Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

Today I join forces with Malaika Dower of the How to Get Away with Parenting podcast to interview Dr. Christia Brown, who is a Professor of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Kentucky, where she studies the development of gender identity and children’s experience of gender discrimination.  Dr. Brown’s book, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue (Affiliate link), helps parents to really understand the scientific research around gender differences in children, which is a harder task than with some other topics because there’s just a lot of bad research out there on this one.  I ask about theories of gender development while Malaika keeps us grounded with questions about how this stuff works in the real world, and we both resolve to shift our behavior toward our daughters just a little bit.  Related Episodes  Interview with Yarrow Dunham on how social groups form  Interview with Kang Lee on children’s lying (yep – your kid does it too!)     References  Brown, C.S. (2014). Parenting beyond pink and blue. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. (Affiliate link)  Taylor, M.G., Rhodes, M., & Gelman, S.A. (2009). Boys will be boys and cows will be cows: Children’s essentialist reasoning about gender categories and animal species. Child Development 80(2), 461-481. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01272.x 

“I spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter – and not only did she not say “thank you,” but she refused to help clean up!” (I actually said this myself this morning:-)) “We took our son to Disneyland and went on every ride he wanted to go on except one, which was closed, and he spent the rest of the trip whining about how the whole trip was ruined because he didn’t get to go on that one ride.” (I hope I never have to say this one…I’m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)   You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners, and what the research says about teaching manners, and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners MUST be explicitly taught – that your child will NOT learn to say “thank you” unless you tell your child “say thank you” every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well.  The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they are developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. But what really underlies manners?  Well, ideas like gratitude.  Because when we train children to say “thank you” before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren’t really experiencing gratitude. Dr. Jonathan Tudge of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child’s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that. Dr. Tudge’s book, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you’re interested.   References Halberstadt, A.G., Langley, H.A., Hussong, A.M., Rothenberg, W.A., Coffman, J.L., Mokrova, I., & Costanzo, P.R. (2016). Parents’ understanding of gratitude in children: A thematic analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 439-451. Kiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O’Brien, L.T., Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (2016). If children won lotteries: Materialism, gratitude, and imaginary windfall spending. Young Consumers 17(4), 408-418. Mendonca, S.E., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Payir, A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of gratitude in seven societies: Cross-cultural highlights. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 135-150. Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Poelker, A.E., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of the virtue of gratitude: Theoretical foundations and cross-cultural issues. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 3-18. Mokrova, I.L., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). Wishes, gratitude, and spending preferences in Russian Children. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 102-116. Nelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056. Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Wang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46(8), 1039-1058.

In just a few years, today’s children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those that were available to their parents or grandparents. While the U.S. economy becomes ever more information-driven, our system of education seems stuck on the idea that “content is king,” neglecting other skills that 21st century citizens sorely need. Backed by the latest scientific evidence and illustrated with examples of what’s being done right in schools today, Becoming Brilliant (Affiliate link) introduces the “6Cs” collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence along with ways parents can nurture their children’s development in each area. Join me for an engaging chat with award-winning Professor Roberta Golinkoff about the key takeaways from the book.   References Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit Scale. Available at: http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/  (Duckworth also wrote a book, although I haven’t read it…yet…: http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/) Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House. Golinkoff, R.M., & Hirsch-Pasek, K. (2016). Becoming Brilliant: What science tells us about raising successful children.  Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Kohn, A. (1999). Punished By Rewards. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.  

In this short episode I reflect on where we’ve been over the past year, my plans to slow down a bit at the end of the year (as well as a super exciting project I’m working on!), and what episodes we have lined up for the new year.   In this episode I also mention something I haven’t done for a while, which is that it’s possible to donate to support the show.  You might know that it takes 20-40 hours to do the research for each episode (although my record is about 80 hours for the show on Self-Reg, because the research was in such a mess and I had to check what I was reading with several developmental psychologists who tempered the claims of the person who created the concept of Self-Reg!).   A core group of listeners (shout out to: Jacqueline B., Rebekah S., Elizabeth M., Kelsey B., Jessica S., Crystian M., Megan P., Alison O., and Cristin B.) have helped to sustain the show over the last months and years.   If the show has helped you, would you consider making a donation to support it?   You can now do this from any episode page.  If a particular episode has given you an insight or a tool that resonated with you and/or your child, I’d be really grateful if you would make a one-time donation to acknowledge that, or consider a recurring donation to help me keep making more episodes for you.  I know there’s always the temptation to say that “eh; I don’t have time right now and it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference and someone else will do it anyway.”  And maybe they will, but as we all know, if everyone thinks like that then the work doesn’t get supported….   I mention in the episode that I’m writing a book!  And the e-book will be available for a sliding scale price on this website, to help everyone who wants to read it be able to read it, no matter what their financial constraints.  I also now make every course and membership I offer over a $100 threshold available with sliding scale pricing, and invite folks who can’t afford even the minimum price to get in touch to figure out a price that works for both of us.  I’m doing everything I can to live my values to make my work available to as many people as possible.  If this resonates with you, I’d be grateful if you would consider donating to support me in continuing to do this work.  You can now donate from any episode page (including this week’s episode!).  Just look for the Support Jen’s Work button on the right side.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child won't listen to you and what to do about each one, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Jen Lumanlan  00:56 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I just have a short episode lined up for you today with a few updates about the podcast and the Your Parenting Mojo world more broadly, we're coming to the end of what has been a pretty amazing year. I finally feel as though we have a really complete set of memberships and courses to help parents at all stages of their parenting journey. I run the Right From The Start course with Hannah and Kelty of upbringing to help expecting parents and those with a child under a year old to get it right from the start. And of course, we mean figuring out what's right for you and your family. We've had so many people sign up because they found that it's the only course for parents of very young children that doesn't focus entirely on the baby and instead looks at both babies and the parents needs and how to meet both of those as you negotiate your new relationship. That course has actually opened registration right now for a couple more days until midnight Pacific on November 3rd. Later on, the parenting membership helps parents who are struggling with their child's behavior to understand what's going on when their child is resisting them and what to do about it. Not just by changing their child's behavior, but by meeting their child's needs and also meeting their needs. Then we cover every other topic that parents want to know about from raising healthy eaters to screentime to supporting anxious children. If the parents are finding they're having a hard time with their own reactions to their child's behavior, the parents exploding or mentally shutting down, or doing anything they can to placate the child and get them to stop crying or screaming or hitting, then the taming your triggers workshop allows them to see where those feelings are coming from and gives them concrete tools to navigate them more effectively. And then once things are on a more solid footing the Supporting Your Child's Learning Membership helps parents to support their child's intrinsic love of learning. So the child can retain their motivation for learning and gain new skills on how to learn which they will carry for the rest of their lives. Of course, all of that is grounded by the podcast where I interview the who's who of academic researchers in parenting and child development to use scientific research to help us understand how to guide our children's development and learning based on principles of respectful parenting. Increasingly, over the last couple of years, I've also begun to look beyond the scientific research, not to just question the methodology of an individual study, but to look at the context that a body of work sits within, and understand how the studies fit with what we believe about capitalism and patriarchy, and racism that some people hear about on the show and then give me a one-star review on iTunes because they don't appreciate discussions of these topics alongside information on parenting. This year, I particularly enjoyed the episodes we covered on the topic of sex, both talking with children about it, and also teaching them about respect-based pleasurable relationships, through the ways that we interact with them. We also looked at how to use tools like Mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to live in a way that's more aligned with our values. We started a series of episodes on food and I have more to come on that topic. And we did a series on How Children Learn. Early in the year, there was an episode on whether you should hold your child back a year when entering school, which is called Redshirting in the US. Then later, we looked at How Children Learn with their Bodies as well as their Brains and How to Support Gifted Children. The thing that keeps me going in all of this work is hearing from parents who are in the courses and memberships and who listen to the podcast who tell me what an impact these have had on them and their families. I was talking with my husband about it recently, he does a lot of the editing of the testimonial videos that go on the information pages for the courses and memberships. So he gets to watch the multiple times and look for the rich stories that members are telling that illustrate these transformations they've made. And he said, You know, I just edit the videos. I'm not the target audience and even I can see how your work is impacting so many people. I can only imagine what it must be like to see it from your perspective. And he's right. It's what I love about this. Might be a parent or a caregiver coming into Taming Your Triggers and realizing by the end that they have a whole lot more issues to deal with that are the reasons why they exploit their children all the time. So they sign up for therapy, or another parent who reports having conversations with their partner and children that they could never have imagined possible, where each person expresses their needs and together they come up with a solution to the problem that actually works for everyone, so the parent doesn't need to nag or be frustrated or explode. And then they go deeper into the parenting membership and expand their learning to all the other topics or they have another baby and they realize they need right from the start to navigate these uncharted waters with multiple children, or they see their child's love of learning as a precious resource to be nurtured rather than squashed so they joined the learning membership. It's really truly my privilege and honor to work with parents who are so committed not only to their children but to children everywhere. Also, this year, a racially diverse team of listeners helped me to develop anti-racist policies, I'd been on my own anti-racist journey for a couple of years, and by then after I learned that I do actually have White privilege. And it shows up in all kinds of ways in my parenting. My critical exploration through a series of podcasts episodes, and blog posts and other resources that you can find at yourparentingmojo.com/race. I knew there was a lot more to do. But I didn't really know where to start uncovering issues related to race that touch a podcast and a business related to parenting and child development. How to develop a narrative on exactly how we did that at some point, so anyone who wants to replicate this kind of work or build on it and improve it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. But the short version is that a small set of listeners helped me to research frameworks to guide the development of these policies. So we would know that we were being as complete as possible, then we drafted the policies themselves, and reviewed them with a broader group to get feedback and make sure we were developing policies that would be true to anti-racistcist mission that we developed, and also having a meaningful impact. If you go to yourparentingmojo.com/anti-racism, you can see the policies and the rationale behind each one, as well as a mechanism for reporting any departures from the policies that you might find in the podcast or on the website so we can address those issues. This was no one-time project, I do plan to assess my progress towards the goals that we've set and report this to listeners annually. And I'm also investigating ways to make more commitments and take deeper action on this topic. So that's where we've been this year. And the reason for this episode is to take a chance to reflect because I don't think we do nearly enough of that in our culture, and also to let you know what's coming. In the short term, a hiatus is coming, I'm going to take a break from releasing new episodes for a few weeks. And there are a few reasons for that. Firstly, our culture prioritizes Go Go going all the time and I've been doing that for quite a while, until we spent a couple of months traveling recently, I was averaging one day off per month over an 18-month period so that I can produce all the content to help parents during COVID lockdowns. Since we've been traveling, I've been doing a bit better than that and I'd like to continue that trend when we get home. I want to spend more time with my family and doing things that I enjoy other than reading about child development for the rest of this year and into early January. And the other main reason I'm taking some time off is that I'm writing a book, this has been quite a journey as well, so a year ago, a book editor approached me after hearing me on somebody else's podcast and asked if I'd like to write a book, and she helped to guide the proposal development, and she said that she only takes projects forward internally that have a very good chance of being approved. But ultimately, the executive team did not approve the project after all. I have a friend who works for a company that helps writers to improve their work and get published, and he advised me to get an agent who could shot the proposal around to several publishers, and I submitted the proposal to several of them, but I never received any calls back. And then serendipity struck. So Hannah and Kelty of upbringing mentioned that an editor had approached them about writing a book and the timing wasn't right for them, so they offered to introduce me to her. And we were right in the middle of launching Right From The Start at the time, so I said, “Yes, please, but in a few weeks.” And so the course finished and I said to them, “Okay, I'm ready now,” and they said, “You already know her.” It turned out the editor and her partner are expecting a baby and had just been through the Right From The Start course, and I had no idea at the time that she was the editor. So I emailed her and I explained the history of the book proposal and asked if she'd be willing to look at it and she emailed me back immediately and thanked me for reaching out first before she'd had a chance to do it. She told me my coaching had changed her life and she said she definitely wanted to work with me to develop the proposal. So overall, while I wish it hadn't taken a year, going from initial development to actually having a signed book contract, I know that many authors go a lifetime without receiving an offer from a publisher, so I'm very grateful that happened for me. And I also think the proposal was much stronger the second time around and we'll create a more useful book for readers. It's going to be a how-to guide for putting into action, many of the ideas you hear about on the podcast, to help you interact with your children in a way that's aligned with your values. And also just so happens to bring about the kind of social change towards justice and equality and away from capitalism, and patriarchy, and racism that generates those lovely one-star iTunes reviews Jen Lumanlan  09:57 And in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I also got the publisher to agree to allow me to provide a sliding-scale ebook version of the book on my website. I'd hoped to have it available on the same basis on their website as well. But I certainly prefer the option to do it myself over being forbidden to undercut the retail price. And I hope that that's going to enable more people who want to dig deeper into this work to do it in a way that they can afford. I'm super, super excited to start working on the book and some friends have loaned me a cabin in the mountains for a couple of weeks, so I can actually focus instead of riding myself around in circles, which is going to happen if it gets dragged out over a period of months. The break is also going to give me time to plan episodes for next year and start researching those in a less time-pressured way. and give my team a chance to make all kinds of updates to stuff that happens behind the scenes to make it faster and easier to serve you when you reach out to us, and to improve the website as well. And of course, all of this costs money. I've produced 146 episodes requiring 20 to 40 hours of research each over the last six years, as well as a variety of episodes with other parents and folks working in the field, and short episodes commenting on current events. I haven't counted them, but I'm guessing we're in the neighborhood of about 170 episodes by now. And throughout all of these episodes, I've never run a single advertisement. I know they're really common on podcasts but I've always said that, “Really? Everything you need to raise your child is in you, so why would I tell you that and then sell you cruises or activity subscriptions for your child or mattresses?” I've had a donation page up on my website for a long time and if your listeners have used it, I particularly love it when listeners reach out to tell me that they've donated because an episode has been especially helpful to them. And I recall one listener who made a substantial donation in memory of the look on her mother's face after the listener’s mother was strapping her daughter into the car seat and her daughter said something like not so tight grandma that doesn't feel good on my vulva. The listener at the very early episode on the book talk sex today and had been putting it into practice with our daughter with hilarious results. The reality is, at this point, the donations don't cover the hard costs associated with the podcast, never mind the hours of time that I put into each episode. And I know how much value many listeners get from the show because of the emails I receive and the many five-star iTunes reviews that outweigh those one-star reviews from folks who don't appreciate my approach. I know it's easy to think, oh, I should donate and I'll get to it someday. I've done that myself. I actually took a break from writing this episode to donate to Tara Brach because I've been listening to her meditations and talks for a year now. And she doesn't take advertising either. And before each episode, she requests a donation. Of course, I'm always in bed with my eyes closed while I'm listening to her so it's easy to forget. I know I haven't mentioned the opportunity to donate very often, so maybe you didn't even realize you could do it. A listener and a friend reached out to me six months ago actually to say she had been job searching and had been using a website published by someone who offered some really helpful interviewing tips. And on each page was a short little blurb saying, “If you found this information useful, please consider donating.” My friend send those to me and she said, “You should do that!” I've always focused first on creating content for members and listeners so it's taken six months to actually get around to doing it, but it's now been done. And so you'll see an invitation to donate on each episode page on my website. So if you're listening to an episode and you're finding the information in it to be useful, I invite you to make a donation. It could be a one-time amount that recognizes the value you got out of that one episode or you could become a sustaining member, as they say on National Public Radio pledge drives in the US, which means that your recurring donations helped me to not have to ask for them as often. I'm especially grateful to members who have made one-time donations in the past but particularly to Jacqueline B, Rebecca S, Elizabeth M, Kelsey B, Jessica S, Christian M, Meghan P, Alison O, and Kristin B who have been making monthly donations for quite a while now. Which funds things like website hosting fees, a podcast editor, and all the little tools that it takes to pull various aspects of the episode together, from scheduling to graphics for the cover art, which all adds up. Thank you so much to each of you. If you'd like to join these awesome parents in helping to pay for a service that you get value from you can go to any episode page and look for the donate button on the right side. So we won't have new episodes for a few weeks but I do have a schedule of oldies but goodies lined up to be re-released. These include a super early episode with Dr. Roberta Golinkoff with co-author Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. She co-wrote Einstein Never use Flashcards among many other books. She was the first nationally known guest whom I reached out to and I still remember exactly the place that I was sitting in a cafeteria at a client's office, back when I still had a day job when I received her email, saying that they would be delighted to talk about their book becoming brilliant. I...

Explore the journey of two expectant parents as they navigate the emotional rollercoaster of preparing for a new baby. Discover the contrasting personalities of a meticulous planner and a laid-back partner, highlighting their unique approaches to parenthood. Delve into the significance of family dynamics in shaping their parenting perspectives, and the importance of community support and reliable resources. Hear about their aspirations, fears, and how they aim to nurture their child's individuality with positivity amidst the uncertainties of new parenthood.

Sleep!  It’s a topic that’s on pretty much every parent’s mind.  We’ve already looked at this from a cultural perspective, where we learned our Western approach to sleep is by no means universal, and that this can result in quite a few of the problems we face in getting our children to sleep.   In this episode we dive deep into the practicalities of sleep with Dr. Chris Winter, who has practiced sleep medicine and neurology since 2004.  His first book, The Sleep Solution, Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How To Fix It (affiliate link) was focused on adults’ sleep challenges, and I’ve been putting the ideas in it into practice and have been getting better sleep as a result.   His new book is The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--And How to Help (affiliate link), and is based on Dr. Winters’ almost two decades of experience of evaluating children in the sleep clinic that he founded.   We’ll look at ways that you can get more sleep (or maybe even more rest that feels almost as restful as sleep), whether you can shift your (or your child’s!) sleep patterns, how to banish bedtime struggles for good, and so much more!   This episode is for all parents, but especially for those who are expecting or have a child under the age of one, and who are desperately trying to get more sleep (or worried about being in that phase of life in the near future!).  We’ll help you get started on the right foot so you can know you’re doing the best for your child - and for yourself as well.   If you are expecting or have a child under one and you’d like to join the Right From The Start course to help you find the path that’s right for you and your child on sleep and feeding and independent play and brain development and not lose yourself in the process, then we’d love to have you join us. Get notified when doors reopen. Click the banner to learn more.     Dr. Chris Winter's Books: The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--and How to Help The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It (Affiliate links).     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child won't listen to you, and what to do about each one, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners and the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to talk about a topic that I know interests parents everywhere and that is sleep. We've already covered this on the show from the perspective of looking at cross-cultural ideas about sleep. But today we're here with an expert who's going to give us some practical ideas about how to get more sleep. Now I know that sleep is an important topic to parents with children of all ages, but it's especially important to expecting parents and those with newborns. And if that describes you right now, I also wanted to let you know that the Right From The Start course is reopening for enrollment on Sunday, October 24th. I run this course with the amazing Hannah and Kelty of the upbringing podcast. And I truly love doing it with them. Because our skill sets complement each other so well. I bring all the research-based information you've come to expect from this show as well as 100 hours of coaching, training, and a good deal of experience in coaching parents over the years. And they bring a lot of training and topics relevant to new parents. But the reason that I wanted to work with them specifically on the course is that they're trained in resources for infant educators or RIE methods, but they aren't RIE associates, which means they help parents to take what they find useful out of RIE rather than seeing it as a prescriptive set of tools. And of course, as twins themselves and being the parents of four children between them, they've just about seen it all from the perspective of siblings, so they can offer a lot of guidance to parents who aren't new at the parenting thing, but who also know that they can't do things the same as they did them with their previous child, or they don't want to do them like that. So the course has 10 modules and runs over nine weeks, all of the content is available in video and audio, and there are transcripts as well so you can learn in the way that you learn best. We have a supportive community of parents who are on this journey with you that isn't on Facebook. And we also meet for group coaching calls regularly as well. The parents who have taken the course tell us that they got the knowledge they knew they needed, but what they didn't even know they needed was the community of parents who really do get to know each other and us as well on the coaching calls, who offer support and guidance related to whatever struggles we're facing during this period in our lives from trying to figure out who you are as a person with a newborn to your shifting relationship with your partner, and your own parents as well to navigating difficult sibling behavior. We cover it all. So if you're expecting a child or you have one under one year old, the right from the start course was designed for you and I'm as I'm sure you can tell, it doesn't mean that we're going to tell you the one right way to raise a child but rather to help you find the right way for you. So once again, enrollment is open starting Sunday, October 24th. And we start as a group on Monday, November 8th, you can learn more and sign up at yourparentingmojo.com/rightfrom thestart. So our guest today Dr. Chris Winter is a board-certified neurologist and a double board-certified sleep specialist who is in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia. He consults with athletes on improving their sleep and his first book The Sleep Solution: Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it, was geared towards adults’ challenges with sleep. His new book just published in August is called the Rested Child: Why your tired wired and irritable child may have a sleep disorder and what to do about it. So today we're going to talk about sleep for children, sleep for parents’ and sleep for everybody. Welcome, Chris. It's so great to have you here.   Dr. Winter  04:20 Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.   Jen Lumanlan  04:24 So I would like to start by addressing the elephant in the room because I know that parents who are listening to this I want to know your stance on these topics because they want to know if this person's approach is aligned with things that I believe about sleeping, about raising my children, and about my values and beliefs. So bed-sharing. I will say that I found your approach in the book to be a little bit flippant and I will quote what you said, “We used to sleep piled on top of one another in a cave, I suppose. But we also used to banish people with leprosy and smoke cigarettes in operating rooms. We evolve.” And that to me sort of implies the only backwards people in backwards countries, you haven't yet seen the light in the sort of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic approach to sleep, they're just, you know, our approach is clearly superior, and they're missing out on some important development. When actually I know the research has shown that people who live in those countries, you asked them about their children's sleep problems, and they're like, “What sleep problems?” So tell me more about your stance on bed sharing and where that came from, and what you believe about it.   Dr. Winter  05:30 Sure. So, I think it's important to define evolve, because you're putting a judgment on it, when in fact, evolve just means take something that's simple and make it more complicated. And we do that very well in this country. I used to be able to fix my own car, I cannot do that anymore, because the cars have evolved to the point now where it doesn't allow that to happen. So I do think that sleep was very simple in the past, and it's become very complicated. People did sleep in one room at some point in the past, and now you have a nice house in Gwinnett County, you know, Atlanta, and every one of your seven kids have their own bedroom and their own situation. So I'm not here to pass judgment on anything, my stance on co-sleeping is, you do what's right for your family and your children, I don't really have an opinion on it one way or the other. Outside of two things. One, I do think that it is important to be careful with little children when you sleep with them just out of a danger perspective and I don't think that's particularly radical, although I do think it took a while for the American Academy of Pediatrics to really come out with a position on it just because of this kind of, you know, feelings about it. It’s deeply personal to people the way they sleep, so I personally believe that it's probably not a great idea to sleep in a bed with a child under the age of one. Just because, you know, I think that we have seen bad outcomes. I've seen, I think, as of today, 32,233 people in my clinic, and four of them have had issues where children have perished in the night because of a family member role on top of them. That's a very, very, very small percentage, far less than what you know, would be quoted for SIDS. So to me if a parent understands that, and it's very important to them to take that risk. I'm not really here to judge that. I can say that of the people that we spoke to when that happened, including a family member of somebody who works for me, it was deeply traumatic, and something that they never wanted to repeat again. I think that's different, though, then a family bed or co-sleeping, I mean, I think that's a very different situation. The other bias that I have is that of those 32,000 people that have come to my clinic, I have yet to encounter somebody who says, “I'm sleeping with all four of my children and it's going great. I just wondered if you give me some tips on how to make it even better.” The vast majority of people that we're seeing are sort of the opposite. It's like help us to make the situation that we've chosen, which is to not have a child in bed with us, more functional and better. So I’m here to support anybody. I think that the people who are co-sleeping and doing well with it, don't really have to see me or by the book. And I think co-sleeping can be really helpful because when you look at some of the disorders of sleep that we talked about in the book, there's sort of a mystery to the parent or parents that aren't with their children until they share the hotel room, until they go to grandmother's house, and share a bed because grandma has one spare bedroom, where they're like, “Dear God, my child does this thing at night. We had no idea.” So, you know, even if you're somebody who believes not, you're not in co-sleeping, it might not be a bad idea once a month to kind of check-in like, “We're all sleeping together to make sure we're not harboring bad sleep problems.” And so anyway, I think and then the only other thing I would say that again, there's a selection bias here too, is that when kids come to have sleep studies apparent we make a parent accompany them. And so our sleep centers and hotels, it's very comfortable that the child has a bed and the parent has a bed in this you know Hotel it truly, it's a Hilton Hotel. It's amazing how many times the parent is the one diagnosed with the sleep problem. The tech will say, “The kids are okay, dad is suffocating 38 times an hour kind of thing,” so I do sometimes wonder if, you know, if you're going to co-sleep it might be a good idea to make sure your sleep is really healthy and positive before you subject your child to it, but that's a small percentage, probably.   Jen Lumanlan  09:52 Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for clarifying that. And I guess my stance on co-sleeping has always been, I don't believe It's currently being itself, it's necessarily dangerous. It's currently being in the way that we tend to do it in this country, on a soft bed with a duvet and pillows and above the level of the floor, so the child could potentially roll off the bed. There is some potential danger of rolling onto the child, but my hypothesis based on the research that I have read is that the danger of that happening is much less than the danger of the child suffocating from a pillow or from getting a duvet on them, or rolling off the bed, or something else happening that's based on the practices that we use when we sleep. And that if we didn't use those practices, if we use practices that are more like the practices used where people do co-sleep routinely, then chances are that would be much, much less dangerous. Do you agree with that perspective?   Dr. Winter  10:50 Yeah, that's probably very true. You know, a lot of the things that we talked about in terms of having bumpers and cribs, and soft pillows, and stuffed animals, you know, really having a hard surface and a simple surface, and, you know, just and creating things that make you as the parent comfortable, or we co-slept with our kids, they were just in a little bassinet, kind of like you described next to our bed just because I am not interested in sleeping on the floor, even though it might be better. And I know from experience that my wife would sometimes say, it's truly disturbing how deep, deeply you sleep sometimes, because she's been screaming for 30 minutes, and you haven't moved to the point where when I was in residency, my wife would not let me be at home with the kids while I was sleeping unless I was sleeping literally on the floor, as you said, in the nursery away from them, so they could like throw stuff out of the nursery onto my head to wake me out just because I was always, even just kind of on a couch, which is the worst place you sitting there watching TV and you kind of drift off with them on your stomach, like, I was always very paranoid about that. Absolutely. But I would agree with everything you said.   Jen Lumanlan  12:03 Okay, I can fully empathize with your wife, too.   Dr. Winter  12:07 Yeah, she really feels like I mean, I probably shouldn't announce this. But if people came into the house and announced at night, I would be no help in terms of dealing with the situation. I'm not sure what she thinks I could do in that situation but might be better to sleep through it. I don't know.   Jen Lumanlan  12:22 Yeah, maybe. And then you do sort of casually toss out this idea that if we start out co-sleeping, then children are going to refuse to sleep on their own later. And you have this little footnote that says, “Sweetie, can you take your laptop somewhere else to do your calculus homework? Daddy and I need to sleep.” And I have this statistic that quotes a paper that “researchers suggest co-sleeping children slept fewer hours had more sleep disturbances and bedtime resistance, more behavioral and emotional problems than independent sleepers,” but that study involved school-aged children, and also found that the anxiety and nighttime fears predicted co-sleeping rather than the co-sleeping was generating anxiety and fears. So it seemed to me as though it was unlikely that co-sleeping was going to cause behavioral and emotional problems, which is what I understood when I was reading that in your book. What do you think about that?   Dr. Winter  13:10 I don't think it causes it. Again, it's just a matter of what does the parent want? And most parents are probably not letting those it's sort of like, oh, no, I remember having a conversation about parents when they said you're too old for a blanket. I have no idea why they chose that particular Tuesday to just take it away from me. My guess is at some point, I would have not been that interested in the blanket, we never told our kids to stop. We call them booze. Okay, no more booze because you're this particular age. So again, I think the footnote was more in line with at some point, parents are like, we don't want to let this sort of play out naturally, I have no doubt in my mind that it always does. I mean, I've never met a family who said, “He's 17. He's still in the bed with us and we really just losing our patience. So to me, that's more about at some point, most co-sleeping families that are coming to see us have decided we're done with it; It's affecting our intimacy, and we want to have some time by ourselves at the end of the night that don't involve the kids in the bed with us. I had an NBA player that had two children in bed, one went to bed every 3rd or 4th nights and he was like, “This is affecting my career because I'm having to get up and change sheets every night. My wife is like that's okay, because this is what we're going to do.” So, again, these are probably true, It’s just I think it's hard to find some parents with the courage to let it play out. They kind of want their lives back. And to your point, that's a big problem when it comes to sleep, I mean, one of my mentors said, you know, most kids sleep problems are parents’ sleep problems, and it's an expectation that we have of our kid that's not meeting our needs, “I've got a lot of work to do. And I'm falling behind and watching episodes of white lotus. So I gotta get this kid in her bed so I can do what I need to do.” If your expectation is they can be in bed with me, they might sleep, they might not, everything. Even adult sleep gets better. So a lot of what we're managing is now, that's why you said what is your stance on sleep training, I love that term as if we're doing like, the parents that didn't train their kids to sleep and now they can't, you know, I mean, it's, it's not swimming, for God's sakes, like they're going to sleep, they may sleep differently than what you would expect or on a different schedule. But the idea that we're training them, we're just kind of guiding some little parameters here and there. So it's interesting the way we think about these things, kids are good sleepers and good eaters, and good breeders and good drinkers, like we just kind of need to step back and let it happen and be on the lookout for problems in those areas. But our dominion over the situation, I think, is a lot less than what we think it is.   Jen Lumanlan  16:00 Yeah, and I wanted to translate what you're saying into language that I think will be familiar to people who are longtime listeners of the show, we're really talking about needs...

Sugar has a bad name these days - much like fat did back in the 1990s.  "Research shows" that it's addictive...that it shrinks your brain...that it's likely to lead to all kinds of health problems.   But will it really?   I interviewed Dr. Michael Goran, author of the recent book Sugarproof: The Hidden Dangers of Sugar that are Putting Your Child’s Health at Risk and What You Can Do.  This is a pretty alarming title, and I was interested to dig into the research behind the book as a continuation of our exploration of topics related to parenting and food.  It turns out that yes, there’s a lot of research on this topic. And a lot of it supports the idea that sugar may be harmful to children...but the case wasn't nearly as clear-cut as I'd imagined it would be.   In this episode we discuss the research on which the book is based, and what practical steps parents can take to reduce their child's sugar intake if they decide they want to do that.   Dr. Michael Goran's Book Sugarproof: Protect Your Family from the Hidden Dangers of Excess Sugar with Simple Everyday Fixes (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights 01:01 Introduction of episode 03:50 Children's preference for sugary foods 08:27 How does fructose differ from glucose and other forms of sugar that humans ingest and where can we find it 12:46 What is the effect of fructose on our body 16:04 Why Dr. Goran would recommend dried fruit as a sweetener when we see fructose should be less consumed off 18:19 How children respond acutely to different types of meals 21:53 Where can we truly understand children's behavior after they've consumed sugar and low-calorie sweeteners and no sweetener at all 38:20 A Big source of added sugar is in liquid form 39:52 Dr. Goran's breakfast experiment 43:12 Why does Dr. Goran recommend less intake of carbohydrates 46:31 Overall message to parents about the episode   References: Bayol, S.A., Farrington, S.J., & Stickland, N.C. (2007). A maternal ‘junk food’ diet in pregnancy and lactation promotes an exacerbated taste for ‘junk food’ and a greater propensity for obesity in rat offspring. British Journal of Nutrition 98, 843-851. Cohen, J.F.W., Rifas-Shiman, S.L., Young, J., & Oken, E. (2018). Associations of prenatal and child sugar intake with child cognition. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 54(6), 727-735. Davis, J.N., Whaley, S.E., & Goran, M.I. (2012). Effects of breastfeeding and low sugar-sweetened beverage intake on obesity prevalence in Hispanic toddlers. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 95(1), 3-8. DeBoer, M.D., Scharf, R.J., & Demmer, R.T. (2013). Sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain in 2- to 5-year-old children. Pediatrics 132(3), 413-420. Francis, H.M., & Stevenson, R.J. (2011). Higher reported saturated fat and refined sugar intake is associated with reduced hippocampal-dependent memory and sensitivity to interoceptive signals. Behavioral Neuroscience 125(6), 943-955. Goldman, J.A., Lerman, R.H., Contois, J.H., & Utall, J.N. (1986). Behavioral effects of sucrose on preschool children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 14(4), 565-577. Grossman, A., & Grossman, E. (2017). Blood pressure control in type 2 diabetic patients. Cardiovascular Diabetology 16, article 3. Jensen, T., Abdelmalek, M.F., Sullivan, S., Lanaspa, M.A., Diehl, A.M., & Johnson, R.J. (2018). Fructose and sugar: A major mediator of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Journal of Hepatology 68(5), 1063-1075. Jung, S.W., Kim, S-M., Kim, Y.G., Lee, S-H., & Moon, J-Y. (2020). Uric acid and inflammation in kidney disease. American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology 318(6), F1327-F1340. Lago, R.M. (2007), Singh, P.P., & Nesto, R.W. (3007). Diabetes and hypertension. Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism 3, 667. Luo, S., Monterosso, J.R., Sarpelleh, K., & Page, K.A. (2015). Differential effects of fructose versus glucose on brain and appetite responses to food cues and decisions for food rewards.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(20), 6509-6514. Noble, E.E., Hsu, T.M., Liang, J., & Kanoski, S.E. (2019). Early life sugar consumption has long-term negative effects on memory function in male rats. Nutritional Neuroscience 22(4), 273-283. O’Reilly, G.A., Belcher, B.R., Davis, J.N., Martinez, L.T., Huh, J., Antunez-Castillo, L., Weigensberg, M., Goran, M.I., & Spruijt-Metz, D. (2015). Effects of high-sugar and high-fiber meals on physical activity behaviors in Latino and African American Adolescents. Obesity 23(9), 1886-1894. O’Reilly, G.A., Huh, J., Schembre, S.M., Tate, E.B., Pentz, M.A., & Dunton, F. (2015). Association of usual self-reported intake with ecological momentary measures of affective and physical feeling states in children. Appetite 92(1), 314-321. Pan, L., Li, R., Park, S., Galuska, D.A., Sherry, B., & Freedman, D.S. (2014). A longitudinal analysis of sugar-sweetened beverage intake in infancy and obesity at 6 years. Pediatrics 134(Suppl 1), S29-S35. Pase, M.P., Himali, J.J., Jacques, P.F., DeCarli, C., Satizabal, C.L., Aparicio, H., Vasan, R.S., Beiser, A.S., & Seshadri, S. (2017). Sugary beverage intake and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease in the community. Alzheimer’s & Dementia 13(3), 955-964. Pase, M.P., Himali, J.J., Beiser, A.S., Aparicio, H.J., Satizabal, C.L., Vasan, R.S., Seshadri, S., & Jacqques, P.F. (2017). Sugar- and artificially sweetened beverages and the risks of incident stroke and dementia: A prospective cohort study. Stroke 48(5), 1139-1146. Philpott, T. (2016, March 16). We don’t mean to ruin smoothies, but…. Mother Jones. Retrieved from: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2016/03/are-smoothies-devil/ Rodríguez-Artalejo F, García EL, Gorgojo L, et al. Investigators of the Four Provinces Study . Consumption of bakery products, sweetened soft drinks and yogurt among children aged 6-7 years: association with nutrient intake and overall diet quality. British Journal of Nutrition 89(3), 419-429. Sullivan, S.A., & Birch, L.L. (1990). Pass the sugar, pass the salt: Experience dictates preference. Developmental Psychology 26(4), 546-551. Watson, E.J., Coates, A.M., Banks, S., & Kohler, M. (2017). Total dietary sugar consumption does not influence sleep or behavior in Australian children. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition 69(4), 503-512. Welsh, J.A., Sharma, A.J., Grellinger, L., & Vos, M.B. (2011). Consumption of added sugars is decreasing in the United States. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 94(3), 726-734. Wolraich, ML, Wilson, DB, and White, JW. “The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children. A meta-analysis”. JAMA, 1995. 274(20): p. 1617-21. World Health Organization (2015). Guideline: Sugars intake for adults and children. Author; Geneva.

I hear from a lot of parents who are worried about their children’s learning.  They tell me things like:“I want to encourage my child’s learning and creativity and confidence as a learner without solely focusing on literacy and numeracy.”   “We’ve been in lockdown here in Melbourne for a very long time, with my older kids learning remotely, and I feel that a lot of the tasks they are given by their school are a bit … uninspiring. It’s so cool when there is something that really engages them and I’m trying to find more things like that.”   “I am wary about the school system squashing the natural instinct to learn, as I feel it did with me. But I'm hoping we can provide the attitude and environment at home to mitigate this.”   “What we have read about traditional schooling is a bit disheartening but something we have to embrace for now. So it is important that with the time we have outside of school we do the best we can to encourage his spark for exploration and learning.”   “My children are already in school. Even though they (and I) are happy with their school and learning so far, I would love to learn how I can support them better and help them being more motivated and stay curious. The challenges of distant-learning that we experienced during the lockdowns have highlighted that I find it difficult to be a good teacher for them and I would like to change that.”   If you could have said (or have already said!) one or more of these things yourself, then I want to introduce you to Madeline.She describes all three of her children as ‘spirited’ (you can kind of see it in their eyes, right?!)   When I first met her, she wanted to know that she was doing everything she could to support their intrinsic love of learning in the preschool years - and she wasn’t sure whether or not they would go to school.  In this episode we discuss some of the Learning Explorations she’s done with them, how she became confident that she really was meeting each child’s learning needs, and what decision she ultimately made about school!   Ready to Support Your Child's Natural Learning Whether this episode has you considering unschooling, reinforced your commitment to traditional schooling, or left you somewhere in between, one thing is clear: every child deserves to have their natural curiosity and love of learning nurtured.   The challenge for parents isn't choosing the "right" educational path, but knowing how to support meaningful learning wherever your child is.   The Learning Membership gives you the tools to nurture your child's development whether they're in traditional school, homeschooled, or unschooled.   Inside the membership, you'll find research-backed strategies that work alongside any educational setting, helping you become the parent who nurtures learning rather than forcing it.   Your child's curiosity is precious - don't let it get lost in debates about educational methods.   Click the banner to learn more.     Jump to highlights 00:02 Introduction to the episode 05:08 Kids’ creativity encouraged through Kid Kitchen Creations 06:38 What Madeline values as a parent: Autonomy and skills 08:23 How being a perfectionist affected Madeline’s parenting 12:30 Finding balance between allowing her child to make mistakes and providing guidance 14:19 The effectiveness of workbooks in supporting children’s love of learning 16:26 Madeline discusses her middle child’s interests and learning style 18:47 Madeline discusses how joining the joining the Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership supported her 23:04 Madeline shares a specific example of how she applied the learning framework she gained from joining the membership 27:59 Madeline reflects on the importance of keeping the balance between her children’s learning and their emotional, social and psychological wellbeing 29:40 Madeline shares the importance of documenting her children’s learning 38:08 Madeline shares how being a member of both Parenting Membership and Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership supported her 42:05 Madeline’s advice for parents

Is your child gifted?   Do you wonder if they're gifted but aren't quite sure?   Do you want to know how to support your gifted child's learning in a way that doesn't pressure them or make them resist working with you?   If so, this episode will help.   I have to say, I wasn't sure where this one was going to end up.  I was really uneasy about the concept of giftedness from the outset, perhaps because the way I had previously come into contact with it was through our conversation with Dr. Allison Roda, from whom we learned how some parents manipulate the Gifted & Talented program in New York City to perpetuate segregated education.   But even so, I tried to go into the research with an open mind.  What if it's just the G&T programs as they're set up in New York City that are the problem, not the entire concept of giftedness itself?   The good news is that there's a good deal of evidence on what kinds of programs benefit gifted children.  And in this episode I end up arguing that we shouldn't just put gifted children in them, but that all children would benefit from learning using these methods.   Ready to transform how you support your child's curiosity? While we're all trying to figure out what's really behind rising teen anxiety and whether phones are the problem, there's something we can do right now that helps nurture our children's natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.   The You Are Your Child's Best Teacher masterclass shows you how to do exactly that without adding pressure or creating elaborate activities that exhaust you.   When children feel competent and engaged in learning that matters to them, they develop resilience that serves them well, whether they're facing social media pressures, academic stress, or the general challenges of growing up in today's world.   Click the banner to learn more!     Learning Membership Do you want to turn your child’s interests into learning opportunities? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world.   Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them.   Click the banner to learn more!     References Adair, J.K., Colegrove, K. S-S., & McManus, M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334. Aiegler, A., Balestrini, D.P., & Stoeger, H. (2018). An international view on gifted education: incorporating the macro-systemic perspective. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.15-28). Cham, Switizerland. Begay, H. & Maker, CJ. (2007). When geniuses fail: Na8Dene’ (Navajo) conception of giftedness in the eyes of the holy deities. In S.N. Phillipson & M. McCann (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness. Sociocultural perspectives (pp. 1278168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berry, K. S. (2004). Multiple intelligences are not what they seem to be. In J. L. Kincheloe (Ed.), Multiple intelligences reconsidered. (pp. 236-250). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Carrillo, J.F. (2013). I always knew I was gifted: Latino males and the Mestiz@ Theory of Intelligences (MTI). Berkeley Review of Education 4(1), 69-95. Chandler, P. (2011). Prodigy or problem child? Challenges with identifying Aboriginal giftedness. In Vialle, W. (Ed.), Giftedness from an Indigenous perspective (p.1-9). Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented Ltd. Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=uowbooks Christie, M. (n.d.). Some Aboriginal perspectives on gifted and talented children and their schooling. Charles Darwin University. Retrieved from https://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/yaci/docs/Aboriginal-Perspectives-On-Gifted-Children%20190910.pdf Ford, D. Y., Orantham T. C. & Whiting, G. W. (2008). Culturally and linguistically diverse students in gifted education: Recruitment and retention issues. Exceptional Children, 74, 3, 289Q306. Jiuliani, A.J. (2013, June 25). Why “20% time” is good for schools. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-percent-time-a-j-juliani Kanevsky, L., & Keighley, T. (2003). To produce or not to produce? Understanding boredom and the honor in underachievement. Roeper Review, 26, 20–28. Mayes, R.D., & Moore III, J.L. (2016). The intersection of race, disability, and giftedness: Understanding the education needs of twice-exceptional African American students. Gifted Child Today 39(2), 98-104. Miller, E.M., & Cohen, L.M. (2012). Engendering talent in others: Expanding domains of giftedness and creativity. Roeper Review 34, 104-113. Novak, A.M. (2021, February 5). Black (Gifted) Joy: A critical race theory perspective. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/xdpwr Peterson, J. S. (2001). Successful adults who were once adolescent underachievers. Gifted Child Quarterly, 45, 236–250. Pfeiffer, S.I., & Prado, R.M. (2018). Counseling the gifted: Current status and future prospects. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.299-313). Cham, Switizerland. Reis, S.M. (2005). Feminist perspectives on talent development: A research-based conception of giftedness in women. In R.J. Sternberg & J.E. Davidson (Eds)., Conceptions of Giftedness (2nd Ed.) (p.217-246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rinn, A.N., & Majority, K.L. (2018). The social and emotional world of the gifted. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.49-64). Cham, Switizerland. Silverman, L.K. (2018). Assessment of giftedness. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.183-207). Cham, Switizerland. Sternberg, R.J., & Kaufman, S.B. (2018). Theories and conceptions of giftedness. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.29-48). Cham, Switizerland. Ziegler, A., Balestrini, D.P., & Stoeger, H. (2018). An international view on gifted education: incorporating the macro-systemic perspective. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.15-28). Cham, Switizerland.

We don’t just think with our brains.   What?!   How can that possibly be true?   I struggled to understand it if myself for quite a while, until I read the fabulous English philosopher Andy Clark’s description of what happens when someone writes, which essentially involves ideas flowing down the arm and hand, through the pen and ink, across the paper, up to your eyes, and back to your brain.   The ideas don’t literally flow, of course, but the process of writing alters the process of thinking - which is why research has shown that processing traumatic memories through journaling about them is more useful just thinking about them - the act of writing about them changes our interpretation of them in a way that just thinking about them doesn’t.   The challenge with school-based learning, of course, is that it’s primarily concerned with the brain.  Our task is to remember facts and ideas so we can recount them when asked about them at a later time.  Children who fidget are told to sit still, when the research that Annie Murphy Paul cites in her new book The Extended Mind indicates that this instruction is entirely misplaced - fidgeting can be a way of managing excess energy, and movement can actually help us to remember things more effectively than we otherwise would.   In this episode we learn many of the different ways that we our brains interact with the outside world to learn in ways that we might never have considered up to now.   Ready to transform how you support your child's curiosity? While we're all trying to figure out what's really behind rising teen anxiety and whether phones are the problem, there's something we can do right now that helps nurture our children's natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.   The You Are Your Child's Best Teacher masterclass shows you how to do exactly that without adding pressure or creating elaborate activities that exhaust you.   When children feel competent and engaged in learning that matters to them, they develop resilience that serves them well, whether they're facing social media pressures, academic stress, or the general challenges of growing up in today's world.   Click the banner to learn more!     Learning Membership Do you want to turn your child’s interests into learning opportunities? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world.   Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them.   Click the banner to learn more!     Annie Murphy Paul's Book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights 01:00 Looking at the idea that our mind isn't actually only located inside of our brains 01:46 An open invitation to join the free You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher Workshop 05:30 Learning does not just happen within the brain, but with things and people that are outside of it 06:44 The metaphor of how our brains are like magpies nest: we draw raw material available to us as resources for our thinking process just like how magpies incorporate materials available in their environment when building their nests 09:22 The movements and gestures of our bodies, the internal sensations of our bodies are part of the thinking process 10:34 Interoceptive sensitivity 13:07 The gut feeling is your body tugging at your sleeve saying that you’ve encountered this situation before and this is how you should respond 14:53 Moving the body is a way to stimulate mental processes in specific ways and you can use different kinds of movements to produce different kinds of thoughts 16:53 Recess -  the great invention that allows students to move and break the monotony of sitting down all day in school 17:49 Fidgeting is  a very subtle way to calibrate our arousal level so that we're in this optimal state of alertness 19:00 We're creatures who are good at moving our bodies and navigating through space and interacting with other people 20:23 We rely on our surroundings to shape our sense of ourselves 26:48 We can interact with our environment in a way that supports our learning 28:33 What are some ways that we can support children in using the space around them in their learning 31:49 Journaling and sketching as a tool to process learning deeper 36:47 Thinking with relationships; encouraging children to learn from and with other people 45:25 Allowing your children to genuinely work together so that parents don’t need to support their learning individually 46:29 We tend to think of learning as when a person sits down at a desk but in fact there are all these cognitive processes that get activated in social interactions 48:08 Argument is very valuable and can be a really effective way of solving problems 52:43 It is a different cognitive process when we do learning with other people 55:45 Human thinking works best when we are able to create “loops” and the best way for parents to support their children’s learning is to look for those loops   Other episodes mentioned: 113: No Self, No Problem137: Psychological Flexibility through ACT with Dr. Diana Hill   Links You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher WorkshopThe Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, by Annie Murphy PaulOrigins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul   References: Andrade, J. 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