Kate Silverton: Parenting, emotional regulation, and screen time
Mar 18, 2024
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Broadcaster turned child therapist Kate Silverton discusses emotional regulation in parenting, stress impact on children, modern challenges, managing screen time, and evidence-based practices. The chat with Fearne emphasizes creating a supportive environment for children, teaching coping strategies, and advocating for neurodiversity awareness.
Emotional regulation in childhood impacts future happiness.
Parenting involves creating a supportive environment for children.
Excessive screen time can negatively affect children's brain development.
Deep dives
Understanding Stress Contagion in Children
Children's stress can trigger stress in parents due to the stress contagion effect similar to how it occurs in baboons in the wild. Kate Silverton discusses how stress responses can be passed between children and parents, affecting everyone's stress levels.
Transition from Journalism to Child Psychology
Kate Silverton shifted her career focus from journalism to child psychology, delving into child therapy. She wrote a transformative book, 'There's Still No Such Thing as Naughty,' exploring neuroscience-backed methods for understanding children's minds and fostering emotional regulation and resilience.
Approaching Childhood Challenges with Compassion
Kate emphasizes the importance of addressing parenting challenges, such as repairing ruptures in parent-child relationships, with compassion and non-judgment. She advocates for acknowledging mistakes, apologizing, and fostering a supportive environment for children to feel understood and supported.
Managing Anger and Anxiety in Children
Kate Silverton provides strategies for helping children express anger safely, such as using 'pillow power' to release pent-up emotions. She also discusses addressing nighttime fears and anxiety in children through visualization and acknowledging the validity of children's emotions to promote mental health and well-being.
Overuse of Screens and its Impact on Children
It is crucial to understand the potential harm caused by excessive screen time for children. Young children exposed to screens at a very early age risk wiring their brains in ways that may not be beneficial. Parents and caretakers play a pivotal role in shaping children's brain development and need to set boundaries regarding screen usage to prevent addiction and negative impact.
Challenges in Understanding and Addressing Neurodivergence in Children
Addressing neurodivergence in children involves navigating challenges in diagnosis and treatment. The complexity lies in distinguishing between emotional dysregulation and neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD. It is essential to move beyond labels and delve into understanding individual experiences and environmental factors that contribute to behavioral patterns in children. The focus should be on providing support and promoting emotional well-being rather than relying solely on diagnostic categories.
Did you learn to regulate your emotions as a child? Broadcaster turned child therapist Kate Silverton says our ability to regulate our emotions has been found to be the best indicator of future happiness.
In this chat with Fearne, Kate definitively explains why it’s never too late to change your relationship with your kids regardless of how much you think you’ve already messed up. Kate talks through why it’s not about changing our children, it’s about changing their environment. Similarly, it’s not that you’re bad at parenting, it’s that you’re being expected to parent while under often more stress and with less community support.
Fearne and Kate also chat about why all of these conversations are relevant even if you’re not a parent, because all these things – soothing anxiety, acknowledging emotions, cultivating resilience – also relate to our relationships with our own parents, and ourselves...
Plus, Kate gives her take on how best to help children with neurodiversity, and how screens are really affecting our brains.
Kate’s book, There’s Still No Such Thing As Naughty, is out on the March 28th.
