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

Today’s episode pulls together a lot of threads from previous shows, and will also give you some really concrete new tools using what’s called Nonviolent Communication to support you in your parenting.  It’s not like these are concepts that we’ve never discussed before, but sometimes hearing them in a different framework can be the key to making them ‘click’ for you. Our guest Christine King has been teaching these techniques to college students, teachers, and parents for over 17 years.   And I’m releasing this particular interview today because these tools are ones we’re learning how to use in the free online workshop.  In the workshop we’re going to spend a couple of weeks learning why our children trigger us so much and how to stop being triggered, and how we can move beyond the power struggles we get caught up in with our children so we can have the kind of relationship with them where their true needs as people are respected and met – and so are ours.   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.   Join the waitlist to get notified when doors reopen in May 2026. Click the banner to learn more.     Things we discussed in the show: We now have feelings and needs lists available to support you in using the tools described in this episode! Click here to access the list of feelings Click here to access the list of needs Christine’s game for kids can be found here Videos of Christine’s giraffe and jackal puppet shows are here Inbal Kashtan’s book Parenting From Your Heart The No-Fault Zone game Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life   References: Baesler, E.J., & Lauricella, S. (2014). Teach peace: Assessing instruction of the nonviolent communication and peace course. Journal of Peace Education 11(1), 46-63. Juncadella, C.M. (October 2013). What is the impact of the application of the Nonviolent Communication model on the development of empathy? Overview of research and outcomes. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. University of Sheffield. Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/sites/default/files/NVC_Research_Files/Carme_Mampel_Juncadella.pdf Kashtan, I. (2005). Parenting from your heart: Sharing the gifts of compassion, connection, and choice. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Marlow, E., Nyamathi, A., Grajeda, W.T., Bailey, N., Weber, A., & Younger, J. (2012). Nonviolent communication training and empathy in male parolees. Journal of Correctional health Care 18(1), 8-19. Rose, M.B. (2003). The heart of parenting: Nonviolent Communication in action. PuddleDancer Press. Retrieved from https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/pdf_files/parenting_communication_mrose.pdf Rosenberg, M.B. (2005). Raising children compassionately: Parenting the Nonviolent Communication way. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Rosenberg, M.B. (2015). Nonviolent Communication (3rd Ed). Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press. Suarez, A., Lee, D.Y., Rowe, C., Gomez, A.A., Murowchick, E., & Linn, P.L. (2014). Freedom project: Nonviolent communication and mindfulness training in prison. SAGE open January-March 2014, 1-10.

  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.   Sign up for the waitlist and we'll let you know once enrollment re-opens. Click the image below to learn more.     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.   Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when enrollment reopens in May 2026. Click the banner to learn more.    

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting.  Click here to view all the items in this series.We’ve done a LOT of episodes specifically for White parents by now:White privilege in parenting: What it is and what to do about itWhite privilege in schoolsTalking with children about raceTeaching children about topics like slavery and the Civil Rights MovementDo I have privilege?In this episode we turn the tables: listener Dr. Elisa Celis joins me to interview Dr. Ciara Smalls Glover, whose work focuses on building the cultural strengths of youth of non-dominant cultures and their families.  We discuss the ways that culture is transferred to children through parenting, how parents of non-dominant cultures can teach their children about race and racism, and how to balance this with messages of racial pride.  Get notified when the Parenting Membership reopens in May 2025This isn't a course that you take once and forget, and things go back to the way they always were.Whenever you get off-track, or when a new challenge pops up, we're here to support and guide you for as long as you're a member.The membership information page has all the details on what you’ll get when you join - monthly modules of content, the not-on-Facebook community, monthly group coaching calls, weekly ACTion groups with five other members and a peer coach, occasional 1:1 coaching sessions with Jen. Click the image below to learn more about the Parenting Membership!  Click the button on the right with the microphone on it to leave me a voicemail for the 100th episode!>>> Read Full TranscriptJen: 01:36Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Before we get started with today’s episode, I just wanted to briefly remind you about a couple things I mentioned in our last episode. Firstly, I’m reopening the Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership group to new members in July. It’s a group for parents who love listening to the podcast and are onboard with the ideas that I described in it, but who find there is a pretty big gap between hearing something on a podcast once and actually being able to implement the idea in their real lives with their real families. So if you join, each month you receive a PDF guide on the specific topic that we’re covering that month. It isn’t a massive amount of new reading, but rather it synthesizes the most important points and walks you through a series of exercises to think through how to apply the principles in a way that’s relevant to your real family.Jen: 02:22You have a group call with me in the first half of the month to help you overcome any initial problems. And then a second one towards the end of the month as you refine your approach and by the end of the month you haven’t just read about some new thing you’d like to try, you’ve actually thought through how you’ll really implement it. You’ve tried it, maybe tripped up a bit and tried again and received support from me and all the other amazing parents in the group and you’ve actually started to see a shift in the way your family members interact with each other. So, you can find more about the group at YourParentingMojo.com/Membership. Secondly, if you’d like to see how the group works, please do sign up for the free online Tame Your Triggers workshop that starts on July 8th, which will help you to understand why you feel triggered by your child’s behavior and what you’re gonna do to avoid feeling triggered in the first place, and also manage your feelings better on the fewer occasions where they do still crop up.Jen: 03:11I see so many parents in online forums looking for help with the frustration, anger they feel when their children do things that just push their parents buttons, but it turns out there’s actually an enormous amount that we parents can do to avoid and manage these feelings rather than waiting for our children to grow out of these behaviors or trying to change the way our children behave. So, if you feel triggered by your children sometimes or perhaps quite a lot, then do head over to YourParentingMojo.com/Triggers to sign up for this completely free online workshop. You’ll get one email a day for the nine-week days following July 8th, each one containing information on a different piece of this puzzle along with a homework assignment that might be completing a quiz or responding to a journaling prompt. Now, I’ve put hundreds of hours of work into developing this workshop and I know that if you put in a little time and effort with me over those nine days, the payoff in your relationship with your child can be huge.Jen: 04:04So, do go to YourParentingMojo.com/TameYourTriggers to sign up for that free workshop. And finally we are inching ever closer to our hundredth episode. This is episode 93 and if you’d like to record a message for me to play in the hundredth episode, whether it’s letting me know about something you’ve learned from the show and how it’s impacted your family or a question that you have about the research on parenting or child development or a question for me about my life or my family, then do go to YourParentingMojo.com and look for that record icon to send me a voicemail. If you can use a headset that came with your smartphone then other listeners will surely appreciate it because it will dramatically improve the sound quality, but if you need to just talk straight into your phone or your laptop, then that will work too.Jen: 04:46I can’t wait to hear from you. Now on to today’s episode. Those of you who have been with the show for a while have probably been following the series of episodes I’ve been doing on the Intersection of Parenting and Race. The majority of these have been focused on Whiteness, partly because I’m White and I felt that I needed to explore these issues for myself and partly because I know that a good chunk of my audience is White and needed to explore these issues as well, but also a decent number of review are people of nondominant cultures. And when listener Elisa Celis who’s Mexican reached out and said, “Hey, what about an episode for us and what it means to parent a child of a nondominant culture?” I said, absolutely and you should come and co-interview with me. Elisa is also known as Dr. Elisa Celis, Assistant Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University where she studies the societal and economic implications of things like fairness and diversity and artificial intelligence and machine learning.Jen: 05:38Welcome Dr. Celis.Dr. Celis: 05:39Thank you. It’s great to be here.Jen: 05:41We are here today to talk with Dr. Ciara Smalls Glover, who is Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University. Dr. Glover obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and she studies the role of identity and parenting on reducing risk for communities of color with particular emphasis on academic and psychosocial outcomes for African American youth. She’s investigating patterns of racial socialization and racial identity as factors that promote positive development and reduce the impact of racial discrimination, which contributes to the development of interventions that build on the cultural strengths of youth and their families. If you’re interested in this topic and would like to continue the conversation with her, you can actually reach her on Twitter @CSmallsGlover. Welcome Dr. Glover.Dr. Glover: 06:24Thank you for having me.Jen: 06:25All right, so let’s dig right into the meat of this. I’m really curious about parenting styles and what parenting style is appropriate for children of nondominant cultures because it seems to me as though the vast majority of this research is done on White children and for them it’s relatively unequivocal and more democratic style where the parents are setting boundaries, but explain their reasoning to the child and incorporate the child’s views promotes the best child outcomes. But I’ve also seen research showing that a more authoritarian style where the parent kind of lays down the law and doesn’t really explain their reasoning or consider the child’s input actually isn’t terrible for African American children. And Elisa also mentioned having heard parents ask their children (they’re presumably rhetorical question), but how would you know your parents care if they’re not yelling at you? And they see shouting is normal because everyone loses their temper. But timeout, which is recommended by pediatricians is downright cruel. So firstly, I guess if we could start with how the perceptions of the way a person is parented intersect with outcomes?Dr. Glover: 07:29Oh, okay. This is a really thoughtful question Jen. So, we’ll back up a bit and talk about the way in which parenting is associated with different outcomes for children of different backgrounds and I think it’s important to preface this conversation by recognizing the heterogeneity within children and even within children of a particular cultural background and it’s in fact one of the reasons why we do find differences in how parenting and parenting styles play out in terms of child outcomes. So you’re right. In terms of the field, a lot of the literature has looked at a thing we call authoritative parenting, which is usually warmth and quality time coupled with a firmness and discipline and understanding that there are going to be rules that have to be respected and authoritarian parenting takes on a little bit of a different approach and that there’s usually a less warmth or fewer perceptions of warmth while still having these firm rules.Dr. Glover: 08:36And often these firm rules are a little less open to the input of the child. There are at least two other types of parenting styles that we could add to this conversation as well. One of which is more of a permissive style where there are fewer rules, a lot more openness as essentially the child is determining what the household rules are. And I’m more of a parent-as-friend approach and I can tell you about (those are not the only ones but for the sake of time I’ll just kind of focus on those) where we have seen research looking at outcomes for children of color. We do find differences in these three and we find universally both for children of color and children from dominant backgrounds. The permissive parenting is problematic for children’s adjustment. Children need rituals, they need a bit of routine to develop trust.Dr. Glover: 09:33So, in homes where there’s less of that, it makes it harder for the children to establish them. Where there is less consistency then is between the authoritative and the authoritarian. In families where the cultural norm is a firmer rule, a firmer hand, if you will in the home, less openness to hearing what the child’s input is in setting the rules. It’s actually perceived as loving and understanding by the child. So, we don’t see the strength of the same negative outcomes for child adjustment for families of color as we do with majority families with respect to the authoritarian. I’ll give one caveat to that though, and that is the perception really does matter, right? So that in families where the child perceives the stronger hand is being used because the parent loves them or the caregiver loves them and they’re doing it to protect them and keep them safe.Dr. Glover: 10:37It offers a safeguard from some of those more negative adjustment outcomes that we see in the literature. But where there’s universal agreement that what the family or caregivers doing is not out of love. We also see consistency and how that’s associated with poor outcomes for children. So, this is very much the case that children understand the cultural norm. Children understand the norm of the family, the individual family, the norm of the individual neighborhood. And that’s important to recognize as we talk about heterogeneity in families that the differences we see in child outcomes related to authoritative and authoritarian parenting are both a byproduct of cultural norms of the individual family as well as the norms that are demanded by the neighborhood and the context that they’re in.Jen: 11:31Isn’t that fascinating? I’ve definitely seen that result in studies of Chinese children as well, where a much more sort of strict style is perceived by the child as warm and loving. So that sort of brings me to the next question, which is, is it more important then to parent kind of in a way that’s in line with your culture in a way that’s line with the way that everybody else around you is parenting or more in line with these studies and what’s known in the literature about authoritative parenting and that often having better outcomes?Dr. Glover: 12:04Well, this I think is a two-part question and that what we do in families, we often do based on our own experiences in our families. So when we talk about what’s typical and what’s expected, well oftentimes parents are relying on the way that they were raised to inform what they’ll use with their families and using that as experience. Either they appreciated the way that their parents raised them and they’re going to parent in ways that are consistent with that or they’ve reflected on it and decided they want to intentionally change some things. So, I think that’s an important piece to this conversation. The parents are weighing on their own experiences. They’re also weighing on, when we think about parenting and the goal of parenting is raising an independent child, I think many families are thinking about what’s going to help that child get to a level of independence.Dr. Glover: 13:00And that’s really motivating a lot of their strategies in raising that child. So that might include things like recognizing. In order for my child to get to a level where they can be independent, I need to keep them safe. I need to keep them out of trouble. That requires that I parent them in such a way that they stay safe and that’s going to be dictated by the neighborhood, by the context that they’re in, whatever the threats are to the safety of that child where that family is living. It would also be determined by what the parent perceives as the responsibilities the child should be able to take on that are of course, developmentally appropriate. And Jen, I know you’ve raised this question earlier as well, inspired by I think what could be perceived as this cultural difference, but are there thoughts that either of you have about the parent that does want to parent more in line with their culture?Dr. Celis: 14:03Well, I think, I mean one thing for me and I think for many people we as a family keep moving, right? So kind of the culture that one had growing up either for myself or for my husband is I think for many people quite different than the one you ended up in now. So there’s also a bit of tension between even things that perhaps worked really well for you. They worked really well for you in that context and now you’re not in that context. So there’s a little bit of tension as to, well, did it work because it objectively works or did it work because of the surrounding neighborhood and with all changes now that I’m in this kind of new place with perhaps a different surrounding culture, raising my children here.Dr. Glover: 14:49That’s such a great point. It actually reminds me of a few television shows that kind of capitalize on that where you see a family that’s relying on the way they were raised to inform the way they raise their children, but their children are in an entirely different context and that’s a source of humor for these television shows, right?Jen: 15:08Ok, what show are you thinking of here?Dr. Glover: 15:10Well, I’m thinking of a couple and I don’t know this might take you back but the first example I’m thinking of is old sitcom called the Bernie Mac show. If you know anything about Bernie Mac, he grew up in a very rough side. He’s a comedian, grew up in a very rough side of Chicago, primarily raised by his grandmother who rule with an iron fist, if you will, because the neighborhood dictated that. He brought that parenting style to where the celebrities live in California and just for the sitcom in raising his nieces and nephews who could not be raised by their parent, he raises them with the same authoritarian lens where they’re saying, we want to go out and play with our friends.Dr. Glover: 15:54And he’s saying, you can’t. He’s raising them as if they were still living on the south side of Chicago, but they’re not, right? They’re living in this very beautiful home where celebrities live and he’s living the life of a celebrity. Another I think more recent example would be, Black-ish has a little bit of the same theme where the father was raised in a very rough neighborhood and brings that perspective to raising his children who also live in this very lovely suburb in California where the neighborhoods not necessarily demanding that he raised them in the same way and they use it as a source of humor because his wife grew up in a very different context that didn’t have those same demands in terms of safety.Dr. Glover: 16:39They get into discussions often about how they’re going to approach different choices with their children because they come at it with different experiences. You talk about this happening in real life because it very much makes a difference and what we think is working and whether we choose to continue to use something or not. I don’t think I mentioned this at the beginning of the broadcast, but I also have a very young child and so this has been a wonderful opportunity for me to both think about my upbringing which wasn’t a very rough neighborhood originally and then moved to a much nicer neighborhood in conjunction with the research that I do and consume. I love reading research on families and strengthening families and then my child’s lived experience where I need to take into account that child’s personality, the context that they’re living in and recognize how different it is from the one that I grew up

This episode began out of a query that I see repeated endlessly in online parenting groups: “My child has a really strong preference for me.  They get on great with the other parent (usually the father, in a heterosexual relationship) when I’m not around, but when I’m there it’s all “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”  This is destroying my partner; how can we get through this stage?” So that’s where I began the research on this question, and it led me down quite a rabbit hole – I’d never thought too much about whether mothers and fathers fulfill unique roles in a child’s development and while it isn’t necessarily as prescriptive as “the mother provides… and the father provides… ,” in many families these roles do occur and this helps to explain why children prefer one parent over another. (we also touch on how this plays out in families where both parents are of the same gender). My guest for this episode is Dr. Diana Coyl-Shepheard, Professor at California State University Chico, whose research focuses on children’s social and emotional development and  relationships with their fathers.   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. Click the banner to learn more and join the waitlist!     Click the “Send Voicemail” button on the right >>> to record your message for the 100th episode: it can be a question, a comment, or anything else you like!   Read Full Transcript (Introduction added after the episode was recorded and transcribed): Before we get started with today’s episode on the unique role of fathers in children’s development, as well as why children prefer one parent over another, I wanted to let you know about three super cool things that I’m working on you. The first is about my membership group, which is called Finding Your Parenting Mojo. I don’t mention the group a lot on the show because I don’t like over-selling, but a listener who was in the group the last time I opened it to new members told me she actually didn’t know I had a membership group, so I’m going to tell you a bit more about it this time around! The group is for parents who are on board with the ideas you hear about on the podcast based in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting, but struggle to put them into practice in real life. So if you find yourself nodding along and saying yep; I agree with the whole ‘no rewards and punishments’ thing and I’m on board with working with my child to solve the problems we have, and I really want to relax a bit around my child’s eating, but on the other hand you’re thinking: but rewarding with story time is the only way I can get my child to brush their flipping teeth, and how do I even get started with working with my child to solve problems? And if I ever did relax around my child’s eating then all they would eat is goldfish and gummy bears, then the group is for you. We spend a month digging into each issue that parents face – from tantrums to figuring out your goals as a parent and for your child to getting on the same page as your partner (and knowing when it’s OK to have different approaches!)…raising healthy eaters to navigating screen time and supporting sibling relationships; we cover it all. I’ll open the group to new members in July, and it closes at the end of July and on August 1st we start digging into our first topic, which is reducing the number of tantrums you’re experiencing. The cost for the group is $39/month this time around which is locked in for as long as you’re a member - I increased the price from last time, and I may increase it again next time the group reopens. Or if you sign up before July 18th, you can pay for 10 months and get the last two months of the year free. If you’d like to learn more about joining the membership group you can do that at yourparentingmojo.com/membership – the doors will open on July 1st. So that’s the deal with the group. The second cool thing I’m working on is something to give you a taste of what it will be like to be in the group. I’ve heard a lot of parents talking about how their children’s behavior really “triggers” them, and I was going to do a podcast episode on this and then I realized that this is especially one of those topics that you can’t just listen to and expect a change to happen; but if you’re willing to do a bit of work, that you can see enormous payoffs. So I thought OK; how can I really make the greatest impact possible with this work? And I decided to put together a nine-day online workshop to walk you through it. So if you go to yourparentingmojo.com/tameyourtriggers and sign up, staring on July 8th you’ll receive an email from me on each of the next nine week days that walks you through an aspect of this issue. In the first week we focus on where these triggers come from and it might surprise you to learn that it’s not our child’s behavior that is actually the origin of this feeling in us, but it’s things we remember, half-remember, and maybe even don’t remember from our childhoods. The more we know about those, the better we can manage these feelings when they arise in us. In the second week we look at new tools we can use to reduce the number of times we do feel triggered, and on the rarer occasions when it does still happen, to manage our reaction so we don’t blow up at our children. Now, you might have done these kinds of online workshops or challenges before and sometimes they ask you to do really simple things and you’re thinking “but I already do that!”. This workshop will be different. Each day you will get homework that you could do in about 15 minutes, although if you find that you are feeling triggered very often you would probably make a huge amount of progress if you could spare 30 minutes a day for not every day, but some of the nine days of the workshop. And these are not always easy tasks to do – I’ll be asking you to take a hard look at some potentially pretty uncomfortable aspects of your childhood, so you may need to do this gently and carefully. I’ll be doing short live videos in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group every other day or so which you don’t have to watch, but which you may find illuminate the daily emails which I deliberately made as short and concise as possible. By the end of the workshop you should have a great deal of insight into what really causes you to feel triggered, and how you can feel triggered less often and less intensely. And we will probably have a pretty big group of parents who are working through this alongside you, who can offer support and encouragement as you work through this. Obviously this isn’t exactly how the membership group works – we don’t do nine-day series of emails and Facebook Lives every other day; I actually send out a Guide at the beginning of the month and I answer your questions on two live group calls each month. But that format really works better once you’re already committed, and I wanted to be able to help you make real progress on a real issue you’re struggling with, so I decided the workshop was the best way to show you the kind of support you get in the group, even if the format is a bit different. So if you’d like to join the workshop, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com/tameyourtriggers and sign up – we’ll get started on July 8th. FINALLY, the last thing before we get to today’s episode is that you might have noticed that this is episode 92 of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, which means we’re only eight episodes away from reaching 100! When I started the show two years ago I really had no idea where it was going to take me, or even how long it could last. I’m always worried that I will run out of topics to discuss but I’m happy to say that two years in I actually have a longer list of topics that I still have to find time to cover than I did when I started. As I started thinking about this, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations…if I figure that on average it takes me about 20 hours to prepare for an episode, by the time I get to 100 episodes that will have been 2,000 hours, which is 250 days, which is very slightly less than a year, which means I’ve spent just a bit less than a third of the last three years preparing podcast episodes for you! If I figure there’s an average of 15 books and peer-reviewed papers on the reference list per episode, that’s 1,500 books and papers that actually made the reference list, and since only about half of the books and papers I read actually make the reference list I’ve probably read somewhere close to 3,000 of them in three years. When I started the show I was really just putting an intention out in the world to see where it might lead, and now I see that this work is what I want to do. It has – without a doubt – made me a better parent, and I want to use tools like the membership group to support you in your parenting as well. I keep producing the podcast episodes because I know that for some of you, a free resource is enough – and I know that by the reviews that you leave me on iTunes and the emails you send me that quite a lot of you get quite a lot out of the show. So I want to do something special for the 100th episode, and I’d love to have your voice be a part of it. If you go to yourparentingmojo.com, you’ll see a button on the homepage that you can use to leave me a voicemail. You could tell me something you learned from the show that has made a difference for your family, or a question you have either about the research on the show or about some aspect of my life that you wish you knew more about. Depending on how many voicemails I receive I’ll put all of you or a selection of you in the 100th episode, in your own voices, and I’ll answer your questions as well. So if you want to do this, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com and hit the icon to record a message. You don’t need any special equipment to do it; you can just speak right into your computer’s microphone, although listeners would probably thank you if you could plug in a headset with a microphone as this will greatly improve the sound quality. It doesn’t have to be a fancy one – just the kind that comes with a smartphone is fine. So head on over to yourparentingmojo.com to record your message and while you’re there, sign up for the Tame Your Triggers workshop and check out the membership group as well. OK, let’s get on with today’s episode!   Jen: 01:20 It's pretty obvious when you're reading the scientific literature on parenting and child development that just as most of the research on children's development is conducted on White children and then the findings are discussed as if they're relevant to all children everywhere. Most of the research on parenting is conducted on mothers and then its applicability to fathers is either extrapolated or it's just simply ignored. So, what role do fathers play in children's development? Our fathers basically like slightly less important mothers or are there unique processes involved in the relationship between fathers and children? Here with us today to sort this out is doctor Diana Coyl-Shepherd Professor at California State University Chico. Her research focuses on mother-child and father-child attachment across the span of childhood and she's especially interested in social and emotional development and children's relationships with their fathers. Welcome Dr. Coyl-Shepherd. Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 02:15 Thank you, Jen. Jen: 02:17 All right, so let's start with, I guess it's kind of the son of the father of attachment theory. The father of Attachment Theory was John Bowlby and so you interviewed his son, Sir Richard Bowlby a few years ago. That must have been pretty exciting. Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 02:32 It was very exciting. Having been a fan both professionally and personally of Attachment Theory for a long time, it was very exciting to meet the son of the author of that theory. Jen: 02:44 Yeah. And so that interview is available for anyone to read in a journal article in early childhood development and care journal. And so I was really shocked to learn that Richard Bowlby actually didn't really talk with his father about Attachment Theory at all and only started learning about it after his father's death. And I was wondering if you could tell us about the different role that Richard Bowlby proposed for fathers and mothers and why mothers had been such a focus of research for so long? Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 03:11 Certainly. Well, what Richard proposed was a model of dual attachment and in the case of heterosexual parents, they would serve complimentary roles in their children's lives. So, mothers would be that safe haven providing care and comfort when children are distressed and fathers, as he observed and other researchers have to, more often were used for secure exploration. So, it was that mothers sensitive responding to their children's distress that increases children's opportunity to turn to their fathers for support during exploration and during challenging tasks. So, what Sir Richard Bowlby explained was that, and this is again based on other people's research as well, that we're driven to explore and seek new experiences, but we need safety and a trusted companion to show us the way. And in our own research we often had children report that they felt safety from their fathers, but more often sought emotional comfort from their mothers. So, each parent can serve both functions of attachment, safety, security and reassurance as well as exploration. But among Western heterosexual couples, we tended to see that mothers and fathers specialized in these areas. Jen: 04:24 Ah, that's fascinating. And so I'm thinking about the ways that we assess this attachment in a lab situation and typically it's using this procedure called The Strange Situation where the mother is withdrawn for certain periods of time and then we look to see how distressed the child is and whether the distress is relieved when the mother comes back. And so it doesn't seem to be that if the child doesn't come to the father to relieve distress, that they're not attached, right? Or is it possible that the way that we are conceptualizing this and the problem is with our measuring tools and not with the attachment between fathers and children. Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 05:03 Exactly right. So, in The Strange Situation that measures in part mother's sensitivity to their children's distress, what it doesn't really measure is what fathers contribute to their children's attachment. And so it was really the research of the Grossmann’s and their colleagues. They did a 16-year longitudinal study, 44 families, and they compared mother's and father's contributions to their children's attachment at ages 6, 10 and 16 and at when the children were toddlers, they had developed this measure called the sensitive and challenging interactive play scale. And what they found, and it's an observational measure of the way that mothers and fathers engaged with their children during play, that father’s play sensitivity was very consistent across the four years and it was father's sensitivity that was predictive of children's internal working models of attachment at when their children were 10 and only fathers play sensitivity, not mothers was predictive of adolescents attachment representations. So, their conclusion was that mothers and fathers are doing different things to support their children's attachment security and consequently we need different ways to assess that. Jen: 06:16 And so I'm just curious as to how this works in sort of real life with real families and whether it doesn't seem as though it's sort of a one person is one role and one person is the other role because I'm sort of the parent who's more likely to stand back and watch as my daughter is climbing up something high and just kinda ask her what's your plan to get down rather than my husband will probably be the one to shout, be careful and we'll both pillow fight with her if she asks us to. So, is it confusing to her at all that that we have this sort of dual role thing going on or not? Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 06:48 I don't think so. I think children's expectations of their parents’ behavior are based on their typical interaction with that parent. So, whatever they usually experience is what they expect to experience. And so if you are engaging in exploration with your child and allowing her to take risks and your husband might be the more cautious of the two that I think she would anticipate that that's the way it goes. That when I want to explore, mom will be my companion and she'll support this. But typically, and in lots of research, fathers do this more than mothers. It’s not that mothers aren't capable of it, it's just typically fathers do it more often. Jen: 07:24 Yeah. Okay. In an article that you and your coauthors wrote in an Introduction to a Special Issue on Fatherhood and Attachment, you said “The link between father attachment quality and children's outcomes are often less direct complicated by individual characteristics like child gender, temperament and father's working models as well as familial and cultural practices.” And that's pretty dense. Can you help us to tease that part a bit? Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 07:48 Yes. There's a lot there. Well certainly, we know that there's research that supports gender differences in the way that parents interact with their children. So for example, that mothers engage with their daughters more frequently and they do more kinds of emotional and social discussion than they do with their sons and fathers more often engage with their sons and the kind of ways that they engage with their sons are activity oriented. So, that sort of supports this model that we're seeing, this idea of father’s activation relationships with their children but more with sons than daughters typically. So, there's a piece there that leads to maybe differential outcomes for children in terms of their social and emotional development based on the way and how often they interact with each parent. But also in culture. Culture plays a role as well because it's really, and this was sort of the argument that Dr. Danielle Paquette made when he developed his measure of the activation relationship of measure he called the Risky Situation is the idea that in cultures where competition is a part of that culture, then what fathers do by the way they engage with their children what he described as rough and tumble kinds of play and security and exploration, that helps children meet the demands in a society where there might be competition. Dr. Coyl-Shepherd: 09:07 How do they manage that competition? How do they manage relationships with others? So, more research I think is pointing to the contributions of fathers and sometimes it's sort of an additional contribution beyond what mothers are doing to support their children's social and emotional development. Jen: 09:27 So, I had a lot of questions about that rough and tumble play and because it seems to be a really critical component of children's relationships with their fathers, can you help us understand what's the purpose of this kind of...

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting.  Click here to view all the items in this series. Each time I think I’m done with this series on the intersection of race and parenting, another great topic pops up! Listener Ann reached out to me after she heard the beginning of the series to let me know about her own journey of learning about her White privilege. Ann and her husband were a ‘normal’ White couple who were vaguely aware of some of the things they could do to help others (Ann works at a nonprofit) and saw politics as an interesting hobby. Then they adopted a Black daughter and had a (surprise!) biological daughter within a few months, and Ann found that she needed to learn about her privilege – and quickly. She’s had to learn about things like the features of a ‘high quality’ daycare for both of her daughters, how to keep them safe, and we get some feedback from Dr. Renee Engeln about how to help Black girls to see and be confident in their beauty. Ann is openly not an expert on this topic, and does not speak for adoptive Black children, or even for all White adopting parents. But she finds herself far further along this journey of discovering her privilege than the vast majority of us – myself included, until I began researching this series of episodes. Read Full Transcript Jen: 01:24 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. When I started this series of episodes on the Intersection of Race and Parenting, I had no idea it was going to go on for so long. I had initially planned to do the episodes on White Privilege and Parenting with Dr. Margaret Hagerman and White Privilege in Schools with Dr. Allison Roda and then How To Talk About Race with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. After the conversation with Dr. Tatum, I realized that we hadn’t talked a lot about what we should teach about topics like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, and so we went on to cover that with Dr. John Bickford and then I got to chatting via email with Ann Kane who is a listener and who’s our guest today. And so before I tell you about Ann, I just wanted to tell you a snippet about my own journey toward learning about my privilege. Jen: 02:06 I was actually listening to an episode of The How To Get Away With Parenting podcast, which is published by my now friend, Malaika Dower. And in it Malaika made a comment about how it might not be safe for a Black toddler to have a tantrum in a store. And the implication was because the White parents would potentially find this threatening in some way. And if you’d ask me before that moment whether I had White privilege as a parent, I would have said, I really don’t think so because I’m really not sure I could have named a single way in which I experienced this. So uncovering my privilege has been a very deliberate exercise for me that’s taken a lot of hard work because the point of privilege is you don’t really see it. It’s there to protect you from having to see it. Jen: 02:48 But our guest Ann has been forced to confront her privilege in a completely different way. So Ann who is White, spent 10 years working in the field with Doctors Without Borders and she left to work in Program Finance for a nonprofit in New York City so that she and her White husband could raise a family and she adopted a daughter, Alice from the foster care system. Alice was 8 days old at the time and is now just over two and she is Black. And then Ann and her husband had a surprise baby named Audrey who is almost two and is White. So when Ann and I started emailing about this, she told me, “Raising Alice in a society that still has so much structural racism is my biggest parenting worry. I’m so afraid that my White privilege is going to harm her. There’s so much I’m unaware of. And as a White person, I don’t feel I can prepare her for all she’ll face.” Jen: 03:35 That’s when I knew I had to talk with Ann in an episode, because while she isn’t and doesn’t claim to be an expert on race or racism or raising a Black child, she’s been forced to confront her own privilege as a White person and as a White parent to a much greater extent than I have. And then I think probably many of my listeners have as well. So my goal for today is that perhaps you hear something in Ann’s journey that resonates with privilege you didn’t know you had, and maybe you’ll take an action to lift somebody else up who has less privilege than you. So with all that said, welcome Ann. Ann: 04:08 Thank you. Hi Jen. Jen: 04:09 Hi. Welcome to the backside of the microphone. Ann: 04:12 Okay. Jen: 04:13 So, we started each episode in this series with both me and my guests stating our privileges. And so you have heard this before and some of the listeners as well. So I’m just going to state mine really quickly. My Whiteness, my economic status in the upper middle class, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness, my education, and my presence on the land of the Chochenyo Ohlone native Americans to whom I pay a voluntary tax called the Shuumi Land Tax as a form of reparations. Could you please start by telling us some of your privileges? Ann: 04:43 Sure. I think I have pretty much all of the privileges. I’m White, my economic status is the upper middle class, I’m heterosexual enabled body. I have a Master’s Degree. My upbringing in a working middle class family back when it was more financially feasible to do so. I have two married parents who have always been supportive. I think the list goes on and on. Jen: 05:04 Okay. So, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about what you thought about racial prejudice and structural racism before you became a parent. Did you already have an understanding of your privilege? Ann: 05:16 I thought that I did. The more I learned, the more I realized how much I don’t know and how much I still need to learn. Before becoming a parent, I realized how unfair the world was to Black people, but it’s become so much more apparent as the parent of a Black child. Growing up, I was pretty clueless behind the basic history lessons of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Race wasn’t something that was discussed in my family. However, as I get older, I moved to a diverse liberal city and started traveling internationally. So, I became more aware of our country’s long historical structural racism and how it still exists today. We knew when we became foster parents, it would most likely be for African American child. So, we did take that responsibility seriously and really tried to learn all that we can. But as I faced these issues on a daily basis with my daughter, I have learned how much I was unaware of and how much I still have to learn as she grows. Ann: 06:14 I don’t pretend to know anything about what it’s like to be a Black person in America, but being Alice’s mom has taught me a lot about my own privileges. Jen: 06:24 And so what are specifically some of the things that you’ve learned about your privilege as a person? Just as a White person, not even as a parent of a Black child over the last few months? Ann: 06:33 Sure. I think the main one is how much I didn’t have to think about things as I go throughout my life and have conversations in my job and with people on the street and I never have to question anything. I take it at face value that they’re talking to me as me and not as a minority or as how they view me because of my skin color as the dominant race in this country. I know that people are talking to me because of me and with Alice, I have these questions all the time. Is this because of her race or is it for something else that I’m not realizing? So that lack of understanding of how it’s in so many situations that race is a factor. Jen: 07:10 Yeah. I had one of those realizations recently. I went to an event at work, it was called a building bridges conversation and they started out with an exercise, they made us all dance around the room and of course as a profound introvert, this is extremely uncomfortable for me. And so I was kind of annoyed that they were doing this thing. Most of the people who work in a consulting firm are pretty extroverted. They get on well with clients and like socializing and that kind of thing. And I was annoyed that they were putting me in this situation. Jen: 07:41 And then I had a realization afterwards, what if this was how I felt at work all day, every day. The absolute discomfort with just being in this situation with people and also the annoyance that they would put me in that situation. And that was a really profound awakening for me. And I’m not sure that was the lesson I was intended to take out of it, but it was profound for me. So I wonder if we can go on and talk about some of the things you’ve learned since you became the parent of a daughter who’s Black. You told me that you can no longer live just anywhere and you have to live in an accepting community with people who look like Alice and so I think you live in Harlem right now (which for those of you who don’t live in the US is a neighborhood of New York that 60% Black and it holds a huge place in Black history and culture). Did you live there before you became a parent? Ann: 08:30 Yes, I moved here to go to Grad school roughly 15 years ago. Jen: 08:33 Oh, okay. And why did you pick that neighborhood? Ann: 08:37 It is near the university that I attended. It’s actually been gentrified quite a lot. I’m not far from a predominantly White university, but this area was within walking distance but still did not have a lot of White people. And I moved in basically for affordability issues and I have seen gentrification and how it’s affected my neighbors in my neighborhood as I’ve been there quite a while now. Jen: 09:01 Yeah. And so I’m curious about whether you’ve taken Alice to predominantly White neighborhoods, maybe to visit your family or friends and are the interactions between Alice and that community different than when you’re in Harlem? Ann: 09:15 Sure. We have been to various areas that are predominantly White and we grew up with White families. So, this is the norm for us. Most of the blatant things we’ve been warned about, for example, being followed around by (in stores) security guards, scary interactions with Police, obviously aren’t things that are happening to a 2-year-old. Most of her interactions go through us simply because she’s not old enough to have full conversations. We’ve heard this from other adoptive parents that they turned from cute children into adults quite quickly in the public’s eyes and you’ll start to see these things. But so far our interactions have been different in these areas, but not in that regard. In these areas, what we’ve noticed is there is a certain kind of othering. I feel like they pay more attention to Alice and not in a negative way, but they kind of fond over her in a way they don’t with our other daughter who’s only 5 months younger. Ann: 10:07 They tried to touch her hair, which of course we don’t allow and go on about how beautiful she is. I obviously don’t know their intention, but it feels like their way of saying they approve of her, our family without directly coming out and saying that, which is obviously a nice gesture and it’s better than the alternative, but other ways it seems unnecessary and we’re not asking for permission to be us or her. I’ve read these feelings from other transitional families, so I don’t think I’m totally imagining it. However, it goes back to some of the things I discussed earlier is when you’re a White person you never have to question your interactions with others. In this case, is it because she is cute? Obviously I think she’s cute. Are they only paying attention to her by chance or is this a racial thing where they’re trying to make us feel accepted? Jen: 10:52 And is this primarily White people who are doing this? The touching? Ann: 10:57 Yeah. Yeah. Mostly. Jen: 11:00 Okay. All right. Yep, that makes sense. And I’ve definitely heard about that as well, that White people feel as though they have to sort of exhibit this acceptance in ways that potentially aren’t so appropriate on the receiving end of it. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about daycare. What kind of setting do your daughters attend now and how did you choose that? Ann: 11:19 Sure. Our daughters are in a small in-home daycare run by an African American family. Making sure Alice was around people who looked like her was our number one priority with other priorities being of course, we want a loving environment that keeps the girls safe and happy. We also wanted something within walking distance to our home because we wanted to build a community within our neighborhood. And logistically taking two babies on the subway ride everyday didn’t seem doable. When searching, we didn’t find many places that had both Black and White children. There seems to be daycares with mostly all Black kids or daycares with mostly all White kids. And for the first year our daughter who’s White, Audrey was the only White child at the daycare. But now there’s one or two other White children. It’s been such a blessing, this daycare. I don’t know if I’m being honest, we probably wouldn’t have prioritize this as much and we might have missed out on the chance to go to this school that our girls love and that we love. They really treat them like family. The grandma (all the kids call her grandma Barbara) helps us with Alice’s braids, something that I’m still working on and we’ve just been very lucky to have found such an important place in our life. Jen: 12:31 Yeah. So, I’m curious about whether you think Audrey might have benefited in the same way from attending that daycare if Alice wasn’t in the picture, you were still living in that neighborhood anyway. It was still an option. What direction do you think you might’ve gone in for Audrey’s care? Ann: 12:46 Hard to say, but our number one priority wouldn’t have been diversity. We would have looked for it, but in our experience we didn’t find it. It was mostly all Black or mostly all White were the two options. Audrey has us that look like her, so we felt like we’d prioritize that for Alice. And she definitely benefits from being there. It’s an amazing environment filled with people that take good care of her and her friends. At the age of two, she loves it very much. So, I think she’ll learn to be with people that looked different than her as she grows also. Jen: 13:20 Yep. And how are you preparing both Alison and Audrey for school? What kind of school environment do you think you’ll choose and how are you getting ready for that? Ann: 13:29 Sure. We will most likely go public schools, there’s quite a few public charter schools in our neighborhood that we’ll be looking into. My husband and I are products of public schools and had positive experiences that we would want to give our children, New York City and our neighborhood. Those are the most diverse options which would be our top choice. Again, it’s what we’ll have to prioritize to make sure Alice sees people that look like her on a daily basis. I think picking schools, our definition of what a good school because we have a Black child has changed. Maybe in the past we would have focused only on test scores or other indicators that most White parents are using. But now while those things we will look at, they’re not our number one priority. Jen: 14:11 And so is it that you see diversity as more important or is it that you see that test scores are not necessarily an indicator of what is good about a school? Ann: 14:22 I think both. I think it’s reprioritizing what you think is the best opportunity for your child. And while I want both of my girls to get good grades and learn all the textbook facts, I think it’s more important that they’re good people. And I think the way to do that is to have them around people who look different than them and have different religions and have different viewpoints so they can learn from their experiences also. Jen: 14:46 Okay. So your sort of understanding of this and your approach to school has probably shifted a little bit because you’ve had this experience, right? You’re not necessarily going to look for the public school with the highest test scores, which you might have done previously? Ann: 14:59 Exactly. And I think it is another area that shows my White privilege in a different way. I haven’t seen a lot of research that says if you put a White child in an adequate school, as long as they have adequate supports at home, they’re mostly going to do okay. So, we would have certainly searched for Audrey, but it doesn’t seem that it’s as important or significant as it feels with Alice. We have to get this question right with Alice, because there is a lot of research that shows that many schools are failing the country’s Black children, and I wanted to make sure she’s not facing that. Jen: 15:31 Yeah. We definitely learned in our episode on White Privilege in Schools which will have been released by the time this episode goes out that more than half of parents say they value diversity in national surveys, but they aren’t willing to travel further to attend a diverse school and possibly less of a concern in New York City where everything’s a little closer together. Although it might involve a subway ride with young children, but there are definitely parts of the country where you’re going to be bused across town if diversity is important to you. And so I think what parents need to think through is do you think it’s going to be critical to your child’s success? And I think there’s a lot of indicators that say that content knowledge and being able to pass the test is one part of being successful. And that being able to get along well with other people and not just get along with them, but know how to collaborate with them is going to be an even more critical skill in the future. So, I think that your approach of selecting for diversity is actually going to end up benefiting both of your children more than potentially a school that just has high test scores. Ann: 16:34 That has been my experience with a lot of these things like I mentioned with the daycare, we wouldn’t have found it, but it’s been such a blessing. So, diversity isn’t always easy and sometimes there’s some uncomfortable with it while it’s happening, but in the long run it’s better for our whole family. Jen: 16:50 Okay. I wonder if we can just dig into that for a minute. What kinds of discomfort do you experience that other White parents who might be thinking about this might be thinking, yeah, I could make that extra step, but it just doesn’t feel right. It feels as though my child is going to be missing out. How would you describe how that’s played out for you and what would you say to those parents? Ann: 17:08 Sure. For us it feels like we’re learning what Alice might feel like. We do go to preschool events and the graduations and things and we’re the only White people in the room and that’s the norm for Alice in her life because her family is White and her grandparents are White. And that’s what she’s going to have to deal with. We want to counteract that as much as possible by getting other people that look like her around her. But it’s not going to be a reality. It’s not the reality of many Black people in many workplaces and then in many cities. So, I think recognizing when it feels like to be the person who’s not in the majority has helped us when we...

This episode comes to us courtesy of my friend Jess, whose daughter has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and who is on a mission to make sure that as many parents as possible learn about it. She says that every time she describes it to a parent they realize that they know someone who exhibits behavior that looks like SPD that warrants following up. I have to say that I was highly ambivalent about doing this episode, because I don’t usually deal with topics that result in medical diagnoses as I’m (obviously) not a doctor. But the more I looked into this the more I realized that helping parents to understand the mess of research on this topic is exactly the kind of thing that I usually do on this show, and that an episode on this topic could probably be useful to a number of you. And here’s the love letter to John McPhee that I mention in the episode     Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode on Sensory Processing Disorder comes to you courtesy of my friend Jess, and I’m going to tell you a little about Jess and her daughter as a way to introduce the topic. Jess told me that her daughter likely had a mini-stroke either in utero or during birth that affected the left side of her body, and Jess figured this out around the time her daughter was 10 months old. So her daughter started physical therapy for that, but Jess still felt as though something wasn’t quite right, and while she already had a pediatrician, physical therapist, and neurologist, six months or so of Jess being (in her words) “a crazy parent,” along with the support of her mother who happens to be a pediatric physical therapist, to convince her daughter’s support team that something wasn’t right, and finally her daughter was evaluated for sensory processing disorder. Her daughter received occupational therapy treatment and is now doing very well. Jess realized that if she hadn’t been especially vocal, and if she hadn’t had her own mother’s expert support, then it’s possible that her daughter’s issues would have gone undiagnosed. Jess told me she has started talking with anyone who will listen about this topic and whenever she mentions it a lightbulb goes off with whomever she is talking with about either a child in their lie or a friend of a friend who is having similar issues, so she asked me to do an episode on it so more people could learn about it. Now I have to say that as much as I love Jess I did hesitate before taking this on. I don’t usually deal with topics that result in medical diagnoses because I’m obviously not a doctor or a psychiatrist. But the more I looked into this the more I realized that helping parents to understand the mess of research on this topic is exactly the kind of thing that I usually do on this show, and that an episode on this topic could probably be useful to a number of you. So, to reiterate, I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist, and this episode is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. In fact, for reasons we’ll get into in the episode, it’s actually kind of difficult for a doctor to diagnose as well. So we’ll talk about diagnoses, and about the efficacy of treatment for SPD, and finally about how to chart a path forward if you suspect that your child may have difficulties processing sensory information. So let’s get into it! For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, what is sensory processing disorder, and where did it come from? The research in this field was pioneered by Dr. A. Jean Ayres, who was an occupational therapist active from the 1960s to the 1980s. Dr. Ayres’ classic book is called Sensory Integration and the Child, and was re-released in 2005 in a 25th anniversary edition. In the book, Dr. Ayres describes sensory integration, which is the organization of our senses, which give us information about the physical conditions of our body and the environment around us. She says that the brain has to organize all of these sensations if a person is to move and learn and behave in a productive way – for example, by making your eyes, nose, mouth, skin, muscles, and joints work together to peel and eat an orange, and that an adaptive response to a sensory experience is a purposeful and goal-directed one. When we have an adaptive response we master a challenge and learn something new. Until the child is about 7, they are primarily a sensory processing machine – they sense things and respond, without having many abstract thoughts and ideas. Dr. Ayres says that the brain’s mental and social functions in the later years are based on this foundation of sensorimotor processes, and if sensorimotor processes are well organized in the first 7 years, the child will have an easier time learning mental and social skills later on. Dr. Ayres died in 1989, and Dr. Lucy Jane Miller has carried the flag on this work. Dr. Miller is the director of the Sensory Therapies and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, and has written her own book called Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder. In Dr. Miller’s book she shifts Dr. Ayres’ original six syndromes of sensory integration dysfunction into three main “pattern types” with a number of subtypes. Pattern Type 1 is Sensory Modulation Disorder (SMD), and results when a person has difficulty responding to sensory input with behavior that is appropriate to the degree, nature, or intensity of the sensory information. Dr. Miller’s book describes SMD as having three main subtypes, although her own peer-reviewed research has only found support for two of these – sensory seeking, and sensory underresponsivity. In Subtype 1, Sensory Overresponsivity (so the one that doesn’t have peer-reviewed research support), people respond faster, with more intensity, or for a longer duration than people with typical sensory responsivity. It may occur in only one sensory system (like not wanting to be touched) or in multiple systems. Difficulties are most often seen in new situations and during transitions, and the responses may appear as willful behavior, seemingly logical, and inconsistent. For example, a child with this subtype may not be able to tolerate being jostled as coats are being put on at preschool for the transition to outdoor play, and may lash out at another child in response. Behavior may also result from cumulative stresses, so the jostle while putting coats on might just trigger the response that has built up as a result of a whole morning of being jostled and touched through normal interactions. People with Subtype 2, Sensory Underresponsivity, disregard or do not respond to sensory stimuli. A child may seem apathetic, lethargic, and lacking an inner drive to socialize and explore. They might not notice bumps, falls, or cuts, or extreme eat or cold, and may be labeled ‘lazy’ or ‘unmotivated.’ As an infant, the child might have been considered a ‘good baby’ or an ‘easy child’ but when they become older they may not be able to maintain enough arousal to participate in family or school life. People with Subtype 3, Sensory Seeking/Craving, crave an unusual amount or type of sensory input, possibly including spicy food, loud noises, visual stimulation, and constant spinning, which can lead to socially unacceptable or unsafe behavior and can be perceived as demanding or attention-seeking. They may become explosive or aggressive when they are unable to meet their sensory needs – for example, when they are asked to sit still and be quiet at school. This subtype can be confused with, and even co-occur with, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. People with Pattern 2, Sensory Discrimination Disorder, have trouble interpreting qualities of sensory stimuli and tell how they are similar and different; this characteristic may be present in just one or more than one sense. SDD in the tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems, which tell you where your body is in the world, results in awkward motor abilities. SDD in the visual or auditory systems can lead to learning or language disabilities. There are two sub-types to Pattern 3, which is Sensory-Based Motor Disorder. In Subtype 1, Postural Disorder, the person has difficulty stabilizing the body during movement or at rest. The child may have low muscle tone, inadequate control of muscles and movement, and poor balance. In Subtype 2, Dyspraxia, the person has difficulty conceiving of, planning, sequencing, and executing actions. They may appear awkward and poorly coordinated in their gross motor skills like running and jumping, fine motor skills like drawing and painting, or oral-motor skills like chewing and swallowing. They seem unsure where their body is in space, have trouble with ball sports, and any actions involving coordinated timing. Where does SPD come from? Dr. Ayres herself acknowledged that we don’t really know what causes SPD, but she goes on to make quite a variety of speculations. She says “Many people think that the increase in environmental toxins, such as air contaminants, destructive viruses, and other chemicals that we take into our bodies may contribute to the dysfunction,” without offering a shred of supportive evidence from these “many people.” She hypothesizes that hereditary and chemical factors may be combined in some children, and that genetic factors in certain children may allow environmental toxins to interfere with sensory integrative development. Some babies do not get enough oxygen at birth, which may affect brain function, and that children who lead very deprived lives – like the children in the Romanian orphanages from the 1980s who had very little human contact – don’t develop adequate sensory, motor, or intellectual functions. But lest you start blaming yourself for your child’s problems, she goes on to say that most of the children with minor irregularities in brain function have had normal sensory experiences, and their parents or guardians did do a good enough job of raising them to allow for good brain development so the parents did not deliberately or accidentally produce the dysfunction. When I was researching this episode I got a question in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group about whether there’s any evidence about how children’s diets impact their sensory processing, and I have to say that this view is VERY popular in the online community groups related to SPD but I’m afraid there is zero evidence whatsoever in the peer-reviewed research, or even in the books by Dr. Ayres and Dr. Miller, that implicates children’s diets in causing or worsening SPD. The only potential connection I could see is that a child may be unwilling to eat if they find the textures of some foods to be difficult to deal with, but there is zero evidence that SPD is caused by gluten intolerance or eggs or sugar or food coloring or any other kind of food. I want to put a couple of side notes in at this point. Firstly, I’m also looking at doing an episode on Dr. Elaine Aron’s work on Highly Sensitive People, and in one of her papers Dr. Aron actually expressly makes the distinction that being a Highly Sensitive Person is different from Sensory Processing Disorder. In her book The Highly Sensitive Child, Dr. Aron says that many parents have told her they have found sensory integration to be helpful for their highly sensitive children, but she doesn’t think that being sensitive as she defines it is a problem to be treated, much less cured. Secondly, a couple of listeners have been in touch about unintegrated reflexes, and since the topic has a bit of an overlap with this one I’d like to address that here too. All babies have reflexes – one of the more famous ones is the Moro reflex which is when the infant spreads their arms and hands out and then pulls them in, usually while crying, when they feel they’re falling. In most infants this reflex goes away, which we call becoming “integrated,” by around four or five months of age but in some children this reflex doesn’t become integrated and the child will still produce it when they feel like they’re falling. There is quite a bit of evidence showing that unintegrated reflexes are *correlated* with a variety of developmental disabilities, but I’m afraid that’s pretty much where the evidence ends on this topic. It’s a bit hard to get your head around because nobody seems to have done any kind of meta-analysis to synthesize the results except the Wisconsin Department of Health Services which briefly reports that this therapy remains an “untested treatment, as there are no studies that have tested its effectiveness. There is no evidence to suggest that it is harmful.” Also, the main figure doing the research is Dr. Svetlana Masgutova is the creator of the Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Integration Method® and she’s also done a good chunk of the research on the effectiveness of the eponymous method. Unfortunately, methodological problems abound in the paper she’s done that’s most relevant to us, which is on the use of the Nurosensorimotor Integration Method in treating symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. In that study she trated 484 children with autism, but the control groups were only 72 children with Autism who weren’t treated, and 483 children with neurotypical development. A more robust methodology would have compared the treated children with a much larger group of children who received comparable attention from a therapist and traditionally accepted treatment to compare the reflex integration treatment with traditional treatment, rather than with no treatment. It’s well-known that just attention from a therapist can produce a therapeutic effect even when the treatment itself doesn’t have any effect at all. And the results produced changes in reflex patterns, which were correlated with improvements in cognitive abilities, but since there’s no mention in the study of the children being randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, we can’t say with any certainty that the treatment *caused* these improvements. So that’s that. And while we’re on the topic of co-morbidity, which is two or more chronic diagnoses in the same individual, some authors estimate that the majority of children with autism spectrum disorders have SPD, although not all children with SPD have autism. SPD is also very difficult to diagnose, and this topic brings me to the part of the episode where I’m not going to just recite what Dr. Miller and Dr. Ayres say but bring a bit more of a critical perspective. SPD is actually not included in the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is abbreviated as DSM-V, which is the standard diagnostic guide for psychological diagnoses, although I should acknowledge that what makes it into the DSM is as much a political issue as a diagnostic one – the first and second editions of the DSM included homosexuality as a mental disorder and it wasn’t removed until 1973. Dr. Ayres developed a Sensory Integration and Praxis test which has been described as “the most comprehensive and statistically sound means for assessing some important aspects of sensory integration, most notably praxis and tactile discrimination,” but apparently five of the 17 subtests are unstable, which means that the same child is likely to get different results each time they are tested. Dr. Ayres reported that scores on the test were different for children with and without learning disabilities, although subsequent analyses of her work showed there were actually no reliable differences between the scores of children with and without learning disabilities, which is a pretty big problem. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a position paper in 2012 stating “it remains unclear whether children who present with findings described as sensory processing difficulties have an actual “disorder” of the sensory pathways of the brain (and I will note, Dr. Ayres says they do), or whether these deficits represent differences associated with other developmental and behavioral disorders. Specifically, the behavioral differences seen in children with autism spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and developmental coordination disorders overlap symptoms described in children with sensory processing disorders. Studies to date have not demonstrated that sensory integration dysfunction exists as a separate disorder distinct from these other developmental disabilities. Furthermore, numerous challenges exist for evaluating the effectiveness of sensory integration therapy, including the wide spectrum of symptom severity and presentation, lack of consistent outcome measures, and family factors, which make response to therapy variable.” The APA officially recommends that “At this time, pediatricians should not use sensory processing disorder as a diagnosis.” Dr. Miller’s team published a paper in 2014 describing the development of a new scale to diagnose SPD, but it focused on only some of the sub-types and the study was conducted on only 20 children, and only 10 of those actually had a developmental disorder, with the other 10 being typically developing children in a comparison group. Dr. Miller does acknowledge that “the standardization of a reliable and valid scale to assess SPD is essential for the field to move forward” but at the moment, we don’t have one. So I want to set this issue of diagnosis aside for a bit and talk about prevalence and treatment, because that is, after all, how we got here in the first place – after occupational therapy was successful for my friend Jess’ daughter. The most widely cited study on the prevalence of SPD was conducted by Dr. Miller and her colleagues, where the researchers sent surveys out to the parents of one suburban public school asking about whether their children exhibit symptoms of SPD. Only 39% of the parents responded, and the researchers were conservative in assuming that none of the parents who didn’t respond who had children who had these symptoms, and based on this they came up with a prevalence rate of 5.3%. If you assume that the children of the non-responding parents had symptoms at the same rate as the responding parents then the prevalence rate goes up to 13.7%. Of course, there are a variety of problems with this – firstly, that this is a suburban school district of mostly white, middle class parents who may be more likely to look for symptoms in their children and report these to a set of researchers. The second problem is that 39% of parents from one school really is a pretty low response rate to base this kind of determination on, even if you are going to assess the results conservatively. Thirdly, the researchers didn’t make any attempt to study comorbidity, which is the concept of having more than one infliction at once, and as we already know SPD has a LOT of symptoms in common with other potential diagnoses. And, finally, there’s the predictable issue we see with so much other research on this show – we see a heavily caveated result in a paper that gets grasped by other researchers and reported as if it were fact: for example, a 2013 paper reports that “Mental health practitioners, however, may have limited information or understanding of [SPD]. This is concerning, as [the disorder] is estimated to occur in 5% of the general population (Ahn et al. 2004), equating to three million children in the United States (United States Census Bureau 2008).” Another set of researchers report that “In fact, Ahn, Miller, Milberger, and McIntosh found that 5-15% of children in the general population of kindergarten-age children demonstrate difficulties with sensory modulation” when in fact it would be irresponsible to generalize from...

In this second episode of Sharing Your Parenting Mojo we talk with Rose, who is American but lives in Germany, about discussing math with girls – as well as with managing her daughter’s sugar intake. Here’s Rose’s blog, where she discusses what she thought of my Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue episode. 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…

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting.  Click here to view all the items in this series. In this episode we continue our series on the intersection of race and parenting, which we started with Dr. Margaret Hagerman on the topic of White privilege in parenting; then we covered White privilege in schools with Dr. Allison Roda and what parents can do to overcome structural racism as well as talk with their children about race with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Today we’re continuing the series by learning from Dr. John Bickford about how to actually have a conversation with our child on a topic as complex and difficult as slavery or the Civil Rights Movement, using both primary sources and children’s ‘trade’ books. During the episode you’ll hear Dr. Bickford and I hatch an idea to develop a resource guide for parents on exactly what sources and books to use to make sure you’re discussing the right issues within these topics: download the guide below!   References: Bauer, M.D. (2009). Martin Luther King, Jr. New York, NY: Scholastic. Bickford, J.H., & Rich, C.W. (2014). Examining the representation of slavery within children’s literature. Social Studies Research and Practice 9(1), 66-94. Bickford, J.H., & Rich, C.W. (2015). The historical representation of Thanksgiving within primary- and intermediate-level children’s literature. Journal of Children’s Literature 41(1), 5-21. Bickford, J.H. (2015). Assessing and addressing historical misrepresentations within children’s literature about the Civil Rights Movement. The History Teacher 48(4), 693-736. Bickford, J.H., & Schuette, L.N. (2016). Trade books’ historical representation of the Black Freedom Movement, slavery through civil rights. Journal of Children’s Literature 42(1), 20-43. Bickford, J. (2018). Primary elementary students’ historical literacy, thinking, and argumentation about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. The History Teacher 51(2), 269-292. Marzollo, J., & Pinkney, J.B. (1993). Happy Birthday Martin Luther King. New York, NY: Scholastic. Southern Poverty Law Center (2019). Anti-racism activity: ‘The Sneetches.’ Author. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/tolerance-lessons/antiracism-activity-the-sneetches Southern Poverty Law Center (2019). Classroom simulations: Proceed with caution. Author. Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2008/classroom-simulations-proceed-with-caution Click below to download FREE guides to teaching children about slavery and the civil rights movement Get the FREE Guide!   Read Full Transcript Jen:  00:01:44 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners will recall that we've been talking about the Intersection of Race and Parenting for a while now. We opened by talking with Dr. Margaret Hagerman on the topic of White Privilege and Parenting. And then we heard from Dr. Allison Roda on White Privilege in Schools. In our third episode, one of my listeners, Dr. Kim Rybacki and I interviewed Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. And we tried really hard to cover a lot of ground on both what parents can do to overcome structural racism and on how to talk with our children about race. But I was very cognizant of the stones that we left unturned that I really wish we had time to address. Now, I reached out to today's guest because I wanted to better understand his work on how historical figures are depicted in children's literature. And he responded, I should be on your show. Jen: 00:02:31 And after I read his papers, I said, yes, you should. So, Dr. John Bickford is here with us today. I just wanted to mention though that I'm rerecording this introduction because you'll hear in the conversation that we formulated an idea to develop some resources to help parents talk with their children about difficult topics like slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. And we actually went ahead and did that. So, each one is a short PDF that walks you through primary sources were these exist on each topic as well as a collection of children's books. You’ll hear Dr. Bickford refer to these as trade books and if it's been awhile since you studied history, then primary sources or things like photographs and posters of slave auctions and audio recordings of former slaves, which you might not normally consider as things to share with young children. Jen: 00:03:13 But which Dr. Bickford has actually done very successfully. So, the thing that makes these resources unique is that they use frameworks developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center for teaching young children about these topics. So, it's not just a random collection of books and pictures and videos that we thought were interesting, but together they address what scholars believe to be the most important ideas on each topic. Things like the fact that enslaved people brought rich cultures and traditions with them that continue today and that the Civil Rights Movement was pushed forward by many, many concerted efforts and not just by Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Primary sources do exist for a lot of these ideas, but where we couldn't find any, we supplemented with interesting secondary sources like videos. So, if you subscribed to the show through my website, you'll already have received these resources and the email about this podcast episode. Jen:00:04:02 If you subscribed through a podcasting platform like iTunes or Stitcher, then I don't have a way to get this to you, but you can head over to this episode's page at YourParentingMojo.com/TeachingRace to download these resources. So, back to the interview, Dr. Bickford received his Bachelor's Degree in History, his Master's Degree in Secondary Education and his Ph.D. in Social Studies Education all from the University of Iowa. And he's now Associate Professor at Eastern Illinois University where he teaches How to Teach Social Studies at the elementary and middle school levels. His research focuses on how social studies and history education is taught at these levels, how students think about history as well as historical misrepresentations within children's literature. And today we're going to discuss a ton of resources to help us teach children about topics related to race. Welcome Dr. Bickford. Dr. Bickford: 00:04:51 Thank you for having me. Jen:00:04:53 All right. So, we've started each episode in this series by both me and my guests stating our privileges. And so my guests have heard mine a number of times right now. So, I'm going to state these quickly. These are my Whiteness, my economic status and the upper middle class, heterosexuality, able-bodiedness and my education. And I was actually also reminded by one of my Instagram followers last night that I should acknowledge the native Americans on whose land I sit, and those are the Chochenyo Ohlone. And I actually pay the Shuumi Tax, which is a donation that's acknowledgement of this land used to belong to these people and was taken from them. So, I wonder if you could begin by telling us some of your privileges, please. Dr. Bickford: 00:05:28 Well, it would be Whiteness and upper middle class socioeconomic status. I'm a heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied White male. I benefited tremendously from having two parents with college degrees and a grandfather who was a college professor. So, education and enriching experiences like museums and concerts were something that I kind of grew up with. I also have the privilege of being physically larger and more athletic than most folks, but my teenage son would disagree. And since you mentioned about the first people’s or native American’s land on which you're sitting, mine would be of the Mississippian culture or the Cahokian culture. Jen: 00:06:12 Oh, wow! And you must know that off the top of your head because I added that after I sent you the question list. Dr. Bickford: 00:06:18 Yeah, yeah. That was not on the list, but one of my favorite passions as a child and as an adult now still with my own reading is about the native people of North and particularly Central and Southern America. I really, really enjoy that. Yeah. Jen: 00:06:33 Okay. Well, we may get to talk about that a little bit more in the interview. I wonder if we could start up by talking a bit about your work. Can you tell us what kind of books you study and how you study them? Dr. Bickford:00:06:42 Sure. Generally speaking, I study the texts and tasks, the best facilitate historical reading and thinking and writing. These are the sources and strategies that get kids to think historically not memorizing historical dates. That's historical comprehension. But real historical thinking is looking at different sources and figuring out what actually happened, like a detective at a crime scene, so to speak, and invariably that involves the texts that include the curriculum the parents and teachers choose and use with their children and teenagers. And from an educational psychology standpoint, I spend most of my time on elementary children and some children in the middle grades. If you were to think of it as like a Venn diagram with one circle being what the experts know, the historians, the archeologists, the anthropologists, and then the other circle being what's included in the curricula, textbooks and trade books. Jen: 00:07:40 Those things overlap in some way? Dr. Bickford: 00:07:43 In some ways they do. I explore the areas of convergence and also particularly the divergences between historians and children's authors. I don't get too much into the historical quibbles or the nuances. I tried to focus on what I consider important big picture aspects. Like is this accurate? But also age-appropriate. Could this be taught to a 5-year-old? Could this be taught to a 10-year-old? Things like that. Jen: 00:08:10 Yeah. We had a fair bit of email conversation before this episode and I was looking for a blog post that's actually well have been published by the time this episode goes out on what we should learn during Black history month. And so I asked Dr. Bickford if he knew of any online resource that actually presented an accurate view of Lincoln rather than this, not quite accurate version that a lot of us understand. And he kind of said, well, historians get over these things when they do an undergraduate degree. So no, there's not really information out there because they don't have a reason to put it out there because they just know it's not true and they don't really speak to laypeople. And I was really interested by that and I'd never thought about the resources that are available online in that way before. Dr. Bickford:00:08:52 It really is remarkable, but it's kind of like this idea if you were to ask a hundred folks, when did native Americans start to inhabit North and South America? Probably 95 of them would say something like about 10,000 years ago they walked across the Bering Strait and since then they populated North and South America. The five people who wouldn't say that have background in archeology or historiography or anthropology. Jen:00:09:21 Okay. Don't tease us like that. Give us the answer. Dr. Bickford: 00:09:24 It's hard to know. But they know that they came over more than one way and they can do this linguists. Linguists by evaluating the different patterns of languages and people disagree to degree. But it's anywhere from four to six different language groups that are in the North and South America for Native Americans. And they assume it was in these four to six different waves because presumably there were small tribes that walked across and linguists may disagree here and there on the small aspects, but the most logical answer that most people would agree with is that it was probably multiple groups probably starting somewhere between 25 and 35,000 years ago and probably the last one was maybe 10 to 15,000 years ago and I just mentioned the linguistic evidence, but there's also a lot of contemporaneous evidence when it comes to spheres and in bison and woolly mammoths and things like that, spearhead points and things like that. It's a whole lot more complicated than what I can just convey in a short answer here. Jen:  00:10:25 Yeah, for sure. I didn't realize your expertise extended to that area. We've been talking a lot about slavery and Lincoln and I didn't realize that was one of your primary interest. Dr. Bickford: 00:10:34 Actually, my primary interest is what historians call the Black Freedom Movement from slavery until beyond the traditional Civil Rights Movement. Native American history is something that I'm deeply fascinated by, but I haven't taken too many courses in that. I just read it on my own. It's a hobby. But I have done some research on it. Jen: 00:10:55 Super. So, let's get back to that Venn diagram that you mentioned and I'm going to quote from one of your papers. It says “Trade books potential and popularity give a false impression of their curricular soundness.” And so firstly, I wonder if you could just briefly just find what trade books are for us. And then secondly, what are some of the more egregious examples that you've seen where historical events depicted in these books are just plain wrong? Dr. Bickford: 00:11:19 Sure. Trade books are biographies, narrative, nonfiction, historical fiction books, books that parents buy for kids over Christmas break and summer break. They're distinct from textbooks, which is trying to be comprehensive. With textbooks, there's lots of different ways to look at textbooks, but you can't cover everything. If you have to cover from Columbus to Lincoln in 300 pages, you can't cover everything. But it's the trade books, it's the biographies of Rosa Parks. It's things like that. It's the biographies of Abraham Lincoln that I'm most curious about because they're presenting themselves often as nonfiction. And that's what I mean by trade books. Some of the most egregious examples, the two most common are phrases like Hitler brainwashed. Where about 40% of the books actually used that word brainwashed. For one of my articles, I reviewed about 50 books, maybe 60, I forget, all centered on the Holocaust. Dr. Bickford: 00:12:18 And I couldn't get over how often that term...

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, Taming Your Triggers workshop 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. Sign up for the waitlist and we'll let you know once enrollment re-opens. Click the image below to learn more.

The podcast discusses the importance of setting loving and effective limits as parents, exploring different cultural tactics and parenting practices. It provides strategies for setting boundaries and promoting child compliance, including the use of logical consequences. The chapter descriptions delve into the impact of parenting styles and cultural differences on children's behavior and relationships.