief to have your podcast available for us. Keep it up. Congratulations on your 100th episode!” Or whether you've left a review on iTunes that helps others find the show or even if you're just subscribed and listening and learning, thank you to all of you, you really keep me going, and here's to the next 100! Don't forget if you'd like to be entered in the drawing to win a free year in the Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership, go ahead and share your favorite episode of the show on social media and tag the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook page or at Your Parenting Mojo on Instagram and I'll let you know who won that on October 21st. Thanks so much, and I'll see you for episode 101.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Your Parenting Mojo. Don't forget to subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com to receive new episode notifications and the free guide to 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. And also join the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. For more respectful research-based ideas to help kids thrive and make parenting easier for you. I'll see you next time on Your Parenting Mojo.