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

Mark Leather, a Senior Lecturer in Adventure Education at Plymouth Marjon University, brings his expertise to the table as he critiques forest schools. He explores the origins of these programs, comparing them to traditional education and revealing the cultural significance of outdoor learning. The conversation dives into the potential benefits of forest schools, such as encouraging creativity and personal growth, while also flagging the limitations of current research. Leather even shares insights on whether he would choose this type of schooling for his own child.

Parent-Teacher conferences are about to be underway in many places, so I thought it might be helpful to give you some resources to make these as productive for you and your child as possible. In this episode we talk with Dr. Margaret Caspe and Dr. Elena Lopez of the Global Family Research Project, which develops authentic partnerships to support children’s learning in the home, school, and community.  I actually used Dr. Lopez’ textbook for my Master’s in Education, so I’ve been familiar with her work for a while and knew she and her colleagues at GFRP were just the right people to help us learn more about Parent-Teacher conferences (for example, did you know that teachers find them just as scary as parents?!) and understand how to advocate for our child – and for all of the children in our community. The resource guide on Parent-Teacher Conferences that we reference throughout this episode can be found here.     References Civil, M., & Quintos, B. (2009). Latina mothers' perceptions about the teaching and learning of mathematics. In B. Greer, S. Mukhopadhyay, A. B. Powell, & S. Nelson-Barber (Eds.), Culturally responsive mathematics education (pp. 321-343). New York: Routledge. Charney, R. (2002). Teaching children to care. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children. [note: Dr. Caspe misremembered the title as “The Responsive Classroom.”] Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine. [Note: check out my episode on this topic before buying this book…] George Lucas Educational Foundation (2015, August 24). Having students lead parent conferences. Author. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/practice/student-led-conferences-empowerment-and-ownership Loewus, L. (2017, August 15). The nation’s teaching force is still mostly White and female. Edweek. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/15/the-nations-teaching-force-is-still-mostly.html McWayne, C. M., Melzi, G., Limlingan, M. C., & Schick, A. (2016). Ecocultural patterns of family engagement among low-income Latino families of preschool children. Developmental psychology 52(7), 1088. Small, M.L. (2009). Unanticipated gains: Origins of network inequality in everyday life. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press Strauss, V. (2014, August 21). For first time, minority students expected to be majority in U.S. public schools this fall. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/21/for-first-time-minority-students-expected-to-be-majority-in-u-s-public-schools-this-fall/?utm_term=.3752d0eeddd7 TeacherVision (n.d.). Parent-teacher conferences: Before, during, and after. Author. Retrieved from https://www.teachervision.com/parent-teacher-conferences-during-after U.S. Department of Education (July 2016). The state of racial diversity in the educator workforce. Author. Retrived from https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-diversity/state-racial-diversity-workforce.pdf   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:21] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to take another look at a topic related to school and it’s one that you’re going to be able to use very soon. We’re looking at parent teacher conferences. Your conferences in your new school or preschool or maybe classroom within the same school are likely coming up within the next couple of weeks. And these things can be stressful!” We get 10 minutes with a teacher whom we may or may not have had any interaction with beyond, hi, how are you?” And we really have no idea what to expect, so ideally parent teacher conferences shouldn’t just be a one shot opportunity to discuss your child’s progress in school. They should be part of an ongoing conversation about progress in school, but maybe also things happening outside school that are affecting that progress. But how can we know what to expect from these conferences and how can we prepare for them, how can we think about them in the context of all the other interactions that we are or could be having with our child’s school? Jen:  [01:54] So we have not one but two guests here today to help us figure this out. We have Dr Maggie Caspe. She’s the director of research and professional learning and the global family research project. She had her masters in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D In applied developmental psychology from New York University and Dr Elena Lopez, co-director at the Global Family Research Project. She received her doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard University. Both Dr Caspe and Dr Lopez conduct research on how families, early childhood programs, schools and communities and the relationships between these support children’s learning. The Global Family Research Project prides itself on doing work that is scientifically based, cutting edge, accessible, and practical. It sounds a lot like the goals of this podcast, so I’m so excited to have them here with us. Welcome Dr. Caspe and Dr Lopez. Dr. Caspe: [02:45] Thanks for having us. New Speaker: [02:46] So let’s start with a little empathy here. It would be a good place to start. When I was researching this episode, I did a general search for parent teacher conferences just to see what would pop up and several resources for teachers were first on the list. One of the top hits contained this quote. “If there is one part of the school year that strikes fear into the heart of any teacher, it’s parent teacher conference time.” Why are teachers afraid of parent teacher conferences? Dr. Lopez:  [03:13] We’re so glad you started with this question because it lies at the heart of a lot of what we do in our work, which is in part to help prepare school and community educators for family engagement and maybe I can take a quick step back and define what we mean by family engagement. Research shows that family engagement is composed of three main pillars. The first is that it’s a shared responsibility among families, schools, and community to support children’s learning for success in school and in life. In other words, it’s all about relationships and trust and ongoing communication and conversation. Not just families blindly supporting school goals and mandates; it’s more than raising money and joining PGA. It’s the way that families promote and advocate for dirty and it’s the way that schools and other organizations open up their doors to support families in getting the information and support they need and also listening and understanding what parents and families desire. Dr. Lopez:  [04:34] And we also know that family engagement takes place everywhere all the time. Not just in school. There is a statistic we like to quote, which is that of the 6,000 hours of awake time children have available to them and really only 1,000 of those hours are spent in school, so children are learning in a lot of spaces outside school: parks, libraries and the home, so it’s not fruitful or productive to think of family engagement as just taking place in school, but we broaden our notion of family engagement to all these settings as well. And the third pillar is that family engagement, bath waste begin early in birth really and continue all the way through high school. Although the ways in which families are engaged in their children’s learning and social and emotional development will change as children mature. So family engagement is really complex. It is nuanced. It exists across time and space and it’s constantly spiraling so you can picture a big wide ocean of family engagement and parent teacher conferences are just one ripple of it. They are part of a larger ongoing conversation that is happening between parents and other adults that care for a child. The parent teacher conference ideally is not the first interaction that a parent is having with a teacher, but instead is part of an ongoing dialogue across space and time making. Maggie, do you want to add to that? Dr. Caspe: [06:27] Thanks for that introduction because I think, Jen, it sort of brings us back a little bit to your original question of why teachers might be afraid of parent teacher conferences and I think what we know is that there are a few things going on. First, you know, we sort of know that for the most part educators are not prepared for family engagement in their foundational coursework and they’re not given a lot of opportunities to learn about how to make families the central part of their practice. It’s funny, so I began my career as a kindergarten teacher and I remember really feeling nervous and petrified during my first parent teacher conferences and in a large part it was – I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. I was really well trained to run reading blocks and engage kids in math and I really felt like I had behavior management strategies down, but the parent teacher conference with something more elusive and for new teachers and even experienced ones I think how you talk with families about what kids are doing, but how they’re doing I think is really hard. And then once you get into the classroom, we know that teachers don’t get a lot of support either in their continuing education around working with families. Dr. Caspe: [07:43] There’s often very little support from administrators or colleagues to pick up and improve their practice along the way. But I want to reflect on the third problem and I think this really gets to the heart of what makes parent teacher conferences a little bit difficult. And this is that parent teacher conferences really weren’t designed to be a conversation of listening. They were really set up as a hierarchical structure of teachers reporting to families. As you know, quote unquote the professional. What children know and can do. So if you could picture it in your mind. Parents often come to meetings, they sit face to face with a teacher and a chair that their child probably sits in every day in a weird, contorted way, and your goal as the parent is often to talk about your child’s individual experience and development within the school. But as Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot writes in her seminal work, “The Essential conversation,” Dr. Caspe: [08:48] She looks at how these conversations make parents feel really raw and exposed, and they hear echoes and murmurs of their own past in their own school histories which often leads to these feelings of nervousness and anxiety that you mentioned and teachers maybe not to the same extent. Also feel uncertain, exposed and defensive because this is the place probably more than any, that their confidence in their professionalism might be the most directly challenged. And the other thing that Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot also draws out is during these conversations were actually replaying some of the larger tensions that exist around family engagement in terms of child rearing, race, class culture, language, gender. Who gets to talk and who needs to remain silent and what makes quote unquote a good parent. So all of these things are playing out in this 10 minute conversation and that makes it a little tough. Dr. Caspe: [09:55] I will say though, I don’t want to end on such a downer, right? A lot of the work that Elena and I do is to reimagine and rethink with family and school communication and the parent teacher conference can look like and you know, there are bright spots and we can talk about those. We know that some places home visits go on or we know that in some school districts there’s been a massive restructuring, so parent teacher conferences are in done individually, but maybe in groups and teams or even text messaging and digital media have really helped support this process. So it’s not all big and nervous. There are bright spots, but there’s a lot that goes on in those 10 minutes. Jen: [10:37] Yeah. Thanks for drawing that out a little bit. I think it can really help parents who might have this perception of teachers as sort of a monolithic and to see that are the experts and they know what’s going on and they’d been trained to do this and actually quite possibly they haven’t. And they’re, they’re just as nervous as you are for a variety of the reasons that you mentioned. So going into this conversation with a very open mind and open heart I think can be very helpful thing. So let’s get into some specifics then because before this conversation you sent me an awesome resource that’s called Parent Teacher Conferences: Strategies for Principals, Teachers and Parents, and we’re going to discuss that a lot more in the show and it’s actually available on your site. We’ll put a link in the references to the parents can go and find it. It’s super short, really easy to read and use. And so in it you described the five R’s. Can you tell us what the five R’s please? Dr. Caspe: [11:27] Yeah, so the five R’s are: Reach Out, Raise Up, Reinforce, Relate and Reimagine. I sometimes pretend I’m doing yoga poses while I say them, but really they’re our way of helping ourselves and others organize and think about the ways to help educators and families share responsibility across time and space. And these really grew out of really in depth interviews and conversations we’ve had with educators over the past few years in a variety of spaces as well as librarians after-school staff to really understand some of those best family engagement strategies and you know, quite simply reaching out means that family engagement programs and resources are accessible to those who often have the most difficulty taking advantage of them. Raising up means that practices, teachers, families work together on two-way communication. Families have an opportunity to share what they know about their children and co-design action plans with teachers. Dr. Caspe: [12:36] And then the third R is really this notion of reinforce and it comes from this idea that we as parents are children’s first teachers and that family’s cultural values, norms, language and contexts always need to be integrated into these types of conversations that families and teachers have. The fourth R is about relationships and it really highlights the value of supporting families in building peer-to-peer networks as well as relationships with their children and finally reimagine is about ways to increase families access to an understanding of information on children’s progress and using really community agencies to help with that. Jen: [13:18] Okay. Super. Thanks for that overview and I would like to delve into each of those a little bit more so that we can really get an understanding of what are the tools that we can use to make these parent teacher conferences more productive for everybody. So the first R you said is reaching out and sometimes parents have scheduling problems and they can’t get childcare so they can attend a conference or maybe they can’t get transportation or maybe English isn’t their first language and they just don’t feel comfortable interacting with the teacher. So I’m curious what kinds of reaching out should parents expect to see from their child’s school and what can they do if the resources they need aren’t forthcoming? Dr. Lopez: [13:54] I’m going to start with what teachers can do and they can be flexible by being available by phone or holding a video conference when an in person meeting doesn’t work for the family and teachers can also spend part off the meeting with parents just getting to know the family better before even talking about a student’s academic progress. So one thing that teachers can consider us long as the proper releases are signed is still allowed parents or guardians to bring another family member or friend, if that helps them feel more comfortable, especially if that person that they are taking along with them can help with translation and principals also have a role in...

This podcast explores the controversial topic of rewarding children for good behavior. The host discusses the differing opinions on rewards and their impact on children's development. Research studies are examined, highlighting the negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation and the parent-child relationship. The flaws in the theory of using rewards and punishments are also discussed. The podcast provides insights on the pros and cons of using rewards and praise in parenting, with specific focus on potty training and developing independent qualities in children.

Arietta Slade, a Clinical Professor at Yale Child Study Center and expert on reflective parenting, dives into the intricacies of attachment theory. She clarifies misconceptions around bonding, babywearing, and co-sleeping, emphasizing that healthy attachments can form through various practices. The conversation highlights the importance of nonverbal communication and emotional expression in child development, while also addressing parental challenges like separation anxiety. Slade reassures that nurturing a bond is about connection, not perfection.

We’re a couple of weeks into the new school year by now and I hope that for most of you the morning drop-offs have gotten a bit easier than they were in the beginning. But some of you may still be struggling with a child who doesn’t want to go to school, who resists you leaving at drop-0ff time, and who might be suddenly suffering from stomachaches and headaches (particularly on Sunday nights or weekday mornings) that had not previously been a problem. Today’s interview with Dr. Jonathan Dalton, director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change in Rockville, MD is going to help us understand whether our child is having a ‘normal’ amount of difficulty transitioning to school or if they are struggling enough that they might need extra help – and if so, what to do about it.   References Bergin, C., & Bergin, D. (2009). Attachment in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review 21, 141-170. Dalton, J., & Beacon, V. (2018). School refusal. In D. Driver & S.S. Thomas (Eds.), Complex disorders in pediatric psychiatry: A clinician’s guide (pp 11-22). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier. Egger, H.L., Costello, J., & Angold, A. (2003). School refusal and psychiatric disorders: A community study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 42(7), 797-807. Hallinan, M.T. (2008). Teacher influences on students’ attachment to school. Sociology of Education 81, 271-283. Hamre, B.K., & Pianta, R.C. (2001). Early teacher-child relationships and the trajectory of children’s school outcomes through eighth grade. Child Development 72(2), 625-638. Houts, R.M., Caspi, A., Pianta, R.C., Arseneault, L., & Moffitt, T.E. (2010) The challenging pupil in the classroom: The effect of the child on the teacher. Psychological Science 21(12), 1802-1810. Jerome, E.M., Hamre, B.K., & Pianta, R.C. (2009). Teacher-child relationships from kindergarten to sixth grade: Early childhood predictors of teacher-perceived conflict and closeness. Social Development 18(4), 915-945. Kearney, C.A. (2016). Managing school-based absenteeism at multiple tiers: An evidence-based and practical guide for professionals. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Kearney, C.A., & Albano, A.M. (2007). When children refuse school: A cognitive-behavioral therapy approach, Therapist guide (2nd Ed.). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Kearney, C.A. (2006). Dealing with school refusal behavior: A primer for family physicians. Family Practice 55(8), 685-692. Kearney, C.A. (2002). Identifying the function of school refusal behavior: A revision of the school refusal assessment scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 24(4), 235-245. King, N., Tonge, B.J., Heyne, D., & Ollendick, T.H. (2000). Research on the cognitive-behavioral treatment of school refusal: A review and recommendations. Clinical Psychology Review 20(4), 495-507. Ladd, G.W., & Dinella, L.M. (2009). Continuity and change in early school engagement: Predictive of children’s achievement trajectories from first to eighth grade? Journal of Educational Psychology 101(1), 190-206. Ladd, G.W., & Buhs, E.S., & Seid, M. (2000). Children’s initial sentiments about kindergarten: Is school liking an antecedent of early classroom participation and achievement? Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 46(2), 255-279. Last, C. G., Hansen, C., & Franco, N. (1998). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of school phobia.  Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 37, 404–411. Pianta, R. C., Belsky, J., Vandergrift, N., Houts, R. M., & Morrison, F. J. (2008). Classroom effects on children’s achievement trajectories in elementary school. American Educational Research Journal 45 (2), 365–397   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen:     [00:00:37] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we are going to help a whole lot of parents who are in the middle of a massive transition, and that is the transition to kindergarten or school. Many people, adults included, don’t love change. It’s certainly much easier to keep doing the same things we’ve been doing with the people we know and love than it is to go to a completely new place with people we mostly don’t know whoever new expectations for us that we don’t know if we can meet and we also have to start getting up really early in the mornings, which can introduce all kinds of new power struggles at bed time so we might not be able to solve all of these problems today, but we’re going to take a specific look at what is known as school refusal, which is pretty much what it sounds like when a child says “I don’t want to go to school.” Jen:    [00:01:24] To help us understand this and figure out what to do about it, we’re here today with Dr Jonathan Dalton, who is a licensed psychologist and the Director of the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral change in Rockville, Maryland. He received his BA in psychology from Villanova University an MA in psychology from the Catholic University of America and this PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fordham University. Dr Dalton specializes in treating anxiety and behavioral disorders with particular expertise in the treatment of anxiety-based school refusal. Welcome Dr. Dalton! Dr. Dalton:  [00:01:53] Thank you so much. Dr. Dalton:   [00:01:54] So I wonder…firstly we should probably get clear on some terms that we’re going to use today because when I started reading your work, there were a whole bunch of terms and I want to be sure that we use them clearly. Dr. Dalton:  [00:02:03] Sure. Jen:  [00:02:04] So you use absenteeism and truancy, school refusal, and so can you define these for us and then perhaps also help us understand how common these issues are. Dr. Dalton:   [00:02:12] Sure. Yeah. So just thank you again for inviting me. This is something that I care a great deal about, and I treat many, many kids with these problems. Absenteeism is a global term. It’s an umbrella term that just defines kids who are not in school for any reason. It could be transportation, it could be illness, it could be anything. Truancy is more in line with delinquency; t’s against the law. These are kids who might leave in the morning and then never show up to school because they’re having too much fun in the parking lot or in the woods behind school. Oftentimes that’s more of a criminal justice issue, where school refusal or school avoidance is a more of a psychological development where kids often because of anxiety do not believe they are able to attend school, and so they literally refused to go. It could be kids won’t get out of bed in the morning. I do a lot of home visits for these kids and I’ve seen kids barricaded in bathrooms with their mastiffs guarding them and sending me off with hairspray when I get there and different things so it can be quite significant for some kids. Jen:   [00:03:13] Okay. So in general we’re talking about slightly older children here, right? Because most of the parents who are listening to this are parents who are just sort of in this kindergarten phase, maybe some of them on the high end are in the transition phase. Some of them were toddlers transitioning into preschool for the first time, and this is probably not such a relevant thing for them. Is that right? Dr. Dalton:    [00:03:33] It really depends, because the research says that there’s kind of a two different ages where we most often see the onset and one of them is five and six years of age, so it’s when kids have to first separate from their family and go into a novel circumstance. It is a time when we really see that now it’s obviously easier to get a five year old in school than it is a 15 year old just physically and logistically it’s a different ballgame, but we do see a lot of that along with a lot of parent tiers on the first day of kindergarten. It’s not just the kids who have separation, anxiety. Jen:   [00:04:03] No, no, it’s definitely not, and when we’re talking about that preschool transition, at least I found it was… It was difficult for sure, but there were three teachers for 18 kids, so if you need someone to hold your child and give your child a hug and hold your child up to the window so that you can be high fived as you’re walking out the door, then that’s something that can be accomplished in that environment, right. Whereas in a kindergarten you’re kind of moving on from that. Dr. Dalton:    [00:04:29] Yeah, I mean we’re looking for kind of the BAND-AID approach. A lot of schools use that so that the parents don’t even walk their kids into the building for kindergarten and then it just eases with the transitions are everyone’s saying goodbye at the door. All the moms are wearing dark sunglasses so no-one can see their tears and then the kids just kind of pivot into what’s happening next. That the separation, physical separation is a hard thing for everybody involved because it’s so novel for the family very often. Jen:   [00:04:56] Yeah. Okay. Alright. So you’ve written that school refusal is a behavior rather than a diagnosis. So I wonder if you can help us understand the difference there from a clinical perspective and also does it make a difference for parents from their perspective and if it’s not a formal diagnosis, does this school refusal typically coworker with other disorders that are diagnosable? Dr. Dalton:    [00:05:19] Yeah. Great questions in there. So you separation anxiety is one of the more common ones that we see. So in one study, 38 percent of the kids who refused school had that as their primary diagnosis. Our job is to think of kids who refuse school…we liken it to someone who breaks out in hives after eating a casserole and you wouldn’t go to the doctor and say, “oh well my kid is allergic to casseroles.” You have to know which ingredient they’re allergic to. And same thing with school refusal. It can look the same but for very different reasons. So some kids are afraid of getting sick or being near someone who throws up or weather is a big one for the younger kids that we say… Jen:   [00:05:54] Weather? Dr. Dalton:   [00:05:54] Yeah, you know, if there’s a thunderstorm, a lot of kids are afraid of being apart from the caregiver if there’s a thunderstorm. Dr. Dalton:    [00:06:01] So we, we see a lot of that. We see kids who might have panic disorder so they feel like they’ve been struck by lightning from the inside rather than the outside. I don’t know why that happens. And so they try and seek proximity to a caregiver or just to their home environment. It could be social anxiety. We see a lot of younger kids with a phenomenon called selective mutism where they don’t talk in a school environment often for the first time. And so parents don’t know this because at home they’re a chatterbox and they get to their first teacher conference and say, yeah, um, you know, your kid doesn’t ever talk and they say, what are you talking about? They never shut up. And in school environment they literally don’t talk. And so that can morph into social anxiety and some cases school avoidance there as well. Jen:    [00:06:45] So we just wanted to go back to something you said at the beginning of that. You mentioned separation anxiety disorder. My child doesn’t love being separated from me, but I guess what would be helpful to understand would be where do you draw the line between separation anxiety and separation anxiety disorder? Dr. Dalton:   [00:07:02] It’s really coming down to functional impairment. So obviously you know, kids like all mammals, they seek out proximity to protectors, you know, in, in just the way other other species do. And so it’s a very normal response if you are a little one and you are used to being with a parent that’s been your go-to response for a long time. And so trying to seek out proximity. So that makes perfect sense. The difference with anxiety disorders, it’s not the severity of the anxiety, it’s the appropriateness for the situation. So a lot of kids will fear you’re separating and they’ll maybe been clinging behavior when they’re being dropped off. I had a neighbor throw a lunchbox at the kindergarten teacher the first day of school last year because she said, don’t take me from my mom, and that lasts only usually minutes, and then the kids can kind of reorient themselves to a new situation Dr. Dalton:  [00:07:53] Separation anxiety disorder is chronic and impairing. It gets in the way of their ability to fully do the things that otherwise they want to do so they don’t do sleepovers, that cannot babysitter sometimes. Sometimes they don’t go to school, clearly. It can really interfere and even within separation anxiety disorder, it can look very different so some kids have a fear of being alone and so they won’t sleep in their own bed, which drives parents crazy as you can imagine, or they don’t want to be in a different floor than where their parents are and they’ll kind of follow them like shadows throughout the house. Other kids have more of a fear of abandonment where they’re afraid of what if mom gets sick or dad and they can’t come and pick me up and they begin to worry a lot about what may happen down the road. They might fear the horrible things that the grownups fear like, you know, being abducted or school shootings or the horrible things like that. So it really does vary even within that diagnostic category greatly in terms of the way it presents itself. Jen:  [00:08:52] Okay. All right. Thanks for helping us understand that little bit better. So you mentioned a lot of different reasons why a child might refuse school and in the reading that I did to prepare for this episode, I think they fit into four main criteria or sort of categories. Is that right? Dr. Dalton:   [00:09:09] Yeah, that’s what the research shows. Jen:     [00:09:09] Okay. And would you mind just reviewing those so that we can help to understand what those are and decide whether a child might meet one of those? Dr. Dalton:   [00:09:16] Sure. So what you’re referring to aren’t diagnoses, they are functions. So behavior is many things. The one thing it’s never is random. It’s very complicated and confusing, kind of like meteorology with lots of different interacting variables, but it is fundamentally lawful and so when we do our assessment, we don’t just look at what is the diagnosis that someone might have in the DSM V or the ICD 10. We’re looking for what are the dimensions of their suffering, like how is it they experience the world, but also what are the functions of the behavior and there are basically four usual suspects that we can look for and they fall under two broad categories. The first one is positive reinforcement, which most parents have come across during their training somewhere along the way and it just means that if this event were to follow a behavior, that behavior is more likely to occur in the future. Dr. Dalton:   

This episode revisits the concept of the 30 Million Word Gap concept, which we first covered in an interview with Dr. Doug Sperry a few weeks back. After she heard that I was going to talk with Dr. Sperry, Dr. Roberta Golinkoff – with whom we discussed her book Becoming Brilliant almost two years ago now – asked to come back on to present a rebuttal. We’re going to learn a lot more about the importance of child-directed speech! This episode serves two purposes: it helps us to understand another aspect of the 30 Million Word Gap, and it also demonstrates pretty clearly that scientists – both of whom have the best interests of children at heart – see very different ways of achieving that end. Jump to highlights (04:17) The origin of the 30-million-word gap (06:32) Addressing children directly is important (11:47) Kindergarten has become the new first grade. (17:19) The difference between infant-directed and adult-directed speech. (39:08) Children also need to be responded to in terms of things that are of interest to them   References Adair, J.K., Colegrave, K.S-S, & McManus. M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334. Avineri, N., Johnson, E., Brice‐Heath, S., McCarty, T., Ochs, E., Kremer‐Sadlik, T., Blum, S., Zentella, A.C., Rosa, J., Flores, N., Alim, H.S., & Paris, D. (2015). Invited forum: Bridging the “language gap”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25(1), 66-86. Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is Kindergarten the new first grade? AERA Open 1(4), 1-31. Baugh, J. (2017). Meaning-less difference: Exposing fallacies and flaws in “The Word Gap” hypothesis that conceal a dangerous “language trap” for low-income American families and their children. International Multilingual Research Journal 11(1), 39-51. Brennan, W. (2018, April). Julie Washington’s quest to get schools to respect African American English. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-code-switcher/554099/ Correa-Chavez, M., & Rogoff, B. (2009). Children’s attention to interactions directed to others: Guatemalan and European American Patterns. Developmental Psychology 45(3), 630-641. Craig, H.K., & Washington, J.A. (2004). Grade-related changes in the production of African American English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(2), 450-463. Gee, J.P. (1985). The narrativization of experience in the oral style. Journal of Education 167(1), 9-57 Genishi, C., & Dyson, A. (2009). Children, language, and literacy: Diverse learners in diverse times. New York: Teachers College Press. Golinkoff, R.M., Hoff, E., Rowe, M.L., Tamis-LeMonda, C., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (in press). Language matters: Denying the existence of the 30 Million Word Gap has serious consequences. Child Development. Lee-James, R., & Washington, J.A. (2018). Language skills of bidialectal and bilingual children: Considering a strengths-based perspective. Topics in Language Disorders 38(1), 5-26. Long, H. (2017, September 15). African Americans are the only U.S. racial group earning less than in 2000. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-african-americans-income-census-20170918-story.html NAEP (2017). National student group scores and score gaps (Reading). NAEP. Retrieved from: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2017/#nation/gaps?grade=4 Rogoff, B., Mistry, J., Goncu, A., ,& Mosier, C. (1993). Guided participation in cultural activity by toddlers and caregivers. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development Series No. 236, 58(8), v-173. Ward, M.C. (1971). Them children: A study in language learning. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Washington, J.A., Branum-Martin, L., Sun, C., & Lee-James, R. (2018). The impact of dialect density on the growth of language and reading in African American children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49, 232-247.

We recently did an episode on the impact of intergenerational trauma, which was about how the ways we were parented, and even the ways our parents were parented, ends up influencing the relationship we have with our children – and often not in a positive way. But there’s another side to this story: relationships between the generations can actually have enormously beneficial effects on children’s lives, even when these are affected by issues like radically different parenting styles, and mental illness. Today we explore the more positive side of intergenerational relationship with Dr. Peter Whitehouse, who (along with his wife, Cathy) co-founded The Intergenerational School in Cleveland, OH, which is now part of a small network of three schools that use this model. Have you ever thought about how you talk about ageing effects what your children think about older people? (I hadn’t, but I have now!) Do you struggle to navigate the difference between the things your parents want to say to and buy for your child, and your own values? Do you worry about what your child might think of their grandparent’s absent-mindedness or volatility? Join us as Dr. Whitehouse and I navigate a path through these and other issues. Jump to highlights (03:07) The definition of intergenerativity. (09:04) how people and other cultures interact with the elderly generally, and specifically with grandparents in particular (13:49) When kids have a good relationship with elders in their own family, they are more open to relationships with adults and elders in society at large. (16:56) The underlying principle of the intergenerational school and how it differs from a typical school. (19:35) What an intergenerational playground looks like. (35:15) The tension we feel in life about the security of the same and the danger of difference. (39:11) How can families encourage intergenerational relationships? (51:46) The more we compartmentalize people and categorize them as sick or diseased, the more we're afraid of them.   References Babcock, R., MaloneBeach, E.E., & Woodworth-Hou, B. (2016). Intergenerational intervention to mitigate children’s bias against the elderly. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 14(4), 274-287. Bessell, S. (2017). The role of intergenerational relationships in children’s experiences of community. Children & Society 31, 263-275. Bostrom, A-K., & Schmidt-Hertha, B. (2017). Intergenerational relationships and lifelong learning. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(1), 1-3. Even-Zohar, A., & Garby, A. (2016). Great-grandparents’ role perception and its contribution to their quality of life. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 14(3), 197-219. Flash, C. (2015). The Intergenerational Learning Center, Providence Mount St. Vincent, Seattle. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 13(4), 338-341. George, D.R., & Whitehouse, P.J. (2010). Intergenerational volunteering and quality of life for persons with mild-to-moderate dementia: Results from a 5-month intervention study in the United States. Journal of the American Geriatric Society 58(4), 796-797. Geraghty, R., Gray, J., & Ralph, D. (2015). ‘One of the best members of the family’: Continuity and change in young children’s relationships with their grandparents. In L. Connolly (Ed.), The ‘Irish’ Family (pp.124-139). New York, NY: Routledge. Hake, B.J. (2017). Gardens as learning spaces: Intergenerational learning in urban food gardens. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(1), 26-38. Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J.F., Jones, B.G.B., Alvarez, H., & Charnov, E.L. (2000). The grandmother hypothesis and human evolution. In Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective, edited by L. Cronk, N. Chagnon & W. Irons, pp. 231-252. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Kirkwood, T., Bond, J., May, C., McKeith, I., & Teh, M. (2010). Mental capital and wellbeing through life: Future challenges. In C. Cooper, J. Field, U. Goswami, R. Jenkins, & B. Sahakian (Eds.), Mental capital and wellbeing (pp. 3–53). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Low, L-F., Russell, F., McDonald, T., & Kauffman, A. (2015). Grandfriends, an intergenerational program for nursing-home residents and preschoolers: A randomized trial. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 13(3), 227-240. Murayama, Y., Obha, H., Yasunanaga, M., Nonaka, K., Takeuchi, R., Nishi, M., Sakuma, N., Uchida, H., Shinkai, S., & Fujiwara, Y. (2015). The effect of intergenerational programs on the mental health of elderly adults. Aging and Mental Health 19(4), 306-316. Schwartz, L.K., & Simmons, J.P. (2001). Contact quality and attitudes toward the elderly. Educational Gerontology 27(2), 127-137. Senior, E., & Green J. (2017). Through the ages: Developing relationships between the young and the old. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships 15(3), 295-305. Sun, Y., & Jiang, N. (2017). The effect of grandparents’ co-parenting on young children’s personality and adaptation: Chinese three-generation families. Asian Social Science 13(5), 7-15. Whitehouse, P.J. (n.d.). Intergenerativity: Imaging between to imagine beyond. Taos Institute. Retrieved from https://www.taosinstitute.net/Websites/taos/files/Content/5694536/Whitehouse_-_Intergenerativity_presentation.pdf Whitehouse, P.J. (2010, Spring). Taking brain health to a deeper and broader level. Neurological institute Journal. 17-22. Whitehouse, P.J., Bendezu, E., Fallcreek, S., & Whitehouse, C. (2000). Intergenerational community schools: A new practice for a new time. Educational Gerontology 26, 761-770.    

“I spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter – and not only did she not say “thank you,” but she refused to help clean up!” (I actually said this myself this morning:-)) “We took our son to Disneyland and went on every ride he wanted to go on except one, which was closed, and he spent the rest of the trip whining about how the whole trip was ruined because he didn’t get to go on that one ride.” (I hope I never have to say this one…I’m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)   You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners, and what the research says about teaching manners, and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners MUST be explicitly taught – that your child will NOT learn to say “thank you” unless you tell your child “say thank you” every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well.  The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they are developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. But what really underlies manners?  Well, ideas like gratitude.  Because when we train children to say “thank you” before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren’t really experiencing gratitude. Dr. Jonathan Tudge of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child’s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that. Dr. Tudge’s book, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you’re interested.   References Halberstadt, A.G., Langley, H.A., Hussong, A.M., Rothenberg, W.A., Coffman, J.L., Mokrova, I., & Costanzo, P.R. (2016). Parents’ understanding of gratitude in children: A thematic analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 439-451. Kiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O’Brien, L.T., Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (2016). If children won lotteries: Materialism, gratitude, and imaginary windfall spending. Young Consumers 17(4), 408-418. Mendonca, S.E., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Payir, A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of gratitude in seven societies: Cross-cultural highlights. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 135-150. Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Poelker, A.E., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of the virtue of gratitude: Theoretical foundations and cross-cultural issues. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 3-18. Mokrova, I.L., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). Wishes, gratitude, and spending preferences in Russian Children. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 102-116. Nelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056. Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Wang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46(8), 1039-1058.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners and what the research says about teaching manners and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners must be explicitly taught, that your child will not learn to say thank you unless you tell your child, say thank you every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they’re developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. Recently I saw an article from the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center about the development of gratitude and I saw it quoted Professor Jonathan Tudge, who is actually edited a very recent book of research called developing gratitude in children and adolescents, and I knew we’d found the right person to speak with about this. Jen: [01:42] Professor Tudge, who goes by “Jon,” works in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, although you will hear from his accent in a minute that he’s perhaps not native to that part of the world. Most of his research focuses on the interrelations between the social world and children’s social, moral and cognitive development. He draws heavily on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and Urie Bronfenbrenner, both of whom are practically old friends of our regular listeners by now, which means he’s interested in how social relationships shape development and in observing children “in the wild” as it were, rather than in lab situations. Welcome Jon. Dr. Tudge: [02:18] Welcome Jen. Thanks. Jen: [02:20] Thank you. So let’s start with the easy questions. What is gratitude? How do you define it? Dr. Tudge: [02:27] Yeah. It’s not terribly easy. Jen: [02:29] No, it’s not. Dr. Tudge:  [02:30] No. Um, I think there are three aspects to a definition of gratitude. First of all, there has to be a benefactor, so when who’s now given something that’s really nice or who’s helped in some nice way and second beneficiary, the person that received that has to appreciate the good intention of the benefactor and feel good about that person and about what’s being done. And third, I think this is the most important part, has to be interested, really addressed. It has to want to desire to reciprocate in some way if there’s an appropriate opportunity. So there are three different parts to what I think is a good definition of the word. Jen:[03:11] And so that sort of leads me to think that we’re going to struggle with this in very young children. Dr. Tudge: [03:19] Uh, yes, we are. Obviously they’re not going to be grateful they’re not, they’re not. They’re not going to be grateful. Well, we have to be doing, I think is to try to think about ways in which we can best enable them over time to become the sort of grateful individuals we’d like them to be. Dr. Tudge:  [03:38] Yeah, and even adults I think struggle with this and I have struggled with this over the years and only, probably in the last maybe five to 10 years or so, have become more cognizant of the fact that when I do someone a favor, when I do something for them, it matters more that the favor, you know, it might be a very small favor, but if it’s something that the other person wants, that’s much better than something that I might perceive as being a really big deal and doing that for that person. If it’s not something the person really valued in the first place. Dr. Tudge: [04:08] That’s right. Although I have to say, you know, if you try to do something that you think is going to be really nice for that person, I think that person ought to be grateful anyway because your intention was to do something nice for that person, right. So I think intentions do matter and that’s another reason why you can’t expect too much your children because it’s hard for children to understand exactly what someone else’s intention is. Jen: [04:34] Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay. So you have a very specific definition of gratitude and I think that from what I’ve read in your research and the research of others that can create problems when you try and measure gratitude because it seems as though all the tools that are used to measure it or looking at much more general concepts about how thankful is the child for being able to watch a sunset or for having things in their lives and that kind of thing. How does all that fit together? Dr. Tudge: [05:01] Yeah. It doesn’t fit very well at all that I think that most people who say they’re measuring gratitude are in fact measuring his appreciation, which is a different concept; its much broader. I have no problem with any of those scale as being a really good way of measuring how appreciative we are of all sorts of things. Whether it’s like you say, a beautiful sunset or the fact that is finally stopped thundering and lightning here, where I am, or the fact that you know, I live in a nice apartment here and I’m so much better off than anybody else, so I can appreciate all those sorts of things. I can appreciate the fact that I reached the grand old age of 69 and I’m very healthy. I mean so many things and that has almost nothing to do with gratitude. Jen: [05:46] And that’s specifically because nobody else is responsible for that. Right? There’s no benefactor that bestowed that on you. Dr. Tudge:  [05:53] There’s no benefactor. Jen: [05:54] Unless you have a particular world belief. Dr. Tudge:  [05:58] Well, yeah, you might. Even then that’s not enough. I think so. If I think the older this is your, for example, God, given which I might, but still if I don’t reciprocate in some way, just accept these things as my good fortune of my good luck or whatever, but don’t try and do anything to reciprocate I’m not being grateful. And I think that notion of trying to reciprocate if at all possible, you know, when it’s appropriate to do so is really important. So for example, if the sun was shining at the end of the day, beautiful sunset and I don’t appreciate it, people would never accuse me of being ungrateful, you know, it’d be stupid, wouldn’t it? They might say he’s unappreciative or you know, have a nice meal and I just wolf it down. You would never say I’m ungrateful for the meal or that I’m unappreciative of it. Dr. Tudge: [06:48] You might say I’m ungrateful to the person who has taken the time to cook it for me. But that’s because gratitude is towards another person. And if someone has done something nice for me, I don’t think it matters terribly much how warm and fuzzy I feel they know a good emotional response to that, that wonderful meal or that kind act. That’s great. It’s nice, it feels good for me. But if I had the chance to do something for that person, when that person needs it and I don’t do anything, it doesn’t matter how warm, fuzzy, and emotionally appreciative I was, I’m still an ungrateful jerk because I didn’t help when I had the challenge to do so. So I think it really got to distinguish between those two things, between appreciation and gratitude, and even talking about gratitude. You can’t ignore an grateful ingratitude. Jen: [07:47] So that makes me wonder then how critical is the other person’s need and reciprocating that gratitude if you never see the person have a need or is that just a completely unrealistic scenario? People are always going to have a need that you could potentially come in and fulfill. Dr. Tudge: [08:01] No, I don’t think so. I think there oftentimes people do things for you and you never have a chance to reciprocate and that does not make you an ungrateful person. You know, we can’t always do it. And even if you know, let’s say it’s pouring with rain, you can tell what’s been going on here the last couple of days. It’s pouring with rain. You’ve really helped me. And I’m driving along and my little sports car – I don’t actually have a sports car but let’s say I do – and your stuck there by the side of the road. Should I pick you up? Well, of course I should if I’m a grateful person, but it so happens that right next to you is a heavily pregnant young woman who’s just about to give birth and needs to get to the hospital. I ignore you and pick her up and take you. One would say I’m ungrateful in that sense. There are some situations in which we can’t actually reciprocate and there are some times when we can reciprocate, but we still don’t actually do so for valid reasons. When we call so an ungrateful, it’s because they typically, when they have a relevant opportunity to reciprocate to someone that’s already done something nice for them, they don’t do that. And I don’t care how emotionally warm they felt when they got the benefit. If they don’t try and help when they have a chance, they’re not grateful. It’s that simple. Jen: [09:28] So then I think you’ve partially answered the question that is on all the parents’ minds, which is is the act of saying thank you, gratitude. Dr. Tudge: [09:40] Well that’s a really interesting question, isn’t it? Because I [unintelligible] gratitude, but I think there are different types of gratitude and when you talk about a young child, you know, the mere fact of saying and meaning it, oh thank you Auntie Jen for giving me that, you know, is appropriate at the age. But if all we ever do is say thank you as adults and never tried to reciprocate, I think that’s not enough. So I think we got to think about not just gratitude is some generic thing, but rather has different types of gratitude that people can express. And you know, “thank you: is the simplest form. It is. It’s easily confused with just politeness. It doesn’t have anything to do necessarily with gratitude, but it could. I mean if you do something for me and I immediately say, “Oh Jen, thank you so much. I mean that was just absolutely wonderful what you’ve done for me. If ever I find a way to repay you, I’ll certainly try and do that.” That sounds to me like an expression of gratitude, right? So it’s not an grateful behavior, but I think we can do more on the more is that notion of reciprocation. So for young children that, that, you know saying thank you is not a bad thing at all. Jen:[11:05] All right, so. So then let’s dig into that a little bit because just the getting the child to say “thank you” can be problematic. And so as we talked about in our episode on manners, the research basically concludes you have to do this and so what I am interested in is understanding does this hurt or does it help? So different researchers looked at whether parents will say say thank you to your child. Or some parents will say, “What do you say?” Well there’s only really one response there and I’ve sort of gone down a bit of a different tack in which when somebody gives my daughter a gift, I give her a minute. And most of the time she doesn’t say thank you, and I say, I really give a heartfelt thank you to the person who gave her the gift from me to the benefactor in the hopes that that will...

Explore the impact of intergenerational trauma on parenting and the transmission of abuse and neglect. Understand how trauma is processed in the brain and the importance of discussing trauma with children. Discover the effects of transference phenomena and the role of therapy in understanding triggers. Learn the significance of taking a breath in challenging situations and recognizing signs of intergenerational trauma.

Pretty regularly I see posts in online parenting groups saying “My child loves to pretend, and they always want me to participate.  I dare not tell anyone else, but I CAN’T STAND PRETEND PLAY.  What should I do?” In this final (unless something else catches my interest!) episode in our extended series on play, Dr. Ansley Gilpin of the University of Alabama helps us to do a deep dive into what children learn from pretend play, and specifically what they learn from fantasy play, which is pretend play regarding things that could not happen in real life (like making popcorn on Mars). We’ll discuss the connection between fantasy play and children’s executive function, the problems with studying fantasy play, and the thing you’ve been waiting for: do you HAVE to do fantasy play with your child if you just can’t stand it (and what to do instead!) If you missed other episodes in this series, you might want to check them out: we started out asking “what is the value of play?”, then we looked at the benefits of outdoor play and talked with Dr. Scott Sampson about his book How to Raise a Wild Child.  We wrapped up with outdoor play by trying to understand whether we should allow our children to take more risks.     References Bergen, D. (2013). Does pretend play matter? Searching for Evidence: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 45-48. Buchsbaum, D., Bridgers, S., Weisberg, D.S., & Gopnik, A. (2012). The power of possibility: Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning, and pretend play. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 367. 2202-2212. Carlson, S.M., White, R.E., & Davis-Unger, A.C. (2014). Evidence for a relation between executive function and pretense representation in preschool children. Cognitive Development 29, 1-16. Gilpin, A.T., Brown, MM., & Pierucci, J.M. (2015). Relations between fantasy orientation and emotion regulation in preschool. Early Education and Development 26(7), 920-932. Hirsh-Pasek, K., Weisberg, D.S., & Golinkoff, R.M. (2013). Embracing complexity: Rethinking the relation between play and learning: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 35-39. Hoffman, J.D., & Russ, S.W. (2016). Fostering pretend play skills and creativity in elementary school school girls: A group play intervention. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 10(1), 114-125. Krasnor, L. R., & Pepler, D. J. (1980). The study of children’s play: Some suggested future directions. In K. H. Rubin (Ed.), Children’s play: New directions for child development (pp. 85–95). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lancy, D. F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Li, J., Hestenes, L.L., & Wang, Y.C. (2016). Links between preschool children’s social skills and observed pretend play in outdoor childcare environments. Early Childhood Education Journal 44, 61-68. Lillard, A. (2011). Mother-child fantasy play. In A. D. Pelligrini (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the development of play (pp. 284–295). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lillard, A.S., Lerner, M.D., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Smith, E.D., & Palmquist, C.M. (2013). The impact of pretend play on children’s development: A review of the evidence. Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 1-34. Lillard, A.S., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Palmquist, C.M., Lerner, M.D., & Smith, E.D. (2013). Concepts, theories, methods and reasons: Why do the children (pretend) play? Reply to Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (2013); Bergen (2013); and Walker and Gopnik (2013). Psychological Bulletin 139(1), 49-52. Ma, L., & Lillard, A. (2017). The evolutionary significance of pretend play: Two-year-olds’ interpretation of behavioral cues. Learning & Behavior 45, 441-448. Paley, V. (2009). The importance of fantasy, fairness, and friends in children’s play: An interview with Vivian Gussin Paley. American Journal of Play 2(2), 121-138. Pierucci, J.M., O’Brien, C.T., McInnis, M.A., Gilpin, A.T., & Barber, A.B. (2014). Fantasy orientation constructs and related executive function development in preschool: Developmental benefits to executive functions by being a fantasy-oriented child. International Journal of Behavioral Development 38(1), 62-69. Singer, D.G., & Singer, J.L. (2013). Reflections on pretend play, imagination, and child development. Interview in American Journal of Play 6(1), 1-13. Sutton-Smith, B., & Kelly-Byrne, D. (1984). The idealization of play. In P. K. Smith (Ed.), Play in animals and humans (pp. 305–321). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Taggart, J., Heise, M.J., & Lillard, A.S. (2018). The real thing: Preschoolers prefer actual activities to pretend ones. Developmental Science 21, e12582.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen:   [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of your parenting Mojo. We’ve done a number of episodes by now in our series on the importance of play and I think this actually might be the last of them for a while. We started out by asking what is the value of play, and then we looked at the benefits of outdoor play and we talked with Dr Scott Sampson about his book, How to Raise a Wild Child. Then we wrapped up with outdoor play by trying to understand whether we should allow our children to take more risks. As we finish this whole series on play, I wanted to look at a question that comes up a lot in parenting groups that I’m in, which is: “my child loves fantasy play, but I just can’t stand it. What do I do?” So in this episode we’re going to try and get to the bottom of whether fantasy play really is important to a child’s development and what you can do if you just can’t stand it either. Jen:     [01:24] So to help us think through these things. I’m here today with Dr Ansley Gilpin, who is an associate professor at the University of Alabama and a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on cognitive development in early childhood, so between about ages three and eight, specifically with a focus on executive functions and imagination as well as development of academic and socioemotional skills. Dr Gilpin is exploring the potential mediation effect of executive functions on school readiness intervention outcomes as well as long term intervention effects on cognitive development. Welcome Dr. Gilpin. New Speaker:   [01:57] Thank you for having me. Jen:   [01:59] All right, so let’s start all the way at the beginning here. I wonder if you could define for us what is fantasy play. Dr. Gilpin:   [02:06] So when we talk about fantasy play in research and when I observed children doing it in their natural day to day lives I’m talking about is a type of pretend play that children tend to do on their own, which involves them pretending something that they don’t experience in everyday life. So differentiated from pretending to be a mommy or pretending to cook or pretending to go to the movies. So with fantasy play they are pretending something that they have not experienced before, like making popcorn on the moon. Jen:   [02:45] Oh Wow. Okay. So that, that’s a very important distinction there. So pretend play is one thing and fantasy play is another thing as far as the research is concerned, then? Dr. Gilpin:   [02:56] Pretty much. Fantasy play as a type of pretend. Jen:    [02:59] Okay. Okay Great. So there has been a fair bit of research done on the benefits of fantasy play on children’s development. And when I read in the popular press about fantasy play, I see these general assumptions that are made that fantasy play is really critical for children’s development. And I know that there was a meta-analysis done, which is a study that looks at a lot of different studies and tries to understand what’s the overall direction of the evidence and you weren’t involved in that study, but I know that you’ve commented on it and your work as well, but that method analysis examined theoretical ways that fantasy play could influence a child’s development and those kind of varied from fantasy play having a critical role to being an index rather than a promoter of development to a fantasy play. Kind of coinciding with other aspects of development but not really being that important. And I was really surprised to find in that paper that the research really doesn’t support the position that fantasy play is critical to the majority of aspects of children’s development, but the far larger problem, but most of the research has such a huge methodological problems that it’s hard to say much more than fantasy play might be linked with some aspects of children’s development. I wonder if you could kind of comment on the general status of the literature and your view of it. Dr. Gilpin:   [04:14] Yes. So this is one exciting part of this research, so with Dr Lillard she and her colleagues demonstrated was going through all of the research on pretense, pretend, play, imaginative play, fantasy, play, all those different types of play that are really very similar and looking to see whether or not there was research to show that really it was causal in facilitating development and part of the excitement is that we don’t know the answer to that yet and we don’t have a lot of support to show that it’s actually causing development to occur or that it is absolutely critical for development and it may not be; it may just be to her point related to development or it may enhance development. It may just develop at the same time as other skills. So we really don’t know. And as we improve on methodology and improve on our physiological measurements and biological measurements and our ability to observe naturalistic play and get multiple measures, that’s really going to help us be able to make those decisions. And so really as the research skill technique and equipment evolves, we will evolve with this question. Jen:    [05:42] Okay. Yeah. And I did wonder to what extent, the way that we attempt to study pretend play is part of the reason that we’re not finding these significant effects. Because when you actually go into some of the studies that are included in that meta-analysis and you look at the methodology, you see the researchers are often going to put children in a lab and they asked them to do some kind of specific task and then they say, okay, now let’s pretend with this specific toy that I’m giving you and you have to do it in this way. And so firstly, I wonder, is it possible that researchers don’t differentiate between pretend and fantasy play in the way that you just did? And secondly, children engaging in fantasy play at home: it’s the child that says, “Mom, I’m going to make popcorn on the moon.” It’s not me that saying that. So how much of this is an artifact of the researcher telling the child how to play? Dr. Gilpin:    [06:29] Right? And so I recently got a grant from the Templeton Foundation to work on that. And so what we did is we really help define the different types of play and that’s going to be important going forward just as you said, so that we’re not combining types of play when we study and confusing them and also then how we’re measuring them. So we created a measurement that parents can report on. So as a parent myself and having interviewed literally thousands of children, they say whatever pops into their head half the time and they’re not good at giving you the last six months, what was it? What did they like to do? They tell you their favorite thing was what they did five minutes ago. That’s just part of their memory development. And so it’s really going to be very interesting as the methodology changes and improves. And that is somewhat technology and somewhat learning. Developmental Science psychology is really early science and so we’re really learning as we go and it’s really exciting. Jen:    [07:32] Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s very strange for non-scientists like me to understand that this is relatively new landscape. If things that there aren’t better answers to a lot of these questions yet when we’ve been studying them for 20 or 30 years and in fact that’s not long enough to really fully understand them yet. Yeah. So one of the things that I thought was really cool coming out of that paper that you mentioned by Dr Lillard was published in 2013 and then you and your colleagues really took that and said, okay, well yes, we acknowledge the methodology and some of these papers isn’t great, so let’s see how we can do better. And so you’ve published a paper showing there’s a correlation between fantasy orientation and executive function and I wonder if you can tell some more about that please. Dr. Gilpin:   [08:17] Sure. So the correlational research, to be honest, doesn’t get us very far, but it’s our first stepping stone. Right? So it just says that when children participate in more fantasy play that either we can measure by directly observing the child or their parent or their teacher tells us that they are higher in fantasy play or pretend play than some of the other kids and then this particular paper that we were talking about fantasy play, so the experiences they haven’t done before. What we found was that correlated with children who had higher what we call executive functions. So those are basic cognitive skills that have something to do with your intelligence and your ability to process, so things like your ability to inhibit and your ability to pay attention and shift your attention when you need to. Your ability to engage your working or short term memory, and I’m using that right now as I try to remember the executive function… Dr. Gilpin:   [09:16] Your ability to plan and organize, which is a little bit later than the toddler years, but those are all skills that are related to how much a child participated in fantasy play. And we measured this in two ways. Both in how much they participated according to their teachers and their parents as well as how much they could show us that they could do it. So how imaginative was it really as well as their, what we call propensity towards play. So parents may have noticed, some children just really like to engage in imaginative or fantasy play and some children really don’t seem to do that very much and that seems to be an individual difference that we can measure in personality later in adulthood. And you can think about it in terms of yourself as well; whether or not you liked to go to see movies that are more imaginative, more fantastical, whether you can keep open the possibility that there might be extra-terrestrials possibly trying to be a super weirdo. Some examples here versus people who would much rather see a movie about a scientist or about mathematics. Jen:   [10:36] So a number of points came up here. Firstly, if my husband’s listening to this interview, which he does occasionally when they published and he’s going to be laughing as he drives home from work because I have zero tolerance for suspension of disbelief. So yeah, I have no interest whatsoever in watching a movie about something that couldn’t really happen and to some extent I kind of see that in my daughter and that she does engage in a little bit of fantasy play. But it’s more of a brief imagination rather than an extended idea that she plays with for a long time. And so what we’re seeing here in, in the research I think is there’s a correlation and so there may be some link between executive function and fantasy play, but that firstly, not every child who doesn’t engage in fantasyy play has poor executive function skills. And secondly, it’s really hard to understand which direction this correlation goes in. Right? We don’t know which half of it leads the other half Dr. Gilpin:   [11:33] right now. We did a follow up study promoted in part by Dr Lillards meta-analysis. What we did is we put the kids into three separate play conditions over a period of five weeks and in their own schools in their own way, we didn’t force them to play with a certain topic in mind; we just simply encouraged...