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

Does your child eat any food under the sun...as long as it's cheese? Do you find yourself worrying that you'll never get all the nutrients into her that she needs? Dr. Dina Rose approaches eating from a sociologist's perspective, which is to say that It's Not About The Broccoli (which also happens to be the name of her book), it's about habits and relationships. Join Dr. Rose as she counsels the parent who struggles with her almost four-year-old "highly spirited" son's eating habits. There is hope for getting this child to eat something other than cheese, and Dr. Rose walks us through the steps to make it happen. Not to be missed even if your child isn't (currently) a picky eater: every worm will turn, as they say, and you may find these strategies helpful to head off any pickiness that starts to emerge in the future. And listen up for Dr. Rose's offer of a free 30 minute coaching session for parents!   Jump to highlights 00:33 Introduction of episode 04:55 3 habits that translate nutrition into behavior 06:11 Nutrition approach vs. habit approach 07:35 Taste preferences are shaped by exposure 08:45 Rotation rule on serving food 15:56 3 categories of issues that J.T had when feeding her son 29:35 Strategies for your child to eat 32:40 Rotation rule is really important 34:27 External reasons for making eating decisions 49:20 Build links to new foods   Dina Rose's Books: It's Not About the Broccoli: Three Habits to Teach Your Kids for a Lifetime of Healthy Eating. (Affiliate link)

So, does your child ever throw tantrums?  Yes?  Well, the good news is that you’re not alone.  And this isn’t something us Western parents have brought upon ourselves with our strange parenting ways; they’re actually fairly common (although not universal) in other cultures as well.   What causes a tantrum?  And what can parents do to both prevent tantrums from occurring and cope with them more effectively once they start?  Join us today to learn more.   Taming Your Triggers If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers waitlist. We’ll help you to: Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause themUse new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needsEffectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered   Click the banner to learn more!     Jump to highlights 00:35 Introduction in today’s episode 01:00 The 1st, last and only detailed research about this subject was published in 1931 then the research went quiet until the 1980’s even since then there’s only little information about this subject because tantrums can be hard to study at home 01:56 Age bracket of children that have tantrums and this is the most common childhood behavior according to parents 02:30 Tantrums may occur in other cultures according to Robert and Sarah LeVine’s recent book Do Parents Matter? 03:12 David Lancy’s book The Anthropology of Childhood cites several studies of other cultures that mention tantrum-like behavior. 04:55 Florence Goodenough wrote a book that was published in 1939 that described tantrums implied that this is not a new phenomenon 06:30 Children who have older siblings have more frequent outbursts than first-born children 09:29 Goodenough asked parents at the beginning of the study what methods of controlling tantrums 12:15 Negotiation is considered to be a valued ability because it can bring about solutions to problems that come as close as possible to satisfying everyone 13:45 The studies found that maternal use of induction techniques was related to social competence, even across time, during the preschool period 14:58 Wrapping up the discussion   References Denham, S.A., & Burton, R. (2003). Social and emotional prevention and intervention programming for preschoolers. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers Green, J.A., Whitney, P.G., & Potegal, M. (2011). Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying: Categorical and intensity differences in vocal expressions of anger and sadness in children’s tantrums. Emotion 11(5), 1124-1133. DOI: 10.1037/a0024173 Goodenough, F. (1931). Anger in young children. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lancy, D.F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levine, L.J. (1995). Young children’s understanding of the causes of anger and sadness. Child Development 66(2), 697-709. LeVine, R., & LeVine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York: Public Affairs. Lieberman, M.D., Eisenberger, N.E., Crockett, M.J., Tom, S.M., Pfeifer, J.H., & Way, B.M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428.

In just a few years, today’s children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those that were available to their parents or grandparents. While the U.S. economy becomes ever more information-driven, our system of education seems stuck on the idea that “content is king,” neglecting other skills that 21st century citizens sorely need. Backed by the latest scientific evidence and illustrated with examples of what’s being done right in schools today, Becoming Brilliant (Affiliate link) introduces the “6Cs” collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence along with ways parents can nurture their children’s development in each area. Join me for an engaging chat with award-winning Professor Roberta Golinkoff about the key takeaways from the new book.   Jump to highlights 00:35 Introducing the guest 02:11 Reason for writing the book Becoming Brilliant 03:49 Mission statement of the book 05:32 6 Competencies in the book 16:19 Teachable places are everywhere 24:42 Talk to your children 25:48 How do you have a conversation around the book 28:05 Books are important for children 29:08 How can we encourage our children to develop grit 33:42 2 Ways to view intelligence significant   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen: 00:33 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode is called Becoming Brilliant. I’m so excited to welcome my guest today, Roberta Golinkoff. I reached out to her because I’d read her book, Einstein never used flashcards, which advocated for a young children’s learning through play rather than through expensive toys or high pressure classes. So when her new book Becoming Brilliant came out, I knew I had to read it and I absolutely dance a jig the day that she agreed to join us here on Your Parenting Mojo. I’m so excited. Thank you so much for joining us. Roberto. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:02 You know, it’s funny, but I danced a jig too! I’m so happy to able to talk about these issues and it’s such a pleasure to meet you, Jen. I hope I get to see you next time I’m out in California. Jen: 01:12 That would be great. All right, well let me formally introduce you. Dr. Golinkoff is the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Education, Psychology, and Linguistics at the University of Delaware. She has won a fellowship and many prizes for her work and she served as an Associate Editor of Child Development, which really is the premier journal in her field and she’s also authored over 150 journal Publications, book chapters, and 14 books and monographs. Her official bio says that she has appeared on numerous radio and television shows and in print media and never turns down an opportunity to spread the findings of psychological science to the lay public so I can vouch for her on that front at least. Thank you again for joining us. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:49 When do I sleep? Jen: 01:51 I don’t know. I wondered that too. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:54 Some days I wonder that. Jen: 01:56 Yeah, I can imagine. So I wonder if you could start a bit by telling us about the premise of Becoming Brilliant. Why did you write this book? Dr. Golinkoff: 02:04 So we know that many parents are struggling and trying to figure out what their children should be receiving by way of schooling and by way of parenting in the home. And the reason they’re struggling is because we are in a new era. You know, there has never been a time like this technology is advancing so rapidly. It’s really changing all our lives. Many of the parents who you speak to know that places like National Economic Forum have said that 47 percent of our jobs are going to go the way of computers and robots. The statistics of very clear that many, many jobs will be vanishing. So how do we protect our children for the future? So when we started to think about this, we knew it was going to be about education, but we didn’t just want it to be about reimagining education in the classroom because we recognize that kids spend only 20 percent of their time in school. Jen: 03:05 It seems like way more than that. Dr. Golinkoff: 03:08 But it’s not if you actually do the numbers on it, and that means that the kinds of activities that children engage in outside of school and at home and be crucially important for their education. Many people are not thrilled with the kind of education that their children have. And we also wanted to broaden what we think of as education because if your kid is just smart but a junky person, what good did you do? Right? You want to create kids who will be happy in their personal lives and who will take the perspective of others. Otherwise, you know, how can you have partners? How can you work in the workforce if you can’t get along with people? So our book actually has a mission statement and we created this mission statement by modifying a mission statement from Ontario, our neighbors to the north. I love Canada. Dr. Golinkoff: 04:02 I want to be a poster child because they get education. They know how important playful learning is and they minimize the drill-and-kill. So our mission statement is society thrives when we craft environments both in and out of school that support happy, healthy thinking, caring and social children who become collaborative, creative, competent, and responsible citizens tomorrow. Jen: 04:35 That’s quite a mission. Dr. Golinkoff: 04:37 It is a big mission. It is true. And in order to fulfill this mission, it’s just a good thing that Kathy and I are steeped in the psychological literature because between us, we read and incorporated thousands of studies into this book and while that may sound incredibly dense and boring… Jen: 05:00 …it’s actually not because I read it! Dr. Golinkoff: 05:07 …we really try to write in a way that invites people into our thinking, into the laboratory, into the school, into the home so that they can see the principles that we extract from the research visible before your eyes? Jen: 05:23 Yeah. I did notice that it’s really full of stories that really helped to get your points across. So let’s dive into the book a little bit. So the setup of the book is that you described the six Cs, which are Collaboration, Communication, Content, Critical thinking, Creative innovation and Confidence. And each of those competencies has four levels of mastery from basic up to pretty high; the kind of level that some people never achieve in their lifetime. And so you actually have it set out on a table format. And as I looked at the table, the building of the levels made immediate sense to me, but it wasn’t until I got to the end of the book that I realized how you can kind of move across the table as well and the competencies themselves build on each other and reinforce each other. Can you talk a little bit about that? Dr. Golinkoff: 06:08 Oh yeah. That was a brilliant presentation of how this is presented. So the idea is that skills that we talk about emerge in development and we tried to put them in sequence by development. And in addition there is development along each of the six Cs. So probably the way to make it clearer would be to give an example, let’s say from collaboration, the first one. Think about the fact that humans are born ultra social. We we will smile to faces and lock onto eyes at birth and this is often a startling recognition that people have. When the new born baby comes out and looks you in the eyes, it’s like, oh my God, there’s a little person in there. So collaboration is basically two heads are better than one. Easy to remember, and in order to collaborate and work with others, so this is our first C. We have to learn to control our emotions and take others’ points of view. We also sprinkle the book with business examples because Peter Drucker, who was the father of modern management, has written about how companies today have to live in a Lego world where the bricks can be combined and recombined as collaborations occur inside and outside the company. Jen: 07:47 Yeah. Yours is the first book I’ve ever seen that does that, that kind of looks ahead to what, what comes out the other end. I’m particularly from a business viewpoint and says these are the kinds of skills that you’re going to need. You know, you’re not going to need to be able to recite the capitals of the 50 states in your career. You’re going to need a whole different set of skills that is not being addressed by schools today. Dr. Golinkoff: 08:07 You know, you, you really get it. I feel like you should be giving this interview! You so get it! So it is absolutely true that what we did in the 20th century, in the 19th century, and unfortunately even in some of this century, is engaged children in a lot of memorization. Now, look, I’m not going to say memorization isn’t important. I’m giving a test tomorrow in one of my classes and not going to have open book, they’re going to have to memorize stuff. Okay? But unless you can make it your own, unless you can engage in deep learning so you can generate examples and you can talk about why this concept is important. You’ve only learned in a very shallow way. And with being able to get at our fingertips now on the computer, I mean, you could go ask any second grader, what’s the tallest building in the world? And they can tell you if they have computer access in about 13 seconds, right? Dr. Golinkoff: 09:09 So there are many things available to children today that weren’t available in the past when we did rely so heavily on memorization. Now what we need to develop in our children is the ability to adapt and be flexible and be able to change. Because seven out of 10 jobs have not been invented yet for the future and our children. Jen: 09:32 Isn’t that a weird thought? Dr. Golinkoff: 09:32 It is! It’s true. We already see all around us how we’re being replaced by…. Oh, oh, he’s a great example. So I spoke at the evolution institute and United Way in Tampa, Florida. It was held in the building owned by Valpack. We get these coupons, I don’t know, monthly is it? Jen: 10:00 Yeah, we get them in the mail too. Dr. Golinkoff: 10:00 And they produce these things. They had a community room where we had the meeting, so they had these giant windows so you could look down into the factory. I was literally blown away. I felt like, oh my God, I have seen the future. This was maybe a 200,000 square foot factory loaded with equipment. There were moving vehicles with no human in them. They were all conducted by robots and this giant working factory had about four humans in it. I was blown away, so this is the future for which we are preparing our children. That means we have to give them the skills, help them develop the skills, that robots and computers aren’t so good at. So collaboration is certainly one of them. Communication is essential. It’s the grease that keeps international commerce alive because now we’re collaborating with people all over the world. One of my fondest expressions is the world is the size of a walnut. You know, 25 years ago even I couldn’t have had a dinner at my house with somebody on my left from Bangladesh, somebody on my right from Ireland, somebody in front of me from India. Dr. Golinkoff: 11:27 I mean it just goes on and on, right? So we have to figure out how to communicate with people from cultures all over the world. We have to learn to speak, we have to learn to write. And all this entails, again, taking the perspective of the other. You have to have content, no question about it. You ain’t going to get away without content, okay. And there are different ways to learn content. Then we would like to move away from a lot of the drill and kill that we’re seeing in school because we want kids to be able to gain, retain and use content in new ways. That’s what they’re going to be asked to do in life to apply what they know to problems and again, we don’t want them replaced by those computers. Critical thinking: we can think of it as question everything. Dr. Golinkoff: 12:20 You have to have some content to be able to engage in critical thinking and you have to be able to synthesize and select the information you need from this deluge to solve the problem at hand. So I don’t know about you, but I’m sitting in my office looking at my desk loaded with journals, papers and books and I like to tell people this is not my fault. This is because we see daily encounter the equivalent: are you ready for this of 174 newspapers? One hundred and 74 newspapers… Jen: 12:57 Worth of content… Dr. Golinkoff: 12:58 Per day is the amount of information by one estimate that we encounter. So how could I possibly keep up and keep my place neat? Jen: 13:07 Yeah. It’s not my fault! I’ll tell my husband that. So let’s talk a little bit about how that content C applies to two very young children. We’re not quite there yet with our toddler. She’s just a little over two. But I’ve certainly met children who are slightly older who sort of latch onto a topic and learn all of these kinds of esoteric facts about it. And I know that they tend to kind of just memorize these little nuggets of information and I’m wondering is there any way that we can, that we can know that we would want to kind of scaffold that knowledge into a more cohesive whole or if it’s just part of being a toddler that you memorize 300 facts about dinosaurs and then you move onto fish and then you move onto something else. Dr. Golinkoff: 13:54 So it’s a wonderful thing that our kids are so curious and it’s an unfortunate thing that school tends to stamp it out of them unless it’s a certain kind of school that really encourages curiosity and questioning. So, you know, my favorite place when my kids were little was the public library. It’s such a gift to go with your kids and let them pick out the books. And then if you know they’re interested in spiders, you know, you take out books on spiders, right? So why not feed into the things that your kids are interested in? It doesn’t mean they have to become entomologists, ultimately, and study spiders for living. But if they’re fascinated about something in the world, let’s build on it. Why not? Right? And this is also where media can come in. In today’s even though there are many junky educational apps out there, and even though we don’t want our kids on television 24 slash seven, you know, you may well be able to find cool videos about spiders. I opened up one of my talks once with a little piece from the New York Times on jumping spiders who can jump like five times their body, you know, and it’s just fascinating once you start to dig in and I wouldn’t worry so much about what your kid is getting out of it as long as they continue to ask questions and they want to know and your feed into this by providing them with opportunity to learn more. Why not? Jen: 15:29 That’s an interesting twist on it. So you’re saying that a measure of success is not how much they know or how well it goes together, but how well they continue to ask questions. Dr. Golinkoff: 15:38 Yeah. And you know, I’m not telling much worried about assaying what my kids know about dinosaurs per se. I just want to feed into their curiosity. And the more we do that, the more they learn about the world and they learn how to learn. So in content is also included, learning to learn. So if we help children know how to find the information they’re interested in, you know, that starts by going to the library, maybe going online. We’re already helping them for the future because they need to know how to find information and teachable moments are everywhere. So we tell parents to take their children to really exotic places like the supermarket. I mean, you know what’s more typical for a family, you go to the supermarket, you go to the pharmacy, you go to the cleaner’s right? And I’ve always loved in the cleaners the button that you press that makes the clothes come down… Jen: 16:47 Yeah, I bet that will be every toddler’s field day… Dr. Golinkoff: 16:52 So this is how do we help our kids learn about the world. We ask them questions and they ask us questions and it’s not like giving a test. It’s like open ended questions where you talk about things. So for example, say you see an eggplant for the first time in the supermarket, you can tap into all the Cs. You can say, this is one of the only purple vegetables. You know, why don’t you feel it? It’s so smooth. It’s amazing how it feels on the outside, should we buy, should we take it home and cook and make something with it. You know, you get, you get all excited about an eggplant, right, and this is what it’s like if you’re excited about taking your child out in the world, you can just share these little tidbits with them and then if you actually take it home and make something with them, they’re not only learning content about the category of vegetables, but they’re learning to collaborate with you. They’re learning about communication because they’re asking you questions and having a conversation with you and all these things come together in creating children who are curious and who want to know more and he takes the perspective of others. It’s like no big secret here. Jen: 18:11 Yeah, in a way that kind of is the secret I in my mind because when my toddler started getting a little bit older, I started to set up all these learning activities for her and you know, what am I, what am I missing out on by not doing a learning activity today? And it’s through reading books like yours that I realize that going to the grocery store is a learning activity. When you’re looking at your collaboration C you’re talking about things like stacking firewood together and I’m packing groceries together because those kinds of activities build collaboration, you know, can you pass me the grapes or whatever and where do these go? Could you put those away for me please? And so I really appreciate just the understanding that I can bring my toddler along just by going through my daily life that I don’t have to set up learning activities for her unless I want to or unless she wants to or there is something outside of that. But I don’t have to. Dr. Golinkoff: 19:08 I’m so happy you’re saying this, Jen, because sometimes I think that I’ve been steeped in this stuff for so long that I, that I need to hear you. You feel the pressure to set up learning activities for a child who is just two. And I think it’s a shame and that’s why we wrote Einstein Never Used Flash Cards… Jen: 19:32 I love that book. Dr. Golinkoff: 19:34 Thank you so much. Because we wanted to tell parents also at that time that they didn’t have to fall prey to the marketolace telling them that they have to buy at the time it was

I’ve never said the words “good job” to my toddler. I was lucky – I stumbled on Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards early enough that I was able to break the habit before my daughter had really done anything much that might be construed as requiring a “good job.”   I’m going to be absolutely transparent here and say that this episode draws very heavily on Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards, which – along with one of his other books, Unconditional Parenting, are a cornerstone of my approach to parenting. If you have time, you should absolutely buy the book and read it yourself. But assuming you don’t have the time for 300 pages of (really, very good) writing plus a hundred more of notes and references to explain why both physical and verbal rewards are just as harmful to your children as punishing them, this episode will help you to get to the crux of the issue much faster. I’ll also get into the research that Kohn draws on, as well as relevant research that’s been published since the book came out in 1993.   Kohn’s thesis is that saying “good job” is really no different than punishing your child, since rewards are essentially the same thing – stimuli designed to elicit a response.  He argues that while this approach is actually quite effective in the short term, not only is it not effective in the long term but it doesn’t mesh well with the kinds of relationships that many of us think or say we want to have with our children.   Parenting Membership  If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   The Parenting Membership is now open for immediate enrollment. Sign up now!       Jump to highlights 00:38 Introduction of episode 03:57 What do the parent’s wanted to achieve when praising their children 09:23 4 Reasons why giving rewards fail 16:27 5 Reasons to stop saying “Good Job” to a child 20:53 Suggestions of Alfie Kohn for parents not to say “Good Job” to their children   References Birch, LL., Marlin, D.W., & Rotter, J. (1984). Eating as the ‘means’ activity in a contingency: Effects on young children’s food preferences. Child Development 55, 432-439. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129954?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Brummelman, E., Tomaes, S., Overbeek, G., Orobio de Castro, B., van den Hout, M.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2014). On feeding those hungry for praise: Person praise backfires in children with low self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Psychology 143(1), 9-14. Condry, J. (1977). Enemies of exploration: Self-initiated versus other-initiated learning. Personality and Social Psychology 35(7), 459-477. Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine. Eisenberger, R. & Rhoades, L. (2001). Incremental effects of reward on creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81(4), 728-741. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.81.4.728 Gottfried, A.E., Fleming, J.S., & Gottfried, A.W. (1994). Role of parental motivational practices in children’s academic intrinsic motivation and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology 86(1), 104-113. Gray, P. (2016). Children’s natural ways of educating themselves still work: Even for the three Rs. In D.C. Geary & D.B. Berch (Eds.), Evolutionary perspectives on child development and education (67-93). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Jeffery, R.W., Drewnowski, A., Epstein, L.H., Stunkard, A.J., Wilson, G.T., Wing, R.R., & Hill, D.R. (2000). Long-term maintenance of weight loss: Current status. Health Psychology 19(1 Suppl.), 5-16. DOI: 10.1037//0278-6133.19.1(Suppl.).5 Kazdin, A.E. (1982). The token economy: A decade later. Applied Behavior Analysis 15, 431-445. Full article available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1308287/ Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by Rewards. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Affiliate link) Kohn, A. (2001). Five reasons to stop saying “Good Job!”. Retrieved from: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/five-reasons-stop-saying-good-job/ Pomerantz, E.M., & Kempner, S.G. (2013). Mother’s daily person and process praise: Implications for children’s theory of intelligence and motivation. Developmental Psychology 49(1), 2040-2046. Rietzschel, E.F., Zacher, H., & Stroebe, W. (2016). A lifespan perspective on creativity and innovation at work. Work, Aging and Retirement 2(2), 105-129. Schwartz, B. (1982). Reinforcement-induced behavioral stereotypy: How not to teach people to discover rules. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111(1), 23-59.

  I’m afraid this is an episode I wish I didn’t have to record. When I launched the podcast I asked anyone who has a question about parenting or child development that I might be able to answer by reviewing the scientific literature to reach out and let me know, and someone got in touch to ask about the impact of domestic violence on children. I was a little hesitant to do an episode on it at first because I was hoping that this would be something that wouldn’t really affect the majority of my audience. But as I did a search of the literature I found that domestic violence is depressingly common and more children are exposed to it than we would like. And if you’re getting ready to hit that ‘pause’ button and move on to a different episode, don’t do it yet – there’s also research linking exposure to domestic violence dragging down the test scores of everyone else in that child’s class. So even if you’re not hitting anyone or being hit yourself, this issue probably impacts someone in your child’s class, and thus it impacts your child, and thus it impacts you. Listen on to learn more about the effects of stress in general on children, and the effects of domestic violence in particular. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800.799.7233.   Jump to highlights: 00:38 Prelude of the episode 01:37 The general impact of stress in the unborn baby, as well at the infants and the pre-school children 05:00 Domestic violence is a common problem across the world 09:14 Abused women may deny their children the sense of basic trust and security that is the foundation of healthy emotional development 10:54 67% of children experienced violence 14:24 What can parents do to protect their children from domestic violence and stress   References Anda, R.F., Felitti, V.J., Bremner, J.D., Walker, J.D., Whitfield, C., Perry, B.D., Dube, S.R., & Giles, W.H. (2006). The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood: A convergence of evidence from neurobiology and epidemiology. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 256(3), 174-186. DOI: 10.1007/s00406-005-0624-4 Carrell, S.E., & Hoekstra, M.L. (2009). Externalities in the classroom: How children exposed to domestic violence affect everyone’s kids. University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series, DP2009004. Retrieved from: http://www.ukcpr.org/Publications/DP2009-04.pdf Edleson, J.L, Ellerton, A.L., Seagren, E.A., Kirchberg, S.L., Schmidt, S.O., & Ambrose, A.T. (2007). Assessing child exposure to adult domestic violence. Children and Youth Services Review 29, 961,971. DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2006.12.009 Essex, M.J., & Klein, M.H. (2002). Maternal stress beginning in infancy may sensitize children to later stress exposure: Effects on cortisol and behavior. Biological Psychiatry 52, 776-784. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11086641_Maternal_stress_beginning_in_infancy_may_sensitize_children_to_later_stress_exposure_Effects_on_cortisol_and_behavior?enrichId=rgreq-a2830462f2af5d60e71eb7b48c03e971-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzExMDg2NjQxO0FTOjEwMjE5ODc5Mjk0OTc3M0AxNDAxMzc3NTAwNDM3&el=1_x_3 Evans, S.E., Davies, C., & DiLillo, D. (2008). Exposure to domestic violence: A meta-analysis of child and adolescent outcomes. Aggression and Violent Behavior 13, 131-130. DOI: 10.1016/j.avb.2008.02.005 Holt, S., Buckley, H., & Whelan, S., (2008). The impact of exposure to domestic violence on children and young people: A review of the literature. Child Abuse and Neglect 32, 797-810. Lupien, S.J., McEwen, B.S., Gunnar, M.R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behavior and cognition. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 10, 434-445. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2639 Martinez-Torteya, C., Bogat, G.A., von Eye, A., & Levendosky, A.A. (2009). Resilience among children exposed to domestic violence: The role of risk and protective factors. Child Development 80(2), 562-577. Obradovic, J., Bush, N.R., Stamperdahl, J., Adler, N.E., & Boyce, W.T. (2010). Biological sensitivity to context: The interactive effects of stress reactivity and family adversity on socio-emotional behavior and school readiness. Child Development 81(1), 270-289. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01394.x. Rossman, B.B.R, & Rosenberg, M.S. () Family stress and functioning in children: The moderating effects of children’s beliefs about their control over parental conflict. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 33(4), 699-715. Starcheski, L. (2015, March 2). Take the ACE Quiz: and learn what it does and doesn’t mean. Shots: Health News from NPR. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

  (Believe it or not, this is Carys’ “I freaking love homemade spinach ravioli with broccoli” face!)   I was sitting in a restaurant recently with half an eye on a toddler and his parents at the next table. The parents were trying to get the toddler to eat some of his broccoli before he ate the second helping of chicken that he was asking for. All of a sudden a line from Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” popped into my head: If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat? This is the way I was raised; you finish everything on your plate and you certainly don’t get dessert if you don’t finish your meal. But as is the custom with the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, I want to use this episode to question why we do this and find out what scientific research has to say about it all. We want our toddlers to eat a balanced diet, and we assume we have to teach them what a balanced diet means. But do we really? Or can we trust that our children will eat the foods that they need to be healthy? These are some of the questions we’ll set out to answer in this episode.   Jump to highlights 00:36 Introduction of episode 01:39 The first book to be published about children's eating behavior was 1939 by Clara Mae Davis 03:25 Current dietary guidelines from 2010, state that children with some specific age range should get an applicable calory supply 04:57 The children didn't have the availability of all kinds of food 07:37 What causes children to like fruits and vegetables 09:27 The more we control what our children eat, the less control we seem to have over it 12:59 How would parents deal with this discussion   References Benton, D. (2004). Role of parents in the determination of the food preferences of children and the development of obesity. International Journal of Obesity 28, 858-869. DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0802532 Birch LL. (1980). Effects of peer models’ food choices and eating behaviors on preschoolers’ food preferences. Child Development 51, 489–496. Birch, LL., Marlin, D.W., & Rotter, J. (1984). Eating as the ‘means’ activity in a contingency: Effects on young children’s food preferences. Child Development 55, 432-439. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129954?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Birch, L.L., & Fisher, J.O. (1998). Development of eating behaviors among children and adolescents. Pediatrics 101 Issue supplement 2. Retrieved from: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/101/Supplement_2/539 Birch, L.L., Fisher, J.O., Grimm-Thomas, K., Markey, C.N., Sawyer, R., & Johnson, S.L. (2001). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Child Feeding Questionnaire: A measure of parental attitudes, beliefs and practices about child feeding and obesity proneness. Appetite 36, 201-210. DOI: 10.1006/appe.2001.0398 Davis, C.M. (1939). Results of the self-selection of diets by young children. Canadian Medical Association Journal 41, 257-61. Full article available at: www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=537465&blobtype=pdf Fisher, J.O., & Birch, L.L. (1999). Restricting access to foods and children’s eating. Appetite 32(3), 405-419. DOI: 10.1006/appe.1999.0231 Hughes, S.O., Power, T.G., Orlet Fisher, J., Mueller, S., & Nicklas, T.A. (2005). Revisiting a neglected construct: Parenting styles in a child feeding context. Appetite 44(1), 83-92. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2004.08.007 Jansen, E., Mulkens, S., & Jansen, A. (2007). Do not eat the red food!: Prohibition of snacks leads to their relatively higher consumption in children. Appetite 49(3), 572-577. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2007.03.229 Jansen, E., Mulkens, S., Emond, Y., & Jansen, A. (2008). From the Garden of Eden to the land of plenty: Restriction of fruit and sweets intake leads to increased fruit and sweets consumption in children. Appetite 51(3), 570-575. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2008.04.012 Newman, J., & Taylor, A. (1992). Effect of a means-end contingency on young children’s food preferences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64, 200-216. DOI: 10.1016/0022-0965(92)90049-C Pink Floyd (1979). Another brick in the wall – Part 2. London, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Lyrics retrieved from: http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/another-brick-2-wall.html Savage, J.S., Fisher, J.O., & Birch, L.L. (2007). Parental influence on eating behavior. Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics 35(1), 22-34. DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2007.00111.x U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2010). Dietary guidelines for Americans: 2010. Full report available at: https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/dietaryguidelines2010.pdf Ventura, A.K., Gromis, J.C., & Lohse, B. (2010). Feeding practices and styles used by a diverse set of low-income parents of preschool-age children. Journal of nutrition education and behavior 42(4), 242-249. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S149940460900284X   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to episode 7 of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, which is called Help!  My toddler won’t eat vegetables!  I decided on the theme for this episode when I was sitting in a restaurant with half an eye on a toddler and his parents at the next table.  The parents were trying to get the toddler to eat some of his broccoli before he ate the second helping of chicken that he was asking for.  All of a sudden a line from Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” popped into my head: “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.  How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”  This is the way I was raised; you finish everything on your plate and you certainly don’t get dessert if you don’t finish your meal.  But as is the custom with the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, I want to use this episode to question why we do this and find out what scientific research has to say about it all.  We want our toddlers to eat a balanced diet, and we assume we have to teach them what a balanced diet means.  But do we really?  Or can we trust that our children will eat the foods that they need to be healthy?  These are some of the questions we’ll set out to answer today. Perhaps you might be as surprised as I was to find that the single study that grounds virtually all current research on children and eating was published in 1939 by a pediatrician named Clara Mae Davis.  She convinced unmarried and widowed mothers who couldn’t support their families to place their children into an orphanage in Chicago.  Davis then recorded every single thing 15 children ate over the first 4 ½ years of their lives after they were weaned.  In addition she recorded their height, weight, bowel movements, bone radiographs and blood tests at various intervals during those years. But the really interesting part of the study is what she offered the children to eat and how she offered it.  She created a menu of 34 different foods, all procured fresh and minimally prepared.  Some of the foods were milk, apples, turnips, lettuce, oatmeal, barley, beef, bone marrow, brains, and haddock.  The 34 foods were selected because collectively they offered the complete set of nutrients needed by a growing person although of course they weren’t all served at once – about 10 were prepared and served at once to offer a wide variety of foods at each meal. The nurses feeding the children were not allowed to directly offer or even suggest that the children try a particular food.  Only after the child reached for or pointed to a dish could the nurse put some food on a spoon and, if the child opened his mouth, put it in.  The nurse wasn’t allowed to comment on what the child ate or didn’t eat, attract his attention to food or refuse him any food.  The child could eat with his fingers if he wanted and no correction of his manners was offered.  The tray of food was taken away when the child had definitively stopped eating, usually after 20-25 minutes. As Clara Mae Davis noted, the remarkable thing about the results in this study is that nothing remarkable happened.  All of the children had hearty appetites.  Constipation was never an issue and other than mild colds, they rarely got sick. Five children were malnourished at the beginning of the study and all were healthy by the end.  The children ate, on average, roughly the caloric intake recommended by both the nutritional standards in place at the time as well as the standards we use today.  Current  dietary guidelines published in 2010 state that children aged 1-3 should get 5-20% of their calories from protein, 45-65% from carbohydrates, and 30-40% from fat; the percentages shift slightly in favor of protein and away from fat for children 4-18 years old.  In Davis’ 1939 study the average distribution of calories per kilogram of body weight was 17% protein, 35% fat, and 48% carbohydrates.  Individual children might have had protein intakes as low as 9% or as high as 20% – all still within the dietary guidelines.  So the children in Davis’ study met dietary guidelines developed sixty years afterwards, with all of the knowledge we have now and didn’t have then about how the body works, and they did this by themselves with no information or encouragement at all from anyone else, which I think is absolutely remarkable. I should also say that, as you may have observed with your own children, the children in the study were consistently inconsistent with the types and amounts of foods that they ate.  One child had a pint of orange juice and liver for breakfast; another had several eggs, bananas, and milk for dessert.  No single meal was what we would think of as “balanced” when we put a plate of meat, potatoes, and vegetables down in front of our child – but the children’s diets were on average extremely well-balanced. Now the kicker in all of this for us, of course, is that the children didn’t have unlimited availability of all kinds of food.  Vegetarians and vegans might argue with me about the health properties of animal products but the foods presented to the children in the study were selected because together they provided the complete set of nutrients the children needed.  Cereals were whole grains; no sugar or salt was added, butter, cream, and cheese weren’t used, and no canned foods were allowed.  Does that sound like the kind of food you eat at your house?  We do pretty well on the whole grains, but we certainly use all of the other foods that Davis banned from her study.  So if we accept that children can eat a healthy diet if they are presented with only healthy food, our task now is to try to understand how to apply this knowledge in the real world of our everyday lives today. I did a literature review for a paper for the Masters degree in Psychology that I’m working on and I couldn’t find any study that definitively shows what kind of behavior or actions parents can use that will have the outcome of children eating balanced diets in the short- and long-terms, largely because longitudinal studies are really rare (because they’re expensive and you don’t get to publish the results for a long time) and they generally don’t establish causation either.  But I did find a slew of other studies that can help us to understand how to support the development of healthy eating habit in our children. Leann Birch at the University of Georgia seems to be a luminary scholar in this field; if you check out the references for this episode you’ll find that around half of them have her name attached to them – and I wasn’t specifically searching for her work.  She and Jennifer Fisher at Temple University conducted a review of studies related to the development of eating behaviors in children that I’ll delve into in detail, pulling in the results from other studies as well.  Birch and Fisher start by noting the prevalence of obesity in children, some – but not all – of which can be explained by genetics; some of the rest of the explanation could be related to similarities in diet of parents and children: so if parents eat a lot of high-fat food then children are likely to have high-fat food available to them as well..  They note that very little research has been conducted that looks both at energy intake and expenditure, and it takes both sides of that equation to really understand obesity.  Children in the U.S. tend to eat too much fat and not enough complex carbohydrates, which is why public health messages now focus on increasing the amount of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains instead of just eating less fat. But other studies have found that the only significant predictor of increased fruit and vegetable consumption is a preference for fruits and vegetables – in other words, children who like fruits and vegetables eat fruits and vegetables.  So what causes children to like fruits and vegetables?  There’s evidence from several studies that these preferences are formed very early on in children (and also rats) who are breastfed, as children are exposed to the flavors of their mother’s diet through the milk, and as a result breastfed infants initially show greater acceptance of new foods than formula-fed infants. Once children start to wean they are predisposed to prefer sweet and salty tastes, and reject sour and bitter tastes.  They quickly learn to associate flavors with how they feel after eating (and they prefer foods that leave them feeling full).  I’m sure most parents realize that children are predisposed to reject new foods but one study found that 5-10 repeated opportunities to consume new foods can lead to increased acceptance.  So if your child says she doesn’t like a food the first time you offer it to her, keep trying.  Keep trying 5-10 times, and maybe one day she’ll just eat it. Another big topic is modeling of eating behavior.  Since eating tends to be a social occasion for children, the social context of meals becomes a model for the child.  One study showed that when preschoolers watched other children choosing and eating vegetables that the observing child didn’t like, the observing child began to like the vegetable more and ate more of it.  Another found that toddlers put foods in their mouths more readily when their mothers put the same food in their mouths compared to when a stranger did, which may not come as a surprise to any parent whose child wants whatever they’re eating.  When my toddler sees me come out of the kitchen with a bowl in my hands she immediately says “Want some.  What is it?” – because she wants whatever I have before she even knows what it is.  Children also look to their parents to understand what is the right amount to eat.  Studies have shown that dieting daughters are more likely to have dieting mothers, and parents who eat a lot are more likely to have children who eat a lot. I want to delve fairly deeply into the idea of parental control because I think it’s a strategy that a lot of parents try to use without knowing just how completely it can backfire.  Leann Birch has been active in this research as well and in general has found that the more we try to control children’s eating, the less control we seem to have over it.  For example, child-feeding strategies that encourage children to consume a particular food increase children’s dislike for that food, so by encouraging your child to eat more broccoli you decrease their liking for it, and we already saw that the only factor that predicts whether a child eats broccoli is whether she likes broccoli.  A survey of parents found that 40% spontaneously reported that restricting or forbidding the consumption of a certain food would decrease their child’s preference for that food, but research shows the exact opposite: when parents withhold a “bad” food children’s preference for that food increases and intake of the “bad” food can sometimes increase as well.   Esther Jansen and her colleagues at Maastrict University in The Netherlands managed to move beyond the correlations that these types of studies usually offer to demonstrating a causal link between parental control over children’s eating and children’s consumption of snack foods by testing whether prohibiting children from eating snack foods would lead to an increased desire for that food, followed by over-consumption once the restriction was removed.  The researchers provided children with two bowls of M&Ms (one containing yellow and the other red M&Ms), and two bowls of salty chips (one yellow; the other red).  Some children were instructed not to eat the red foods, were then asked how much they wanted to eat the red foods an how full they felt, and in a later test they were allowed to eat as much as they liked from any bowl.  These results were compared with those from children who were allowed to eat freely throughout the experiment.  The children who weren’t allowed to eat the red food consumed more of the red food in proportion to yellow foods, although they didn’t actually consume more food altogether.  And we should note that the authors of this study should be commended for demonstrating causation rather than just correlation, it isn’t clear to what extent the findings of this highly controlled lab study are applicable in a home setting where a wider variety of foods that may be equally unpalatable (like broccoli AND green beans) might the things children get to choose between. And what about the issue of the amount children eat?  It turns out that even infants are capable of regulating their caloric intake.  One set of researchers added more or less formula to the bottles of six week-old infants, and found that the infants drank more of the formula that was more watery so their overall caloric intake was the same as the infants who drank less of a stronger solution.  But parents who bottle feed might inadvertently pressure their child to override the child’s hunger cues by getting the child to finish the last bit of liquid in the bottle – I remember doing this with my daughter as well when she drank pumped milk from a bottle.  You don’t want to waste something that’s such a hassle to get in the first place!  Leann Birch did another study that essentially replicated this with children who were eating solid food – they adjusted the fat and carbohydrate content of the first course of a meal to make it more or less energy dense, and then tested how many calories were eaten in a second course and in subsequent meals.  She, too, found that children were able to self-regulate their caloric intake both within the same meal and also across the remainder of the 24-hour period.  But when researchers asked parents to reward children for cleaning their plates, the children stopped responding to the different energy density of the foods and began eating more in response to the rewards.  Another set of researchers noticed that parental prompts to eat were correlated with both time spent eating and the level of obesity in children, and also that these prompts to eat almost always followed food refusals by the child.  So the child says she’s not hungry; the

This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting.  Click here to view all the items in this series. I’d always assumed that if I didn’t mention race to my daughter, if it was just a non-issue, that she wouldn’t grow up to be racist. Boy, was I wrong about that. It turns out that our brains are wired to make generalizations about people, and race is a pretty obviously noticeable way of categorizing people. If your child is older than three, try tearing a few pictures of White people and a few more of Black people out of a magazine and ask him to group them any way he likes. Based on the research, I’d put money on him sorting the pictures by race. So what have we learned about reversing racism once it has already developed? How can we prevent our children from becoming racist in the first place? And where do they learn these things anyway? (Surprise: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”)   Jump to highlights 00:37 Introduction of episode 02:03 The premise of Vedantam's book The Hidden Brain 02:51 Brain processors that happened using unconscious awareness 05:05 What happens to people after being caught making racist comments 08:36 Colorblind approach socialization 15:00 The literature on attempts to reverse bias in children 23:07 Advice for parents about the episode   References Aboud, F.E. (2003). The formation of in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice in children: Are they distinct attitudes? Developmental Psychology 39(1), 48-60. Bigler, R. (1999). The user of multicultural curricula and materials to counter racism in children. Journal of Social Issues 55(4), 687-705. Castelli, L., Zogmaister, C., & Tomelleri, S. (2009). The transmission of racial attitudes within the family. Developmental Psychology 45(2), 586-591. Faber, J. (2006). “Kramer” apologizes, says he’s not racist. CBS News. Retrieved from: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kramer-apologizes-says-hes-not-racist/ Frontline (1985). A class divided. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/ Hebl, M.R., Foster, J.B., Mannix, L.M., & Fovidio, J.F. (2002). Formal and interpersonal discrimination: A field study of bias toward homosexual applicants. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(6), 815-825. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mikki_Hebl/publication/252443069_Formal_and_Interpersonal_Discrimination_A_Field_Study_of_Bias_Toward_Homosexual_Applicants/links/55a760f108ae410caa752c8c.pdf Hebl, M.R., & Mannix, L.M. (2003). The weight of obesity in evaluating others: A mere proximity effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29(1), 28-38. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mikki_Hebl/publication/8436667_The_Weight_of_Obesity_in_Evaluating_Others_A_Mere_Proximity_Effect/links/55a760fb08aeb4e8e646e81f.pdf Hebl, M.R., & Xu, J. (2001). Weighing the care: Physicians’ reactions to the size of a patient. International Journal of Obesity 25, 1246-1252. Pahlke, E., Bigler, R.S., & Suizzo, M.A. (2012). Relations between colorblind socialization and children’s racial bias: Evidence from European American mothers and their preschool children. Child Development 83(4), 1164-1179. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224853709_Relations_Between_Colorblind_Socialization_and_Children%27s_Racial_Bias_Evidence_From_European_American_Mothers_and_Their_Preschool_Children Piaget, J. (1950). The child’s conception of the world. New York: Humanities Press. Piaget, J. (1970). Piaget’s theory. In P.H. Mussen (ed.), Carmichael’s manual of child psychology (p.703-732). New York: Wiley. Priest, N., Walton, J., White, F., Kowal, E., Baker, A., & Parides, Y. (2014). Understanding the complexities of ethnic-racial socialization processes for both minority and majority groups: A 30-year systematic review. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 43, 139-155. TMZ (2012). Michael Richards spews racist hate. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoLPLsQbdt0 Vedantam, S. (2010). The hidden brain. New York: Spiegel and Grau. von Hippel, W., Silver, L.A., & Lynch, M.E. (2000). Stereotyping against your will: The role of inhibitory ability in stereotyping and prejudice among the elderly. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26(5), 523-532. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William_Von_Hippel/publication/255604292_Stereotyping_Against_Your_Will_The_Role_of_Inhibitory_Ability_in_Stereotyping_and_Prejudice_among_the_Elderly/links/5475035a0cf245eb43707162.pdf Weber, S., & Meilan, I. (2015). Michael Richards: My racist outburst during 2006 stand-up gig was a “reality check.” Us Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/michael-richards-my-racist-outburst-in-2006-was-a-reality-check-20152310 Weiner, M.J., & Wright, F.E. (1973). Effects of undergoing arbitrary discrimination upon subsequent attitudes toward a minority group. Journal of Applied Psychology 3(1), 94-102.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] It seems like I hardly ever read for pleasure any more. With this master’s degree in Psychology that I’m doing plus writing podcast episodes the stack of books next to my bed is getting so high that I have to climb around them to get in and out. But someone I contacted about research on toddlers’ eating habits was kind enough to give me some unsolicited advice in addition to the information on who’s doing current work on toddlers and food – a couple of books to read to give me insight into authors who are able to take scientific work and make it accessible. One of them is Shankar Vedantam; he’s a columnist at the Washington Post and his book is called The Hidden Brain, and in reading it I got an idea for this podcast episode. I and a lot of parents I know are interested in bringing up our children not to be racist. But how do we go about doing that? My assumption was that if you just don’t talk about racism; if it becomes a non-issue, then my daughter won’t grow up to be racist. Shankar Vedantam tells me I’m dead wrong, so in this episode I’ll dig into the reasons behind that and what we really should be teaching our children if we want to teach them how to build this post-racial society that we’d like to have one day. I should say now that I’ll examine the issue from the perspective of a White parent looking to try to avoid her half-White daughter from becoming racist; the way Black parents approach this may be quite different due to their history as the discriminated-against group rather than the group “in power,” as it were. The premise of Vedantam’s book is that our actions are controlled in large part by our unconscious brains. We like to think we’re making conscious decisions based on our knowledge and rational interpretation of information but in fact a large part of the decisions we make are based on what Vadantam calls Unconscious Bias. He’s not using that term to mean prejudice, but rather any situation where people’s actions are at odds with their intentions. Now you, like me, might think this doesn’t describe you. I’m sure you think *your* decisions are based on rational information just like I do. But scientific research has shown that for the vast majority of the population – and really, there’s no reason to believe that you and I aren’t like the vast majority of the population in most aspects – have unconscious biases and don’t even realize it. I’m assuming you’re going to need some convincing of this (just like I did) so here are a few examples. So there are brain activities that lie outside of your conscious awareness – you don’t have to think about breathing; you just do it. You *can* think about it if you want to, but you don’t stop breathing if you stop thinking about it. When you first learned to read you probably read very slowly, sounding out each letter and gradually combining them in to words – k-a-t becomes cat. You’ll likely be able to revisit this process with your own toddler soon if he or she isn’t reading yet. Over time reading became more fluid to you as the process got embedded into your unconscious brain – you don’t have to sound out each letter any more and you might even be able to skim whole sentences or paragraphs and understand their meaning. Have you ever gotten angry at someone without realizing how it happened so quickly? Or locked eyes on someone from the other side of a bar and had your heart leap – not because you mentally compared a list of that person’s features to the features you find attractive but just because there was some spark between the two of you? A researcher named Mikki Hebl has been especially active in producing research on unconscious bias. She sent actors with hidden tape recorders to stores to apply for jobs, either pretending to be straight or homosexual. None of the “homosexuals” experienced overt discrimination but the potential employers were more verbally standoffish, nervous, and hostile with the gay candidates. The employers spent less time with the gay candidates and used fewer words when interacting with them. She gave charts of fictitious patients who complained of migraines to doctors; some of the patients were average weight, some were overweight, and some were obese. The doctors indicated they would send less time with the heavier patients and viewed them significantly more negatively on 12 of 13 criteria related to their feelings about and behavior toward the patients. And you don’t even have to be fat yourself to be negatively impacted – a male job applicant was perceived to have lower professional and interpersonal skills when he sat in the waiting room next to an overweight woman rather than a normal weight woman. I was interested to see that in none of Hebl’s experiments did she try to go back to the people who were experimented on and ask them why they might have acted the way they did – maybe because the subjects would have been less than thrilled to know they were part of an experiment that was going to show them as biased in some way. But one way we can try to understand the impact that the unconscious brain has in these kinds of situations is to see what happens after people are caught making racist comments. It seems that these people aren’t especially racist and, when asked, explicitly say that they are not racist. In their conscious minds they probably aren’t racist but when some kind of stressful situation occurs, their unconscious brains take over and the truth comes out. Some of you might remember that Michael Richards, who played Kramer on Seinfeld, was recorded making an extraordinary tirade against a Black man who had heckled him (there’s a link to the video in the references; just make sure your kids aren’t around when you watch it). When he appeared on the David Letterman show not long afterward he apologized and said. An article on CBS news said “Richards seemed baffled by his own reaction on stage. “I’m not a racist, that’s what’s so insane about this,” he said.” Talking about the incident some years later he said “I’d only been doing stand-up at the time that situation happened about seven or eight months and I just lost my patience that night because people were heckling me and not letting me work on my material and I lost my cool.” – this was the stressful situation that caused his conscious brain to get distracted and the thoughts in his unconscious brain to come out. But Shankar Vendantam says that “Most Americans think of Richards’ views as abhorrent – and they are. But unpleasant and inaccurate associations lie within all of us, which is why when we see someone slip, or reaction should not be “We finally caught that racist bastard!” but “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” We convince ourselves that biased attitudes are the exception when actually they’re the norm – among all of us, not just White people. We often see elderly people as more biased than us, and a scientist named William von Hippel did some experiments to find out why that is. He found evidence for bias coming from the fact that elderly people grew up in a time when bias was more acceptable, but they express their racism because as people get older their brains get worse at inhibiting behaviors that we might think of as undesirable. Their conscious mind might know that it’s “wrong” to express racist thoughts but as soon as their conscious mind gets distracted, the unconscious ideas come out. So all of this brings us now to children. A researcher named Frances Aboud at McGill University in Montreal showed preschoolers drawings of Black, White, and what she called “Native Indian” people. She gave them cards with statements on that were either positive or negative – things like “this person is clean; they never forget to wash their hands before eating.” “This person is kind – they bring flowers to their teachers.” “This person is cruel –they sometimes throw rocks at little cats.” “This person is naughty and does things like draw on the wall with crayons.” Who does these things?  Aboud found that 70% of the children assigned nearly every positive adjective to the White faces, and nearly every negative one to the Black faces. Remember, these were preschoolers tested in a daycare – the children were aged between 3 years 9 months and almost 7. Shankar Vendatam goes on to describe more research that Frances Aboud has conducted where she told children a story about two White boys and one Black boy who played on a boat, and the Black boy rescued the White boys, children misremembered the story and thought that one of the White boys did the rescuing. She also found there was no correlation between the views of the children and their parents, and neither was there one between the children and their teachers. They weren’t being drip-fed racist attitudes (at least as far as the researchers could tell; it would take a pretty bold parent to report racist views on a study of racism). So where were these racist attitudes coming from? And what can parents do to try to instill non-racist attitudes in children? I looked beyond The Hidden Brain book for answers to this question because I didn’t want to assume that Vendatam was right in his assumption that it was the children’s hidden brains at work. I also wanted to know more about how to circumvent the inevitability of racist toddlers and he doesn’t give us much information about how to do that. Most White parents think that if they just don’t mention race, then their children won’t be racist. It’s called the “colorblind” approach to socialization. In one study I found the researcher asked White American mothers to read race-themed books to 4 and 5-year old children to see how the mothers would explain ideas about race to their children. One of these books was “What if the Zebras lost their stripes,” which is a book that was specially written to help children think about racial issues – one page asks “Could Black and White friends still hold hands?” As they were reading the book, only 11% of mothers mentioned interracial interactions among people. Far more drew analogies between the black and white zebras and different colored animals. The mothers reported that they didn’t often provide race-related messages to their children. When the children reading the books were asked if the different colored zebras could still be friends and the children said “no,” the mothers usually just kept reading the book. This could explain why children don’t understand that their parents don’t hold different beliefs about race from them – because their parents don’t say anything to indicate that that may be the case. On the flipside, the mothers expressed shock that their children could even differentiate people by race – but 83 of 84 children were able to correctly label a group of photos as being of European American or African American people (the one child who didn’t said all people had “yellow” skin). Phyllis Katz, who has been studying the process through which children develop racist attitudes, has commented that “people unfamiliar with the psychological literature typically hold two beliefs about racial prejudice. First and foremost, they believe that young children are inherently color-blind and do not notice racial differences unless they are pointed out. The second popular belief is that children would never develop race bias if they were not explicitly taught this by their parents.” As I’m sure you’re by now willing to believe, the research shows popular belief to be wrong on both counts. Katz found that babies develop some understanding about race at a very early age. The typical way to test what an infant is capable of doing is to see how long they look at something. Katz conducted an incredible longitudinal study of 200 children, half Black, half White, following them from age 6 months to 6 years. She showed White and Black babies a series of pictures of people of their own race followed by one of the other race, and found that the babies looked for longer at the opposite-race faces. She hypothesized that it has something to do with the diversity of the child’s environment – Black children in Colorado, where she works, have a greater chance of living in a racially diverse environment than Whites. Between 18 and 30 months of age, she saw a liner increase in the preferences of both Black and White children to self-label, sort dolls and pictures by race, and select Black or White dolls in response to instructions. White children continue to do this as they got older but Black children actually did this less. At age three, both Black and White children showed a mild same-group preference, meaning they would prefer to socialize with members of their own race, and this increased at ages five and six for White children but drastically decreased for Black children. Katz and her colleagues asked children to select potential playmates from photographs. At 30 months old, Black children chose more same-race potential playmates than Whites. But at three years, 86% of the White children wanted same-race playmates compared with 32% of Black children. At every age that was tested, the White children had more same-race friends than Black children, and this disparity only increased with age. When children were asked to sort pictures of Black and White people in any way they liked, 68% of the children sorted into racial groups, while 16% sorted into gender groups. But it wouldn’t be right to say that all of the six year-olds in Katz’ study were racists at age 6. She found a lot of variables that were correlated to increased bias, which means the actual reason why children develop racist beliefs is dependent on a complex series of issues,...

When I started talking with people about the idea for this podcast, one theme that came up consistently was the idea of supporting our children’s growth and development. A friend of mine summed it up most concisely and articulately by asking “how do I know when to lead and when I should step back and let my daughter lead?”   This episode covers the concept of “scaffolding,” which is a method parents can use to observe and support their children’s development by providing just enough assistance to keep the child in their “Zone of Proximal Development.”   This tool can help you to know you’re providing enough support…but not so much that your child will never learn to be self-sufficient.   Learning Membership Do you want to turn your child’s interests into learning opportunities? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world.   Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them.   All the usual stuff applies - sliding scale pricing, money back guarantee.   Click the banner to learn more!     Jump to highlights 00:38 Introduction of episode 01:27 3 Theorists of learning and development 04:49 Example of scaffolding 08:55 To many cultures scaffolding is neither needed nor used 09:37 Difference between experience expectant behavior and experience-dependent behavior 13:55 Components on how to scaffold learning 17:06 Conclusion of the episode   References Berk, L.E., & Winsler, A. (1995). Scaffolding children’s learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children. Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher 18(4), 32-42. Courtin (2000). The impact of sign language on the cognitive development of deaf children: The case of theories of mind. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 5,3 266-276. Retrieved from: http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/3/266.full.pdf Greenough, W.T., Black, J.E., & Wallace, C.S. (1987). Experience and Brain Development. Child Development 58, 539-559. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Black11/publication/20116762_Experience_and_Brain_Development/links/552b9d830cf21acb091e4d90.pdf Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R.M. (2003). Einstein never used flash cards. Emmaus, PA: Rodale. Johnson, J.S. & Newport, E.L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational stage on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology 21, 60-99. Full article available at: http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/JohnsnNewprt89.pdf Lancy, D.F. (2015). The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press McCarthy, E.M. (1992). Anatomy of a teaching interaction: The components of teaching in the ZPD. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April, San Francisco, CA. Pratt, M.W., Green, D., MacVicar, J., & Bountrogianni, M. (1992). The mathematical parent: Parental scaffolding, parent style, and learning outcomes in long-division mathematics homework. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 13, 17-34. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019339739290003Z Roberts, R.N. & Barnes, M.L. (1992). “Let momma show you how”: Maternal-child interactions and their effects on children’s cognitive performance. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 13, 363-376. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019339739290036H Thompson, R.A., & Nelson, C. (2001). Developmental science and the media: Early brain development. American Psychologist 55(1) 5-15. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12089227_Developmental_Science_and_the_Media_Early_Brain_Development

I’m so excited to welcome my first guest on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast: Professor Tara Callaghan of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.   Professor Callaghan has spent a great number of years studying the emergence of artistic ability in young children and she shares some of her insights with us.  This is a rather longer episode than usual so here are some places you might want to skip ahead to if you have specific interest: [03:55]: The connection between individuality and creativity, especially in Western cultures [09:00]: What is “symbolic representation” and why is the development of symbolic representation an important milestone for young children? [12:10]: Is it helpful for parents to ask a child “What are you drawing?” [15:25]: When do children understand symbols? [31:15]: What can parents do to support children’s development of symbolic representation in particular and artistic ability in general?   Dr. Tara Callaghan's Book Early social cognition in three cultural contexts - Affiliate link   References Brownlee, P. (2016). Magic Places. Good Egg Books: Thames, NZ (must be ordered directly from the publisher in New Zealand; see: http://penniebrownlee.weebly.com/books.html) Callaghan, T.C., Rackozy, H., Behne, T., Moll, H, Lizkowski, U., Warneken, F., & Tomasello, (2011). Early social cognition in three cultural contexts. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 76(2), Serial Number 299. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mono.2011.76.issue-2/issuetoc Callaghan, T. & Corbit, J. (2015). The development of symbolic representation. In Vol. 2 (L. Liben & U. Muller, Vol. Eds.) of the 7th Edition (R. Lerner, Series Ed) of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science (pp. 250-294). New York: Wiley. Callaghan, T., & M. Rankin (2002). Emergence of graphic symbol functioning and the question of domain specificity: A longitudinal training study. Child Development, March/April 2002, 73:2, 359-376. Callaghan, T., P. Rochat & J. Corbit (2012). Young children’s knowledge of the representational function of pictoral symbols: Development across the preschool years in three cultures.  Journal of Cognition and Development, 13:3, 320-353. Available at: http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/lab/CALLAGHAN,%20ROCHAT,%20&%20CORBIT,%202012.pdf DeLoache, J. S., (2004).  Becoming symbol-minded. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 66-70. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661303003346 Frith, C., & Frith, U. (2005). Theory of mind. Current Biology 15(17), R644.R645. Full article available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982205009607 Ganea, P.A., M.A. Preissler, L. Butler, S. Carey, and J.S. DeLoache (2009). Toddlers’ referential understanding of pictures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104(3):283-295. Full article available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865246/ Golomb, C. (2003). The child’s creation of a pictoral world. London: Psychology Press. Jolley, R.P. (2010). Children and pictures: Drawing and understanding. Wiley-Blackwell, Cichester, England. Jolley, R. P. & S. Rose (2008). The relationship between production and comprehension of representational drawing. In Children’s understanding and production of pictures, drawings, and art (C. Milbrath & H.M. Trautner (Eds)). Boston, MA, Hogrefe Publishing.  Chapter available at: http://www.staffs.ac.uk/personal/sciences/rj2/publications/Jolley%20and%20Rose%20chapter.pdf Kellogg, R. (1970). Analyzing Children’s Art. Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, CA. Preissler, M.A., and P. Bloom. Two-year-olds use artist intention to understand drawings. Cognition 1[06:51]2-518. Full article available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.522.4017&rep=rep1&type=pdf Rochat, P. & T. Callaghan (2005). What drives symbolic development? The case of pictoral comprehension and production. In L. Namy (Ed.) Symbol use and symbolic representation. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Chapter available at: http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/lab/WhatDrivesSymbolicDevelopment.pdf Winner, E. (1985). Invented worlds: The psychology of the arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"]   Jen: 00:35 Hello! This is Jen Lumanlan of Your Parenting Mojo and I’m here with episode four on Creativity and Artistic Ability in Young Children. So the question that’s lovely, what is it seems to be one of the most asked by parents of children related related to young children’s drawings, but she’ll do children even know what IT is? I’m really excited to welcome my first guest on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast today, Professor Tara Callaghan. I went to start by introducing her by telling you a little bit about how we met. So I visited Reggio Emilia Italy in April 2016 because I wanted to learn more about the approach to early childhood education that was founded in that city. And before I went, I read a book called Magic Places by Penny Brownlee, which says that a parent shouldn’t ask what a scribbling child is drawing because they’re not drawing anything, they’re just scribbling. But in contrast, the people in Reggio Emilia, I believe that the children are “fully aware of the representative process” and that’s actually a quote from one of the practitioners there after I witnessed a group of under two year olds, I think they were about 18 months who had been given in a real orange and a set of orange paints and the toddler is we’re making orange paint marks on the paper because that was the only color that was available to them. Jen: 01:45 And based on my reading of Magic Places, I queried whether the toddlers could possibly understand that they were being asked to represent the orange on the paper and clearly the director thought that they could. Her position was that even if the marks don’t look like an orange to us, the toddlers understand the marks as a representation of an orange. When I returned home, I started digging into the research on this topic and ultimately found a chapter that Professor Callahan authored a book called Children’s Understanding and Production of Pictures, Drawings and Art, and it was the most comprehensive, really insightful piece I’d read on that topic and she expressed a view that was quite different from what the Reggio practitioners believe. So I reached out to her and she was kind enough to actually spend quite a bit of time patiently answering my questions so I could write a very long blog post about it on my personal blog, which was actually the thing that made me realize that I should start a podcast. Jen: 02:33 So it’s a formally introduce her: Professor Callaghan is Professor of Psychology at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. She’s a developmental scientist working in the fields of symbolic and pro-social development from a cultural perspective. She received her Ph.D in psychology from Brown University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University and she served as consulting editor for the journal Child Development, and she also coauthored a chapter on symbolic development in the new 2015 edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, which if you don’t happen to be familiar with, it is a pretty seminal work on the psychological development of young children. So thank you so much for joining us Dr Callaghan.   Dr. Callaghan: 03:11 Oh my pleasure, Jen. My pleasure. So, thanks for the introduction. I might add to that that I am also very interested in cultural developmental psychology and so maybe some of that will come up as we talk a little bit more today, but one of the things that I’ve been doing for about the past decade is, is looking across cultures to help understand what children know, uh, as a result of the socialization that they get from parents and others in their culture compared to what, how we are built as humans, I guess. What is our human nature? Jen: 03:54 Yeah. I’m actually very interested in that as well so do feel free to sprinkle that in as it comes up. Awesome. Okay. Well the first thing I wanted to ask you about is something that I hadn’t even considered until you kind of mentioned it as an offhand comment, as part of a larger discussion that we were having when we were emailing and you said that “creativity is highly valued in our society and is part of our individualistic orientation. Creativity that makes a difference in art, depends on the ability to do and see things differently and also have a command of the medium.” And it was the first part of that that, that really blew my mind. I really hadn’t considered the possibility that not all cultures value creativity equally. I just figured that if everybody had access to crayons and paper, everybody would give their child crayons and paper and we pretty much do the same thing as I do with my child. So I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about this. Dr. Callaghan: 04:44 Yeah, I think that what, what I was focused on was, was thinking about how we define creativity in our own society and by our own, I’m talking about a kind of middle class, North American, European, Euro-centric kind of um, uh, what is typically called the Western orientation. So in the West we’re well known for valuing independence and independent thought and if you are in a society that values that, then a lot of different things including creativity, get defined in a way that meets those societal goals. And then if you’re a parent, you’re trying to, without really even being aware of this, you are instilling the cultural values in your children as you parent them. So I think in different art forms it’s maybe more or less true, but I, my observation of, of art and my experience with art in our culture is that to get ahead, you have to be different from somebody else. Dr. Callaghan: 05:52 You have to be contributing a new perspective or a new discovery, that sort of thing. And that’s also the case in science really, that we really are pushing to individuals to contribute something that’s brand new. So when I say that it’s highly valued, I think creativity is highly valued in probably every culture, but it may be defined and what, what constitutes or how the process of creativity may be seen to be a different. Back to your issue about creativity and crayons and giving. It really comes down to what the parents’ goals are in that society. And India is not a society, it’s a multitude of societies. Canada, likewise; U.S. likewise. So when you try to think about a parent helping a child become creative, you’ve got to know what that parents’ aims are, what are their parenting goals there? And part of that, uh, those goals will be shaped by the society they find themselves in and you may find more of a, um, a goal in, in the US and Canada in counteracting the larger society goals. So you might want to do things differently than you feel the larger society may hold children back or or whatever. And so you see a lot of that kind of independence in Canada and I, and I think that’s, that’s really valuable, but probably becoming aware of your own goals, how they’re influenced by society, the society we live in and as a parent we want our children, uh, I would say to become contributing members to the society that they find themselves in and so shaping our child to fit in well with an individualist society where that’s going to bring them the most success in their lives in terms of happiness, and feeling that they are valued and making a contribution I think is probably behind a lot of the shaping or parenting practices that we do. Dr. Callaghan: 08:00 Like how do you prepare your child if you want to foster creativity, which I think is a really great thing to do, in any individual, regardless of culture, then how do you go about that and how do you predict what your society is going to be like in, you know, when your child is becoming an adult and a launching off to make their contribution to life. And so I think keeping tabs on what’s going on in other cultures is a really good way to keep a handle on what your child’s going to need and creativity I think is a great way because the more adaptive we are to change and to new things and to seeing things from different perspectives, I think that that’s where I’d put my money – the better able we will be to adapt to whatever’s coming down the road. Jen: 08:58 Great. So let’s start digging a little bit into your research. Can you tell us about what symbolic representation means and why it’s important? Dr. Callaghan: 09:06 A symbol is something that stands for something else and as a symbol can be, as you know, many forms that can be a child, a naive kind of drawing of a person, what we call the tadpole, which is a little head body with a couple of stick legs coming out of it. And sometimes, an eye, and a smile as my grandson called the mouth… Dr. Callaghan: 09:30 Just one eye? Dr. Callaghan: 09:31 Yeah, sometimes sometimes multiple eyes, when he really gets into that form! So that visual or very simple graphic can be a shorthand if you like, or, or an image that stands for something else. So a symbol is something that stands in for or represent something else. And representation…when you put those together, symbolic representation is really about a process that you are intentionally creating, a symbol in order to stand for something else. Dr. Callaghan: 10:13 Now, why would humans even want to do that? Well, the ultimate goal of all symbols is to communicate with other humans. So that’s it. Symbolic representation is at the very basic foundation, it’s about communication. And I, I, I said intentionally, forming that because of the scribbles. And you talked about the book that you had read, Magic Places where she said no, these scribbles don’t mean anything. They very likely don’t. And they very likely are… Sometimes children happen upon something that looks like it and can recognize a shape; their form perception is excellent for sure. And their color perception is excellent by the time they’re two. But their cognitive ability to understand such an abstract concept as ‘stand for,’ ‘stand in for’ or ‘represent’ is not there yet. And that’s a very strict criteria. Dr. Callaghan: 11:24 So somebody will say, well, my two year old drew something as you know, and said this is a dog. And then when I looked at it, it really looked like a dog and sure… Those kinds of perceptual similarities labeled after the fact precede genuine symbolic understanding. And it’s all part of that process of how we help children and how we scaffold them to this understanding of these very complex terms. So if a child brings you a picture and you say, what is it? Then right away the child’s getting the message that there’s meaning here. So you know, you’re helping them to understand by that question, that meaning is involved when we do these kinds of things. Jen: 12:10 So do you think it is helpful for parents to ask the child “what is it?” Does it, does it scaffold that knowledge? And if you, if parents are listening to and understand what the term scaffolding is, I have a whole episode coming up on that in a couple of weeks…but is it something that helps the children’s developmental process or does it make them aware of something that, you know, it might be better if they were naive about for a little bit longer. Dr. Callaghan: 12:36 I think that’s almost an individual choice. I’m careful about how I ask questions, but I don’t see a problem whatsoever of parents saying, “Hey, what’s that? That’s so cool.” And, and, and, you know, having a discussion with the child but not pushing it. If a child is a parent can really tell whether the child’s really grasping what they’re asking them or not. And so that’s where, in your episode on scaffolding, you’ll be talking no doubt about, you know, you, uh, children are in this zone of understanding and there’s some things they are capable of and some things are not. You had like this little boundary around you where you can understand some things not. And in that sweet spot you can help children, uh, understand with particular questions like that. Oh, what’s that? And let me draw something and look what I’m drawing and then the child can see that when you have an object you can make a figure look like it with a certain amount of motor control and intention and and then they’re sort of getting at that process what that process is all about and scribbling is great fun for kids and you know, it’s very enjoyable for children to work with the medium of paint or or marker or whatever it is, color and shape and make all…and the graphics and graphic motor actions are really fun for them to do as well. Dr. Callaghan: 14:05 So these, I see all as important precursors. And then if you wrap that all up with an attentive parent who is not imposing their own understanding on the child, but reading from the child’s reactions, what is it that they understand? I think that if I, if I were training as a…and I do train lots of students, I’m asking them to be completely open minded and not to have an idea ahead of time of what this child understands. Just try to see, try to probe lightly without giving them the answer… Jen: 14:47 So what kinds of things do you say to… What do you tell your students to say in that situation? Dr. Callaghan: 14:52 You would follow up but not lead the child down the path that you want them to go so you mostly when we do experiments we don’t have any kind of dialogue with children when we’re done the experiment we might follow up with when you did that, what did you mean? Or what is this part? And I noticed that you did this and and and so on. So mostly we would, we would keep our experiments really pristine and not influenced by by an adult input whatsoever. Jen: 15:27 So you’ve done a lot of research on when children understand that pictures are actually symbols for a real object. And I know you’ve spent many, many years, they hear about this. Can you tell us just a little bit about it and specifically I’m interested in the fact that there are people who believe that maybe symbolic representation develops a little bit earlier than you do, and so what leads you to think that it comes in later than some other people do? Dr. Callaghan: 15:53 Well, there’s a big move in developmental psychology, always has been really toward finding the earliest onset of something which is a really valuable goal. It’s really important to do that because of that question that we talked about just briefly at the beginning. What do we have as part of human...

So did you teach your toddler to read yet? And if not, why not? I’m just kidding, of course. I wanted to write this episode on encouraging literacy in middle to older toddlers, but the more I researched the more I found the issues go much further back than what you do in toddlerhood. Then I found – and read! – a 45,000 word essay by Larry Sanger, who taught his baby son to read.  I’m not kidding.  Check out the link to the video on YouTube in the references. My two-year-old can’t read yet.  Did I miss the boat?  Would her learning outcomes have been better if I had taught her as a baby? Is TV a good medium to teach reading and vocabulary? What are some of the things parents of young toddlers can do to encourage reading readiness when the child is ready? We talk about all this and more in episode 3, and there’s more to come for older toddlers in a few episodes time.   Jump to highlights 00:38 Introduction of episode 02:43 Vocabulary development 07:36 Academic instruction at an early age 08:10 2 things that stood out in the research 10:09 What should you be doing to encourage future literacy in children 10:54 6 principles of word learning development 12:00 Interactive and responsive context   References American Academy of Pediatrics (2016). Media and Children. Accessed August 19th, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Pages/Media-and-Children.aspx?rf=32524&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token Carlsson-Paige, N., G. Bywater McLaughlin, and J. Wolfsheimer Almon (2015). Reading instruction in kindergarten: Little to gain and much to lose. Available online at: http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/Reading_Instruction_in_Kindergarten.pdf Christakis, D.A. (2008). The effects of infant media usage: What do we know and what should we learn? Acta Paediatrica 98, 8-16. Full article available at: http://echd430-f13-love.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Pediatrics+article.pdf Federal Trade Commission (2014). Defendants settle FTC charges related to “Your Baby Can Read” program. Available online at: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/08/defendants-settle-ftc-charges-related-your-baby-can-read-program Gray, P. (2010). Children teach themselves to read. Blog post on Psychology Today available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read Gray, P. (2015). Early academic training produces long-term harm. Blog post on Psychology Today available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm Harris, J., Golinkoff, R.M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2011). Lessons from the crib for the classroom: How children really learn vocabulary. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.) Handbook of early literacy research Vol. 3. (49-65). New York: Guilford. Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R.M., & Eyer, D. (2003). Einstein never used flash cards. Emmaus, PA: Rodale. National Center for Education Statistics (2016). Status dropout rates. Available at: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coj.asp Neuman, S., Kaefer, T., Pinkham, A., & Strouse, G.A. (2014). Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media. Journal of Educational Psychology 106(3), 815-830. Full article available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273814238_Can_Babies_Learn_to_Read_A_Randomized_Trial_of_Baby_Media Sanger, L (2010). How and why I taught my toddler to read. Available online at: http://blog.larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading/ Sanger, L. (2010). 3-year-old reading the Constitution – reading progress from age 2 to age 4. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIu8BGFqMm4 WatchKnowLearn (2016). Reading Bear. Website available at: http://www.readingbear.org/# Zimmerman, F.J., Christakis, D.A., & Meltzoff, A.N. (2007). Associations between media viewing and language development in children under age 2 years. Journal of Pediatrics 151, 364-368.   Read Full Transcript Transcript So is your toddler reading yet?  And if not, why not? I’m just kidding, of course. I will say that this episode has been the hardest one yet to research and write, just because there is *so much* information out there on the topic, which is “How to encourage literacy in preschoolers.”  Each time I thought I knew what my research question was I had to step back and consider an issue further back in the information chain. I started by reading textbooks for teachers on how to teach children to read, including the theoretical background behind this work and how approaches have shifted over the years.  I like to start with textbooks because they tend to be rigorously researched and have lots of citations to spark my own research. I also found – and read – a 45,000 word essay by Larry Sanger, he who co-founded Wikipedia, who successfully taught his own son to read – in the show notes for this episode on my website (at Your Parenting Mojo.com) you can find a link to a video of his son reading a book at 2 years 5 months, and reading the Constitution at 3 years 10 months.  Sanger did this using a video called Your Baby Can Read (which is available on Amazon even though Dr. Titzer, who started the program, settled a claim with the FTC and is not allowed to use the term “Your Baby Can Read” any more because it is an unsubstantiated claim.)  Basically the child watches programs from a DVD, reads the books, and looks at the flash cards and develops an ability to “read.” So I was actually reading these things – Larry Sanger’s essay and several books – in parallel, using one answer questions raised by the other.  It’s safe to say that the preponderance of scientific evidence does not advocate for teaching your baby to read.  Indeed, the only study I could find on the topic was one conducted to test specifically whether Your Baby Can Read works, and found that it does not.  Another study that focused on vocabulary development rather than reading found that for each hour of “educational” DVDs that babies watched, they knew on average 6-8 fewer words, although the effect did appear to be transitory and was mostly gone by age 17-24 months.  Even Peter Sanger acknowledges that plonking your child in front of a DVD isn’t really the “ideal” way to learn to read. I should also note that Sanger has developed a free set of tools called Reading Bear, based on the ones he used to teach his son – I’ll include the link in the references for this episode.  I was amused to see, though, that “Reading Bear is aimed mainly at children learning to read at the traditional ages of 4-7….But even younger children do enjoy and get something out of Reading Bear.”  Sounds like someone has read the FTC ruling on the Your Baby Can Read set and doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of that argument to me But what about Sanger’s son? He is clearly reading the Constitution in the video, if not understanding it.  Can *some* babies be taught to read?  Should they be taught to read?  As a parent of a toddler, have I missed out on something by not teaching my daughter to read? These were the questions I set out to answer for this episode. I think ultimately it goes back to what we as parents want for our kids, and what our kids want for themselves.  Sanger says that he aims to give his son “a deep, serious liberal arts education”, which he characterizes as having substantial knowledge about many different subjects, being able to write well, being able to read difficult texts, being comfortable with numbers (or excellent, if one is in a technical field), being able to speak a few languages, and generally having a sophisticated outlook on human life and our place in the universe.  He argues that his goal is not to get his kid to graduate by age 12 and out into the working world sooner so his son can get a big richer at the end of his longer career, it’s the opportunity to have more years to spend on learning general knowledge like literature, history, and science, before specializing and getting into a profession. To me, it seems as though Sanger has missed a step.  He’s assuming that a liberal arts-style of education is a good goal for all kids, and I don’t believe it is.  I’m still thinking this through so my approach may change in the future, but if I had to pinpoint what I want for Carys it would be that she lives a life that she considers to be satisfying and fulfilling.  I would really love for her to have a love for learning as well, but to me that’s a secondary goal. As a reasonably well-educated parent it would of course make *me* happy if that involved her learning a lot about some of the subjects I consider important.  *But it might not make her happy*.  She may be perfectly fulfilled as an auto mechanic who never listens to NPR.  She might become a master plumber and be the person who can finally teach me how to install a hammer arrester on an existing water line (I failed at that a couple of weekends ago).  She might want to work in an oil field, undoing all the work I’ve tried to do in my corporate career, getting companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.  None of those occupations *require* a liberal arts education, although it’s possible she could get that education and still find one of those jobs fulfilling.  As a reasonably well-educated parent it might make me cringe a bit to tell people at parties that my daughter was doing one of those jobs.  But ultimately it’s *her* choice to make, not mine.  Sanger talks about how some of his happiest and most rewarding times in high school and college were when he was really learning, and he wants his child to do more of that sort of learning, and enjoy it.  But what if his son doesn’t enjoy it?  I wonder what Sanger will do then. But Jen, I hear you thinking, what could be the harm in it?  Clearly at least one baby has learned to read using Your Baby Can Read, even if a statistically significant sample in a scientific study didn’t learn to read using that method.  Shouldn’t you and I be trying to make up for lost time? The scientific community does seem to have some consensus around the idea that *pushing* kids to learn skills like reading before they are ready and when they don’t really want to, can have harmful effects on later learning outcomes.  A 2015 literature review called “Reading instruction in kindergarten: Little to gain and much to lose” found that many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, yet the Common Core State Standards require them to do just that – read in kindergarten.  No research documents long-term gains from learning to read in kindergarten.  Studies have shown that early academic training can increase children’s immediate scores on specific tests that the training addresses, but these initial gains are lost within 1-3 years and may eventually be reversed.  It’s also possible that academic instruction at an early age can produce long-term harm in the realms of social and emotional development. Just like with every other aspect of children’s development, there appears to be a wide range of “normal” development related to reading.  Some children learn to walk at nine months; some walk at 15 months.  Some children learn to read as toddlers (it’s probably safe to say that babies wouldn’t learn to read without adult intervention); some children in a Sudbury-school type model where there is no direct instruction unless the student requests it, may not learn to read until age 14 or 15. Two other things stood out in my research: firstly, that children will learn to read when they want to read to accomplish some other goal.  Peter Gray, who writes a blog on Psychology Today, asked parents who were in alternative forms of education when and how their children learned to read.  One woman wrote that her daughter had been telling people she couldn’t read until she was about age 7.  One day the daughter wanted to eat brownies and neither the mother nor the father wanted to bake them.  A while later the daughter asked the mother to turn on the oven and find her a “9 ex 11 pan” and, later, to put the brownies in the oven.  The daughter said “Ma, I think I can read now.”  The daughter read a few books out loud to the mother until the brownies were done. A 19 year-old blogger who had been homeschooled said that her mother would read the first Harry Potter to her and her younger sister.  But the mother was busy and if she read too long her voice would get hoarse so, being frustrated at the delay and impatient to know what happened next, the blogger picked up the book and started reading.  Clearly these children had a reason to start reading, so they did it.  Not every child can just “read,” though – some of them do need explicit instruction. Secondly, if you’re in the U.S. and your child isn’t reading by the end of kindergarten, he or she is officially “behind” according to the Common Core standards.  And now we find ourselves with a problem: we know that some children may not be able to read until much later than kindergarten age, but if they’re not reading by the time they enter first grade they’re going to get more and more “behind” as they can’t keep up with material that’s presented in a written format. This puts parents whose children will go into a traditional school model in a bit of a bind.  You’ll be OK following your child’s lead as long as he’s not a late bloomer (because there is some evidence that boys develop reading ability later than girls).  Perhaps that’s one factor explaining why boys drop out of high school at a higher rate of girls – from the very beginning some of them are pressured to learn things before they’re ready and that just continues to cascade throughout their school career.  I’m just speculating on that one. So assuming you haven’t yet taught your toddler to read, what should you be doing to encourage future literacy in your child without pushing it on them?  I’ll go into much more detail on this in a future episode, but I want to leave you with some things to get you started.  I should acknowledge here that different cultures have different ways of thinking of literacy.  Some cultures prioritize things like oral stories, songs, and music.  Others prioritize the written word but mainly use print for religious purposes (like reading religious texts) or practical purposes (paying bills and writing shopping lists). One thing that anyone can do to prepare a child for reading readiness, no matter how you use literature, is talk with your child in a way that enhances their vocabulary.  So no need for flash cards or new word memorization, but you can follow six principles of word learning developed by the authors of the book Einstein Never Used Flashcards, although these specific principles are found in a journal article they wrote with one of the graduate students.  The principles are are: Frequency – children learn the words they hear the most Children learn words for things and events that interest them Interactive and responsive contexts (like conversation) are more conducive to vocabulary learning than passive contexts (like TV viewing) Create meaningful contexts – rather than offering flashcards, learn words about baking while baking. Learn colors and textures while folding laundry. Tell children the definitions of the new words. When the child points to a toaster and says “what’s that,” instead of just saying “it’s a toaster,” say “that’s a toaster.  It’s cooking your bread for your breakfast.” Use words in sentences. Children’s learning of grammar feeds off their learning vocabulary, and vice versa. They learn how to use grammar correctly when they hear adults using grammar correctly. I want to expand a bit on point number 3 because it connects back to the Your Baby Can Read program, which is presented in a series of DVDs.  The American Academy of Pediatrics officially discourages TV viewing in the first two years of life (although only 6% of U.S. parents are even aware of these guidelines which may partly explain why 90% of parents appear to ignore this advice).  The AAP states that its guidelines are based on the detrimental effects of “excessive” media use, and because “young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.”  So while Larry Sanger taught his son to read using a DVD set, he describes his process very explicitly – he always sat with his son while his son watched the DVDs and they talked about what they saw, and this interaction could have been responsible for some of Sanger’s success.  But, as Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington points out, “the fundamental research question is not *can* infants learn from a screen under ideal circumstances, including an interactive parent, but is that learning somehow superior to alternative means of advancing child development?” Many researchers agree that reading books to children is very important, but so is surrounding children with literacy in their everyday lives.  Following a recipe together as you bake a cake counts as a “literacy activity.”  So does sorting junk mail.  And discussing road signs you see while out on a walk. One way to figure out a path is to let your child lead, which is something I stumbled on accidentally myself.  We were waiting outside a restaurant about three months ago (so my daughter, Carys, would have been about 22 months old).  It was a seafood restaurant and there was a humorous slogan along the bottom of the window – something like “fish or cut bait.”  Carys pointed to the “F” and said “what’s that?” I said “It’s an F.”  She moved along each letter asking “what’s that?”.  Not long after that my husband was at the mall and picked up an alphabet book at a bookstore so he could get his parking validated.  Carys and I went on a backpacking trip in Wales a couple of weeks after that and she made me go through that book every single night – even though I specifically requested we read a different book.  She knew about three letters of the alphabet before we left, and now she knows about half of it.  The whole thing is led by her: we read to her when she asks; we tell her letters when she asks.  Your child may well not be asking these questions yet and *that’s OK*.  Continue reading books – vary the books, as much as your toddler will allow, anyway – test him with longer books but mix in shorter books as well.  Consider running your finger under the line of print to see if she’s interested in what the print *does* – but be ready to back off if she finds it irritating.  Follow her lead.  My next question is “now that...