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This episode is the final in our mini-series that I hope will help you to think through the options you might have for your child’s preschool. In previous episodes we looked at Waldorf and Montessori approaches to early childhood education; today we examine the Reggio Emilia-based approach with Suzanne Axelsson, who studied it for her Master’s degree in early childhood education and is well-respected in the Reggio field.  She helps us to understand how the “concept of the child” impacts how we see the child and support their learning, and what are the “hundred languages of children”… Suzanne Axelsson's Book The original learning approach: Weaving together playing, learning, and teaching in early childhood - Affiliate link References Bodrova, E., & Leong, D.J. (2006). Tools of the mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Pearson. Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (2012). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:   [00:27] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called Is a Reggio Emilia Preschool Right for My Child. So this is the third in our mini series about different approaches to preschool education and today’s episode is going to be a little bit odd for me because I actually know a fair bit about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, but I went out and found us a real expert to talk with and I’m going to pretend like I don’t know very much so that we can ask the kinds of questions that people here are new to Reggio Emilia might ask. Our guest today, Suzanne Axleson received her master’s degree in early childhood education at Sheffield University in England, where she specialized in Reggio Emilia language and communication and documentation as a tool to aid memory and deepen children’s learning. She has 20 years of experience teaching in a variety of early years settings including traditional Swedish preschool and Montessori. Suzanne recently worked at Filosofiska, which I hope I’m pronouncing correctly, Sweden’s first preschool with a philosophical profile where she developed an approach to use philosophy as a pedagogic tool for young children, but she recently decided to spend some time collecting her thoughts in preparation for writing a book on how to use listening to improve pedagogical outcomes. Welcome, Suzanne. Suzanne:    [01:39] Thank you. Jen: [01:40] Thanks so much for joining us today. I wonder if you could tell us about how you first learned about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education and what about it spoke to you? Suzanne: [01:49] It was round about 2007 when I was working in a preschool and there were teachers talking about that this is a new approach to this preschool should take and we looked into it so we realized this was something we were going to do and so I looked more into it and realized it spoke to me because it’s more or less what I’ve been doing all the time. It was about observing the children and listening to the children and making sure that the learning was happening appropriately for them. So it felt like a natural contraction of how I was working as an educator but to deepen that, to learn more about it. Jen:     [02:27] Okay, and what specific elements of the practice were you referring to there? Suzanne:   [02:32] When working with projects the children will find something of interest and then you will go into their interest and deepen their understanding of this by if for example, it was dinosaurs, it would not just be looking at everything that was dinosaurs and learning facts about dinosaurs. Why was it they were interested in dinosaurs and quite often it was finding out more about their fears and finding out more about how they themselves build things or created things or drew things and interacted with what was scary or it was different depending on the group of children, so dinosaurs was never – I’ve done it many different times, but he’s never been exactly the same. Jen:  [03:13] Hm. And is never exactly the same because the children are never exactly the same. Right? Suzanne:   [03:18] They all have their different approaches. Some children have been – they’ve wanted to be paleontologists, so they wanted to go and pretend that we’re finding fossils and it’s all been about the bones and connected to the bones in their own body, so it was like an exploration of their own body through the dinosaur bones while others, It’s been definitely the fear. There’s something was those big scary teeth was what was fascinating them. There were more of the fear exploration during that time. Jen:   [03:45] Okay. Suzanne:   [03:46] It’s always been an interesting way to… It gives us the opportunity to look at, to, to discover what children are learning, but they give me a new perspective on the same thing. So I never go and see dinosaurs and exactly the same way. Jen:    [03:59] Mm. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I wonder if for somebody who’s never seen a Reggio classroom before, can you walk us through what one looks like in your mind? What does the room look like and what are the children doing and and how do they move through their day? Suzanne:   [04:13] In my mind, the classroom would be one would inspire learning now look around and I would know the children were interested in and know what they’ve been doing recently because there’d be documentation on the wall and that everything would be accessible for the children or most things will be accessible for the children because sometimes you can’t have everything out all at once. The children will be busy. They will be engaged. It would have freedom, freedom to move around and the classrooms from what I’m used to, when I’ve observed classrooms in the U.S. Have been more like a classroom while I’m used to the children being exposed to a whole series of rooms that they can move in and out of, so they have even more freedom here in Sweden and then what they do in the US, so um, aesthetic, it would be beautiful, but then what beautiful is, is can be quite different from preschool to another preschool because you’ve got to include your own culture and your own context. Suzanne:  [05:17] I think when I’ve observed schools in the US, they’ve had an awful lot of things on the walls while here in Sweden and not quite so many things on the walls, so there’s huge differences in how Reggio is being interpreted, but it’s not just the beautiful classroom is not enough is how the classroom is designed to create interactions with the teacher, with the materials, with children, with each other. So it’s not so much about a beautiful looking classroom is it’s very much about a room that is created with consideration for children and consideration for their interactions and consideration for the interests and learning of the children. Jen:    [06:07] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I am a member of a couple of different Reggio-based groups on facebook and I think that especially the teachers who are newer to it tend to get hung up on the beauty of the classroom and it tends to be a lot of wood in the classroom and a lot of wicker baskets and I think sometimes think that if they were doing the wood and the wicker baskets, they’re “doing Reggio” and I think it’s important to remember that the beauty of the classroom is sort of a way of grounding us, but it’s not what. It’s not what Reggio is, right? Suzanne:  [06:38] Absolutely. Jen:    [06:40] Yeah. I wonder if you can help us understand a bit about the origination of the Reggio approach because this is… When I’ve spoken with in a Montessori and Waldorf educators this is the point in the interview where I normally talk about certifications and school accreditation, but that, that doesn’t exist for Reggio, right? Suzanne:    [06:56] Not in the same sense, no. Jen:    [06:58] So can you. Can you help us understand that? Suzanne:   [07:01] It started as an approach because at the end of the Second World War, they basically wanted a kind of education for their young children in Italy, the city of Reggio Emilia that would allow a more critical thinking, a more democratic approach that you wouldn’t just follow leaders blindly, they would actually question so that the children had the ability as adults to choose the right direction for their lives and not just follow. So it was always an approach. Malaguzzi was a very young man; and it was kind of surprising, I think he was only 24 when he started it Jen:   [07:37] Oh, I didn’t know that! Suzanne:   [07:38] I know; it kind of shocked me. This was a man who was very humble in his approach because he understood that he only knew a certain amount, so he wants to learn together with the children. So it’s always been this approach of learning together with the children and the children would be his teacher and he will be their teacher. Suzanne:    [07:56] And we would be co-researchers. So it’s more of an approach rather than a method. So it’s hard to become accredited in an approach, while a method is much easier to teach. Like the Montessori method, you learn the method of learning. Then you can apply this. While Malaguzzi really did not want to method because he felt this approach will be evolving all the time, like children, like society and culture is always evolving so we can’t have something that is fixed because if it’s fixed then it’s not going to be adjusting to the needs of our time and the needs of the culture that it finds itself in. A big part of why it appeals to me because it’s a pedagogy that is evolving rather than just this is the way it is and this is the way it should be. Jen:  [08:47] Yeah, and it also, in my mind, makes it more relevant to different cultures. I think when you go to Reggio Emilia and you talk to the teachers there, they’re adamant that you know, you don’t go in and look at their what they’re doing in their classrooms and take and take that home with you and aim to copy it in your classroom because it’s not relevant in your culture. The idea is to kind of extract the way that they’re thinking about the issue and then go and apply that in some kind of topic relevant to learning that is relevant in your culture. Is that right? Suzanne:  [09:20] Exactly. The view of the child not as an empty vessel to be filled with information but the child is competent and to reach their own potential and we’re just scaffolding that learning; they’re building their own education. So I also appreciate that we don’t see the children as something that we have to fill and we are responsible for in that sense, but we are responsible in supporting this child to reach their own potential. Jen:   [09:51] Yeah. Okay. So you brought up a couple of ideas there and I think one of those is the idea about constructivism, which is sort of the opposite of the way that school exists in the U.S., where you assume that the child is basically an empty vessel into which the teacher pours knowledge. Whereas Reggio views learning as a process that is co-constructed between two people and I think the example that you gave of Malaguzzi is great. You know, the idea that this person who was really the bedrock of the Reggio Emilia approach didn’t say, you know, this is my approach and I will teach it to you. He said, children, I will learn from you and you will learn from me. It seems as though that’s an awesome example of constructivism. Suzanne:    [10:36] Yes, yes. Jen:   [10:37] Yeah. And so the other, the other idea that you mentioned was scaffolding. Can you tell us a bit more about that? And I should, I should, I should mention to listeners, we did a whole episode back on scaffolding. I think it was about episode four or five. So if you want an in-depth understanding of it, go back and check that out. But um, can you help us understand how scaffolding is used in a Reggio-based classroom? Suzanne:   [10:56] Well instead of just telling the children how to do it or what to do, you’re asking them open ended questions to do that open problem solving. It can take little bit longer, but then the children’s learning is that own learning and they can be proud of how they achieve this. I think it’s very easy for us to fill in the gaps for them, but the idea is that the children make that leap themselves and we just kind of give them the tools to be able to do that leap, or create the safe space for that learning to happen. Jen:    [11:29] I wonder if you could give us an example of how that might work is there a situation that you’ve kind of scaffolded a child through recently that you could talk us through? Suzanne: [11:38] I think a lot of things with outdoors and climbing, for me. I will not lift the child onto a swing. I will not lift the child to a climbing frame and I’m quite happy for them to be and to look at me with angry stares as if I’m the worst teacher on the planet because I know that they can do it and I will give them the tools and I will give the encouragement to keep trying. I’ll ask another child come in, I know that you can climb up here. Can you show them that the technique that you’ve used to climb there and to be with that child and to help them through that frustration until they get there and they get to the top of the climbing frame and they have this enormous pride that they have achieved this themselves. Jen:   [12:25] Yeah. It seems to me as though you’re touching on a variety of different theories here. Jen:     

Your kids don’t lie, right?  And if they did, you’d be able to tell, right? News flash: they do.  And you probably can’t. Dr. Kang Lee – who is one of the world’s experts in lying – tells us why children lie, how we can (try to) reduce the incidence of lying, and how we should handle it when we catch our children in a lie. And here’s the one story that Dr. Lee says can help to prevent your child from lying…   Dr. Kang Lee's Book Children and lying: A century of scientific research - Affiliate link Reference Dr. Lee’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/kang_lee_can_you_really_tell_if_a_kid_is_lying   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:    [00:30] Welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called My Child is Lying to Me! I became interested in this topic after I researched the episode on symbolic representation in art, which relies on the child’s understanding of what I know might be different from what she knows and that turns out that that concept is also important in lying because if I’m a toddler and as far as I know what’s in your head is the same as what’s in my head, why would I bother lying to you? And so I also started to wonder about the connections between lying and joking. After my one year old started telling me jokes: she would point to a pig and say “ats cow” and I’d say “really?” And she’d say “no.” So lying is a really pervasive human behavior, but I’m wondering how do children learn how to lie and why do they do it and is there anything we can do to encourage them to be more truthful more often. So let’s dive right into that topic in a conversation with Dr Kang Lee, who’s a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Toronto, Dr Lee received his B.S. and M.A. from Hangzhou University in China and his Ph.D from the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Dr Lee has been studying lying for a really long time, but we hope he’s going to tell us the truth today because we need the help. Welcome Dr Lee. Thanks for joining us. Dr. Lee: [01:44] Hi. Thanks for inviting me to be part of your program. Jen:     [01:48] Alright, so let’s start at the beginning. What are some of the reasons that people lie and do all people lie? Dr. Lee:   [01:54] So as far as I can tell, among the kids we have seen, we have seen possibly over 10,000 kids from all ages as young as two years of age, all the way up to 16, 17 years of age. The majority of them would lie in various kinds of situations. The first kind of like kids tell, tend to be motivated by self protection and typically what happens is when they have done something wrong, they haven’t done something I’m not supposed to do and then they have to cover that up and that’s one of the most frequent kind of lies kids tell. And the one of the earliest kind of lies kids tell. Jen:   [02:37] Okay. And so I’m just thinking through what are the logical consequences of what you just said, if, if I try and set up my home so that there are fewer things that my child is not supposed to do so that I put things out of reach that she’s not supposed to play with. And you know, kids get into stuff and sometimes things happen, but am I reducing the possibility that my two year old is going to lie to me if I…no. We have our video on and you’re shaking your head. Dr. Lee:  [03:08] You know, the kids, the jobs of a child is to learn the various rules of our society. We actually have a lot of rules. You know, you should do this, you should do not do that. But you know, during the learning process, you know, the child does not always listen to you and they say do not touch this. It’s not going to be good. And then, but the child sometimes it has this problem we call a deficit in inhibitory control because they are learning to control their behaviors, but they are not quite there yet. That the brain is not matured to a point that, that the way wherever you tell a child not to do the immediately do not do it. It’s not going to happen. So then the child would do something even for adults and say don’t do this. Dr. Lee:    [03:54] And the adults also find it difficult to not do certain things that you tell them not to do. So because of this struggle, sometimes the kids would violate the rules, violate the things you know, you set out for kids, and then what they’re going to do. So because kids, they do not have political power, they do not have the physical power. So one of the things that they can turn to really is to, using their mind, their ability to use the language. So they discover very quickly, as soon as they learn how to speak basically, and they say, Oh yes, you know, if I just simply move the lips of my mouth, I actually can get mom to believe that I have not done something that I’m not supposed to do. And that actually happens around two and two and half years of age. Jen:   [04:47] Okay. So, okay, so this starts really early then I’m thinking about, you know, why, why do people lie in general? And it seems as though there are a lot of reasons and we typically say, Oh, I want my child to be truthful all the time, but we’re not truthful all the time, right? Dr. Lee:    [05:05] No, no. And so the first kind of lies I call for self protection, right? So that happens all the time to just not sure, just make sure we do not get into trouble. And, and lying is a very, very efficient way of getting us out of trouble. So that’s the first kind of license. So I called self protection lies. Another kind of lines is for self personal benefits to gain something. For example, you know, you sometimes you want to get the toy you want, but you may have to lie to your brother or sister so that they will not touch the toy you really want. So that’s another kind of lies to win competition. And that happens all the time in the adult environment as well. But the third kind of lies interesting one that is the I call white lies. Dr. Lee: [05:55] These are the lies we tell to avoid hurting another person’s feelings. And these are kinds of lies actually we are socialized to do, you know, we as parents, we want to raise our kids to be polite kids and in order to do that we actually sometimes teach our kids not to tell the truth. And the kids actually learn very quickly as soon as they turn three years of age, they would learn to not to say certain things that are going to hurt other people’s feelings. For example, if the child sees a person who, who has a facial anomoly, or the person is overweight. You don’t want any child to see, you know, see something like, “oh, you are fat,” or “you have something strange on your face.” Rather you want your child not to say anything. And then sometimes they even have to lie about it. And so, so these kinds of politeness kind of lies or white lies are actually socialized by us, by the society. So we do that all the time. You know, when we say oh, your hair cut looks great. You know, your dress looks great, your food looks great, you know, because just think about this. If you don’t tell white lies in some situations you’re not going to have any friends. Jen:   [07:08] Your hair looks great by the way. Dr. Lee:   [07:13] I hope it does! Jen:     [07:14] And that that makes a ton of sense. But as a two year old, three year olds. I wonder how do they figure out the difference between the lies that we want them to tell and the lies that we don’t want them to tell. Dr. Lee:     [07:23] This is very confusing for kids. I mean we parents always say, tell the truth, you know, I want you to be the honest job and they do everything they could tweak, kind of convey this message. But at the same time when your child tells the truth and the parents actually don’t encourage them, for example, the child says, oh, that person is fair to right in front of the person. And the parents really get very embarrassed by that. And they say, you shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t say that. And then the child gets confused and you said I have to be honest. Now you say no, so that kind of situation becomes an issue and a lot of parents are not prepared to teach their kids about different situations one are to tell the truth and sometimes you have to not to tell the truth all the time. So I think this kind of socialization should start early. Jen:    [08:16] And when you say that what you mean is you should help the children to understand when they should tell a white lie and when they should tell the truth and how do you do that? Dr. Lee:    [08:25] Exactly. So when you are encouraging your child to tell a white lie, for example, you have to tell them why that’s important, the rationale behind it. And then when you ask your child not to tell a lie, you don’t say, do not tell her like don’t say it generically, but say, if this happens, I want you to tell me the truth. And that’s very important for the child to know from the very beginning in what kinds of situations lies are not permissible and in what kinds of situations lies are permissible. Jen:    [08:58] That’s an awesome little nugget of wisdom for parents. And how old do you think children can be when they understand that, you know, my toddler is two and a half right now. Is that too early? Dr. Lee: [09:07] Not really. So the, the are the studies showing that the kids are abroad this age are able to know that what is the true state of affairs and what is false. So the truth and false is understandable by about two yields by three and four years of age. They actually can tell the difference between a lie and the truth. So they are very sophisticated. And then another thing, you know, you mentioned about children’s representation of things in the world. We always, you know, thought kids under six years of age are unable to tell the difference between what’s imagined and what’s magical about what’s real and true. And they actually can tell very, very well. So something they have imagined in their brain and they can talk about that and something. They actually come up as a lie. They can tell the difference under six years of age. So they are very sophisticated. Jen:   [10:04] Okay. So let’s jump to that topic a little bit and that was actually one of the reasons that I first reached out to you because if this kind of discrepancy in the literature that I was finding, you know, I had read the theory of mine doesn’t normally develop until around age four, but the children as young as two can tell lies and so can you tell us a bit about what theory of mind is and why it matters and where this discrepancy plays out in your work. Dr. Lee:     [10:26] So let me just backtrack a little bit. So we have been looking for various factors that make a child more likely to lie or less likely to lie. So we have looked at almost everything. We looked at gender; we wanted to know are girls more likely to lie the boys or vice versa. It turns out that there’s no difference. It’s boys and girls are equally likely to lie, and they equally lie well or not very well. So their skills of lying is also very similar. Then we say, okay, what about parents? Right? You know, do parents with different kinds of parenting styles, would they produce kids who like earlier or later it turns out that that also doesn’t matter. So no matter whether or not you are permissible parents or you are a very strict parents, your kids are still as much as likely to lie as the next kid. Jen:    [11:18] There’s no hope! Dr. Lee:     [11:20] No hope. What about, let’s see, religion, right? So you’re more religious. Would a more religious family produce more truth tellers and turns out that’s not true either, so regardless of what religion, how much you practice it, your kids are still as likely to lie as the next kid in the next family. So I see. What else are we looked at? The children’s personalities all can maybe, you know, personality, right? Some kids are more shy than the others; will the more outgoing kids be more likely to lie more than the shy kids? It turned out that also is irrelevant. So we looked at at many, many factors and turn out there are two important factors I call ingredients for lying. So one is theory of mind. So this is the idea that I, you know, different people have different beliefs and knowledge about the world because it’s a very essential for lying because the point of lying is I know you don’t know what I know and therefore I can lie to you. And children actually understand this at about two years of age, if not earlier. Therefore it’s very likely your child is going to live very soon or has already. Jen:    [12:31] Well, she already told me that a cow is a pig or a pig is a cow. Dr. Lee:     [12:38] They actually can tell the difference between what I know and what you know. Jen:     [12:41] Okay. So before you move on from that, I want, I want to just tease that out a little bit. So there is sort of a classic test of theory of mind, which is that you go with your child into the kitchen maybe and you take some cookies out of the cookie jar where they normally are and you put them in the fridge and you say, okay, Daddy’s going to come into the kitchen in a minute and he wants a cookie. Where is he going to look for the cookies? And if your child says that he’s going to look in the cookie jar, then the idea is that your child doesn’t realize that daddy couldn’t know that we put the cookies in the fridge. And so I’ve read that if you do that test that you shouldn’t expect to see a child have theory of mind until around age four. So are there different tests that you can do to find it earlier or what’s going on here? Dr. Lee:   [13:28] Yes. So, so the different stages of learning about theory of mind. So they, the first one you need to know is like, I want something and you want something and what I want differs from what you want. That’s something the child already and stands around two years of age. Jen:     [13:46] Yeah. Dr. Lee:    [13:47] The other thing a child is able to understand around two years of age is what I can see is different from what you can see. What I know differs from what you know. So these are the two ingredients we already...

In this discussion, Beverly Amico, Executive Director at the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, shares insights from her extensive experience in Waldorf education. She highlights the unique philosophy, emphasizing simplicity, beauty, and the transformative power of play. Listeners learn about a typical day in a Waldorf preschool, the value of free play, and the importance of storytelling in child development. Beverly also addresses common concerns, like the compatibility of Waldorf principles with modern lifestyles and the significance of teacher certification and school accreditation.

We talked a while ago about sharing, and how you can understand the developmental processes that your child needs to go through before s/he truly understands what it means to share. One of the inputs to sharing behavior is an understanding of what is fair, and Drs. Peter Blake and Katie McAuliffe talk us through what we know about what children understand about fairness.  This episode will help you to understand how much of the idea of fairness is naturally culturally transmitted to children and what you can do to encourage a sense of fairness in your child, which is important for their own social well-being and for the benefit of our society – this has implications for ideas like the development of perceptions about race and gender that we’ll be talking more about in upcoming episodes.   References Blake, P.R., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., & Warneken, F. (2016). Give as I give: Adult influence on children’s giving in two cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 152, 149-160. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.07.010 Blake, P.R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., Barry, O, Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K.L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F. (2015). The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature 528, 258-261. DOI:10.1038/nature15703 Blake, P.R., Rand, D.G., Tingley, D., & Warneken, F. (2015). The shadow of the future promotes cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma for children. Scientific Reports 5, Article number 14559. DOI: 10.1038/srep14559 Blake, P.R., & McAuliffe, K. (2011). “I had so much it didn’t seem fair”: Eight-year-olds reject two forms of inequity. Cognition 120, 215-224. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.04.006 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Giving preschoolers choice increases sharing behavior. Psychological Science 24, 1971-1979. Jordan, J.J., McAuliffe, K., & Warneken, F. (2014). Development of in-group favoritism in children’s third-party punishment of selfishness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111(35), 12710-12715. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1402280111 McAuliffe, K., Blake, P.R., Steinbeis, N., & Warneken, F. (2017). The developmental foundations of human fairness.  Nature (Human Behavior) 1 (Article 00042), 1-9. McAuliffe, K., Jordan, J.J., & Warneken, F. (2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition 134, 1-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013 Schmuckler, M.A. (2001). What is ecological validity? A dimensional analysis. Infancy 2(4), 419-436. Full article available at: http://utsc.utoronto.ca/~marksch/Schmuckler%202001.pdf   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:  [00:30] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called What Do Children Understand About Fairness? And I have two very special guests with me to discuss this topic. Dr Peter Blake earned has doctorate in education at Harvard University and is currently an Assistant Professor at Boston University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. His research focuses on three important foundations of human life, cooperation, fairness and ownership, and so he asks questions in his research like when should you share and when should you compete for resources? Is equal always fair or can you sometimes keep more for yourself? And how do you know when a toy is owned and what does that mean? Right now he’s working on extending projects, the different cultures, so we can better understand whether children in all cultures develop in similar ways at similar times and what cultural variables influence that development. Welcome Dr Blake. Dr. Blake: [01:21] Thank you. Jen:   [01:22] And Dr. Katie McAuliffe is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College, which I just learned as different from Boston University. She two studies, the development and evolution of cooperation in humans with a special focus on how children acquire and enforced fairness norms. She’s made the rounds of Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge, and her educational career. I think the only one she’s missing is Oxford. Welcome Dr McAuliffe. Dr. McAuliffe:  [01:44] Hi; nice to be here. Thanks. Jen:     [01:45] Thank you so much for being here. So let’s start with a question that seems really simple, but I’m guessing there’s probably more to it than, than maybe I might imagine. Can you tell us what fairness is? Dr. Blake: [01:56] Yeah, that’s, that’s the big question and it is a very complicated answer. So fairness is a, is a very complex concept, particularly for adults and we know that equal is not always fair, but equality does provide a kind of starting point for us to understand how children figure out what is fair and what is not. So we tend to focus our research in a couple of ways. One way is that we focus on the allocation of resources which has also been called distributive justice, how you distribute resources between people. So we focus on that aspect of fairness as opposed to social status and things like that. And we also focus around this idea of equality and particularly what happens. How did children respond when they get less and get more than other kids. Dr. McAuliffe: [02:51] And I think studying how fairness develops in childhood is a nice way of showing how flexible the concept is. Because when we look at how children begin to think about fairness, you can see that what it means to be fair really varies depending on whether you’re a two year old or an eight year old. Jen:    [03:08] How does that change? Dr. McAuliffe:  [03:09] Well, we can kind of get into that with lots of different studies, but maybe a sort of broad way to characterize the change, and this is based on work that was really done in the seventies is that fairness tends to start out as being quite self focused. So I want to make sure that I’m getting a good deal, and it goes through a period of sort of really caring about equality as Peter said, as a sort of benchmark of justice and then it becomes much more nuanced or you can take different perspectives into account and understand that sometimes someone is more deserving or more needy and therefore inequality is acceptable under certain situations. Jen:  [03:46] Most of the parents listening to this show are parents of toddlers and, and some parents of preschoolers. And I know that you start to study children kind of around about age four or five years. Why don’t you study children younger than that? What is it that makes that difficult? Dr. Blake:   [04:01] It’s primarily that there’s very different methods that are used for, for infants and toddlers, largely because they don’t have the verbal skills yet to do some of the tasks. We have tried to test children as young as three in some of our experiments. That works fine, but younger than that, we’ve found that they don’t do well on our tasks, but other people do research…have done research on infants. And one key thing that they found going back to this idea of equality is that even at about 15 months of age, infants expect resources to be distributed equally between two people. And they expect adults to divide things like food and toys equally. They’re surprised when this doesn’t happen. And this has been shown in several different infant studies now. So that goes back to this idea of equality is a kind of foundation now where that comes from. This could have been learned through experience 15 months of age is still quite a long time of life, but they’re learning just by observing this, this isn’t based on their own behavior. So they’re not constructing this idea of equality from their own experience. Jen:   [05:13] So are you saying that if I always make sure that I get a bigger piece of chocolate cake than my husband does, that my daughter might not understand fairness to mean equal? Dr. Blake:    [05:22] I wouldn’t go that far. But by the time we get up to about three years of age you can ask it explicitly what they think is fair. And one of the things that we’ve found in some of our studies is that when we give children a set of stickers, for example, and we asked them, how should you divide this up with another child? They’ll say, yeah, I should give half. But then when we give them a chance to actually give to the other child, they’ll keep more for themselves. So they, they recognize that there’s this norm of an equal split in that context, but they don’t follow it; they tend to favor themselves. And this is, uh, this idea of a bias to favor oneself is something we see in other variations of studies, including the big ones that Katie and I have worked on together. Dr. McAuliffe:   [06:10] And I think Peter is pointing to a really important distinction in the types of studies that are done looking at fairness sort of this children’s expectations of what ought to be done versus what they actually do. And so most of our work really focuses on children’s behavior, so we put them into these games inspired by behavioral economics where they’re making decisions that affect both their own payouts as well as a partners payout. And I think this is part of the reason why we tend to start around for those contingencies and the payoffs and the structures of the games are just hard to understand for children younger than than that age. Dr. Blake:     [06:45] And when we say economics to kids, we use candy and stickers as our currency. Jen:    [06:53] Both things that are very attractive to kids. And so I’ve seen a bunch of, you know, I’ve read a lot of your papers and I’ve seen a bunch of diagrams of how you do these experiments. Can you just maybe talk us through one of these experiments and how you actually test this kind of thing? Dr. McAuliffe:  [07:08] Yeah. So the one that Peter and I started back when we were Grad students at Harvard is called the inequity game and this game that we developed that we’ve subsequently used across a lot of different papers and the way this works is we go out to different public areas and we recruit two children, typically children that do not know one another to play a face to face game. And in this game, one child makes all the decisions so they have control of this apparatus and they are making decisions that affect both how many Skittles they get as well as how many Skittles their partner gets. So they’re called the actor. They’re the one who’s making the decisions that we care about. Then the other participant is assigned the role of recipient. They’re sort of passive in this game. They just get whatever they get based on the actor’s decisions. Dr. McAuliffe: [07:52] Uh, and then from there the structure is really very simple. So an experimenter, we’ll put different amounts of candies on two trays, one for the actor, one for the recipient. And essentially the actor just decides, do I want to accept that allocation or do I want to reject it? And now if they accept it, they’ll get some candy and the recipient will get some candy. But if they reject it, and this is the interesting part, the candy gets put into a middle bowl and nobody gets to take those candies home. So it’s an all or nothing game. And we use this game to, to kind of understand what distributions children will accept and which ones they’ll reject. And sort of the simplest distinction is one where they’re either getting an equal pay off. So the actor is getting one candy and their partner is getting one candy. Dr. McAuliffe:[08:35] And as you might imagine, children tend to be very happy to accept those allocations, but then we can put them in a situation where they’re getting less than their partner. So let’s say they’re getting one candy and their partner is getting four. So this is an interesting dilemma because now you know, presumably the actor wants that one Skittle, but you know, they don’t really want the partner to get more than them. So they have to decide, am I okay accepting one thing and letting my partner have more than me or would I rather we both get nothing. And what we find is that even children at the bottom end of our age range, so four year olds will reject those allocations. Jen:  [09:09] Really? Dr. McAuliffe: [09:10] Yeah. That means effectively they’re paying the price of one Skittle to prevent their partner from getting more than them. So that’s what you might’ve seen in our papers as that’s labeled disadvantageous inequity aversion. So it’s an aversion to pay off where I’m getting less than someone else. And then we can also in using this exact same game, look at the reverse form of this allocation. So one where the actor gets for candies and their partner gets one. So now you know, they get this amazing payoff. Their partner is getting less and now they face this sort of different dilemma, which is now I really want these four candies, but maybe I know it’s unfair to my partner. So should I accept them and let them get less than me or should I reject it and make, make us both get nothing? And they’re, what you might expect having interacted with children, is that young children are totally fine with those outcomes. Jen:   [10:00] Did they ever take the four Skittles and then away from the game, give one to the other kid? Dr. McAuliffe:[10:05] So that kind of behavior actually doesn’t happen spontaneously, but part of that might be that these children don’t know one another, like those things that would happen more organically in the relationship that’s established, just don’t happen that much in this. And we also tried to discourage talking and things like that to the best of our ability. But the interesting thing about this form of reaction is that children by about eight or nine, at least in America or the U.S. populations that we studied and tend to reject those. So here is a case where they’re sacrificing for candies to prevent a partner from getting less than them, which is really costly adherence to a norm of equality. Jen:  [10:46] Yeah, for sure. So you alluded to a question that I had in my mind about, you know, you do these experiments and you find children that don’t know each other and get them to divide candies across them. But most of the time if I have to share something, it’s probably with somebody that I know, you know, it’s not like I get one shot to take candy from you and then I never have to see you again. So how do we mesh the economic models that talk about how I’m supposed to try and get as much as I can for myself or the fairness models that say an equal split is the best thing with the idea that, you know, I have to see you again tomorrow. Well I don’t have to see YOU again tomorrow but I have to see my daughter again tomorrow and if I give her the short end of the stick, then she, she might end up remembering that. Dr. Blake:

It’s that time of year: daycare and preschool tours start ramping up and parents have to try to figure out which is the right option for their child.  And many parents are overwhelmed by the options.  Montessori?  Waldorf?  Reggio Emilia?  How are they different?  Will my child be messed up if I pick the wrong one? This episode is the first in a mini-series to help us think through the questions you might have as you explore the options that are available in your community. Today we’re going to learn about Dr. Maria Montessori’s approach to early childhood education and what it’s like to have a child in a Montessori preschool with Mary Ellen Kordas, the President of the Board of Directors at the American Montessori Society.   References Gray, P. (2011). The special value of children’s age-mixed play. American Journal of Play 3(4), 500-522. Full article available at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ985544.pdf Isaacs, B. (2012). Understanding the Montessori approach: Early years education in practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Lillard, A.S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Lillard, P.P. (1996). Montessori today: A comprehensive approach to education from birth to adulthood. New York, NY: Schocken. Louv, V. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York, NY: Algonquin. Montessori, M. (1971). The Montessori Elementary Material (Trans. A. Livingston). Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc. Wentworth, R.A.L. (1999). Montessori for the new millennium. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:  [00:05] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called Is a Montessori Preschool Right for my child? I sort of skipped the whole preschool touring and decision making thing. It turned out we had a nanny at the time and I had planned to actually to work with her friend the somewhat long term, but she decided to work with a family with a younger child. So we found ourselves rather abruptly in need of care and I’d been doing a lot of research on the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education at the time. And we were actually lucky enough to find a daycare that had space for her on short notice. And so we just kind of went with that. But I know a lot of parents are able to plan ahead and spend a bit more time choosing between the different options that might be available to them. And so to help with that process, I wanted to do a little mini series of episodes where we learn about some of the options that might be available in your community and today we’re going to learn about Dr Maria Montessori’s approach to early childhood education and what it’s like to have a child in a Montessori Preschool with Mary Ellen Cordis. Mary Ellen is the incoming President of the Board of Directors of the American Montessori Society and has over 40 years of experience as the head of a Montessori school in the San Francisco Bay Area, and as an advocacy champion of Montessori. Mary Ellen’s school was the first accredited Montessori school in the state. Welcome Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen:  [01:43] Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here. Jen:    [01:45] Thank you. So I wonder if you could first start off and tell us a little bit about how you learned about Montessori and what about it called to you and how you went through that process of becoming a leader in the Montessori movement. Mary Ellen:   [01:56] If I’d only had you in my life, I may not have had to do all the research that I did, but this is exactly how I got involved is I had a three year old and I was looking around for what type of program I might enroll him in. Although I had come from the Midwest and preschool wasn’t that popular. People went to kindergarten and then they went to elementary school and that was pretty much how it was. So when a neighbor came around and said to me, I’m going to send Kathy, my son’s best friend, to the Montessori school. I said, what’s a Montessori school? And that began this journey. So the school had just opened. There were six children. My son was now going to be one of them and I fell in love. I found what really I thought was exactly what children needed. I was working with abused and neglected children at the time, and so I walked into a place where children were honored and respected and treated well and it just made my heart sing, so that was really my beginning. Jen:  [03:02] Wow, that’s awesome. And so you’ve been at this for awhile now and I understand that there’s probably not one single Montessori experience, but I wonder for those of us who haven’t been to a Montessori school, can you kind of walk us through in your mind what it’s like to be in a Montessori classroom? What does the room look like? What are the children doing and how do they move through their day? Mary Ellen:    [03:24] Sure, absolutely. Because it’s what drew me when I saw them in action. So first let me tell you that there are different levels in Montessori education. So what I’m going to choose to walk you through is a three to six classroom and that’s ages three years to six years, which is typical because there’s multiple ages in Montessori classrooms. So when you first enter a classroom, I think what you’re struck by first is the beauty that has been very intentionally created in the classroom. Mary Ellen:  [03:56] The furniture is child-sized. There’s often plants or flowers on the table. The classroom is not cluttered on the walls with a lot of pictures of things. It’s usually tastefully done pictures, if they’re hung it all, are hung low enough for the children. It’s definitely designed for the children. There’s low shelves, often made of wood that surround the whole classroom and materials, that’s the usual, the working apparatus in the classroom are on those low shelves so that the children have free access to them. So what you would see in the classroom is children moving about the classroom freely, taking something off a shelf, taking it to a rug. The reason that you see rugs in the classroom is it just sort of defines a space for a child. There’s nothing magical about it, but because there’s usually 24 children or so in a classroom of mixed ages, it just helps define a space. Mary Ellen: [04:53] So they’ll take the material that they’re going to work onto a rug. They may work alone, they may invite a friend, you may look across the room and see a teacher sitting with five or six children doing a presentation. You probably would see a table with two children or three children sitting at it, having a snack and conversing amongst themselves. It feels very peaceful and when I hear people comment on what they see, when they see a classroom for the first time, they’re struck by the calm, and yet there’s a real energy because the children are working at their own pace. They’re taking things off the shelves as they want to work on them, and so it feels peaceful, yet you can feel the energy and the spirit of the children. Jen:     [05:38] Wow, that sounds really awesome. Is there a kind of a set structure of the day that they do certain things for certain amounts of time? Mary Ellen:   [05:47] So that’s an interesting question. So what you would often see is upon entry to a classroom, let’s assume that the class goes from nine to 12. That’s a three hour classroom. That’s very popular. You see it all over in many schools as well as full day classrooms, but say it’s a nine to 12. You’ll see the children arrive and there’ll be greeted at the door by the teacher. There’s usually two teachers in a classroom, but they would be greeted probably they would shake hands. They would say hello, just have a few words and the children would go put their things away and they usually would go right to finding something to do. Then after the gathering of the group has occurred, they would bring the children together often for a group setting so that they… It’s sort of what you think about circle time, that more traditional word that you think because community is vital to the whole process in a Montessori classroom, they build a community of children with these two adults in the classroom that’s spend often three years together because a child coming in at three would often stay with those same teachers and as they matriculate, if you will, into an older level. That would be the natural progression, but they often have the same teacher. So you’d see maybe group time, then they would go off again to do some individual work where a teacher may have a presentation for a particular number of children, not necessarily all the same age, but they might, they might be choosing all the three year old and they might be mixing it up because the goal is to work at your own level and so the day then would usually end at noon, usually transition time for young children is done in group setting. So you might have them together again at the end of the day and then the parents would come to pick them up. So there isn’t 20 minutes for math and 10 minutes for language. It very much is a flow. Jen:    [07:39] Okay. And are they typically half day programs? Or do they do full day programs as well? Mary Ellen:    [07:44] They’re both I think in the current culture where so many of our families are, both parents are working and they really need a full day of the majority of programs you see now definitely are full day. Jen:    [07:56] OK. Alright. So let’s talk a bit about certification and accreditation is, it’s not fully clear to me how this works. I think there’s a certification for Montessori teachers, but I guess probably not all teachers are certified and I think there’s an accreditation system for schools, but there are different organizations that do that accreditation. Right? Can you help us make sense of all of that and how parents judge the quality of a school that calls itself Montessori. Mary Ellen:  [08:20] Oh, now we have three questions. So yes, there’s many accrediting bodies for schools, the American Montessori Society… And please know that my underpinning is all the AMS, the American Montessori Society because that’s the thing organization to which I’m affiliated primarily so we do accreditations of schools and so we are able to send a team in and look over self studies, review the school and then you often can become an AMS accredited school. The school that was at when I was in northern California also had accreditation through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges are better known as WASC, just like many high schools, colleges, public schools. There’s also the California Association of Independent Schools; that’s another accreditation. The school I was at had all three of those and that’s pretty much that runs the gamut of what you would do. Now if you’re outside of the state, of course there would be other organizations that would accredit. Mary Ellen:    [09:24] So that’s the accreditation piece for schools. What you get when you look at an accredited school for the American Montessori Society is, you know, the standard has been met with teacher training that has, that’s checked that box, that’s a done deal. The materials are in the classroom, the school has gone through all of the standards that are set and so that does give parents comfort. Now there’s other things we’ll look at in a minute, but let me address the teacher piece of it. So there’s a credential that is given to teachers when they go through training, but it isn’t as simple as just getting trained to be a Montessori teacher. You get trained at a level. So if it’s an infant-toddler teacher or an early childhood teacher, an elementary teacher all the way through high school. So you have to be in the classroom at the level to which you were accredited where you got your credential. Mary Ellen:   [10:23] Teacher training programs are offered either in universities or colleges or sometimes in standalone programs. So both can can happen. The teacher training programs themselves are also accredited. The AMS teacher training programs are accredited through MACT, which is the Montessori Accreditation Council for teacher training, teacher education. So that’s another piece. Now, if I haven’t lost you totally by this time, one of your other questions that was the most insightful of all I think is the one. How do you tell when you’re in a really good school, and I say to parents who sometimes waffle in their confidence in their ability to choose the right school at that moment, they may have Ph.Ds on hanging on the wall, but they sometimes at that point worried that they aren’t going to make the right choice and I think you have to have the confidence that it sort of the gut reaction. Mary Ellen: [11:23] You walk into an environment, you see respectful interactions between teachers and children. You see them paying attention to the children in a way that feels very respectful and of course you do want the school to meet certain standards. You want to see the children engaged in what they’re doing, not staring off into space. Although everybody does deserve the opportunity to stare off into space for a few minutes. We can’t be busy all the time. So that’s sort of I say trust your gut, you know, walk into school and see how it feels to you and then do some of the research. Definitely sit in a classroom. Definitely experience what it’s like to watch the children because it’s different. It’s very free-form. Different than when we were children. I will say me not huge and because there were a much more rigid look to schools where you went in, you didn’t speak to the teacher unless you were spoken to. You often sat in desks that fased one way in a Montessori classroom, the furniture is all over the room. Children are sitting on the floor, they’re sitting on a chair, they’re sitting in a library looking at books quietly and there’s so….there’s all kinds. So that’s, that’s really a little bit of a bird’s eye view at 30,000 feet of accreditation and credentialing and how to trust yourself. Jen:    [12:41] Great. Thank you for that. So let’s, let’s go into some of the nitty gritty of what really makes Montessori Montessori and I know that one of the first things that I think of when I think of Montessori is the concept of work and the, the idea that there’s a correct way to use materials in it often in a progressive sequence. Can you tell us about that? Mary Ellen:  [13:00] Sure. This is one of those very challenging aspects of Montessori because it gets misunderstood a lot. Mary Ellen:   [13:08] So the, the materials are arranged in a sequence order in the classroom. Now that isn’t obvious to the children, it doesn’t have a number one for the first material you’re supposed to use because there are many areas in the classroom. There’s practical life, there’s sensorial, there’s cultural subjects, there’s math, there’s language, there’s all of those. The materials within those groupings are on the shelves left to right and top to bottom. You probably know because our culture reads left to right and top to bottom. That’s one of the very small indications of the deep thought that was put into this. The children begin to know, oh gosh, I moved through these materials sequentially. Now the reason you move through them sequentially is they build upon one another in terms of challenge. So the first thing, maybe a very simple thing, the next thing on the shelf would take what was on the first piece of material and then build on that to make it more complicated. There’s also something called isolation of difficulty. So children can self correct the materials themselves. They do not need to say to a teacher, did I get this right? Is this okay? They know because everything fit together perfectly....

Have you read the now-classic book How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk?  Ever wished there was a version that would help you with younger children who perhaps aren’t quite ready for a detailed problem-solving session? Well now there is!  Adele Faber is a co-author of the original book; Adele’s daughter Joanna and Joanna’s childhood friend Julie King have teamed up to write the new version of How to Talk so LITTLE Kids Will Listen, packed with examples of how real parents have used the information they’ve now been teaching for over 30 years. Join me for a chat with Julie King as we work to understand the power of acknowledging children’s feelings and some practical tools to help engage your younger children to cooperate with you. Update 5/10/17: An eagle-eyed listener noticed that Julie mentioned her 10-year-old son wanting to sit on the front seat of her car, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that children 12 and under should sit in the back seat.  Julie was recounting an episode that happened long before there were CDC recommendations on where children should sit in the car, so please don’t take this as an ‘OK’ to put your 12-and-under child in the front seat.  Thanks!   Reference Faber, J. & King, J. (2017). How to talk so little kids will listen. New York: Scribner.  (Affiliate link)   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:    [00:21] Welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I’d like to welcome my guest today, Julie King, who is one half of the writing duo behind the new book, How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen, and if that title sounds familiar, it’s because it’s part of what seems to have become a family of books around the classic How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Julie has been educating and supporting parents and professionals since 1995 and in addition to her work with individual parents and couples, she also leads How to Talk workshops and gives parent education presentations to schools, nonprofits, and parent groups. Julie received her AB from Princeton University and a JD from Yale Law School. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is the mother of three. Welcome Julie. Julie:  [01:13] Thank you. Jen:  [01:14] It actually does feel a little odd to welcome you when we’re in your own home. Julie was kind enough to invite me to her home today to have this conversation. So thanks so much for taking the time. Julie: [01:23] Oh my pleasure. Jen:   [01:24] So I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about the genesis of this book because it kind of runs in the family a bit, right? Julie: [01:30] Okay. So to tell you the whole story, I have to go back in time to when I was six months old. Jen:    [01:37] This is going to be a long story! Julie: [01:38] I’m not going to go through all the details, I promise, but when my parents moved into the house that they still live in when I was born, right before I was born and my mother didn’t know very many people in the neighborhood. I was six months old. She was looking out the kitchen window and she saw another mom with two little kids the same age as me and my brother and she invited that woman in. That was Adele favor and the two of them became very good friends. Joanna. Joanna was the baby and her brother Carl was the older boy and she and I went to nursery school together. Adele took these, what they call Child Guidance Workshops with Haim Ginott and used to call my mother daily and discuss what she was learning and they would talk about what they were going to try on Joanna and her older brother and her younger brother and me and my older brother and younger sister. Jen:    [02:27] So you were a Guinea pig for the original book? Julie:  [02:30] That’s right. I was a Guinea pig. Um, so she and I became very good friends. We went to school from nursery school all the way through high school together. And um, I was aware that her mother was writing these books as a teenager. I remember going to her house and seeing her mother and Elaime Mazlish writing on yellow legal pads on the kitchen table by hand, and in the eighties when the one of the books came out or was coming out. I got to copy edit the book and I think I found a coma out of place and I felt very proud of my contribution, but I never actually expected to be doing anything with the work until I had my own child and he was in preschool at the San Francisco JCC and they were looking for a more than one time event for parents. They used to bring people in to speak, but they wanted to do something that would be ongoing and I at the time was studying group facilitation and group development and of course I knew this material very well, having grown up with it. So I volunteered to lead a group which was originally scheduled as an eight week group and halfway through everybody said, well, we need another eight weeks to really learn this. At which point I panicked because I wasn’t quite sure what I would do. Well we turned it into an ongoing support group and that first group met for four and a half years. The other people heard about it and asked me to bring the workshop to private groups into nonprofits and that’s how I got into leading the groups originally and my friend Joanna, who is still a good friend of mine who still lives in New York, and I moved out to California…This will happen in New York originally. She started leading workshops in New York, so we would talk to each other about what we were doing and what we were discovering and quite a few years ago when I was still mostly working with parents of preschool-aged kids. People said to me, we love this book, but we need more examples, and so I said, I know what to do. I called Adele and I said, I have your next book for you. She’s written one for teens and she’s written ones for kids at school. I said, now you have to write one for little kids, and she said, more or less. I quote, Julie, I’m too tired. You have to write it. So I called Joanna and I said, Joanna, we have to write this book. So we’ve been collecting material for many years and working very hard for the past two years to really polish it up and create this book. Jen:    [04:49] Yeah. Awesome. I did a little comparison between the new book, which as we’re recording has not been released yet, but once, once you hear this interview, you will be able to get the book on Amazon and other bookstores. So I have an advanced copy and I did a little comparison between that and the classic How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and it seemed to me as though the overall concepts are quite similar. The certainly a big focus on handling emotions and engaging cooperation and praise. There’s a little less than the new book on encouraging autonomy, which surprised me a little bit, and you have a spanking new chapter on working with differently wired kids, which we’re going to talk more about in a little bit. I’m guessing that a fair number of my listeners have already read or maybe even own the original book. And maybe that was, you know, they bought it for their first child and maybe they have a toddler in tow now. And I’m wondering if you can help us understand what they would get out of this book that they wouldn’t necessarily get if they have already bought or read the original. Julie:    [05:48] Well, let me, let me address that autonomy question. And then the second question as well. Joanna and I talked quite a lot about whether to include a separate chapter on autonomy and we ultimately decided not to in part because we feel like every chapter is about how to encourage autonomy. You know, when we, when we respect a kid’s feelings, when we offer them choices, when we give them information and they get to decide what to do with that information, all of those give the child an opportunity to say to himself or herself, well, I’m going to put the toys away or I’m going to turn off the bathroom light. And we also see that kids have a natural drive to be autonomous and independent. And so a lot of the tools that we’re offering in our book are a way for parents to sort of use that natural drive. So that’s why we didn’t include a separate chapter also because our editor said it had to be under 400 pages and we just had to stop because I think we really could have included another chapter and maybe someday we will, but… Jen: [06:48] Or another book! Julie:    [06:49] Another book, right – no, not another chapter for this book; this book is done. So that’s the answer to the autonomy question. And your other question was, what’s different about this book? Jen:   [07:00] Yeah, yeah. Julie:     [07:01] There are a number of differences. I think the biggest reason for people to get this book is because every example is about little kids. If you get the original book, there are little kid examples are 10 examples. We, we just are offering you lots and lots of ways to use these tools from stories that were given to us by actual real life people, parents and teachers. And in my experience, the tools make sense to people. But when you’re in the heat of the moment, it’s hard to think of what to do. Yeah. And if you have somebody else’s example and when you have, when you can picture it in your mind, when you can sort of rehearse it a little bit ahead of time, that’s when you can pull up the tool more easily and use it in the moment. So I think that’s the biggest advantage of, of. I mean, I, I love the original book, obviously… People should read both probably, but if you have little kids that make sense to read a book, just about little kids. Jen: [07:56] Yeah, that makes sense to me. I often find when I read books that the principles are aligned with what I’m thinking, but you know, the, the examples and the language they talk through, I’m thinking what would really happen if I said that to my two and a half year old when she really get that? Would you understand it? And so what you’re saying is that because the examples in your book are geared towards younger children, they’re more easy for parents to apply, is that right? Julie:      [08:21] Yeah. Jen:     [08:21] Okay. Julie:    [08:22] And then there’s are several other differences. One of the, the differences that I think will be very helpful to parents is around the idea of taking action. So in the original book there’s a, there’s a skill called take action without insult and doing the workshops. What I found is a lot of parents get confused. Well, what actions should I take? How do I know what to do? I mean, I’ve tried acknowledging his feelings. You know, you’re in the mood to draw. I’ve given them information. Walls aren’t for drawing on; I’ve given him choices. You can, you can draw on this box, you can draw on this paper. But he still took the, took the Sharpies. One of my parents groups, you know, I don’t know why…and started drawing on the walls so, you know, so I felt like I had to say, no, I’ve told you, I’ve told you you can’t do that, you bad boy. I’m taking this away from you. You may not. Now you’re not going to get a chance to see. I’ve already told you that sort of language. And they’re like, well that’s taking action. Isn’t it? Well, the, and you’re nodding your head. Yes it is, and it’s, it’s also we want to offer an alternative, um, in which we protect ourselves or we protect property without attacking the child. So the action is going to look the same. I’m still going to take those Sharpies away, but, but what I’m going to say is I don’t like my walls drawn on. For now, the sharpies are going away and the child knows that I was drawing on the wall. Now I can’t, but you’re not doing it to me, the child. You’re not doing this to make me suffer. You’re doing to protect yourself and protect the walls. Right. So I think that’s, that’s. I think we explain that in the book in a way that’s a little easier for parents to figure out, okay, what do I do in this next situation? Jen:  [10:04] Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I’m wondering if I can selfishly talk a little bit about situation that I’m having around acknowledging feelings. Yes, because I think that that’s, it’s a really central theme in the book and Joanna actually wrote that chapter and she described a scenario where she videotaped to show for a five year old and a three year old wants to know why she didn’t a tape a show for him when he had asked her to tape it and she says to her, a missed TV show doesn’t really seem as though it’s qualifies as being worthy of a meltdown. But to her son it really was because it was important to him, or, it had become important to you and so it seems as though the best way to help him get over it was to help him get through it is the advice that’s given in the book. Julie:    [10:47] And so, you know, when my daughter’s having that kind of meltdown, let’s just clarify, to get, to help him means to say, Oh, you LOVE that show! You would have liked me to tape that one for you too. Jen:  [10:57] Yeah, yeah. Jen:  [10:58] Or a different show that wasn’t taped. Julie:    [11:00] Yeah. Yeah. Jen:  [11:01] Um, and so, you know, if, if my daughter is asking for ice cream at bedtime and I say you really, really want ice cream, she seems as though she gets kind of hopeful and it feels to me as though I’m sort of getting your hopes up and then, you know, sorry, you still can’t have ice cream and I’m, I doing something wrong when I’m doing that or…? Julie:   [11:18] No… Jen:    [11:18] Or partly no. Julie: [11:24] I think the point is what you do after that? So when you, when you acknowledge the feelings that that child has for something that you can’t grant, like I can’t make that TV show rebroadcast. Right? So that’s in a way easier. Jen:   

I was scrolling down my Facebook feed recently when I saw a post in a parenting group saying “My two year-old daughter seems to have a “special relationship” with her rocking horse.  Is she masturbating?”  And I thought to myself “Whoa, two year-olds masturbate?  I gotta do an episode on this!”  So I looked around to see who is writing about this and I found Saleema Noon, who has a Master degree in sexual health education, and who co-wrote the recent book Talk Sex Today (Affiliate link), which is chock-full of information on how to talk with children of all ages about sex. There are lots of resources available on Saleema’s website to help with these kinds of conversations, including a ‘what kids need to know and when’ list, a selection of books (for you and for your child), and other helpful tips and links.   Additional Recommended Resource: Outspoken Sex Ed     References Note: Books that Saleema recommends during the podcast are linked directly to Amazon via affiliate links. Albert, B (2004). With one voice 2004: America’s adults and teens sound off about teen pregnancy. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Retrieved from: https://thenationalcampaign.org/sites/default/files/resource-primary-download/wov_2004.pdf Brown, L.K., & Brown, M. (2000). What’s the big secret? Talking about sex with girls and boys. New York: Little, Brown. CBS Miami (2014, May 6). Broward school board approves sex ed overhaul. Retrieved from: http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/05/06/broward-school-board-to-vote-on-new-sex-ed-policy/ Chicago Department of Public Health (2013, June). Sexual education policy in Illinois and Chicago. Retrieved from: https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdph/CDPH/HCPolicyBriefJune2013.pdf Guttmacher Institute (2016, November 1). Sex and HIV Education: State laws and policies. Retrieved from: https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/sex-and-hiv-education Mayle, P. & Robins, A. (2000). Where did I come from? New York, NY: Lyle Stuart. Noon, S. & Hickling, M. (2016). Talk Sex Today: What kids need to know and how adults can teach them. Kelowna, BC: Wood Lake Publishing Scarry, R. (2008). This is me. New York, NY: Sterling. Schalet, A.T. (2011). Beyond abstinence and risk: A new paradigm for adolescent sexual health. Women’s Health Issues 21(3), S5-S7. Full article available at: http://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867%2811%2900008-9/fulltext Silverberg, C, & Smyth, F. (2013). What makes a baby. New York, NY: Triangle Square. UNESCO 2009: International technical guidance on sexuality Education: An evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers, and health educators. Retrieved from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183281e.pdf Utah Administrative Code (2016, November 1). Rule R277-474. School instruction and human sexuality. Retrieved from: http://www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r277/r277-474.htm#T3   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:    [00:30] Hello and welcome to Your Parenting Mojo. We have a fabulous guest lined up today and we’re going to talk about sex. No, not sex for you. I assume you probably figured that part out already by now, especially since you’re listening to a podcast for parents, but about your children and sex. So I was scrolling down my Facebook feed recently when I saw a post in a parenting group saying my two year old daughter seems to have a “special relationship,”with her rocking horse is she masturbating? And I thought to myself, Whoa, two year olds masturbate. I got to do an episode on this. So I looked around to see who’s writing about this and I found Saleema Noon, who has a master’s degree in Sexual Health Education and has been teaching the fields of sexual health, assertiveness, internet safety, healthy relationships and body image for a decade now. She co-wrote the recent books talk sex today, what kids need to know and how adults can teach them, which is absolutely chock full of information on how to talk with children of all ages about sex. And the book is so awesome that I knew I had to invite her on the show to help us understand what we should consider discussing with our toddlers and preschoolers about sex and sexuality and why we should do this as well. Welcome Saleema. Saleema:       [01:36] Hi. Thanks for having me. Jen:  [01:38] So can you tell us a bit about why you think we should start talking even with really young children about sexuality? What’s our overall goal here? Why are we doing this? Saleema:    [01:46] Well, the goal is to keep our kids educated and therefore protected and safe. I tell parents that there are three main reasons why we need start talking to our children early about sexual health and they all have to do with protection and prevention. The first one is that young children are easiest to teach because they haven’t learned yet that sexual health is still a taboo subject in our society. So for example, when we explained to even young children how babies are made or what their body parts are called using scientific language, they’re excited to learn about that stuff. They don’t have any emotional baggage around the topic, just like, older children and teenagers and even some adults have. So they’re really curious. Body scientists, we call them and they’re excited to learn everything they can about the topic. By the time they get to grade four or five, however we call these people that gross-me-out-ers because now they’ve learned they should be totally disgusted by anything to do with sex or sexual health or bodies. Saleema:  [02:48] You know. So the whole idea is for parents to teach their kids early, even before questions start coming up to capitalize on their natural curiosity and matter of fact nature in learning the information. The second reason why we as parents need to start talking about sexual health with our young children as early as possible is that our kids are exposed to so much to do with sexuality at younger and younger ages, even as toddlersi believe it or not. And so we always need to stay one step ahead of the game with accurate information so that our kids know how to interpret what they hear. They can think critically about it and if they hear something that doesn’t make sense to them or as upsetting or disturbing to them even they can come and ask us about it. We as parents want to be our kids’ number one source of sexual health information. Saleema:   [03:40] And the third reason why we need to start talking from an early age, I think is most important, and that is that studies from all over the world consistently show us that children who are educated about healthy bodies and healthy sexuality are protected from child sexual abuse. Children need information to keep themselves out of exploitative situations. And so when parents ask me, you know, when do I start teaching? Well, I have jokingly tell them the day your child is born by using technical terminology, you know, um, they can learn words like vagina and vulva just as easily as they learn any other word, you know, they’re like little sponges. And we have to be accurate too. For example, when a young child is in the bath, we’re not washing the vagina, the vagina does not need to be washed. It’s an opening. But what needs to be washed is the vulva. Saleema:  [04:31] And even seemingly small distinctions like this are important because if a child is abused and needs to report to a parent or in a court setting, God forbid, they need to have appropriate vocabulary so they can be very clear in exactly what they’re trying to express. Lots of research has been done talking to child predators and what they tell us is that they spend a lot of time grooming their victims, most have been abused themselves so they know exactly what to look for and what they say time and time again is that a child who is educated and knowledgeable and aware about sexual health at any age has probably been taught by a parent or another reliable adult and has also been taught to report should something exploitative happen. On the other hand, a child who doesn’t know anything, doesn’t have the vocabulary, doesn’t have that awareness, probably hasn’t been taught either and won’t report or at least will be less likely to report and therefore is an easier target. So teaching our kids even as toddlers using technical terminology and as they reach the preschool years, answering questions as they come up is really key from a safety perspective. Jen:    [05:46] Yeah. Yeah. We’re not going to dig too deep in the safety perspective. But before we move on, I just wanted to mention something, I can’t remember if I heard this in your book or read it somewhere else. I remember reading about a toddler who had been taught to call their genital genitalia a cookie jar and that they had been abused and had been trying to tell the teacher at school, you know, somebody’s touching my cookie jar and the teachers had no idea what was going on. And then the kid kept talking about it and talking about it finally called the parent and then figured out what was going on and this poor child had been trying to communicate this for weeks and couldn’t do it because they didn’t have the language to tell. Saleema:    [06:23] And that is a true story that a parent told me years ago. It just highlights the importance of being clear with our kids and teaching technical terminology from day one. Jen:   [06:32] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so we’ll sort of keep that in our minds is an important reason why we should do this, but we’re going to dig more into what children learn about sex and sexuality and how we can talk to them about it more in this show. So let’s jump ahead a little bit to school age. What do children learn about sex in school? Because it seems to me as though we’ve sort of reduced this huge, amazing topic of sex and sexuality to: Thou shalt not have sex before marriage because it’s wrong. And if thou does thou had better not get pregnant or get an STI. How does that happen? Saleema: [07:08] You know, much of what kids learn in school based sexual health education is fear-based and problem-focused, especially in the United States, I have to say. We here in Canada or are a lot more progressive and a lot more positive in how we address it. However, we still have a long way to go. I can’t speak to what the curriculum is in each area of California, for example, because it really does. I’m guessing it’s much like here in Canada where what our kids learn, even in elementary school about sexual health varies from school to school and even class to class, depending on who the teacher is. What I can tell you is that here in Canada, we do have a mandated curriculum for kids kindergarten to grade 10 in all schools, but what actually happens in the classroom is hit and miss because our teachers are not given adequate support. Saleema:   [08:02] They’re not given good resources. They may not have time and they may simply not feel comfortable teaching it and there’s no monitoring of it, and so it really is it we can’t be sure of what our kids are learning. Here in Canada, the bulk of the curriculum and the primary years, so kindergarten to grade three centers around abuse prevention, private parts on the body, really teaching consent. The idea that all kids are the boss of their bodies. They say who goes on them and who does not. And of course this is an important message of course when it comes to safety, but what our curriculum does not cover and what needs to be covered is basic reproduction and anatomy information. I can’t tell you how many times when I’m teaching grade one for example. So these are six year olds. How many times kids ask me what the word “sexy” means because they hear about it on commercials, they hear about it in music, they see it on…right now we have a bus ad campaign for extra gum and it says bad breath isn’t sexy. So I’ve got kids every week asking me about that and what it means. Jen:   [09:12] And what do you tell them? Saleema:   [09:13] Well, it really depends on the context in which they’re asking me. So I’m, a lot of kids are seeing, hey, sexy lady and songs for example, and they really have no idea what the word means. Just last week, a grade one girl came up to me and said, hey, I know what the word sexy means. And I said, Oh yeah, what does it mean? She said, it means cool. And then another girl interrupted and she said, no, it doesn’t mean cool. It means that you’re healthy and you make good choices about what you put in your body. So between what parents are telling them and what they’re interpreting for themselves, uh, there’s all kinds of miscommunication and confusion. Saleema: [09:51] What we want kids to know, for example, about the word sexy, is that because sex is only for grownups, it wouldn’t be appropriate for kids to use this word or even to sing it in a song. So when it comes up and your favorite song, maybe instead of seeing, hey, sexy lady, you could sing, hey, funny lady or hey, happy lady or you know, hey independent lady… I usually lose them when I, when I suggest that. But you know, the idea is just to sub out the word. And so they can still enjoy and sing their songs. But because sex is for grownups only, it wouldn’t be appropriate. In a literal sense, I explained to kids that to say that someone is sexy means that you want to have sex with them. And again, because sex is only for grownups, not appropriate. It’s not a bad word, it’s just not a word that kids should use. Saleema:     [10:35] The word sexy is one example of how much our kids are exposed to mostly through media at an early age. I’m also reminded of a time recently where I was in a kindergarten class and as we’re talking about the baby growing inside of the uterus, one of the girls blurts out, Oh yeah. And you know what else, Saleema? Sometimes grownups have sex when they’re drunk. So who knows where she got that from. My guess is that she overheard some adults talking or maybe she saw something on a movie, who knows, right? But this is proof that our kids are exposed to so much more than we think at such younger ages than we think. And so we have to be willing as parents to have those open conversations with them and help them make sense of what’s around them. Jen:   [11:21] Yeah. Because especially in the U.S., they’re not getting that in school. Knowing that you’re Canadian. I did a bit of background research on what is the state of sex education in the U.S. And I’m English and so it didn’t have any sex education here. And I found that 37 US states require that information on abstinence be provided at 26 percent, sorry, 26 states require that abstinence be stressed and in Utah absence has to be the dominant message given to students, educators and Utah aren’t even allowed to discuss, and I’m going to quote this, “the intricacies of intercourse, sexual stimulation or erotic behavior, the advocacy of homosexuality, the advocacy or encouragement of the use of contraceptive methods or devices or the advocacy of sexual activity outside marriage.” So that’s sort of the worst of that. Saleema:  [12:08] I hear that Jen, and I want to cry. Jen:     [12:10] Yeah. Yeah. But there are places that are getting better. You know, Chicago and Broward County have now some form of sex education in all grades starting in kindergarten. But yeah, that’s, that’s not the norm by any...

Parenting is tough, huh? Sometimes it feels like we spend a lot of our time asking our daughter to do things…and asking again…and finding a more creative way to ask. We’re going to get some great advice on this next week from Julie King, co-author of the new book How to Talk so Little Kids will Listen – but for this week I want to set the stage and think about why we should bother with all of this. Why not just force our kids to do what we want them to do? And, is it possible to raise obedient kids who can also think for themselves? Reference Baldwin, A.L. (1948). Socialization and the parent-child relationship. Child Development 19, 127-136. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1125710 Baumrind, D. (1978). Parental disciplinary patterns and social competence in children. Youth Society 9(3), 239-267. DOI: 10.1177/0044118X7800900302 Collins, W.A. (Ed.) (1984). Development during middle childhood: The years from six to twelve. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. Full book available as a pdf at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/56.html Crockenberg, S.C., & Litman, C. (1990). Autonomy as competence in 2-year-olds: Maternal correlates of child defiance, compliance, and self-assertion. Developmental Psychology 26(6), 961-971. DOI: 0.1037/0012-1649.26.6.961 Hare, A.L., Szwedo, D.E., Schad, M.M., & Allen, J.P. (2014). Undermining adolescent autonomy with parents and peers: The enduring implications of psychologically controlling parenting. Journal of Research on Adolesence 24(4), 739-752. DOI: 10.1111/jora.12167 Lamborn, S.D., Mounts, N.S., Steinberg, L., & Dornbusch, S.M. (1991). Patterns of competence and adjustment among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful families. Child Development 62, 1049-1065. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1991.tb01588.x Lansbury, J. (2014). Setting limits with respect: What it sounds like. Retrieved from: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2014/04/setting-limits-with-respect-what-it-sounds-like-podcast/ Kochanska, G. (1997). Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young children: Implications for early socialization. Child Development 68(1), 94-112. 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb01928.x Kochanska, G. (2013). Promoting toddlers’ positive social-emotional outcomes in low-income families: A play-based experimental study. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 42(5), 700-712. DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2013.782815 Kochanska, G., Kim, S., & Boldt, L.J. (2015). (Positive) power to the child: The role of children’s willing stance toward parents in developmental cascades from toddler age to early preadolescence. Developmental Psychopathology 27(4pt.1), 987-1005. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579415000644 Kohn, A. (2005). Unconditional parenting: Moving from rewards and punishments to love and reason. New York: Atria. Parpal, M., & Maccoby, E.E. (1985). Maternal responsiveness and subsequent child compliance. Child Development 56, 1326-1334. DOI: 10.2307/1130247 Spera, C. (2005). A review of the relationship among parenting practices, parenting styles, and adolescent school achievement. Educational Psychology 17(2), 125-146. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-005-3950-1   Read Full Transcript Transcript This episode actually grew out of an assignment for my master’s program. I’m in the middle of a class on child psychology, which is really at the heart of the curriculum for the masters in psychology with a focus on child development. We were presented with a case study for a child called Jeremiah whose mother was at the end of her rope in dealing with him because he basically refused to cooperate with her. He was having problems in school as well and I was tasked with writing a guide for his mother that that would help her to address some of his challenges. I’ve been reading two books that helped me with this assignment – the first is Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, who also wrote the book Punished by Rewards that was the basis of the episode on not saying “Good Job.” The blurb on the back of Unconditional Parenting starts out “Most parenting guides begin with the question “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?” and then proceed to offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly groundbreaking book, nationally respected educator Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking “What do kids need – and how can we meet those needs?” What follows from that question are ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them.” I read Unconditional Parenting a while ago and have been looking for an excuse to delve into the research behind it so this seemed to be about as good of an offer as I was going to get. But I have on my nightstand at the moment the provocatively-titled book “Do Parents Matter?” which is sort of like David Lancy’s book The Anthropology of Childhood that I’ve quoted many times on this show except that the authors actually lived in the communities and did a lot of the research themselves that the book cites, whereas Lancy’s book mostly cites other anthropologists’ work. At various points in Do Parents Matter? very young children in some African and Central American cultures are described as being highly cooperative and even obedient. They can and will sit still and quiet through long church services or car rides; they entertain their siblings rather than squabbling with them and they make valuable contributions to the running of a household. And I started to think about how to marry these two lines of inquiry together – what is it that parents in other cultures are doing to get their kids to cooperate in learning and in life? And are some of those things the kinds of activities that we should consider doing to get our own kids to cooperate more – or is the key really focusing on the child’s needs like Alfie Kohn suggests? So let’s start with the research on children in other cultures. Sarah and Robert LeVine spent two years studying how the GuSII people in Kenya take care of their infants, and compared these relationships with middle-class American mothers in Boston. The Gusii mothers would spend a lot of time soothing their babies. Mother and baby were in close bodily contact for much of the day, or if the mothers weren’t available then siblings were holding the baby. The mothers responded very quickly to a distressed cry, often by offering a breast – the LeVines showed some Gusii mothers a video of an American baby crying while having his diaper changed and the mothers were shocked that anyone would let a baby cry for even a few seconds. The Gusii infants rarely cry long enough to become aroused, and being in constant touch with another person and feeding as soon as they fuss helps to keep the baby calm. The Gusii mothers didn’t use toys or other objects to play with their baby, and would turn the baby away from them so the baby couldn’t make eye contact if they thought the baby was getting too excited so the baby would calm down again. The Gusii mothers want a calm infant and a compliant child because another child is probably on the way within a couple of years, since the average Gusii mother has ten children – so this continual “soothing” of the baby helps to set the stage for a toddler who prioritizes his mother’s wishes and doesn’t give her much trouble. Shifting gears a bit to slightly older children among the Mayans of the YucaTAN, we find that children older than two are asked to do chores quickly and efficiently. Beginning around age 6 the run errands, help older siblings with chores outside their compound, and take care of younger siblings. Girls learn to make tortillas by watching, and by the mother’s very judicious use of direction. I have personally watched children younger than ten in the highlands of Guatemala make tortillas – they left a bucket of corn to soak overnight and in the morning they took it up the hill to someone who had a generator and returned with the corn ground up. They would pat the tortilla into shape, passing it from hand to hand. I tried it myself, and they laughed at me because I couldn’t stop the dough from sticking to my hands and my tortillas were so thick they were virtually inedible. Children in many cultures WANT to learn and they are EXPECTED to learn; they stand stock-still watching someone do a task that they’re interested in, and they learn how to do it by watching the task over and over again. Their parents don’t have to train them or teach them to do a task; the child learns how to do it because he wants to, because what is being learned has some value – often a real contribution to the running of the household. If an adult offers instruction it’s during the course of doing work, not as a lesson specifically set up to teach the child something. And one set of researchers note that in learning outside of school there are virtually no failures. Some children might take longer than others to learn certain skills but almost all children become able to collaborate and contribute fully to family and community. Flunking isn’t really an option. Of course, you can also take the opposite approach like Chinese parents, as these mothers combine parental authority with love – if you love your child then you want to train him for the seven Confucian learning values, which are sincerity, diligence, endurance of hardship, perseverance, concentration, respect for teachers, and humility. Chinese parents consider the child’s school performance as part of their development as a moral person. They criticize their children without worrying about the child’s self-esteem because self-esteem is less important than being a diligent student. So I think the key point in all of this is that it’s possible to use a variety of methods to create a child who does exactly what he is told – you can keep him calm all the time by being in constant contact with him and not playing with him in an American sense of using toys to interact with him. You can teach him the importance of sitting quietly and observing to take advantage of his innate capacity to learn and contribute to the family. You can directly instruct the child on the qualities you think are important and berate them if they don’t measure up. You can threaten to beat them or actually beat them if they don’t do what you say – there are plenty of cultures where this happens although I’ll go on the record and say that I’m against it in the kinds of Western cultures of which I’m a member. But it seems as though the one thing you cannot do is raise a child to think for himself, to be independent, to take the initiative, to be self-confident, to think creatively, to talk from an early age – all typical goals of American parents – you can’t raise a child to be all of these things *and* obey your every word. The two things just don’t go together. I have yet to find information in a book or paper describing parenting practices in non-Western cultures that describes the mental health outcomes in the children who are in constant physical contact but otherwise ignored, who are berated, and who are threatened or beaten. It’s certainly possible that not all of these lead to negative mental health outcomes in children in cultures where these practices occur, but I do wonder. And secondly, I wonder what the relationship between the child and the parent is like when the child gets older. If the primary goal is obedience to the parent then as long as the child is obedient then everything is probably fine from the parent’s perspective. But I wonder how it feels from the child’s perspective. In Western cultures we try to achieve two goals that I haven’t seen mentioned in descriptions of other cultures – we try to ensure the positive mental health of our children, and we try to build a positive relationship between the child and the parent. And while some of the practices used in other cultures can be helpful to us – personally I plan to shift how I cook from keeping sharp knives away from my toddler to using them within her reach, but instructing her to keep her hands away so she can more closely observe how I prepare dinner every night. But in general if we are to meet our goals for developing what we consider to be well-adjusted children who grow into well-adjusted adults who have a good relationship with us then we need two things. Firstly, we need to redefine our expectations regarding getting a child to do what we want him to do, because an inherent part of raising a free-thinker is that they don’t always do what you want them to do. And secondly we need a different toolkit than the people in cultures who create compliant children through keeping them calm or training them to observe or berating them. We need to move beyond thinking about getting our children to do what we want them to do and start thinking about how we create the kind of relationship with them that makes THEM want to be in a positive working relationship with us as we go out on this journey of life. So why don’t we just control our children? Why don’t we just tell them what we want them to do and force them to do it? Diana Baumrind is a psychologist who described three different parenting styles. Authoritarian parents foster individuality, self-regulation, and self-assertion by meeting and responding to their children’s needs, and exert a fairly high level of control over their children to integrate them into the family culture. In White Western cultures, authoritarian parents are generally considered the “good” parents. Parents who exert a lot of control but don’t balance it with meeting and responding to their children’s needs are called “Authoritative.” (Because I always have to look it up to remember which is which I’ll restate these two – Authoritarian parents are the good ones that exert a high degree of control but are also responsive. Authoritative parents exert a high degree of control but are not responsive).  This style of parenting is more common in the African-American community in the U.S. and while it has been shown to cause negative effects on White children, that’s not necessarily the case with African-American children. Authoritative parenting is associated with better outcomes for African-American children, but the Authoritarian style isn’t terrible. The Permissive parenting style is linked to a high degree of responsiveness to the child, but a low degree of control. So the child gets what she wants, and doesn’t have to fit into the rest of the family – in fact, the family fits around her. A fourth style was added later by some other researchers, who noticed that low responsiveness and low control are basically elements of neglectful parenting. So, Alfie Kohn cites a number of studies that link authoritative – the bad kind – of parenting with really negative psychological outcomes, and several more have been done since that essentially find the same thing. A really early study from way back in 1948 noticed that when parents control children and don’t allow children any kind of say in how rules are made or who does what and when, then we get a “quiet-well-behaved, non-resistant child…conformity to cultural demands is not easily obtained without robbing the child of that personal integrity which gives him a mind of his own. Very controlling parenting obtains conformity but at the expense of personal freedom in areas which are not intended to be restricted.” Another of the studies that Kohn cites makes a distinction that I found really helpful, and that’s the difference between self-assertion and defiance. If a mother tells her child to pick up some toys and put them in a box, if the child say’s “No, still playing” then he is asserting himself. But if he takes more toys out of the basket or if he throws a toy across the room, he is defying her. So if the act is primarily geared toward resisting what the mother wants to do, then we call it “defiance.” But if the child really does want to keep playing not just for the sake of defying the mother, then that’s assertion. Now this is important because researchers associate self-assertion with competence in young children, but the same doesn’t hold true for defiance. Children who say “no” more often are more likely to have a secure attachment to their parents, engage in more negotiation with their mothers, and are more developmentally advanced that other children. Children who are defiant often hare parents who use highly power-assertive control strategies like anger, harshness, criticism, and spanking or hitting, and the mother’s use of these strategies after the child’s initial ‘no’ was more likely than other strategies to result in defiance, probably because she’s using these strategies to signal that she’s not willing to negotiate. If the child complies at this point he does so because his mother has more power than him, and his autonomy suffers. And asking a child “Could you pick up the toys now?” wasn’t effective at getting compliance either because the child feels like he has a choice, and he chooses not to pick up the toys.   I have to say when I started researching this episode that I didn’t realize where it was going to end up, which his pretty much directly supporting the Resources for Infant Educarers, or RIE, approach to parenting that I use. I haven’t talked too much about this in the podcast because I haven’t been able to find much information to say that its strategies are supported by science – I mainly did it because it advocates for respect in the relationship between the parent and the child and that just felt very RIGHT to me. But while there is no research out there that says “RIE parenting methods produce better children than non-RIE methods,” it’s pretty interesting to me to see strategies that RIE has taught me described in a paper on effective methods of gaining compliance. I’ll quote from the paper: “Mothers who were effective at eliciting compliance from their children and deflecting defiance were very clear about what they wanted, but in addition to listening to their children’s objections, they also accommodated them in ways that conveyed respect for the children’s autonomy and individuality. Often, the process of obtaining compliance was quite extended; mothers reasoned, persuaded, suggested, and adapted their requests to what they thought the child would accept. In doing so, they encouraged competent behavior on the part of their toddler.” If you want to hear this in action, go and check out Janet Lansbury’s podcast episode on setting limits with respect – there’s a link to it in the references for this episode. Janet has been a RIE parent educator since 1994, and I find it really helpful to not just read the language she uses but hear her demonstrate it. I do want to be super clear that respecting autonomy and individuality doesn’t mean being a pushover. I think of it as believing that I have rights as a person in the parenting relationship as well, and I place primary importance on the relationship between my daughter and I, and that it’s OK for us each to have boundaries about what is and isn’t OK. Sometimes my daughter doesn’t want to kiss me goodbye in the morning and that’s OK with me – that’s her boundary, her limit in that moment. I cheerfully wave goodbye to her as her Dad takes her to daycare and think nothing more of it. And also I have the right to set boundaries as well – I don’t want there to be water all over the floor in the bathroom after her bath. If she’s splashing a lot then I tell her “I don’t want you to splash water on the floor. You can splash...

  Did your child receive a digital device as a gift over the holidays? Have you been able to prise it out of his/her hands yet? Regular listeners might recall that we did an episode recently called “Really, how bad is screen time for my child?” where we went into the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time for very young children, so if you haven’t listened to that one yet you might want to go and do it before you listen to this episode, because this one really builds on that one. Yes, we know we’re not supposed to give our babies under 18 months old access to screens. But at some point our children are going to start using screens – and we as parents need tools to manage that process, whether we’ve limited screens until now or whether we’ve been using them as a bit of a crutch. (If you’re in a third category of parents who is totally happy with the amount and type of screen time your children are getting and feel confident about managing this in the future then click along to the next episode, because there’s nothing for you here!) So all of this is what today’s guest is going to help us to figure out. Dr Kristy Goodwin is one of Australia’s leading digital parenting experts (and mum who also has to deal with her kids’ techno-tantrums!). She’s the author of the brand new book Raising Your Child in a Digital World (Affiliate link).  Dr Kristy arms parents, educators and health professionals with research-based information about what today’s young, digital kids really need to thrive online and offline. Kristy takes the guesswork and guilt out of raising kids in the digital age by arming parents and educators with facts, not fears about how screens are impacting on children’s health, wellbeing and development.   References Brewer, J. (2016). Digital Nutrition (website/blog). Retrieved from: http://www.digitalnutrition.com.au/blog Christakis, D., Zimmerman, F.J., DiGuiseppe, D.L., & McCarty, C.A. (2004). Early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. Pediatrics 113(4), 708-713. Common Sense Media website: www.commonsensemedia.org (Also check your app store for their app) Goodwin, K. (2016). Raising your child in a digital world: What you need to know!. Warriewood, NSW: Finch. (Affiliate link) Kindertown website: http://www.kindertown.com/ (Also check your app store for their app)   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:    [00:30] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called Raising Your Child in a Digital World. Now, regular listeners might recall that we did an episode recently called really how bad his screen time for my child and we went into the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time for very young children. So if you haven’t listened to that one already, you might want to go back and do that before you listen to this episode because this one really builds on that one. So we all know that we’re not supposed to give her a babies under 18 months old access to screens, but at some point our children are going to start using screens and we as parents need tools to manage that process, whether we have limited screens until now or whether we’ve been using them as a bit of a crutch. Jen: [01:10] And l say that if you find yourself in a third category of parents who’s totally happy with the amount and type of screen time that your children are getting and you feel confident about managing this in the future, then you should just click along to the next episode because there’s nothing for you here, but for the rest of us who are still trying to figure all this out that’s what today’s guest is going to help us do. So Dr. Kristy Goodwin is one of Australia’s leading digital parenting experts and she’s also a mom who has to deal with her kids techno tantrums. She’s the author of the brand new book, Raising Your Child in a Digital World, and Dr Christie arms parents, educators, and health professionals with research based information about what today’s young digital kids really need to thrive online and offline. Christy takes the guesswork and guilt out of raising kids in the digital age by arming parents and educators with facts and not fears about how screens are impacting children’s health, wellbeing, and development. Welcome Dr. Goodwin, thanks so much for joining us. Dr. Goodwin:  [02:05] My pleasure. It’s great to be here. Jen:    [02:08] So your book outlines seven building blocks for young children’s development. Can you tell us a little bit about what those are? Dr. Goodwin:    [02:15] Sure. So I draw on the neuroscience and the developmental science research and they have consistently identified that children have basic, unchanging developmental needs or priorities. And it doesn’t matter where the children were born in 2012 or whether they were born in 1950. Their developmental needs are fairly, pretty consistently the same. So I identified the seven basic developmental needs or as I refer to in the book as the building blocks. And kids need basic things like relationships and attachments. They need language exposure to as much language as possible, both hearing and using. They need sleep, they need opportunities for play, they need opportunities for physical movements, they need good quality nutrition. And the final one is a relatively new one that I’m looking at executive function skills and these are basically children’s higher order thinking skills at the part of the brain that’s responsible for executive function skills is sometimes referred to as the air traffic control system or CEO of the brain. So I draw on what the research because we’ve got a very robust, consistent body of research that says these are the basic needs that children have in order to thrive. And then what I do is look at how technology is intersecting with those basic needs. Jen:   [03:36] So I know we’ve, we’ve talked a lot already in the previous episode about how researchers are concerned with children’s screen time. So I, I want to spend a little bit of time on this just to make sure that we’re acknowledging it before we move into some of the more positive attributes. So can you tell us that some of the ways that screen time can hinder children’s development? Dr. Goodwin: [03:55] We do some preliminary research that tells us that excessive or inappropriate use of technology with children can have some adverse effects. In particular, the research has consistently identified but excessive or inappropriately used technology can have implications on children’s sleep. It’s also associated with obesity levels and some research, although not yet consistent, tells us that it has been correlated with attentional issues. This doesn’t necessarily mean that screens cause attentional issues, but there’s definitely a link there. More recently we’re seeing, and again, these are still in the preliminary stages because we need to remember, you know, the ipad is only six years old, and as a researcher in this field, I have to admit, we’re really hopeless at keeping up with the technology. The technology is growing exponentially by the time we conduct, publish, and then disseminate research, the technology is often been superseded. So we don’t yet have, you know, I’m often asked what’s the longterm impact of preschoolers and toddlers on the iPad. Dr. Goodwin:    [05:00] I hate to say we really don’t yet know. And in some regards we are conducting a bit of a living experiment. So that’s why I always fall back on what do we know, what does the science tell us? It’s those seven basic things. So we’re seeing with screens in particular, there’s a displacement effect, so when children are using a screen thing, not doing something else. So in particular we’re seeing the early signs that we were concerned about children’s fine motor skills. So children are learning to tap, swipe, and pinch before they’ve learned to grip a pencil and tie their shoe laces were also concerned with perhaps the use of screens to early on derailing or changing children’s brain architecture. We know, for example, in the first three years of life, brain development is predominantly focused on the sensory and the motor regions of the brain. Dr. Goodwin: [05:52] And then from that ages three to four, brain development shifts to that, the prefrontal, where they develop all those executive function skills. And we’re worried that if kids are spending too much time on screens and the sensory and motor regions of the brain, may be under-developed and then we’re placing them in a, you know, an online world that I call it, you know, it’s sensory seduction says things always trying to captivate their attention. Yet, they don’t have the impulse control that’s required in this prefrontal cortex where all their executive function skills…They don’t have those skills yet to manage their attention. So we can see there’s some of the potential concerns. Psychologists are very concerned with children’s self regulation skills that children are not learning how to manage some of their big emotions. Instead they’re being placated by a screen, you know, we give them the digital babysitter to calm them down. Dr. Goodwin: [06:44] We’re also seeing, you know, some preliminary research on the impact of screens on relationships and other relationships children have with parents, not so much because of the child screen use, but even more interestingly, it’s parental use, you know, we’re calling it parental digital distraction and the impact that’s having. There’s one study that’s been published already that’s looked at what they’re calling fractured maternal care. And they looked at rodents because obviously getting ethics approval to do studies like this with humans would be near impossible. But what they’ve actually found is that there’s some adverse social and emotional consequences if the maternal rat was chronically distracted. I’m saying, you know, we’re just, there’s so many potential risks, so that’s why I think it’s always safe to be until we have conclusive longterm evidence, which we gears away from, let’s fall back on, you know, my friends call me Cautious Christy; I always err on the side of caution, do we know what, you know, what are their basic needs, let’s make sure they’re met and if they are met and a little bit of screen time is unlikely to be harmful or detrimental to them. Jen:   [07:52] Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I just want to dig into a couple of things that you’ve mentioned. You talked about the correlative link between screen time and attention, and just wanted to clarify that you did say that that’s not causative, but just to clarify for listeners that I think what you’re saying here is that we know that there’s a link between screen time and attention and we’re not sure which causes, which is that right? Dr. Goodwin:   [08:15] Absolutely. Definitely A study by Dr Christakis was published a few years ago and um, some of the media headlines as often is the case misconstrued the findings and said that screens, calls add and Adhd, and that is definitely not the case. We do not have the research to substantiate that there is a link, but we’re not sure which direction that link goes from. It goes between. So is it that children with attentional issues gravitate towards the rapid fire fast paced stimulation that the online world offers? Or is it that rapid fire stimulation, that sensory bombardment that controls a two inch totally. We don’t yet know. So I go back to what do we know that the prefrontal cortex, you know, where their executive function skills are developed. One of the key parts of executive function skills, is impulse control, and we know that this part of the brain doesn’t start to peek in its development until about age is four to six. So children cannot really orient and manage their attention. And even then attention management is not fully developed. So potential risks. Jen:    [09:26] Yeah, and it seems as though the issue of correlation/causation is also there on that managing attention research, right? We don’t know if the children who have trouble managing their attention are gravitating towards screens or vice versa. And just something else that you mentioned that caught my ear. You said that children are learning to tap, swipe and pinch before they start learning to hold a pencil or tie their shoe laces. Is that a concern or could it be that those fine motor skills that children are developing using a screen time is actually helping them. Which, which way does that go? Dr. Goodwin:[09:59] Yeah, so we’ll put some mixed research there . There was actually a study by the technology company AVG two years ago that said that children literally meet their technical milestones before their physical milestones now. Um, and it’s interesting. I traveled throughout Australia and this year I’m in Australia was the first year of what they’re calling the iPad kindergarten generation and teach us throughout the country anecdotally reporting that children are entering school with poor fine motor skills so they can, you know, not holding a pencil correctly, not able to use scissors. So there is definitely, I would think some sort of displacement effect that, you know, time on screens is eroding, superseding opportunities to develop those skills. However, we have also had a study published that has suggested that actually tapping and swapping, depending on what the actual action is on the screen, that can actually facilitate the development of fine motor skills. So again, it depends on what they’re doing. If an app is specifically designed, there are a couple of apps for preschoolers that I’m aware of that do start to develop some of the pincer group and some other small fine motor skills. But again, and this is where it all comes back to balance, you know, making sure that they get the best of analog and digital experiences as well. Jen:    [11:18] Yeah. Okay. So we’ve talked a little bit about some of the potential negative effects the screen time can have on children’s development, but one of the things that I really loved about your book was the way that you address each of the seven building blocks in turn and for each of the building blocks that you’d talk about, not only the ways in which screen time can hinder children’s development in that block, but also how screen time can support it. And I was really surprised to find that there are ways that screen time can support all of the seven building blocks. So can you tell us about some of those more important ways that screen time can support child’s development? Dr. Goodwin:  [11:50] Absolutely. So screen time isn’t necessarily toxic or taboo and I think this is one of the issues facing us as modern parents. Unfortunately, if we read popular media, all of the negative attributes of technology is often reported. So we are given a very lopsided view. And as a researcher in this field, I know that there’s a lot of positive potential that screens can offer, again, if they’re used appropriately and intentionally with our kids, so as parents, I think that helps us to ditch what I call the techno guilt, we don’t need to feel bad that accuracy using a screen because there is positive potential. In particular things like language, there are wonderful apps and websites and online tools that can develop children’s oral language skills, both very expressive language and receptive language skills. So in this instance, we need to be looking for apps in particular where it’s interactive, where children can either record their voice or were they can respond to some sort of stimulus. Dr. Goodwin:

  Someone in a parenting group on Facebook suggested I do an episode on The Spiritual Child, by Dr. Lisa Miller.  My first thought was that it didn’t really sound like my cup of tea but I was willing to read it and at least see what it had to say. I was surprised by the book’s thesis that spirituality can play a critical role in a child’s and adolescent’s development.  But I was astounded that her thesis was actually backed up by scientific research. I invited Dr. Miller to be on the show and she initially agreed – but during my preparation I found that the science supporting spirituality doesn’t seem to be quite as clear-cut as the book says it is.  I invited Dr. Miller again for a respectful discussion of the issues but I didn’t hear back from her. In this episode I describe the book’s major claims, and assess where the science seems to support these and where it doesn’t.  I conclude with some practices you can use to deepen your child’s spiritual connection, if you decide that this is the right approach for your family. Note: I mainly focused on the research related to child development in this article, but as I was about to publish this episode I found an article claiming that the science behind some of Dr. Miller’s other assertions might not be so solid either.   I didn’t read all of those studies (because they’re not directly related to child development, and it took me a lot of hours to find and read just the ones that were), but the author’s conclusions very much mirror my own. References Benson, P.L., Roehlkepartain, E.C., & Scales, P.C. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Berry, D. (2005). Methodological pitfalls in the study of religiosity and spirituality. Western Journal of Nursing Research 27(5), 628-647. DOI: 10.1177/0193945905275519 Boytas, C.J. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Button, T.M.M., Stallings, M.C., Rhee, S.H., Corley, R.P., & Hewitt, J.K. (2011). The etiology of stability and change in religious values and religious attendance. Behavioral Genetics 41(2), 201-210. DOI: 10.1007/s10519-010-9388-3 Cloninger, C.R., Svrakic, D.M., & Przybeck, T.R. (1993). A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry 50(12), 975-990. DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.1993.01820240059008 Gallup. (2016). Religion. Survey retrieved from (and updated annually at): http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx Kendler, K.S., Gardner, C.O., & Prescott, C.A. (1997). Religion, psychopathology, and substance use and abuse: a multimeasure, genetic-epidemiologic study. American Journal of Psychiatry 154, 322-329. Full article available at: http://medicina.fm.usp.br/cedem/simposio/Religion,%20Psychopathology,%20and%20Substance%20Use%20and%20Abuse.pdf Kendler, K.S., Gardner, C.O., & Prescott, C.A. (1999). Clarifying the relationship between religiosity and psychiatric illness: The impact of covariates and the specificity of buffering effects. Twin Research 2, 137-144. DOI: 10.1375/twin.2.2.137 Kidwell, J.S., Dunham, R.M., Bacho, R.A., Pastorino, E., & Portes, P.R. (1995). Adolescent identity exploration: A test of Erikson’s theory of transitional crisis. Adolescence 30(120), 785-793. Koenig, L.B., McGue, M., & Iacono, W.G. (2008). Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood. Developmental Psychology 44(2), 532-543. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.44.2.532 Mahoney, A. & Tarakeshwar, N. (2005). Religion’s role in marriage and parenting in daily life and during family crises. In R.F. Paloutzain & C.L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (p.177-198). New York: The Guilford Press. Chapter available online at: http://psychologyofreligion99.blogspot.com/2013/07/religions-role-in-marriage-and.html Miller, L., Warner, V., Wickramaratne, P., & Weissman, M. (1997). Religiosity and depression: Ten-year follow-up of depressed mothers and offspring. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36(10), 1416-1425. Full article available at: http://highriskdepression.org/files/1997C.pdf Miller, L., Davies, M., & Greenwald, S. (2000). Religiosity and substance use and abuse among adolescents in the National Comorbidity Survey. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 39(9), 1190-1197. DOI: 10.1097/00004583-200009000-00020 Miller, L., & Gur, M. (2002). Religiousness and sexual responsibility in adolescent girls. Journal of Adolescent Health 31, 401-406. DOI: 10.1016/S1054-139X(02)00403-2 Miller, L., Wickramarante, P., Gameroff, M.J., Sage, M., Tenke, C.E., & Weissman, M.M. (2012). Religiosity and major depression in adults at high risk: A ten-year prospective study. American Journal of Psychiatry 169(1), 89-94. DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.10121823 Miller, L., Bansal, R., Wickramaratne, P., Hao, X, Tenke, C.E., Weissman, M.M., & Peterson, B.S. (2014). Neuroanatomical correlates of religiosity and spirituality: A study in adults at high and low familial risk for depression. Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry 71(2), 128-135. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.3067 Miller, L. (2015). The spiritual child. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Plante, T.G., & Thoresen, C.E. (2012). Spiritual development during childhood and adolescence. In L. Miller (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of psychology and spirituality. New York: Oxford. Shoshani, A., & Aviv, I. (2012). The pillars of strength for first-grade adjustment: Parental and children’s character strengths and the transition to elementary school. The Journal of Positive Psychology 7(4), 315-326. DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2012.691981 Sloan, R.P. & Bagiella, E. (2002). Claims about religious involvement and health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 24(1), 14-21. DOI: 10.1207/S15324796ABM2401_0 Wagener, L.M. & Maloney, H.N. (2006). Spiritual and religious pathology in childhood and adolescence. In E. Roehlkepartain, P.E. King, L. Wagener, & P. L. Benson (Eds.), The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence (p.137-149). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  We have a bit of a different episode lined up for today: we’re looking at the book Your Spiritual Child by Dr. Lisa Miller.  I was chatting with some parents in a Facebook group a while back and mentioned that I’m always looking for podcast episode topics, so one of them suggested I do an episode on this book.  My first thought was “well that doesn’t really sound like my cup of tea but I’ll read the book and see where it goes from there.” So I read the book and I was pretty surprised – Dr. Miller makes all sorts of claims about the integral role that spirituality can play in a child’s development.  Her thesis is that children are naturally spiritual and that by not allowing them to develop this quality we’re depriving them of an essential ingredient in their success.  The really surprising part to me, though, was that her claims are underpinned by actual scientific research.  So I emailed Dr. Miller and said “hey, I’m an atheist but I read your book and I’d love to interview you on the show so we can dig into this and both my listeners and I can understand it better.”  She initially responded with something along the lines of “sounds great!” but we had some scheduling difficulties and then I stopped hearing back from her.  While the scheduling attempts were going on I was doing all the background research I normally do for an interview and I started to get more and more worried.  I was finding discrepancies between the outcomes of studies Dr. Miller referenced and the way she was describing them in the book -not in all cases, but in enough that I wanted to understand the issues further.  In the end I emailed her and told her what I’d found, explained that I was really interested in a rigorous intellectual discussion and didn’t have any malicious intent, and invited her again to be on the show but she didn’t respond.  I told her it would be a bit of a bummer to have spent all this time doing research and not have an episode to show for it so I would plan to go ahead and run it without her if she decided not to participate – so here we are. So, let’s start with the book.  Dr. Miller defines spirituality as “an inner sense of living relationship to a higher power, which might be God, nature spirit, universe, the creator, or whatever your word is for the ultimate loving, guiding life-force.”  The important thing here is that spirituality is not tied to religion – it’s about an individual’s personal relationship with the transcendent, not about how organized religion might shape that experience.  We know this through the results of a study of White, Caucasian twins in Virginia by Kenneth Kendler, which asked the twins about their experience of spirituality religion as part of understanding whether these could be protective against substance abuse.  Researchers like to study twins because it’s the closest thing we have to two people who are identical but still have important differences between them, like their experience of spirituality.  Dr Miller says that “by comparing monozygotic (which are twins from the same egg and who are thus genetically identical) with dizygotic twins (which came from two different eggs fertilized at the same time and are thus genetically different), our tendencies around personal devotion are due 29% to broad heritability, 24% to family environment, and 47% to our own personal unique environment.  Now I actually couldn’t find this result in Kendler’s study.  These specific findings aren’t discussed.  It’s possible Dr. Miller worked with the statistical results provided and devised these percentages, but they are not found in the paper.  Later in the book she calls him her “senior colleage,” so I wonder if she had access to data not described in the paper.  In the paper, Dr. Kendler finds that age and number of years of education are positively associated with personal devotion (which is what Dr. Miller calls transcendental relationships) and that none of the three dimensions of religiosity differed between monozygotic and dizygotic twins, although he doesn’t mention these differences for  personal devotion. The study did that personal spirituality is a different thing from religious affiliation, which was another point that Dr Miller made, and this was corroborated by a follow-up study by Dr. Kendler.  The first study also found that both spirituality and religion are associated with lower levels of alcohol and tobacco use which is something we’ll get to again later.  Spirituality was inversely associated with depressive symptoms, indicating that people who experience spirituality are less likely to experience depression, and this actually wasn’t the case for religion.  But other than these findings, there were no significant correlations between spirituality or religiosity and any of 27 other mental illnesses. It seems as though organized religion is at a bit of a crossroads in the U.S..  A Gallup poll that’s updated annually finds that the percentage of people reporting ‘none’ as their religion is increasing, and people reporting that they have a great deal of confidence in the church or organized religion is declining, while people who say they have ‘very little’ confidence in these organizations is increasing.  Yet 89% of people asked in 2016 if they believe in God will say “yes”- and that’s down from the 96% who believed in 1944, but it’s still really high.  So what do all these people who believe in God but don’t believe that organized religion has the answers tell their children?  Dr. Miller quotes some parents she’s talked with as saying “I don’t want to share my views about spiritual things because I’m not so sure myself.  I could say something to steer my child in the wrong direction.”  Another said “I’m just not sure how to put it.  There is almost nothing at all for parents that helps us talk about spirituality, other than religion.  But I’m not religious and I don’t like the way religion was taught to me.”  Many parents they know they don’t want organized religion for their children, but they don’t know what else to replace it with. Dr. Miller goes on to quote these studies from Dr. Keller a number of other times, so in each case I tried to corroborate the evidence from an alternate source.  I did find one from Professor Ralph Piedmont of Loyola University, who wondered if spirituality could be considered a dimension making up a person that’s different from the other traits that make up a personality and found that transcendence does indeed appear to be a different component of personality than other characteristics.  So these studies point to the idea that at least a part of our spirituality is a genetic component of our makeup, and not something that is something we learn through exposure to organized religion. Dr. Miller’s second major finding is that while we might notice elements of and a curiosity about spirituality in young children it really comes into its own in adolescence.  This fits with reading I’ve been doing for my classwork on adolescent development, related to the identity exploration that adolescents go through as they ‘try on’ different identities to see which one fits them.  It turns out that teenage angst and not wanting to be around parents very much are developmentally necessary things for adolescents to go through as they figure out who they are as separate beings from their parents. My expectation would have been that the influence of biology decreases over time as the child is exposed to more experiences over the course of her life but a study by Dr. Tanya Button at the University of Colorado finds that at age 14, the largest impact on a teen’s spirituality is from her family, but by age 19 it is primarily shaped by her biology – in other words, the biological changes of puberty and adolescence.  When the researchers looked at the underlying causes of that shift they found that it was about half due to the force of genetic expression, or the “unlocking of the window” as Dr. Miller puts it, and the other half to the personal environment that the teens create as they go through the search for their identity – things like going to a youth group or to church, or trying meditation.  This shift in the influence of heritability was corroborated by Dr. Laura Koenig at the University of Minnesota using another twin study, so we can be reasonably sure about the conclusion that there is a surge in the importance of biological factors in determining an adolescent’s interest in spirituality.   So all of this brings us to the question “why should we care about spirituality?” It’s nice to believe nice things about the world and the people in it, but are there any real benefits to being spiritual?  And this gets to the heart of the issues I was having as I read through the research that Dr. Miller draws on for the book.  Because as far as she is concerned, the evidence is pretty cut and dried – but it seems to me that it’s rather less so. So let’s take a look.  We’ll start with young children: Dr. Anat Shoshani studied 479 five-year-old children in Israel to find out what kinds of characteristics are linked to a child’s adjusting well to school.  Dr. Miller reports that “the degree of the child’s transcendent strengths, based on spirituality, hope, humor, and gratitude, was more predictive of teacher’s ratings on school adjustment than the child’s other inborn capacities of intellect or temperament.”  But it turns out that that’s not what the study really said – it looked at four different types of school adjustment – cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional.  Transcendent characteristics were indeed better related to good emotional adjustment (by a really tiny amount in some cases), but for cognitive, behavioral and social adjustment there were other factors that were more important than transcendent strengths in every case.  In fact, transcendent strengths weren’t even among the top four factors for cognitive and behavioral adjustment.  This study also brings up a methodological issue related to the study of spirituality – this Israeli study was the only one I saw that included hope and humor as definitions of a transcendent strength, and it’s entirely possible that these factors aren’t really related to spirituality at all. Dr. Miller has done a lot of work related to spirituality and depression.  She and her colleagues did a study looking at MRIs of people with a high risk for depression; some of these people reported that religion or spirituality was important in their lives, while some said it wasn’t.  They found that the outer layer of the brain, called the cortex, was thicker in some places where people reported a high degree of religiousness and spirituality, and that a thinner cortex is associated with a certain type of familial risk of depression.  They caution that they can’t say which causes which; or even if one causes another – it’s possible that people with thicker cortices like to go to church or perhaps people who go to church altered the cortical thickness. In another study, Dr. Miller found that adults who reported that religion or spirituality was highly important to them had about a quarter the risk of experiencing major depression over the next 10 years compared with other participants, and that this effect was most pronounced among those who were at higher risk for depression by having a depressed parent., who had about one tenth the risk of depression over the next 10 years than those who didn’t find religion or spirituality important.  This protective effect was found primarily against the recurrence rather than the onset of depression, which wasn’t adequately explained in the results – it’s not clear to me why spirituality wouldn’t protect you from getting depressed in the first place, but it does protect you from getting depressed again.  Yet in another of Dr. Miller’s studies, she assesses the impact of maternal religiosity as a protective factor against depression in offspring.  One of her major points in that work is that “overall the findings do not support the hypothesis that offspring religiosity is protective against offspring major depressive disorder.”  Another finding, that if mother and child has similar spiritual beliefs then the child is less likely to experience depression WAS cited in The Spiritual Child, but it’s not clear to me why she reports that finding but not the other finding that contradicts some of her other work. Dr. Miller also looked at how spirituality and religiosity is associated with substance use and abuse in adolescents – and this is one of the few studies on spirituality...