Emotional Regulation – Your Parenting Mojo

256: Managing Anger as a Parent: The Two Types of Anger You Need to Know

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:00:00 +0000

Are you tired of feeling guilty every time you get angry as a parent? What if your anger actually contains valuable information about what needs to change in your family systems?

Most parental anger management approaches treat all anger the same way – as a problem that requires control. But research shows there are actually two distinct types of parental anger, and understanding this difference changes everything about how you respond. Instead of suppressing your emotions or exploding at your kids, you can learn to use your anger constructively to create positive change for your family.

In this episode, you’ll discover why traditional anger control methods often backfire and learn a practical framework for responding to your anger in ways that honor both your emotional experience and your family’s wellbeing. You’ll understand when your anger is pointing to legitimate systemic problems versus when it’s signaling you’ve hit your personal limits.

Questions this episode will answer

Why do I get so angry as a parent? Parental anger often emerges when core values around fairness, respect, or safety are violated, or when you’re overwhelmed and basic needs aren’t being met.

What are the two types of anger parents experience? Values-Aligned Anger carries information about legitimate concerns and aims for positive change, while Reactive Anger emerges from overwhelm, triggers, or unmet basic needs.

How can I control my anger with my child? The HEAR method (Halt, Empathize, Acknowledge, Respond) provides a framework for responding to anger constructively rather than suppressing or exploding.

How does parental anger affect children? When parents model constructive anger responses, children learn that emotions can fuel positive change rather than destruction, and that their voices matter.

How do I deal with parental anger issues? Understanding whether your anger is Values-Aligned (requiring systemic changes) or Reactive (requiring self-care and healing) determines the most effective response strategy.

What are the symptoms of parental rage? Reactive anger typically comes suddenly with surprising intensity, seems disproportionate to triggers, and leaves you drained, while Values-Aligned anger builds gradually and energizes you toward solutions.

What you’ll learn in this episode

Why emotional suppression techniques often backfire and create “emotional rebound” effects
How to distinguish between Values-Aligned Anger (pointing to systemic problems) and Reactive Anger (signaling overwhelm or triggers)
The HEAR method for responding to anger constructively while maintaining family connection
Practical strategies for addressing the mental load and inequitable parenting responsibilities
How to model healthy anger responses that teach children their emotions have value
When to focus on systemic changes versus personal healing and self-care
Why your anger about impossible parenting standards reflects legitimate concerns about family-unfriendly systems
How to break the Anger-Guilt Cycle that keeps parents stuck in suppression and explosion patterns

Taming Your Triggers

If you see that your relationship with your child isn’t where you want it to be because you:

Speak to them in a tone or using words that you would never let other people use with your child…
Are rougher with their bodies than you know you should be when you feel frustrated…
Feel guilt and/or shame about how they’re experiencing your words and actions, even though your intentions are never to hurt them…

…the Taming Your Triggers Workshop will help you.

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

01:53 Introduction to today’s episode

03:50 Research shows that common anger management advice like breathing exercises and staying calm actually backfires, creating an emotional rebound that makes anger worse

05:40 A comprehensive research review by Richard and colleagues examined 46 studies on anger and found that anger serves important functions in our cognitive and emotional systems

06:07 The first type of anger, which is the Lordian Rage, according to Philosopher Myisha Cherry, but other researchers call it values-aligned anger or moral anger

07:50 The second type of anger is the reactive anger, and it emerges from overwhelm from past triggers getting activated or from basic needs that are not being met

09:10 You have to look at your own history and situation to know what kind of anger you’re dealing with

12:15 Both types of anger contain important information, but they’re most effectively addressed with quite different responses. Jen has created a HEAR method: H for halt, E for empathize, A for acknowledge, and R for respond, which can be used when the anger is already building up

21:02 When you feel angry about shouldering a disproportionate share of family responsibilities, your anger reflects broader cultural patterns where domestic labor continues to fall more heavily on women

23:42 Ideas that can be gained from the discussion

24:40 An open invitation for the Taming Your Triggers workshop

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248: The Anxious Generation Review (Part 2): Does Social Media Actually Cause Kids’ Depression and Anxiety?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:00:00 +0000

In Part 1 of this mini-series looking at Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, we discovered that the teen mental health crisis might not be as dramatic as The Anxious Generation claims – and that changes in diagnosis and coding could be inflating the numbers. But even if we accept that teens’ struggles have increased somewhat, the next crucial question is: what’s actually causing the change?

Jonathan Haidt is adamant that social media causes depression and anxiety in teenagers. He claims that “dozens of experiments” prove social media use is a CAUSE, not just a correlate, of mental health problems. But when you dig into the studies, as we do in this episode, we’ll see that the ‘causal’ data is nowhere near as strong as Haidt claims.

We’ll examine the experimental evidence behind social media and teen mental health claims, reveal why leading researchers compare social media effects on teens to eating potatoes, and uncover what factors actually explain 99% of youth mental health outcomes. Because if we’re going to spend time and energy helping our kids, we want to make sure we’re spending it doing things that will actually help.

Questions This Episode Will Answer

Does social media really cause teen depression and anxiety? Research shows correlation, not proven causation, with social media effects on teens explaining less than 1% of wellbeing, similar to the effect of eating potatoes. (Some researchers argue that this is still important enough to pay attention to – the episode explores why.)

Why do I keep hearing that social media is harmful if the research is weak? Many (but not all) social media studies find some evidence of harm, but when you look at the methodology this isn’t surprising – researchers do things like sending participants daily reminders that “limiting social media is good for you,” and then asking them how much social media they’ve consumed and how they feel. It’s hard to draw strong conclusions from this data!

How can different studies on social media show opposite results? Researchers studying teen social media use can get completely different results from the same data depending on how they choose to analyze it. The episode looks at those choices and what they mean for understanding whether social media causes kids’ depression and anxiety.

Is limiting my teen’s social media use actually going to help them? Current evidence suggests that some kids who use social media a lot are vulnerable to experiencing depression and anxiety, and limiting their use specifically may be protective. There is little evidence to support the idea that blanket bans on kids’ social media/smart phone usage will result in dramatic improvements in youth mental health, and focusing on issues that are more clearly connected to mental health would likely have a greater positive impact.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

How most social media research creates results that don’t tell us what we want to know (but then reports the results as if they do)
How the same teen mental health data can be analyzed to support opposite conclusions about social media effects on teens
What family relationships, academic pressure, and economic stress reveal about the real drivers of youth mental health issues
How social media and teen mental health correlations explain the same amount of variance as seemingly irrelevant factors like potato consumption
How researcher bias and study design flaws make social media studies less reliable than parents think
What happens when kids who benefit from social media lose access to it
Why the focus on teen social media use might distract from addressing bigger factors affecting your child’s wellbeing
How to evaluate social media research claims critically when making decisions about your family’s technology use
What the ongoing debate between leading researchers reveals about the uncertainty in digital wellness science
Why blanket solutions like social media bans might miss the complex realities of teen mental health challenges

Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s Book

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Affiliate link)

Jump to highlights

00:45 Introduction of today’s episode

01:40 Haidt explains that after reviewing many research studies with his colleagues Jean Twenge and Zach Rausch, social media doesn’t just happen to show up alongside mental health problems in teens – it’s actually creating them. The research shows that social media use leads to increased anxiety and depression, rather than simply being something that anxious and depressed teens tend to use more often

05:28 According to Dr. Gray, despite potential placebo effects boosting results, researchers found mostly no significant improvements in well-being from reducing social media use, only small effects on loneliness and depression that could easily be explained by chance

12:20 Dr. Amy Orben’s Specification Curve Analysis is a sophisticated attempt to show how research choices affect outcomes

15:12 A study by Schwartz found that both the group that quit Instagram AND the control group that kept using it normally BOTH improved on measures of depression and self-esteem, which the researchers admitted might just be because being in a study about social media usage made people more aware of their usage

26:54 Dr. Twenge’s studies of over 100,000 teens found heavy social media users were twice as likely to report depression, low well-being, and suicide risk, especially girls

31:42 Dr. Orben uses a technique called Specification Curve Analysis, which is a way to evaluate how the choices a researcher makes affect the study outcomes

34:35 Some of the factors that are bigger contributors than screen time usage

42:53 Dr. Orben describes repeating technology panics: radio, comics, TV, video games, now social media. Research lags behind fears, creating cycles where society panics about new tech before understanding previous ones

50:19 People tend to agree with yes/no questions regardless of content, even contradictory statements. Question-wording heavily influences responses, inflating correlations due to response style rather than genuine opinions

54:00 Wrapping up

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Epi-Aid 2016-018: Undetermined risk factors for suicide among youth, ages 10–24 — Santa Clara County, CA, 2016. Santa Clara County Public Health Department. https://files.santaclaracounty.gov/migrated/cdc-samhsa-epi-aid-final-report-scc-phd-2016.pdf

City of Palo Alto. (2021). City of Palo Alto: Suicide prevention policy and mental health promotion [Draft policy document]. Project Safety Net. https://www.psnyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/DRAFT-Palo-Alto-Suicide-Prevention-Policy-and-Mental-Health-Promotion-dT.pdf

Clinical Practice Research Datalink. Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is a real-world research service supporting retrospective and prospective public health and clinical studies. CPRD. https://www.cprd.com/

Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2022). Young people’s perceptions of their parents’ expectations and criticism are increasing over time: Implications for perfectionism. Psychological Bulletin, 148(1-2), 107-128. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000347

Evolve’s Behavioral Health Content Team. (2019, September 13). Long-term trends in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents and young adults. Evolve Treatment Centers. https://evolvetreatment.com/blog/long-term-trends-suicidal-ideation-suicide-attempts-adolescents-young-adults/

Evolve’s Behavioral Health Content Team. (2020, July 27). Mental health and suicide statistics for teens in Santa Clara County. Evolve Treatment Centers. https://evolvetreatment.com/blog/mental-health-suicide-santa-clara/

Faverio, M., & Sidoti, O. (2024, December 12). Teens, social media and technology 2024: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among U.S. teens; some say they’re on these sites almost constantly. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/12/PI_2024.12.12_Teens-Social-Media-Tech_REPORT.pdf

Garfield, R., Orgera, K., & Damico, A. (2019, January 25). The uninsured and the ACA: A primer – Key facts about health insurance and the uninsured amidst changes to the Affordable Care Act. KFF. https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-uninsured-and-the-aca-a-primer-key-facts-about-health-insurance-and-the-uninsured-amidst-changes-to-the-affordable-care-act-how-many-people-are-uninsured/

Gulbas, L. E., & Zayas, L. H. (2015). Examining the interplay among family, culture, and Latina teen suicidal behavior. Qualitative Health Research, 25(5), 689-699. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732314553598

Haas, A. P., Rodgers, P. L., & Herman, J. L. (2014, January). Suicide attempts among transgender and gender non-conforming adults: Findings of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-GNC-Suicide-Attempts-Jan-2014.pdf

Haidt, J., & Rausch, Z. Better mental health [Ongoing open-source literature review]. The Coddling. https://www.thecoddling.com/better-mental-health

Haidt, J., Rausch, Z., & Twenge, J. (ongoing). Social media and mental health: A collaborative review. Unpublished manuscript, New York University. Accessed at tinyurl.com/SocialMediaMentalHealthReview

Hunt, M., Auriemma, J., & Cashaw, A. C. A. (2003). Self-report bias and underreporting of depression on the BDI-II. Journal of Personality Assessment, 80(1), 26-30. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327752JPA8001_10

Johns Hopkins Medicine. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder-pmdd

Martin, J. L. (2002). Power, authority, and the constraint of belief systems. American Journal of Sociology, 107(4), 861-904. https://doi.org/10.1086/343192

Mueller, A. S., & Abrutyn, S. (2024). Addressing the social roots of suicide. In Life Under Pressure (pp. 191-218). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190847845.003.0008

NHS Digital. (2020). Mental health of children and young people in England, 2020 [Data set]. UK Data Service. https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-9128-2

Programme for International Student Assessment. (2024, May). Managing screen time: How to protect and equip students against distraction. OECD. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2024/05/managing-screen-time_023f2390/7c225af4-en.pdf

Rosin, H. (2015, December). The Silicon Valley suicides: Why are so many kids with bright prospects killing themselves in Palo Alto? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. (2020, March). Suicide. State of Child Health. https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/mental-health/suicide/

Sarginson, J., Webb, R. T., Stocks, S. J., Esmail, A., Garg, S., & Ashcroft, D. M. (2017). Temporal trends in antidepressant prescribing to children in UK primary care, 2000–2015. Journal of Affective Disorders, 210, 312-318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.12.047

Scottish Government. (2024, March 18). Supporting development of a self-harm strategy for Scotland, what does the qualitative evidence tell us? Gov.scot. https://www.gov.scot/publications/supporting-development-self-harm-strategy-scotland-qualitative-evidence-tell/

Thomas, J. F., Temple, J. R., Perez, N., & Rupp, R. (2011). Ethnic and gender disparities in needed adolescent mental health care. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 22(1), 101-110. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2011.0029

Townsend, E., Ness, J., Waters, K., Rehman, M., Kapur, N., Clements, C., Geulayov, G., Bale, E., Casey, D., & Hawton, K. (2022). Life problems in children and adolescents who self‐harm: Findings from the multicenter study of self‐harm in England. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 27(4), 352-360. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12544

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health. (n.d.). Mental and behavioral health – American Indians/Alaska Natives. https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/mental-and-behavioral-health-american-indiansalaska-natives

Wong, Y. J., Wang, L., Li, S., & Liu, H. (2017). Circumstances preceding the suicide of Asian Pacific Islander Americans and White Americans. Death Studies, 41(5), 311-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2016.1275888

Zulyniak, S., Wiens, K., Bulloch, A. G. M., Williams, J. V. A., Lukmanji, A., Dores, A. K., Isherwood, L. J., & Patten, S. B. (2021). Increasing rates of youth and adolescent suicide in Canadian women. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(1), 67-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/07067437211017875

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247: The Anxious Generation Review (Part 1): Is There Really a Mental Health Crisis in the U.S.?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 20:00:00 +0000

Are we really facing an unprecedented mental health crisis in America, or have we been misreading the data? As parents everywhere grapple with The Anxious Generation’s claims that smartphones are rewiring our children’s brains, this episode takes a closer look at what the research actually shows about youth mental health trends.

If you’ve read the book, you’ve seen those alarming hockey-stick graphs showing dramatic increases in teen depression and anxiety in teenagers. But what if those “surges” aren’t quite what they seem? What if changes in how we diagnose and track mental health conditions are inflating the crisis? And what happens when a community with everything that should protect kids – tight social bonds, involved parents, shared values – still experiences devastating teen suicide rates?

This deep-dive analysis examines the evidence behind Gen Z mental health claims, investigates whether youth depression statistics show the dramatic surge described in The Anxious Generation, and asks the crucial question: are we fighting the right battle when it comes to protecting our children’s wellbeing?

Questions This Episode Will Answer

Is there really a mental health crisis in America? While youth mental health challenges are real, the “crisis” narrative may be overblown due to changes in diagnostic practices and data collection methods since 2010.

When did the mental health crisis start according to The Anxious Generation? Haidt claims the crisis began between 2010-2015 with smartphone adoption, but the data shows more complex patterns that predate this timeline.

What are the signs of youth depression and anxiety that parents should watch for? The episode explores how reported signs of youth depression and anxiety have increased, but examines whether this reflects actual increases or better identification and reporting. We look at the classic signs of depression and anxiety in teens, as well as what to look for in teens who might ‘seem fine.’

How many teens have mental health issues compared to previous generations? Teen mental health statistics show increases, but when examined closely, many changes are smaller than dramatic graphs suggest.

What causes anxiety in teenagers beyond social media? Research shows that other factors may explain larger portions of youth mental health struggles than screen time.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

How changes in diagnostic criteria and healthcare access may have inflated mental health crisis statistics since 2015
Why teen suicide rates show different patterns than depression rates, and what this means for understanding youth struggles
The real story behind those alarming youth depression statistics and why context matters when interpreting data
How academic pressure in high-achieving communities can drive teen mental health problems even without social media
Why focusing solely on anxiety in teenagers related to screens might miss bigger factors affecting Gen Z mental health
What signs of youth depression actually tell us about the scope and causes of teen mental health challenges
How different communities experience and conceptualize mental health struggles in ways that challenge universal assumptions
Why the timeline of the supposed mental health crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere doesn’t align with smartphone adoption as clearly as The Anxious Generation claims

Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s Book

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Affiliate link)

Jump to highlights

00:53 Introduction of today’s episode

01:18 What is The Anxious Generation all about?

08:33 Is there really a mental health crisis among kids?

13:30 Male teen suicide rate in the US look like a sine wave. They peaked in about 1990 and then dropped and are more recently rising again to their 1990 levels

15:38 The determination of depression is done through people reporting their symptoms on a survey, not by therapists or doctors

19:55 There was a really huge change in our support for depression over the years. In 46 million people, almost 18 % of the US population didn’t have health insurance according to 2010

26:00 In one of Haidt’s google docs, he observed the two big jumps in suicides of 10 to14 year-old females in the US, from 66-88 in 2009 and from 85-141 in 2005

27:38 The National Transgender Discrimination survey in the US found that 38% of those assigned male at birth reported a lifetime suicide attempt, and that rate was 44% for those assigned female at birth and identifying as trans

33:18 Latinx Americans with a suicide history were less likely to experience feelings of hopelessness, low self-esteem, and meaninglessness compared to other groups. They often viewed suicide as a way to escape suffering caused by social factors like discrimination, abuse, poverty, and low social status. Research also shows that immigration-related stress and socioeconomic challenges increase suicide risk in this community

42:27 Scientists with the Centers for Disease Control surveyed Palo Alto residents for an epidemiological report and found that residents believed depression and mental health issues academic distress or pressure, disconnection and social isolation, family and cultural pressure and life challenges were the biggest contributors to youth suicide in the town

46:00 I wonder if focusing primarily on teaching children problem-solving, coping skills, and resilience might inadvertently place the responsibility on kids to adapt to overwhelming expectations, rather than prompting us to examine whether our cultural values and systems are truly supporting their well-being

49:52 Some key indicators to look out for when you feel worried that your child may be experiencing depression or anxiety

55:44 Wrapping up the part one of our mini-series on The Anxious Generation

References

Haidt, J., & Rausch, Z. Better mental health [Ongoing open-source literature review]. The Coddling. https://www.thecoddling.com/better-mental-health

Johns Hopkins Medicine. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder-pmdd

Martin, J. L. (2002). Power, authority, and the constraint of belief systems. American Journal of Sociology, 107(4), 861-904. https://doi.org/10.1086/343192

Mueller, A. S., & Abrutyn, S. (2024). Addressing the social roots of suicide. In Life Under Pressure (pp. 191-218). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190847845.003.0008

NHS Digital. (2020). Mental health of children and young people in England, 2020 [Data set]. UK Data Service. https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-9128-2

Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. (2020, March). Suicide. State of Child Health. https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/mental-health/suicide/

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242: The secret to having feedback conversations your family will actually hear

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:00:00 +0000

Have you ever shared an observation with your partner or child, only to watch them immediately become defensive or shut down? You meant well, but somehow your words landed as criticism instead of the helpful insight you intended.

In this episode, we explore The Feedback Process framework with Joellen Killion, examining how we can transform our family communications. When we participate in the feedback process effectively, we create conversations that family members can actually hear—conversations that lead to lasting positive change rather than defensiveness and resistance.

Questions this episode will answer

Why do our attempts to share observations with family members often lead to defensiveness?
What’s the difference between criticism and participating in the feedback process?
How can we frame our observations so they’re received as helpful rather than hurtful?
What specific language patterns help family members stay open to what we’re sharing?
How can we create feedback conversations that strengthen relationships instead of damaging them?
How does shifting from “waiting to respond” to “truly listening” transform the entire feedback dynamic?
How can we teach children to participate in the feedback process constructively?

What you’ll learn in this episode

The key components of The Feedback Process framework and how they transform family communications
Practical techniques to share observations without triggering defensiveness in your partner or children
Specific language patterns that help feedback recipients stay open to what you’re sharing
How to recognize when feedback isn’t being received and what to do about it
The crucial difference between criticism and constructive feedback
Ways to create a family culture where feedback strengthens relationships rather than damaging them
How participating in the feedback process builds emotional intelligence in children
Practical examples of transforming common family conflicts through effective feedback conversations

This episode provides practical tools to break cycles of criticism and defensiveness, creating space for authentic communication that leads to positive change in your family relationships.

Joellen Killion’s book

The Feedback Process (Affiliate link)

Other episodes mentioned

Jump to highlights

00:57 Introduction of today’s guest.

04:17 Key distinction between the traditional feedback that we usually practice and the feedback process.

09:50 When we encourage our partners, children, and siblings to express their views and desires, we acknowledge that we don’t have authority over them. True connection comes from understanding what others want, sharing our perspective, and finding mutual agreement.

14:55 When parents define success differently, navigate this by exploring each other’s underlying values without judgment, sharing your perspective, finding common ground, and experimenting with compromises that honor both viewpoints while meeting your child’s needs.

20:52 Create space for productive dialogue by focusing on the agreement versus the action, and inviting reflection rather than demanding explanations, you maintain connection while addressing inconsistency. This helps parents recommit to thoughtfully revising agreements when needed.

27:48 The feedback typology and how we know what type of feedback to use in any given situation.

32:48 Examples of what the feedback process looks like in the regulate middle stage, and the metacognitive reflect stage.

35:19 What does reflecting and metacognition look like with a child and with a parenting partner?

38:56 The stages of the feedback process.

40:11 Situations given by Joellen in which we can determine if it is construction knowledge or deconstruction knowledge.

49:26 Success comes from finding the middle ground that allows for consistent parenting. We can examine specific situations where we approached our child’s emotions differently, analyzing how each of us felt, how our child reacted, and the ultimate outcomes. From this analysis, we can construct an ideal approach that incorporates both perspectives.

55:55 The first question in the feedback process is what do you want to learn about the topic, because it shows a small indication of motivation, openness, and willingness to learn

57:46 The difference between giving and receiving feedback and engaging in the feedback process or a learning process.

59:10 Wrapping up the discussion.

References

Bing-You, R. G., & Trowbridge, R. L. (2009). Why medical educators may be failing at feedback. Jama, 302(12), 1330-1331.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: principles, policy & practice, 5(1), 7-74.

Bok, H. G., Teunissen, P. W., Spruijt, A., Fokkema, J. P., van Beukelen, P., Jaarsma, D. A., & van der Vleuten, C. P. (2013). Clarifying students’ feedback‐seeking behaviour in clinical clerkships. Medical education, 47(3), 282-291.

Butler, D. L., & Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and self-regulated learning: A theoretical synthesis. Review of educational research, 65(3), 245-281.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of educational research, 77(1), 81-112.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: a historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological bulletin, 119(2), 254.

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240: How to prepare your kids for the real world

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we explore how to prepare children for the real world without sacrificing their authentic selves. Drawing on research about food habits, screen time, social expectations, and discipline approaches, this discussion offers balanced strategies that prioritize connection over control. You’ll learn how to guide children through external pressures while helping them develop critical thinking skills and maintaining their inherent wisdom.

Questions this episode will answer

How can I help my child navigate a world of hyper-palatable foods without creating unhealthy food relationships?
What’s the evidence about screen time and video games, and how can I approach them constructively?
How do social systems pressure children to conform to limiting gender roles and expectations?
Is traditional discipline truly preparing children for the “real world,” or is there a better approach?
How can I honor my child’s authentic self while still giving them tools to succeed?

What you’ll learn in this episode

The truth about BMI measurements and research on body size that contradicts common assumptions
How the Division of Responsibility model can transform mealtime struggles
Why video games don’t increase violence and may offer surprising benefits
Practical ways to help children develop critical thinking about media messages
How to identify the unmet needs behind challenging behavior
The concept of “traumatic invalidation” and its impact on children’s development
Step-by-step approaches to build children’s self-regulation around screen time
How to create meaningful conversations about problematic messages in children’s books
Ways to validate children while preparing them for life’s challenges

This episode offers a thoughtful examination of the tensions between societal pressures and children’s innate wisdom, providing practical guidance for parents navigating these complex territories. Rather than offering quick fixes, we focus on building connection as the foundation for helping children develop resilience and discernment.

Jump to highlights

00:56 Introducing today’s episode

02:29 All kinds of cultural implications may be involved in what our children consume

04:35 Mealtimes can be stressful for children who likes to consume bread rather than to eat healthy foods like vegetables

07:12 Explaining what is a bliss point of a product

10:41 Things that help parents to navigate a world of hyper-palatable foods without creating unhealthy food relationship

15:07 Video games often reflect our broader societal values

16:35 Ways on how to help your child develop a healthy relationship with screens while preparing them for the digital world that they will inhabit

22:57 When a video game portrays a male character as warrior and a female character as healer, it often gives the same division of human qualities that pressure boys and girls

24:10 Choosing where the families live will significantly shape what children learn about social structures

26:19 Steps on how parents prepare our children for the reality while helping them develop into individuals

33:09 What is time-out teaching our children about relationship and their place in the world

42:12 How parent’s experiences shape our children to fit in the society

51:05 Acceptance of our own circumstances in dealing with our own child can be helpful at times

58:07 Wrapping up the discussion

References

Linehan, M.M. (2021). Building a life worth living. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Moss, M. (2013, February 20). The extraordinary science of addictive junk food. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

National Center for Education Statistics (1996). Do rich and poor districts spend alike? Author. Retrieved from:

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp#:~:text=Districts%20with%20high%2Dincome%20households,to%20spend%20for%20public%20education.&text=districts%20with%20moderate%2Dto%2Dhigh,student%20(%245%2C411%2D%20%244%2C774).

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231: How to support baby’s development after a Wonder Week

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 20:00:00 +0000

Expert strategies for baby’s growth and development beyond Wonder Weeks

In Part 2 of our Wonder Weeks series, we’re exploring how to support your baby’s development once a Wonder Week has passed. Is there a predictable schedule to follow, or is your baby’s crying tied to something unique?

In this episode, we’ll dive into:
✨ What research says about crying and developmental stages.
✨ The cultural influences behind parenting decisions and baby care.
✨ Strategies to support your baby through challenging times, Wonder Week or not.
✨ Ways to handle stress and ensure both you and your baby thrive.

Whether your baby follows the Wonder Weeks timeline or forges their own path, this episode equips you with the insights and tools you need to nurture their growth.

Book mentioned in this episode:

Mentioned Episodes

Jump to Highlights

00:00 Introduction to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast

01:49 Exploring the Developmental Leaps in Wonder Weeks

02:50 Critical Analysis of Leap Descriptions

12:04 Evaluating Leap Seven and Leap Eight

14:23 Parental Concerns and Cultural Influences

19:31 The Role of Social Support in Parenting

19:47 Addressing Fussy Periods and Parental Stress

44:34 The Evolution and Function of Regression Periods

51:10 Critique of Wonder Weeks’ Parenting Advice

57:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

References

Alink, L. R. A., Mesman, J., van Zeijl, J., Stolk, M. N., Juffer, F., Koot, H. M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2006). The early aggression curve: Development of physical aggression in 10- to 50- month old children. Child Development, 77(4), 954-966.

Brix, N., Ernst, A., Lauridsen, L. L. B., Parner, E., Støvring, H., Olsen, J., … & Ramlau‐Hansen, C. H. (2019). Timing of puberty in boys and girls: A population‐based study. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 33(1), 70-78.

Feldman, D. H., & Benjamin, A. C. (2004). Going backward to go forward: The critical role of regressive movement in cognitive development. Journal of Cognition and Development, 5(1), 97-102.

Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1985). From people, to plans, to objects: Changes in the meaning of early words and their relation to cognitive development. Journal of Pragmatics, 9(4), 495-512.

Green, B. L., Furrer, C., & McAllister, C. (2007). How do relationships support parenting? Effects of attachment style and social support on parenting behavior in an at-risk population. American Journal of Community Psychology, 40, 96-108.

Hall, E. S., Folger, A. T., Kelly, E. A., & Kamath-Rayne, B. D. (2013). Evaluation of gestational age estimate method on the calculation of preterm birth rates. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 18, 755-762.

Horwich, R. H. (1974). Regressive periods in primate behavioral development with reference to other mammals. Primates, 15, 141-149.

Jusczyk, P. W., & Krumhansl, C. L. (1993). Pitch and rhythmic patterns affecting infants’ sensitivity to musical phrase structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19(3), 627.

Krumhansl, C. L., & Jusczyk, P. W. (1990). Infants’ perception of phrase structure in music. Psychological Science, 1(1), 70-73.

Luger, C. (2018, January 8). Chelsey Luger: The cradleboard is making a comeback among tribal families. Yes! Magazine. Retrieved from https://indianz.com/News/2018/01/08/chelsey-luger-the-cradleboard-is-making.asp.

Mizuno, T., et al. (1970). Maturation patterns of EEG basic waves of healthy infants under twelve-months of age. The Tohoku Journal of Experimental Medicine, 102(1), 91-98.

Nez Perce Historical Park (n.d.). Cradleboard. Author. Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/nepe/exb/dailylife/GenderRoles/cradleboards/NEPE57_Cradle-Board.html.

Plooij, F. X. (2020). The phylogeny, ontogeny, causation and function of regression periods explained by reorganizations of the hierarchy of perceptual control systems. In The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory (pp. 199-225). Academic Press.

Sadurní, M., Pérez Burriel, M., & Plooij, F. X. (2010). The temporal relation between regression and transition periods in early infancy. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 13(1), 112-126.

Sadurní, M., & Rostan, C. (2003). Reflections on regression periods in the development of Catalan infants. In Regression Periods in Human Infancy (pp. 7-22). Psychology Press.

Seehagen, S., et al. (2015). Timely sleep facilitates declarative memory consolidation in infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(5), 1625-1629.

Tremblay, R. E. (2004). Decade of behavior distinguished lecture: Development of physical aggression during infancy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 25(5), 399-407.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control (n.d.). CDC’s Developmental Milestones. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html.

Wapner, J. (2020, April 15). Are sleep regressions real? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/parenting/baby/sleep-regression.html.

Click here to read the full transcript

Emma 00:00

Emma. Hi, I’m Emma, and I’m listening from the UK. We all want our children to lead fulfilled lives, but we’re surrounded by conflicting information and click bait headlines that leave us wondering what to do as parents. The Your Parenting Mojo podcast distills scientific research on parenting and child development into tools parents can actually use every day in their real lives with their real children. If you’d like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free infographic on the 13 Reasons Your child isn’t listening to you and what to do about each one, just head on over to yourparenting mojo.com/subscribe, and pretty soon you’re going to get tired of hearing my voice. Read this intro, so come and record one yourself at your parenting mojo.com/recordtheintro.

Jen Lumanlan 00:45

Hello and welcome to the second of our two part episode on the Wonder weeks on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. In part one of this mini series, we looked at the research that underpins the concept of regression periods, which is the idea that babies go through periods where they are more fussy than usual, because they’re getting ready to make a developmental leap. In that episode, we saw that, while we might assume that given the global distribution of the Wonder weeks, book and app, that the information is based on studies of 1000s of babies from many different locations, which all came to similar conclusions, that actually they’re based on one single study and three attempted replications with a total of about 80 children, all of European parents who were specifically selected because they were homogenous, meaning they were white and in two parent families and had secure incomes, and the mother planned to stay home with the baby for two years and had lots of family support, if not all of those conditions were in place, then the whole thing kind of fell apart pretty fast. In this episode, I want to take a closer look at the developmental part of the leaps, rather than the fussiness. And the timing of the fussiness. I look back at the ploys earliest paper describing the leaps to see where they got the idea that leaps exist and what they mean. I wanted to understand whether, even though there might be disagreements about when the fussy periods are, we could still get some useful information out of knowing more about the developmental periods that the ploys say happen in between the fussy periods. So we’re going to look at the evidence for the development that the ploys say happens in each of these periods, and also consider what, if anything, we should do with that information to support our babies and ourselves. The ploys research mostly focuses on the fussy behavior that precedes the leaps, both because it’s much easier to measure than the development itself, as well as because that’s perhaps understandably what parents are worried about. They want to know that what they’re going through is normal and that they aren’t responsible for the difficult behavior they’re seeing, but in the books, they also describe the development that’s apparently happening in between the fussy periods. So let’s see what evidence we can find that supports their descriptions. The first thing that stands out to me in the LEAP section of the Wonder weeks website is how fuzzy the languages. Here’s an example, conveniently drawn from leap one. Quote from week four, your baby enters leap one, the world of sensations. The first signals of your baby’s leap will appear between weeks four to six after the due date. Learn everything about leap one in the Wonder weeks app after this leap, baby senses will undergo a sudden, rapid growth. Your baby will notice that something new and strange is happening and in their world, and they could get upset after taking leap one. Your baby will be open for new experiences, and we will notice that he or she is more sensitive. End quote, uh, what? What does this actually mean? It’s like grasping at fog. There’s no specific terms here that we can research ourselves, no indication that this sudden, rapid growth of baby senses that they’re describing is based in research. How on earth are they measuring that babies are more open for new experiences and are also more sensitive? I went through all of the language describing the leaps and tried to find evidence supporting each of them, I looked for terms that actually meant something and ran them through Google Scholar with variations of search terms related to infant development, and I didn’t find very much. After going through leap two, the ploys say that, quote, your baby stops seeing the world as one big mishmash and starts to discover patterns. End, quote, I couldn’t find any specific information on pattern recognition at this age, the one paper I did find observed that the development of pattern recognition, not just in terms of visual patterns, but also patterns in language and relationships, is ongoing throughout the early years. There’s no mention of a specific leap around week 10, moving on to leap three. Around 11 weeks, you may see signs of the next leap approaching. Leap three. The world of smooth transitions, your baby is acquiring yet another new skill. Smooth transitions are things, whether tones, the brightness of light or moving objects that smoothly change into something else. Smooth transitions are so natural to adults that we barely notice them anymore. For your baby, these are the most complex things they can handle, and are therefore peak experiences. It was hard to find any evidence related to this. The paper I did find was written by two authors who are both psychologists, and one is also an ophthalmologist, who showed that visual functions of symmetry, COVID, linearity, motion, depth, acuity, these are all beginning to develop from birth until they show more adult like signatures at seven to eight months with no specific shift in the 11 to 13 week window. Leap four involves grabbing objects which we can actually find evidence to support. This is a common enough milestone it shows up in developmental charts. Deploys also suggest that infants will start babbling in this period around four months, when developmental charts published by the Centers for Disease Control put this at closer to six months. So the ploys are right when they say in the Wonder weeks book that they mention their skills really are on the earliest possible end of when they might appear. I couldn’t find any evidence at all for leap five on putting together the relationships between all the earlier leaps. Leap six on dividing the world into categories or groups, or LEAP seven on beginning to assemble and connect things rather than only deconstruct them. Leap eight is described in such weird language that I initially couldn’t understand it. It involves the ability to observe and perform various programs. And when I put that together with the idea that the child will learn that an end goal can be achieved in different ways, I finally understood that they’re talking about planning, they also pick up this idea in the LEAP nine description. Welcome to the world of principles. If your toddler has taken the leap, you will notice they are running all kinds of programs more smoothly, more naturally and more clearly. Around 64 weeks, your toddler will be a bit used to their new world and the journey of discovery can begin. Leaf nine is the leap of principles. Your toddler is more adept at handling the world of programs. As a result, they can not only imitate programs better, but also change them and create them by themselves. As a result, your little one will learn to think ahead, to reflect, to consider the consequences of their actions, to make plans and to balance them against each other. When we put these two leaps together, we can finally find solid evidence. Dr Allison gottnick and her colleagues did some work on this topic in the 1980s which is not cited in any of the Wonder weeks books which argues that the words there no and more represent baby’s plans. Specifically, there encodes the success of a plan, no encodes the failure of a plan, and more encodes the repetition of a plan or a request for assistance. These words are also used to encode relationships between objects there encodes the location of objects, more encodes the similarity of objects, meaning this thing I just had and that thing over there, the same and I want more of it. And no is used to negate propositions around 18 months, children apply these words to their current concerns, right around the 64 weeks predicted by leap nine, although rather later than leap eight, where it’s first discussed, the description of LEAP 10 is that you will notice that your toddler is a little more enterprising. They are behaving more maturely. They become very aware of themselves, gain a better understanding of time, begin to really enjoy music, and they treat things and toys differently. They want to do everything by themselves. And I’m thinking, Well, yes, it would be sort of surprising if, all things equal, your child wasn’t behaving more maturely as time went on. A child is going to gain a better understanding of time as time goes on, as it were, from the early days in infancy, when they had no idea where you went, when you disappeared, to being able to predict when something will happen that comes on a daily basis to understanding what just a minute means, which, when we say is almost never just one minute, their understanding of time is continually evolving. I also have a video of my daughter, Karis, at about eight months, sitting on a mat and swaying in time to someone’s guitar playing, clearly enjoying music. I’m not seeing anything unique in treating things and toys differently, which can happen at a variety of ages for a variety of different reasons. Holovitz brings us to how does the Wonder weeks help? Why do so many people follow this stuff I mentioned in the last episode on this topic that I ran a definitely unscientific poll in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group to understand whether parents knew that they had to base the timing of the Wonder weeks on the child’s gestational age when they responded to the survey. Some parents added comments about their experience with the program. Parent Anker said, we use the app, and it helped us tremendously. I have since learned there is much to criticize about the concept, but the perceived knowledge of what was happening for our baby made it easier for us to deal with the increased fussiness and difficult nights, and I really think that’s at the heart of it. It’s about seeing that there might be a reason why your child is being fussy and that you aren’t eat. In other words, you aren’t breaking your baby I think a big part of why we think we need apps is because we aren’t parenting in villages like we used. Do Before parenting was even a verb, and when we would have had so much help with the baby from people who had done it many times before.

Jen Lumanlan 10:08

Parent, Katie loved wonder weeks and said that they’re in parenting groups about reflux, and they’ve noticed that a surprising number of babies with reflux seem to have flares during the regression periods. Katie’s son would projectile vomit twice as often as normal, and then they would realize a new leap was underway, and every time it matched up with a wonder week. But again, we have to ask, what the Wonder week’s adds here? I totally get that we want to know that our baby is normal. I remember reading the your three year old child book when Karis was that age, and being amused and relieved that she fit about half of the descriptions in the book, but not the other half, and thinking, Oh, great, she’s doing what other kids before her have done. Then, of course, I did the deep dive into those ideas that I described in the why we shouldn’t read the your x year old child books anymore episode, because yes, she did fit half the ideas in the book. But as I pointed out in that episode, and as parent Christina pointed out in the Facebook group, these things are kind of like horoscopes, there is enough there that anyone can find something true to them in it, but also in a flex that it somehow fits millions of people. So parent Lauren found it helpful to see their baby was in a wonder week, even though their babies were so colicky that every week was a wonder week in their home. In the book The ploys note that baby lifting their head and torso with their arms while lying face down. Happens for the first time, or more often, or better than before, starting around three weeks, but maybe not until five months. They say, on average, most babies do this after making this leap, meaning leap two, which happens in weeks eight to nine. But given the wide range of ages, there are going to be a significant number of babies that lift their head and torso with their arms while lying face down after leap three and leap four as well. The book says that baby rolling from their back to their side is associated with the second leap, but that some babies won’t do this until they’re seven months old, by which they would have already gone through leap five. So what development is happening related to each leap? Well, apparently nothing that we can specifically pinned down, kind of like a horoscope deploys then liken the leaps to puberty. They say every child goes through puberty around the same age. But do they Well, not really. Firstly, puberty has a lot of different components. For kids with penises, researchers generally measure things like genital development and children the age at which their voice breaks and their first ejaculation for kids with vulvas, researchers measure things like breast development developed development of pubic hair and the age of the first period. A study of over 14 and a half 1000 children in Denmark found that boys genitals develop between the ages of eight and 17. Pubic hair between 10 and 16, and voice break and first ejaculation track very closely together between about ages 11 and 16. For kids with breasts, we’re looking at breast development between the ages of eight and 18. Pubic hair between nine and 18, and the first period between about 10 and 15. So these ranges do vary by continent. Another study found the median age at which children with vulvas develop breast buds range from 9.8 to 10.8 years in Europe, 9.7 to 10.3 years in the Middle East, 8.9 to 11.5 years in Asia, 8.8 to 10.3 years in the US, and 10.1 to 13.2 years in Africa, and yet deploys say that every child goes through puberty around the same age, even though puberty develops differs from the mental development your baby goes through, they are comparable in that all babies go through leaps at the same age, when clearly this is not the case. They go on to say that with a each age linked leap, we include a list of things that a baby could do for the first time at that earliest possible age. The key words here are could do and earliest possible, as we’ve stated before, babies don’t do all these skills at once, and hence, could do the age at which these skills appear for the first time varies greatly, sometimes by many months. To illustrate the large differences in ages when skills appear, we also state for some motor skills the average age and maximum age at which children master the skill. And we do that because we notice that parents want to know but do keep in mind that averages say nothing about your baby. End quote. So if the averages say nothing about our baby. What’s the point in providing the averages? I get that as a parent, you want to know if your child is okay, but it seems to me that it would be more helpful to provide something like the Center for Disease control’s developmental milestones, which are things like 75% or more of children can do a thing by a certain age, these are based in research, and they’re much more helpful for parents in understanding when a child might need more support, rather than knowing the earliest possible age at which a child might be able to do something, even knowing the date by which 75% of children can do a certain thing is way more difficult than you might think. So. I’m thinking back to the episode on the science of rye, where we looked at whether there’s evidence to back up the ideas in books by Magda Gerber, who developed the resources for intimate educators, or rye approach to being with young children. Gerber developed rye after her daughter was sick with a cold. One day she lived in Hungary, and physicians still made house calls then, and a physician named Dr Emmy Pickler came to her house. Gerber thought that Pickler would talk with her, Gerber as the parent, and was stunned when Dr Pickler instead talked respectfully with Gerber’s daughter. Dr Pickler published a study in English comparing the age in weeks that seven researchers had said that certain physical developmental milestones would occur, and the variation between the dates when these researchers said we would see each of the milestones appear, was incredible. One author said that babies should be able to turn from their back to their side at 18 weeks. Another said 28 weeks. One says babies should be able to turn from their back to their front by 18 weeks. Another says 32 weeks, and the rest appear in between. The lowest estimate on starting to walk is 49 weeks. The highest is 70 weeks. Most of the researchers will set a date when the child can sit by themselves, meaning the parent sits the baby up on the floor, and the baby doesn’t topple over. But parents who follow rye often don’t ever put the baby sitting up on the floor. They put the baby on their back, and baby eventually learns to get themselves into a seated position. And of course, that happens way later than parents who don’t use rye would sit their baby up so those babies would completely miss that milestone. But it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong. So why does it matter if we’re looking for a child to roll over in weeks eight to nine, when some babies can’t do this until seven months? Essentially, what we’re doing here is balancing concerns about whether we can help our child’s development if we know they’re about to be able to do something with how much we might worry if they can’t do something until later. That’s why we get the different focuses in the Wonder weeks book from the CDC. Wonder weeks is trying to appeal to a fairly well advantaged audience who wants the absolute best for their child, which probably includes people like you and me, people who could afford to buy black and white mobiles for our newborns because we’ve read the infants can’t perceive color, and the subscription toy services that send you toys supposedly geared to your child’s exact developmental stage, and cribs that function as an extra set of hands whenever you need a break, to shower, to work, to cook or sleep, and promise you’ll get your baby to sleep for an extra One to two hours each night because of its calming womb like motion and sound, a finding which has been published in a peer reviewed journal in a grand total of four paragraphs and definitely with not enough information to help us properly evaluate that claim. Now when two of the three authors on that study about the crib work for happiest baby, the manufacturer of said wellness device and the company also funded the study, and lo and behold, they have quote, unquote, peer reviewed data in support of their product. Claim, wonder weeks knows there are parents out there who want the best for their baby and will buy the Wonder weeks book and hopefully also the app and the baby monitor with its associated app and the baby’s first year diary. These parents want to know they’re proactively doing everything they can to support babies development. The CDC data, on the other hand, is looking to catch children who should have already passed a milestone but haven’t. It’s looking retroactively to see who might be having problems, rather than looking ahead to support children in reaching the milestone. And you might think, well, of course, it’s better to know what’s coming and support them in doing it. I want that. And what I want you to consider is, is it better? Is it better to know that very few babies might be able to roll over after leap two, even though most of them won’t do it for a couple more months, and some perfectly, normally developing babies won’t do it for quite a while? Because, to me, that’s a big reason why parents show up in online groups in week 10 saying wonder week says my baby should be rolling over by now, because now you know that a very small percentage of babies can do it. You worry when yours can’t do it. In my mind, there are enough real things to worry about in parenting without adding more things. Based on these incredibly early estimates of when babies might be able to do a certain skill, and with wonder weeks, you might find yourself not only worrying about what skill they should be able to do and can’t do, but also about anticipating the next stormy period, as the regressions are called in the book and the app, before it even arrives, instead of just being present with your baby and enjoying your baby today.

Jen Lumanlan 19:22

The second questionable assumption behind telling parents that babies might pass milestones very early is that parents think they both can and should do something to get or help the child to pass the milestone and maybe even to pass it early. And that’s a big fail, from my perspective, what we’re really doing when we’re doing this is comparing our child to a theoretical perfect child who passes their milestones on time and preferably early. We’re saying that the child won’t pass this milestone on time or preferably early without you doing things to make that happen. And the book encourages this approach in leave one The book tells us that quote, after eight weeks your baby. Become bored if they always see, hear, smell or taste the same old things. They crave variety. If they seem bored, keep them stimulated, carry them around in your arms or move the position of their baby chair to give them different objects to look at end. Quote, we’re told to quote, help your baby discover their hands and feet. But the only way we’re told to do that is to quote, allow your baby to study their hands as long as they want and as often as they want to. But now I’m worried they get bored by looking at their hands. How do I even know if an eight week old is bored? And if, quote, some babies will need a lot of time to complete their explorations, whereas other babies won’t. How should I support my baby if they’re done looking at their hands, or if they want to look at them endlessly, should I still move their baby chair so they can see other things? While we’re on that topic, the use of a baby chair is one of those things that’s really a cultural decision, but here it’s accepted as if it’s not a decision. There’s no place in the book where we’re encouraged to think about the benefits and drawbacks of putting your child in a baby chair. It’s just assumed we’ll have a baby chair and will put a child in it. I’m not saying that baby chairs are evil and we should never use them, but putting your child in a chair says something about what we expect a child to do, that they’re supposed to be quiet and still and contained, and that this takes preference over their ability to explore their hands and feet, which is apparently also important. We can imagine a baby who has the opportunity to just be on the floor for most of the time might reach their physical milestones earlier than a baby who spends a lot of time in a chair because they have more opportunity to move parents. In many indigenous cultures in North America used to strap their babies into a cradle board, which is a rigid board with a pillow around the back of the head and protection on the front. The practice is making a comeback among indigenous people today, who say that placing the cradleboard at eye level showed the baby the parent nurtured and respected them. Another benefit of the cradleboard was that it allowed babies to observe nature and the daily routines of the people around them in a world where close observation was a critical survival skill, the families using cradleboards Were preparing their children for success in their environment through the decisions they make that as they’re with the children. And our decisions prepare our children for our culture as well. And in this case, it’s a culture of keeping quiet and being still in the house. We used a baby rocker because I didn’t know anything differently back then, and I wrote in Karis diary when she was just a few days old that it was capable of stopping a meltdown instantly, which at the time, I thought was pretty flippin magical. I have to say, we also got one of those things that kids over about six months old, can sit in and bounce surrounded by toys. Another parent had told us it was the only way we were going to be able to take a shower. So of course, it sounded like a must have device for us, but what it was really doing was constraining Karis movement, not to a degree that harmed her, but to a degree that started teaching her that she was going to be expected to move in the ways we wanted her to move, which might not be how she wanted to move. She’s never been one of those kids who are in constant motion, although we definitely had her struggles over jumping on the couch as she got big and heavy enough that it shifted from being an activity we could permit to being an activity that broke a couchspring. But I do coach a lot of parents who want their children to stop moving so much, stop climbing on things, stop jumping on things. We all, and I include ourselves here, assume that children should adapt to the furniture we already have in our homes, even though it was designed for adults and is often inconvenient or dangerous for children to use. We rearranged our living room a few months ago so we could have hang a hammock in the middle of it. Both ends of the hammock are suspended from the same point, and that makes it perfect for swimming, swinging around in and Charis uses it many, many times throughout every day. Sometimes she says she can’t imagine what life was like before it I would love to install monkey bars down our hallway, but unfortunately, I can’t figure out a way to do it without wrecking the wood paneling another example of how a home is designed for adults rather than children. When I talked with Dr Diana Hill on the topic of how we can use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to support ourselves and our children, she mentioned that because she believes so much in the mental and physical health benefits of movement, she removed most of the big furniture from her living room, which cues everyone in the house to use the room to get more movement. So in parenting, as it’s practiced in the US, we’re giving our kids mixed messages. We want them to meet these movement milestones early, but we want them to do it in ways that are convenient for us. And when I say us, I fully include myself here, because while we did practice a lot of elements of rye, there were also many ways that our home was not set up for children, which made it more difficult for Karis to get the movement she needed and that we needed also, but we had trained to only do when we were exercising.

Jen Lumanlan 24:35

Praise is another one of those cultural decisions that seems like it isn’t a decision. The book tells us to, quote, encourage your baby to grab toys by showing them that you are enthusiastic about the effort they’re making, and encourage each serious attempt. Praise from you will encourage them to continue. End, quote. We also see a quote from a parent eight week mental development leave baby finds their hands. Good job, buddy. I was sort of surprised. Is that the ploys didn’t cite Dr Carol Dweck work on this, because it definitely seems to be on their minds. We looked at this research in the episode on can growth mindset live up to the hype, where we concluded that yes, it seems safe to say that if you work harder at something, you’re more likely to succeed at it, but that it’s highly unlikely to be a variable that makes an important contribution to your child’s success. Our conversation with Alfie Kohn on the topic of rewards is relevant here, because praise is essentially a kind of reward. When we praise someone, we’re saying we have power to judge their behavior, and we get to determine what measures up to an appropriate standard and what doesn’t the ploys say this directly, we are to quote, encourage each serious attempt, so we’re the ones who judge whether the attempt is serious or not, and thus worth praising or not. The decision to say good job or not when our child reaches for a toy might seem pretty inconsequential, but I can’t tell you how many women I work with, especially who describe themselves as people pleasers or recovering people pleasers. People who are praised as children tend to go on to have a really hard time saying no and will say yes even when they don’t want to do what they’re being asked to do, they neglect their own needs and feel guilty if they can’t do it. All. People pleasing is driven by a variety of factors, including a desire to avoid conflict, a fear of rejection or criticism, or a need for safety, and underneath all of those is the need to belong, to have the other person accept us and love us, and we fear that they won’t if we say no to them, which we learned when our parents judged our behavior and praised us for behavior that matched their expectations and either ignored or punished behavior that didn’t measure up. We equate that praise with love and belonging, and we do whatever it takes to keep the praise coming, including abandoning ourselves when we’re trying to get our child to match up with some external idea about what they should be doing, and when we aren’t really seeing the actual child in front of us, and that is what our child needs us to do more than anything else, these cultural ideas show up throughout the book, and we presume the app as well. We learned that we should talk to our baby throughout their waking hours as a matter of course, where we see echoes of the research on the massive word gap that supposedly exists between black and white four year olds when you ignore a lot of the ways that the black kids hear words spoken between other people, rather than directly to the child. We looked at that research in our pair of episodes on the so called 30 million word gap, we learned that many babies like pull up games, which means pulling a child who’s old enough to lift their head from a half sitting position to an upright position, or pulling them from sitting to standing. We’re even told that quote, fathers are usually the first to discover that babies enjoy the early pull up games, then mothers will follow end quote. Because, of course, the mothers are the caretakers and the fathers of the fun parents. The ploys uncritically state that quote, fathers tend to be slightly more enthusiastic with baby boys than baby girls, which may well be true because we all tend to call babies dressed in pink cute and pretty, and babies dressed in blue strong our expectations of what babies can and should do, and especially what girl and boy babies shouldn’t can do, shapes them from even the younger stages. We looked at that topic in the episodes on parenting beyond pink and blue, as well as on Virginia Mendes, great book childhood Unlimited, where we found that when researchers dress a baby up in blue clothes, people call the baby big and strong, and when they dress the same baby up in pink clothes, people call it pretty and cute. We assume that mothers are supposed to take the more nurturing, caring role because that’s what women are supposed to do. Dads are supposed to take the more fun, physical role, because that’s what men are supposed to do. We’ve been socialized to think this for our whole lives. And here are the ploys, reiterating these ideas, confirming that it’s a normal and natural thing for parents genitals to be the thing that determines how they take care of and play with their babies. Later on, we learn that quote, many babies try to help their parents crawl, which I hadn’t known was possible. When I read this, I realize the Floyds have an odd writing style, where they tell us that some parents do X and many parents do Y without stating why. They’re telling us this. Are we supposed to take this as advice? The text itself doesn’t say whether we should teach our babies to crawl or not. Only. The subheading says, teach your baby to crawl. It sometimes works. It only sometimes works. Why not always? What are parents or babies for whom it doesn’t work doing that’s different from the ones for whom it does work? What does research say about whether helping babies to crawl helps them? Does it even matter? And if it doesn’t matter, why are they telling us this going back to the chimps who would physically pry their infants off them after a regression period to teach the infants how to be more independent. We see this come out at the very beginning of the Wonder weeks book, when the child of the parent reading the book is probably still an infant. And we get when a baby learns something new, we want to encourage them and make it stick so they can build on that new skill to crawl instead of being carried. Means unlearning. The habit of reaching up for their mommy or daddy. Like the earlier example of a phone update, the old way of doing things is no longer available. Once they can crawl, they can get their own toys. After each leap, a baby can do more and will also be more independent. The more they do themselves, the more their self confidence and self esteem will grow. End quote, and this is where we see how we’re being taught to train our children to be successful in a culture that prioritizes independence. I do wish I could have gotten my hands on the early Dutch version of the book and knew how to read it so I could see whether the ploys gave the same advice for their Dutch audience that got massively more social support than the average parent in the US. Because this issue is at the heart of how we parent. I’m certainly not advocating that we become our child’s servant and whatever they whatever they want, something we deliver it, but there’s a wide gulf between that and constant encouragement to do more for themselves. Always doing more for yourself leads to the parents I work with not knowing how to ask anyone for help, the statement that the more they do for themselves, the more their self confidence and self esteem will grow, is not backed by any peer reviewed research cited in the book. Do we even want their self esteem to grow? Long time listeners might remember our episode on that topic from a while ago where we saw how the state of California learned the hard way after spending millions of dollars implementing school based programs to improve children’s self esteem. The higher self esteem is not associated with better outcomes for children, and actually, self compassion is a much more useful tool. You can hear all about that in the episode called don’t bother trying to increase your child’s self esteem. Related to this, I will never forget a parent telling me that their mom used to be so kind and compassionate when the child was sick that the now parent on the call with me used to wish that they could be sick more often. That story has really guided me for a lot of years, and I try very hard to treat my daughter, Karis, every day with the same tenderness and compassion that I do when she’s sick. It doesn’t mean that I do everything for her, but it does mean that I check in with her and make more requests of her when she has more capacity and come toward her a bit more when her capacity is lower. I don’t say, well, you’re 10 now, so you should be able to unload the dishwasher when I ask you to just like I wouldn’t think, well, you’re eight months old. You should be able to get the toy by yourself, because that comparison takes us right back to the most harmful component of self esteem. It turns out that self esteem is reliant on comparing yourself to others and seeing yourself as better than them. And when you compare your child to a sibling or a theoretical child of their age who should be able to do this task, you don’t actually help them. Those comparisons create shame, which is not where we want to be. If we can help it, we may end up there accidentally, so we don’t need to end up there on purpose, because we’re trying to encourage our child to be more independent. So all of these ideas are underneath the seemingly simple advice to keep babies stimulated rather than letting them get bored by carrying them around or pointing their chair toward new things or pull them up by their hands, or get them to practice a skill once they’ve learned it, at the end of the day, your baby won’t do any better, either in the next leap or in life, because they went through these milestones faster than any other baby, we can’t even say that they will develop a particular and specific skill at a time that’s aligned with a particular and specific fussy period. Dr ploy even acknowledges this in his book chapter summarizing the results of all these so called replication studies, he says, quote, There is no simple one to one relation between new skills, task performances and behaviors on the one hand, and the age related regression periods on the other. In the past, developmental psychologists tried to establish a temporal link between brain maturation and the so called developmental milestones. They failed. The developmental milestones did not appear to be age related. Developmental Psychology has shown abundantly that children may show huge individual differences of many months in the age of first appearance of some milestones. End Quote, so once again, why do the ploys attempt to tie the developmental growth to specific periods of time, as they do in the Wonder weeks book. As well as to the fussy periods.

Jen Lumanlan 34:06

The final issue I want to work through is the idea of what we parents should do in the fussy phases. The ploys say that quote, When your baby becomes aware their world is changing, they will usually cry more easily than before. At this point, many parents might call their babies cranky, bad tempered, whiny or disconnect, discontented. End quote. They go on to list a variety of other behaviors you might notice, including being restless, impatient, troublesome, cry more often than they used to, and may want to be in physical contact with you. They might have nightmares, although the evidence they use for this is the baby tosses and turns during sleep, so it looks like they’re having a nightmare. But we have no idea if this is actually happening for infants. They say, quote, This phase is not only difficult for your baby, but also for you, and it causes worries, irritation and quarrels that puts you under strain. End, quote, the way this is presented makes it sound like there’s a direct line from the child’s clingy behavior to the parent’s worry, irritation and strain. Which is what presumably results in the quarrels. I’m not sure how you can quarrel with an infant, but I guessed it was a translation issue, and that they mean have disagreements about how much of the time you want to be in physical contact. And then on my second reading of the book, I found buried in the LEAP six section that quarrels are related to the baby’s fickle behavior, sometimes wanting to nurse, sometimes not, which irritates the mother, and that quarrels can also develop when parents and babies fail to negotiate the amount of physical contact and attention their baby wants, and their mommy and daddy are willing to give end quote, and oh my gosh, I remember those days so well. One time when Karis was a few months old, I wanted to go grocery shopping, so I got all the bags and the list ready in advance while she was napping, and then she woke I fed her. I took a few minutes to put my shoes on, go to the bathroom, head out to the car, and I was just about to get in the car when my husband came out carrying her, and she was crying, and he said, I think she needs feeling again. And I shouted pretty loudly across the street, I just want to make one decision for myself. The Wonder week’s book quotes a variety of parents saying things like, I can hardly move without my daughter crying out in fear, and my baby doesn’t like playing on his play mat for long periods. I really have to keep him occupied on my lap or walk around with him, and my son keeps on bothering me to sit on my lap, but as soon as I take him, there’s almost no controlling him. He crawls all over me and gropes around like a monkey for anything he can get his hands on. I try playing games, but it’s a waste of time, so he doesn’t feel like playing with me, okay, but at least he could stop being difficult. Another parent said, reasons why Carl was crying like this yesterday. I took the toilet paper away from him. He was playing with his favorite toy. I changed his very wet diaper. I set him down so I could use the restroom for five seconds. He hit his head on the door. I put the car I put him in the car seat. The dog walked away from him. I wouldn’t let him bite me. And lastly, for absolutely no reason at all, leap seven is really hitting this guy hard, and we still have 23 days until it’s over. And I do remember those days too. When Charis was about four months old, I would try to transition from playing with her on the floor in the living room to cooking dinner in the kitchen, and she would cry, and I remember quite clearly telling someone she won’t let me cook dinner. I didn’t know at the time how much she was impacted by being able to see me or not see me, and when I was cooking she couldn’t see me. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t let me cook dinner, it was that she may have felt disconnected from me and potentially scared at being alone. The ploys say that quote, parents are concerned when their baby is upset, they try to find a cause for their babies now, more frequent crying? Could it be teething, not enough sleep, a pesky sibling? Or perhaps it’s a leap, and I think that’s what the Wonder weeks does for us. Our child is crying more than usual, and we’re racking our brains trying to figure out what’s going on. And if we can’t think of what else it could possibly be, we conclude maybe it’s a leap. We feel better. We try to remember which are the stormy weeks, and we know weeks eight to nine are stormy ones, and it’s week 10, but week eight wasn’t that bad, was it? Maybe it’s a late regression now, but what if we didn’t have to buy the book or enter daily data into an app or worry about whether a leap is happening, given it could happen any time over a multi week period. What if we could see our baby fussing more than usual? And think I can see that you need more help today than you did yesterday? How much can I willingly come towards you, and what am I not willing to do? Yes, we want to know if there’s a physical reason why baby’s crying. If they’re wet, we change them. If they’re hungry, we feed them. If they have a tooth coming in, we offer them something cold to bite down on. If they always fuss when we put a particular item of clothing on them, we might conclude they find that particular piece of clothing to be uncomfortable. If they’re crying when we disappear to the kitchen to cook dinner, perhaps we could imagine they feel disconnected or scared, and if we put them on the floor just outside the kitchen, or maybe the end of the day is difficult. We do more meal prep earlier in the day, so there’s less work to do in the evenings, and we both have less capacity. The key is that when we do this, we’re responding to the child in front of us. We aren’t comparing our baby to some external milestone that some babies hit some time over a four week period, and trying to understand whether that’s why our baby is having a hard time we’re saying you’re having a hard time today. Let’s see how I can help. If we go back to some of those parents who were expressing dismay at their baby’s fussy behavior, we might be able to find some of the reasons why that’s happening. Maybe a baby who’s crying when they’re on their mat is feeling bored. We can test this by offering something new for them to investigate, which for a child who’s grasping things could be something as simple as a napkin, and seeing whether that engages them. If they’re not actually protesting being on the mat, but they’re protesting not being able to see us, then a napkin isn’t going to help. Putting them in a spot nearer to us will help when we perceive our child climbing on us as being difficult, when we probably want this very same child to meet milestones related to crawling and walking on time or early. Maybe the problem isn’t with our child. If they’re pulling on necklaces or earrings, maybe we could wear jewelry a bit less for a bit. If they’re grabbing at our glasses. We could take our glasses off when they climb on us and re. Great. I don’t want you to grab my glasses. We can learn to see each thing our baby is doing as exactly the right thing for them in their development, in this moment, instead of feeling unhappy when they’re too fussy and also unhappy when they aren’t fussy, as baby Nina’s parent says, The only thing my baby likes doing right now is cuddling up close to me in her sling. She’s very quiet and no trouble at all. She doesn’t do much except sleep. To be honest, though, I’d much rather see her full of life. The poor kids can’t win, can they? And what we’re hoping here is that you’re getting enough support that you don’t find babies requests for help to be difficult to hear, if you are having a hard time, that you can get help. Because according to the Wonder weeks, you should get help if things are difficult and difficult enough that you’re finding babies fussing hard to cope with. And this fact does come through clearly to readers. Parent, Catherine said in our Facebook group she got the impression the Wonder weeks book was a series of reminders not to shake your baby even if you are frustrated at a change, because that change could supposedly be expected based on their schedule. And the book is a bit repetitive on this, there isn’t much on the topic at leap one, but it starts in earnest at leap two, under a subheading, you may be on the edge of really losing it. The ploys say, only Rarely will a parent admit to having been a bit rougher than necessary when putting their baby down, because they were so driven to distraction by the baby screaming and crying that it happened without their thinking about it, even thoughts of being rough, need to be addressed immediately, because it’s an indication that you’re overwhelmed and desperate and need help right away. There is no excuse for acting on these feelings. However difficult your baby is being, accept that it can be trying at times and take action before the situation overwhelms. You talk to someone about how you’re feeling. End Quote, here’s the LEAP three reminder, if parents worry a lot about their baby and they are not given enough support from family and friends, they may become exhausted. Unwelcome advice. On top of exhaustion could make any parent feel even more irritable and snappish. They feel they have no one to turn to with their problems. They feel alone. However understandable these feelings of frustration may be, one should never act on them. Slapping or hurting a baby in any other way is not acceptable. Seek help if you feel it is all getting too much for you. End quote. Then there’s a special call out box with a drawing of a cloud and a lightning bolt at the top that says, shaking is very dangerous. In capitals, never shake your baby. Shaking a young child can easily cause internal bleeding just below the skull, which can result in brain damage that may lead to learning difficulties later on, and in some cases, even death. End quote.

Jen Lumanlan 42:29

The LEAP four reminder is many mothers and fathers can become annoyed toward the end of a fussy phase, when there seems to be no real reason a baby is upset. It may feel like their baby has no valid reason for making such a fuss, and they are inclined to let them cry a little longer than they used to. Parents may think of comments and helpful advice they’ve heard from others about spoiling their baby, baby. They really are giving into their whims too much. We hope you will remember your baby needs to be comforted. Leaving them to cry will not help them through this fussy phase when your baby won’t stop crying and you are at your wit’s end. Get help long before you lose control. Shaking in particular can be harmful. So this all, and I’m not going to repeat the same thing from all of the leaps, but it’s there for most of them. It brings us back to our quarrels with the baby. The book essentially sees our role, by which I mean the mother’s role in particular is to provide the perfect environment for your child. You have to really pay attention to their behavior and preferably record it in the Wonder weeks app and provide the right level of stimulation to ensure they’re taking advantage of their developmental leap. Which reminds me of those toy kits you can sign up for that the toys are supposedly timed for the exact developmental stage your child is at when there’s no evidence that children benefit from presenting specific toys at specific times, you as the mother don’t really exist as a person anymore. Once you become a parent, your role is to be a parent, to be a mother, to do that job perfectly, and if you get stressed out doing that, get help and don’t shake the baby. You can take an active role during a leap. We’re told, by helping and guiding your baby, you build a safe and strong bond. End quote, and even though we give you the earliest age at which the behavior appears, quote, don’t focus on the earliest possible age, as most babies exhibit these skills at the later side of the range. And anyway, you can anticipate when a leap will happen by age, but your baby’s choices make them unique. And also, don’t shake the baby as we start to zoom out a bit at the end of this pair of episodes, we have to wonder, what’s the purpose of the fussy periods? Assuming they do exist, what are we to do with this information that our child is going through one of these nebulously defined periods of development for which there’s basically no research supporting them in the book, in a book chapter celebrating the legacy of pediatrician and author, T Barry Brazelton, Dr ploy recounts the results of his early chimp studies and mapped these to the data they gathered from human parents, with a goal of understanding the four whys, where researchers try to understand the evolution, development, causation and function of behavior, regression. Periods have evolved in humans, primates and non primate mammals as well. He says the chimp mothers would tolerate increased contact that the infants were trying to get, but then, after the regression they would enter a period of conflict where the mother chimp would actually try to push the baby off them, in providing evidence for the development of regression periods. Dr ploy says that mothers of younger human babies would initially worry that something was wrong with their babies during a regression period and take them to the doctor, only to find out there was nothing wrong. Then their worry would turn to annoyance. In the first few months, they wouldn’t do anything about their annoyance, but from the second half of the first year onwards, they would the chapter is pretty light on details, and I didn’t see this information described in any peer reviewed paper, but he says the mothers sensed their babies were able to do more, and so they would demand more of them. They initially used mild strategies like diverting the baby’s attention, but over time, these would develop into what took deploy, called clashes, and by the time the babies were 18 months old, all the mothers reported these clashes, which we can assume are the same thing as the quarrels in the Wonder weeks book, Dr ploy argued that the cause of regression seems straightforward. They’re related to age linked developments in children’s brains. Their function is to trigger what he calls better caring behavior for mothers, because being able to trigger this behavior creates better outcomes for children. The evidence in support of this is a single study finding that temperamentally difficult middle class and upper class children, who we can assume are all white, had unexpectedly high IQs. He theorized that, quote, temperamentally difficult children activate special family resources, stimulating intellectual development. End quote, The ploys and a collaborator developed a program quote for a group of single mothers at risk of abusing their infants. End Quote, to help them see that their babies couldn’t help being difficult and that comforting their babies would facilitate later learning, they published their findings in a book, not in a paper, and only in Dutch, so I can’t check the outcomes, and as we might expect, they reported in this chapter that I was reading unequivocally positive outcomes, and conclude that regression periods have the function of activating family resources to promote intellectual and social development as well as physical health. If we accept this premise as true, then ultimately, what Dr ploy is saying is, hug your baby, respond to your baby, ignore all that science based advice from earlier in the century that said you would spoil your baby by hugging them too much. It is not at all clear what’s happening during the clashes, and it seems to me that that’s just as important at what happens during the regressions. But that isn’t the ploys area of expertise. Their expertise is on whether regressions exist, not on how to support children in their growth and development, which is what most of the Wonder weeks book is about. We can only speculate that there might be a connection between regression periods and attachment, between mothers and children. And if you need a refresher on how attachment theory, which we’re discussing here, is different from attachment parenting, you can find that in the episode on most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong. Dr Woolmore, who did one of the sort of replication studies in the first episode in this mini series, speculates that one interpretation of regression periods is they’re essentially periods of attachment behavior. Depression can impact attachment relationships because, as we’ve seen, depressed mothers can have a more difficult time responding flexibly and sensitively to their infant, especially when they perceive baby as crying for no reason. Perhaps the entirety of the Wonder weeks method, along with all of these reminders not to shake the baby, is that the baby is going through some sort of internal stress that it doesn’t have any control over that it’s a phase that will pass and that it doesn’t need pain medication, which some mothers and study populations did often give because they thought there was something physically wrong with baby. But this introduces a potential challenge to the ploys perspective. If we understand that something important is happening in these fussy periods, that our calm and sensitive presence is helping our baby to cope with internal struggles that we don’t know much about, then quarreling or clashing with them is not even a neutral action. It’s an action that may create more difficulties for our baby. A variety of studies have found the biggest predictor of a secure mother infant attachment relationship is adequate social support. So once again, we find ourselves considering cultural consequences of what the ploys very much see as issues that only take place within the family. It’s a lot easier to respond sensitively every time baby cries when you aren’t the only one responsible for doing this, because there are 10 other adults around you who all have experience of being with babies, but don’t have one exactly the same age as yours. So they can support you now, because they know you’ll support them with their baby when the time is right, when our culture has told us for several generations now that a family is one mother and one father and their biological children, and we can’t cope with the work that it takes to respond sensitively to those children, then clearly the answer is to spend $1,650 on a bassinet. It rocks baby back to sleep when it detects the moving, rather than to try to understand why we’re doing the work of a village of people all by ourselves. So where do we go with this information? Is there anything useful here? I think the ploys are on their safest ground when they tell us that regressions exist, because I believe they probably do, but also so what I’ve been looking at peer reviewed research on parenting and child development for about nine years now, and until I read this book and started looking for research on it. I’d heard of Wonder weeks and regressions because I’d heard of the book, but I had never seen this concept appear in any peer reviewed paper on any other topic related to parenting or child development, ever. I’ve never seen an author say we found the babies in our study did x, but we realized we tested it in a regression week. So we’re not sure if the results are valid. No other researchers are thinking about this, unless we’re talking about the three sets of researchers who were trying to prove that regressions happened back in the 1990s it seems to have basically been abandoned since of a line of work since then, I think it’s worth reiterating the weak evidence base behind the entire idea of the Wonder weeks. I’m not going to restate the contents of the first episode on this topic, where we covered this extensively. Suffice it to say the entire concept is based on essentially four studies of fewer than 100 children in total. I went through the references list to the 2019 edition of the book, and tried to get hold of every single book chapter and article that was cited. On one hand, that wasn’t very difficult. There are only 53 references in that edition. Just for comparison, this episode references 46 studies, so not that many fewer than the book. Books that describe precise developmental processes usually have much longer reference lists because readers want to know what research the assertions the authors make are based on. And to be clear, my list is shorter actually, because I couldn’t find most of the studies of the book chapters and books that the ploys are referencing. But at least 53 references is better than 28 references that the 2012 edition was published with when you look at the ploy zone research, it seems there’s a long list that is kind of explicitly relevant, but when you count up the subjects of those studies, you find a good chunk of the work is actually based on their chimpanzee studies. They have 19 papers and book chapters cited in the 2019 edition. Eight of them are studies of chimps, which is 42%.

Jen Lumanlan 52:21

One was about both chimps and people. One was in a book that I couldn’t find, so I generously interpreted that that was about both chimps and people as well. So if we distribute those studies, basically about half the work they’re published that’s cited in the 2019 book is on chimps, not on human children. Again, this is not a massive study of chimpanzees we can use to make sweeping conclusions about all chimpanzee behavior. The ploys main 80 page paper describing the pattern of Mother infant behavior among chimps was conducted on five mother infant pairs, and these are not wild chimps. These are chimps in Gombe National Park with whom Dr Jane Goodall had worked for decades. If you Google Jane Goodall chimpanzee, you can find pictures of her holding and even kissing chimpanzees on the lips. The researchers would follow the mother to be around every day to make sure she would tolerate being followed after she had the baby, and then did monthly observations until 300 minutes of good observation were obtained, which is five hours over two years. It’s nothing. And we’re looking at five chimps, two of whom became ill in the course of the study. And we know that illness affects behavior, and this one chimp study generated the data they based their subsequent papers on. So once again, we’re looking at a beyond tiny sample size here. And as we know, we can write pretty much anything we want in a book. The publisher will do some basic fact checking, but they aren’t going to dig into the weeds like we do here on the podcast, and like peer reviewers do when the study is published in a journal. 13 of the 19 studies, the ploys were involved with that are referenced in the book are book chapters rather than peer reviewed journal articles. That’s 68% of their reference work that’s never been peer reviewed, and all of this work is old. Five of the references, which is 9% of the total of 53. References cited in the 2019 book were published in the 1970s which means they’re over 40 years old. Another eight or 15% of the total was published in the 1980s 11, 21% of the total were published in the 1990s because nobody else has really looked at the existence of Wonder weeks. There’s no more recent research to support or refute the idea. I think we should be aware of the Centers for Disease Controls act early recommendations, which state the age by which 75% of children have achieved certain milestones. So if your child hasn’t met this milestone yet, then keep an eye on it. Make an appointment to see your doctor if you’re worried. There are different milestones at each age for social and emotional development, language and communication, cognitive milestones that involve learning, thinking and problem solving and movement and physical development milestones, so the social and emotional milestones at two months old that your baby calms down when spoken to or picked up, looks you in the face, seems happy to see. You when you walk up to them and smile when you talk to them or smile at them. The language and communication milestones at two months so that your baby makes sounds other than crying and reacts to loud sounds. The cognitive milestones are that your child watches you as you move and looks at a toy for several seconds. Note that they don’t say a toy that’s specifically geared toward their exact developmental stage. And the movement and physical development milestones are that they hold up their head when they’re on their tummy, they move both their arms and legs and open their hands briefly. There’s no mention of the leap of changing sensations in the CDC milestones. We could imagine that a number of the CDC milestone items could be found within the leap of changing sensations that happened back at five weeks. But then what additional information does the LEAP offer? Nothing at eight weeks, baby is supposed to be entering the world of patterns leap, and there’s nothing in the CDC guidelines about that. So the book is essentially a set of 10 reminders that babies go through periods of time when they’re fussy. Each chapter unfolds the same way with some variation of the questions deploys asked in their questionnaire to appearance. They don’t tell you all the questions at once, though, and partly that makes sense, doesn’t make sense to ask about temper tantrums for an eight week old, but the book spreads out the description of the questionnaire items, making it seem like, for example, a baby demanding more attention than before is uniquely associated with Leap two, rather than something they expect to see in every leap they’re a mixture of these questionnaire items sprinkled throughout the chapters, and when they appear in multiple chapters, they’re phrased differently to make them sound unique. There’s the reminder that you may feel overwhelmed by baby’s behavior in the fussy phase, but don’t shake the baby. They give some pointers on the kinds of things baby might be able to do at that stage, although at the very earliest end of the potential spectrum so you can look out for them. There’s a checklist of things you can go through so you can see what your baby can do. And that’s kind of it repeated 10 times. And the further you go into the book, there’s increasing focus on parenting advice as well. Just a representative sample, many parents say their sweet toddler sometimes turns into an aggressive Tiger, and this makes them uneasy, yet it is an understandable change in the world of principles. Your child tries all types of social behavior. Being aggressive is one of those your toddler studies how their parents, other adults and children react if they hit, bite, push or kick or if they deliberately break something. Show your child what you think of their behavior. This is the only way they will learn that being aggressive isn’t sweet, interesting or funny. This way they learn it’s hurtful and that adults are not amused by aggressive or destructive behavior. End Quote, and there’s a call out section on the next page which assures parents that aggression in toddlers is normal, which concludes quote, when children live in environments where aggression is not tolerated and where sweet and friendly behavior is rewarded, the child will not start hitting and kicking when they are frustrated, want something or are corrected, they will use more acceptable ways of expressing themselves. End quote, If you are a regular listener, I am sure you can imagine. I could spend an entire episode dissecting those statements, but let us go for the short version. How are we to show the child what we think of their behavior. The ploys say that, quote, a whining toddler is quicker to land in a time out than when they were younger. So are the ploys advocating this strategy. It’s hard to tell. The language is observational, but what else are we supposed to make of it? And of course, we are told, Don’t let quarrels escalate. No matter how bad the outburst of quarrels are, stay calm and consistent. Screaming is never a good example, even a small smack on their bottom or hand will work against you in the end, physical violence can never be justified. Okay, all well and good, but what are we supposed to do? Just say no. I think it’s totally fine to say no to behavior that hurts us. If your child is hitting, biting or kicking you, you should absolutely block them from doing it if you can and say, I won’t let you hit me, but only say that if you do block the hit, because if they already hit you and say, I won’t let you hit me, they learn that your I won’t let you doesn’t mean very much. If they already got a hit in you can say, I don’t want to be hit and block them from hitting you again. We’re going to get through the meltdown as safely as we all can. And then immediately after that, we want to figure out. Why did that happen? Were they overwhelmed, hungry, tired? Did you say no to 10 things beforehand, and this was the last straw, and they didn’t know how else to express their frustration? Had their sibling been poking at them all morning? Had they been keeping it together all day at preschool and they had no energy left to figure out how to tell you that they didn’t want peas for dinner today? No, we can’t always understand every single meltdown your toddler has, but you might be surprised how often you can find patterns. When you find patterns, you find needs. Your toddler probably has needs for connection and autonomy, and at some points, their need for connection may be more prevalent. At times, it might be autonomy. Some kids have additional sensory needs. They struggle with certain types of clothes or slippery foods. Some kids seek out more sensory input. Sometimes hitting can be a way of looking for more stimulation. Just imagine you came home at the end of a long day and your partner said, Hey, how are you doing? Did you get the milk we needed? And you say, No, did you get the milk? Since you clearly did remember, we can then imagine that our partner might think to. Sells. Wow. My partner’s in a crappy mood right now. How can I show them their behavior isn’t okay, but what do we want them to do in that situation? I would want my partner to think, Hmm, sounds like Jen’s had a tough day. Is there any way I might have contributed to this? And I wonder what I can do to help. And that’s usually what our kids want us to think as well. And then come towards them as much as we reasonably can, we might even find that if we can interpret our child’s behavior in this way, we might not find ourselves so frustrated by it. Psychologists call that reframing, which means seeing the same situation in a different way. What if we didn’t have to remind ourselves not to shake the baby over and over again, because we could see this is just a child doing the best they can, just like I’m a parent, doing the best I can. There’s a reason why they’re having a meltdown, just like there’s a reason why I snap at people when I’m having a hard time. The more we can look for patterns that help us understand these reasons, the less we’re reliant on horoscopes or wonder weeks. Thanks so much for being here with me as we explore these topics. If you’d like to see the extensive list of references that I consulted for this episode, you can find them at your parentingmojo.com forward slash wonder weeks part two.

Emma 01:01:13

We know you have a lot of choices about where you get information about parenting, and we’re honored that you’ve chosen us as we move toward a world In which everyone’s lives and contributions are valued. If you’d like to help keep the show ad free, please do consider making a donation on the episode page that Jen just mentioned. Thanks again for listening to this episode of The Your Parenting Mojo podcast.

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228: Parenting Through Menopause – Discover Your Wise Power!

Jen Lumanlan — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 03:32:00 +0000

Learn How To Navigate Menopause While Raising Kids

Today, we’re diving into a topic that many parents may face but rarely talk about openly: navigating menopause while raising young kids. If you’ve been wondering how to balance parenting with the changes menopause brings, this episode is for you.

In our first interview on Menstrual Cycle Awareness, we explored how menstruation impacts our lives. Today, we’re thrilled to welcome back our wonderful guests, Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, for a second interview focusing on menopause. Alexandra Pope, Co-Founder of Red School and Co-Author of Wild Power and Wise Power, is a pioneer in menstruality education and awareness. With over 30 years of experience, Alexandra believes that each stage of the menstrual journey—from the first period to menopause and beyond—holds a unique power. Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, also Co-Founder of Red School and Co-Author of Wild Power and Wise Power, is a psychotherapist and menstrual cycle educator. She is passionate about helping people understand and honor their natural rhythms, using menstrual cycle awareness as a tool for self-care and empowerment.

In this conversation, they’ll share their insights on embracing menopause as a time of empowerment rather than something to simply endure. They introduce us to their concept of “Wild Power,” a strength that arises from understanding and honoring your body’s natural rhythms through every stage of life.

Why Menopause Matters in Parenting

When we have kids a bit on the ‘later’ side, we may find ourselves dealing with perimenopause – when our body prepares for menopause – as we’re raising young children. This experience can bring challenges, like feeling more tired or dealing with mood changes, but it also offers us new ways to grow and find our inner strength. Alexandra and Sjanie show us how we can be more understanding and open with ourselves and others as we go through this time of change.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

What is Menopause? Alexandra and Sjanie explain what menopause and perimenopause are and how these natural changes affect us physically and emotionally;
The Wild Power Within: Discover how your unique energy can be a guiding force in both your personal life and in parenting;
Tools to Support Yourself: Simple ways to be kinder to yourself, balance rest with activity, and embrace each phase with a sense of discovery;
Reconnecting with Yourself: Learn how you can stay grounded and connected to your inner self as you navigate the ups and downs of menopause.

Listen in to this powerful conversation that might just change the way you think about parenting—and about yourself.Alexandra and Sjanie’s books

(Affiliate Links):

Other episodes mentioned:222: How to cultivate Menstrual Cycle Awareness
216: Am I in Perimenopause? with Dr. Louise Newson

Jump to highlights:

00:03 Introducing today’s episode and featured guests

00:52 Understanding menopause and it’s stages

03:02 Introduction to menopause terminology: perimenopause, menopause, post-menopause

05:34 Phases compared to seasons, each with unique emotional and psychological developments

06:44 Defining menopause and it’s psychological impact

08:51 Importance of self-care and preparation for menopause

09:59 “Quickening” phase introduces a creative energy shift

17:43 Navigating menopause as a parent

18:15 Challenges for parents in their 40s during menopause

21:00 Importance of self-acceptance, setting boundaries, and receiving partner support

24:44 Symptoms and self-care in menopause

34:29 Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and it’s implications

44:16 The role of the inner critic in menopause

54:18 Final thoughts and resources

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177: Three ways to be a good parent, even on bad days

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

In this episode I take a look at the main reasons why we have these hard days – from our child’s temperament to our temperament to attachment relationships, trauma, and neurodivergences – all of these intersect especially tightly on the hard days.

Then we look at three ways to get through these days with a little more grace – and maybe even without having to apologize to your child at the end of it.

Ready to break free from the cycle of triggered reactions and conflict in your parenting journey?

If you want to:

😟 Be triggered less often by your child’s behavior,

😐 React from a place of compassion and empathy instead of anger and frustration,

😊 Respond to your child from a place that’s aligned with your values rather than reacting in the heat of the moment,

the Taming Your Triggers workshop will help you make this shift.

Join us to transform conflict into connection and reclaim peace in your parenting journey.

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

02:44 It can be difficult when we have a temperament mismatch

03:25 But having the same temperament can also be difficult

04:36 Children will often take on a role in the family

05:29 Our attachment style impacts how we perceive other people’s behavior

10:40 Making a non-cognitive shift so you see difficult days differently

21:05 We don’t always have to fix everything in the moment

25:59 The challenges to meeting your needs more often

29:43 The part we often forget is that your child has needs as well

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176: How to begin healing shame with A.J. Bond

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

Do you ever feel ashamed? Many people find it among their most physical emotions, resulting in a big knot of tension or a hot flush that washes over their whole body. But what is shame, and where does it come from?

I recently read a LOT of academic papers and books, and also popular books about shame, and the most helpful resource I found among all of the ones I read was written by my guest today, A.J. Bond. A.J. is a wrier and a filmmaker who experienced a shame-related breakthrough in his own therapy several years ago, and who subsequently became certified as a Healing Shame Practitioner through the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley.

We discuss, among other things:

The origins of shame all the way back in our childhoods
What kinds of shame really are helpful in our lives
How to heal from toxic shame so we don’t pass it on to our own children

AJ’s book (Affiliate link)

Discomfortable: What is shame and how can we break its hold?

Ready to break free from the cycle of triggered reactions and conflict in your parenting journey?

If you want to:

😟 Be triggered less often by your child’s behavior,

😐 React from a place of compassion and empathy instead of anger and frustration,

😊 Respond to your child from a place that’s aligned with your values rather than reacting in the heat of the moment,

the Taming Your Triggers workshop will help you make this shift.

Join us to transform conflict into connection and reclaim peace in your parenting journey.

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

02:05 How AJ Bond get started on understanding what shame is

05:12 What is shame?

07:15 Different versions of shame for different people

08:10 Shame is like an alarm system

10:39 The breaking of the interpersonal bridge

15:48 What does good repair look like

18:45 The rupture and repair make the relationship stronger

25:41 The cultural evolution aspect and how we evolved to be around the same pretty small group of people for a lot of the time

26:58 Shame will often feel like it’s connected to survival

31:09 Are there common reactions that people have when they’re feeling when they’re experiencing shame?

34:18 The concept of healthy shame

37:19 The 123 Punch of Shame

47:03 How our unconscious values show up in the context of our conscious and chosen values

References

Arnink, C.L. (2020). A quantitative evaluation of Shame Resilience Theory. Inquiries Journal 12(11), 1-11.

Bond, A.J. (2022). Discomfortable: What is shame and how can we break its hold? Berkeley: North Atlantic.

Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. Center City: Hazeldon.

Brown, B. (2006). Shame resilience theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services. 87(1), 43-52.

Brown, B. (1999). Searching for a theory: The journey from explanation to revolution. Families in Society 80(4), 323-429.

Cooley, C.H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner’s.

Deonna, J.A., Rodogno, R., & Teroni, F. (2012). In defense of shame: The faces of an emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DeParle, J. (2022, November 25). The expanded child tax credit is gone. The battle over it remains. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/politics/child-tax-credit.html

Elias, N. (1978). The civilizing process (Volume 1). New York: Pantheon.

Elison, J., Garofalo, C., & Velotti, P. (2014). Shame and aggression: Theoretical considerations. Aggression and Violent Behavior 19, 447-453.

Garland-Thompson, R. (2005). Feminist disability studies. Signs: Journal of women in Culture and Society 30(2), 1557-1587.

Greenwald, D.F., & Harder, D.W. (1998). Domains of shame: Evolutionary, cultural, and psychotherapeutic aspects. In P. Gilbert & B. Andrews (Eds.), Shame: Interpersonal behavior, psychopathology, and culture (p.225-245). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hauser, C. T. (2016). Shame and resilience among mental health trainees: A scale construction study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jacquet, J. (2015). Is shame necessary? New uses for an old tool. New York: Pantheon.

Jóhannsdóttir, Á. (2019). Body hair and its entaglement: Shame, choice and resistance in body hair practices among young Icelandic people. Feminism & Psychology 29(2), 195-213.

Kendi, I.X. (2019). How to be an anti-racist. New York: One World.

Lee, R.G. (1996). Shame and the Gestalt Model. In R.G. Lee & G. Wheeler (Eds.)., The voice of shame: Silence and connection in psychotherapy (p.3-58). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lichtenberg, P. (1996). Shame and the making of a social class system. In R.G. Lee & G. Wheeler (Eds.)., The voice of shame: Silence and connection in psychotherapy (p.269-295). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mate, G. (2019). Scattered minds: The origins and healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. New York: Random House.

Mendible, M. (2016). American shame and the boundaries of belonging. In M. Mendible (Ed.), American Shame (p.1-23). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Morris, C. & Munt, S.R. (2018). Classed formations of shame in White, British single mothers. Feminism & Psychology 29(2), 231-249.

Morrison, A.P. (1996). The culture of shame. New York: Ballantine.

Parsons, E.M. (2020). The development and evaluation of a brief shame resilience intervention: Proof of concept in Social Anxiety Disorder. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Miami University. Retrieved from: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=miami1595594451509091&disposition=inline

Pescosolido, B.A., & Martin, J.K. (2015). The stigma complex. Annual Review of Sociology 41, 87-116.

Probyn, E. (2019). Productive faces of shame: An interview with Elspeth Probyn. Feminism & Psychology 29(2), 322-334.

O’Halloran, K. (2015). Theory, politics, and community: Ethical dilemmas in Sydney and Melbourne queer activist collectives. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Sydney: The University of Sydney. Retrieved from: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/13958/OHalloran_KT_thesis.pdf?sequence=2

Richards, R., (2019). Shame, silence, and resistance: How my narratives of academia and kidney disease entwine. Feminism & Psychology 29(2), 269-285.

Tagney, J.P., & Dearing, R.L. (2002). Shame and guilt. New York: The Guilford Press.

Scheff, T.J. (2003). Shame in self and society. Symbolic Interaction 26(2), 239-262.

Singer, A. (1996). Homosexuality and shame; Clinical meditations on the cultural violation of self. In R.G. Lee & G. Wheeler (Eds.)., The voice of shame: Silence and connection in psychotherapy (p.123-142). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Stearns, P.N. (2017). Shame: A brief history. Urbana: The University of Illinios Press.

von Raumer, Wilhelm. 1857. The Education of Girls. (Cited in Elias 1978.)

Wheeler, G., & Jones, D.E. (1996). Finding our sons: A male-male gestalt. In R.G. Lee & G. Wheeler (Eds.)., The voice of shame: Silence and connection in psychotherapy (p.61-99). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Q&A #1: Should I let my child hit me, or a pillow?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

This episode kicks off a series of new episodes that I’m very excited about, which is based on listeners’ questions. My goal is to produce shorter episodes that cut across the research base to help you answer the questions that are on your mind about your child’s behavior and development.

Our first question comes from Dee in New Zealand, who wants to know: should she should do what her preschooler is asking and buy a pair of inflatable boxing gloves so he can hit her when he’s feeling angry. Or would hitting a pillow be a better option?

If you’d like to submit your own question, you can record a video of yourself asking it in two minutes or less, upload it to a platform like Drive or Dropbox, and send a link to it at support@yourparentingmojo.com. Alternatively you can go to the homepage and click the button to record your question for an audio-only option.

Ready to break free from the cycle of triggered reactions and conflict in your parenting journey?

If you want to:

😟 Be triggered less often by your child’s behavior,

😐 React from a place of compassion and empathy instead of anger and frustration,

😊 Respond to your child from a place that’s aligned with your values rather than reacting in the heat of the moment,

the Taming Your Triggers workshop will help you make this shift.

Join us to transform conflict into connection and reclaim peace in your parenting journey.

Click the banner to learn more!

Other episode referenced:

Episode 159, Supporting girls’ relationships with Dr. Marnina Gonick

Jump to highlights

02:18 Parent Dee’s question about her child

04:02 The six things going on in the question

06:19 The Catharsis Theory

07:18 Pointing out the difference in terminology about anger and aggression

09:38 Most of the research has studied cognitive behavioral therapy as a treatment for anger and aggression

11:22 The difference between adults and children in navigating situations

13:10 Anger in girls and boys

14:42 Addressing the difficult behavior instead of the reason for the behavior

16:00 The importance of self-regulation in managing feelings of anger

17:06 Most of us didn’t have great role models for how to cope with anger

22:23 Things to do to help a child regulate their feelings

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174: Support for Neurodivergent Parents with Dr. Rahimeh Andalibian & Sara Goodrich

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 18 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

Most of the resources related to parenting and neurodiversity are geared toward helping neurodivergent children, not neurodivergent parents, so this episode aims to help close that gap.

Whether you (or your partner, if you have one) have a diagnosis or you see yourself (or them) struggling but can’t quite figure out why, this episode may help. Autism and ADHD are diagnosed at wildly differing rates in girls and boys (in large part because boys’ symptoms often turn outward while girls’ symptoms turn inward), which means that girls are very often undiagnosed and unsupported well into adulthood.

Dr. A. may help you to identify neurodivergence in yourself or your partner, and then connect you to resources to support you on your journey.

Find more about Dr. A’s practice at SpectrumServicesNYC.com

I also very much appreciated Dr. A’s memoir The Rose Hotel (affiliate link) about her experiences in Iran during the revolution, and later in the U.K. and the U.S.

Jump to highlights

00:03 Introduction to this episode.

03:07 What kind of patterns do you see in couples where one partner is known to be neurodivergent?

07:28 It’s often the female-identifying partner who is the one who identifies the issue.

11:46 What are some of the red flags for neurodivergent partners?

16:05 Men tend to flood four times as fast as their female partners when they are in an argument.

21:43 How do I support my partner in being a successful parent and also find more balance in terms of what they bring to the family?

25:38 What do we do with this knowledge that we have?

30:31 Dealing with conflict between the couple.

32:46 What do you think of the idea of trauma as a factor in ADHD?

36:12 Diagnosis of ADHD is multi-directional.

41:56 Mental health is still stigmatized, and getting a diagnosis could backfire on you.

42:31 What is a diagnosis and how does it help?

47:44 The different types of ADHD.

53:03 Social calendaring and extracurricular activities.

54:46 Time blocking is a better approach for ADHD.

01:01:45 Strengths of people with ADHD.

References

Blair, R.J.R. (2005). Responding to the emotions of others: Dissociating forms of empathy through the study of typical and psychiatric populations. Consciousness and Cognition 14(4), 698-718.

Bostock-Ling, J.S. (2017, December). Life satisfaction of neurotypical women in intimate relationships with a partner who has Asperger’s Syndrome: An exploratory study. Unpublished Master’s thesis: The University of Sydney.

Chronis-Tuscano, A., & Stein, M.A. (2012). Pharmapsychotherapy for parents with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Impact on maternal ADHD and parenting. CNS Drugs 26(9), 725-732.

Chronis-Tuscano, A., O’Brien, K.A., Johnston, C., Jones, H.A., Clarke, T.L., Raggi, V.L., Rooney, M.E., Diaz, Y., Pian, J., & Seymour, K.E. (2011). The relation between maternal ADHD symptoms & improvement in child behavior following brief behavioral parent training is mediated by change in negative parenting. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 39, 1047-1057.

Conway, F., Oster, M., & Szymanski, K. (2011). ADHD and complex trauma: A descriptive study of hospitalized children in an urban psychiatric hospital. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy 10, 60-72.

Dziobek, I., Rogers, K., Fleck, S., Bahnemann, M., Heekeren, H.R., Wolf, O.T., & Convit, A. (2007). Dissociation of cognitive and emotional empathy in adults with Asperger Syndrome using the mUltifaceted Empathy Test (MET). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 38, 464-473.

Ford, J.D., Thomas, J., Racusin, R., Daviss, W.B., Ellis, C.G., Rogers, K., Reiser, J., Schiffman, J., & Sengupta, A. (1999). Trauma exposure among children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Attention Deicit-Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 67(5), 786-789.

Hull, L., Petrides, K.V., & Mandy, W. (2020). The female autism phenotype and camouflaging: A narrative review. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 7, 306-317.

Lilley, R., Lawson, W., Hall, G., Mahony, J., Clapham, H., Heyworth, M., Arnold, S., Trollor, J., Yudell, M., & Pellicano, E. (2022). “Peas in a pod”: Oral history reflections on autistic identity in family and community by late-diagnosed adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1-16.

Mazursky-Horowitz, H., Thomas, S.R., Woods, K.E., Chrabaszcz, J.D., Deater-Deckard, K., & Chronis-Tuscano, A. (2018). Maternal executive functioning and scaffolding families of children with and without parent-reported ADHD. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 46(3), 463-475.

Mazursky-Horowitz, H., Felton, J.W., MacPherson, L., Ehrlich, K.B., Cassidy, J., Lejuez, C.W., & Chronis-Tuscano, A. (2014). Maternal emotion regulation mediates the association between adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder symptoms and parenting. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 43(1), 121-131.

McGough, J.J., Smalley, S.L., McCracken, J.T., Yang, M., Del’Homme, M., Lynn, D.E., & Loo, S. (2005). Psychiatric comorbidity in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Findings from multiplex families. American Journal of Psychiatry 162, 1621-1627.

Moser, D.A., Aue, T., Suardi, F., Manini, A., Rossignol, A.S., Cordero, M.I., Merminod, G., Ansermet, F., Serpa, S.R., Fabez, N., & Schechter, D.S. (2015). The relation of general socio-emotional processing to parenting specific behavior: A study of mothers with and without posttraumatic stress disorder. Frontiers in Psychology 6:1575.

National Library of Medicine (n.d.). 14. Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Author. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK332896/

Park, J.L., Hudec, K.L., Johnston, C. (2017). Parental ADHD symptoms and parenting behaviors: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review 56, 25-39.

Pearlstein, T., & Steiner, M. (2012). Premenstral Dysphoric Disrorder: Burden of illness and treatment update. The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry X(1), 90-101.

Psychogiou, L., Daley, D., Thompson, M.J., & Sonuga-Barke, E.J.S. (2008). Do maternal attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms exacerbate or ameliorate the negative effect of child attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms on parenting? Development and Psychopathology 20, 121-137.

Reinhold, J.A. (2015). Adult ADHD: A review of the clinical presentation, challenges, and treatment options. Psychiatric Times 32(10), 41.

World Health Organization (2022, March 30). Autism. Author. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/autism-spectrum-disorders#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20worldwide,figures%20that%20are%20substantially%20higher

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119: Aligning Your Parenting With Your Values

Jen Lumanlan — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Ever have a vague sense that your interactions with your child aren’t quite aligned with your values…but aren’t quite sure what to do about it?

Have you been to a protest and shouted “Black Lives Matter! Fight the Power!”…and then gone home and forced your child to brush their teeth?

Have you chastised Grandma for ‘stealing’ kisses from your child because it disrespects their body autonomy…and then pinned them down for a haircut?

You’re not alone. We’re in this weird place where we know we want to do things differently than the way we were raised. But cultural norms are still telling us: we need to be in charge. (Because if we aren’t in charge, who is?)

A conversation with the hosts of Upbringing

My guests today, Hannah and Kelty of the Upbringing podcast, see this dissonance more clearly than almost anyone I’ve met. In their podcast they explore how we live one way as people (who believe in freedom! respect! consent! empathy!) and another way as parents (timeouts, shame, control, consequences), and how we’re unwittingly undermining the very skills and values we hope to promote.

But blaming and shaming helps nobody (not us…and certainly not our children). By instead approaching the topic with compassion and optimism, we can get out of an us vs. them relationship with our children, and take back our parenting practices from our cultural conditioning, and parent in relationship with our children in a way that’s deeply aligned with our values.

Hannah and Kelty describe their RESIST approach (Respect, Empathy, Sync up, Innovate, Summarize, Trust) and also have a new guide to navigating sibling conflict (use discount code MOJO at checkout for 15% off!) on their beautiful website. If our conversation strikes a chord, I’d definitely encourage you to check out their podcast and weekly Q&As on Instagram.

Parenting Membership

If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.

The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!

Jump to highlights

08:22 Introduction to the episode and guests Hannah and Kelty

11:01 Becoming feminists through parenting

14:12 The moment Hannah realized she was “the man” at home

15:56 The Freedoms Model: ten realms of resistance worth paying attention to

18:48 Asking “why” before enforcing a rule

21:29 The Resist Approach: Respect, Empathize, Sync up, Innovate, Summarize, Trust

24:14 Walking through the Resist Approach with a toothbrushing struggle

30:40 Circling back to a conversation later, instead of forcing it in the moment

32:19 Parenting as a form of social change

36:05 How everyday power dynamics at home connect to power in the world

39:34 Learning to trust your own intuition alongside your child’s

42:42 The Sibling Survival Guide and why fighting isn’t a sign of failure

45:49 Redefining the goal for siblings: connection instead of harmony

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SYPM 007: Parenting Across Cultural Divides

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode we hear from Denise, who claims to have listened to every Your Parenting Mojo episode…
Denise is a Filipina living in Madrid, and the intentional, respectful parenting style she’s chosen to use is somewhat out of place in both cultures. She wanted to chat about what to do when her daughter is having some big feelings out in public, and a well-meaning senior citizen approaches and says directly to her daughter: “You shouldn’t cry, because you look ugly when you cry.”

We talk through the immediate issue, as well as all the layers underneath that question, on this episode. And Denise’s children make a surprise guest appearance at the end!

You can find Denise on Facebook at facebook.com/DeniseSuarezConCarino

Jump to highlights

01:09 Introduction to the episode and guest Denise

05:47 What Denise learned about feelings in her own childhood

08:50 Wondering whether feelings being welcome at home changes teen years

12:18 How Denise responds to strangers’ comments in the moment

13:16 Making family values explicit, and preparing kids for outside messages

17:36 Where to find Denise and the families she works with

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099: How to parent highly sensitive children

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 22:45:00 +0000

Is your child Highly Sensitive? Does it sometimes feel as though you don’t understand them, and struggle to support them in the ways it seems they need to be supported? Or does your child experience and process things more deeply than other children, but this is the first time you’re hearing about High Sensitivity?

In this episode Dr. Michael Pluess helps us to understand how we can know whether our child is highly sensitive, and how to parent these children effectively so they can reach their full potential.

Jump to highlights

01:39 Introduction to Dr. Michael Pluess, researcher on environmental sensitivity

03:13 Defining sensitivity: sensing and processing what happens around us

06:43 Common traits in highly sensitive children, from caution to empathy to overstimulation

08:38 The four components of sensitivity from Elaine Aron’s research

13:36 Three main theories of sensitivity: sensory processing sensitivity, differential susceptibility, and biological sensitivity to context

20:00 Why sensitivity is about half genetic, half shaped by experience

25:37 Introducing “vantage sensitivity”: the positive side of being highly sensitive

35:58 Defining maternal sensitivity and its link to attachment

42:20 The impact of sensitive parenting on internalizing problems like anxiety

46:20 Practical ways to support a highly sensitive child day to day

50:25 Why childcare quality matters more for sensitive children, though parenting matters most of all

55:42 Helping sensitive children see their sensitivity as a strength

References

Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Jagiellowicz, J. (2012). Sensory processing sensitivity: A review in the light of the evolution of biological responsivity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 262–282.

Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Davies, K. M. (2005). Adult shyness: the interaction of temperamental sensitivity and an adverse childhood environment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 181-197.

Aron, E.N. (2002). The highly sensitive child: Helping our children thrive when the world overwhelms them. New York, NY: Harmony.

Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (1997). Sensory-processing sensitivity and its relation to introversion and emotionality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 345-368.

Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2011). Differential susceptibility to rearing environment depending on dopamine-related genes: New evidence and a meta-analysis. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 39–52.

Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Van IJzendoorn, M. H., Pijlman, F. T., Mesman, J., & Juffer, F. (2008). Experimental evidence for differential susceptibility: dopamine D4 receptor polymorphism (DRD4 VNTR) moderates intervention effects on toddlers’ externalizing behavior in a randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 44, 293-300.

Belsky, J., & Puess, M. (2013). Beyond risk, resilience, and dysregulation: Phenotypic plasticity and human development. Development and Psychopathology 25, 1243-1261.

Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). For better and for worse: Differential Susceptibility to environmental influences. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 300-304.

Bouvette-Turcot, A-A., Pluess, M., Bernier, A., Pennestri, M-H., Levitan, R., Skolowski, M.B., Kennedy, J.L., Minde, K., Steiner, M., Pokhvisneva, I., Meaney, M.J., & Gaudreau, H. (2015). Effects of genotype and sleep on temperament. Pediatrics 136(4), e914-e921.

Pluess, M. (2015). Vantage sensitivity: Environmental sensitivity to positive experiences as a function of genetic differences. Journal of Personality 85(1), 38-50.

Pluess, M. (2015). Individual differences in environmental sensitivity. Child Development Perspectives 9(3), 138-143.

Pluess, M., & Boniwell, I. (2015). Sensory processing sensitivity predicts treatment response to a school-based depression prevention program Evidence of Vantage Sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences 82, 40-45.

Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2013). Vantage sensitivity: Individual differences in response to positive experiences. Psychological Bulletin 139(4), 901-916.

Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2011). Differential susceptibility to maternal sensitivity. Maternal Sensitivity: A critical review for practitioners, 95-107. Retrieved from http://philosonic.com/michaelpluess_construction/Files/PluessBelsky_2010_Differential%20Susceptibility%20to%20Maternal%20Sensitivity.pdf

Pluess, M. & Belsky, J. (2010). Differential susceptibility to parenting and quality child care. Developmental Psychology 46(2), 379-390.

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SYPM 003: Responding Mindfully with Seanna Mallon

Jen Lumanlan — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:10:00 +0000

Today we talk with listener Seanna Mallon about her struggles to be mindful when responding to her two spirited young sons (and I can confirm from direct experience that they are indeed spirited – we actually had to re-record the episode after we simply couldn’t continue the first interview due to her children’s continual interruptions!).

I share some basic tools for staying calm in difficult moments; for a deeper dive on this topic, do join the Tame Your Triggers workshop! Enrollment is now open.

We’ll help you to:

Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered

It’s a 10-week workshop with one module delivered every week, an amazing community of like-minded parents, a match with an AccountaBuddy to help you complete the workshop, and mini-mindfulness practices to re-ground yourself repeatedly during your days, so you’re less reactive and more able to collaborate with your children.

Click the image below to learn more.

Parenting Membership

The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!

Jump to highlights

02:00 Introduction to the episode and guest Seanna

02:23 About Seanna’s family and busy life

04:39 What Seanna learned from Raising Your Spirited Child

07:29 A slow-to-adapt son and difficult morning transitions

10:34 Connecting Seanna’s own childhood to her triggered reactions

12:58 How the morning cycle spirals once frustration takes over

13:25 Finding the underlying need behind a reaction

16:11 Introducing needs and Nonviolent Communication as a tool

16:54 The “toe monster” game: turning mornings into connection

19:02 Why obedience isn’t the goal

21:14 What the Parenting Membership helped with most

23:16 The power of apology and repair

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SYPM 001: Mindfulness with Jess Barnes

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 21:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the first episode in a new series that I’m calling Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, where I interview listeners about what they’ve learned from the show as well as the parenting challenges they’re facing. Today we talk with Ontario, Canada-based listener Jess Barnes, a registered social worker and parent of almost-two about a mindfulness tool that can help us to stay calm when our children push our buttons.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Sharing Your Parenting Mojo, please complete the form located here and I’ll be in touch if there’s a fit…

Taming Your Triggers

If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop!

We’ll help you to:

Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

00:57 Introduction to the episode and guest Jess

02:52 What the White privilege and racism episodes meant to Jess

04:23 Facing racism in the Canadian context

05:43 Developmentally appropriate expectations and toddler memory

08:32 Recognizing our own triggers as parents

09:38 Rethinking manners: modeling gratitude instead of demanding it

11:56 “Quality time” versus “once nothing” quality time with a baby

15:19 Changing our own reactions instead of trying to change a child’s behavior

15:31 A three-step pause practice for the moment something goes wrong

18:04 Bringing the pause practice into a child’s own bedtime routine

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080: Self-Reg: Can it help our children?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Emotion regulation: It’s one of the biggest challenges of childhood (and parenthood!). We all want our children to be able to do it, but they struggle with it so much, and this is the root of many of our own struggles in parenting.

But instead of trying to get them to reduce the intensity of their emotions, should we instead be trying to reduce the stress they experience from things like a too-hard seat at school, itchy labels, and the scratch of cutlery on plates? Is there any peer-reviewed research supporting this idea?

We’ll find out in this, the most frustrating episode I’ve ever researched, on Dr. Stuart Shanker’s book Self-Reg!

References

Baumeister, R.F., Twenge, J.M., & Nuss, C.K. (2002). Effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes: Anticipated aloneness reduces intelligent thought. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(4), 817-827.

Crnic, K.A., & Greenberg, M.T. (1990). Minor parenting stresses with young children. Child Development 61(5), 1628-1637.

Davies, P.T., Woitach, M.J., Winter, M.A., & Cummings, E.M. (2008). Children’s insecure representations of interparental relationship and their school adjustment: The mediating role of attention difficulties. Child Development 79(5), 1570-1582.

Gershoff, E.T., & Font, S.A. (2016). Corporal punishment in U.S. public schools: Prevalence, disparities in use, and status in state and federal policy. Social Policy Report 30(1). Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2379-3988.2016.tb00086.x

Grant, B. (2009, May 7). Elsevier published 6 fake journals. The Scientist. Retrieved from https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/elsevier-published-6-fake-journals-44160

Gross, J.J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry 26(1), 1-26. Full article available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.670.3420&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Hamoudi, Amar, Murray, Desiree W., Sorensen, L., & Fontaine, A. (2015). Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress: A Review of Ecological, Biological, and Developmental Studies of Self-Regulation and Stress. OPRE Report # 2015-30, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Heaviside S, Farris E. Fast Response Survey System. Washington, DC: US GPO; 1993. Public School Kindergarten Teachers’ Views on Children’s Readiness for School. Contractor Rep. Statistical Analysis Report.

Lyons, D.M., Parker, K.J., & Schatzberg, A.F. (2010). Animal models of early life stress: Implications for understanding resilience. Developmental Psychobiology 52(7), 616-624.

Lyons, D.M., & Parker, K.J. (2007). Stress inoculation-induced indications of resilience in monkeys. Journal of Traumatic Stress 20(4), 423-433.

Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic. Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238.

Muraven, M., Tice, D.M., & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). Self-control as limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(3), 774-789.

Murray, D.W., Rosanbalm, K., & Christopoulos, C. (2016). Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 3: A Comprehensive Review of Self-Regulation Interventions from Birth through Young Adulthood. OPRE Report # 2016-34, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Newman, K. (2014, September 3). Book publishing, not fact checking. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/why-books-still-arent-fact-checked/378789/

Raio, C. Orederu T.A., Palazzolo, L., Shurick, A.A., & Phelps, E.A. (2013). Cognitive emotion regulation fails the stress test. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(37), 15139-15144.

Schuessler, J. (2018, October 4). Hoaxers slip breastaurants and dog-park sex into journals. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/arts/academic-journals-hoax.html

Shanker, S. (n.d.). The self-reg view on: Schools as “Self-Reg Havens.” Self-Regulation Institute. Retrieved from https://self-reg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Mehrit_Havens.pdf?pdf=schools-havens

Shanker, S., & Francis, T. (n.d.). Hide and seek: The challenge of understanding the full complexity of stress and stress-reactivity. Reframed 1(1) (no pagination). Retrieved from https://selfregulationinstitute.org/reframed-volume-1-issue-1-july-2017-hide-seek/

Shanker, S. & Burgess, C. (n.d.) Self-Reg and reframing. Reframed 1(1) (no pagination). Retrieved from https://selfregulationinstitute.org/reframed-volume-1-issue-1-july-2017-self-reg-reframing/

Silvers, J.A., Insel, C., Powers, A., Franz, P. Helion, C. Martin, R.E., Weber, J., Mischel, W., Casey, B.J., & Ochsner, K.N. (2017). vlPFC–vmPFC–Amygdala Interactions Underlie Age-Related Differences in Cognitive Regulation of Emotion. Cerebral Cortex 27, 3502-3514.

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074: Attachment: What it is, what it’s not, how to do it, and how to stop stressing about it

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 22:18:00 +0000

Is attachment the same as bonding?

Can I have a healthy attachment with my baby if I don’t breastfeed?

Do I have to babywear to develop an attachment to my baby?

Will being apart from my baby disrupt our attachment relationship?

Is co-sleeping critical to attachment?

These are just a few of the questions that listeners wrote to me after I sent out a call for questions on Attachment. This was such an enormous topic to cover that Dr. Arietta Slade and I did the best we could in the time we had, and we did indeed cover a lot of ground.

If you’ve ever been curious about the scientific evidence on how attachment forms, what are its benefits, and what it has NOT been shown to do, this is the episode for you. We also cover reflective functioning, one of the central ways that the attachment relationship develops, and discuss how to improve our skills in this arena.

Check this episode for more attachment research: Most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong

Dr. Arietta Slade’s Book

Attachment in therapeutic practice – Affiliate link

Jump to highlights

00:37 Introduction to Dr. Arietta Slade, clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center

01:58 Defining attachment: the biological drive to connect, seek safety, and explore

04:50 The subtle nonverbal ways parents communicate the world to infants

07:13 Regulation: how being soothed by a parent builds a child’s own capacity to self-regulate

13:19 What to do when a baby won’t stop crying and you can’t figure out why

16:46 Developmental milestones in attachment between 18 months and 2.5 years

22:15 Reflective functioning: staying aware of your own emotions to better understand your child’s

29:22 A brief note on family separation at the border and its documented psychological harm

31:26 Daycare separation anxiety: knowing when it’s a normal adjustment versus a deeper problem

35:28 Is daycare harmful? Weighing resilience, quality of care, and lack of societal support

41:17 A critical look at baby-wearing and whether it supports or restricts healthy exploration

44:39 Birth bonding: what the early days after birth actually do, and don’t do, for attachment

47:32 Breastfeeding, formula, and reassurance for parents who can’t or don’t breastfeed

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Pediatric Child Health 9(8), 541-545.

Bowlby, J. (1973/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. London, U.K.: Penguin.

Bowlby, J. (1971/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 1. Attachment. London, U.K.: Penguin.

Cassidy, J. (2008). The nature of the child’s ties. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.3-22). New York, NY: Guilford.

Greenspan, S.H. & Salmon, J. (2002). The four-thirds solution: Solving the childcare crisis in America today. Boston, MA: Da Capo [Note that Dr. Slade mis-remembered the title of this book as “The Three Fourths Solution”]

Hudson, N.W., & Fraley, R.C. (2018). Moving toward greater security: The effects of repeatedly priming attachment security and anxiety. Journal of Research in Personality 74, 147-157.

Jones, J.D., Brett, B.E., Ehrlich, K.B., Lejuez, C.W., & Cassidy, J. (2014). Maternal attachment style and responses to adolescents’ negative emotions: The mediating role of maternal emotion regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice 14, 235-257.

Julian, T.W., McKenry, P.C., & McKelvey, M.W. (1994). Cultural variations in parenting: Perceptions of Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American parents. Family Relations 43(1), 30-37.

LeVine, R.A., & Levine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.

Marvin, R.S., & Britner, P.A. (2008). Normative Development: The ontogeny of attachment. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.269-294). New York, NY: Guilford.

Nicholson, B., & Parker, L. (2013). How did attachment parenting originate? Attached at the heart. Retrieved from: www.attachedattheheart.attachmentparenting.org/faq/

Raby, K.L., Roisman, G.I., Labella, M.H., Martin, J., Fraley, R.C., & Simpson, J.A. (2018). The legacy of early abuse and neglect for social and academic competence from childhood to adulthood. Online first. Retrieved from https://socialinteractionlab.dl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1356/f/2018/Raby%20et%20al%20%28CD%2C%202018%29.pdf

Sadler, L.S., Slade, A., & Mayes, L.C. (2006). Minding the Baby: A mentalization-based parenting Program. In J.G. Allen & P. Fonagy (Eds.), The handbook of mentalization-based treatment (pp.271-288). Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons.

Slade, A. (2014). Imagining fear: Attachment, threat, and psychic experience. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 24(3), 253-266.

Slade, A. (2005). Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment & Human Development 7(3), 269-281.

Slade, A., Sadler, L., Dios-Kenn, C.D., Webb, D., Currier-Ezepchick, J., & Mayes, L. (2005). Minding the Baby: A reflective parenting program. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 60, 74-100.

Slade, A. (2002). Keeping the baby in mind: A critical factor in perinatal mental health. Zero to Three. June/July, 10-16.

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069: Reducing the impact of intergenerational trauma

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 22 Jul 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Do you ever snap at your child over tiny things, and wonder where that intense anger comes from? You’re not alone – and there’s actually a scientific explanation for why this happens.

What you’re experiencing might be intergenerational trauma – the way traumatic experiences and their effects get passed down from parents to children, often without us even realizing it. But here’s the hopeful part: understanding how this works is the first step to breaking the cycle.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Rebecca Babcock-Fenerci, a clinical psychologist from Stonehill College who researches exactly how trauma transmits across generations and what we can do about it. She explains the science behind the reasons our brains react so strongly to certain parenting situations, and why some survivors seem to come through trauma unscathed while others struggle daily. Most importantly, she helps us to examine some of the ways we can recognize the impact of this trauma on ourselves. And with this awareness and the right tools, we can heal these patterns and create the calm, connected relationships with our children that we’ve always wanted.

Questions This Episode Will Answer

What is the definition of intergenerational trauma?

Dr. Babcock-Fenerci explains that intergenerational trauma occurs when parents who experienced trauma pass both the direct traumatic experiences and the psychological consequences (like PTSD, mood disorders, and disrupted attachment) to their children through various mechanisms including genetics, epigenetics, and parenting behaviors.

How is trauma actually passed down through generations?

Trauma transmits through multiple pathways: genetic predisposition, epigenetic changes (where experiences turn genes on or off), trauma-related thought patterns in parents, and when children serve as unconscious trauma reminders that trigger the parent’s unprocessed emotions and memories.

Why do some trauma survivors seem fine while others struggle a lot more?

Individual responses vary based on genetic predisposition, personality differences, other life stressors, and the severity/duration of the trauma. Even siblings in the same family can have completely different outcomes due to these complex interactions between genetics and environment.

Should parents talk to their children about their trauma history?

The answer lies between two extremes – never talking about it can prevent healing, while over-sharing inappropriately can cause vicarious trauma. Parents should consider the child’s developmental stage, let children’s questions guide conversations, and think through the purpose and potential impact before sharing.

What are common anger triggers for parents with trauma history?

Parents often get triggered by situations that unconsciously remind them of their own childhood experiences – like children repeating behaviors, not listening, or general parenting situations that activate old trauma memories. The key is gaining insight into why these specific situations cause such intense reactions.

How can parents recognize if their trauma is affecting their children?

Warning signs include behavior problems, mood issues, anxiety, conflict in the parent-child relationship, or when a parent notices their own emotional reactions seem disproportionate to the situation. These may indicate intergenerational trauma transmission.

What can parents do to break the cycle of family trauma?

Processing involves gaining insight into triggers, understanding where intense emotions come from, seeking therapy when needed, learning emotional regulation techniques like taking breaths during triggered moments, and working on unresolved trauma with professional support.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

You’ll discover the science behind what we know of how trauma passes between generations, including the role of epigenetics, and how unprocessed trauma memories affect current parenting situations.

Through discussion of various stories (including a Vietnamese refugee family, an adoptee from Russia, and a family who escaped domestic violence), you’ll see how intergenerational trauma plays out in real families and recognize patterns in your own life.

Learn concrete techniques for managing trauma triggers, including the power of taking a breath before reacting, gaining insight into your emotional patterns, and working as a family team to manage difficult moments together.

Dr. Babcock-Fenerci shares research-backed approaches to trauma processing, when therapy is helpful, and considerations for confronting people who have hurt you.

Understand why trauma memories work differently than regular memories, how the fight-or-flight response affects parenting, and why gaining conscious insight into unconscious patterns can literally change how your brain responds to triggers.

FAQ

Does having childhood trauma mean I’ll definitely harm my children?

No. Research shows that 75% of parents who experienced childhood maltreatment do NOT go on to maltreat their own children. Having trauma doesn’t doom you to repeat cycles – awareness and healing work can help you break patterns.

How do I know if my childhood was “traumatic enough” to affect my parenting?

Any experience that left you with intense emotional reactions, unprocessed memories, or patterns that feel out of proportion to current situations may be worth exploring. Trauma isn’t just severe abuse – it includes emotional neglect, witnessing violence, or feeling unsafe or unloved as a child.

What if I don’t remember much of my childhood?

Memory gaps can actually be a sign of trauma processing through dissociation. Your body and emotional patterns may hold trauma memories even when your conscious mind doesn’t. Pay attention to your current triggers and reactions for clues.

Is it too late to heal if I’m already a parent?

It’s never too late. Dr. Babcock-Fenerci emphasizes that healing is an ongoing process, not a destination. Even small insights and changes in how you respond to triggers can make a meaningful difference for both you and your children.

How do I find a good trauma therapist?

Look for therapists trained in trauma-specific approaches like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, and EMDR. They should understand both individual trauma work and how it affects family relationships.

What if my partner doesn’t understand or support my healing work?

This is common and challenging. Consider couples therapy, sharing educational resources about trauma, or working on your own healing first. Sometimes seeing positive changes in you can help partners become more supportive over time.

Can children be resilient despite intergenerational trauma?

Yes. Dr. Fenerci notes that humans are inherently resilient. While trauma can have impacts, many factors contribute to resilience including supportive relationships, processing experiences, and developing coping skills. Awareness and healing work strengthen this natural resilience.

What’s the difference between normal parenting stress and trauma responses?

Trauma responses tend to be more intense than the situation warrants – like “seeing red” over minor issues, having physical reactions, or responses that feel connected to your own childhood experiences rather than just your child’s current behavior.

Taming Your Triggers

If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, sign up for the Taming Your Triggers workshop.

We’ll help you to:

Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

00:37 Introduction to the episode and guest Dr. Fenerci

02:43 What intergenerational trauma is and how it’s defined

06:09 Why the impact of the same trauma varies so much between people

08:33 How the brain processes trauma differently from ordinary memory

10:29 A listener’s story: what happens when a family retells trauma over and over

16:14 Anger, transference, and reenacting old patterns without realizing it

20:59 A listener’s question: understanding triggers and whether to revisit the past

27:08 How a child can unconsciously become a trauma reminder for a parent

30:36 Shame, disorganized memory, and their link to a child’s mood and behavior

35:40 Jen’s own trigger: being interrupted, and what her daughter revealed

40:47 Taking a breath: modeling emotional regulation for children

44:44 Why trauma can make specific parts of parenting especially hard

47:56 When loving a child isn’t the same as meeting a child’s needs

52:20 Signs worth paying attention to, in a parent and in a child

References

Auerhahn, N.C., & Laub, D. (1998). Intergenerational memory of the Holocaust. In Y. Danieli (Ed.), International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma (pp.21-41). New York, NY: Plenum.

Babcock, R.L., & DePrince, A.P. (2013). Factors contributing to ongoing intimate partner abuse: Childhood betrayal trauma and dependence on one’s perpetrator. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 28(7), 1385-1402.

Berthelot, N., Ensink, K., Bernazzani, O., Normandin, L., Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2015). Intergenerational transmission of attachment in abused and neglected mothers: The role of trauma-specific reflective functioning. Infant Mental Health Journal 36(2), 200-212.

Cross, D., Vance, L.A., Kim, Y.J., Ruchard, A.L., Fox, N., Jovanovic, T., & Bradley, B. (2017). Trauma exposure, PTSD, and parenting in a community sample of low-income, predominantly African American mothers and children. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Psychological Trauma 10(3), 327-335.

Dias, B.G., & Ressler, K.J. (2014). Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. Nature Neuroscience 17, 89-96.

Fenerci, R.L.B., & DePrince, A.P. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma: Maternal trauma-related cognitions and toddler symptoms. Child Maltreatment 23(2), 126-136.

Fenerci, R.L.B., & DePrince, A.P. (2017). Shame and alienation related to child maltreatment: Links to symptoms across generations. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Epub ahead of print. doi: 10.1037/tra0000332

Fenerci, R.L.B. & DePrince, A.P. (2016). Intergenerational transmission of trauma-related distress: Maternal betrayal trauma, parenting attitudes, and behaviors. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 25(4), 382-399.

Kellerman, N.P.F. (2013). Epigentic transmission of Holocaust trauma: Can nightmares be inherited? Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences 50(1), 33-39.

Nagata, D.K. (1998). Intergenerational effects of the Japanese American internment. In Y. Danieli (Ed.), International handbook of multigenerational legacies of trauma (pp.125-139). New York, NY: Plenum.

Oliver, J.E. (1993). Intergenerational transmission of child abuse: Rates, research, and clinical implications. American Journal of Psychiatry 150, 1315-1324.

Riva, M.A. (2017). Epigenetic signatures of early life adversities in animal models: A role for psychopathology vulnerability. European Psychiatry 415, S29.

Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N.P., Bierer, L.M., Bader, H.N., Klengel, T., Holsboer, F., & Binder, E.B. (2016). Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. Biological Psychiatry 80, 372-380.

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067: Does the Marshmallow Test tell us anything useful?

Jen Lumanlan — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 01:41:00 +0000

The Marshmallow Test is one of the most famous experiments in Psychology: Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the researcher returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell and just have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure how delayed gratification develops, and, in later studies, understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success.

Dr. Mischel and his colleagues have followed some of the children he originally studied and have made all kinds of observations about their academic, social, and coping competence, and even their health later in life.

But a new study by Dr. Tyler Watts casts some doubt on the original results. In this episode we talk with Dr. Watts about the original work and some of its flaws (for example, did you know that the original sample consisted entirely of White children of professors and grad students, but the results were extrapolated as if they apply to all children?). We then discuss the impact of his new work, and what parents should take away from all of this.

As a side note that you might enjoy, my almost 4YO saw me open my computer to publish this episode and asked me what I was doing. I said I needed to publish a podcast episode and she asked me what it was about. I told her it’s about the Marshmallow Test and asked her if she wanted to try it.

She is, as I type, sitting at our dining room table with three marshmallows on a plate in front of her, trying to hold out for 15 minutes. We’re not doing it in strictly; we are both still in the room with her, although we’re both typing and ignoring her and asking her to turn back toward the table when she asks us a question.

She keeps asking how many minutes have passed, which I imagine (as I tell her) is quite helpful to her in terms of measuring the remaining effort needed. She seems most torn between wanting to continue building her Lego airport and the need for the three marshmallows. She has sung a bit, and smelled the marshmallows a bit, and stacked them into a tower, but she is mostly trying to ignore them and is counting as high as she can.

14 minute update [quiet, despairing voice]: “I’ve been waiting for so long…”

She did make it to 15 minutes (that’s her devouring the third marshmallow in the picture for this episode), although I wonder if she might not have without the time updates. We’ll have to try that another day:-)

Jump to highlights

02:00 Introduction to Dr. Tyler Watts, researcher on early childhood development and cognition

11:14 Why the original Marshmallow Test wasn’t even designed to be longitudinal

18:23 Criticisms of the test: trust, cognitive strategies, and shyness as confounding factors

22:21 Questioning whether marshmallow-resisting (intrinsic) translates to schoolwork (extrinsic) motivation

29:13 The government-funded NICHD dataset Dr. Watts used instead of collecting new data

35:49 Why statistical controls matter: separating the marshmallow test from the parenting and environment behind it

39:07 Results without controls: weaker effects than the original study, and no link at all to behavioral outcomes

40:58 Splitting the sample by mother’s education, and why the “ceiling effect” mattered for measurement

43:37 Adding full statistical controls: the achievement link nearly disappears

45:29 Jen’s summary interpretation, and Dr. Watts weighing in on how closely it matches the findings

47:36 Why delayed gratification alone probably isn’t worth targeting in isolation as an intervention

References

Bembenutty, H., & Karabenick, S.A. (2004). Inherent association between academic delay of gratification, future time perspective, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review 16(1), 35-57.

Bennett, J. (2018, May 25). NYU Steinhardt Professor replicates famous Marshmallow Test, makes new observations. New York University. Retrieved from https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/may/nyu-professor-replicates-longitudinal-work-on-famous-marshmallow.html

Berman M.G., Yourganov, G., Askren, M.K., Ayduk, O., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Kross, E., McIntosh, A.R., Strogher, S., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Jonides, J. (2013). Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control. Nature Communications 4(1373), 1-7.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Calarco, J.M. (2018, June 1). Why rich kids are so good at the Marshmallow Test. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180602&silverid-ref=MzYwODc2MjE4MjE4S0

Carlson, S.M., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Aber, L., Schaefer, C., Sethi, A., Wilson, N., Peake, P.K., & Mischel, W. (2017). Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification. HECO Working Paper Series 2017-077.

Duckworth, A.L., Tsukayama, E., & Kirby, T.A. (2013). Is it really self-control? Examining the predictive power of the delay of gratification task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(7), 843-855.

Imuta, K., Hayne, H., & Scarf, D. (2014). I want it all and I want it now: Delay of gratification in preschool children. Developmental Psychobiology 56, 1541-1552.

Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R.N. (2012). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition 126, 109-114.

Michaelson, L.E., & Munakata, Y. (2016). Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers’ willingness to delay gratification. Developmental Science 19(6), 1011-1019.

Mischel, W., & Ebbesen, E. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16(2), 329-337.

Mischel, W., Ebbesen E.B., & Zeiss, A.R. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21(2), 204-218.

Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholgy 31(2), 254-261.

Mischel, Q., Shsoda, Y., & Peake, P.K. (1988). The nature of adolescent competences predicted by preschool delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54(4), 687-696.

Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., Berman, M., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Jonides, J., Kross, E., Teslovich, T., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., & Shoda, Y. (2011). ‘Willpower’ over the life span: Decomposing self-regulation. SCAN 6, 252-256.

Schlam, T.R., Wilson, N.L., Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2013). Preschoolers’ delay of gratification predicts their body mass 30 years later. The Journal of Pediatrics 162(1), 90-93.

Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P.K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental Psychology 26(6), 978-986.

Tangney, J.P., Baumeister, R.F., & Boone, A.L. (2004). High self0control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality 72(2), 271-324.

Watts, T.W., Duncan, G.J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661

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064: Compassion (and how to help your child develop it)

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 20 May 2018 22:48:00 +0000

“Social and Emotional Learning” is all the rage in school these days, along with claims that it can help children to manage their emotions, make responsible decisions, as well as improve academic outcomes.

But what if those programs don’t go nearly far enough?

What if we could support our child in developing a sense of compassion that acts as a moral compass to not only display compassion toward others, but also to pursue those things in life that have been demonstrated – through research – to make us happy? And what if we could do that by supporting them in reading cues they already feel in their own bodies, and that we ordinarily train out of them at a young age?

Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Associate Director for the Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, tells us about his work to bring secular ethics, which he calls the cultivation of basic human values, into education and society.

Learn more about Breandan’s work here:

www.compassion.emory.edu

https://www.facebook.com/emoryseelearning/

We also mentioned the Yale University course The Psychology of Wellbeing, which is available on Coursera here.

Jump to highlights

01:42 Introduction to Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva of Emory’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics

01:51 Defining “secular ethics” and how it connects to social and emotional learning

08:22 Why adults not having all the answers can still be a productive, courageous space to open up

10:21 A four-year-old’s spontaneous conversation about compassion, and why this starts before school age

14:53 Free resources at compassion.emory.edu, and starting with “what is kindness?”

17:21 How reciprocity develops over childhood, from tit-for-tat to a broader, farsighted sense of responsibility

21:37 The state of SEL research: why inconsistent results don’t necessarily mean the approach doesn’t work

27:43 Weighing structured programs against unstructured outdoor play as another path to these same skills

32:54 Connecting sensation-awareness to past episodes on risky play and modeling emotional regulation

35:09 The marshmallow study and impulse control as an example of why regulating emotion matters

36:11 The “spark and forest fire” analogy for catching emotions early, before they escalate

40:47 Teaching kids metacognition: practicing the skill of just watching their own mind

42:42 Mediating disputes between siblings: body awareness, mindful dialogue, and perspective-taking

48:10 Zooming out: happiness research, the “hedonic treadmill,” and where material success falls short

52:09 A comparison to hyper-competitive education systems elsewhere, like India and Japan

References

Desbordes, G., Negi, L.T., Pace, T.W.W., Wallace, B.A., Raison, C.L., & Schwartz, E.L. (2012). Effects of mindful-attention and compassion medication training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6(1), 1-15.

Frey, K.S., Nolen, S.B., Edstrom, L.V., & Hirschstein, M.K. (2005). Effects of a school-based social-emotional competence program: Linking children’s goals, attributions, and behavior. Applied Developmental Psychology 26, 171-200.

Lantieri, L., & Nambiar, M. (2012). Cultivating the social, emotional, and inner lives of children and teachers. Reclaiming Children and Youth 21(2), 27-33.

Maloney, J.E., Lawlor, M.S., Schonert-Reichl, K.A., & Whitehead, J. (2016). A mindfulness-based social and emotional learning curriculum for school-aged children: The MindUP program. In K.A. Schoenert-Reichl & R.W. Roeser (Eds.), Handbook of mindfulness in education (pp.313-334). New York, NY: Springer.

Ozawa-de Silva, B., & Dodson-Lavelle, B. (2011). An education of heart and mind: Practical and theoretical issues in teaching cognitive-based compassion training to children. Practical Matters 4, 1-28.

Pace, T.W.W., Negi, L.T., Adame, D.D., Cole, S.P., Sivilli, T.I., Brown, T.D., Issa, M.J., & Raison, C.L. (2009). Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology 34, 87-98.

Rovelli, C. (2017). Reality is not what it seems: The journey to quantum gravity. New York, NY: Riverhead.

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056: Beyond “You’re OK!”: Modeling Emotion Regulation

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 22:26:00 +0000

I hear a huge crash.

It’s my favorite glass vase. I hear “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mommy! It just fell!” as I run full-pelt from the other end of the house.

It was a family heirloom passed down by my grandmother. I’ve asked her not to touch it a hundred times. I am beyond furious. “Please don’t be mad, Mommy. It was an accident.”

I clench my teeth. “I’m not mad.”

_______________________________________________________

What does my daughter learn from this exchange? How does my own emotional regulation affect what she learns about how to regulate her own emotions? We’ll learn about this in today’s episode.

Note that this episode is the second in the ill-fated experimental short episodes – we’ll be back to the regular length hereafter! In case you missed it, the first episode in this series was Three Reasons Not To Say You’re OK.

Taming Your Triggers

If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop.

We’ll help you to:

Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered

Click the banner to learn more!

Other episodes mentioned in this show

Jump to highlights

00:00 The story of the broken vase, and a listener’s question about staying “unruffled”

03:16 Two strategies adults use to cope with stress: reappraisal versus suppression

06:40 Why a parent’s emotional suppression limits a child’s own reappraisal skills

09:03 Reimagining the vase story using reappraisal instead of suppression

12:13 Practical takeaways: the power of a pause before responding

References

Bariola, E., Hughes, E.K., & Gullone, E. (2012). Relationships between parent and child emotion regulation strategy use: A brief report. Journal of Child and Family Studies 21(3), 443-448.

Butler, E.A., Egloff, B., ,Wilhelm, F.H., Smith, N.C., Erickson, E.A., & Gross, J.J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion 3(1), 48-67.

Christenfeld, B., Gerin, W., Linden, W., Sanders, M., Mathur, J., Deich, J.D., & Pickering, T.G. (1997). Social support effects on cardiovascular reactivity: Is a stranger as effective as a friend? Psychosomatic Medicine 59, 388-398.

Cohen, S., & Wills, T.A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 98(2), 310-357.

Gershoff, E.T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of Family Psychology 30(4), 453-469.

Gottman, J.M., & Levenson, R.W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolation: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63(2), 221-233.

Gross, J.J., & John, O.P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85(2), 348-362.

Gunzenhauser, C., Faasche, A., Friedlmeier, W.& von Suchodoletz, A. (2014). Face it or hide it: Parental socialization of reappraisal and response suppression. Frontiers in Psychology 4, 992.

Kiel, E.J. & Kalomiris, A.E. (2015). Current themes in understanding children’s emotion regulation as developing from within the parent-child relationship. Current Opinions in Psychology 1(3), 11-16.

Kopystynska, O, Paschall, K.W., Barnett, M.A., & Curran, M.A. (2017). Patterns of interparental conflict, parenting, and children’s emotional insecurity: A person-centered approach. Journal of Family Psychology 31(7), 922-932.

Krantz, D.S., & Manuck, S.B. (1984). Acute psychophysiologic reactivity and risk of cardiovascular disease: A review and methdologic critique. Psychological Bulletin 93(3), 435-464.

Lansbury, J. Unruffled Parenting. Author. Retrieved from http://www.janetlansbury.com/2015/08/respectful-parenting-podcasts-janet-lansbury-unruffled/

Laurenceau, J.P., Barrett, L.F., & Pietromonaco, P.R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: The importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(5), 1238-1251.

Meeren H.K.M., van Heijnsbergen, C.C.R.J., & de Gelder, B. (2005). Rapid perceptual integration of facial expression and emotional body language. PNAS 102(45), 16518-16523.

Pennebaker, J.W. (1989). Confession, inhibition, and disease. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 22, 211-244.

Rutherford, H.J.V., Wallace, N.S., Laurent, H.K., & Mayes, L.C. (2015). Emotion regulation in parenthood. Developmental Review 36, 1-14.

Tiedens, L.Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80(1), 86-94.

Tromssdorff, G., & Heikamp, T. (2013). Socialization of emotions and emotion regulation in cultural context. In S. Barnow & N. Balkir (Eds.), Cultural variations in psychopathology: From research to practice (pp.67-92). Cambridge, MA: Hoegrefe Publishing.

Rime, B., Mesquita, B., Boca, S., & Philippott, P. (1991). Beyond the emotional event: Six studies on the social sharing of emotion. Cognition and Emotion 5(5-6), 435-465.

Roomer, L., Williston, S.K., & Rollins, L.G. (2015). Mindfulness and emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology 3, 52-57.

Wang, M-T., & Kenny, S. (2015). Longitudinal links between fathers’ and mothers’ harsh verbal discipline and adolescents’ conduct problems and depressive symptoms. Child Development 85(3), 908-923.

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054: Three reasons not to say “You’re OK!”

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 21:00:00 +0000

“I hear parents on the playground all the time saying “You’re OK!” after their child falls over. Often it does make the child stop crying…but doesn’t it invalidate the child’s feelings?”

It turns out that this question is related to a skill that psychologists call emotional regulation, and learning how to regulate emotions is one of the most important tasks of childhood.

This to-the-point episode is a trial of a shorter form of episode after listeners told me this show is “very dense.” It’s hard to back off the density, but I can back off the length. Let me know (via email or the Contact Me, page – not the comments on this episode because I get inundated with spam) what you think…

Other episodes referenced in this show

How parenting affects children’s development

How divorce impacts children’s development

How to scaffold children’s learning

Jump to highlights

01:45 The question that sparked this episode: does saying “you’re okay” invalidate a child’s feelings?

02:14 The three ways children learn emotional regulation, and why this episode focuses on direct teaching

03:31 Why is emotional regulation important: well-being, friendships, and academic achievement

04:49 How cultural values around autonomy shape whether “you’re okay” fits or clashes

07:50 How emotional regulation develops with age, from infancy through toddlerhood

10:36 Four practical steps for handling a fall at the playground without saying “you’re okay”

References

Brookshire, B. (2013, May 8). Psychology is WEIRD: Western college students are not the best representatives of human emotion, behavior, and sexuality. Slate. Retrieved from www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/weird_psychology_social_science_researchers_rely_too_much_on_western_college.html

Duncan, L.G., Coatsworth, J.D., & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). A model of mindful parenting: Implications for parent-child relationships and prevention research. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review 12, 255-270.

Keane, S.P., & Calkins, S.D. (2004). Predicting kindergarten peer social status from toddler and preschool problem behavior. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 32(4), 409-423.

Kopystynska, O., Paschall, K.W., Barnett, M.A., & Curran, M.A. (2017). Patterns of interparental conflict, parenting, and children’s emotional insecurity: A person-centered approach. Journal of Family Psychology 31(7), 922-932.

Roemer, L., Williston, S.K., & Rollins, L.G. (2015). Mindfulness and emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology 3, 52-57.

Rotenberg, K.J., & Eisenberg, N. (1997). Developmental differences in the understanding of and reaction to others’ inhibition of emotional expression. Developmental Psychology 33(3), 526-537.

Sasser, T.R., Bierman, K.L., & Heinrichs, B. (2015). Executive functioning and school adjustment: The mediational role of pre-kindergarten learning-related behaviors. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 30(A), 70-79.

Swain, J.E., Kim, P., & Ho, S.S. (2011). Neuroendocrinology of parental response to baby-cry. Journal of Neuroendochrinology 23(11), 1036-1041.

Trommsdorff, G. (2010). Preschool girls’ distress and mothers’ sensitivity in Japan and Germany. European Journal of Developmental Psychology 7(3), 350-370.

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052: Grit: The unique factor in your child’s success?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 21:00:00 +0000

In Professor Angela Duckworth’s TED talk, she says of her research: “One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn’t social intelligence. It wasn’t good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit.”

The effusive blurbs on the book cover go even beyond Professor Duckworth’s own dramatic pronouncements: Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, says: “Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Duckworth is the one who has found it…She not only tells us what it is, but how to get it.”

Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (which we’ve looked at previously in an episode on supporting your introverted child) says: “Impressively fresh and original…Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us…Buy this, send copies to your friends, and tell the world that there is, in fact, hope. We can all dazzle.”

Don’t we all want to dazzle? Don’t we all want our children to dazzle? Is grit the thing that will help them do it?

It turns out that Professor Duckworth’s own research says: perhaps not. Listen in to learn how much grit is a good thing, how to help your child be grittier, and why it might not be the factor that assures their success.

Other episodes mentioned in this show

How to support your introverted child

Why you shouldn’t bother trying to increase your child’s self-esteem

References

Crede, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113(3), 492-511.

Del Giudice, M. (2014, October 14). Grit trumps talent and IQ: A story every parent (and educator) should read. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-angela-duckworth-success-grit-psychology-self-control-science-nginnovators/

Denby, D. (2016, June 21). The limits of “grit.” The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-limits-of-grit

Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92(6), 1087-1101. Full article available at https://www.ronaldreaganhs.org/cms/lib7/WI01001304/Centricity/Domain/187/Grit%20JPSP.pdf

Duckworth, A.L., & Yeager, D.S. (2015). Measurement matters: Assessing personal qualities other than cognitive abilities for educational purposes. Educational Researcher 44(4), 237-251.

Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner. (Affiliate link)

Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E.P., Young, V., Tsukayama, E., Brunwasaser, S.M., & Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Using wise interventions to motivate deliberate practice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111(5), 728-744.

Farrington, C.A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagoka, J., Keyes, T.S., Johnson, D.W., & Beechum, N.O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners: The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. Retrieved from https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Noncognitive%20Report.pdf

Forsyth, D.R., & Kerr, N.A. (1999, August). Are adaptive illusions adaptive? Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA.

Hannon, B. (2014). Predicting college success: The relative contributions of five social/personality factors, five cognitive/earning factors, and SAT scores. Journal of Educational and Training Studies 2(4), 46-58.

Heckman, J.J. (2013). Giving kids a fair chance (A strategy that works). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kamenetz, A. (2016, May 25). MacArthur ‘genius’ Angela Duckworth responds to a new critique of grit. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit

Kapoor, M.L. (2017, June 27). 12 books expelled from Tucson schools. High Country News. Retrieved from http://www.hcn.org/articles/education-tucsons-mexican-american-studies-ban-goes-back-to-court

Kohn, A. (2014). Grit: A skeptical look at the latest educational fad. Author. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grit/

No byline. (1998, March 15). Weddings; Jason Duckworth, Angela Lee. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/15/style/weddings-jason-duckworth-angela-lee.html

Sparks, S.D. (2015, June 2). ‘Nation’s Report Card’ to gather data on grit, mindset. Education Week. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/06/03/nations-report-card-to-gather-data-on.html

The Leadership Conference. (2015, May 5). Civil rights groups: “We oppose anti-testing efforts.” Author. Retrieved from https://civilrights.org/civil-rights-groups-we-oppose-anti-testing-efforts/

The Learning Project Elementary School. Website. Author. Retrieved from http://www.learningproject.org/

The Nation’s Report Card (n.d.). Percentage of fourth-grade students at or above Proficient not significantly different compared to 2013. Author. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading/acl?grade=4

Tough, P. (2016). Helping children succeed: What works and why. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Useem, J. (2016, May). Is grit overrated: The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/is-grit-overrated/476397/

Zernike, K. (2016, February 29). Testing for joy and grit? Schools nationwide push to measure students’ emotional skills. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/testing-for-joy-and-grit-schools-nationwide-push-to-measure-students-emotional-skills.html?_r=0

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Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a pretty interesting topic lined up for today, or I think so at least: we’re going to talk about grit. If you’ve heard about grit over the last couple of years it’s probably because of one woman named Angela Duckworth, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and who invented what she calls The Grit Scale – she won a MacArthur Genius award for her research on grit in 2013. She tells a story about how she developed this scale that goes like this: several years ago the U.S. Army was having trouble figuring out which of their 1200 new cadets were going to make it through the grueling 7-week training program at West Point, and which were going to flunk out. They had developed their own measure called the Whole Candidate Score, which was a weighted average of SAT or ACT exam scores, high school rank, expert appraisal of leadership potential, and performance on physical fitness tests, but it turned out that the Whole Candidate Score actually wasn’t very good at predicting who would make it through the 7-week training. In 2004, Professor Duckworth gave the Grit Scale that she’d been developing to the incoming class of West Point cadets which asks questions like how likely you are to get discouraged by setbacks and how often your interests change, and it turned out that while the quitters had indistinguishable Whole Candidate Scores from the cadets who made it through the training, the Grit Scale was an “astoundingly reliable” predictor of who made it through training and who did not.

At this point you might be wondering how gritty you are yourself which is easy to test: just Google “Grit Scale” and hit the first link that pops up; I’ll put the link in the references as well. (I just took it and I scored 4.5 on a scale of 1-5, which is apparently higher than 90% of the population “in a recent study” that isn’t named). I guess I’m not enormously surprised; I think of myself as a pretty determined person; I think carefully before signing up to a project or a goal but once I sign up I’m *in* and am 100% committed to the end. So grit isn’t about talent or luck or how intensely you might want something *in the moment,* but instead it’s about your passion and perseverance for long-term goals. The test is pretty easy to fake, though – it’s not hard to guess what the ‘right’ answer is when you have to rate your response to the statement “I am a hard worker” or “I am diligent. I never give up.”

Professor Duckworth wrote about all this in her 2016 book “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance,” which I read recently. My first instinct after reading a book that seems pretty good and is well-referenced is to reach out to the author and ask if she might like to be interviewed, but then I started doing some reading around. The first thing I found was a long profile of her in National Geographic, of all places, saying that she routinely declines requests for interviews, including the one from the National Geographic journalist, who finally tracked down her personal phone number and reached her directly – apparently the journalist’s grittiness persuaded Professor Duckworth to do the interview. And then secondly I found some studies saying that maybe – just maybe – grit isn’t quite such the big deal that Professor Duckworth makes it out to be – she hopes it will be the thing we can teach poor children that will help them to succeed in school, and it turns out that that is far from clear. So ultimately I decided we could have more fun by digging into this ourselves and seeing, by the end of the episode, whether grit is a trait we want to try to encourage in our children – or not.

So we’ve said that grit is about passion and perseverance. Professor Duckworth spends most of her book talking about the perseverance side of the equation, so we’ll just touch briefly on passion first. Passion is sparked by an interest; an intrinsic enjoyment in what you do. I wrote my psychology master’s thesis on what motivates children to learn so I can say she’s right on the mark here; we don’t know much about what it is that get us interested in a topic, but once we are interested in it if we learn more about it (and are encouraged to learn more about it by the people we love), that interest can blossom into a passion. Professor Duckworth provides case studies throughout the book of highly successful people she’s interviewed, as well as some highly successful people who she apparently wasn’t able to interview but she read their books and quotes them as if she had interviewed them, and I think it’s fair to say that all of them were passionate about their work. This isn’t too hard to wrap your head around; a lot of studies have come to the conclusion that people are not only happier but they perform better when they are interested in their work. For many people, this interest is linked to the concept of purpose – the idea that their work somehow matters in the world, because it’s connected to the wellbeing of others (or, I suppose to another thing, like the planet). As a side note, the book never resolves the tension between applying the concept of grit to classroom-based learning, and the fact that interest and passion are a key component of grit. Unfortunately, much of learning in school is not based on students’ interest; it’s based on what other people say they think students *should* find interesting. So in a way, if we’re looking at grit as a way of improving student outcomes (which Professor Duckworth apparently hopes we can do), we’re trying to improve students’ perseverance on things they don’t care much about. It seems like that could be a problem. But we’ll come back to that later.

In addition to passion and purpose, Professor Duckworth briefly mentions that hope is apparently important as well; a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance that keeps us going when things get tough, and to get back up when we get knocked down.

But the bulk of the book is dedicated to the perseverance component of grit, so that’s where we’re going to spend the most time as well. Professor Duckworth describes perseverance as the capacity to practice – after you’ve developed an interest in an area, it’s the devotion to a rigorous, committed, never-ending practice that leads to mastery. It’s finding your weaknesses and addressing them, day after day, and saying “whatever it takes, I want to improve!.” Our society is actually quite biased against the kind of practice it takes to be great. We want to believe it happened because a person was deeply talented. Professor Chia-Jung Tsay at University College London conducted an experiment where she had professional musicians listen to clips of two musicians playing the piano – one is described as an innately talented player while the other is a ‘striver’ who has worked hard. The professional researchers didn’t know that the two players were actually the same player, playing different parts of the same piece. In direct contradiction to their stated beliefs about the importance of effort versus talent, the professional musicians said the naturally talented pianists to be more likely to succeed and more hireable. In a follow-up study, a set of adults read a profile of a ‘striver’ entrepreneur, while another set read a profile of a ‘naturally talented’ entrepreneur. All participants then listened to the same audio recording of a business proposal and were told it was made by the entrepreneur they’d read about. Again, the naturally talented entrepreneur was judged as more likely to be successful and more hireable. When the participants were asked to back one entrepreneur or the other, the striver had to have four more years of leadership experience and an additional $40,000 in start-up capital before the participants were as likely to invest with the striver than with the natural. As a profile of Professor Duckworth in The Atlantic so eloquently put it, “We don’t like strivers because they invite self-comparisons. If what separates, say, Roger Federer from you and me is nothing but the number of hours spent at “deliberate practice” – as the most extreme behaviorists argue – our enjoyment of the U.S. Open could be interrupted by the thought There but for the grace of grit go I.”

So as a society we value natural talent, but if hard work gets people to the same place and they can just hide the hard work, we can be accepting of that as well. We don’t want to see those hours of practice or the mistakes that went into making something great (the Atlantic article author, Jerry Useem, did as Professor Duckworth suggested and tried to find video footage of people practicing, and wasn’t able to find much at all. He said the closest he got was the discovery of an early Rolling Stones draft of “Start Me Up,” which apparently does not work at all well as a reggae tune).

The attractiveness of the perseverance narrative, of course, cannot be underestimated for an American audience. We might prioritize talent above all else, but the country’s story is built on the idea of the value of hard work and its ability to lift you out of whatever circumstances you might find yourself in. It’s the old Protestant work ethic in new clothes. The narrative isn’t always true, of course: there are plenty of people who find themselves in circumstances that hard work cannot get them out of, despite what conservative politicians might have us believe. But I think the idea that they should *try anyway* is very American – perhaps this partly explains why Professor Duckworth’s book is ranked number 286 in all books on Amazom.com, but only number 764 on Amazon.co.uk. Hardly a scientific study, of course, since Professor Duckworth is American and does a lot more publicity work here, but perhaps the difference in culture is one factor.

Professor Steven Maier at the University of Colorado has done a lot of work on understanding how rats respond to stress. He found that if he gave young rats electric shocks that they could switch off by turning a wheel, they grew up to be more adventurous than normal rats. But young rats who had no control over the duration of their electric shocks grew up with what psychologists call “learned helplessness” – if they were shocked as adults, they behaved very timidly. When I think about the cultural implications of this, I imagine American children in disadvantaged circumstances pushing against the sides of the box in which they find themselves, getting shocked over and over again, and learning not to push any more. But being English myself, I imagine English children looking at the box in which they find themselves and thinking “yup, it’s a box. I’m supposed to be in a box.” And they don’t even try to touch the sides.

So there are a number of ideas to explore here. Professor Duckworth was a math teacher before she went back to graduate school; first she taught in a private school (although its website says it is not and has never been a “fancy private school” that is “chiefly interested in serving whoever wishes to enroll.” Later, she taught in the only public school in San Francisco that admits students on the basis of academic merit. As an aside here, Professor Duckworth doesn’t mention that the school in New York was private and actually implies it was a pretty gritty public school when she says that most of her students “lived in the housing projects clustered between Avenues A and D” in Manhattan, which made me think that her students were from a disadvantaged background but then I found out that the tuition is listed on the school’s website as $20,500/year for incoming kindergarteners. When she got to San Francisco, one of her students was in her ‘regular’ math class rather than ‘Advanced Placement’ math class but he turned in consistently perfect work, so she got him transferred to the AP class. He didn’t always get As in the AP class, but he went to the teacher and asked for help when he needed it, and he ultimately ended up getting a PhD in mechanical engineering from UCLA – he quite literally became a rocket scientist. This is just one example of how some of Professor Duckworth’s former students appeared to be using effort to overcome potential deficiencies in talent and effort. Now isn’t that an attractive idea? That just through persistent, dogged, hard work, students who are at some kind of disadvantage can overcome the shadow of their backgrounds? Even though the public high school in San Francisco that Professor Duckworth taught at was the only one in the city that admits students based on academic merit so once again, these are hardly highly disadvantaged students.

Because it is such an attractive idea, some schools are already beginning to implement curricular changes to teach grit. Professor Duckworth is affiliated with the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP group of charter schools, which actually grades children’s levels of grit. The tests for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is how we say “54% of American fourth graders read at a basic or below-basic level in 2015” – which is a true statistic, by the way – is going to start including measures of what is known as “noncognitive skills” – which are grit, desire for learning, school climate, technology use, and socioeconomic status. The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is the test that compares how badly our students are doing compared with those in other countries (we’re around number 22-24 for reading literacy based on 2015 data, depending on how many of China’s different territories are separated out or lumped together) is going to start measuring grit too. Schools in nine California districts have started teaching grit and are going to test students on it as well, although in an irony of ironies, they’re using behavioral modification techniques to do it. So they’re not teaching students to be gritty for the sake of getting better at something that’s important to them, but to see how long they can behave respectfully in class so they can win a prize like 20 seconds of putting their feet on their desks or playing rock-paper-scissors. Seriously, I couldn’t imagine a worse way to implement this. It also reminds me of the failed attempt to instill self-esteem in Californian students in the 1980s and 1990s as part of an effort to make Californians more responsible and productive citizens – and save the State a bundle of money by doing so that we discussed in our earlier episode on self-esteem. It turned out that self-esteem wasn’t causally linked with academic performance at all; we still can’t say whether increasing self-esteem will cause a child’s academic performance to improve; it might just be that students who do well in school have high self-esteem as a result. We covered that in much greater depth in the episode called Don’t bother trying to improve your child’s self-esteem.

And it turns out that even Professor Duckworth is against this – she has resigned from the board of the group overseeing the roll-out in California, saying she couldn’t support using grit tests to evaluate school performance. (As an aside, when I was doing research for a paper on multicultural issues in education I was surprised to find a statement from a coalition of civil rights groups representing minorities opposing programs to opt out of standardized testing, because standardized tests are the best measure that these groups have of the disparities in educational outcomes that their students attain. I do wonder if testing for grit could achieve a similar aim?) Professor Duckworth went into much more detail about her hesitation to measure grit in a paper she co-authored with Professor David Yeager of the University of Texas at Austin, which she wrote after she was summoned to the White House to discuss how grit could be used to improve achievement in schools. The paper provides a non-exhaustive list of 12 limitations of questionnaires and performance tasks used to assess things like grit. These limitations include the teacher or student (whoever is doing the reporting) misinterpreting the researcher’s intent in asking the question, the questions may not take into account changes that occur over time (so if I just forgot my homework once last week I might say I’m “less reliable” than if I forgot my homework once last year), and, as we’ve seen, the tests are ridiculously easy to fake. Professors Duckworth and Yeager suggest several elements of a path forward, firstly arguing that if we must measure grit, we should use multiple measures of the characteristics we’re interested in, which can be more reliable than just using one measure. Secondly, if we can come up with a way to measure grit that yields acceptable results and overcomes issues of differing language ability, cultural norms, and the like, we don’t yet have great information about what to do with that information on a state-wide or nation-wide basis. We can’t say “students who scored below a 2 on the grit scale should get intervention X to improve their grittiness” because students have different reasons for not being gritty and won’t all respond to a specific intervention in the same way. Thirdly, it is likely to be far more practical to assess an individual student’s grittiness as part of the “web of daily instruction” that can tailor instruction to a student’s individual needs. Finally, the authors conclude their introduction to the paper by saying that “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts,” which I think we should take as a maxim.

But what if we were somehow, magically or otherwise, able to overcome the issues of measuring grit, would that help struggling students to get ahead? Once again, the allure is strong – could we give students from poor backgrounds? Professor Maier – who did the experiments on shocking rats – says about these children: “I worry a lot about kids in poverty. They’re getting a lot of helplessness experiences. They’re not getting enough mastery experiences. They’re not learning: ‘I can do this. I can succeed in that.’ My speculation is that those earlier experiences can have really enduring effects. You need to learn that there’s a contingency between your actions and what happens to you: ‘If I do something, then something will happen.’” The problem here is that the approach assumes that poor children and prosperous children are essentially the same except for their lack of mastery experiences, and if we could shift that, we could shift their outcomes. But David Denby, writing in the New Yorker, argues that this is not the case. Kids who grow up in harsh environments can be badly hurt before they even leave infancy, and those harsh environments are often associated with poverty. It’s not to say that poverty causes stress in children, but that conditions children find stressful are often found in poor households (although they can certainly also be found in some rich households too). David Denby’s argument is based on journalist Paul Tough’s 2012 book Helping Children Succeed which argues that stress causes at least two reactions in children: chronic stress causes chronically elevated levels of the hormone cortisol, which can compromise the child’s immune system, and also create a stress-response system that is over-prepared to fight back. Paul Tough says “Small setbacks feel like crushing defeats; tiny slights turn into serious confrontations. In school, a highly sensitive stress-response system constantly on the lookout for threats can produce patterns of behavior that are self-defeating: fighting, talking back, acting up in class, and also, more subtly, going through each day perpetually wary of connection with peers and resistant to outreach from teachers and other adults.” Secondly excessive stress in early childhood can damage the development of the prefrontal cortex, which means that executive functions like memory, self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility don’t develop properly, and these are exactly the types of brain structures that are needed for a person to develop grit. So it’s entirely possible that we could ‘diagnose’ a child as having ‘low grit,’ but find that it was caused by circumstances entirely beyond their control and which they may be powerless to change because it has become a structural part of their brain. Potential solutions to this problem abound, from improving parenting skills to providing better infant nutrition; from improving the quality of preschools to making them more affordable. But in the current political climate, it seems unlikely that we are going to see any investment in children even if it would most likely save a lot of money in the long run. “You’d better have that baby,” they say, “but you’re on your own in figuring out how to care for it.”

Getting off my soapbox – the political one, at least – I also want to take issue with the overall goals of developing grittiness. The book is stuffed with case studies on businesspeople like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates. Kat Cole is also featured: she was raised by a single mother and rose from being a waitress at Hooters (which, for those of you who live in more enlightened cultures, is a restaurant where the invariably beautiful waitresses wear low-cut tops and very short shorts) to being the CEO of Cinnabon, which sells calorically intense but otherwise nutritionally devoid baked goods and is now the Group President of Focus Brands, which owns Cinnabon as well as a half dozen other restaurants serving food of suspect nutritional quality. In her paper arguing against the measurement of Grit, Professor Duckworth says that the Grit Scale was developed through exploratory interviews with lawyers, businesspeople, academics, and other professionals. But when you think about this some more, you come up with some troubling problems. Firstly, Jeff Bezos appears several times in the book, and each time you get a glimpse of either his creativity or his passion. His persistence is never discussed. Bill Gates used to decide which software programmers to hire by giving them a task that he knew would require hours of tedious troubleshooting, to see which ones would stick with the task. No mention is made of their passion, and did they all go on to be *incredible* programmers? We have no idea. So do the two really always go together? Recruiting high-achieving people and then designing a theory to fit around them isn’t exactly a scientifically valid way to understand what really makes people successful. How would we know what qualities other than grit contribute to their success? And how would we know about what prompted people who have been successful but aren’t gritty to achieve that success? We need a random sampling of successful people to understand how important grit has been to their success, not a selection of successful people who agree to be interviewed because success has been important to them, supplemented with quotes from successful people’s autobiographies that support the case for grit.

And while we can’t argue that going from being raised by a single working mother who struggled to make ends meet to a CEO probably takes both persistence and passion, is this really the kind of passion we want in our world? The kind where our goal is to use women’s bodies to peddle chicken wings and convince people they need a cinnamon roll that provides them with almost half of their recommended daily caloric intake? David Denby, the author of the New Yorker article, says that Professor Duckworth worked with the founder of KIPP and the head of a private school in New York to distil a long list of character traits into seven virtues. Grit is one; the others are self-control, zest, optimism, social intelligence, gratitude, and curiosity. Denby notes that this list is devoid of any mention of anything like honesty, courage, integrity, kindliness, responsibility for others, ethics, or moral development. Indeed, at the beginning of Grit, when Professor Duckworth mentions the importance of being driven by a sense of purpose, but it seems as though this purpose exists only to serve the individual. David Denby observes that the list “would seem to be preparing children for personal success only – doing well at school, getting into college, getting a job, especially a corporate job where such docility as is suggested by these approved traits (like gratitude) would be much appreciated by managers. Putting it politically, the character inculcated in these students is perfectly suited to producing corporate drones in a capitalist economy. Putting it morally and existentially, the list is timid and empty.”

I’ve done a lot of reading over the last couple of years about where power lies in society and in schools, and I have to say that I agree with Denby’s critique. We might know and choose not to think about it, or we might just never have thought of it before, as I had not before I started studying for all these master’s degrees, but one of the major purposes of school is to pass on society’s culture and values to the next generation of children. It is the government (the national government in many societies, with power increasingly being devolved to the states here in the U.S.) that sets educational policy and works with private corporations to determine the curriculum that students must learn and will be tested on. Standardized tests are couched in the language of student success, but ultimately what we want them to be successful at is getting a job, so they can earn money, pay taxes, and create demand for American products. And it’s not just “generic” culture that’s passed on, it’s the cultural values of the dominant culture, which is why it’s acceptable in schools to use language in the way that most White children do and not like many Black children do. Families who don’t speak English well are assumed to have values, histories, and ways of learning that are inferior to those of the dominant culture, and *if only these families could learn to do things our way,* their children would get on so much better in our society. Given what we’ve learned about the potential futility of telling children who have experienced emotional trauma when they were very young to “be grittier,” is it possible that children from non-dominant cultures may also find that there are reasons that they cannot or would not want to increase their own levels of grit? Perhaps the single-minded pursuit of excellence that Professor Duckworth espouses might be less-than-compatible with the familial emphasis of Latinos, for example, who may not make decisions about individuals without consulting with the family?

Paul Tough’s book Helping Children Succeed quotes a section of a report from 2012 called Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners which was written by Professor Camille Farrington and her colleagues. Her review of the research on grit found that it actually may not be possible to instill a universal sense of grit in children, but it might be possible to increase their gritty actions in specific circumstances, like in studying at school. There are four key beliefs that cause a student to persevere more in the classroom, and these are firstly a sense that “I belong in this community,” secondly that “my ability and confidence grow with my effort,” thirdly that “I can succeed at this,” and fourthly “This work has value for me.” We don’t have the time here to dissect each of these beliefs in-depth, but I want to briefly address two of them. Let’s take the last one first: “This work has value for me.” As we’ve already said, this is obviously a challenge in school where for most of the day someone else has determined what the student has learned and how they will learn it, and the students learn that the best reason to persevere is that they get to put their feet up on their desks if they do. The first one, “I belong in this community,” is also a tough one for students who don’t belong to the dominant culture when *everything we teach in schools* says that they don’t actually belong. We teach Native Americans that Whites had a right to settle across the United States through their belief in Manifest Destiny; the first – and often last – thing we teach about Black people is that slavery happened to them, and the State of Arizona prohibits students in predominantly-Latino schools from taking a Mexican-American Studies course even though students in the course showed higher academic achievement than students who didn’t. More than half of our students are now of a race other than White, but over 80% of teachers are White. Many studies have shown that it’s difficult for people in general and teachers in particular to have empathy for people who are different from them, and empathy is a critical precursor for developing the kind of relationship with a student that would lead them to believe “I belong in this community.”

So who, then, is grit for? Is it possible that it’s mostly for White and Asian parents (Professor Duckworth’s maiden name is Lee; her parents were immigrants from China) who seem to care most about wanting their children to ‘get ahead’? And how much can it actually help them to get ahead anyway? Well, perhaps not as much as we might think from reading Grit and from watching Professor Duckworth’s TED talk. Professor Marcus Crede (which might be pronounced “Creday”) published a study in 2017 called “Much Ado About Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature.” Anya Kamenetz, a journalist for NPR, pored through that highly technical paper and simplified one of its key findings for us. In 2009, Professor Duckworth and a co-author said that West Point Cadets’ score on the grit test was highly predictive of whether or not they would make it through basic training. The exact phrase they used was “Cadets who scored a standard deviation higher than average on the Grit-S were 99% more likely to complete summer training.” But it turns out that while the tables and statistics in Professor Duckworth’s paper are entirely correct, her phrasing leads us to believe that the grittiest cadets are 99% more likely to get through basic training – perhaps they bounce from 40% to close to 80%. But what actually happened was that 95% of all cadets get through basic training, compared to 98% of the very “grittiest candidates.” The difference is that the *odds* of making it through improved by 99% – or in other words, by three percentage points. Professor Duckworth conceded this point in an email to Anya Kamenetz, reiterating that the tables and statistical analysis is correct, and her intent was not to mislead. Professor Duckworth doesn’t cite the statistics in her book, but she does describe the study in a way that implies that the grit score makes a massive difference between who succeeds and who fails: “By the last day of basic training, 71 cadets had dropped out. Grit turned out to be an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it through and who did not. The next year, I returned to West Point to run the same study. This time, sixty two candidates dropped out, and again grit predicted who would stay. In contrast, stayers and leavers had indistinguishable Whole Candidate Scores. So what matters for making it through basic training? Not your SAT scores, not your high school rank, not your leadership experience, not your athletic ability. Not your Whole Candidate Score. What matters is grit.” The association between grit and success is held up high throughout the book, as well as in Professor Duckworth’s TED talk, where she says “One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn’t social intelligence. It wasn’t good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit.” As Alfie Kohn points out, though, what does this actually prove? That people who say on a questionnaire that they stick with things actually stick with things? Surely what Professor Duckworth is actually testing is the cadets’ honesty, not their grit?

The effusive blurbs on the book cover go even beyond Professor Duckworth’s own dramatic pronouncements: Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, says “Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Duckworth is the one who has found it…She not only tells us what it is, but how to get it.” Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (which we’ve looked at previously in an episode on supporting your introverted child) says “Impressively fresh and original…Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us…Buy this, send copies to your friends, and tell the world that there *is,* in fact, hope. We can *all* dazzle.”

Don’t we all want to dazzle? Don’t we all want to know the secret that will help us do it? Well, it turns out that grit might not actually be *the* secret. Professor Crede’s meta-analysis reviewed 88 studies, and found the correlation of 0.18 between grit and academic success. For those of you who have been out of school for a while, a correlation describes a relationship between two factors, or variables. A correlation of 0 says there is no relationship between the variables and a correlation of 1 says there’s a perfect relationship. And most importantly, correlation and causation are very different. Just because we can say there’s a relationship, doesn’t mean we can say which variable impacts the other. Professor Duckworth herself found a correlation of 0.2, which she says are what personality psychologists would describe as a “small-to-medium” effect. Now a correlation of 0.2 isn’t nothing; I was recently corresponding with a friend who is on the verge of getting a Ph.D in something I don’t fully understand related to global health which has a very heavy statistics component, about the impact of homework on academic outcomes. It turns out that the correlation there is about 0.16 – so, lower than the correlation for grit, and my friend described the homework correlation as “not a bad correlation at all in the real world; it’s the difference between failing a class and getting a C, or going form a B to an A+.” So grit is one of a host of factors that predicts student success, and is not as high a predictor as, say, either a SAT score or a high school GPA on a student’s first year college GPA, which have correlations in the neighborhood of 0.5, and is hardly the single unique quality that will enable all of us to dazzle.

It would also be remiss of us if we failed to examine whether grit is even a trait we *want* to encourage. Because by encouraging grit, we have to *discourage* something else. If we encourage single-minded pursuit of academic success, we’re discouraging the other things that student could be spending time on, like being creative, or simply being a generalist: some careers require expertise in one topic, but others derive a great deal of value from pulling together disparate experiences into a whole greater than its parts. If we encourage our children to demonstrate their proficiency on standardized tests, they necessarily have less time available to spend on something they might have chosen to study and pursued with single-minded passion, if they had had the time. Grades and test results are someone else’s judgment of how well a student is doing. If a student were instead engaged in something they actually found interesting themselves, it’s much more likely that they would become their own toughest critic, because they would actually care about the work products, not just the A at the end.

So, as usual, we draw to a close by asking what parents are supposed to do with this information. Well, if you’re a White or Asian parent, I guess you should start by acknowledging that if your child is in one of these schools down the road from my house, where I know a decent number of my listeners live, and if grit is being touted in that school as the amazing thing that’s going to level the playing field for historically disadvantaged students, then now you know there’s a good chance that grit is not going to be the thing that ‘saves’ these students. In fact, there’s a good chance that grit is going to be the thing that puts ever-more distance between these students and your student, who may come from a relatively more well-advantaged background. And that grit may be the thing that helps your student to succeed in school, and college, and in the corporate world, if that’s important to you.

So if after all that you’re thinking grit *is* something you’d like to nurture, how do you do it? Well, first, allow your child to experiment with lots of different activities. If they enjoy ballet or soccer or whatever for one class then they might want to participate for a season, but they might not. Ask your child. Make this initial learning more like play than learning if possible. This approach is more likely to hold your child’s interest, and experimenting with different activities gives them a chance to gain context for what they like and what they don’t.

Once the child does commit to the activity, make sure they understand the value of deliberate practice that’s designed to identify their weaknesses and work on these so they’re no longer weak. One of Professor Duckworth’s studies found that students who had learned about deliberate practice were more likely to give advice to other students related to practicing, and were also more likely to choose to do more deliberate practice in math rather than messing about on social media. For those who hadn’t been doing well in school, this led to increased performance as measured by their grades. The students receiving the self-esteem message actually did worse on the next test, possibly because the message encouraged them to feel better about themselves regardless of the work they put in, which removed the motivation to work hard and resulted in lower test performance. So once your child settles on an activity, make practice a habit; something they don’t even have to think about starting every day.

Next, don’t be afraid of allowing your child to fail. Really; that’s how they learn. Toddlers fail all the time; then they get up and try again. When we rush over to help them out, we teach them that failing is shameful; something to be feared. Once you fear failure, you won’t stick your neck out and take a risk, which makes it more difficult to get better.

When your child comes to you with a success or a failure, what you say next tells them how you view their success or failure. If you say “You’re a natural!,” you show that you value innate talent. If you say “You’re a learner!” you show that you value the effort it took to do the activity, even if your child isn’t a natural at it. If you say “well, at least you tried,” your child may not learn to pick herself up and try again. If you say “Well, that didn’t work. Let’s talk about how you approached it and what might work better,” your child learns that failure is just another step on the learning journey. These examples might sound familiar to you as being related to what Professor Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset; the idea that qualities like intelligence are not fixed, but can be changed through learning. We’ll have to do an episode on that sometime Over time, your child will internalize these ideas as self-talk that she can use to reframe her own failures into lessons from which she can learn. But she may still need your helping hand to identify new strategies to try; to suggest people who may be able to offer expertise; to just listen while she figures things out. In many ways, it’s a harder role than just fixing the thing for her. In the longer run, it’s likely to pay off.

But the best lesson I got out of Grit, and one that I plan to put into effect in our house, is called the Hard Thing rule, which has three parts. Firstly, everyone in the family has to do a hard thing – something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’m already doing mine; my research for this podcast and my master’s in education is my hard thing. I love it, but it’s still hard work – especially the statistics part. Although my husband says that my hard thing should be cleaning the house. He definitely thinks I need the practice at that. My daughter isn’t really old enough at three to choose a hard thing, but in a few years I’ll ask her to choose one. My husband is having a hard time deciding on his hard thing; his best suggestion yet is to stop looking at his phone during every free second of the day.

The second part of the hard thing rule is the part I like the best: you can quit, but not until a natural stopping point has arrived – the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or something like that. Carys isn’t in any classes yet but I’d been wondering what might be the appropriate balance of *sticking with* something without forcing her to do it for my sake rather than hers. The idea is that you have to finish what you committed to in the beginning, which means you can’t just quit on a bad day. The final part of the hard thing rule is that *you* get to pick your hard thing. Obviously you should pick something you enjoy and you should let your child pick something she enjoys. You don’t get to force her into piano lessons for her hard thing if she prefers soccer (or football). (Again, note the irony of allowing your child to pick their hard thing – but somehow hoping, without any apparent evidence, that the resulting grit will translate to environments where passion is not present that is contradicted by the evidence found in Professor Farrington’s report.) Interest in the topic should help to get you (or your child) through the bad days so you can really make a decision when the season is over or that tuition payment is up about the totality of your experience and whether you want to do more of it, rather than just whether it sucks right now. And by modeling a hard thing yourself, you’re providing your child with exactly the kind of role model he needs to become more gritty himself. I plan to only ask my daughter to pick *one* hard thing, and I don’t plan to obsess over whether she is becoming better than anyone else at it. To me, that feels like an appropriate balance of learning what it’s like to be gritty and not getting obsessed with the idea that grit is the be-all-and-end-all of success in life. The actor Will Smith is quoted in the book as saying “I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me…but if we get on the treadmill together, there are two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.” I’m not interested in raising a child who is so caught up in proving that she’s the best at something that she has to out-compete everyone. She might become highly successful, but it doesn’t seem as though she’d be much fun to be around, and ultimately achieving balance between being productive and being satisfied with what one has achieved seems to be a much better outcome than someone who would rather die than get off a treadmill before someone else.

So, in sum, grit may be *one* of several traits that are important to a child’s success in life, which Professor Duckworth does acknowledge in her own conclusion, after she’s spent a whole book telling us how important grit is. Indeed, she says in the National Geographic article that “there’s more that we don’t know than we do know.” But grit by no means the only characteristic that’s important; Professor Duckworth herself says that she thinks ‘goodness’ is more important than ‘greatness.’ Be wary of school-based interventions that promise to increase grit, especially if they are delivered on a one-size-fits all basis, using rewards to get children to do it, and doubly-especially if they promise to level the playing field between privileged and under-privileged children. Perhaps the best thing you could do on that front would be to mentor an underprivileged youth so they, too, can learn from you what it means to be gritty, and you could also talk with them about what components of grittiness are a fit with their culture. Don’t lose sight of the fact that committing to a goal and sticking your head down and doing the work should also be balanced by looking up every once in a while and making sure the goal is still the right one. College and a corporate job is not the right fit for all children. I have to assume (because Professor Duckworth’s research only focuses on high achievers) that grit can benefit people from all walks of life, with all kinds of life goals. Finally, consider implementing the Hard Thing rule when your child is old enough to choose her hard thing for herself. It could be just the balance you need between allowing your child appropriate choices and helping her to see the value of sticking with a thing even when it gets tough.

Thanks for listening: all of the references from today’s episode can be found at yourparentingmojo.com/grit

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050: How to raise emotionally healthy boys

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 22:19:00 +0000

“Be a man.” “Boys don’t cry.” “Don’t be a sissy.”

Boys hear these things all the time – from parents, from teachers, from friends and peers. What does it do to their emotional lives when they crave close relationships but society tells them to keep emotional distance from others?

Join my guest Alan Turkus and me as we quiz Dr. Judy Chu, who lectures on this topic at Stanford and was featured in the (awesome!) documentary The Mask You Live In.

This episode is a must-listen if you’re the parent of a boy, and may even help those of you with girls to understand more about why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do.

Don’t have a boy? Check out How To Raise A Girl With A Healthy Body Image.

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chu, J. When boys become boys: Development, relationships, and masculinity. New York, NY: NYU Press. (Affiliate link)

Maccoby, E.E. (1990). Gender and relationships: A developmental account. American Psychologist 45(4), 513-520.

Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York, NY: Random House.

Read Full Transcript

Transcript

Jen: [00:40]

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few weeks ago, I interviewed Dr Renee Engeln who wrote the book Beauty Sick on the topic of raising girls with a healthy body image. Even though I don’t have a son, I know a lot of you do, so in today’s episode we’re going to talk about some of the challenges associated with raising sons and how we can be better parents to sons, and specifically how fathers can be better parents to sons. So since I am not a father and don’t have a son, I figured I’d better find someone who is both of those things. So today I welcome a co-interviewer, Alan. Alan grew up in New Jersey with a comfortable middle class family whose father was physically present and not physically abusive, but who had what Alan calls embarrassing spasms of anger that came with yelling and throwing things and when he wasn’t angry, he was pretty emotionally absent, so Alan feels as though he didn’t really have a great model for this whole fathering thing, but he wants to parent his own son differently and it started to take some steps in that direction, but he isn’t really sure if it’s enough or what else he should be doing. Welcome Alan.

Alan: [01:42]

Thank you.

Jen: [01:44]

And to help Alan and I figure all this out. I’m so excited that we’re joined today by Dr Judy Chu. I first learned of her work on the documentary called The Mask You Live In, which you can rent on Amazon or on Netflix and I would highly encourage you to do that even if you’re the parent of a girl because it really helped me to understand some of the reasons why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do. Dr Chu is featured in that film and when I looked her up, I saw she’d written a book called When Boys Become Boys, which I devoured as soon as I got it, and I knew she was the right person for us to talk with. She also teaches a course on boys psychosocial development at Stanford University. Her work aims to support boys healthy resistance against societal constraints that undermine their connections to themselves and others. Welcome Dr. Chu.

Dr. Chu: [02:28]

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jen: [02:31]

So Dr. Chu. I wonder if we could just start sort of in the weeds a little bit here about your research because a lot of the studies that we cover on this show are experimental in nature and that means that some researchers take some children to the lab and maybe they do something to make them uncomfortable and then they give the children a difficult task and see how they respond and then we try and generalize that behavior out to the real world and I’m familiar with the quote from the great psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner who called this the science of behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time, but your research takes such a different approach from that. Can you just tell us a little bit about how you go about studying boys?

Dr. Chu: [03:11]

Sure. Well, I guess the best way to describe my research is exploratory studies because like you at the time I hadn’t grown up as a boy and I didn’t have a son. And so in a way it was very much like anthropological research where I was going to learn from boys about what it was like for them to grow up as boys amidst, you know, a culture that has specific messages about what it means to be a real boy, quote unquote, or a real man. And I wanted to learn from the boys themselves, you know, what they’re capable of knowing and doing and relationships. So a lot of my methods really involved kind of like ethnographic observations. Just really trying to approach the boys as… I even told them that they’re my teachers because I don’t know what it’s like to be them. And so really looking to them as key informants and then kind of participating in their everyday lives at school as a participant observer.

Dr. Chu: [04:01]

So watching what they were doing, but also asking them about it and kind of really centering everything around developing kind of trusting and comfortable relationships so that they would talk to me as I was, you know, obviously different. I was an adult, I was a woman and kind of letting them get to know me so that they could feel that they could tell me things or share with me or also tell me if they didn’t feel like sharing things with me, which was also a part of the process. So I really wanted to respect and honor their wishes and their levels of comfort and then following up those observations later in the year once we had established relationships with interviews that I did – conducted either one on one with the boys or the boys in groups and that just depended on their preference. I would ask them, do you want to meet with me on your own or do you want to meet with me with some of your buddies?

Dr. Chu: [04:45]

And they would let me know what they preferred because I brought toys to my meeting and because they were some times more desirable character that each boy wanted to play with. That became a way of getting to meet with them one on one because they didn’t want to have to kind of negotiate who got to be which characters and whatnot. So, um, but it was really very much based on what’s called the relational approach to psychological inquiry, which really kind of tries to account for the fact that the stories people tell us or the things that they share with us about their lives really depends on how they see us and how they see our motives and really starts from a place of, you know, placing at the center of the relationship between the researcher and the participant.

Jen: [05:24]

And so how many times did you meet with the boys roughly?

Dr. Chu: [05:27]

Let’s see. I studied them throughout their pre kindergarten year and then followed up in their kindergarten year. I went at least once a week for two to three hours a week. And let’s see. I probably had about 48 days that I was there. And of those 48 I probably did interviews on 36 to 38 of those days. And so I met with them quite frequently and it was kind of eventually became on-demand, so I’d show up and the boys would kind of, you know, this was much later once they felt comfortable with me, but I’d show up and they’d come and request like, can you meet with me today, can you take me today? And then I’d try to make sure I met with everyone who had asked to be met with. And then also some of the boys who are a little more shy or hesitant, I also would ask them and when they didn’t feel comfortable, I’d let them pass and then if they wanted to then we eventually met in that way. So I tried to kind of, you know, more or less meet with at least everyone who wanted to. And eventually all of the boys did meet with me several times, so, you know, a handful but some more than others.

Jen: [06:24]

So this is very different from pulling a kid into a lab and get spending them in a five minute experiment and generating a result at the end. And I know that with an experiment you can potentially reach a larger number of people. You studied a relatively smaller number of people and I’m curious about the generalizability of your results. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Chu: [06:43]

Oh no, that’s a great question. Yeah, of course. I’m happy to talk about that. One of the things that kind of drove my research was that at the time, and this was in the late nineties, nineteen nineties, a lot of the literature on boys was not really talking about their relationships and the centrality of relationships in their development because relationships were kind of deemed feminine. And so it’s like, Oh, if you’re going to study relationships then you should be looking at girls because that’s what girls do. And so the boys relational capabilities and kind of their styles and all those things were very much overlooked or underestimated or just kind of neglected. Like, you know, some of the books that had been written with just say, oh well boys don’t really hardwired to talk about emotions and relationships. And so there was really this missing discourse in the literature on boys.

Dr. Chu: [07:29]

So what I really wanted to do is go in and focus on the boys perspectives to learn about their experiences and the relational approach that I adopted was very much based in studies that had emerged out of questioning traditional psychological methods which kind of approached experiments or studies as kind of what they call the black box approach where you think, okay, this person is this mysterious black thoughts. And like you said earlier, you know, we can manipulate situations and kind of see how they respond and try to guess at what they think about it. But my mentor at the time at Harvard, her name is Carol Gilligan. And one of the things that came out of her work in addition to the research on girls’ relationships and girls’ development that came out of the Harvard project on girls’ development and women’s psychology was this method that really said, you know, you can ask people about their experiences.

Dr. Chu: [08:14]

And if you create a context or a situation that is comfortable and familiar and trusting and inviting, people can tell you what they’re thinking, and you can trust that. And so the approach was really that the boys know something about their experience and they can tell me about it if I can create a situation that makes them able to be open and honest with me. And so yeah, in a way it’s probably seen as a little bit more of a radical approach to psychological inquiry. But in terms of the kinds of questions that I wanted to examine, it was really the most appropriate method as opposed to coming in and, you know, because one of the things that I document in my book is just how long it took, you know, several visits, maybe 10 to 15 visits before the boys started to feel comfortable with me because I was a stranger to them.

Dr. Chu: [09:00]

And understandably what they wouldn’t know if they could trust me or if they even wanted to talk to me. And so really giving them time to feel like, okay, who is this person? What does she want to know is safe for me to talk to her, do I even want to talk to her? And then finally kind of realizing that, you know, because I was genuinely interested in what they had to say really coming out and sharing with me things that, you know, sometimes they would say, oh, you know, don’t tell the teachers that I told you this or, you know, don’t let the other boys know that this is happening. Because a lot of them often felt that they were the only ones kind of struggling with some of the messages and pressures that were coming into their lives. Even at the young age of four.

Jen: [09:37]

Yeah. So you answered another of my questions, which is why did you get interested in this if you didn’t even have a son yet?

Dr. Chu: [09:46]

That was a really wonderful question and if I could just, I’ll try to speak very briefly about it, but I was actually brought to this study by boys themselves and it actually started with work with adolescent boys because my first year at Harvard, after I went home. I was driving around my brother and his friends, they were all 13 years old so they couldn’t drive and one of his friends kind of said to me, Oh, Harvard, you know, tell us what you’re learning there, you know, basically sarcastically like “impress us.” And I said, well, one of the things I learned about was when you know, these studies of girls and how to support girls, and he, this 13 year old boy says to me, oh, everyone’s so obsessed with girls, they’re talking about girls and how to support them and that we need to support them.

Dr. Chu: [10:24]

He goes, and that’s fine with me, but nobody’s talking to boys and we have something to say too. And he goes, “I know you should study boys; you should start with me.” And so I went back to Harvard that fall, told my advisor Carol about this, and she said, you should go back and study him. Clearly he has something to say. And so when I went home for winter break, that’s what I did. I started with an interview with this 13 year old. He talked for two hours about, you know, just kind of things that were, what was going on with him, what was hard, what was easy, what was on his mind. And I actually spent the first year of my studies studying adolescent boys, but what I found was that by adolescents they had already started to kind of reconcile the discrepancy between this is the way people think boys are and this is the way I experienced myself to be and the fact that there’s a gap between those things is just the way things are and you have to accept that gap as a part of growing up.

Dr. Chu: [11:22]

So that was kind of what I was seeing and hearing from adolescent boys. And so Carol said, you know, you really need to start earlier when they’re still in the middle of struggling with that discrepancies when they’re not yet kind of reconciled to the fact that people just aren’t going to know what they’re really like. And so her hypothesis was that what she was observing or had observed in adolescent girls, which is kind of this heightening of pressures for girls to conform to these feminine ideals and stereotypes, that the girls then had healthy resistance against. She felt that, you know, in our patriarchal culture where men still have most of the privileges in terms of power and status, that she thinks that in patriarchy they go after the boys earlier at the boys start hearing things like, don’t be a sissy, don’t cry, don’t be a Mama’s boy.

Dr. Chu: [12:08]

Those messages come in earlier. And her theory or hypothesis was that it came in at early childhood. So she said, why don’t you go in and find out, you know, what’s going on for these boys. And at first I was actually a little bit worried about that because I hadn’t been working with young children very much. And because I felt like, oh, I could talk to adolescents, I just finished adolescence, but I didn’t know what to expect with the younger kids. And they were amazing, you know, once we’re able to establish familiarity and comfort and trust. They were just as welcoming as the adolescent boys and it’s open to sharing. Once they knew they could trust me and that I really wanted to know what they had to say.

Jen: [12:44]

Okay. So you mentioned about how our society defines masculinity and I’m curious about Alan’s perspective on this and I think the whole “boys don’t cry.” Is really common. Was that the way you were raised on?

Alan: [12:55]

I think that I wouldn’t say I was raised that way by my parents in terms of, specific way, you know, criticized if I cried or anything like that, but I do think you get the cultural influence just out in the world about it’s maybe not it’s not safe have certain kinds of emotion.

Jen: [13:16]

So if your parents weren’t giving you that message, where did you get that message from?

Alan: [13:21]

I think you get it just through media, through interacting with other kids and adults. I would guess…and I can’t point to a specific incident, but you know, you learn by if you do express emotions and somehow you get embarrassed by it or somebody says something, then you’ve kinda learned to ratchet things back because it cannot be safe to be so open emotionally.

Jen: [13:51]

That safety of being open emotionally seems like a pretty major theme in this work Dr. Chu. Do you see that as well?

Dr. Chu: [13:56]

Absolutely. I think just as Alan said, I mean the boys learned very quickly through observation if not experience that you know that there are consequences to their behaviors and so they go from being really open and very kind of wearing the hearts on their sleeves so to speak, to learning that, you know, they need to be a little more selective, maybe even savvy in what they reveal about themselves and to whom you know, and they learn to anticipate the consequences and kind of modify their behaviors accordingly to keep themselves safe. And that’s smart and it’s adaptive. I mean it makes a lot of sense if you sense that you’re in a hostile or not particularly welcoming context. It makes sense not to reveal your vulnerabilities, right,

Jen: [14:35]

But it seems as though when our culture does is sets up… Our entire culture is this hostile and unwelcoming place for boys and men to express those feelings of insecurity? Do you agree?

Dr. Chu: [14:45]

Right. I think that unfortunately a lot of the conventional constructions of masculinity really focus on this ideal of men having to be physically and emotionally tough and stoic and kind of self-sufficient, not needing to tell anybody their problems and having to kind of bottle it all up and I think that it’s been demonstrated a lot even in the media, I think there’s kind of the popular messages just are slowly starting to deliver the message that it’s not healthy, it’s not good for them, it’s not good for their relationships and that there are long-term health consequences as well as short term kind of unpleasantries that can result when our emotional expression becomes stifled. Can you give us some examples of those? Well, I think, I mean the most kind of obvious would just be it can contribute to feelings of isolation that one is alone loneliness or even if they have, you know, a ton of Facebook friends or if they’re in the crowd, they can still feel lonely because nobody knows what they’re really like and it can just basically get in the way of their efforts and they definitely boys throughout childhood and adolescence and into adulthood, definitely continue to seek connections and to resist disconnection.

Dr. Chu: [15:52]

So if their goal is to really connect with others in authentic ways where they feel genuinely known and accepted and they’re having to withhold certain things because standards of masculinity tell them “boys don’t talk about these things,” then it really becomes a big obstacle to achieving the things that they want to getting the kinds of relationships that they obviously strive towards and desire.

Jen: [16:15]

So it’s like society is saying you can’t have this openness. They desperately want this openness versus it says if you have this openness, you’re not a real boy, you’re not a real man.

Dr. Chu: [16:24]

Right, right. So there’s like conflicting messages that are confusing for them for sure because you know, they’re trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do, what’s appropriate, what’s desirable. And ironically sometimes it’s that boys get the impression that the path to social acceptance and approval is to conform to these masculine norms, but then certain aspects of those constructions of masculinity inhibit the very things that will enable the connections that they’re working towards. And so they’re kind of in this buying the conformity to those kinds of norms that tell them, you know, you’re not supposed to talk with people. You’re not supposed to reveal the fact that you need other people in your lives. That undermines their ability to reach out when they need help to offer help, when they can be of help and like to really establish those kinds of mutual reciprocal relationships that will be protective in many ways for them.

Alan: [17:13]

So Dr Chu, in your research, you saw a big shift happening in boys while you were studying them. And I’m curious how you identified when that shift would happen and what the nature of that shift actually it was.

Dr. Chu: [17:31]

That’s a great question. I think what with the shift, it was not something that the boys told me about. It was something that I observed in their interactions with each other and with their parents and then also experienced in their interactions with me. So one of the things that, you know, when I first started studying these boys, my mentor, Carol Gilligan actually came with me during the first couple of months and did observations and then we’d kind of talk about what we had seen. And so some of the things that had struck us, for instance, where the boys’ ability to be really self aware and sensitive to other people’s feelings and attuned to kind of that social dynamics that were going on. And also one of the things that really stood out for us was this incredible tenderness between the boys and their fathers, much more so than with their mothers.

Dr. Chu: [18:16]

Because I think they had already started to learn that little boys aren’t supposed to cling to their mothers when they arrive to school, but somehow the message hadn’t been transferred over to fathers and so the boys were very, very tender, very loving. Some of them would cuddle with their fathers when they arrived, sit in their laps, read together and kind of settle into the day in a way that was so peaceful and loving and really kind of started the day right for them. And so these were things we had not expected to see because you know, based on stereotypes or images of boys as kind of rowdy and rambunctious and moving too much to even be hugged or held or whatever. It was so contrary to that. And so we kind of followed that and watched for that over the years because I started in the beginning of the school year. So that was the Fall.

Dr. Chu: [19:00]

And then into Spring there was kind of this gradual, like more of a distancing. Like it’d be more of a high five instead of a hug and a kiss. And it depended; it varied by the boys. They didn’t change at the same time. Some of the boys were able to still give hugs and kisses and feel very comfortable in that, but others were like, you know, you can give me a high five or a handshake and kind of being very aware all the time. Do you know who’s watching this interaction, you know, which of my friends is seeing this, you know, who’s watching me interact with my parent and how do I need to conduct myself? And so they went from being just, like I said, one of the things that had impressed me with how just open and honest, they were, not just in terms of being positive towards each other, but also in terms of when they’re mad at each other, when they’re angry, they talk about it.

Dr. Chu: [19:41]

They said, you know, “I’m upset with you because you did this and that wasn’t fair.” And they talk about it to kind of feeling like they couldn’t talk about it as much. That just how I described it was kind of. They went from being really fully present in their relationships in terms of expressing a whole range of qualities and behaviors and feelings to starting to adopt a pretense that sometimes word for word echoed characters they had seen on TV or heard in commercials or hurting the song and be a kind of this posturing that again, kind of imported language or phrases or attitudes and postures or poses that they had seen either in the media or maybe in older siblings or in people that they had interacted with. And that shift really reflected how they were actively reading and responding to messages that they were hearing from their peers and from adults about what it meant to be a boy.

Dr. Chu: [20:30]

And it was never very explicit in terms of, oh well boys shouldn’t do this. Although occasionally media you’ll hear something like, boys don’t cry or boys will be boys and the implication is that boys don’t do emotions or relationships. But then and then also just kind of pressures to conform, which were really motivated by their desire to be able to identify and relate to the other boys in their class. So what does it mean to one of the boys in this class and how can I engage with them in ways that won’t make me stick out or be teased or be excluded.

Jen: [20:58]

Alan, do you ever do drop off? Daycare drop off?

Alan: [21:03]

I do. I drop my son off at school every morning.

Jen: [21:06]

Okay. What have you seen?

Alan: [21:09]

You know, my son is four, so I think he’s still on the young side and still at a pretty open point and still pretty emotionally available and so generally, you know, he always wants to give me a hug and a kiss and I see him being, you know, it works well. It’s interesting. I drop him off every morning because he can be pretty clingy with his mother and not want to separate. So while he’ll be readily emotionally available with me, he doesn’t actually have a hard time separating with me like he would with his mother, which is why I do the drop off every day.

Jen: [21:51]

You know,, we actually face a similar thing with my daughter; I had to do drop off this morning and it wasn’t pretty. And normally my husband does it for exactly the same reason. So I guess what I’m curious about here then is as Alan’s son gets older, he’s going to start to notice probably what the other kids around him are doing and especially if it’s four year olds and five year olds in the same class. He’s probably observing what the five year olds are doing too and maybe it’s a little bit different. And is there a way that Alan can encourage his son to keep that really emotionally available quality that we feel as though we want our sons to have still have them not get teased about it when dad leaves and they have to go and be with their friends.

Dr. Chu: [22:32]

I think in part it varies by the child, you know, and if he’s comfortable in being himself and kind of saying this is who I am, this is what I have with my dad. It actually became a point of… I think the other boys were jealous of the boys who were able to kind of have those moments of affection with their fathers. And so like for instance in my book, I know you read it, Jake and his father were just, they really stood out, you know, because Jake’s father was this kind of warm and loving and just really comfortable with himself and Jake adored his father and he would hug and kiss and climb on his back. And sometimes like when his dad was on all fours and Jake’s on his back, the other boys would come and climb on his back.

Dr. Chu: [23:09]

And when the father left actually in addition to getting a hugging his from Jake, he’d sometimes get hugs from the other boys too who kind of wanted in on the action. And so they do crave it. And as long as there’s no one kind of gender-policing them, even when there is, I mean, in my book there was one of the boys who was a little more adherent to the codes of masculinity. And so sometimes he would question other boys like, you know, what are you doing? And Jake, because he was so comfortable with his father and because they had this amazing relationship that very much was based in their home life, but spilled out into other contexts and became wonderful protective shield in a way. And so because he had those things, people could say, oh, you know, what are you doing there?

Dr. Chu: [23:53]

You know, when he was snuggling with his dad and goes, “I’m snuggling with my dad” because he said it so competently, you know, what can they do? Right? It’s kind of like bullies or people who want to kind of coerce you into something else. I’m going to pick on you if they think they can influence you. But that confidence, which has his relationships with his mother and father instilled in him, gave him the confidence to kind of deviate in a way that was really good for him, but in a way that also protected him from peer pressures that might otherwise sway him to say, Oh, I better give that up or I better tone that down. And so in a way Carol, my advisor, really said, you know, Jake, he’s kind of the epitome of this healthy resistor, you know, and that resistance is fostered in the home because his parents basically said if you don’t want to do something, don’t do it.

Dr. Chu: [24:35]

And they gave him language and permission to really question things that didn’t feel right to him. And so you can definitely kind of create this bubble that they carry with them or that they kind of can live inside of. It’s just hard to protect boys from the messages that inevitably they’re going to encounter either by people that you know, because we can’t control how other people interact with our children and we can’t control what the messages the media conveys. But we can teach them to read it and to question them, to know that they don’t have to inevitably be subject to those rules, those arbitrary rules that other people say they’re supposed to be and do. And even four year olds are in a position to have that kind of competence. And I see it very much as coming from the parents.

Dr. Chu: [25:17]

So that’s one way to kind of maintain and to support his ability to be so emotionally available and say I really value this. And as he gets older, if he finds out, oh, you know, it’s not always safe, which sometimes unfortunately can happen in schools and outside in society to really kind of say, okay, well maybe you can’t be like that everywhere, but there are safe places, safe relationships in which you can bring yourself very openly and honestly and that you can always feel safe and you know, so it’s kind of creating those protective relationships for them that they then can take into the world even when the world is not as supportive.

Jen: [25:50]

Alan, have you had any kinds of conversations like that with your son? Do you feel as though you have the tools to have those kinds of conversations?

Alan: [25:58]

We make a real effort to not stifle his emotions and to get him comfortable with just emotions generally. So, you know, there’s some good books that we have. There’s a book called F is for Feelings, which basically just goes through a feeling for every letter in the alphabet and that’s a really good book because it can get kids comfortable with identifying what the different feelings they’re having are and what they mean and by just naming things that can help them get in touch with them. And I know I always make an effort, if he’s crying to just say, you know, it’s okay, please go ahead and cry. You know, a lot of times you see parents, something happens and they want to just push their child because they want it to be over there. Like, Oh, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay.

Alan: [26:52]

You know, something like that, you know, I’d much rather say, oh, go ahead and cry and get it out. Release the emotion. So we make a real effort around that. And my wife is very passionate about child development issues and we talk about this stuff all the time and she does a ton of reading. And so she brings a lot of resources into our family and we just have a lot of consciousness about it. I think a lot of families don’t have that way of thinking about it. And you know, one of the questions I had for Dr Chu is whether she knows of resources or tools that parents have that they can use to combat these cultural influences that we might not like or when we see things in our children that you know, how we deal with hard times with them.

Dr. Chu: [27:42]

Wow. That’s a wonderful question. First of all, I want to say that what you’re doing sounds exactly right. From what I’ve heard from the boys and from their families, that’s exactly what works is this kind of validation of their feelings. Allowing them, letting them know it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. It’s human, it’s natural to cry. All these things. It will nurture his self acceptance, which again contributes to that confidence that enables him to resist pressures or messages that might not be helpful to him as he goes through life. But in terms of resources and tools, I mean I think the fact that your wife is reading a lot and you’re both very aware of it and kind of conscientiously making decisions about what you want to do. I think those are all exactly the right things to do. I think some of the biggest maybe missteps or mistakes or just oversight that parents do as they maybe don’t take their kids as seriously.

Dr. Chu: [28:30]

Because I think in general people seem to think like, oh, they’re just kids and so what can they really be experiencing or feeling? I think they inadvertently or just because they get caught up in the business of everyday life or they’re tired and don’t have the time or the bandwidth to kind of devote that time and attention to every little thing. They can oftentimes miss the cues that kids are giving them in terms of I need help with this and I need to process this and kids – as astute as they are, they are still developing these skills and so that book F is for Feelings sounds great talking with them and just kind of reassuring them that yes, this is completely normal. It’s difficult, but it’s normal and you know, you’ll figure this out and it’ll get easier and giving them the language and the skills for sure and just, I mean I think more than anything is just also just that knowing that you’re on their side, that you believe them, that you’re listening to them, that you’re trying to help even if you don’t solve any of their problems for them, which isn’t necessarily the goal anyway, but to say “I hear you, I understand what you’re going through and I know, this can feel difficult, but we’ll get through this.”

Dr. Chu: [29:33]

One of the boys in my study actually, Jake I met with last year or so because it turns out he’s living here in San Francisco and he’s now 27 years old. So I was able to have coffee with him and ask him to reflect back on what he felt as he was going through this, what he remembered and he, you know, in terms of what you remembered from when he was four, I was a little more limited, but he reflected back on his childhood and adolescence because as you can imagine, somebody who is a resistor like that who says, you know, this doesn’t feel right for me, so I’m not going to do it – it’s an endless struggle but a worthwhile one. And I always asked him, you know, so what enabled you to feel supported in resisting those things? And he very much pointed to his relationship with his father and his relationship with his mom and also his older brother.

Dr. Chu: [30:16]

And they were just very much – it didn’t mean that life was always easy. It just meant that they could always talk about it no matter what. And one of the things that his father brings up that I describe in my book in the chapter on what the parents shared, which I learned so much, you know, you’re not expected to be perfect all the time and in fact the kids kind of benefit from seeing the mistakes that we make and knowing how we’re struggling and again just are talking through it with them, enables them to then have tools that they can then bring to their own problems and adapt and apply. So if I had an easy fix, so I would definitely share it. And then probably be very wealthy.

Jen: [30:55]

Probably.

Dr. Chu: [30:56]

But you’re asking the right questions though, and just even your intentions just demonstrates… Its exactly the right place to be. I mean, nobody has it figured out. I certainly don’t and I questioned myself all the time as a parent, like am I doing the right thing? Did I just say something that’s going to destroy them or whatever. And it’s very much like this sense of resilience and knowing that it’s okay to make mistakes and in fact there may be even better off for it when we’re able to turn those mistakes into learning opportunities for both of us and so…

Jen: [31:25]

Yeah, I felt as though what Alan was hoping for and there was a book to read or some thing to do and what you’re telling us I think is kind of that he has already. He and his wife have the tools that they need.

Dr. Chu: [31:35]

Right.

Jen: [31:35]

His family and our family both use the same respectful approach to parenting; I actually met him through his wife in a group that I’m in and so I think what we try and do is acknowledge our children’s experiences as authentic. Yeah, we’re at the park and you’re having a tantrum because you don’t want to leave. And personally I think this is ridiculous because we’re going to be at the park again tomorrow if you want to come. But what I’m saying is: “I hear that you really don’t want to go home. I hear that this is really important to you, that you really want to stay here and play and feel free and cry if that’s what you need to do to experience that” and not to minimize that and say, “Oh, just shut up and get in the car because we have to go home.”

Jen: [32:10]

It seems as though just that mind shift of allowing your child to experience their emotions as their authentic selves and for them to see you seeing that and being okay with that is what they need more than sort of any tip or trick or checkbox that you can go down. Am I sort of reading that back right?

Dr. Chu: [32:29]

Absolutely. And it even matters more than, them necessarily getting their way. You know, they just want to feel that you’re listening and you’ve heard them and you’ve considered it, and if the answer is still no, but I hear you and I understand what you think, then that gives them the feeling that they matter, that their voice matters, their feelings matter, and you’ve validated that, but you’re saying, you know, the situation is just this and you can always give them like a choice, like you want to leave now or in five minutes, you know, you can, there’s ways to kind of soften it a little bit. But yeah, like you said, the most important thing is that they feel listened to and even more than they got their way. Right.

Jen: [33:02]

So I want to look at the flip side of this a little bit. We’ve talked about Jake and his amazing relationship with his father and I want to read a passage from your book about Mike and his relationship with his father and specifically what that looks like at dropoff. So it goes “When Mike’s dad prepares to leave by asking Mike for a hug and a kiss. Mike walks slowly and self-consciously toward his Dad, stands with his arm, set asides, and allows his Dad to hug him. While in his Dad’s embrace. Mike makes a face like he slightly annoyed or feels inconvenienced by this exchange and let his body go limp like a rag doll. However, there is a brief moment when Mike smiles slightly or returns his Dad’s hug by placing his hands on his Dad’s back before letting his arms fall loosely at his sides again and resuming his air of indifference as Mike and his Dad finish their hug and begin to pull away from each other, Mike’s Dad gives me a kiss on the cheek, which Mike subtly wipes away by gently brushing his cheek with his fingertips. When Mike’s Dad catches him in the act and asks playfully. What are you doing? Mike responds with a guilty smile and they separate affably,” and so that sort of really stuck out to me, particularly in contrast with the story about Jake because it’s almost like maybe Mike was like Jake a year ago and something has shifted in Mike that hasn’t shifted in Jake and I’m wondering to what extent is it just the health, the ability to separate it from a parent and to what extent can we tease out is it that there’s something deeper going on and the Mike is beginning to deny what his needs are as a person for connection with his dad and is there something that a parent in that situation could do to sort of opened the gates back up again?

Dr. Chu: [34:34]

That’s a great question. A little bit ties to Alan’s question about there being a single source or even a small group of sources and resources and this is why it’s hard to recommend even my book, sometimes is because it really does depend on the kid, right? You know, each individual is different and so when I used to publish about my research, I would get calls from people saying, Oh, well what should I do with my kid? And I said I’d have to meet to know what to tell you what to do, but there’s not like a universal thing like you can’t. Even for awhile one of my colleagues was saying, well just take them out for ice cream. And I’m like, some people are allergic to dairy!

Jen: [35:08]

Cashew ice cream!

Dr. Chu: [35:08]

So that even in terms of Mike, I think you noticed something really that was really central to what was going on for him. And for those who haven’t read my book, it’s like he was kind of seen… I saw him as the bully in the class. He was the tallest boy. He was the toughest boy. He had this just really “don’t mess with me” exterior. And oftentimes he would kind of coerce the other boys into doing things that they didn’t necessarily want to do. And so at first I wasn’t super fond of him, but then it turned out during my study, during those months that I was observing him, his parents were going through a separation which was incredibly hard for him. And so he was developing this kind of tough exterior because he was actually the most vulnerable of all the boys at that time. He had this huge concern that people were going to suddenly leave him. He didn’t want to be abandoned. And so he was really trying out this like… If I force people to stay with me then they can’t leave me kind of thing.

Dr. Chu: [36:03]

And he also was just, you know, playing around with like, how do I deal with these…for him were probably these unbearable feelings of nothing, feels predictable. I thought my parents were going to be both in the house, all the time… And so just kind of what they’re dealing with. And I think if we’re going to compare him to Jake, I mean his parents were in a very loving, very strong marriage. And so he definitely came from a different situation. That’s not to say that they couldn’t both end up being fine, but it’s just that Mike had a lot more going on and so, you know, he was definitely kind of developing this persona that he felt he needed to project to show everyone, you know, I’m fine, I’m okay and nobody can hurt me. Everything he did kind of was about protecting himself from being hurt.

Dr. Chu: [36:45]

And so yeah, I mean I think with every kid you need to meet them where they are. Every kid has a different personality, a different temperament. They bring something different to the situations and they also have access to different resources. And so in terms of supporting them, again, coming back to Alan’s question, it’s like I would encourage parents to really trust that you know, your kid best of anyone else in the world. You’re the one who’s going to love them the most and want the best for them. And if we’re lucky, we have other people who want to be supportive. Ultimately we are our children’s biggest champions, right? And so, and we’re the ones that they’re going to look to and rely on to help them get through whatever they’re getting through. And so it becomes very much custom tailoring our support to what our kid needs.

Dr. Chu: [37:28]

And so I think if I were to think of like a “solution” to it is just for parents to be able to trust themselves more. I think there’s so much insecurity and uncertainty around parenting these days. I certainly feel it. And in the years that I struggled on behalf of my son and what he was going through and what I needed to give to him. I think what I kept coming back to as needing to be reminded that I know something about this. And in that sense, people always say “Oh, did studying this help you as a parent?” I’m like, if only to give me a little ounce of confidence that I might know what I’m doing because there’s so much doubt. You know, there’s other parents, there’s teachers who say, oh, your kid is this and that’s not good and whatever.

Dr. Chu: [38:08]

And it’s so easy to get sucked into feeling like I don’t want to do more damage and so how can… I think even parents who decided: I need to toughen up my kid, it’s because they want to protect them from being bullied or picked on and whatever. And so usually the parents have these really wonderful intentions and I think the best thing to do is to learn also to kind of sit with what we know and say, you know, even though other people say this or even though the popular thing is to do this with kids, this is not for my kid to be able to have the courage to kind of say, okay, this is going to be our choice. And that’s really, really hard because there really are pressures all around not just for our boys but also for ourselves.

Jen: [38:44]

Yeah. I obviously have no idea what happened later in that day when Mike got home from school. But I wonder, and certainly the moment at school was not the right time for Mike’s Dad to sit down and say, hey, it seems as though there’s something going on with you right now, but I would hope that maybe later in the day Mike’s dad said, “Hey, I noticed that you didn’t really want to be hugged when we left daycare or school. Is there something you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” And maybe start a conversation about what’s going on in the child’s life and really seeing that instance of behavior as a signal as your child trying to tell you something, not just as a, Oh, that was interesting, and then you go out to the car and go to work and don’t think about it anymore.

Dr. Chu: [39:22]

Or sometimes the kids even forget and so that it’s not necessary that we analyze every situation unless there’s like a red flag or something. You can always just try to reconnect because in that sense the relationships are very resilient. The kids are resilient and the relationships are resilient and the more that we can kind of demonstrate that as well, so like if the father was to come home and if that was on his mind just find another way to kind of reconnect and to be present like, oh and that wasn’t the right context because as you mentioned that’s in his school context. It’d be Mike doesn’t want to be all vulnerable and exposed in the school setting where he feels that his peers are watching just like his father wouldn’t in his workplace necessarily be emotionally available, but then to kind of notice when the opportunities are that you can slow down and just be together sometimes that some of the parents mentioned, you know, when they’re putting their kids to bed, that’s usually a nice quiet… Everybody settled. Everyone’s calm and able to be present or bath time or sometimes car rides were they’re in the back seat and you’re in the front seat and they just are able to say whatever’s on their mind. So it doesn’t have to be like an interrogation or anything like that, but it can kind of be like, oh, you know, is there anything on. There’s always second chances and I think that’s also good for boys as well. And also girls to learn to know that, you know, it’s not all or nothing. You can make mistakes and you can still come back into relationship and it’s still there that teaches them about the durability and the strength of the relationship.

Alan: [40:47]

I find that to be actually a really key point, you know, as a father, I really make an effort when I do something that is upsetting or I get angry or something happens where I think my son is maybe having a hard time to try to come back to when he’s in a better place or when I’m in a better place or both in a better place and just kind of process that together. I’m always surprised by his capacity to really do that at such a young age and how that yields real benefit. I plan to do that today. Actually, this morning we had a hard time getting out of the house for school and I got a little bit angry at him and I plan having a conversation with him later today about, hey, you know, let’s talk about what happened this morning. I know I was pushing you to get out the door and you wanted to jump on the trampoline and we were late and I got angry and I don’t want to do that. I’m sorry I got angry. But I also want you to, you know, when I tell you it’s time to go to be able to say, oh, okay, we’re running late. Well let’s go.

Alan: [41:58]

So you know, to have a conversation about it where we can process it in a better way than it went this morning. That I think that creates a sense of closure for him. It also brings up another point around… That’s behavior that I want to model for him because I think the modeling thing is really important just in general as a father to present a set of behaviors that I think he can witness that are healthy and then adopt. And that goes across a whole range of things, not just around if I get angry coming back to him, but just how I treat other people in general, how I am as a father and how I am as a husband, you know, doing an equal amount of work around the house an equal amount of parenting, you know, all that stuff. Like I want to model all that behavior for him because I think if that’s what he sees, then that’s what he’ll want to present himself out in the world. I’m curious what your thoughts were about the idea of modeling and how that can interacts with all this.

Dr. Chu: [43:07]

Oh, I think that what you just described sounds perfect. I really agree with you entirely that, you know, it’s so important for boys and girls to see men doing, you know, a range of things so that this is what men can do; girls as well – because you want their expectations and conceptions of, well, what do men do? What men do as far as what the men do as husbands to really be influenced by positive role models. I think that’s incredibly important and wonderful that you’re doing that. Even if he doesn’t grow up to be exactly like you, he knows that this is a possibility and it offers an alternative to maybe some of the mainstream messages, which actually comes back to also, we talk about this concern about some of them more damaging or harmful aspects of masculinity that get portrayed in the media.

Dr. Chu: [43:54]

And so when you ask kids any age, he said, you know, what does it mean to be a man? They do have this kind of, Oh, you gotta be tough. You’ve got to be powerful, whatever. But then if you ask them what does it mean to be a good man, they can tell you that also. And so it’s somebody that who’s loyal and loving and responsible and that those alternative… Or the fact that there are multiple masculinities. There are multiple ways to be good men or to be a man or to be a boy. And that’s exactly what you’re showing your son when you model these things and demonstrate this range for him is that there are options; that it’s not just one very narrow conception of masculinity, but that there are ways in that, you know, whatever feels right to him. And also like you said, you know, showing him how you treat people and this is how you’re in a positive, good relationship. This is what it means and what it looks like that he will definitely benefit from that. And that’ll be a source of strength and support for him as he moves forward.

Jen: [44:49]

Alan, I have about 300 more questions for Dr. Chu, what’s on the top of your list of things to cover? What do you desperately want to know?

Alan: [44:57]

I want to talk about the idea of how parents can deal with influences that come outside of the home. You know, if they notice that their son is having issues with other kids at school or you know, even other adults… But maybe we could just talk about that whole general issue about stuff that happened that you can’t control that’s outside of the way you would like it to be and how you can help your son deal with those kinds of things when they come up.

Dr. Chu: [45:34]

I love these questions. I think that in terms of dealing with external influences, what you described in terms of modeling and processing together is a great example of what to do; it can be extended and applied to that situation as well, that you talk to them about it. Because we can’t control how other people behave around our children or how they treat our children unfortunately. And there’s always going to be things that are less than optimal that you hear a coach or a teacher say to your kid and you’re like, oh, I really hate that, or even even to say to someone else’s kid, that your kid happened to see. And so really invite them to talk about it with you. That it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to criticize it or question it and ask what’s going on.

Dr. Chu: [46:13]

Why do you think they said that? What do you think they meant? Do you agree with that? Here’s what I think; what do you think? Then that way, again, it’s not presented as this truth that they’re not allowed to challenge or question, but an instead it’s like this person is coming from here and maybe they had a hard day and that’s why they said this or something that was unpleasant. Or maybe it wasn’t about you. Even though it hurt, it was hurtful, and so kind of processing it together in much the way that you had described you do with your sons about things that happen between the two of you. You can extend to other people as well. You can help them to know again that we can’t control what other people do or how other people treat us, but we can decide how we respond to that and how we make meaning of that.

Dr. Chu: [46:53]

And so really joining them in that process of like, okay, this thing happened and unfortunately these days there are so many bad unfortunate things that are happening both on a personal level in terms of how people treat us or interact with us, but also on a wider level and so really giving your kids these tools or skills to make sense of that in a way that preserves their sense of integrity. Like this is what I value, this is what I believe, but also allows them to kind of consider what else might be going on; other people’s perspectives, why might they have done that? And even if I don’t agree with what they’ve done, I can maybe understand it or maybe you respect it depending on what the view is. And so I think in many ways what Alan described is kind of applicable to dealing with external influences as well.

Jen: [47:40]

Is there one other item on your burning question list, Alan?

Alan: [47:44]

Just as a kind of a follow up on that… In your experience in the research you did and then in your experience generally sometimes you know, it’s one thing to know that there is some kid at school that’s causing a problem for your son and you can actually actively coach him about it, but often time the parent may not know what’s going on exactly. Like in your research, did you find that the kids that were not at the top of the hierarchy, and might’ve been having a hard time, were their parents aware of what was happening? And kids are not always able to articulate what it is or they don’t want to talk about it or whatever and some parents might not… It might not be that easy to diagnose what the problem is, so I’m just curious about your thoughts about all that and how parents can best deal with it.

Dr. Chu: [48:36]

My wish is that parents could be more like both of you where they’re just really kind of paying attention as best as they can because I think the kids do bring it up because at age four and five they haven’t yet mastered putting up a front and so you know, even like if you look at like when they tell secrets, they’re whispering so loud that everyone can hear them anyway. And so I think that when they’re struggling with something there’s evidence there and so to kind of again take a little bit of time in parents’ busy schedules. So like one of the boys in the kindergarten year, there was a new boy and he came in and because he came in late, he was at the middle or lower end of the hierarchy and he was really struggling with kind of Mike being on top and everything and kind of harassing him because he was new and not yet accepted.

Dr. Chu: [49:18]

And so this kid came in. He would always tell me, “Turn on your tape recorder. I have to tell you something really important.” And so he tells me and he goes, you know, I want to be a part of this team, but they’re excluding me or, and they’re not letting me do this and that. And I said, oh well, you know, have you talked to your parents about it? And the thing that made me so sad when he goes, yeah, I tried to tell my mom, but she said, “oh, I think you’re just kidding.” You know, sometimes they say things. And then as adults we don’t always hear them be either because we’re caught up in the middle of doing something or I always find with my son, if he tells me the most important things when I’m doing five other things at the same time.

Jen: [49:53]

He knows!

Dr. Chu: [49:54]

Exactly. They always know that I’m going to drop the big bombshell on you. I know you can’t..[unintelligible] And then when I’m sitting there and I say “I’m 100 percent attentive now” and he’s like, “Yeah, I have nothing to say to you right now.” But yeah. So I think a lot of times boys, they can tell us what they need. If they know that we’re really interested and so I always say that, you know, what I found with my research isn’t that remarkable because anyone who’s interested and listening can hear these… Boys will tell them these things. You boys can tell us what they need, if they know that we’re interested in understanding and that we want to help. And so again, like you said, they are very astute and they know who they can trust and they’re starting to be a little more careful as well.

Dr. Chu: [50:42]

And so if they know that you’re on their side and that you’re listening, they will tell you and they absolutely have the capability to do so. Maybe they don’t have super sophisticated vocabulary, but their level of psychological understanding is actually really, really impressive. And they do know what’s going on. When one of the boys said, you know, “Oh, I’m actually friends with all the girls, but I don’t want Mike to find out. Because if he finds out he’ll fire me from his club and then I won’t have a club.” I think is pretty sophisticated that he knows exactly what’s going on and the fact that he can’t reveal certain things because there are these consequences that he really would rather not have happened to him. And so when something bad is happening… And I mean with bullying again, it’s also just unfortunately it’s such a common phenomena.

Dr. Chu: [51:24]

I mean if not like the kind of physical bullying that happens is a very obvious problem and more visible in some ways, hopefully not more easy to deal with but just that people can recognize it. But there’s also more relational bullying and just kind of slights and taunts and teases. And so really kind of talking with our kids and preparing… Not preparing them for that, like this horrible things can happen to you. But just, you know, what can we do when sometimes someone says something that we didn’t like, you know, how can we kind of give them the tools so that they’re ready and teach them to defend themselves or stand up for themselves in healthy, productive ways. You know. And so, you know, first of all, you know, at that age, at four and five definitely report the problem to a responsible, trusted adult.

Dr. Chu: [52:02]

You want to validate what’s happening for them and how it makes them feel and this is a problem and that you’re there to help them work through it. But then the fact that even if it’s not this one particular person, maybe it’s just the whole thing like how they can kind of gather or bolster the sources from which they draw strength and that includes their relationships with you but also their own personal sources like what they know about themselves. And then when they feel they need to say something or do something, what can help them to feel supported in doing that? I think one of the things with my son who was shy at age five that I felt super proud of was some kid came up to him and said, you know, do this. And when my son said, “No, I don’t really want to.” He goes, “Well, you’re mean.” And my son said, “Don’t say that, because I’m nice.”

Dr. Chu: [52:48]

And then the kid went away. And I thought that’s great. So you kind of… It’s not necessarily to provide them with specific scripts but then supply them with a sense of entitlement to speak up for themselves to defend themselves or one way to kind of role play with them is say, well, if you were standing next to a good friend of yours and someone said this to them, what would you say? What would you say either to the person to the bully or what would you tell your friend to do? And don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself in that same way, because sometimes we feel more entitled to help somebody else, but then we don’t feel like we can do that same thing for ourselves. And just to say, you know, that’s totally okay to do and if you need help ask for it. And if you can give help offer it. And then that again is also this way of feeling like there are things I can do. Even though there are a lot of things I can’t control.

Jen: [53:34]

Yeah. I feel as though you’ve completely vindicated my decision not to take advertising on this show because there is nothing I need to advertise that parents need because they have what they need. They just need to listen to their kids and talk with their kids and have respect for their kids and that’s all…that’s really all a parent needs.

Dr. Chu: [53:50]

And it sounds really simple. I know, but it always comes back to that. It’s incredibly powerful. I always actually come back to Mr Rogers and his whole thing of “I like you just the way you are,” and how simple that is, but how powerful that can be as kids go out into the world, that feeling that they know they are accepted and the the confidence that comes from that, that allows them to then make decisions that feel right for them. I mean, I think so many of the problems that we see kids encountering are because they don’t feel that they have the right to say, I’ll treat you with respect, but you have to treat me with respect to and respect means I can be who I am as long as I’m not hurting anyone else, who I am is okay. In fact even good and how difficult that is to actually really foster in our kids and so if we can just get that right, I think that gives them a significant advantage as they’re entering the world and all the challenges that it presents.

Jen: [54:43]

Yep. I feel like we could talk about this for another hour, but unfortunately we’re out of time. I want to thank you Alan, particularly for just putting yourself out there and sharing your. A bit about your life with us, so thanks for taking the time.

Alan: [54:56]

Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Jen: [54:58]

And Dr. Chu for helping us to think through these issues and helping us to really feel confident as parents that we have the tools that we need. We just got to be attuned to our children that we have everything that we need to be good parents. Thank you for taking the time to think through that with us.

Dr. Chu: [55:12]

Absolutely. It’s my pleasure.

Jen: [55:13]

So listeners who want to actually see Dr. Chu can rent Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s film, the mask you live in and you can remember it’s called The Mask You Live In. I saw her explain it. If you say it very fast, “TheMaskYouLiveIn” it sort of sounds like “The Masculine” so you can rent that on Netflix and on Amazon and you get to see Dr. Chu explain her research, which is pretty cool, and also her book When Boys Become Boys is available on Amazon and all the references for today’s show can be found at yourparentingmojo.com/boys

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045: How parenting affects child development

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 21:00:00 +0000

Isn’t it kind of a “well, duh?” that parenting affects child development? But do we know how? We know it’s not good to have really big fights in front of the kids, but do spousal quarrels screw them up too? Are there really links between a family’s emotional expressiveness and the child’s later academic performance? How does the marital relationship affect parenting, and how does parenting affect the marital relationship?

Today we talk with Dr. Laura Froyen, who has a Ph.D in Human Development and Family Studies and seems almost as obsessed with research on child development issues as I am. You can find much more about her work at www.laurafroyen.com.

References

Bascoe, S.M., Davies, P.T., Sturge-Apple, M.L., & Cummings, E.M. (2009). Children’s representations of family relationships, peer information processing, and school adjustment. Developmental Psychology 45(6), 1740-1751.

Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development 55(1), 83-96.

Bretherton, I., & Munholland, K. A. (1999). Internal working models in attachment relationships: A construct revisited. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 89-111). New York: Guilford Press.

Buehler, C., & Gerard, J.M. (2002). Marital conflict, ineffective parenting, and children’s and adolescents’ maladjustment. Journal of Marriage and Family 64(1), 78-92.

Davies, P.T., & Cummings, E.M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 116(3), 387-411. Full article available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edward_Cummings/publication/15390513_Marital_Conflict_and_Child_Adjustment_An_Emotional_Security_Hypothesis/links/0912f507fc3e02ce88000000.pdf

Davies, P.T., Winter, M.A., & Cicchetti, D. (2006). The implications of emotional security theory for understanding and treating childhood psychopathology. Developmental Psychopathology 18(3), 707-735.

Erel, O., & Burman, B. (1995). Interrelatedness of marital relations and parent-child relations: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin: 118(1), 108-132.

Froyen, L.C., Skibbe, L.E., Bowles, R.P., Blow, A.J., & Gerde, H.K. (2013). Marital satisfaction, family emotional expressiveness, home learning environments, and children’s emergent literacy. Journal of Marriage and Family 75, 42-55.

Gottman, J., & Gottman, J.S. (2008). And baby makes three: The six-step plan for preserving marital intimacy and rekindling romance after baby arrives. New York, NY: Harmony.

Grych, J.H., & Fincham, F.D. (1993). Children’s appraisals of marital conflict: Initial investigations of the cognitive-contextual framework. Child Development 64(1), 215-230.

Hindman, A.H., Miller, A.L., Froyen, L.C., & Skibbe, L.E. (2012). A portrait of family involvement during Head Start: Nature, extent, and predictors. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 27, 654-667.

Lapierre, S. (2008). Mothering in the context of domestic violence: The pervasiveness of a deficit model of mothering. Child & Family Social Work 13, 454-463.

Sturge-Apple, M.L., , Davies, P.T., & Cummings, E.M. (2006). Hostility and withdrawal in marital conflict: Effects on parental emotional unavailability and inconsistent discipline. Journal of Family Psychology 20(2), 227-238.

Tronick, E. (2009). Still face experiment. UMass Boston. Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0

Vallotton, C. D., Harewood, T., Froyen, L., Brophy-Herb, H., & Ayoub, C. (2016). Child Behavior Problems: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Mental Health Matters Today and Tomorrow. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 37, 81-93. doi: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2016.02.006

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024: How (and when) does my child understand fairness?

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 22:00:00 +0000

We talked a while ago about sharing, and how you can understand the developmental processes that your child needs to go through before s/he truly understands what it means to share.

One of the inputs to sharing behavior is an understanding of what is fair, and Drs. Peter Blake and Katie McAuliffe talk us through what we know about what children understand about fairness. This episode will help you to understand how much of the idea of fairness is naturally culturally transmitted to children and what you can do to encourage a sense of fairness in your child, which is important for their own social well-being and for the benefit of our society – this has implications for ideas like the development of perceptions about race and gender that we’ll be talking more about in upcoming episodes.

References

Blake, P.R., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., & Warneken, F. (2016). Give as I give: Adult influence on children’s giving in two cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 152, 149-160. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.07.010

Blake, P.R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., Barry, O, Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K.L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F. (2015). The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature 528, 258-261. DOI:10.1038/nature15703

Blake, P.R., Rand, D.G., Tingley, D., & Warneken, F. (2015). The shadow of the future promotes cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma for children. Scientific Reports 5, Article number 14559. DOI: 10.1038/srep14559

Blake, P.R., & McAuliffe, K. (2011). “I had so much it didn’t seem fair”: Eight-year-olds reject two forms of inequity. Cognition 120, 215-224. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.04.006

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Giving preschoolers choice increases sharing behavior. Psychological Science 24, 1971-1979.

Jordan, J.J., McAuliffe, K., & Warneken, F. (2014). Development of in-group favoritism in children’s third-party punishment of selfishness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111(35), 12710-12715. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1402280111

McAuliffe, K., Blake, P.R., Steinbeis, N., & Warneken, F. (2017). The developmental foundations of human fairness. Nature (Human Behavior) 1 (Article 00042), 1-9.

McAuliffe, K., Jordan, J.J., & Warneken, F. (2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition 134, 1-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013

Schmuckler, M.A. (2001). What is ecological validity? A dimensional analysis. Infancy 2(4), 419-436. Full article available at: http://utsc.utoronto.ca/~marksch/Schmuckler%202001.pdf

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022: How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: Author Interview!

Jen Lumanlan — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 23:59:00 +0000

Have you read the now-classic book How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk? Ever wished there was a version that would help you with younger children who perhaps aren’t quite ready for a detailed problem-solving session?

Well now there is! Adele Faber is a co-author of the original book; Adele’s daughter Joanna and Joanna’s childhood friend Julie King have teamed up to write the new version of How to Talk so LITTLE Kids Will Listen, packed with examples of how real parents have used the information they’ve now been teaching for over 30 years.

Join me for a chat with Julie King as we work to understand the power of acknowledging children’s feelings and some practical tools to help engage your younger children to cooperate with you.

Update 5/10/17: An eagle-eyed listener noticed that Julie mentioned her 10-year-old son wanting to sit on the front seat of her car, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that children 12 and under should sit in the back seat. Julie was recounting an episode that happened long before there were CDC recommendations on where children should sit in the car, so please don’t take this as an ‘OK’ to put your 12-and-under child in the front seat. Thanks!

Reference

Faber, J. & King, J. (2017). How to talk so little kids will listen. New York: Scribner. (Affiliate link)

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019: Raising your Child in a Digital World: Interview with Dr. Kristy Goodwin

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Did your child receive a digital device as a gift over the holidays? Have you been able to prise it out of his/her hands yet?

Regular listeners might recall that we did an episode recently called “Really, how bad is screen time for my child?” where we went into the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time for very young children, so if you haven’t listened to that one yet you might want to go and do it before you listen to this episode, because this one really builds on that one.

Yes, we know we’re not supposed to give our babies under 18 months old access to screens. But at some point our children are going to start using screens – and we as parents need tools to manage that process, whether we’ve limited screens until now or whether we’ve been using them as a bit of a crutch. (If you’re in a third category of parents who is totally happy with the amount and type of screen time your children are getting and feel confident about managing this in the future then click along to the next episode, because there’s nothing for you here!) So all of this is what today’s guest is going to help us to figure out.

Dr Kristy Goodwin is one of Australia’s leading digital parenting experts (and mum who also has to deal with her kids’ techno-tantrums!). She’s the author of the brand new book Raising Your Child in a Digital World (Affiliate link). Dr Kristy arms parents, educators and health professionals with research-based information about what today’s young, digital kids really need to thrive online and offline. Kristy takes the guesswork and guilt out of raising kids in the digital age by arming parents and educators with facts, not fears about how screens are impacting on children’s health, wellbeing and development.

References

Brewer, J. (2016). Digital Nutrition (website/blog). Retrieved from: http://www.digitalnutrition.com.au/blog

Christakis, D., Zimmerman, F.J., DiGuiseppe, D.L., & McCarty, C.A. (2004). Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. Pediatrics 113(4), 708-713.

Common Sense Media website: www.commonsensemedia.org (Also check your app store for their app)

Goodwin, K. (2016). Raising your child in a digital world: What you need to know!. Warriewood, NSW: Finch. (Affiliate link)

Kindertown website: http://www.kindertown.com/ (Also check your app store for their app)

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011: Does your child ever throw tantrums? (Part 1)

Jen Lumanlan — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 21:00:00 +0000

So, does your child ever throw tantrums? Yes? Well, the good news is that you’re not alone. And this isn’t something us Western parents have brought upon ourselves with our strange parenting ways; they’re actually fairly common (although not universal) in other cultures as well.

What causes a tantrum? And what can parents do to both prevent tantrums from occurring and cope with them more effectively once they start? Join us today to learn more.

Taming Your Triggers

If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop.

We’ll help you to:

Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered

Click the banner to learn more!

Jump to highlights

00:35 Introduction to today’s episode

01:00 The 1^st, last, and only detailed research about this subject was published in 1931, then the research went quiet until the 1980s. Even since then, there’s only little information about this subject because tantrums can be hard to study at home

01:56 Age bracket of children who have tantrums, and this is the most common childhood behavior according to parents

02:30 Tantrums may occur in other cultures, according to Robert and Sarah LeVine’s recent book Do Parents Matter?

03:12 David Lancy’s book The Anthropology of Childhood cites several studies of other cultures that mention tantrum-like behavior.

04:55 Florence Goodenough wrote a book that was published in 1939, which described tantrums, implying that this is not a new phenomenon

06:30 Children who have older siblings have more frequent outbursts than first-born children

09:29 Goodenough asked parents at the beginning of the study what methods of controlling tantrums

12:15 Negotiation is considered to be a valued ability because it can bring about solutions to problems that come as close as possible to satisfying everyone

13:45 The studies found that maternal use of induction techniques was related to social competence, even across time, during the preschool period

14:58 Wrapping up the discussion

References

Denham, S.A., & Burton, R. (2003). Social and emotional prevention and intervention programming for preschoolers. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers

Green, J.A., Whitney, P.G., & Potegal, M. (2011). Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying: Categorical and intensity differences in vocal expressions of anger and sadness in children’s tantrums. Emotion 11(5), 1124-1133. DOI: 10.1037/a0024173

Goodenough, F. (1931). Anger in young children. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lancy, D.F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Levine, L.J. (1995). Young children’s understanding of the causes of anger and sadness. Child Development 66(2), 697-709.

LeVine, R., & LeVine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York: Public Affairs.

Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.E., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H., & Way, B.M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428.

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008: The impact of stress and violence on children

Jen Lumanlan — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 03:00:00 +0000

I’m afraid this is an episode I wish I didn’t have to record.

When I launched the podcast I asked anyone who has a question about parenting or child development that I might be able to answer by reviewing the scientific literature to reach out and let me know, and someone got in touch to ask about the impact of domestic violence on children. I was a little hesitant to do an episode on it at first because I was hoping that this would be something that wouldn’t really affect the majority of my audience. But as I did a search of the literature I found that domestic violence is depressingly common and more children are exposed to it than we would like.

And if you’re getting ready to hit that ‘pause’ button and move on to a different episode, don’t do it yet – there’s also research linking exposure to domestic violence dragging down the test scores of everyone else in that child’s class. So even if you’re not hitting anyone or being hit yourself, this issue probably impacts someone in your child’s class, and thus it impacts your child, and thus it impacts you. Listen on to learn more about the effects of stress in general on children, and the effects of domestic violence in particular.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800.799.7233.

Jump to highlights:

00:38 Prelude of the episode

01:37 The general impact of stress in the unborn baby, as well at the infants and the pre-school children

05:00 Domestic violence is a common problem across the world

09:14 Abused women may deny their children the sense of basic trust and security that is the foundation of healthy emotional development

10:54 67% of children experienced violence

14:24 What can parents do to protect their children from domestic violence and stress

References

Anda, R.F., Felitti, V.J., Bremner, J.D., Walker, J.D., Whitfield, C., Perry, B.D., Dube, S.R., & Giles, W.H. (2006). The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood: A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 256(3), 174-186. DOI: 10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4

Carrell, S.E., & Hoekstra, M.L. (2009). Externalities in the classroom: How children exposed to domestic violence affect everyone’s kids. University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series, DP2009004. Retrieved from: http://www.ukcpr.org/Publications/DP2009-04.pdf

Edleson, J.L, Ellerton, A.L., Seagren, E.A., Kirchberg, S.L., Schmidt, S.O., & Ambrose, A.T. (2007). Assessing child exposure to adult domestic violence. Children and Youth Services Review 29, 961,971. DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2006.12.009

Essex, M.J., & Klein, M.H. (2002). Maternal stress beginning in infancy may sensitize children to later stress exposure: Effects on cortisol and behavior. Biological Psychiatry 52, 776-784. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11086641_Maternal_stress_beginning_in_infancy_may_sensitize_children_to_later_stress_exposure_Effects_on_cortisol_and_behavior?enrichId=rgreq-a2830462f2af5d60e71eb7b48c03e971-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzExMDg2NjQxO0FTOjEwMjE5ODc5Mjk0OTc3M0AxNDAxMzc3NTAwNDM3&el=1_x_3

Evans, S.E., Davies, C., & DiLillo, D. (2008). Exposure to domestic violence: A meta-analysis of child and adolescent outcomes. Aggression and Violent Behavior 13, 131-130. DOI: 10.1016/j.avb.2008.02.005

Holt, S., Buckley, H., & Whelan, S., (2008). The impact of exposure to domestic violence on children and young people: A review of the literature. Child Abuse and Neglect 32, 797-810.

Lupien, S.J., McEwen, B.S., Gunnar, M.R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behavior and cognition. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 10, 434-445. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2639

Martinez-Torteya, C., Bogat, G.A., von Eye, A., & Levendosky, A.A. (2009). Resilience among children exposed to domestic violence: The role of risk and protective factors. Child Development 80(2), 562-577.

Obradovic, J., Bush, N.R., Stamperdahl, J., Adler, N.E., & Boyce, W.T. (2010). Biological sensitivity to context: The interactive effects of stress reactivity and family adversity on socio-emotional behavior and school readiness. Child Development 81(1), 270-289. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01394.x.

Rossman, B.B.R, & Rosenberg, M.S. () Family stress and functioning in children: The moderating effects of children’s beliefs about their control over parental conflict. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 33(4), 699-715.

Starcheski, L. (2015, March 2). Take the ACE Quiz: and learn what it does and doesn’t mean. Shots: Health News from NPR. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

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002: Why doesn’t my toddler share?

Jen Lumanlan — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 18:11:00 +0000

Imagine this: you’re with your toddler son or daughter at a playground on a Saturday afternoon so there are a lot of people around. You’re sitting on a bench while your child plays in the sandpit where several others are playing as well. You’re half paying attention while you catch up with some texts on your phone. You hear a scream and when you look up you see a child you don’t know clutching tightly onto the spade your child had been playing with, and your child is about to burst into tears.

Or this: You’re at the playground on a Saturday afternoon and your child is in the sand pit, but when you hear the scream you look up to see your child holding the spade, and a child you don’t know has clearly just had it removed from his possession.

What do you do?

Assuming you want your children to learn how to share things, what’s the best way to encourage that behavior? What signs can you look for to understand whether they’re developmentally ready? Does praising a child who proactively shares something encourage her to do it again – or make her less likely to share in the future? We’ll answer all these questions and more.

Jump to highlights

00:37 Introduction of episode

02:10 Drastic steps to promote sharing behavior

02:54 The key goal for resting parents

03:28 Concepts for sharing behavior

04:55 Concept of ownership

07:07 Understand the thing for you to be yours

07:29 Understanding of time

08:20 Impulse control

11:42 Shaming a child into sharing

14:55 Five sharing strategies you can teach children

References

Brownell, C., S. Iesue, S. Nichols, and M. Svetlova (2012). Mine or Yours? Development of Sharing in Toddlers in Relation to Ownership Understanding. Child Development 84:3 906-920. Full article available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578097/

Crary, E. (2013). The secret of toddler sharing: Why sharing is hard and how to make it easier. Parenting Press, Seattle, WA.

Davis, L., and J. Keyser (1997). Becoming the parent you want to be. Broadway Books, New York, NY.

Klein, T (2014). How toddlers thrive. Touchstone, New York, NY.

Kohn (1993). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes. Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY.

Lancy, D. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

Warenken, F., K. Lohse, A. Melis, and M. Tomasello (2011). Young Children Share the Spoils After Collaboration. Psychological Science 22:2 267-273. Abstract available at: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/2/267.abstract

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