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

Does play really matter? Do children get anything out of it? Or is it just messing around; time that could be better spent preparing our children for success in life? Today we talk with Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, about the benefits of play for both children and – I was surprised to find – adults. This is the first in a series of episodes on play – lots more to come on outdoor play (and how to raise kids who love being outdoors), risky play, and imaginative play.   Dr. Stuart Brown's Book Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul - Affiliate link   References Bjorklund, D.F., & Brown, R.D. (1998). Physical play and cognitive development: Integrating activity, cognition, and education. Child Development, 69, 604-606. Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York, NY: Penguin. Christakis, D. A., F. J. Zimmerman, and M. Garrison. (2007). Effect of block play on language acquisition and attention in toddlers a pilot randomized controlled trial. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine,161 (10), 967-971. Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row. Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner. Elkind, D. (2003). Thanks for the memory: The lasting value of true play. Young Children 58(3), 46-51. Lancy, D.F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:  [00:40] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We’re kicking off a series of episodes today on the topic of play. Now I hear you wondering: play? There’s enough research about play to be able to do one episode, never mind a series of episodes?! And my response to that would be, Oh yes, there is just you. Wait, so we’re going to kick off today with an overview of the topic and then we’ll delve into various aspects of play with a particular focus on outdoor play because it’s important to me and just sometimes that’s how we pick topics around here. So today we have is our very special guest Dr. Stuart Brown, MD. I first learned of his work when I heard the National Institute for Play mentioned during a show on NPR. I thought to myself, there is a national institute for play. I have to talk to somebody from there, and so Dr. Brown, who’s the founder and director of the National Institute for Play is here to share his research and work. I was fascinated to read his book play, how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul because I was expecting it to tell me how important play is to my daughter’s development, but I wasn’t expecting it to tell me how important play is to my own wellbeing as well. So we’ll get into that to welcome Dr. Brown. Dr. Brown: [01:51] Glad to be here Jen. Jen:    [01:53] So let’s start with something that seems kind of obvious, but then you think about it a bit and you realize that you’re actually not quite sure what it is. So I’m wondering, can you please define play for us? Dr. Brown: [02:04] Well, it’s very hard to define; it’s a little like love in that play is an experience and it is often prompted by pre-verbal sorts of impulses. But having said that, we always like to think of it as something that is definable, although I think most of us, if we see a puppy or kitty playing in front of us, we know that what they’re doing is play, but it’s voluntary; it’s done for its own sake. It appears purposeless. It takes one out of a sense of time. There is a diminished sense of self importance. You’re just engaged in what you’re doing. It’s fun and pleasurable. It can be interrupted. It’s not driven like addictive or other kinds of activities in general. Like to go back to it and experience it again and it is something that’s deeply instinctively embedded in the humans. So that’s a start anyhow. Jen:   [03:11] And I’m wondering if you can talk us through, Scott Eberle, I think is how you say his name. He has a six step process of play that you describe in your book. Can you walk us through those six steps? Dr. Brown:  [03:22] I don’t know if I can go through all six steps butt Scott Eberle was the distinguished editor of the American Journal of Play from its start until just recently when he retired and he has established what he considers the elements of play, kind of like the periodic table of elements define the atomic structure. Then he goes from anticipation to poise and describes there’s anticipation, surprise, increased strength, agility, curiosity, and takes these elements, and if I had them listed in front of me. I could read them off, but he has a whole array of gradations that go from, as you anticipate, for example, an experience of play, whether it’s playing a sport or reading a novel that you’re looking forward to. There is that heightened sense of anticipation. Then once you get into the various elements of play, they establish a kind of a “state of play.” Then he and I have gone back and forth. It had lots of really sort of discussions about his play elements fit very well into the burgeoning neuroscience of play. Jen:     [04:46] Mmmm. And I’m also wondering as you were reading, as you were talking through some of the elements of play, I was thinking about Czikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, but it seems to me as though that might be more applicable to when people are working more than playing because they have goal-directed behavior and you said that the play doesn’t have goal-directed behavior. Can you help us to tease out what are the connections between play and flow? Dr. Brown:   [05:11] I don’t know that it’s correct to say that it doesn’t have goal direction. It is at the time one is experiencing it, the outcome of the experience is less important than the experience itself. That doesn’t mean that the experience doesn’t have purpose. I think one can enjoy a hike or a job and say, oh, well, you know, I’m just doing this for its own sake, and yet it increases physical fitness and personal health, so there is an outcome. Dr. Brown:   [05:45] So this is not to say that the experience of play itself doesn’t have outcome and deep purpose. It’s just that at the moment, if you’re terribly anxious about performing, you’re probably not playing as much as if you’re just doing something for its own sake. Jen:   [06:04] And so you alluded to something there that I wanted to get into a bit more deeply and that is about the purpose of play and specifically how that differs for children from different cultures. Dr. Brown:  [06:16] Well, I don’t know that it differs; I think there are cultures that foster and cultures that suppress it, but I think particularly developmentally that the value of play and the necessity of play for wholeness and wellbeing at a full use of curiosity and engagement in the world, those are universals and they apply both to the human experience cross-culturally and they apply to social mammals at play, and so you see the necessity of particularly early developmental play, whether you’re a coyote or a dolphin or a horse or a human. Jen:   [07:03] Okay. So this is sort of very common experience then for mammals. And is it right to say that humans have sort of perfected it and taken it to another level, or is it much the same as you see in humans as in other animals? Dr. Brown:   [07:20] We’re different in that we have language, imagination, curiosity, the search for novelty, but the patterns of play that we see in kids and in highly intelligent animals really quite similar. Then we can learn from animal play a lot about its value because laboratory scientists can objectify that and study it and suppress it and then see the benefits or the effect of a lack of play on development and in highly social mammals and that’s not an ethical thing we could do or want to do with humans. Jen: [07:54] Right, and I know that your work has actually focused on children and adults where children experienced play deprivation. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Dr. Brown:    [08:05] Well, in a long, long time ago, over 50 years ago, I got involved in studying a mass murderer who had gone to the top of the Texas tower after killing his wife and mother. He was a 25 year old ex-Marine Eagle Scout, no legal history and [unintelligible] killed 14 people and wounded 32. It was then the largest mass murder in the U.S., which unfortunately has been superseded by may that we’ve seen in our recent time. Anyhow, we looked closely at this individual’s life and he was killed on the top of the tower by vigilante gunfire to stop his outpouring of violence, but we did a very, very detailed study of his life history going back three generations and I won’t go through the whole story, but we found – we being the commission – and we found that his father had systematically suppressed play again and again and again, so that literally this young man grew up without the experience of free play and with the need to conform to the demands and control of this sadistic and disturbed father. Dr. Brown:   [09:30] So that initial study which was done very carefully and included a very detailed review of his physiology, sort of opened my eyes to what’s going on here that play is so important, particularly in this young man’s life? And it appeared to be necessary for him to have suppressed his violent impulses, which were hidden in part of his diaries and imagination, but not been evident until this moment and the tragedy on the top of the tower. So that then led to a formal study of homicidal males and the Texas prison system for a year or so with a team and we found that the homicidal individuals who were very violent men compared to match controls had very different play history. They there were isolated or bullied or tortured or they were themselves bullies. They didn’t have a normal play background, so we found in that and some other research following, I won’t go through all of it, that have a normal rough and tumble play and the kinds of activities that most of us engage in spontaneously as children were not experienced in general by the populations of violence and social man and so that led me in the course of my long clinical career to review the play histories of everyone that I saw and the psychiatric interns and residents and psychology intern, social workers and the like that were part of my teaching career also collected these detailed…as detailed as possible play histories and one from that long and involved anecdotal history and again, they get a sense that when play is adequate, it really leads to a more fulfilled and meaningful life in one play is seriously deprived life that it has consequences and they’re not obviously homicide or murder, but there are consequences that I think are significant, so it’s from that long base that led to my, when I left clinical practice, led to my independent scholarship and establishment of the National Institute for Play. Jen:     [12:06] Okay. So I’m curious as to some of the methodological issues with understanding the importance of play history as you’ve just described it and I imagine that people when they were children who had sub-optimal play, history’s probably also had other things going on in their homes as well. You mentioned the Texas murderer having a difficult relationship with a sub-optimal father. How do you tease out the importance of play compared to everything else that might be going on in a family where play is not valued? Dr. Brown:   [12:37] I think it’s difficult. And I think the fact that these anecdotal reviews were not all established with a rigorous research design means that one can make generalizations about that, but what you see from the lives, particularly where play is intensely, where there’s real deprivation, let’s say the child is isolated or they’ve got a psychotic mother and father, so that there’s no verbal interchange and playfulness and you begin to see the really severe deprivations, then from that and from the murderers, once you get a sense that even if there is abuse and poverty and other kinds of mayhem in the family background, still what stands out as different from a lot of other individuals who had some of those same difficulties, but were able to play, we do see that play has a nourishing, developmentally important component that leads toward wellbeing and resiliency and self organization and things that are otherwise don’t seem to happen in the absence of play. Dr. Brown:   [13:56] So I can’t tell you that you know, this is. I can write an article and a peer review group would say, okay, we can now pinpoint exactly what play does. I don’t think one can do that and separate it from some of the other issues, but when you then take a look at the animal world and then objectify and limit play highly playful, playful rats, for example, and see the effect on their development and brain function, you begin to get a sense that the experience of play among the playful social mammal is necessary for competency and wellbeing. Jen:   [14:43] Alright, so that helps us to understand why play is important. So let’s talk about some of the hows we revisit pretty often on this show David Lancy’s book, The Anthropology of Childhood. And so I went back to that book and saw that there was a whole listing of entries in the index for play. And so I went through and read them and I found that in many cultures parents just don’t play with their children at all, particularly if you’re in a culture where there’s a high child mortality rate and the parents just aren’t supposed to get attached to their child. And in many cultures parents aim to raise children who are compliant. And so they do this by wearing the baby, by anticipating the child’s needs. And essentially by not interacting with the child unnecessarily, but in our culture, It’s pretty common for parents to actually play with children, but I was sort of amused to realize that children in other cultures will often play independently for hours by themselves and American parents do sometimes play with their children, but they also expanded quite a bit of energy trying to get their children to play independently, which children and other cultures have mastered perfectly well without being prompted. So I’m curious as to your thoughts on the value of parental play with children to the child. Dr. Brown:    [15:57] Well, I think parental play is extremely valuable and has a exploration of the possible, searching on novelty, being secure and safe in a protected environment so that there is, I think, enrichment that occurs with culturally approved parent child play. I do think there are almost no cultures that suppress play enough where’s there’s almost no child-child or peer-peer play. And I think many cultures there’s not parent child play, but there’s a lot of mixed age play where the older kids play with the younger kids and there really is a kind of a natural parenting among the play styles that take place. And I’m not an anthropologist, so I don’t claim to cultural expertise. I think there’s some general principles that indicate play is really important developmentally and it is a natural experience for child-child exposure to each other. There’s an onset of play when that happens, when your kids will play, whether they’re Eskimos or Aborigines, they will still play. Or live on the upper...

I hear a huge crash. It’s my favorite glass vase.  I hear “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mommy!  It just fell!” as I run full-pelt from the other end of the house. It was a family heirloom passed down by my grandmother.  I’ve asked her not to touch it a hundred times.  I am beyond furious.  “Please don’t be mad, Mommy.  It was an accident.” I clench my teeth.  “I’m not mad.” _______________________________________________________   What does my daughter learn from this exchange?  How does my own emotional regulation affect what she learns about how to regulate her own emotions?  We’ll learn about this in today’s episode. Note that this episode is the second in the ill-fated experimental short episodes – we’ll be back to the regular length hereafter!  In case you missed it, the first episode in this series was Three Reasons Not To Say You’re OK.   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.   Other episodes mentioned in this show How parenting affects child development The impact of divorce on a child’s development How to scaffold children’s learning to help them succeed   References Bariola, E., Hughes, E.K., & Gullone, E. (2012). Relationships between parent and child emotion regulation strategy use: A brief report. Journal of Child and Family Studies 21(3), 443-448. Butler, E.A., Egloff, B., ,Wilhelm, F.H., Smith, N.C., Erickson, E.A., & Gross, J.J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion 3(1), 48-67. Christenfeld, B., Gerin, W., Linden, W., Sanders, M., Mathur, J., Deich, J.D., & Pickering, T.G. (1997). Social support effects on cardiovascular reactivity: Is a stranger as effective as a friend? Psychosomatic Medicine 59, 388-398. Cohen, S., & Wills, T.A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 98(2), 310-357. Gershoff, E.T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of Family Psychology 30(4), 453-469. Gottman, J.M., & Levenson, R.W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolation: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63(2), 221-233. Gross, J.J., & John, O.P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85(2), 348-362. Gunzenhauser, C., Faasche, A., Friedlmeier, W.& von Suchodoletz, A. (2014). Face it or hide it: Parental socialization of reappraisal and response suppression. Frontiers in Psychology 4, 992. Kiel, E.J. & Kalomiris, A.E. (2015). Current themes in understanding children’s emotion regulation as developing from within the parent-child relationship. Current Opinions in Psychology 1(3), 11-16. Kopystynska, O, Paschall, K.W., Barnett, M.A., & Curran, M.A. (2017). Patterns of interparental conflict, parenting, and children’s emotional insecurity: A person-centered approach. Journal of Family Psychology 31(7), 922-932. Krantz, D.S., & Manuck, S.B. (1984). Acute psychophysiologic reactivity and risk of cardiovascular disease: A review and methdologic critique. Psychological Bulletin 93(3), 435-464. Lansbury, J. Unruffled Parenting. Author. Retrieved from http://www.janetlansbury.com/2015/08/respectful-parenting-podcasts-janet-lansbury-unruffled/ Laurenceau, J.P., Barrett, L.F., & Pietromonaco, P.R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: The importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(5), 1238-1251. Meeren H.K.M., van Heijnsbergen, C.C.R.J., & de Gelder, B. (2005). Rapid perceptual integration of facial expression and emotional body language. PNAS 102(45), 16518-16523. Pennebaker, J.W. (1989). Confession, inhibition, and disease. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 22, 211-244. Rutherford, H.J.V., Wallace, N.S., Laurent, H.K., & Mayes, L.C. (2015). Emotion regulation in parenthood. Developmental Review 36, 1-14. Tiedens, L.Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80(1), 86-94. Tromssdorff, G., & Heikamp, T. (2013). Socialization of emotions and emotion regulation in cultural context. In S. Barnow & N. Balkir (Eds.), Cultural variations in psychopathology: From research to practice (pp.67-92). Cambridge, MA: Hoegrefe Publishing. Rime, B., Mesquita, B., Boca, S., & Philippott, P. (1991). Beyond the emotional event: Six studies on the social sharing of emotion. Cognition and Emotion 5(5-6), 435-465. Roomer, L., Williston, S.K., & Rollins, L.G. (2015). Mindfulness and emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology 3, 52-57. Wang, M-T., & Kenny, S. (2015). Longitudinal links between fathers’ and mothers’ harsh verbal discipline and adolescents’ conduct problems and depressive symptoms. Child Development 85(3), 908-923.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I’m going to start this episode by telling you a short story. _____________ I hear a huge crash. It’s my favorite glass vase.  I hear “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mommy!  It just fell!” as I run full-pelt from the other end of the house. It was a family heirloom passed down by my grandmother.  I’ve asked her not to touch it a hundred times.  I am beyond furious.  “Please don’t be mad, Mommy.  It was an accident.” I clench my teeth.  “I’m not mad.” ______________ Recently we talked about the first of the three ways that children learn about emotional regulation: through our direct teaching (like saying “You’re OK!” when we can clearly see they’re not). If you think about it, telling a child “You’re OK” is an attempt to get them to suppress their emotions, while saying things like “I’m not mad” through clenched teeth are an attempt to suppress yours.  Why might we not want to do that? Recently, one of my podcast listeners emailed me with a question: “Some parenting approaches/experts advocate for remaining “unruffled” with children and that we shouldn’t let children’s emotions impact our own (which allows us to stay unruffled), while others argue that parents should have and show their true feelings, because this is how children learn to understand their own and others’ feelings.  Which is ultimately better for the child’s development?” When I started researching the answer to this question, I realized that it constitutes the second of three ways that children learn about emotional regulation: though parental modeling.  As I mentioned in our last episode in this series, the third way children learn about emotional regulation is through the emotional climate of the family, and you can see our previous episodes on how parenting impacts child development as well as the impacts of conflicts and divorce. So what can scientific research tell us about parental modeling of emotions?  Well, we need to extrapolate a bit here, because most it has been done on couples and college students.  We do know that social sharing of emotions through narrative and story is an important social skill, especially following an emotional episode, and self-disclosure is a critical component of intimate adult relationships, and while adult relationships are not the same as parent-child relationships, they do share many similar features.  In a marriage, the practice of stonewalling – suppressing verbal, emotional, and backchannel behaviors like head nodding and eye contact – is linked to reduced marital satisfaction.   Adults typically use one of two strategies to cope with stressful situations: they reappraise the situation to view it in a less-stressful way – by taking an optimistic attitude, reinterpreting what they find stressful, and trying to get out of a bad mood rather than wallowing, or they suppress negative behavior once the emotions have already occurred, which can have a host of negative effects on the individual. Emotional suppression causes a person to experience themselves as inauthentic, and also to share fewer negative and positive emotions as well as avoiding close relationships.  There is some (limited) evidence that emotion suppression may increase physiological stress not only in the suppressing individual (or parent), but also in their partner (or child). Suppressing emotions is linked to increased depressive symptoms and potentially other emotional disorders, reduced immune system functioning and the development of coronary heart disease, as well as indirectly reducing access to social support. Now I’m not saying that you should tell your child every thought that comes into your head, or even that you should give her a full “buck up and stop crying because you’re not really hurt and you’re making me late for my appointment which is going to make me angry” speech every time she falls over.  There’s plenty of research supporting the finding that showing significant anger toward children is associated with poor child development outcomes.  Excessive demonstrations of anger are rarely welcomed in social settings, although people who express moderate anger over a justifiable situation leads other people to think they are more competent (in adults, at least).   It seems that the key here is to understand the optimal amount of emotion to express, given the child’s age, temperament, and the cultural values that you aim to instill in him – as well as how much the child might have hurt himself when he fell.  You can then reappraise your response to the situation, which should hopefully cause you to be less angry in the first place, and then express your true emotions which are now – hopefully again – going to be more measured than they would have been if you hadn’t reappraised your response.  Sounds like a tall order when you’re in the thick of things and your child just broke something that was important to you, but when you realize that the brain can process information about other people’s emotions in a tiny fraction of a second, you start to see that a very short pause – perhaps the amount of time you need for a single breath – might be enough time to mentally reframe your approach. Janet Lansbury is a practitioner of the Resources for Infant Educarers approach to parenting that we mostly use, and she has a very popular blog and also a podcast called Janet Lansbury Unruffled in which she describes problems that parents are having with their children and write to her about, and then tells listeners how to deal with them – often using scripted stories sort of like I did in this episode to help parents see how they might have a different kind of conversation with their child than the one they’ve been having.  A reframing of the parent’s emotional response is implicit in her ‘unruffled’ approach – but unless you’ve read all this research on how the brain processes information, it is very difficult to make it explicit when you listen to Janet’s calm voice telling you how to respond to your child.  She isn’t asking you to cover up your emotions, but if you already got angry and she’s telling you to just nod your head and calmly acknowledge your child’s feelings, it’s difficult to understand what you’re actually supposed to do with your anger.  The key is that when you see a situation and you know “I’m about to get angry,” to pause, take a breath, and try to get into that reappraising state of mind.  Then you don’t have to suppress your anger, because you didn’t get angry in the first place.   Let’s talk about how to model emotional regulation. The first thing to realize is that our children learn this reappraising strategy by watching us do it ourselves. We all know our children are observing us and modeling the things they do and say on the things we do and say.  (That’s why my preschooler asks my husband “So how was your day at the office, dear?” at the dinner table, in the tone I imagine a 1950s housewife might use as she puts his slippers in front of him and a gin and tonic in his hand: it’s because she’s heard me say it every night since she was born.) This is why a parent’s emotional suppression is directly linked to less use of reappraisal strategies by children (some say a mother’s influence is more important; others say it’s the father’s – perhaps we can agree both are important?): because they’ve watched their parent suppress emotions, and they need to see reappraisal modeled to know how to use it. The old adage to ‘be the person you want your child to become’ is literally true. It’s hard to believe that something as simple as responding authentically to your child, and allowing your child to respond authentically to you can have such a profound impact, but it really does.   What should parents do in the heat of the moment? If you’d like to try to model emotional reappraisal rather than emotional suppression for your child, consider taking the following steps: Learn some common signs of tension that might indicate you’re about to get angry – whether it’s because your child was being careless and fell over (which is going to make you late if they don’t hurry up), or for other reasons. These may include tightness in your throat or chest, shallow or rapid breathing, clenching your jaw, and/or having negative thoughts about yourself or your child.   When you notice these signs, pause. Take a single breath, and ask yourself how you can best respond in a way that honors both your and your child’s needs.  If your child fell, look for their reaction (if they’re not crying, perhaps you don’t need to say anything at all and a shared look would suffice?).  If possible, reframe your emotions into a more empathetic state which assumes the child’s best intention: “She was interested in the vase.  She was probably trying to be gentle with it and slipped.  She didn’t mean to break it.”   Respond in a way that displays your true emotions, and doesn’t minimize your child’s emotions. Let me reimagine the story I told at the beginning of this episode:   CRASH! I hear a huge crash. It’s my favorite glass vase.  I hear “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mommy!  It just fell!” as I run full-pelt from the other end of the house. It was a family heirloom passed down by my grandmother.  I’ve asked her not to touch it a hundred times.  I pause and take a deep...

Is your child ‘spirited’?  Even if they aren’t spirited all the time, do they have spirited moments?  You know exactly what to do in those moments, right? No? Well then we have a treat for you today.  Dr. Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, author of Raising Your Spirited Child, walks us through the ins and outs of her book on the same topic.  Best yet, we do the interview as a consult with a parent, Kathryn, who has read and loved the book, but struggled with implementing the ideas. Warning: we spend quite a bit of time brainstorming very specific problems that Kathryn is having with her daughter.  You may not be having exactly the same problem with your child, but the brainstorming method we use is one you can do with a friend – take the approach with you to address your own problems, rather than the specific ideas. Read more about Dr. Mary’s books and other work on her website.   Reference Kurcinka, M.S. (2015). Raising your spirited child (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: William Morrow. (Affiliate link)   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen:    [00:39] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I know we’re going to help a lot of parents out today because we are here with Dr. Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, who wrote the book Raising Your Spirited Child, which I know is an absolute classic read for any parent of a spirited child. I read the book because a listener had requested an episode on it and what surprised me about it was that I don’t think my daughter is particularly spirited, but I definitely saw elements of her behavior described in the book and what I took out of that was that probably pretty much any child can have spirited elements of their personality or even just spirited moments. And so both the book and this episode are really for anyone who raises a child and who has ever had a moment where they think, “why won’t he or she just do what I ask.” Jen:    [01:26] So Dr. Mary has a bachelor’s in early childhood education, a Master’s in family social science, and a doctorate in education. She has written four books on various aspects of raising children, which have been translated into 23 languages. Her son and daughter are now fully fledged adults and she lives with her husband in Bozeman, Montana. Welcome Dr. Mary. Kathryn:     [01:46] Thank you. Jen:   [01:48] And so when I mentioned in my fortnightly newsletter, which you can actually receive by subscribing to the show YourParentingMojo.com, that I was looking for a coat interviewer to help me interview Dr Mary and really dig into the ways to apply the wisdom in the book. I received a number of responses, but one really stuck out. Kathryn is based in London and she has a four year old daughter who we’re going to call Jane in this episode and a son who’s a little over a year old and we’re going to call him George. Jen:    [02:14] I asked Kathryn to help us with this interview because she’d actually read and love the book, but had been struggling with the application of some of the strategies. She’s tried hard to support her spirited daughter as she grows and develops, but has found a particularly challenged in some areas since the birth of her son. So we’re here today to really get into the book, but also go beyond the book and get the real lowdown on how to implement the strategies in the book when the first attempt has maybe been a little bit less than successful. Welcome Kathryn. Kathryn:  [02:41] Thank you. Jen:   [02:42] All right. So Kathryn, let’s start with you. I wonder if you could please describe your daughter and how she fits into your family dynamic and I know you’ve read the book so you know that the words that are used to describe spirited children are very important. So what words do you use to describe her and what words do people around you who might not have read the book use? Kathryn:   [03:01] So after reading the book, I would say that in particular it was the intense and persistent elements that really struck a chord, but also she’s sensitive, very perceptive, a very high energy introvert, I would say. And just very articulate about what she wants, funny, enthusiastic, that kind of thing. And in terms of other peoples, there’s never been so much the label’s put on her I would find, but it’s just kind of when people talk, when they’d see something happening, you know, as if, oh, so and so that I know that they’re spoiled and oh well people don’t treat me like King Tut, or you know, just, it’s more in people’s tone. And I, I noticed as well since her brother was born that it’s more she falls into a particular persona kind of in contrast as the main older sibling almost. Jen:    [03:54] Is that pretty common? Dr. Kurcinka? Dr. Mary:    [03:57] As the mean older sibling? Well, certainly one of the things we know about spirited children is their intent. So every emotion is intense, including jealousy, they’re also slow to adapt. So a shift in the family dynamic is certainly going to affect them, but they’re also incredibly perceptive of the stress levels within our family and so often it’s the spirited child who I refer to them as our stress barometers because they’ll often start acting out because they’re taking in the stress around them. And obviously a new baby brings a great deal of stress to a family dynamic. Jen:    [04:42] Yeah. Do you feel as though that’s really impacted your family dynamic, Kathryn? Kathryn:    [04:46] Yes, I would say that has made a huge difference because I think, you know, when people talk about age two and age for as being particularly noteworthy in our family, it was really age three. But I think that’s because that was, you know, in the leadup my pregnancy and then the birth of her, her brother, the starting of preschool. So many things kind of happened at that period of time and therefore also our resources were that much less to kind of cope with it. And whereas I had kind of taken everything on with her, largely myself, because I stayed at home, I didn’t go back to work after my maternity leave and had kind of tried to protect her a little bit there because she had very distinct needs as far as I could see it in terms of being a little bit more sensitive to stimulation and to situations and things I had kept her under my wing a little bit in that respect. Whereas I couldn’t obviously do that with a newborn and also just adjusting to letting go a little bit in terms of preschool, you know, and no longer being her whole world anymore. That kind of rattled things a little bit and of course changed the family dynamic quite a bit and then adding an extra person. Jen:   [05:58] And these are all fairly natural things to happen, right? Brothers and sisters are born and their children tend to go up to some kind of care or preschool or something. Dr. Mary, how can we help children and prepare them for the kinds of transitions that Jane’s been going through? Dr. Mary:    [06:15] Well, there’s several things. One is, as you said, with the starting preschool, there’s also a change in routine in one of the things I talk about and work with families on in my private consultants, there’s two aspects to effective discipline, there’s structure, which is the routine, the rules, the expectations, they’re the things that remain pretty stable and then there’s the emotion coaching and the challenge with a new baby and starting preschool is the structure gets disrupted and so if you think about it’s kind of like all of a sudden moving or changing jobs or changing bosses at work that all of a sudden there are…what you expected in the past is no longer occurring. Things are different, so in preparing them, one is reforming that structure and creating predictability for them, which will then reduce the frequency and intensity of the meltdowns, leaving you the patience and energy to do the emotion coaching when it needs to be done. Jen:    [07:25] Yeah, Dr. Mary, you just said something really profound there that helped me to understand the gravity of these kinds of changes in a child’s world. When you talk about being comparable to moving for an adult or changing a boss for an adult, you know, I think if there was a big deal, I need to figure out what a new boss wants for me and how I interact with that person and you know, even as something as simple as changing a child’s teacher at preschool, you might think, well all the other teachers are still there and all the other children is still there, but that’s a very different interaction and it makes me feel as though, oh yeah, I can understand that. I can understand why that would be difficult for a child. Does that help us to bring more compassion to it, do you think? Dr. Mary:   [08:02] Well, I think it is important to look at that and look at this situation, yes, very compassionately. And that’s another thing that we can do is actually reduced expectations on that older child, which can be hard because it’s like, okay, now you’re the older one and I need to be taking care of the baby. But one of the stress reactions you’ll see is shut down. And shut down behaviors are, I can’t dress myself, I can’t walk, I can’t feed myself, and the natural reaction to those responses are you could do it yesterday or you could do it an hour ago and we push to have them do what they’re capable of doing, but what they’re actually telling us is I’m so overwhelmed, I’m shutting down. And so one thing that we can do as a parent is proactively say to them before they’re demanding, carry me, dress me, feed me, is, “is today a day that you can dress yourself or do you need help?” And if they say I need help, we help them because we recognize, wow, they’re dealing with a lot of stuff here. And so instead of fighting and struggling, we help them, but we also nudge them by saying, okay, you know, today I’ll help you, but pretty soon maybe even tomorrow you’re going to surprise me and do it yourself again. So we let them know we’re not doing this for ever, but we can see that right now, you need a little extra support. Kathryn:     [09:46] Do you see that dynamic in Jane, Kathryn? Yes, and I think some of those kinds of things about the dressing herself and things like that, that was a little bit easier for me or when we had in meal times the returned to kind of wanting to be fed for a little while or when my son was weaning than wanting to be on our laps as well and so some of that we definitely saw and I think I was used to a little bit more doing things at her own pace beforehand, so that part of it was a little bit easier for me, but I struggled a little bit. I think with things that were just suddenly new in those transitions, so transition around having the new sibling created a kind of a new level to my own intensity. I think in terms of a protectiveness over the small person than she had never shown aggression really before then to see some of those behaviors being targeted towards him specifically rather than wanting to be baby. But something that kind of felt like a bit more of an emergency in the moment kind of thing. That was triggering to me in a way that I hadn’t really been triggered as much in the past, Dr. Mary:   [10:54] And you’re absolutely right, Kathryn, you know, as a mom who are very protective of our children. It’s kind of the mother bear syndrome and one of the things I think that’s important to recognize, especially with a four year old, four year old and many spirited children, tend to be very bright and have excellent language skills and so we often assume that they have an understanding of things that they don’t because they are so verbal and so when we see behaviors that are potentially dangerous to the baby or a safety issue for the baby, the question becomes what is Jane feeling and needing in this situation? So is it an issue that she actually doesn’t realize, you can’t hug a baby that firmly. And so it’s teaching her how to hold and touch the baby. Is she feeling jealous? So instead of pushing the baby, teaching her to say I want him to go away, and that when she uses the words, we actually at that…because we’re teaching the words at this point, set the baby down and hold her because she used words instead of action. So it’s in those situations stopping to think what is she feeling or needing. Is it a skill issue? Is it a feeling she doesn’t know how to express appropriately. But as a four year old she has no idea that she can harm the baby. Jen:    [12:39] Wow. I would never have thought that. Wouldn’t you think that if you hit something it might hurt. But no, that’s a very profound realization I think to understand that a four year old can’t think that. Kathryn: [12:51] And I think sometimes if there are kind of two elements to it and like for, it’s the intensity piece around just that kind of out of control, excitement/anxiety, kind of that, you know, in the beginning in particular, if I’m trying to spend time just one on one with her to have a little bit of that, she actually would reject that for quite awhile. And she always wanted to know where he was and oh, if he was asleep she wants to be there waking up. Like she just really didn’t want to take her eyes off him. Like really was affectionate to like overzealously affectionate, but you know, in a way you would expect. But just couldn’t. It was like, yeah, simultaneously just out of control, affection and anxiety around the situation that she just couldn’t quite get to grips with, it felt like. Dr. Mary:   [13:42] And, and I think that’s an interesting choice of words when you say kind of anxiety about it. And again with the energy and that frenzied energy, we look at the fuel source because that frenzied energy is saying she’s overstimulated, she’s over aroused. And so one question I would have is actually about sleep because if the meltdowns are happening like after school or late in the afternoon or that frenzied behavior, that actually is an indication that can be an indication of, oh, we’re tired. So what time does she wake in the morning? Kathryn:   [14:25] She wakes up about [7:00] usually. Dr. Mary:    [14:27] And is she napping? Kathryn:  [14:29] No, and she can’t now because she’s in school. Dr. Mary:   [14:33] Okay. And what time does she fall asleep at night? Kathryn:    [14:39] Uh, she’ll be actually asleep by about [8:30]. Dr. Mary:   [14:43] Okay. So if we look at the averages and these are only averages, which means some children will have more, some people less. But this time of the year, the winter, when the...

“I hear parents on the playground all the time saying “You’re OK!” after their child falls over. Often it does make the child stop crying…but doesn’t it invalidate the child’s feelings?” It turns out that this question is related to a skill that psychologists call emotional regulation, and learning how to regulate emotions is one of the most important tasks of childhood. This to-the-point episode is a trial of a shorter form of episode after listeners told me this show is “very dense.”  It’s hard to back off the density, but I can back off the length.  Let me know (via email or the Contact Me, page – not the comments on this episode because I get inundated with spam) what you think…   Other episodes referenced in this show How parenting affects children’s development How divorce impacts children’s development How to scaffold children’s learning   References Brookshire, B. (2013, May 8). Psychology is WEIRD: Western college students are not the best representatives of human emotion, behavior, and sexuality. Slate. Retrieved from www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/weird_psychology_social_science_researchers_rely_too_much_on_western_college.html Duncan, L.G., Coatsworth, J.D., & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). A model of mindful parenting: Implications for parent-child relationships and prevention research. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review 12, 255-270. Keane, S.P., & Calkins, S.D. (2004). Predicting kindergarten peer social status from toddler and preschool problem behavior. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 32(4), 409-423. Kopystynska, O., Paschall, K.W., Barnett, M.A., & Curran, M.A. (2017). Patterns of interparental conflict, parenting, and children’s emotional insecurity: A person-centered approach. Journal of Family Psychology 31(7), 922-932. Roemer, L., Williston, S.K., & Rollins, L.G. (2015). Mindfulness and emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology 3, 52-57. Rotenberg, K.J., & Eisenberg, N. (1997). Developmental differences in the understanding of and reaction to others’ inhibition of emotional expression. Developmental Psychology 33(3), 526-537. Sasser, T.R., Bierman, K.L., & Heinrichs, B. (2015). Executive functioning and school adjustment: The mediational role of pre-kindergarten learning-related behaviors. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 30(A), 70-79. Swain, J.E., Kim, P., & Ho, S.S. (2011). Neuroendocrinology of parental response to baby-cry. Journal of Neuroendochrinology 23(11), 1036-1041. Trommsdorff, G. (2010). Preschool girls’ distress and mothers’ sensitivity in Japan and Germany. European Journal of Developmental Psychology 7(3), 350-370.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. While I was still pregnant with my daughter, a friend showed me a video of a toddler falling down a flight of stairs.  Once he has tumbled all the way to the bottom he immediately bounces up and announces loudly for anyone who might be around: “I’m OK! I’m OK!” At the time I thought that was pretty cool.  Who wouldn’t want a child who can roll with the tumbles of life and be fine with it? I was working on some mental and emotional pregnancy exercises from a book at the time, one of which instructed me to write down my hopes for my yet-unborn daughter.  In the beautiful book that I made for her by hand (and that I hope to one day give to her), the third entry on my list of “My hopes for you” was “I hope you’ll be the kind of kid who gets up after a fall and says I’m OK!” Fortunately, through studying for a Master’s in Psychology and through researching podcast episodes for you, my wishes for my daughter, as well as my skills, have evolved – but I’m still learning all the time. Recently, one of my podcast listeners emailed me with a question: “I hear parents on the playground all the time saying “You’re OK!” after their child falls over.  Often it does make the child stop crying…but doesn’t it invalidate the child’s feelings?” It turns out that this question is related to a skill that psychologists call emotional regulation, and learning how to regulate emotions is one of the most important tasks of childhood. There are three major ways that children learn about emotional regulation.  The first of these is through direct teaching of emotional regulation – for example, by saying things like ‘you’re OK!.’  The second is through parental modeling of emotional regulation, and because I’ve been getting feedback from listeners saying that they LOVE my show but find the content to be very dense, we’re going to try a little experiment here and break these two topics down into two episodes.  They’re not actually going to be any less dense than my regular episodes (although I really make no apology for that), but hopefully making them shorter will help them to be a bit more digestible anyway.  I’d like you to let me know what you think about this, so do drop me a line at jen@yourparentingmojo.com with any feedback. The third way children learn about emotional regulation is the emotional climate of the family, which includes parent-child attachment, the romantic attachment of the parents, and the presence/absence of marital conflict (and how this is resolved).  We’ve covered a lot of this information in other shows already – like in our interview with Dr. Laura Froyen on how parenting affects child development, as well as in the episode related to how divorce impacts children, which contained a lot of information on how conflict affects children, and how resolving conflict productively can actually be very helpful for children to observe.  For that reason we’re not going to do a third show on this particular aspect of emotional regulation but go ahead – show affection to your partner!  Be romantic!  Your kid is watching… So there are three critical reasons we need to support our children’s emotional regulation.  Firstly, emotional regulation directly impacts an individual’s wellbeing, because emotions have a physical impact on both children and adults.  Stress can have direct physiological effects on a person, like increasing blood pressure, it can impact behaviors related to wellbeing like alcohol and substance use and abuse, and can contribute to mental wellness or illness, for example, depression (Butler 2013). Secondly, emotional regulation helps children to make (and keep friends) – aggressive boys and girls who fail to share and who get peers in trouble find it hard to make friends. And finally, emotional regulation is really important for academic achievement – pre-kindergarten skills related to emotional regulation actually predict later academic skills probably because children who can sit still even when they want to fidget and ignore a taunting classmate are more likely to stay on-task with the lesson. What I wanted to know next was “can scientists help us to understand how our actions as parents impact our children’s emotional regulation?”  It turns out that there’s no one “aha!” study that neatly addresses these issues.  But a whole slew of studies cast light on different pieces of the puzzle.   There are two key ideas behind the incongruence of saying “You’re OK” to Western children: Firstly, emotional expression is culturally driven.  We Westerners tend to think that pretty much everyone thinks (or should think) like us.  While differences between individuals in a culture do, of course, exist, in general researchers assume that “people strive for independence, self-fulfillment, and authentic expression of emotions based on autonomy” (Trommsdorff & Heikamp 2013, p.70) – but in many Asian societies this is not a goal for raising children. Instead, Asian parents aim to know what their child needs before the child even says it (Tromsdorff & Heikamp 2013).  Chinese children see this control as an expression of warmth and support, whereas European-American children find it stifling. Most psychological research that makes it into journals is conducted on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (or WEIRD)  WEIRD college students, and then researchers assume it’s applicable to all Americans, and maybe even people everywhere.  But the ‘hot’ way of studying the cultural issues behind emotionally-driven behavior is to put some Western and some Japanese people in an uncomfortable situation and see what happens – they use Japanese people because the Japanese are typically considered the paragon of the Asian interdependent cultures. When researchers gave Japanese and German preschool girls a task that they could not possibly complete, German girls experienced distress associated with their failure for much longer than Japanese girls, whose distress quickly disappeared – to be expected in a culture where such expression is typically avoided.  The girls’ mothers were present during the experiment: German mothers expressed warmth to their daughters after the girls failed at the task, and the more sensitive the mother the more distress the girls expressed – in other words, the girls cried more, perhaps because the German mothers felt as though the girls were expressing their authentic emotions and so did not try to get the girls to stop crying. So if we put all this together, we see that telling a child how they feel (or should feel) is a strategy that is really not well-suited to raising children in a society where autonomy and independence are prized.  We are attempting to control their experience of the world, which would help to build warmth between Chinese-American children and their parents, but which European-American children see as overly controlling.  German mothers seem to have it figured out – their children might cry more as a result, but they learn the validity of their own emotions.  It seems as though if American parents really do prize autonomy and independence, it would be a whole lot less confusing for their children if they were also a bit more tolerant of the expression of emotions that can be seen as negative, like crying.   The second reason why it’s incongruent for Westerners to tell their children “you’re OK” is that children’s emotional regulation develops as they age. Perhaps this won’t be terribly surprising to parents: emotional regulation before age three months is thought to be driven largely by innate processes – things like turning toward pleasant stimuli like a parent’s face, and away from aversive stimuli like a loud noise.  By age one, babies know that other people can help them to regulate their emotional states, and by age two they can use specific strategies to manage their own feelings (although they aren’t always successful, which is why they have tantrums) (Calkins & Hill 2007). The way children think about controlling emotions also changes as they get older.  Young children seem to believe that parents can actually change children’s emotions simply by saying “stop crying,” but older children and adults recognize that you don’t stop feeling something just because someone else tells you to – you just stop expressing the emotion.  As we’ll see in our next episode, this can have very negative impacts on a person’s mental and physical wellbeing. So we do need to adjust our approach as our child gets older, and we can use what psychologists call scaffolding to offer our children more support when they are younger (or hungry, or tired) and gradually withdraw that support as they get better at regulating their own emotions.  As a reminder, we did a whole episode pretty early on in the show on how to use scaffolding to increase children’s abilities.   So what should we understand from these studies? Firstly, we socialize our children to succeed in our culture, and we should use strategies to help our children succeed in our culture (unless we might think that our culture relies just a touch too much on individualism, in which case we might want to adjust our approach slightly…). Telling Western children “You’re OK!” when they’re clearly not flies in the face of all the other lessons we try to teach them about living their own experience and respecting their feelings.  It might stop them from crying, but it’s incredibly conflicting for them – we’re suddenly using strategies more suited to socializing in Asian cultures for no apparent reason. Secondly, while our youngest children might think that we can change how they feel just by telling them, but eventually they figure out that we can’t, and they feel gypped. Finally, by supporting our children as they develop their own emotional control skills (rather than just telling them they’re OK) we equip them with critical skills they need to succeed in learning and in life. So why do we continue to tell our children they’re OK when they clearly know they’re not (and, if we’re honest, so do we)?  The only explanation I can come up with is that we really hate to hear our children cry.  We’re wired to make it stop as fast as we can, which we do by soothing our infants, and when they get old enough that we can’t easily soothe them any more we try to get them to stop using whatever means we can – even if it doesn’t benefit our children at all, and may instead impede their emotional regulation skill development.   Al well and good, I hear you say, but what should we do instead of saying “You’re OK?” So next time your child falls at the playground, consider taking these four actions: And Watch Don’t go running over.  Cement yourself to that park bench if necessary. Look to see whether your child is really hurt.  If he really is, go over immediately.  If it’s more likely to be just a bump, sit tight a little longer.   Set an Intention Use this time to check in and see how you’re feeling.  Bring your full awareness to the moment and set an intention to respond with your child’s best interest in mind.  Are you anxious?  Take a breath.  Resolve to not say “You’re OK.”   Act Reassess what your child needs.  If he’s not already up and running around, walk over and sit next to him.  Say something like “Ouch – that looked like it hurt.  Do you need a hug?” (for younger children).  “Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?” (for older children).  Provide a hug (or not) accordingly. Sit quietly until your child seems to calm himself.  When your child is ready, consider replaying the incident without judgment: “It looked like you were walking along the beam and you lost your balance.”  Empathize and acknowledge any new feelings that occur.   Move on When your child is ready, ask a question.  “Would you like to sit here with me for a bit longer or are you ready to play again?” or “Would you like to play some more or would you rather go home now?”  He may have other ideas about what he wants to do, but you may find giving him ideas to be more effective than just asking “what do you want to do now?,” which may simply elicit an “I don’t know.”     When you have time, you may find deeper reflection on this topic helpful.   You may find that saying “You’re OK!” has become reflexive for you – you don’t even think about it before you say it. If this is the case, try first simply to notice when you say it – without judging yourself.  Then try to institute the pause that gives you the time you need to think and say something different.   Spend some time thinking about what skills you think feel are important for your child to learn, and how you can support those through your relationship. If emotional awareness is high on the list, think about the messages you send your child when you discuss those emotions.  If you find that you frequently invalidate those emotions (e.g. “Of course you want to go to school!  You love your teacher!” or “Why wouldn’t you want to go to the party?  All your friends will be there!”) then your words may contradict your intention.  Don’t be afraid to let your child experience her own sadness, frustration, and anger, even as you support her by empathizing with her.  Your child learns more by experiencing them and dealing with them than by suppressing them because you don’t want to hear about them.   Cultivate a practice of mindfulness – of being in and experiencing the present moment, which can help you to institute that all-important pause, as well as develop your own healthy emotional regulation skills. I’m working on finding someone who might be interested in talking with us about bringing a practice of mindfulness to our parenting, so stay tuned for that.   As always, the references for today’s show can be found on my website at www.yourparentingmojo.com/youreok, and please do let me know your thoughts on this shorter episode format by sending an email to jen@yourparentingmojo.com  

“HOW DO I GET MY CHILD TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT?!” is the thinly-veiled message under the surface of many of the emails that I get about sleep.  And I don’t blame you.  I don’t claim to be a magician in this regard, although I did get incredibly, amazingly lucky – my daughter put in her first eight-hour night at six weeks old, and has regularly slept through the night for longer than I can remember.  I’m really genuinely not sure I could parent if things weren’t like this. But today’s episode is about the data, not about anecdata. Zoe in Sydney wrote to me: A hotly debated topic with my friends has been “sleeping through the night.” My daughter never was great at napping and still wakes up once a night, coming into our bed. We have never been able to do controlled crying etc – I would love to know what science says about sleeping through the night! And what is best for your child (vs the parent). My close friend is a breastfeeding counselor and said they are taught that lots of children don’t sleep through until 4 years old! Other mothers I knew were horrified if their child wasn’t sleeping through by 6 months – and the French talk about their children ‘having their nights’ much earlier… As I started researching this topic it became clear that sleep is driven to an incredible extent by cultural preferences.  Some (Western) psychologists advocate for letting children Cry It Out, while people in many cultures around the world see putting a child to sleep in their own room (never mind allowing them to cry) as tantamount to child abuse. So: can we get our children to sleep more?  Is bed-sharing inherently bad?  Does Cry It Out harm the child in some way?  Let’s find out!   References Amoabeng, A.O. (2010). The changes and effect of stress hormone cortisol during extreme diet and exercise. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Boston, MA: Boston University. American Academy of Pediatrics (2016). SIDS and other sleep-related infant deaths: Updated 2016 recommendations for a safe infant sleeping environment. Author. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/10/20/peds.2016-2938 Bernier, A., Carlson, S. M., Bordeleau, S., & Carrier, J. (2010). Relations between physiological and cognitive regulatory systems: Infant sleep regulation and subsequent executive functioning. Child Development, 81, 1739–1752. Blampied, N.M. (2013). Functional behavioral analysis of sleep in infants and children. In A. Wolfson & H. Montgomery-Downs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of infant, child, and adolescent sleep and behavior. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Burnham, M.M. (2013). Co-sleeping and self-soothing during infancy. In A. Wolfson & H. Montgomery-Downs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of infant, child, and adolescent sleep and behavior. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1984). Origins and evolution of behavior disorders. New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel. Crncec, R., Matthey, S., & Nemeth, D. (2010). Infant sleep problems and emotional health: A review of two behavioral approaches. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 28(1), 44-54. Ferber, R. (1985). Solve your child’s sleep problems. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. France, K.G. (1991). Behavior characteristics and security in sleep-disturbed infants treated with extinction. Journal of Pediatric Psychology 17(4), 467-475. Gaddini, R. (1970. Transitional objects and the process of individuation: A study in three different social groups. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 9(2), 347-365. Germo, G.G., Goldberg, W.A., & Keller, M.A. (2009). Learning to sleep through the night: Solution or strain for mothers and young children? Infant Mental Health Journal 30(3), 223-244. Giannotti, F., & Cortesi, F. (2009). Family and cultural influences on sleep development. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 18(4), 849-861. Hale, L., Parente, V., & Phillips, G.K. (2013). Social determinants of children’s sleep. In A. Wolfson & H. Montgomery-Downs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of infant, child, and adolescent sleep and behavior. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Healey, D., France, K.G., & Blampied, N.M. (2009). Treating sleep disturbances in infants: What generalizes? Behavioral Interventions 24, 23-41. Hiscock, H., Bayer, J., Gold, L., Hampton, A., Okuomunne, O.C., & Wake, M. (2006). Improving infant sleep and maternal mental health: A cluster randomized trial. Archives of Disease in Childhood 92, 952-958. Hupp, S., & Jewell, J. (2014). Great myths of child development. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Jenni, O.G., & O’Connor, B.B. (2005). Children’s sleep: An interplay between culture and biology. Pediatrics 115(1), 204-216. Lushington, K., Pamula, Y., Martin, J., & Kennedy, J.D. (2013). The relationship between sleep and daytime cognitive/behavioral functioning: Infancy and preschool years. In A. Wolfson & H. Montgomery-Downs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of infant, child, and adolescent sleep and behavior. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. McKenna, J.J., Ball, H.L., & Gettler, L.T. (2007). Mother-infant cosleeping, breastfeeding, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: What biological anthropology has discovered about normal infant sleep and pediatric sleep medicine.  Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 50, 133-161. Meleva-Seitz, V.R., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., Battaini, C., & Luijk, M.P.C.M. (2015). Parent-child bed-sharing: The good, the bad, and the burden of evidence. Sleep Medicine Reviews. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298427230_Parent-child_bed-sharing_The_good_the_bad_and_the_burden_of_evidence Mindell, J.A., Du Mond, C.E., Sadeh, A., Telofski, L.S., Kulkarni, N., & Gunn, E. (2011). Efficacy of an internet-based intervention for infant and toddler sleep disturbances. Sleep 34(4), 451-458B. Neff, J. (2016, February 24). Time to a mobile sleep app – More products in carts. AdAge. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/digital/j-j-research-led-bath-time-a-mobile-sleep-app/302776/ Pantley, E. (2002). The no-cry sleep solution. New York, NY: Contemporary Books. Price, A.M.H., Wake, M., Ukoumunne, O.C., & Hiscock, H. (2012). Five-year follow-up of harms and benefits of behavioral infant sleep intervention: Randomized trial. Pediatrics 130(4), 643-651. Santos, I.S., Bassani, D.G., Matijasevich, A., Halal, C.S., Del-Ponte, B., Henriquez da Cruz, S., Anselmi, L. Albernaz, E., Fernandes, M., Tovo-Rodriguez, L., Silveira, M.D., & Hallal, P.C. (2016). Infant sleep hygiene counseling (sleep trial): Protocol of a randomized controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry 16(1), 307. Sears, W., Sears, R., Sears, J., & Sears, M. (2005). The baby sleep book. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Company. Super, C.M., & Harkness, S. (2013). Culture and children’s sleep. In A. Wolfson & H. Montgomery-Downs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of infant, child, and adolescent sleep and behavior. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Teti, D.M., Kim, B.R., Mayer, G., & Countermine, M. (2010). Maternal emotional availability at bedtime predicts infant sleep quality. Journal of Family Psychology 24(3), 307-315. Weinraub, M., Friedman, S.L., Knoke, B., Houts, R., Bender, R.H., Susman, E.J., Bradley, R., & Williams, J. (2012). Patterns of developmental change in infants’ nighttime sleep awakenings from 6 through 26 months of age. Developmental Psychology 48(6), 1511-1528.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  Before we start today, I just wanted to take a minute and mention what happens around here on the weeks when you don’t hear an episode, because I have a suspicion based on my download patterns that most of you are subscribed to the show through iTunes rather than through my website, which means you’re kind of missing out.  On the weeks when I don’t publish an episode, I send out a newsletter instead – and this is not just any old newsletter.  I keep track of new research and articles related to both child development and education over the previous couple of weeks, and I select the best of them for the newsletter.  Then I don’t just tell you about the new studies and articles, but locate them in the rest of the literature on the topic by helping you to understand how the new work adds to our understanding, and what we’re still lacking.  I also post calls for questions on topics I’ve already decided to do episodes on (and your questions not only get onto the list of questions that I end up asking the interviewee, but also help me to decide which interviewee to ask in the first place), and mention ideas I’m considering for future episodes to see whether you all are interested in them or not.  Finally, I also use the newsletters to do a Q&A on difficult or controversial topics – so after I did the episode on potty training recently, listeners emailed me with their questions and I answered them in a newsletter a few weeks later.  Pretty often I end up in an email conversation with the people who write to me about the topics they’re interested in, which I really enjoy and I hope is useful to them as well.  So if you’re really interested in this research and in having me do all the work in terms of keeping on top of it for you, you really should head over to yourparentingmojo.com and enter your email address in the box at the top of the screen to subscribe there.  As I’ve mentioned before, if you’re only subscribed through iTunes I never get your email address and I actually never even find out that you subscribed, so there’s no way for me to send a newsletter to you.  So head on over to yourparentingmojo.com and subscribe to the show!   Seems like we’re on a roll lately with topics that I’ve resisted doing for a while – we did an episode recently on potty training, or ‘toilet learning,’ as I prefer to call it.  And I’ve been getting quite a lot of questions over the last few months about sleep – mostly around how to get more of it.  I’d resisted doing an episode on this for much the same reason as the potty training episode – there are books out there on this topic as well, and Facebook groups, and plenty of people making a living from doing nothing but advising parents on how to get their children to sleep.  But the questions kept coming!  And so we’re going to talk about them today.  We’ll do what we usually do with these kinds of episodes – take a tour through the anthropological literature and find out just how weird our Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies are, and from there we’ll reframe how we look at children and sleep before we discuss ways that we can all get more of it.  And I should say that as is typical with the show, we’ll look at sleep primarily through the lens of caring for toddlers and preschoolers.  We’ll detour perhaps a little more than usual into learning about younger babies just because that’s the population on whom a lot of research has been done, but we’ll focus primarily on the types of problems that parents of toddlers and preschoolers tend to have, and what we can do about them.   Let’s talk just a little first about why children sleep – it’s because they really do need to do it!  Just a couple of the amazing things that happen during sleep is that memories are consolidated, stabilized, and perhaps enhanced (which has obvious implications for a child’s performance in school), and memories may actually be assimilated into the child’s cognitive matrix, which allows a cohesive view of the individual’s world to develop.  Pretty cool stuff.  Sleep problems in childhood are associated with memory and learning impairments, difficulty in regulating mood, attention and behavioral problems, as well as hyperactivity and impulsivity.  Short sleep duration is associated with overweight in childhood, although I should caution that for many of these issues we aren’t sure whether sleep problems cause these effects or whether these effects cause the sleep problems.  So not getting enough sleep is a problem because when you don’t sleep as much you miss out on all the benefits of sleep that we’re really only just starting to understand. So the first place I looked when I wanted to learn more about how children sleep in other cultures was David Lancy’s book The Anthropology of Childhood, and I was absolutely shocked to find that there’s nothing at all in it about sleep.  Luckily there is some published literature about it and all the studies seem to pretty much give the tour of the same cultures and their approaches to sleep.   For something that is such a biological NEED as sleep, I was surprised to find the extent to which sleep patterns are culturally determined.  I’m sure many of you are aware of the differences in sleep patterns between Japanese and Western societies – in the West, we encourage children to sleep in their own beds in their own rooms from a very young age, while children in Japan share a bed with one or both parents for many years.  Bed-sharing is typically frowned on in Western cultures; I regularly see signs on buses in my town discouraging parents from bed-sharing, which is more common in African American than White communities in the U.S.  In 2011 the Milwaukee Health Department ran an advertising campaign that showed a beautiful sleeping baby with a large knife lying next to her, with the tag line “your baby sleeping with you can be just as dangerous.”  The American Academy of Pediatrics specifically recommends that infants sleep in the parents’ room, close to the parents’ bed but on a separate surface designed for infants, ideally for the first year of life, but at least for the first six months.  The recommendations go on to list a variety of bed-sharing arrangements that increase the risk of SIDS or unintentional injury or death while bed-sharing, including the child’s age being less than four months, bed-sharing with a current smoker, with anyone who is not the infant’s parent, including nonparental caregivers and other children, and with soft bedding accessories like pillows and blankets.  If we follow the AAP’s guidelines, which I have to say are extremely well-referenced, we’d all be terrified of bedsharing and we would think that nobody in the world would ever do it.  Which would be rather strange, because it turns out that a lot of people in the world do do it, probably in part because bed sharing was very much the norm as our species evolved.  Infants have a need for food (which was historically delivered solely from the mother’s breast) at regular intervals as well as the sensory maternal-infant exchange involving touch, smell, movement, sound, and taste – together, this package represents the only physiological and behavioral environment that the infant is adapted to.  This is not to say that infants aren’t resilient and can’t adapt to new circumstances but we should acknowledge that it’s a cultural shift in Western countries that has precipitated a desire to have children sleep through the night in their own rooms.  So when we read studies that discuss giving parents literature to read that discusses “normal sleep patterns at 6-12 months,” we should be very cognizant that the definition of “normal” is culturally-bound, and that in many cultures what we think of as “normal” is actually thought of as “not normal” and even “unkind.”   Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find that there’s a link between cultures that value interdependence between people and co-sleeping, and cultures that value independence and individualism and sleeping alone.  In non-western countries, cosleeping is very much more common than in western countries. Ninety-three percent of Indian children aged 3 to 10 years cosleep, as do 80% of Japanese infants, who typically stay in the parental bed until at least school age.  45% of Korean children aged between 1 and 7 bed share, as do 45% of Egyptian families where the bed typically has up to four sleepers.  Cosleeping is common in Brazil: from isolated communities of indigenous people to the urbanites in Sao Paolo, not less than 80% of children under 10 years of age co-sleep with parents.  So in almost all cultures around the world, babies sleep with an adult, while older children sleep with parents or other siblings.   I should also be clear that I’m not for or against co-sleeping; we didn’t do it in our household primarily because I found I couldn’t sleep with my daughter in our bed.  She spent her first four months in a bassinet right next to our bed and most of the time she could be lifted back into it after nursing in the night.  Occasionally in the early mornings she would fuss and seem like she might not settle so I would leave her in bed with us, with her taking up over a third of the bed next to the bed rail, my husband taking up over a third on the other side, and me jammed in the middle unable to move for fear of waking someone up or squashing them.  I could sleep with just her in the bed if my husband was out, but he’s not really the type to relocate himself out of the marital bed so we stuck with the bassinet.   So why the huge disconnect between Western cultures and the rest of the world when it comes to bed sharing?  Well, there are a number of factors at play which are reviewed in an excellent paper by Professor McKenna at the University of Notre Dame, who holds pretty interesting dual appointments in the Department of Anthropology as well as in the Behavioral Sleep Laboratory.  He tells the following story: apparently during the last 500 years in major European cities, a relatively sizeable number of poor women with no access to birth control confessed to Catholic priests that they had deliberately laid on and smothered their infants as a way of controlling their family size.  The priests threatened excommunication, fines, and imprisonment, and infants were at some point in this period “banned” from parental beds.  The legacy of these events have converged with other changing customs and values such as the rise of privacy, self-reliance, and individualism that support the children’s place of rest being in a different room and not just a different bed in the parental bedroom.  The rise of romantic love made a further contribution to prevent the child from intruding on the conjugal bond; Freud was a proponent of the idea that children should not watch their parents’ sexual activities, although more recent research has shown that children are not harmed by seeing these activities early in life.  The role of fathers shifted as well, as the father-figure became authoritarian figures who engaged in limited physical contact with their children.  In the early part of this century, psychologists, pediatricians, and new-found ‘parenting experts’ promoted allegedly science-based sleep patterns that were compatible with the western cultural values of individualism and autonomy.  In the second half of this century we became especially enamoured of technological solutions to...

In Professor Angela Duckworth’s TED talk, she says of her research: “One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success.  And it wasn’t social intelligence.  It wasn’t good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ.  It was grit.” The effusive blurbs on the book cover go even beyond Professor Duckworth’s own dramatic pronouncements: Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, says:  “Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Duckworth is the one who has found it…She not only tells us what it is, but how to get it.”  Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (which we’ve looked at previously in an episode on supporting your introverted child) says: “Impressively fresh and original…Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us…Buy this, send copies to your friends, and tell the world that there is, in fact, hope.  We can all dazzle.”  Don’t we all want to dazzle?  Don’t we all want our children to dazzle?  Is grit the thing that will help them do it? It turns out that Professor Duckworth’s own research says: perhaps not.  Listen in to learn how much grit is a good thing, how to help your child be grittier, and why it might not be the factor that assures their success.   Other episodes mentioned in this show How to support your introverted child Why you shouldn’t bother trying to increase your child’s self-esteem   References Crede, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113(3), 492-511. Del Giudice, M. (2014, October 14). Grit trumps talent and IQ: A story every parent (and educator) should read. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-angela-duckworth-success-grit-psychology-self-control-science-nginnovators/ Denby, D. (2016, June 21). The limits of “grit.” The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-limits-of-grit Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92(6), 1087-1101. Full article available at https://www.ronaldreaganhs.org/cms/lib7/WI01001304/Centricity/Domain/187/Grit%20JPSP.pdf Duckworth, A.L., & Yeager, D.S. (2015). Measurement matters: Assessing personal qualities other than cognitive abilities for educational purposes. Educational Researcher 44(4), 237-251. Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner. (Affiliate link) Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E.P., Young, V., Tsukayama, E., Brunwasaser, S.M., & Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Using wise interventions to motivate deliberate practice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111(5), 728-744. Farrington, C.A., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagoka, J., Keyes, T.S., Johnson, D.W., & Beechum, N.O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners: The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. Retrieved from https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Noncognitive%20Report.pdf Forsyth, D.R., & Kerr, N.A. (1999, August). Are adaptive illusions adaptive? Poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA. Hannon, B. (2014). Predicting college success: The relative contributions of five social/personality factors, five cognitive/earning factors, and SAT scores.  Journal of Educational and Training Studies 2(4), 46-58. Heckman, J.J. (2013). Giving kids a fair chance (A strategy that works). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kamenetz, A. (2016, May 25). MacArthur ‘genius’ Angela Duckworth responds to a new critique of grit. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit Kapoor, M.L. (2017, June 27). 12 books expelled from Tucson schools. High Country News. Retrieved from http://www.hcn.org/articles/education-tucsons-mexican-american-studies-ban-goes-back-to-court Kohn, A. (2014). Grit: A skeptical look at the latest educational fad. Author. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grit/ No byline. (1998, March 15). Weddings; Jason Duckworth, Angela Lee. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/15/style/weddings-jason-duckworth-angela-lee.html Sparks, S.D. (2015, June 2). ‘Nation’s Report Card’ to gather data on grit, mindset. Education Week. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/06/03/nations-report-card-to-gather-data-on.html The Leadership Conference. (2015, May 5). Civil rights groups: “We oppose anti-testing efforts.” Author. Retrieved from https://civilrights.org/civil-rights-groups-we-oppose-anti-testing-efforts/ The Learning Project Elementary School. Website. Author. Retrieved from http://www.learningproject.org/ The Nation’s Report Card (n.d.). Percentage of fourth-grade students at or above Proficient not significantly different compared to 2013. Author. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading/acl?grade=4 Tough, P. (2016). Helping children succeed: What works and why. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Useem, J. (2016, May). Is grit overrated: The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/is-grit-overrated/476397/ Zernike, K. (2016, February 29). Testing for joy and grit? Schools nationwide push to measure students’ emotional skills. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/testing-for-joy-and-grit-schools-nationwide-push-to-measure-students-emotional-skills.html?_r=0   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  We have a pretty interesting topic lined up for today, or I think so at least: we’re going to talk about grit.  If you’ve heard about grit over the last couple of years it’s probably because of one woman named Angela Duckworth, who is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and who invented what she calls The Grit Scale – she won a MacArthur Genius award for her research on grit in 2013.  She tells a story about how she developed this scale that goes like this: several years ago the U.S. Army was having trouble figuring out which of their 1200 new cadets were going to make it through the grueling 7-week training program at West Point, and which were going to flunk out.  They had developed their own measure called the Whole Candidate Score, which was a weighted average of SAT or ACT exam scores, high school rank, expert appraisal of leadership potential, and performance on physical fitness tests, but it turned out that the Whole Candidate Score actually wasn’t very good at predicting who would make it through the 7-week training.  In 2004, Professor Duckworth gave the Grit Scale that she’d been developing to the incoming class of West Point cadets which asks questions like how likely you are to get discouraged by setbacks and how often your interests change, and it turned out that while the quitters had indistinguishable Whole Candidate Scores from the cadets who made it through the training, the Grit Scale was an “astoundingly reliable” predictor of who made it through training and who did not. At this point you might be wondering how gritty you are yourself which is easy to test: just Google “Grit Scale” and hit the first link that pops up; I’ll put the link in the references as well.  (I just took it and I scored 4.5 on a scale of 1-5, which is apparently higher than 90% of the population “in a recent study” that isn’t named).  I guess I’m not enormously surprised; I think of myself as a pretty determined person; I think carefully before signing up to a project or a goal but once I sign up I’m *in* and am 100% committed to the end.  So grit isn’t about talent or luck or how intensely you might want something *in the moment,* but instead it’s about your passion and perseverance for long-term goals.  The test is pretty easy to fake, though – it’s not hard to guess what the ‘right’ answer is when you have to rate your response to the statement “I am a hard worker” or “I am diligent. I never give up.” Professor Duckworth wrote about all this in her 2016 book “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance,” which I read recently.  My first instinct after reading a book that seems pretty good and is well-referenced is to reach out to the author and ask if she might like to be interviewed, but then I started doing some reading around.  The first thing I found was a long profile of her in National Geographic, of all places, saying that she routinely declines requests for interviews, including the one from the National Geographic journalist, who finally tracked down her personal phone number and reached her directly – apparently the journalist’s grittiness persuaded Professor Duckworth to do the interview.  And then secondly I found some studies saying that maybe – just maybe – grit isn’t quite such the big deal that Professor Duckworth makes it out to be – she hopes it will be the thing we can teach poor children that will help them to succeed in school, and it turns out that that is far from clear.  So ultimately I decided we could have more fun by digging into this ourselves and seeing, by the end of the episode, whether grit is a trait we want to try to encourage in our children – or not.   So we’ve said that grit is about passion and perseverance.  Professor Duckworth spends most of her book talking about the perseverance side of the equation, so we’ll just touch briefly on passion first.  Passion is sparked by an interest; an intrinsic enjoyment in what you do.  I wrote my psychology master’s thesis on what motivates children to learn so I can say she’s right on the mark here; we don’t know much about what it is that get us interested in a topic, but once we are interested in it if we learn more about it (and are encouraged to learn more about it by the people we love), that interest can blossom into a passion.  Professor Duckworth provides case studies throughout the book of highly successful people she’s interviewed, as well as some highly successful people who she apparently wasn’t able to interview but she read their books and quotes them as if she had interviewed them, and I think it’s fair to say that all of them were passionate about their work.  This isn’t too hard to wrap your head around; a lot of studies have come to the conclusion that people are not only happier but they perform better when they are interested in their work.  For many people, this interest is linked to the concept of purpose – the idea that their work somehow matters in the world, because it’s connected to the wellbeing of others (or, I suppose to another thing, like the planet).  As a side note, the book never resolves the tension between applying the concept of grit to classroom-based learning, and the fact that interest and passion are a key component of grit.  Unfortunately, much of learning in school is not based on students’ interest; it’s based on what other people say they think students *should* find interesting.  So in a way, if we’re looking at grit as a way of improving student outcomes (which Professor Duckworth apparently hopes we can do), we’re trying to improve students’ perseverance on things they don’t care much about.  It seems like that could be a problem.  But we’ll come back to that later. In addition to passion and purpose, Professor Duckworth briefly mentions that hope is apparently important as well; a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance that keeps us going when things get tough, and to get back up when we get knocked down. But the bulk of the book is dedicated to the perseverance component of grit, so that’s where we’re going to spend the most time as well.  Professor Duckworth describes perseverance as the capacity to practice – after you’ve developed an interest in an area, it’s the devotion to a rigorous, committed, never-ending practice that leads to mastery.  It’s finding your weaknesses and addressing them, day after day, and saying “whatever it takes, I want to improve!.”  Our society is actually quite biased against the kind of practice it takes to be great.  We want to believe it happened because a person was deeply talented.  Professor Chia-Jung Tsay at University College London conducted an experiment where she had professional musicians listen to clips of two musicians playing the piano – one is described as an innately talented player while the other is a ‘striver’ who has worked hard.  The professional researchers didn’t know that the two players were actually the same player, playing different parts of the same piece.  In direct contradiction to their stated beliefs about the importance of effort versus talent, the professional musicians said the naturally talented pianists to be more likely to succeed and more hireable.  In a follow-up study, a set of adults read a profile of a ‘striver’ entrepreneur, while another set read a profile of a ‘naturally talented’ entrepreneur.  All participants then listened to the same audio recording of a business proposal and were told it was made by the entrepreneur they’d read about.  Again, the naturally talented entrepreneur was judged as more likely to be successful and more hireable.  When the participants were asked to back one entrepreneur or the other, the striver had to have four more years of leadership experience and an additional $40,000 in start-up capital before the participants were as likely to invest with the striver than with the natural.  As a profile of Professor Duckworth in The Atlantic so eloquently put it, “We don’t like strivers because they invite self-comparisons.  If what separates, say, Roger Federer from you and me is nothing but the number of hours spent at “deliberate practice” – as the most extreme behaviorists argue – our enjoyment of the U.S. Open could be interrupted by the thought There but for the grace of grit go I.”   So as a society we value natural talent, but if hard work gets people to the same place and they can just hide the hard work, we can be accepting of that as well.  We don’t want to see those hours of practice or the mistakes that went into making something great (the Atlantic article author, Jerry Useem, did as Professor Duckworth suggested and tried to find video footage of people practicing, and wasn’t able to find much at all.  He said the closest he got was the discovery of an early Rolling Stones draft of “Start Me Up,” which apparently does not work at all well as a reggae tune). The attractiveness of the perseverance narrative, of course, cannot be underestimated for an American audience.  We might prioritize talent above all else, but the country’s story is built on the idea of the value of hard work and its ability to lift you out of whatever circumstances you might find yourself in.  It’s the old Protestant work ethic in new clothes.  The narrative isn’t always true, of course: there are plenty of people who find themselves in circumstances that hard work cannot get them out of, despite what conservative politicians might have us believe.  But I think the idea that they should *try anyway* is very American – perhaps this partly explains why Professor Duckworth’s book is ranked number 286 in all books on Amazom.com, but only number 764 on Amazon.co.uk.  Hardly a scientific study, of course, since Professor Duckworth is American and does a lot more publicity work here, but perhaps the difference in culture is one factor. Professor Steven Maier at the University of Colorado has done a lot of work on understanding how rats respond to stress.  He found that if he gave young rats electric shocks that they could switch off by turning a wheel, they grew up to be more adventurous than normal rats.  But young rats who had no control over the duration of their electric shocks grew up with what psychologists call “learned helplessness” – if they were shocked as adults, they behaved very timidly.  When I think about the cultural implications of this, I imagine American children in disadvantaged circumstances pushing against the sides of the box in which they find themselves, getting shocked over and over again, and learning not to push any more.  But being English myself, I imagine English children looking at the box in which they find themselves and thinking “yup, it’s a box.  I’m supposed to be in a box.”  And they don’t even try to touch the sides. So there are a number of ideas to explore here.  Professor Duckworth was a math teacher before she went back to graduate school; first she taught in a private school (although its website says it is not and has never been a “fancy private school” that is “chiefly interested in serving whoever wishes to enroll.” Later, she taught in the only public school in San Francisco that admits students on the basis of academic merit.  As an aside here, Professor Duckworth doesn’t mention that the school in New York was private and actually implies it was a pretty gritty public school when she says that most of her students “lived in the housing projects clustered between Avenues A and D” in Manhattan, which made me think that her students were from a disadvantaged background but then I found out that the tuition is listed on the school’s website as $20,500/year for incoming kindergarteners.  When she got to San Francisco, one of her students was in her ‘regular’ math class rather than ‘Advanced Placement’ math class but he turned in consistently perfect work, so she got him transferred to the AP class.  He didn’t always get As in the AP class, but he went to the teacher and asked for help when he needed it, and he ultimately ended up getting a PhD in mechanical engineering from UCLA – he quite literally became a rocket scientist.  This is just one example of how some of Professor Duckworth’s former students appeared to be using effort to overcome potential deficiencies in talent and effort.  Now isn’t that an attractive idea?  That just through persistent, dogged, hard work, students who are at some kind of disadvantage can overcome the shadow of their backgrounds?  Even though the public high school in San Francisco

“I don’t want to play with you.” “You’re not my friend.” “We’re playing families.  If you want to play, you have to be the dog.” Seems like everyone can remember a time when something like this happened to them as a child, and how much it hurt.  Children still say these things to each other – and we see how much it hurts them, too.  When researchers ask them, every child can remember a time when they were excluded – yet no child ever reports being the excluder! One of my listeners recommended that I read the book You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, in which the author (who is a teacher) proposes and then introduces a rule that you can’t say “you can’t play.”  A few researchers (including Professor Jamie Ostrov, with whom we’ll talk today) have since tested the approach: does it work?  If not, what should we do instead? Since most of these situations occur in preschool and school, teacher Caren co-interviews Professor Ostrov with me: we have some great insights for teachers as well as lots of information for parents on how to support both children and teachers in navigating these difficult situations.   Dr. Professor Jamie Ostrov's Book The development of relational aggression - Affiliate link   References Allen, S.S. (2014). Narratives of women who suffered social exclusion in elementary school. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation. Antioch University, Culver City, CA DeVooght, K., Daily, S., Darling-Churchill, K., Temkin, D., Novak, B.A., & VanderVen, K. (2015, August). Bullies in the block area: The early childhood origins of “mean” behavior. Child Trends. Retrieved from https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2015-31BulliesBlockArea.pdf Haney, M., & Bissonnette, V. (2011). Teachers’ perceptions about the use of play to facilitate development and teach prosocial skills. Creative Education 2(1), 41-46. Helgeland, A., & Lund, I. (2016). Children’s voices on bullying in kindergarten. Early Childhood Education Journal 45(1), 133-141. Ostrov, J.M., Gentile, D.A., & Crick, N.R. (2006). Media exposure, aggression and prosocial behavior during early childhood: A longitudinal study. Social Development 15(4), 612-627. Ostrov, J.M, Godleski, S.A., Kamper-DeMarco, K.E., Blakely-McClure, S.J., & Celenza, L. (2015). Replication and extension of the early childhood friendship project: Effects on physical and relational bullying. School Psychology Review 44(4), 445-463. Ostrov, J.M., Murray-Close, D., Godleski, S.A., & Hart, E.J. (2013). Prospective associations between forms and functions of aggression and social and affective processes during early childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116(1), 19-36. Perry, K.J., & Ostrov, J.M. (2017). Testing a bifactor model of relational and physical aggression in early childhood. Journal of Psychopathology & Behavioral Assessment. Online first. doi 10.1007/s10862-017-9623-9 Swit, C. S., McMaugh, A. L., & Warburton, W. A. (2017). Teacher and parent perceptions of relational and physical aggression during early childhood. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 1-13. DOI: 10.1007/s10826-017-0861-y Werner, N. E., Eaton, A. D., Lyle, K., Tseng, H., & Holst, B. (2014). Maternal social coaching quality interrupts the development of relational aggression during early childhood.  Social Development 23, 470-486.  doi: 10.1111/sode.12048 Weyns, T., Verschueren, K., Leflot, G., Onghena, P., Wouters, S., & Colpin, H. (2017).  The role of teacher behavior in children’s relational aggression development: A five-wave longitudinal study.  Journal of School Psychology 64, 17-27.  doi: 10.1007/s10826-017-0861-y   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:  [00:39] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We’ve done a couple of episodes in the past on social groups. There was one where we interviewed Dr. Yarrow Dunham on the topic of how social groups form and then another on how children develop prejudices. Today we’re going to talk about a book that was recommended to me by a fabulous listener, Jamie in Los Angeles, who sends me a long email every time she finishes listening to an episode to tell me what she thought of it and what kinds of issues and ideas that brought up for her. So the book that she recommended I read is by a teacher, Vivian Paley, and it’s called You Can’t Say You Can’t Play. It’s a really lovely little book. It’s not more than around 100 pages and it describes how Paley thinks about an ultimately implements a rule called you can’t say you can’t play, which is to say that child A can’t say that child B can’t play with whatever child a is doing. Jen:    [01:28] It seemed to me there that there’s a lot more at play here as it were than the simple making up of a role and so I found a professor to talk through these issues with us. Professor Jamie Ostrov is a developmental psychologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who is working to understand the development of both relational and physical aggression in children. As part of this work, he has conducted research on how media exposure impacts children’s aggression and that’s where I first met him, quote unquote. I cited some of his work in our episode on understanding the American Academy of Pediatrics’ new screen time guidelines, but media exposure is just one small part of his interest and so I’m really excited today to speak with him about his work more broadly and to understand how relational aggression develops in children and what we know and to do about it to reduce incidence. Welcome professor Ostroff. Dr. Ostrov:   [02:13] Hello. Jen:    [02:15] And so because so much of social exclusion is primarily something that occurs in group settings like preschool and kindergarten in school. We also have a teacher here to help us take the theory and make it really practical. So Caren is a teacher at a preschool in British Columbia that’s inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to learning, which has a specific focus on what it means to be a friend and on social inclusion. So my hope is today that we’re going to give the teachers among us some really practical suggestions about handling social inclusion in their schools and that parents can get an understanding of what happens in schools and how they can support teachers and creating inclusive environments. Welcome Caren. Caren:  [02:52] Hello everyone. Jen:    [02:53] Alright, so let’s start with a little memory test for Professor Ostrov. Could you tell us a little bit about, for those of who haven’t read it, the book you can’t say you can’t play, so what’s the story about and how did you find it and what did you take out of it? Dr. Ostrov:   [03:07] Sure, so thanks for having me today. You know, the story is a… It’s an interesting story. It was recommended to me by one of our school partners by one of the directors of the childcare centers that we were doing research in and she saw a lot of parallels between what’s conveyed within the book, the overall message, the challenges within the book and some of our own work. And so for me, I definitely will, after reading this very short, very lovely book, I saw some clear connections to our work on social exclusion or what we call relational aggression. A key takeaway for me after reading this book about her struggles to implement this new golden rule. You Can’t Say You Can’t Play within her kindergarten classroom and talking to older children about some of their own peer rejection and pure exclusion experiences and the challenges that they envisioned in implementing this kind of new golden rule. Dr. Ostrov:  [03:59] A key takeaway for me was first, it’s too late to intervene in kindergarten, which in some ways reinforced my view that if we want to intervene, we should intervene when these behaviors are coming online developmentally, and we’ve known for a number of years now that really it starts back in preschool, so that was the first takeaway. The second takeaway was that if we are going to try to intervene even in the preschool environment, it was going to be challenging and it would be really challenging to implement a golden rule like this that you can’t say you can’t play. In part because Vivian Paley talks about the struggles of implementing this rule. The children didn’t like it. There were some real challenges in getting them to adhere to the overall rule and even using fairytale magical story. This character Magpie this bird that can talk to the characters. Even doing all these things in a very developmentally appropriate way didn’t seem to really convince the kids in the end and so without that except ability without the buy in from the kids, I really didn’t think that this program was going to be all that effective, although I was clearly intrigued and it certainly planted a seed that later in my career I would come back to and try to address with the development of our own program. Jen:  [05:11] Okay. And so you’ve mentioned a couple of things there. The first thing that I want to just touch on with Caren is I wonder if Caren, when you first start to see these kinds of behaviors appearing in children, because my job is just a little bit over three and as far as I can tell, she pretty much plays with anyone who walks up to her at this point, but I guess that must shift somewhere probably in the next year. How does that start to manifest itself from what you see in your preschool setting? Caren: [05:34] We find that now with our three year olds that are just coming in, it appears as though they’re, you know, doing more of the solo type play and just getting to know sort of how to be with other children and how to be in the same space and share toys and then later as the friendships form and the connections get stronger, that’s when we start to see more of the exclusion start to happen. Jen:    [05:55] Ah. So it’s more to, I have a real relationship with you and this I want to play with you and you alone and nobody else can play with you. Dr. Ostrov:     [06:04] Right. You know, a lot of sentences like, you know, we asked children like how can you be a friend with child A, but also Child B, and what does that look like? Jen:     [06:13] Okay. A limited amount of love to spread around. Okay. So Jamie, I wonder if we could just talk for a minute about physical and relational aggression and also we’ve used the term social exclusion and social inclusion. Do they have different meanings or can we use them interchangeably and can you just define what those are please? Dr. Ostrov:    [06:30] Sure. So first, I think it’s important to define what we mean by aggression. Aggression is the intent or children, individuals, adults, anybody who has the intent to hurt, to harm or to injure another person, and then that can manifest in different forms and so the typical forms that we study would be physical aggression and another would be what we call relational aggression. So physical aggression is the easiest to define. That’s using physical force as the means of harm and that’s the usual suspects of hitting, kicking, punching, pushing, pulling, taking things away from others. If you would ask somebody on the street what is aggression, they probably would say, oh, I know it’s hitting, kicking. The other form of aggression of what we call relational aggression is using the same overall definition of aggression, the intent to hurt, to harm or to injure another, but it manifests in a different way. Dr. Ostrov:   [07:18] It uses the relationship or the threat of the removal of the relationship as the means of harm. It looks a little differently at different points in development, but some of the prototypical examples would be threatening the removal of the relationship by saying, I won’t be your friend anymore. You can’t play with me. You can’t come to my birthday party. You’re not my friend. Right? You can’t come. My birthday party is a great example because you know, the very young child doesn’t know when their own birthday party is, let alone anyone else’s, so they use that all, all year round. But we can, we can also see, uh, the use of the silent treatment or malicious ignoring. We see evidence of spreading secrets, malicious rumors, gossip and lies about others. These are all part that’s part of the construct that we call relational aggression. So social exclusion is one component of this behavior, but you know, I have no problem with using that interchangeably with the term relational aggression. When we talk about inclusion, I consider that to be part of prosocial behavior or this kind of genuine desire to help others to share with them or to include them in games or activities. Jen:    [08:25] Okay. Wow. It sounds just delightful. A number of ways you can exclude somebody that you don’t want to play with, so I’m wondering how this shifts over the course of a child’s life. Do children start off being more physically aggressive and then maybe as they develop more sophisticated mental and verbal skills, they shift to relational aggression and is the process the same for boys and girls? Dr. Ostrov:   [08:49] It’s a great question. So we know that developmentally physical aggression is actually quite common during the early years, but it typically drops off. There’s a sharp decline in physical aggression such that by the time we approach kindergarten and formal school, for most children, physically aggressive behavior is really relatively low and that in part is related to increases in their social cognitive capacity, their emotion regulation capacity, but also sanctions. Sanctions are higher and children appreciate that, I mean certainly as they get to formal schooling, they understand that there are serious costs to engaging in physically aggressive behavior. Relationally aggressive behavior, we’ve seen the emergence of that to occur around 30 months so that two and a half year old can start engaging in some exclusionary behavior, but it really seems to be picking up between that three to four year old period that we were talking about before and we don’t have a whole lot of longitudinal studies studies that have followed children across long periods of time to really understand the trajectory that changes in behavior or across time, but what we do know is that it certainly is quite common to engage in relational aggressive behavior during this preschool period, the three to five year old period and for many children to continue to engage in these behaviors and in some cases to shift their behavior from physically aggressive behavior to this arguably more covert form of aggression, relationally aggressive behavior as we transition into school and when we move into later periods in development, when we move into the middle childhood years and into adolescence, it’s much more common to see relationally aggressive behavior is occurring. Dr. Ostrov: [10:29] It’s interesting that as far as gender goes, the typical form of aggression, the modal form of aggression for girls is relationally aggressive behavior and that probably has something to do with their social goals which tend to be more about fostering dyadic relationships and intimacy with others, so the best way to harm a girl is to destroy a relationship that you have with her or she has with others. Whereas for boys there modal form, the more common form of aggression is physical aggression and that might be linked to their social goal of social dominance, of instrumentality, of being on top and somebody else on the bottom, and so the best way to knock somebody down is literally to knock them down from that power position. And this does change a bit throughout development such that boys and girls in early childhood, for the most part are operating within a gender segregated world where boys are playing primarily with boys and girls with girls and they’re being...

“Be a man.”  “Boys don’t cry.”  “Don’t be a sissy.” Boys hear these things all the time – from parents, from teachers, from friends and peers.  What does it do to their emotional lives when they crave close relationships but society tells them to keep emotional distance from others? Join my guest Alan Turkus and me as we quiz Dr. Judy Chu, who lectures on this topic at Stanford and was featured in the (awesome!) documentary The Mask You Live In. This episode is a must-listen if you’re the parent of a boy, and may even help those of you with girls to understand more about why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do. Don’t have a boy?  Check out How To Raise A Girl With A Healthy Body Image.   References Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chu, J. When boys become boys: Development, relationships, and masculinity.  New York, NY: NYU Press. (Affiliate link) Maccoby, E.E. (1990). Gender and relationships: A developmental account. American Psychologist 45(4), 513-520. Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York, NY: Doubleday. Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York, NY: Random House.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen: [00:40] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few weeks ago, I interviewed Dr Renee Engeln who wrote the book Beauty Sick on the topic of raising girls with a healthy body image. Even though I don’t have a son, I know a lot of you do, so in today’s episode we’re going to talk about some of the challenges associated with raising sons and how we can be better parents to sons, and specifically how fathers can be better parents to sons. So since I am not a father and don’t have a son, I figured I’d better find someone who is both of those things. So today I welcome a co-interviewer, Alan. Alan grew up in New Jersey with a comfortable middle class family whose father was physically present and not physically abusive, but who had what Alan calls embarrassing spasms of anger that came with yelling and throwing things and when he wasn’t angry, he was pretty emotionally absent, so Alan feels as though he didn’t really have a great model for this whole fathering thing, but he wants to parent his own son differently and it started to take some steps in that direction, but he isn’t really sure if it’s enough or what else he should be doing. Welcome Alan. Alan:    [01:42] Thank you. Jen:    [01:44] And to help Alan and I figure all this out. I’m so excited that we’re joined today by Dr Judy Chu. I first learned of her work on the documentary called The Mask You Live In, which you can rent on Amazon or on Netflix and I would highly encourage you to do that even if you’re the parent of a girl because it really helped me to understand some of the reasons why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do. Dr Chu is featured in that film and when I looked her up, I saw she’d written a book called When Boys Become Boys, which I devoured as soon as I got it, and I knew she was the right person for us to talk with. She also teaches a course on boys psychosocial development at Stanford University. Her work aims to support boys healthy resistance against societal constraints that undermine their connections to themselves and others. Welcome Dr. Chu. Dr. Chu:   [02:28] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Jen:    [02:31] So Dr. Chu. I wonder if we could just start sort of in the weeds a little bit here about your research because a lot of the studies that we cover on this show are experimental in nature and that means that some researchers take some children to the lab and maybe they do something to make them uncomfortable and then they give the children a difficult task and see how they respond and then we try and generalize that behavior out to the real world and I’m familiar with the quote from the great psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner who called this the science of behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time, but your research takes such a different approach from that. Can you just tell us a little bit about how you go about studying boys? Dr. Chu:    [03:11] Sure. Well, I guess the best way to describe my research is exploratory studies because like you at the time I hadn’t grown up as a boy and I didn’t have a son. And so in a way it was very much like anthropological research where I was going to learn from boys about what it was like for them to grow up as boys amidst, you know, a culture that has specific messages about what it means to be a real boy, quote unquote, or a real man. And I wanted to learn from the boys themselves, you know, what they’re capable of knowing and doing and relationships. So a lot of my methods really involved kind of like ethnographic observations. Just really trying to approach the boys as… I even told them that they’re my teachers because I don’t know what it’s like to be them. And so really looking to them as key informants and then kind of participating in their everyday lives at school as a participant observer. Dr. Chu:   [04:01] So watching what they were doing, but also asking them about it and kind of really centering everything around developing kind of trusting and comfortable relationships so that they would talk to me as I was, you know, obviously different. I was an adult, I was a woman and kind of letting them get to know me so that they could feel that they could tell me things or share with me or also tell me if they didn’t feel like sharing things with me, which was also a part of the process. So I really wanted to respect and honor their wishes and their levels of comfort and then following up those observations later in the year once we had established relationships with interviews that I did – conducted either one on one with the boys or the boys in groups and that just depended on their preference. I would ask them, do you want to meet with me on your own or do you want to meet with me with some of your buddies? Dr. Chu:    [04:45] And they would let me know what they preferred because I brought toys to my meeting and because they were some times more desirable character that each boy wanted to play with. That became a way of getting to meet with them one on one because they didn’t want to have to kind of negotiate who got to be which characters and whatnot. So, um, but it was really very much based on what’s called the relational approach to psychological inquiry, which really kind of tries to account for the fact that the stories people tell us or the things that they share with us about their lives really depends on how they see us and how they see our motives and really starts from a place of, you know, placing at the center of the relationship between the researcher and the participant. Jen:  [05:24] And so how many times did you meet with the boys roughly? Dr. Chu:  [05:27] Let’s see. I studied them throughout their pre kindergarten year and then followed up in their kindergarten year. I went at least once a week for two to three hours a week. And let’s see. I probably had about 48 days that I was there. And of those 48 I probably did interviews on 36 to 38 of those days. And so I met with them quite frequently and it was kind of eventually became on-demand, so I’d show up and the boys would kind of, you know, this was much later once they felt comfortable with me, but I’d show up and they’d come and request like, can you meet with me today, can you take me today? And then I’d try to make sure I met with everyone who had asked to be met with. And then also some of the boys who are a little more shy or hesitant, I also would ask them and when they didn’t feel comfortable, I’d let them pass and then if they wanted to then we eventually met in that way. So I tried to kind of, you know, more or less meet with at least everyone who wanted to. And eventually all of the boys did meet with me several times, so, you know, a handful but some more than others. Jen:   [06:24] So this is very different from pulling a kid into a lab and get spending them in a five minute experiment and generating a result at the end. And I know that with an experiment you can potentially reach a larger number of people. You studied a relatively smaller number of people and I’m curious about the generalizability of your results. Can you talk a little bit about that? Dr. Chu: [06:43] Oh no, that’s a great question. Yeah, of course. I’m happy to talk about that. One of the things that kind of drove my research was that at the time, and this was in the late nineties, nineteen nineties, a lot of the literature on boys was not really talking about their relationships and the centrality of relationships in their development because relationships were kind of deemed feminine. And so it’s like, Oh, if you’re going to study relationships then you should be looking at girls because that’s what girls do. And so the boys relational capabilities and kind of their styles and all those things were very much overlooked or underestimated or just kind of neglected. Like, you know, some of the books that had been written with just say, oh well boys don’t really hardwired to talk about emotions and relationships. And so there was really this missing discourse in the literature on boys. Dr. Chu:  [07:29] So what I really wanted to do is go in and focus on the boys perspectives to learn about their experiences and the relational approach that I adopted was very much based in studies that had emerged out of questioning traditional psychological methods which kind of approached experiments or studies as kind of what they call the black box approach where you think, okay, this person is this mysterious black thoughts. And like you said earlier, you know, we can manipulate situations and kind of see how they respond and try to guess at what they think about it. But my mentor at the time at Harvard, her name is Carol Gilligan. And one of the things that came out of her work in addition to the research on girls’ relationships and girls’ development that came out of the Harvard project on girls’ development and women’s psychology was this method that really said, you know, you can ask people about their experiences. Dr. Chu: [08:14] And if you create a context or a situation that is comfortable and familiar and trusting and inviting, people can tell you what they’re thinking, and you can trust that. And so the approach was really that the boys know something about their experience and they can tell me about it if I can create a situation that makes them able to be open and honest with me. And so yeah, in a way it’s probably seen as a little bit more of a radical approach to psychological inquiry. But in terms of the kinds of questions that I wanted to examine, it was really the most appropriate method as opposed to coming in and, you know, because one of the things that I document in my book is just how long it took, you know, several visits, maybe 10 to 15 visits before the boys started to feel comfortable with me because I was a stranger to them. Dr. Chu:    [09:00] And understandably what they wouldn’t know if they could trust me or if they even wanted to talk to me. And so really giving them time to feel like, okay, who is this person? What does she want to know is safe for me to talk to her, do I even want to talk to her? And then finally kind of realizing that, you know, because I was genuinely interested in what they had to say really coming out and sharing with me things that, you know, sometimes they would say, oh, you know, don’t tell the teachers that I told you this or, you know, don’t let the other boys know that this is happening. Because a lot of them often felt that they were the only ones kind of struggling with some of the messages and pressures that were coming into their lives. Even at the young age of four. Jen:   [09:37] Yeah. So you answered another of my questions, which is why did you get interested in this if you didn’t even have a son yet? Dr. Chu:    [09:46] That was a really wonderful question and if I could just, I’ll try to speak very briefly about it, but I was actually brought to this study by boys themselves and it actually started with work with adolescent boys because my first year at Harvard, after I went home. I was driving around my brother and his friends, they were all 13 years old so they couldn’t drive and one of his friends kind of said to me, Oh, Harvard, you know, tell us what you’re learning there, you know, basically sarcastically like “impress us.” And I said, well, one of the things I learned about was when you know, these studies of girls and how to support girls, and he, this 13 year old boy says to me, oh, everyone’s so obsessed with girls, they’re talking about girls and how to support them and that we need to support them. Dr. Chu:  [10:24] He goes, and that’s fine with me, but nobody’s talking to boys and we have something to say too. And he goes, “I know you should study boys; you should start with me.” And so I went back to Harvard that fall, told my advisor Carol about this, and she said, you should go back and study him. Clearly he has something to say. And so when I went home for winter break, that’s what I did. I started with an interview with this 13 year old. He talked for two hours about, you know, just kind of things that were, what was going on with him, what was hard, what was easy, what was on his mind. And I actually spent the first year of my studies studying adolescent boys, but what I found was that by adolescents they had already started to kind of reconcile the discrepancy between this is the way people think boys are and this is the way I experienced myself to be and the fact that there’s a gap between those things is just the way things are and you have to accept that gap as a part of growing up. Dr. Chu:  [11:22] So that was kind of what I was seeing and hearing from adolescent boys. And so Carol said, you know, you really need to start earlier when they’re still in the middle of struggling with that discrepancies when they’re not yet kind of reconciled to the fact that people just aren’t going to know what they’re really like. And so her hypothesis was that what she was observing or had observed in adolescent girls, which is kind of this heightening of pressures for girls to conform to these feminine ideals and stereotypes, that the girls then had healthy resistance against. She felt that, you know, in our patriarchal culture where men still have most of the privileges in terms of power and status, that she thinks that in patriarchy they go after the boys earlier at the boys start hearing things like, don’t be a sissy, don’t cry, don’t be a Mama’s boy. Dr. Chu:    [12:08] Those messages come in earlier. And her theory or hypothesis was that it came in at early childhood. So she said, why don’t you go in and find out, you know, what’s going on for these boys. And at first I was actually a little bit worried about that because I hadn’t been working with young children very much. And because I felt like, oh, I could talk to adolescents, I just finished adolescence, but I didn’t know what to expect with the younger kids. And they were amazing, you know, once we’re able to establish familiarity and comfort and trust. They were just as welcoming as the adolescent boys and it’s open to sharing. Once they knew they could trust me and that I really wanted to know what they had to say. Jen:

Folks, this one is personal for me.  As someone with an ~ahem~ family history of disordered thinking about body image, it is very, very high on my priority list to get this right with my daughter.  Dr. Renee Engeln, author of the book Beauty Sick, helps us sort through issues like: Should I tell my daughter she’s pretty? What should I say when she asks me if she’s pretty? Is teaching our daughters about media literacy – the ability to critique images they see in the media – enough to protect them, or not? …and so much more! I know there’s a lot more to raising a girl than just this issue, and in time I hope to find another expert to discuss how we can raise daughters who aren’t limited by broader societal expectations, but there’s enough on this topic to make it an episode by itself. In the show, we discuss a prompt you can use to write a self-compassionate letter to yourself as a way of recognizing all the amazing things your body can do. Professor Engeln actually sent me two of them; you can find these below. You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out why this picture is here:     Body-Compassion letter (based on Kristin Neff’s exercises available at self-compassion.org): For the next 10 minutes, you will be writing a letter to yourself. The letter should be all about your body, but it should be from the perspective of an unconditionally loving imaginary friend. Think about your body from the perspective of a friend who cares about you. What would your friend want to tell you about your body? If you run out of things to write, re-write what you already have, perhaps with different wording. Think about this imaginary friend who is unconditionally loving, accepting, kind and compassionate. Imagine that this friend can see all the strengths and all the weaknesses of your body, including any aspects of your body that you may view as flawed or imperfect. Reflect upon what this friend would say about your body, knowing that you are loved and accepted with your body exactly as it is, with all your body’s very human imperfections. This friend recognizes the limits of human nature and is kind and forgiving toward you. In his/her great wisdom, this friend understands your life history and the millions of things that have happened in your life to give you the body you have in this moment. Write a letter to yourself, about your body, from the perspective of this imaginary friend. What would this friend say about your body from the perspective of unlimited compassion? How would this friend convey the deep compassion he/she feels for you, especially for the pain you feel if you tend to judge the flaws and imperfections of your body harshly? What would this friend write in order to remind you that you are only human, that all bodies have both strengths and weaknesses? As you write to yourself from the perspective of this imaginary friend, try to infuse your letter with a strong sense of his/her acceptance of your body, caring, and desire for your health and happiness. Above all else, be kind, understanding, and compassionate toward your body.   2. Body Functionality letter: For the next 10 minutes, you will be writing a letter to yourself. The letter should be all about what your body does. Think about all your body does and how it helps you do the things you want to do each day. Focus on everything your body can do for you and write a letter to yourself about that topic. If you run out of things to write, re-write what you already have, perhaps with different wording. Think about all the strengths of your body in terms of everything it can do. What has your body allowed you to do throughout your life? Think about the different parts of your body and how they each play a role in helping you do what you need to do each day.   References Engeln, R. (2017). Beauty Sick: How the cultural obsession with appearance hurts girls and women. New York, NY: HarperCollins. (Affiliate link) Fredrickson, B.L., Roberts, T.A., Noll, S.M., Quinn, D.M., & Twenge, J.M. (1998). That swimsuit becomes you: Sex differences in self-objectification, restrained eating, and math performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 75(1), 269-284. Neff, K.D. (2011). Self-compassion, self-esteem, and well-being. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5(1), 1-12. Neff, K.D., & McGehee, P. (2010). Self-compassion and psychological resilience among adolescents and young adults. Self and Identity 9, 225-240.   Read Full Transcript   Transcript Jen:  [00:39] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode is going to be a difficult but an important one for me. So you all know that I have a daughter who’s heading towards being three and a half and a while back, we did an episode with Dr. Christia Brown where we talked about how the differences between boys and girls at a young age are almost entirely based on culture and socialization rather than on genetic factors and that’s still true, but I wanted to take the next step in thinking about this because it seems to me as there are the impacts of culture become magnified rather than diminished as girls get older. And the effects of that culture are really not kind to our girls. And I’ve seen this firsthand myself. Those of you who listen to my episode with Dr. Atle Dyregrov on the topic of talking with children about death know that my mother died when I was young and what I didn’t mention in that episode was that she was anorexic and she actually starved herself to death. Jen:    [01:32] So we talk about a lot of topics related to child development on this show. And for the most part I kind of feel as though I have some wiggle room and whether or not I get them right. But today we’re gonna talk about raising emotionally healthy girls, and I really feel as though this is one issue that I cannot and must not screw up. So this is a must listen episode if you have daughters, but if you only have sons I’d say don’t turn us off just yet because a lot of the things that make raising girls so difficult are related to how we raise our boys. So we’re going to cover a lot more detail on that topic in another episode very soon. Jen:     [02:06] So here to guide us through some of the issues related to helping girls develop a positive body. Image is professor Renee Engeln who is an award winning professor of psychology at Northwestern University. She’s the author of Beauty Sick: How The Cultural Obsession With Appearance Hurts Girls and Women. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals and conferences and she speaks to groups across the country. Her TEDx talk at the University of Connecticut has more than 400,000 views on YouTube and she also blogs regularly for Psychology Today. Welcome Professor Engeln. Dr. Engeln:    [02:35] Thank you for having me. Jen:  [02:37] All right, so your book is called Beauty Sick. What is beauty sickness and what are some examples of it? Dr. Engeln:     [02:43] For me, beauty sickness is what happens when you get so worried about how you look when you get so caught up in the mirror that you don’t have the time and the energy and the resources left to put into the things that you really care about, to things that matter more to you than how you look. Jen:   [03:02] Is this really a thing that there are people who cannot literally focus on what they’re doing because they are spending so much time thinking about how they look? Dr. Engeln:   [03:11] So I think we want to think of it as a continuum, right? So I don’t know any woman who can never focus because she’s always thinking about how she looks, but I have yet to meet a woman who hasn’t had those moments where you get distracted in the middle of an important meeting or where you’re late to something because you just can’t get your clothes looking quite like you want them to look or where you’re exhausted because you had to get up earlier in order to do more makeup and put more effort into your hair. So we pay these costs and a lot of little ways throughout the day and throughout our lives, but they add up to a cumulative effect. Jen:    [03:48] Yeah. I remember an example from the book about, I think it was girls and boys together at a prom event and the girls were all dressed in something that has to be hitched up and hitched down or something would be revealed and that’s sort of a facetious example, but if you imagine that it happens on a somewhat lesser scale on a daily basis in offices when you’re wearing heels and a skirt that you have to make sure you sit in the right way and… Dr. Engeln:    [04:10] And it, it takes you out of the moment, right? Yeah. I always tell people when I give that example of those girls I saw in that restaurant, I don’t care that they’re wearing strapless dresses or skirts are short. That’s not the issue. The issue is that it kept pulling them away from what they were doing. It kept interrupting their conversations. It’s like carving a little piece of your consciousness off and then dedicating it to solely monitoring how you look to make sure everything’s in place and everything looks okay and we don’t really see men having to focus on that in the same way women do. Jen:   [04:46] And I’m thinking specifically of one of the examples in your book about a girl who’s… The pseudonym she chose is “Artemis.” Can you tell us about her? Dr. Engeln:   [04:55] Artemis was a high school girl when I talked to her. She was around 17 years old and Artemis estimated to me that she spent 50 percent of her mental energy thinking about how she looked and for her she was particularly focused on her body size. She thought she was too heavy. Dr. Engeln:   [05:12] She wanted to be thinner. She used the term brain space, which I really liked. So she said half my brain space is for thinking about my body; half of it slept for thinking about school. That’s how she experienced herself as being sort of carved up and this is the same girl who told me when I asked her about some of the goals she had, she said, well, I can’t really think about those goals. I can’t think about getting my brain where I want it to be until I get my body where I want it to be. That’s the kind of pressure we’re talking about. Jen:    [05:40] Okay. Because women tend to think that if I was just a bit thinner, my experience of the world would be different and better in some way. Right? Dr. Engeln:  [05:49] And let’s be honest, there’s a lot of stigma in this culture around weight. We focus on appearance a lot, but it’s not true that changing how you look is going to magically open the door to happiness. If there’s no evidence that that is the case. There’s a great big literature on that out there on happiness and well-being and finding meaning in your life and the things you can pursue to get there. None of them have to do with spending more time in front of the mirror and they all have to do with spending less. Jen:   [06:19] Okay. So I’m thinking social media probably plays a fairly large role in all of this these days. Is that true? Dr. Engeln:   [06:27] Absolutely. I say this in my book. I feel bad about it, but I mean it that I thank my lucky stars I did not have to be a young girl or an adolescent girl at a time when there was social media. Jen:   [06:38] Me too. Dr. Engeln:   [06:40] It is unbelievably hard and when I talk to young girls and teenagers and even young women through adulthood about what they face on social media, it is not a healthy scene out there. I had a girl who came to hear me talk, tell me that she posts a picture on Instagram and if she gets 50 likes then she can feel okay about how she looks that day, but if she doesn’t get 50 then she knows she doesn’t look okay and will spend the whole day worried about it. And this is not a healthy way to live. Right. Instagram likes are not a cure for low competence. If that worked, we’d only have to do it once; we’d throw a picture, you’d get some likes and you’d think, oh, right, I do feel good about how I look, but it’s never going to be enough and every time you post one of those pictures where you’re trying to look sexy or skinny or perfect or filtered or whatever you’re doing, it’s also making everyone who sees that picture, think about how they look and wonder if they look good enough and it perpetuates that cycle of focusing on how we look and how other women look. It takes up a lot of our mental energy. Jen:  [07:54] I was just watching your TED talk before I got on the phone with you and I saw you demonstrate the pose that women. Can you describe it? Dr. Engeln:   [08:05] I learned this from my students and it’s been a while, I think since they first showed me me; maybe even 10 years or so and it started with skinny arms, skinny arm. I feel like a lot of women know at this point when I see pictures of women online on Instagram or Facebook, it’s rare that they don’t have skinny arms, so that’s when you purchase your hand on your hip and get your arm out at a real sharp angle. Right? And my students tell me that so that your arm doesn’t smoosh against your body. Right? So it makes your arm looks skinnier and I think, oh, okay, that’s one thing. Dr. Engeln:    [08:34] And then they tell me there’s more, right? You have to turn slightly to the side, you have to pop your knee, you have to pull your chin out just a little to make sure you don’t have double chin, and then you need to tilt your head at just the right cant. And what they told me is that they do this automatically now when someone pulls out a phone. Someone’s going to take a picture. It’s just the pose you get into. It is hard. If you know people who are going to prom or homecoming or things like that and you see pictures online, it will be hard for you to find a picture without skinny arm. Jen:    [09:04] Yeah. I don’t look at a ton of prom pictures, but I had noticed there are a few younger people that I’m friends with on Facebook and I had seen them in this sort of standard position and hadn’t realized it had become so common and once you know what it is and you know all the components of it. You see it everywhere. Dr. Engeln:   [09:21] You see it everywhere and I think some people say, well, what’s so wrong with that? When I got headshots done for my book, the photographer told me of course, “At all weddings we tell women to pose like that because they’re just happy with how their arms look.” Jen:   [09:32] I was happy to see in your jacket and cover that you do not do skinny...

Waaaay back in Episode 3, we wondered whether we had missed the boat on teaching our babies to read (didn’t you teach your baby how to read?). We eventually decided that we hadn’t, but given that many parents have a goal of instilling a love of reading into their children, what’s the best way to go about doing that? And what if your child is the kind who wriggles out of your lap at the mere sight of a book? Our second-ever repeat guest, Dr. Laura Froyen, helps us to delve into the research on this topic. We conclude by talking through some of the things parents can do to promote a love of reading, because it turns out it’s not as intuitive as one might think! Dr. Froyen's  11 Ways to Support Your Child in Learning to Read PDF guide.   References Bus, A.G. (2001). Joint caregiver-child storybook reading: A route to literacy development. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: Guilford. Bus, A.G., van IJzendoorn, M.H., & Pellegrini, A.D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research 65(1), 1-21. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marinus_Van_IJzendoorn/publication/230853169_Joint_Book_Reading_Makes_for_Success_in_Learning_to_Read_A_Meta-Analysis_on_Intergenerational_Transmission_of_Literacy/links/53f05d6f0cf26b9b7dcdfe58.pdf Burchinal, M., & Forestieri, N. (2011). Development of early literacy: Evidence from major U.S. longitudinal studies. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research (Vol. 3). (85-96). New York: Guilford. Bus, A.G. (2003). Social-emotional requisites for learning to read. In A. van Kleeck, S.A. Stahl, & E.B. Bauer (Eds.), On reading books to children: Parents and teachers (3-15). New York: Guilford. Butterworth, G. (2001). Joint visual attention in infancy. In G. Bremner & A. Fogel (Eds.). Blackwell handbook of infant development. (213-240). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Carlsson-Paige, N., G. Bywater McLaughlin, and J. Wolfsheimer Almon (2015). Reading instruction in kindergarten: Little to gain and much to lose. Available online at: http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/Reading_Instruction_in_Kindergarten.pdf Evans, M.A., & Saint-Aubin, J. (2011). Studying and modifying young children’s visual attention during book reading. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research (Vol. 3). (242-255). New York: Guilford. Fletcher, K.L., & Reese, E. (2005). Picture book reading with young children: A conceptual framework. Developmental Review 25, 64-103. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathryn_Fletcher2/publication/223236320_Picture_book_reading_with_young_children_A_conceptual_framework/links/0912f503ce1f9d05ec000000.pdf Landry, S.H., Smith, K.E., Swank, P.R., Zucker, T., Crawford, A.D., & Solari, E.F. (2011). The effects of a responsive parenting intervention on parent-child interactions during shared book reading. Developmental Psychology 48(4), 969-986. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Swank/publication/51831766_The_Effects_of_a_Responsive_Parenting_Intervention_on_Parent-Child_Interactions_During_Shared_Book_Reading/links/0912f5097cf5ddf41c000000.pdf McBride-Chang, C. (2012). Shared-book reading: There is no downside for parents. In S. Suggate & E. Reese (Eds.), Contemporary debates in childhood education and development (pp.51-58). Abingdon, U.K.: Routeledge. Morow, L.M. (1993). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Notari-Syverson, A., (2006). Everyday tools of Literacy. In Learning to Read the World: Language and literacy in the first three years (61-78). Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three. Otto, B. (2008). Literacy development in early childhood: Reflective teaching for birth to age eight. Long Grove, IL: Waveland. Phillips, L.M., Norris, S.P., & Anderson, J. (2008). Unlocking the door: Is parents’ reading to children the key to early literacy development? Canadian Psychology 49(2), 82-88. Reese, E. (2012). The tyranny of shared book-reading. In S. Suggate & E. Reese (Eds.), Contemporary debates in childhood education and development (pp.59-68). Abingdon, U.K.: Routeledge. Rosenkotter, S.E., & Wanless, S.B. (2006). Everyday tools of Literacy. In Learning to Read the World: Language and literacy in the first three years (81-100). Washington, D.C.: Zero to Three. Scarborough, H.S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research. (97-110). New York: Guilford. Schickedanz, J.A. (1999). Much more than the ABCs: The early stages of reading and writing. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Senechal, M. (2011). A model of the concurrent and longitudinal relations between home literacy and child outcomes. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research. (175-188). New York: Guilford. Whitehurst, G.J., & Lonigan, C.J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development 69(3), 848-872.