On Self-Regulation (Aliza Pressman, PhD)

Jan 18, 2024

Aliza Pressman, an expert on self-regulation, discusses the importance of adults working on their own self-regulation for the benefit of children. They explore the impact of parents on children's development, the influence of culture and relationships, and the pitfalls of parenting scripts. The conversation also touches on parenting dynamics in a two-parent system, being selective about products brought into the house, and the concept of 'good enough' parenting.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

The Five Principles of Parenting

02:49 • 13min

The Influence of Culture, Families, and Relationships on Children's Development

15:36 • 4min

Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation

19:18 • 14min

Product Consciousness, Parenting Styles, and Focus Areas

33:02 • 4min

Parenting Dynamics in a Two-Parent System

37:18 • 10min

Masterclass and Balanced Parenting

47:06 • 5min

The Pitfalls of Parenting Scripts

52:17 • 7min

Exploring Good Enough Parenting and Repair in Parent-Child Relationships

59:38 • 4min

“I think that with regulation, the funny thing is that it's either I want to control the weather around my children, or I want to control my children, but regulation is very much a self thing for adults and a co regulation thing between you and other, especially you and a young person whose brain isn't fully able to self regulate. But if you're so focused on controlling all these outside things that you can't, like the weather, then you get to let yourself off the hook of getting into the much harder, but more possible work of self regulation and of figuring out your own stuff. And all of that has much bigger benefits to your kids, of course, than making the weather perfect around them, but it just is harder. Even though it shouldn't be so easy to change the weather, but it does appear that is what happens, right?”

So says Aliza Pressman, development psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor in the Division of Behavioral Health Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital where she is co-founding director of The Mount Sinai Parenting Center. Aliza is also the host of the hit podcast, Raising Good Humans, and the author of The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans.

I love Aliza for many reasons: Yes, we all want friends who are developmental psychologists on speed-dial, but she’s also different in the way she delivers advice. For one, she cuts right to the point, reminding and reaffirming that while yes, every family has its own complicating factors, the basic tenets of raising good humans are simple. You don’t need your own PhD in parenting to do the job, nor do you need a PhD to re-parent yourself, you need to focus on the elements she outlines in The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans: Relationship, Reflection, Regulation, Rules, and Repair. As she explains, through practice and normalizing imperfection, along the way you’ll discover the person you’re ultimately raising is yourself. By becoming more intentional people, we become better parents. By becoming better parents, we become better people.

In today’s conversation, we touch on these tenets while also exploring the particular social world we find ourselves in, one in which there seems to be an expectation that we can and should control the weather for our kids.